Desire freezes when switching from 3G to 2G

[edwinek]

This is weird, but reproduceable, at least on my device. I call it the toilet freeze because it usually happens when I try to catch up on some reading while on the toilet.
I switch on the device, which at that point has an H or 3G data connection. A few seconds later that becomes G (because somehow the toilets are heavily shielded, or something). Again about a minute later the phone freezes.
This happens almost every time when the data connection degrades from 3G to 2G. I've had this happening on several ROMs, like CM7.0.3, Redux 1.2 and now GingerVillain 2.7. It can happen while reading Twitter (independent of which Twitter app I'm using) or browsing the web or any other net-related activity. Very strange.
I have a slight suspicion that this happens expecially when I'm using some kind of network traffic counter (3G Watchdog Pro, so far), but I'm not at all sure. With the amount of apps I have installed, trying them one by one would take almost a year...

HTC Desire GSM
GingerVillain 2.7 (GingerBread 2.3.4)
2.6.38.4-defrost-bravo HAVS Kernel
Radio 5.11.05.27

Update:
I seem to be the only one having this problem. At the moment it looks like Tweetdeck was the culprit. Using Device Analyzer (highly recommended in situations like this) I found out it was always among the recently started processes when my Desire froze. I replaced it with Plume yesterday and tried it twice on the toilet of doom. No freezes at all. Fingers crossed this was it.

 

[edwinek]

Am I really unique in this? I'm still having this issue. In the meantime I tried other ROMs (Oxygen 2.2 and GingerVillain 2.8 and now 3.1), but the issue is still there. Looks like the ROM's not to blame.

Can anyone give me any starting point for finding the cause? I've thought of de-/reinstalling all of my apps, but first of all that's a lot of apps, and second: it might just as well be a combination of apps that's causing this. Not promising.

So anyone who can suggest where I can start looking (like certain kinds of apps, or certain messages in the log file) will be forever my hero.

I attach a log file that leads right up to one freeze, maybe that will shed some light on this.

Current config:
HTC Desire GSM
GingerVillain 3.1 (GingerBread 2.3.4)
2.6.38.4-defrost-bravo HAVS Kernel #890
Radio 5.11.05.27

 

[pepevdm]

If you still have this problem, I hope you find my reply eventually.

I flashed my first unofficial rom on my desire two days ago, and met the same thing you did, my phone froze once it switched to 2G. I spent a whole day trying to find the exact problem myself. So, I've dug around on xda and found a guy who solved it by changing his SD card cache partition from ext4 to ext3. I went to try it, aaaand... nothing, same freezing after about 20 seconds. I reflashed everything to exclude possible app and cache problems, still no change. Then I realized this is not android crashing (as I think it would just reboot) but a CPU hang! I turned off ALL power saving features included in my custom rom, and found out that it overclocked my cpu to 1,2Ghz without asking me about it... I removed the OC in an app supplied in the rom, setting it back to the original 1Ghz, and now my phone works perfectly.

Now this raises some questions, as 99% of desire owners never even met this problem, it is likely we are blessed with under-performing units, or just bad luck.

I hope this helps someone.

 

[edwinek]

Thanks for the reply. I hadn't thought of that yet, but thinking back, the start of this problem and my first using OC might well coincide. Ever since, I've been running my CPU with a max of 1113MHz (which, according to SetCPU stats, is in use for 3.5% of the time). Not a lot of OC, but still.
I'll give this a go. In fact, I've already tried it in a location known to provide only 2G with a max of 998MHz and all went fine. That's happened before, but it affords a spark of hope. I'll report the results in a couple of days time.

 

[edwinek]

Well, sadly that didn't work. It looked hopeful at the start, but then the crashes came back... Thanks all the same.

 

[tocophonic]

Hi!
edwinek, do you still have that problem or have you already solved it?
I got it too, didnt find a single thread on that problem except this one so farm.

Experiencing those freezes since I wiped my phone and updated to CyanogenMod 7 (nightly #262)

The phone always freezes soon seconds after switching to GPRS/EDGE, nothing helps but removing and then reinserting the battery again.. that's frustrating.
I had Juice Defender (power management app) installed and suspected this app of maybe being the reason for my problem. Uninstalled it, didn't help.

Any help or advice would be appreciated!

Thanks in advance,
toco

 

[edwinek]

Hi Toco,

in my case 3G works fine, switching to 2G freezes the phone. I've totally disabled 2G data, since I have a 3G connection available 95% of the time. That stopped the freezes.

On the dialer, type *#*#4636#*#*. That will take you to the testing menu. Select phone information, scroll all the way down. There's a select-box where you can select which network types to use.

Good luck

 

[tocophonic]

Hi edwinek,
thanks for the tip. But unfortunately, that wouldn't work so well for me since in some buildings here in Vienna/Austria (especially when below street level) there is only 2G coverage. I sometimes visit my parents as well, they live in a rural area where 3G coverage is very limited.

What I did just recently: upgraded to the latest CM7 nightly ([ROM] HTC DESIRE NIGHTLY - @euroskank [ FEB 26th 2012 ] CM 7.2.0 - RC1 - xda-developers) and changed the kernel to ManU 2.1 ([AOSP/CM7 Kernel] 11/01/2012 ManU 2.1 - 2.6.35 based battery efficient kernels - xda-developers). Runs very stable so far, will keep this thread updated.

Greetings out there,
toco

 

[edwinek]

Hi Toco,

I'll give that one a try. What did you go for, CFS/BFS? AXI?

Edwin

 

[tocophonic]

I went for AXI-CFS (http://famille.viollet.free.fr/DeFrostKernels/ManU-2.1-GB-HAVS-AXI-128-CFS.zip)

good luck!