Samsung Galaxy S3 I9300 freezes every hour or so.

[jdta09]

This might not be much help, but I've been having these same issues. I went to delete loads of apps that I don't really use any more just to clear up a bit of space. The Settings app froze a couple of times when I started doing this. I probably deleted about 20 apps, some quite large. I then went through all the remaining ones and deleted their cache. Then I rebooted normally. It's been a lot more responsive and less sluggish since doing this and no freezing so far. I also disabled Samsung Push Services.

 

[Talha Chowdhury]

This has pissed me off! I've got the blue s3 & like everyone here things were fine until recently.
I've come across a possible solution which I've only implemented a few minz ago so fingers crossed it works! Just thought I'd share that with y'all.

Well after a weekend of troubleshooting here are my findings:-
The above fix suggestion (type: *#0011# Then press menu -> wifi, there is a button ON ( power saving or something ), change it to OFF.) did completely fix the issue.
Also speeded up general operation (some slowdown/lag switching between screens, not unbearable, but noticeable)
However:-
This fix works until you turn the phone off and then on again. On the boot up sequence Samsung see's fit to turn this 'feature back on' leaving me with no option but to go through the simple, but annoying task of typing in *#0011# and turning the feature back off.
Not sure how to turn this feature off permanentely (or at least until Samsung release a bug fix/patch) but I suspect the option hides in system somewhere and I will have to root my phone to apply (ideas anyone?)

 

[Pranav Nigam]

service center has kept my phone for 3 days now.. 1st day they wiped the s/w and reloaded the latest firmware again but that didn't solved the issue completely...

then they replaced the motherboard on the 2nd day but now are unable to write imei number on it so its still with them... i have called samsung customer care for this and they will call me back tomorrow mng for updates why its taking so long.... lets see its difficult to spend time without my S3 ://

 

[thelegendaryjay]

I've followed the steps in the XDA thread (inc. backing up my EFS) - I'll let you all know how this goes and if it has resolved it for me, though I had 0 bad blocks...



EDIT: just ran the VEllamo benchmark to see if that would lock it up... it has. Back to the drawing board / Vodafone.

 

[LeQna]

Same problem here. Have had my s3 for about 7 months without any problems. But recently it freezes every 10 minutes and I have to take the battery out and testat it. It's absolutely the worste when the battery is rusning low. Why? What should we do?

 

[Sl0th]

i was having exact same problem was such a punish but it fixed itself magically dont know how.. that was after 2 factory resets and upgrading firmware to 4.1.2

So hopefully yours will magically fix itself. been working exactly how it should be now and i can use it with confidence again going into all different apps without thinking "oh its gonna freeze!"

 

[nombredeusuario75]

well, the *#0011# method works for me, but still have not rebooted the phone. Im sure it will freeze again as soon as I reboot it.

 

[richo1973]

Similar to others my problems have returned . For a couple of days after a factory reset it worked fine. Put a few more apps on and it froze on me once a day. This morning its frozen 3 times already and now started rebooting itself. Originally I was going to roll it back to 4.1.1 but I've decided to walk back into Phones4U and send the phone off for repair. Very frustrating and same as others upto last Tuedsay I had never experienced these issues before.

Update. Since resetting my phone and installing only minimal apps (for now) coming upto 72hrs it has frozen once which I'm not convinced was not an issue with Twitter. So..for me so far so good. Slowly will now start installing my main apps and see how it goes. Good luck for everyone else out there who has had the same issues....

 

[Pranav Nigam]

They replaced my motherboard. But then it started giving network problem. So i called samsung customer care and they routed my call to india hq and i was put on conference with the owner of the service center.

Points to note:
1. They will put another new motherboard.
2. Samsung replacement warranty in india is just 7 days, later on its just service/repair warranty for 1 year.
3. I noticed everyone who is facing the problem has purchased his s3 6-7 months before.
4. I should have got additional 1 year warranty

i would suggest others as long as its under warranty take your phone to samsung instead of trying different tweaks or factory reset again and again...

 

[betty_boop245]

I agree with Pranav, re installing software and resetting etc, doesn't work. I personally think there is a manufacturing flaw with certain handsets made around 6-7 months ago, as it does seem odd that so many people are having the same issues with handsets that are around the same age. At first I thought it was the Jelly Bean update, but now I think its a major hardware issue, and I'd say to anyone having problems to send it back to Samsung, while its still under warranty

 

[jdta09]

I'm sure it's to do with charging/battery. I was trying to charge my phone at work this afternoon and it was freezing rebooting every 5 minutes, once I'd left work I listened to 30 mins podcasts, watched 30 mins video and have been at home checking it occasionally and all's been fine, no problems at all.
This would also explain why I've noticed recently that when I leave it charging next to the bed, it often makes the noise to say it's just been plugged in. In fact I now put it on silent every night, but in fact I bet this is when it's rebooted or reawakened itself.

 

[Christian Natiez]

Freezing (Re: Samsung Galaxy S3 I9300 freezes every hour or so.)

Freeing space on internal SD card (sdcard0) solved the problem.

• Set the Android camera app to save photos and videos to SD card by default. Move the contents of the camera folder (/storage/sdcard0/DCIM/Camera) to the external SD card (/storage/extSdCard/DCIM/Camera).

• Set every app you can to use the external SD card by default. Move existing data of the respective app to the external SD card.

• Remove redundant, obsolete apps. Keep in mind that ad enabled apps can use mem (besides bandwidth) for ad data.

 

[champions12]

I've been having the same problem with my S3 for about the last 2 weeks. I've not tried the rollback to 4.1.1 or factory reset (mainly because people on here have said it hasn't worked for them) and none of the other tweaks like WPS have worked either.

One thing I've noticed with mine, though, is that it wasn't freezing when I was listening to music or an audiobook. To experiment further, I created a 10-minute "silence.mp3" file (which does exactly what it sounds like - plays silence for 10 mins) and I set this playing in the music player on continuous single-track loop. Since I did this, my phone has not frozen at all.

The obvious downside is that it is a drain on the battery (although not a massive drain). It's not an ideal workaround but is worth a go if nothing else is working for you. It might at least buy you a bit of time pending a proper fix from Samsung. They don't seem to be acknowledging the general problem yet so we might be some way off that, though.

I'm going to experiment with a few options in the Android API to see if I can write something more lightweight that will keep the device active in a similar way to the music player but is less of a drain on the battery.

 

[gpalmans]

I've been strugling with the same issue the past weekend.
So far I've come to the following conclusions:

1) for me, it's definitely a wifi issue. If I reboot the phone, it will freeze in a matter of minutes. If first thing I do is turn off the wifi, or at least disconnect from my home network (but leave wifi turned on), it will not freeze at all, and it will run stable for hours on end. Seconds after I re-enable (or re-connect) to wifi, the phone will freeze.

2) for me, it seems to be a 4.1.2 issue only. I've tried different (stock) ROMS (XXEMR2, XXELLA), and all the 4.1.2 ROMS were freezing. Even during initial setup after factory reset (not long after connecting to wifi). I flashed back to the original 4.0.4 (XXALF5), which seemed stable. I tried Emergency Recovery through Kies (which installs 4.1.2 XXELL4), but that one frooze too. I've now flashed it to a 4.1.1 ROM (XXDLIH), and been working on the phone intensively for the past 2hrs restoring all my apps and data, continuously on Wifi, and it hasn't crashed once.

So even though, at least for me, this seems to be limited to the 4.1.2 firmware only, I'm still debating if I should just let this slide. Maybe it IS a hardware issue, that's being triggered by 4.1.2? If so, since my phone is still under warranty for the next 4 months, would it be safer to send it back and have it checked?

 

[boyleyc]

My s3 has been crashing for days now.

In another obscure thread I found someone having problems similar, anyway they said the fix was as follows:

Settings > DEVELOPER Settings > Turn off Transition and Animation Scale.

Previous to doing this my phone was crashing randomly, sometimes as soon as it was booting, holding power was the only way to fix. This happened after 4.1.2 upgrade

I posted this in another thread and It has been 2 days since the last crash happened.

Hope this solves your problems

Mr B

 

[David Sutherland1]

Following up on my earlier post.

My phone uptime is 99:51:05 and hasn't frozen once in that time. That's 4+ days. It would be longer but I shut it down while flying.

I no longer need to mess with the wifi settings or do any other tweaks.

The fix for me was running fstrim. This suggests that block allocation on the phones internal memory was SNAFU'd, and fstrim fixed it. Why wifi settings were helping shall remain a mystery.

There are a few reports of bricking after using fstrim, but I suspect that is where non-patched eMMC-aware kernels are in use. I had no problem at all and I am delighted to have my stable, fluid S3 back.

Those of you still struggling should consider giving it a try.

 

[rynlpin]

Fstrim requires rooting.

 

[Chinedu Umeh]

Following up on my earlier post.

My phone uptime is 99:51:05 and hasn't frozen once in that time. That's 4+ days. It would be longer but I shut it down while flying.

I no longer need to mess with the wifi settings or do any other tweaks.

The fix for me was running fstrim. This suggests that block allocation on the phones internal memory was SNAFU'd, and fstrim fixed it. Why wifi settings were helping shall remain a mystery.

There are a few reports of bricking after using fstrim, but I suspect that is where non-patched eMMC-aware kernels are in use. I had no problem at all and I am delighted to have my stable, fluid S3 back.

Those of you still struggling should consider giving it a try.

I can confirm that this fixed my constant freezing

 

[FabP69]

Same here. Mine froze every 5 to 10 minutes or so for days after installing 4.1.2. Anytime between Samsung logo flashing at start, password entering, usings apps, or simply not doing anything. I finally realised that the Storage was nearly full (rougly 10GB used out of total space 11.25GB, as checked in Setting/ Storage). I deleted a few music and film and now everything is back to normal. It was runing perfectly fine before 4.1.2 version and I didn't increase strorage usage since (or not much). Can it be that the new 4.1.2 needs much more free space than previous versions?

Freezes came back (less frequently though, every other hours), so not a memory problem.

 

[thelegendaryjay]

I think fstrim also fixed it for me, it was the last thing I had done and no freezing / lock ups since! Hurrah!