Why is my Samsung Galaxy S5 Mini freezing and crashing?

[melvis82]

Samsung Galaxy s5 Mini freezing or crashing

Hi there, can someone please help me. I bought my Samsung S5 Mini on the day it was released in the UK in August and since then I have had to have a replacement handset due to the phone crashing at random times, this has happened when trying to use the camera from the lock screen, after being on charge overnight and when using youtube.

I have had this new handset for 3 weeks and its started to do the same thing again, it crashed last night when trying to use a torch app that I have downloaded (and used on all my previous android devices) and again this morning after taking it off charge.

I've checked and I am running kitkat 4.4.2 so I don't need to do a software update, my network provider is 3

I always close any app after using it and 90% of the time I am connected to WiFi however I have started to notice if I stay connected to WiFi for a couple of hours it drops off and I have to turn my WiFi off and back on for it to connect, this obviously could be an issue with the WiFi I am using not the phone.

Does anyone else have these or similar problems as I really like android and Samsung and don't really want to have to change phones again.

 

[B. Diddy]

Re: Samsung Galaxy s5 Mini freezing or crashing

Welcome to Android Central! When similar problems crop up on a new phone, it's either a widespread issue with the hardware or firmware (which is unlikely, since it would have made headlines), or more likely it's due to some app that you installed on both phones that is causing some kind of instability. Try booting into Safe Mode, which temporarily disables all 3rd party apps. If the problem goes away in Safe Mode, then you know it's something you installed. The challenging part is figuring out which app is the problem. You may have to uninstall apps one by one until the problem goes away.

Safe Mode steps are here: Reset: Samsung Galaxy S 5 | T-Mobile Support

 

[baldpaul]

I too have suffered with random crashes and even a few instances where the screen will not wake up after the display has gone to sleep for a while. The last problem can only be fixed by removing and replacing the battery which is a complete pain but as it has only happened about 3 times I'm hoping it may settle down eventually. The random crashes have occurred maybe once every 4 days and when I say crash I mean that the phone just restarts itself. I don't believe that this is caused by a third party app as these are the same apps I use on all my previous android phones and tablets with nothing out of the ordinary. I have had restarts when i haven't been using the phone for several hours and it just suddenly does it. I am hoping that a future software upgrade may sort it out and hopefully that will be to lollipop.I have read about similar issues on the S5 so we're not the only ones.

 

[melvis82]

Thanks folks typically since I posted this my phone has not crashed so fingers crossed it wont again any time soon

 

[melvis82]

Hi all again, just my luck that last night and this morning my phone has crashed again last night I was having 2 whatsapp coversations at the same time, when one conversation finished I continued the other one for a while...I got a bit bored so when I received the last message I left the whatsapp pop up box on my screen and ignored my phone for about an hour. When I went to use my phone again I pressed the home button and the whatsapp message box flashed up you have the choice to type a message and send or press close to ignore/reply to later so I pressed close and the message wouldn't close, I pressed close again and my phone started flicking screens between the whatsapp message box and my lock screen but wouldn't let me either unlock my phone or close the message box. I clicked the home button a couple of times in frustration and the S voice function started loading so I tried to shut that down and again my screen kept flicking between my lock screen and the whatsapp message box, I ended up having to take the back off and take the battery out and put it back in again, then this morning when using facebook I clicked on the icon in the top right that shows who is on chat/online and saw my other half was so I went to message him and it took me into the messenger screen then randomly started calling him via the phone function on messenger even though I didn't press the phone icon????? I am starting to get really annoyed with this phone I have never had so many crash issues with a brand new phone, any advice is greatly appreciated thanks.

 

[B. Diddy]

I was reading another thread that suggested the possibility of a conflict between Facebook and WhatsApp. It made me wonder if Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp cause the conflict. See what happens if you uninstall one of them.

 

[MrRadish]

Similar problem here.

Samsung S5 Mini Android 4.4.2

When the phone was new it constantly (2-3 times a day) black screened at the lock screen although it was evident from the sounds that the phone was alive and working. In this case the battery had to be removed and the phone reset. We were also plagued by intermittent application instability. Under instruction from Samsung we used the Kies 5 utility to reset the phone to factory settings and reinstall the apps one by one. This has largely cured the black screen at the lock screen issue (although we have not yet installed some of the security software such as Cerberus) but now the major headache is the camera app. Both samsung camera app and the later installed stock camera app are highly unstable especially when using immediately after phone wakeup. In most instances the battery needs to be removed and the phone reset.

It is all very frustrating.

:-(

NB we use facebook but not whatsapp

 

[melvis82]

My phone is getting worse by the day
On Tuesday I woke up to a message saying i needed a software update, I made sure I was on WiFi and then did the update so I am now on 4.4.2 however since this update whenever I have whatsapp open or recently closed and my phone goes to lock screen I now get this horrible messed up screen that's pixilated with half of my lock screen and half of my whatsapp background, see attached pic. also now when I open my phone none of my apps are on the screen its just my wallpaper picture and I have to scroll left twice before anything becomes visible and then another two times to get back to my home screen. I've checked my whatsapp on the play store and there are no updates available so I am running the latest version of this also, getting really fed up with this phone now.

 

[melvis82]

am being stupid and cant attach the picture.

 

[melvis82]

 

[baldpaul]

As you state that the problem coincides with using Whatsapp (I don't use it so haven't experienced the problem) have you tried notifying the developer of the app as it may be a known problem? One other thing that you may want to try is to do a factory reset in order to start afresh as this sometimes helps. Obviously you would lose any saved app data but you may judge it worthwhile. But it does sound more like an app problem than a phone problem. One other thing that may be worth a try is to wipe the cache partition. You won't lose data and you can find details on how to do it by doing a search as I can't remember the specifics off the top of my head. It involves booting into recovery by holding power and vol down (I think!).

 

[melvis82]

OK thanks I will look into doing that cache clearing see if that helps, I don't want to do a factory reset until I can access Samsung kies and do a full back up

 

[Jon Wilbur Tan]

This mirrors my own experience with the S5 mini. Sometimes I love it and other times I want to throw it against something Random crashes and freezes with screen blackouts is what sums it up.

 

[melvis82]

I am really fed up with it now, I've got to go into town on Saturday so I am going to take it back to the shop and see if I can swap for an alternative handset I think.

 

[MrRadish]

OK I think we have fixed most of problems with our S5 mini.

The first problem we had was black screens when the phone was waking so we were unable to answer calls, acknowledge alarms etc. We used the Samsung kies software to factory reset the phone and once reset we disabled updates and installed the previously installed apps one by one. This seems to have cured the Black screen issue.

However another issue involving the camera persisted. Every so often when the camera was started the phone crash and required battery removal. This also happened occasionally at points where it is possible that an app my have asked for camera services (eg picture acquisition etc). We tried using the stock android camera but this did not fix it. A few weeks ago we noticed that the phone had used almost all of the 1Gb data allowance in one day. On investigation we found the picture autobackup in G+ was the culprit and it had been trying to upload two pictures taken when we had first started using the phone. The pictures upload was failing but G+ was retrying continuously using data. It turns out that these pictures were so corrupt that any app that tried to access them (including file manager) crashed until the phone itself crashed. The pictures had to be located and deleted via USB. Both pictures were taken using the samsung virtual tour camera option if this is relevant.

Result? G+ is now happy and the camera no longer randomly crashes. BUT over the last two weeks we have not had any random phone crashes either. It is interesting to note that while a factory reset puts all the binaries back to factory settings it is common practice to backup and restore data and this would have included the duff pictures.... :-(

BTW The phone is only using the internal memory and no SD card is installed.

Hope this helps others.

 

[anrdoider]

Try to disable WiFi and see if it still crashes