Hi Everyone,
Basically, I got my Samsung Galaxy Player 4.0 in January, and when it comes to the features, I have been loving it. This is my first Android device.
However, I have been having problems lately. First, some basic information: it's an 8gb device, and I have a 32gb class 10 microSD card in it. I have a huge number of apps on it (over 200), however, I keep careful tabs on what is running in the background, reporting an app if it runs in the background even when not needed and that will reopen if killed, and if I don't really need it, deleting it after a week. I've only had to do that with a couple of apps so far. As I use this a lot as a PDA (I don't have a phone, this basically covers those bases), I have a couple of things that always run in the background, which I want there (textplus, Linphone, MailDroid, SwipePad). After getting rid of the services that I don't need, I'm still looking at over 100MB free RAM. I'm still on the stock ROM, and I'm using GO launcher Ex. I reboot daily.
My problem is that it crashes often - sometimes daily. Usually, it will go something like this: An application freezes, the whole system becomes unresponsive, and I either have to reboot it by holding down the power button for 8 (?) seconds, or something snags and it reboots by itself. Usually the first sign is that the haptic feedback for the home button comes about a second later after I press it - except then it is almost always too late. The power button will usually turn the screen on or off, but the lockscreen won't appear, I'll see the screen as it was before, frozen. Sometimes, it eventually reboots, while sometimes it doesn't, making me hold down the power button to reboot it, and sometimes, just as it will start "becoming unfrozen" (it goes to the home screen and it starts loading), it will reboot.
It seems to be that after an approximate time of active use, it will crash. Before that, apps can freeze, FC, and within a few seconds, I'll be back on the home screen or in another app, doing something else. After that, on the other hand, it seems to me that whenever an app freezes or has a problem, it basically takes down the whole system with it.
Something tells me that this isn't just normal (otherwise Android wouldn't have over 50% of smart phone market share ), because I haven't heard of problems like this before, and other people with Android I know don't seem to be having the same problems (if any, at all). I have been reading around, and saw some thread about another phone describing similar problems, and it turns out it was a motherboard problem, so the phone was returned for warranty, except I don't remember where that was, I'm just hoping it's something like that...
OK, now that you've read my long post (sorry, I thought it would be best to give more details than get asked about them), I really hope this isn't something normal, because outside of this problem, I'm really enjoying all the possibilities, capabilities and flexibilities of Android (I'm looking at you, iPod). It's really quite aggravating, today I lost my public transit itinerary on Google Maps (I feature I love), and thankfully, I remembered enough to make it through, but it is quite frustrating. Please tell me this is not Android being Android?
Go Launcher is not Officially supported on these devices and swallows the small amount of ram very quickly, I tried it for a day and got rid of it because of how badly it impacted performance.
edit: looks like since I tried it they added support for our players, still won't run it, its to much of a system hog.
I don't know, but I tried switching to the default launcher, and it already crashed earlier than usual. Any other ideas? I'll try some other launchers over the next few days.
Sounds like you are running out of system resources. You say you have a couple hundred apps installed and I bet some of those are becoming active and hogging precious ram and cpu resources in the background until the system crashes. I have a 2 year old Samsung Captivate and I only have minimal amount of apps because it will often big down and become unresponsive and crash. So before you head out to a repair shop, remove some of your many apps and see if that helps.
So, if I understand, even if an app runs in the background for a short period of time, it still consumes resources, even after it's stopped running?
trainman261 said:
So, if I understand, even if an app runs in the background for a short period of time, it still consumes resources, even after it's stopped running?
Click to expand...
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If you have a titanium backup freeze apps that run in backround and see what happens ..when you open programs they will stay in memory so use some memory kill widget to clean memory from time to time.I have a stock rom witch is not very good with memory menagment so sometimes when memory is full it just stop and only help is restarting ..so i use app "quick system info" which give you memory ajd cpy usage displayed in status bar and when memory is close 2 full i just click on that and it kill all other aps except what a use in that moment.
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA
So, basically, the ROM is to blame? As to Titanium backup, I think that needs root, and I'm not quite ready to root yet (I've done enough hacking on my iPod). I do plan on upgrading to android 4.0 eventually (once all the issues get fixed, this is my main device, after all), and I think I'm going to have to root it at that point, but I'll be able to test it on a different ROM then, as well as try freezing apps. For now, I've tried LauncherPro, which seems a lot more lightweight, and it seems to be making it through the day until I reboot, and seems to be very stable... it also loads my widgets lightnight fast, which is great.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the way I understand it is:
obviously there are memory leaks, every OS has that
Android will not kill services, but only programs
If there are places where memory can be freed, Android will do that when necessary
If no memory can be freed, and there is barely any memory left, than a minor FC or a frozen app is all it will need to push Android off the cliff
Is this the way it works? And, then, when I upgrade to 4.0 (CM9), most of those problems should be gone (because of better memory management)?
I'm unable to install/uninstall or update my apps with google play. Uninstalling Google Play updates doesn't work either. Rebooting doesn't help. Reset my phone to factory defaults once, but after a while the problem cropped up again. Not sure if it has anything to do with some of the apps I've installed.
Another issue that maybe connected to the first one is that when i go into an individual app info, it says computing and nothing happens, no info no matter how long I wait.
Issue #3: The developer options are not accessible. When I press the Developer options, I just get a black screen and after a while it says Settings are not responding.
It's safe to say I really hate this phone's guts. I've had nothing but trouble with it. It's slower than molasses, and I've never installed a lot of apps on it, no cracked apps either, just highly rated free apps and paid apps. It does have a great screen. That's all good I can say about this beta phone. I can't wait to upgrade Note 2.
I'm on the stock rom 4.0.4
Any ideas, other than resetting it yet one more time?
Thanks!
This one is a weird one. I have not experienced this before.
My wife's HTC One X unrooted, factory unlocked from oversees, still under warranty. Latest JB available (stock).
Just the other day I went to clean up some of her redundant apps that I installed on her phone. All apps were from legitimate sources, Google Play.
Problem 1. I could not uninstall any app. The device would get quite warm, actually very warm. I would do a hard boot and sometimes I would then be able to uninstall the app, most other times no. I even have uninstaller apps and I tried using them and the app would go through the motions. it would seemingly uninstall the apps but it really didn't . On the times it would uninstall apps (it doesn't matter which app or how large or small) it often would take a long time.
Problem 2: Downloading apps from GP. I might be able to get away with downloading one app and installing it. However, most of the time GP would be stuck in "downloading', Again, if I do a hard reboot or even soft reboot, sometimes the download would start and you would see the small tray and down arrow. Most of the times, not. What is odd about this is that if I go to Google Play via desktop and remotely tell GP to install a particular app, it usually does without issue on the device.
Problem 3. I did a factory restore and after a few apps everything was ok. but problem would then develop again. I repeated the process to narrow down which app may be causing issue but I haven't been able to do so. Then, I did a hard reboot again and then the download would be very slow to start, several minutes then it would start up normally. I tried uninstalling an app and it too took a long time initially and then it was ok. However, in between this all, it was not. Even when going to SETTINGS, APPS, seeing info on the app (cache size, etc) would take a very very long time to populate.
The wife has her phone with her today at work, but for now it is operating as it should. However, I am very confident it will return to the way it was.
Does any one know what could be going on? Is this a s/w issue or hardware issue? Is there any way to test to see if the flash drive has bad sectors or is somehow damaged? Perhaps the HTC needs a brand new re-flash to the original ROM ?
I just got a 35it, brand new in the box off the shelf. Ran whatever out-of-the-box firmware update it needed and immediately started having issues.
In my head should be the perfect device but I keep having problems that I think might be memory related. I know this isn't a "high end" device but I'd imagine 800mhz and 1gb of memory shouldn't choke like this (pretty sure my old phone had the same specs, right down to the 2.2 android).
The browser crashes CONSTANTLY. I was attempting to browse to a site to download ArcTools and the Google Play Store APK, and almost every other page I'd navigate to would crash the browser.
Also, I installed ArcTools and the play store to get Pandora running. It seems this little guy just doesn't have the power to run Pandora reliably - it'll fire up, sit there for a second, and finally start playing - but as soon as I hit the home button it'll hang up, ask to force close/wait, and then, finally, the app will crash.
Does this sound like a defective device, or am I doing something wrong? Will Pandora run better with a full root?
I use the tablet mostly for playing. And I am used to move between them without issues. Unless I open a bunch of other apps or browser with multiple tabs and what not. The games remain running without issues or at least they used to. Normally I don't update anything, except for the games because they are live service and I can't play them if I don't. After learning that this update would improved multitasking I updated.
Ever since I can't keep the games open if I leave them for like 20 minutes or maybe less, haven't time it.
Using it as I did, closed them. So I decide to clear all and only play one. After a notification, went to that game for daily tap immediately went back to the prev game and it had close, which cost me a match. After finishing what I was doing on that game. I went to the settings to see if something was amiss. And all the apps I remember disabling that I couldn't uninstall like Youtube are still disabled. I don't have any social media app like FB or anything that would be constantly running. And went back to the game. Lo and behold had to restart again. I checked Dev options and Apps "Background process limit" still standard. Memory is at 4~4.5 with so much free I don't get I it's been so aggressive. Have 66 apps on "deep sleeping" have things like digital well being and other monitoring stuff also off. And the only thing I changed was enabling the "Labs" to allow Multi window for all apps. And just now, went to homescreen while I picked something from the kitchen, I know I didn't take more than 5 min because the screen didn't even timed out. And when I tap on a game, had to relaunch.
God this is ridiculously annoying. And non of the games updated since. I only updated a couple of apps from store.
And worst, I updated believing it would be better at multitasking. Like it would be smarter when using split screen, but it isn't. Maybe it does improve for Samsung apps. But I've seen nothing good from anything I use. And changes to the UI could've been implemented better. Like having dual pane only when you are holding the tablet lanscape. I remember having very old android device that had dual pane but revert to single if you hold them portrait.
I'm considering doing a full reset. But I'm hoping not too. Between the apps and games, which most are 5GB+ up to nearly 10GB it would take me a very long time to set everything again, Easily a full day for some games. (Very bad old, first gen copper line DSL)
Is anyone have any type of similar issues. Cause it would suck if I reset it and that's just how it works now. And it wants me to use the "keep open" feature. Which I don't like, I do like to use the clear all.
One of the main reason I got this particular tablet was for the multitasking. This is the first device I didn't try rooting out of the bat because of a warranty and what not and decided to give it a go as is. Now I'm not sure If I'm just spoiled by years for rooted and heavily modified devices. Or this is just a Samsung thing.
@Omizuke: Not sure if this is related to RAM management, but I'm also on September update. When I update apps via Play Store/Galaxy Store, the device will completely freeze for as long as 30 seconds. It just locks up, I can't do anything. Can't pull down the status bar, nav buttons don't work. Then suddenly it returns to normal. I get the same thing when connecting to WiFi or pairing via Bluetooth. ROM is clean flashed with Odin, i also did a factory reset.
This didn't happen at all on the July update.
I'm not seeing any issues with app killing, as you've described it. All opened apps continue running and I can return to them on demand. I play a lot of games, COD Mobile in particular, and I switch apps a lot between rounds.
I feel you on the not wanting to set up everything again. I save cached copies (APKs/obbs) of my games/apps on my SD card, so I can set everything up without Internet. Just use an app like Total Commander/X-plore to copy the apps.