Ok, so I have a rooted Vibrant on stock firmware and I've been having a problem with my screen becoming unresponsive. It originally happened on a smaller level when the phone was newer and unrooted, however the problem has gotten much worse. I've done a factory reset of the phone along with a nandroid backup of it before the problem was severe, yet it comes back just as strong.
I already went through the problems with the no wake from setcpu, even thought it was my lock screen becoming unresponsive until I disabled it with NoLock. Also, I have the Logcat live wallpaper, and usually when you tap the screen, you can see the system processing the information, however when the problem occurs there is no response on the logcat live wallpaper. The phone doesn't freeze at all though. All the soft keys still work perfect as do the volume and power buttons.
Any ideas, tips, suggestions that might help me narrow down this problem? Could it be from a bad version of busybox? Autokiller maybe? I have it set to strict(was previously on aggressive) but no change. Maybe Autostarts is causing something to freeze up. Thanks for any help. Seams like these phones have alot of wake up issues.
I would reflash back to stock with Odin and see what happens when you don't have task killer, set CPU, etc. Also, be careful with autostarts
So I removed Autostarts and rebooted, same deal. I did a factory reset and still the same. I just unrooted a few minutes ago and the problem seams to have gone away. I'm gonna leave it like this for a bit without installing any apps and see what happens. Is it possoble I have a bad root.zip file or bad version of busybox? Doesn't make sense to happen when I have root, then go away when I don't. Any reason it could cause this? I'm really close to sending the phone back, but don't want to waste my time if it's just a bad root file or user error.
Well I don't know for a fact, hopefully someone more knowledgeable can chime in. Maybe when you are unrooted, changes made by autostarts no longer have the permissions to affect anything. Personally I would use Odin (have done it twice already) and start from scratch. But then you risk accidentally screwing up the phone if something goes wrong.
I removed Autostarts and rebooted just to make sure the changes took effect though. Even did a factory reset. Those removed all apps that required root access and the problem was still so bad it took me an hour to get the screen responsive again. Once I did get into my phone I booted into recover and unrooted. Restared the phone and now the issue seams to have gone away. Touch screen is very responsive now which leads me to believe it was something that had to do with the root file i'm flashing, or possibly busybox. Very very strange.
Hopefully someone much smarter than me could give some insight as to what could potentially cause the touch screens to just stop recieving signal. It's just bizarre that the phone continues to run fine, just not the screen.
Thank you for reading. I feel really stuck and though I've tried cannot solve this on my own.
The Problem:
When my phone crashes, the logcat apps that are happily recording the events get force closed along with it, and the buffer is lost forever. I seemingly have no way of recording the actual crash event so that I can research the problem.
Possible Solutions, Unfounded:
So I guess what I need is a logcat app that writes the events to file as it's reading (none seem to offer this, only saves manually) or a way to read the internal log after the crash occurs.
Crash Description:
When it crashes, I get a few short successive vibrations, then a lot of lag between a few seconds to a minute, then (if I'm lucky) the screen goes black for a few seconds and then a sort of an instant reboot occurs where I am at the home screen and all the widgets/icons are loading again and all the programs running a moment ago are not open, and any programs normally loading on a startup will start. It always will say the Sim Card has been removed and I must reboot. I lose contacts but not network. Sometimes the phone just freezes without going black and the fast reboot occurs after some minutes or not at all.
Background on what causes the Crash:
As you know, the GPS on the Fascinate and other Galaxy S models have serious issues with accuracy. I have tweaked the internal settings (*#*#3214789650#*#*) myself, without modifying system files (I dont think I ended up going that far) in order to produce better results. I did this months ago and havent changed it since.
The tweaks did not perfect it, so for some apps where accuracy is crucial I temporarily use an app called FakeGPS, which allows me to manually set my location while the app is running. It worked fine. After I updated about 12 apps at once, FakeGPS included, now whenever I run that application the phone crashes as described above.
At first I thought it was just the new version of the App, so I tried a different one that did the same thing. But it also crashes in the same way. I reinstalled both, still crashes.
I am using firmware 2.2. My phone is rooted. I'd be happy to answer any questions.
Really appreciate even just a point in the right direction.. I wouldnt be afraid to poke around the filesystem if need be.
Thank you!
Sent from my SGH-T959D using XDA App
Ok. Problems I have encountered the 2 days I have used the phone:
Constant freeze. The first hour I used the phone it froze and rebooted 7 or 8 times.
Missing SocialLocation.apk. This caused a problem for the GPS in smart actions to work at all. Rooted phone and installed the app, and problem disappeared.
Tried to hard reset the phone because of all the rebooting problems. Guess what, on the first menu coming up where you can choose language, the phone froze and rebooted again. Now still it is constantly freezing and rebooting.
The freezing issues does not really have one specific app causing it. It can happen whenever doing whatever!
Anyone got a solution for this? Maybe a OTA update for Norwegian model?
Well, as my dad's phone is still fine as of now with not a single reboot in 2 days, I'd suggest you get in contact with your carrier and ask for a replacement. This seems to be a phone defect and you should be able to get your replacement easily. Be sure to not mention rooting and installing SocialLocation.apk though!!
You rooted and removed some files from the System, did you not?
I know I know, I am very late to the party.
But anyway, I finally installed the ICS update a few hours ago.... and my phone won't stop rebooting now.
Its not a boot loop, because it does get into Sense UI and I can use it, but eventually after a few minutes, it will reboot all on it's own with no warning. I assume its loading my (rather large) list of apps from the SD card since I have never seen it reboot until it finally wakes up, realizes a SD card is indeed mounted, and starts populating my app list. I never saw that process finish from the few times I bothered to watch it.
I tried removing the SD card and now its no longer rebooting, so unless taking out the battery did something, I assume its likely the SD card.
Is there any way to tell what is causing it without reformatting my phone? I REALLY don't want to wipe out everything.
After some testing, I have found two issues with the update:
1. It seems that it is not any one specific app, but the NUMBER of apps on my SD-card causing the reboot. I have somewhere around 200-250 apps installed on it. So far I can put about 80 or so of them in .androud_secure and it will work fine, I do not know exactly what the braking point it, but I know that having around 140 apps causes it to reboot every 5 minutes, regardless of which apps are on there.
2. I can't load my text messages anymore. Any contact who I have had a long history of texting with, it just gets stuck saying "loading". I can still receieve messages, but since I can't actually open the message list anymore, I can't reply!
I would really like to avoid doing a factory reset if possible, is there anything I can do about this?
I was consideing just doing a SMS-backup and then flashing a custom rom, but I like the 3D feature and it seems like there is not a SINGLE custom rom out there that supports 3D, and many don't support 4G either.
Please, does anyone have any advice?
Hi.
My Galaxy S3 is frequently getting into hotboot looping state for no apparent reason. The only way to get it out of this state is to wipe the phone or restore a backup of the "data" folder only.
After that, it might work for a week, but it might not work for a day (not work = start to hotboot loop).
It happens when after the phone screen is locked, it doesn't wake up anymore. It doesn't answers to any calls (like if it's off) or notifications. Just dies.
Forcing a reboot (by holding the power button) or removing the battery ables me to reboot it, but enter in hotboot looping state. I can make it go thru the whole booting state and I see the homescreen (And that's weird because I'm supposed to see the lockscreen first). Some widgets animation works but the device doesn't answer to touch (two softbuttons vibrates when touched, they do vibrate but don't render anything on Android) and then hotboots. Keeps doing this forever. Booting into safemode USED to work, but it doesn't work anymore, I don't know why.
After wiping the device or restoring the Data backup, device turns on as expected (restoring data takes it back to working state exactly like it was before the backup, even the same lockscreen pattern). I've tried to leave a terminal running logcat to catch the error, but it doesn't write in realtime, so when the bug breaks out, the logfile is empty.
I even thought it could be the S3 memory issue with firmware, but I'm using the "fixed" kernels. Also, it is recoverable, and not permanently dead.
I suspect of some rogue app, but I have too many apps to just go through installing one by one (and waiting even weeks to install the other one). Is there any way I can get a postmortem logfile or make logcat write in realtime?
Thanks
GTMoraes said:
Hi.
My Galaxy S3 is frequently getting into hotboot looping state for no apparent reason. The only way to get it out of this state is to wipe the phone or restore a backup of the "data" folder only.
After that, it might work for a week, but it might not work for a day (not work = start to hotboot loop).
It happens when after the phone screen is locked, it doesn't wake up anymore. It doesn't answers to any calls (like if it's off) or notifications. Just dies.
Forcing a reboot (by holding the power button) or removing the battery ables me to reboot it, but enter in hotboot looping state. I can make it go thru the whole booting state and I see the homescreen (And that's weird because I'm supposed to see the lockscreen first). Some widgets animation works but the device doesn't answer to touch (two softbuttons vibrates when touched, they do vibrate but don't render anything on Android) and then hotboots. Keeps doing this forever. Booting into safemode USED to work, but it doesn't work anymore, I don't know why.
After wiping the device or restoring the Data backup, device turns on as expected (restoring data takes it back to working state exactly like it was before the backup, even the same lockscreen pattern). I've tried to leave a terminal running logcat to catch the error, but it doesn't write in realtime, so when the bug breaks out, the logfile is empty.
I even thought it could be the S3 memory issue with firmware, but I'm using the "fixed" kernels. Also, it is recoverable, and not permanently dead.
I suspect of some rogue app, but I have too many apps to just go through installing one by one (and waiting even weeks to install the other one). Is there any way I can get a postmortem logfile or make logcat write in realtime?
Thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Try flashing another ROM for S3 and doing a full wipe.
TenKoX said:
Try flashing another ROM for S3 and doing a full wipe.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the reply.
I already did. It started to happen out of nowhere while I used the Android Revolution HD ROM, then after a few wipes and reinstalls with the same problem, I gave a shot to WanamLite ROM. Exactly same problem. Both are based on the original 4.1.2 Android.
I'm pretty sure it is being caused by some rogue app, because the only thing in common between those ROMs is that I "batch-install" all my apps back from Google Play.
So far, I'm suspecting about Vine (it's the last install that I remember since it started to have this issue) and I have already uninstalled it, but it might have been caused by some app update that broke hell to my phone.
If there were some kind of "black box" that I could retrieve after a crash, it could be the solution
GTMoraes said:
Thanks for the reply.
I already did. It started to happen out of nowhere while I used the Android Revolution HD ROM, then after a few wipes and reinstalls with the same problem, I gave a shot to WanamLite ROM. Exactly same problem. Both are based on the original 4.1.2 Android.
I'm pretty sure it is being caused by some rogue app, because the only thing in common between those ROMs is that I "batch-install" all my apps back from Google Play.
So far, I'm suspecting about Vine (it's the last install that I remember since it started to have this issue) and I have already uninstalled it, but it might have been caused by some app update that broke hell to my phone.
If there were some kind of "black box" that I could retrieve after a crash, it could be the solution
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you wipe data, your apps disappear, so I think this is not the problem.
Do another full wipe and DON'T restore your data. Just download again from Google Play and see if the problem appear again.
TenKoX said:
If you wipe data, your apps disappear, so I think this is not the problem.
Do another full wipe and DON'T restore your data. Just download again from Google Play and see if the problem appear again.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the reply.
I started doing this the first time, but it still crashes it. And as I was wasting too much time with this, the backup option came as a option to not have to click to download over 200 apps one by one. Also, it once happened during a long holiday, and I was in a friend's ranch with no decent internet connection for downloading. All my apps were gone and I was stuck with a default phone for five days.
The backup is exactly the point where I finish downloading all the apps and they're installed. There are no cracked programs or adapted (e.g. Nexus camera). Every single app is obtainable from Play Store, so it's pretty fresh
Funny (actually sad) thing is that it's a system-wide error that a wipe solves it. If I don't wipe data and reinstall the same ROM (which under normal condition is no big deal), it doesn't get past from boot screen.
The worst is it happens instantly. It's working now, but then it crashes. Bam, gone. Few hours ago I was texting my gf and I left the phone for a while, waiting for her answer. After some time I knew something was off, picked up the phone and it was pretty warm (first signal), with the LED blinking some Facebook notification. Tried to wake up but it is in coma. I force a restart and it hotboot loops like I described on first post
It -only- happens when screen is locked. I disabled the screen lock for now to see if it's a workaround, but I'm not holding my breath
It could be a hardware malfunction if it can carry through all the roms you flashed and even when you tried a fresh install without your apps it still happened.
WildfireDEV said:
It could be a hardware malfunction if it can carry through all the roms you flashed and even when you tried a fresh install without your apps it still happened.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's pretty much discarded. Wiping data instantly solves it. It did indeed run for 5 days with no external app without a single problem.
But also it ran over one week with external apps without a problem. I've executed some memory integrity tests and they all reported a-OK.
I'm kinda ruling out the "rogue-app" issue. I thought that recovering "data" from NAND backup was the /sdcard/android/data. But it's deeper than that. Now I don't even have a lead.
Phone already crashed today, without Vine and lockscreen, so that's not the problem. I really need to get some logs out of him. Just need to know how. Only if it could write a realtime log, so I could pull through ADB.
My last resort will be a fresh-fresh android installation, default S3 i9300 ROM, with only essential apps. Already have it triggered for the next crash.
If it goes rogue even this way, I'm running triangleaway and returning it (will be a profit too, the silver border is stripping).
This time around, I'm trying running it without a external sdcard (several files were being corrupted in it, don't know if it's due to force restart by removing battery, or some real issue on the card)
It's a problem within the Facebook social app or Youtube.
I've managed to run the phone flawlessly for weeks without signing in on Facebook, suspecting it might be it.
Today I logged in on Youtube app accidentally, and had to login on Facebook app to retrieve some info. Three hours later, phone went mad again.
I don't know which app caused it, but I think there's some relation to Facebook due to a greater ~involvement~ (couldn't find a proper word.. forgot it) with Android.
I've changed ROMs, launchers, system versions.. but not Kernel. I'll try another kernel and report on Boeffla main thread to see if there's some known bug