Screen rotation fix - Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

I use a S3 on the Sprint network (Credo carrier) with model sph-l710.
the other day the screen auto-rotate feature stopped working, all of a sudden. i had thought it was attributed to a drop the phone experienced about 2 weeks prior (my 2nd one in 18 months, thank you very much), but after the subsequent events, i dont think the drop caused it.
i work in data centers and telecom closets that have electrical crap lying around. after doing all i could minus un-rooting my phone (i run 4.1.2 on it and constantly reject the persistent upgrade notifications), the screen started rotating all by itself again after 3 weeks. now, when i run the sensor test, the X Value fluctuates quickly, like the other values that are listed. Before the X Value had stayed stubbornly still at one value.
so the point of all this is that EMI contributed to the problem and later somehow fixed itself.
may all of you who experience mystical feelings while looking for a solution for the screen rotation problem be gloriously satisfied after trying this troubleshooting step. :laugh:

Related

Screen flickering madness

I got my 920 today and I'm quite happy with it. However I'm facing a weird issue. My screen is noticeably flickering. At first I tried to restart the phone a few times, and at last with a soft reset I got rid of it in some areas (eg the unlock screen) but in some others (typing an address in the browser, typing into Bing search) it's still there, even tho it's not very noticeable anymore. However I'm quite picky so it annoys me a bit, also I don't think it's fair that I have to use a phone behaving this way. Anybody else having this? Workarounds of any sort? Otherwise I guess this guy is going back to the store...
Edit: I found out that this issue pretty much comes and goes randomly, I happen to have it for a few hours then it goes away, so on so forth. I really don't know if I'll ever be able to get the phone replaced if the issue is so hard to be reproduced.
Same intermittent problem
vnvman said:
I got my 920 today and I'm quite happy with it. However I'm facing a weird issue. My screen is noticeably flickering. At first I tried to restart the phone a few times, and at last with a soft reset I got rid of it in some areas (eg the unlock screen) but in some others (typing an address in the browser, typing into Bing search) it's still there, even tho it's not very noticeable anymore. However I'm quite picky so it annoys me a bit, also I don't think it's fair that I have to use a phone behaving this way. Anybody else having this? Workarounds of any sort? Otherwise I guess this guy is going back to the store...
Edit: I found out that this issue pretty much comes and goes randomly, I happen to have it for a few hours then it goes away, so on so forth. I really don't know if I'll ever be able to get the phone replaced if the issue is so hard to be reproduced.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You're not going crazy as I have the same issue with my 920. It is VERY intermittent and probably happens about once every 3 weeks I guess.
I'll wake the phone to check it and it seems that the display is not working fully and looks interlaced and flickering. No loss of functionality and when I put it to sleep and wake it up a few times it's fine and back to normal. Appears to be an intermittent issue with either the display or drivers but no way to reproduce unless you separately take a video/photo of the screen when it is in this state when you are returning it to the store for an exchange. For me it doesn't happen enough to really worry me although it is slightly annoying...
mad_style said:
You're not going crazy as I have the same issue with my 920. It is VERY intermittent and probably happens about once every 3 weeks I guess.
I'll wake the phone to check it and it seems that the display is not working fully and looks interlaced and flickering. No loss of functionality and when I put it to sleep and wake it up a few times it's fine and back to normal. Appears to be an intermittent issue with either the display or drivers but no way to reproduce unless you separately take a video/photo of the screen when it is in this state when you are returning it to the store for an exchange. For me it doesn't happen enough to really worry me although it is slightly annoying...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Man, this is driving me nuts. I noticed it does it every time the phone reaches a somewhat hotter temperature (like body temperature, a couple minutes of usage normally) or when it's plugged. When the battery is 100% loaded it usually stops, but then after a few minutes it comes back, very annoying. Since it does it like 90% of the time I guess the guys at the shop will notice it, when I'm at max brightness it's like a freaking strobe, I can't take this any longer, makes my head ache. One thing I also noticed is the fact that the lowest light setting available is still way brighter than when on auto in a dark room: low looks more like medium, so to speak. Is this ok?
Today I'm bringing it back to the shop anyway, I'll keep you posted.
Update: I got my phone replaced. We had to open 3 boxes before finding a non flickering one, insane. For the last try I decided to open a white one and it was flawless, weird...
Are you guys in cold areas or keep your phones in cold areas? By cold I mean under 65 F. I have noticed in certain types of LCD's that if they are cold they seem to slow in refresh rate. Try warming your phone up and see if it gets better.
R: Screen flickering madness
Solarenemy68 said:
Are you guys in cold areas or keep your phones in cold areas? By cold I mean under 65 F. I have noticed in certain types of LCD's that if they are cold they seem to slow in refresh rate. Try warming your phone up and see if it gets better.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Not really my case I guess, actually the phone kept acting up even after an hour usage, so it was plenty hot. No problems with new one so far, fingers crossed...

[Q] Issues (stock)

Dear all,
I've been waiting a little before rooting and installing a new ROM to make sure I don't need to return my phone for any reason. (So, it is stock now, no root, locked bootloader, KNOX still there, etc.)
So, far I've noticed three small problems, which I don't know if they are universal or just mine:
Sometimes when I get a call, the touch screen is irresponsive. If I press the lock/power button twice, it seems to work again. (I now have set up to press home to answer.)
It often feels a bit warm, more than I'd expect. (I have it in a case, though, a Spigen Slim Armor. It fits perfectly though.) But this happens sometimes when it is just sitting, not playing games. It is not really hot, but I can feel it warm in my pocket.
Sometimes I get a pop between songs. See this post
(So, at least one person also has the last problem.)
I can live with any of the problems above, but I'd hesitate to have a defective unit which can have bigger problems later on. Is any of the above an issue for you? Any suggestions if I should exchange the phone?
Thanks!
Luis
Do you remember when were the times when the screen was unresponsive?
I've read somewhere that sometimes when the screen is woken up and is under some pressure this will happen, and the only way is to do what you did. It's not uncommon in touchscreen phones though, so I wouldn't worry about it.
The verge app was broken until the most recent app update. Also, the s5 seems to refuse allowing Dashlane's accessibility service from working properly. So no more auto filling passwords for me. Ugh. I hoped rooting might help but it didn't. Now I really can't wait for custom ROMs to start appearing. Samsung, you make great hardware (like amoled displays) but your software sucks. Even the software on my Samsung TV is stupid.
Yes on two out of three!
finotti said:
Dear all,
I've been waiting a little before rooting and installing a new ROM to make sure I don't need to return my phone for any reason. (So, it is stock now, no root, locked bootloader, KNOX still there, etc.)
So, far I've noticed three small problems, which I don't know if they are universal or just mine:
Sometimes when I get a call, the touch screen is irresponsive. If I press the lock/power button twice, it seems to work again. (I now have set up to press home to answer.)
It often feels a bit warm, more than I'd expect. (I have it in a case, though, a Spigen Slim Armor. It fits perfectly though.) But this happens sometimes when it is just sitting, not playing games. It is not really hot, but I can feel it warm in my pocket.
Sometimes I get a pop between songs. See this post
(So, at least one person also has the last problem.)
I can live with any of the problems above, but I'd hesitate to have a defective unit which can have bigger problems later on. Is any of the above an issue for you? Any suggestions if I should exchange the phone?
Thanks!
Luis
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The unresponsive screen is more than a little issue, it is being reported all over the web, and get's more severe over time. I'm thinking that it is a bad proximity sensor defect, either firmware, hardware or software. Some people are reporting along with myself that sometimes for no apparent reason, the screen will not turn on even though the phone is completely operational! This has happened to me four times now and I am stock with very few apps on my phone, five total games and Pandora. I do use a substitute launcher that I've used for years but I don't believe that would be the issue since others report the same issue with stock launcher.
The pop or skipping you speak of in sound happens to many of us who stream music in our automobiles. It even happens on the note3. The fix is simple for that one though! Turn the screen on. I was told that with many of the streaming software music programs that the phones CPU goes to sleep and does not offer enough processing power to the music program. I stream all day via bluetooth to my Auto's sound system and it will usually start to skip, click or whatever after the phone has been untouched for about twenty minutes. The second I turn the screen on the problem alleviates itself. You can find even more information by googling that one, in fact both of those! The heat one I have not had, both with stock battery and zero lemon high capacity battery. The phone very rarely get's warm. However, when I was using wireless charging it would get warm even after charging was complete but I believe that is a normal event with QI type tech.

[Q] Verizon G3 Extreme Performance Issues

Not sure what is happening, but this phone went from being awesome to being hardly usable in a very short amount of time. I downloaded a Verizon update on or around November 5th, and ever since then, I have noticed the following issues ever since then.
- Overall slowness. Whether it's switching apps, making phone calls, turning the screen on or off...everything is just much slower and lags more often.
- Unresponsive at times. This occurs most often during phone calls. The proximity sensor does not activate correctly (screen will not turn on when I move the phone away from my face), and the touchscreen will not register input. It will happen other times, but never seems to follow a specific pattern.
- Random soft resets. Every once in a while, it will randomly go to the Verizon splash screen, for no reason. This has happened in the middle of phone calls, while using apps, and while the phone is just idle.
- Increased battery drain. Even turning down the screen brightness, and using some apps like CM cleaner to keep apps closed and clear up RAM usage, I am experiencing drain at an exponential rate (over 10% per hour when idle, and sometimes up to 20% per hour doing simple things like texting and making phone calls.)
I have researched multiple websites' solutions for crappy G3 performance. Some of their proposed solutions have applied to my problems, and I've tried each and every one of them. Nothing has really helped...turning brightness down, using apps like CM Cleaner and Battery Doctor, etc. My last hope is that I unmounted my SD card this morning...which, if it works, will be fine, but is kind of a bummer because I would have liked to have the expandable storage.
Unless the update I downloaded from Verizon (I don't think it was an actual Android update, but I'm not sure?) is what caused this, I can't find any more potential problems other than my phone being defective...which just doesn't make sense, as I've had it since launch now with no issues. The only other thing that I can think which may be affecting things is that the phone is encrypted (the SD card was not, I never found the time and eventually forgot)...and is also using a piece of software called Maas360 (which I installed around the same time as the update was downloaded), which I'm hoping does not affect phone performance this much, because it will be required by my work starting in the next couple weeks.
amsage3 said:
Not sure what is happening, but this phone went from being awesome to being hardly usable in a very short amount of time. I downloaded a Verizon update on or around November 5th, and ever since then, I have noticed the following issues ever since then.
- Overall slowness. Whether it's switching apps, making phone calls, turning the screen on or off...everything is just much slower and lags more often.
- Unresponsive at times. This occurs most often during phone calls. The proximity sensor does not activate correctly (screen will not turn on when I move the phone away from my face), and the touchscreen will not register input. It will happen other times, but never seems to follow a specific pattern.
- Random soft resets. Every once in a while, it will randomly go to the Verizon splash screen, for no reason. This has happened in the middle of phone calls, while using apps, and while the phone is just idle.
- Increased battery drain. Even turning down the screen brightness, and using some apps like CM cleaner to keep apps closed and clear up RAM usage, I am experiencing drain at an exponential rate (over 10% per hour when idle, and sometimes up to 20% per hour doing simple things like texting and making phone calls.)
I have researched multiple websites' solutions for crappy G3 performance. Some of their proposed solutions have applied to my problems, and I've tried each and every one of them. Nothing has really helped...turning brightness down, using apps like CM Cleaner and Battery Doctor, etc. My last hope is that I unmounted my SD card this morning...which, if it works, will be fine, but is kind of a bummer because I would have liked to have the expandable storage.
Unless the update I downloaded from Verizon (I don't think it was an actual Android update, but I'm not sure?) is what caused this, I can't find any more potential problems other than my phone being defective...which just doesn't make sense, as I've had it since launch now with no issues. The only other thing that I can think which may be affecting things is that the phone is encrypted (the SD card was not, I never found the time and eventually forgot)...and is also using a piece of software called Maas360 (which I installed around the same time as the update was downloaded), which I'm hoping does not affect phone performance this much, because it will be required by my work starting in the next couple weeks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ah encryption. That's your culprit. It sounds like you took Verizon's 11c update on the 5th of November. This was a minor security update that also added some minor features like a camera shortcut on the lockscreen. A lot of people have been experiencing very poor performance on the G3 after encrypting internal storage. Apparently, it drastically reduces read/write speeds as of now and is not ready for primetime. Hopefully with the Lollipop update around the corner, we will see this issue fixed. I would suggest decrypting your phone and seeing if that makes an improvement on overall fluidity. I know that that is a pain, but this seems like what has happened to several people who encrypted data on a stock LG ROM. Best of luck and let me know if encryption is not the issue!

My defective device story

I walked into best buy at store opening on release day and picked up a still warm from the assembly line N9. I don't use it much so i never really put much thought into it. However i was playing Clash of clans one day and i was having a hard time getting troops to deploy. I did little investigation and was able to reproduce this touch screen issue. Its might be one out of 20 times but then i can click a few times in the same spot with no response. Its really inconsistent but its there. I contacted HTC they first had me factory reset and yep its still there. Then they had me mail it into them on my dollar.... fine whatever i just want it fixed. They receive it, say its good and send it back.
Thoughts on what i should do?
Buy another at best buy and return the defective one with your receipt. Quick and no BS to deal with.
Actually I encountered a similar issue while playing Uplink; sometimes the screen just stops reacting to touch inputs. My workaround would be to rotate the device by 180° with Auto-rotate activated. When the new orientation kicks in it works again.
I've so far attributed that to some Lollipop bug, but if it turns out to be a hardware issue it would be pretty severe. For now I'll stick with my device and I hope your new one, should you replace it, will work properly.

Weird Sounds and Restart Issues

So first, two things:
1. I went through the hell that is Samsung IM support and finally convinced her to give me a phone number and case number to someone higher up. They want me to send the phone in, saying I may be billed for any repairs due to physical damage. I'm fearful of going this route, because I don't have any guarantee they won't try to cop me of my money by claiming my issues were caused by neglect.
2. This is my second replacement. This is now my second time going through these issues(except the camera noise, more on that later), and I'm extremely hesitant to get another Note 3.
1st phone was stock (restart issues), then rooted w/ PACROM (Issues got worse)
2nd phone is stock (used to be fine, then it's now to the point where it's a dud)
So I have two issues:
1. Any time my phone is set down on anything besides a bed of cotton spun by the hands of virgin maids, put in my pocket, dropped from a height greater than half an inch, lightly tapped on the back plate, etc., it'll restart. Sometimes it shuts itself off, sometimes it'll boot just fine. I'm 100% confident it's from physically moving the device, and isn't caused by a software issue.
2. Whenever I launch my camera or torch, no matter the app, i'll get this high-pitched (but extremely noisy) "errrrr" noise for approx. 10 seconds. Focusing the camera makes it stop, or sometimes it'll fix itself after a few seconds. But for the torch, it's always present.
So my course of action is to contact the Samsung tech and tell him my issues. Has anyone experienced any of these errors? A quick google search only yeilds 1 result, but everyone downplayed his issue.
Oh, and P.S. Tape over the battery does not help. Swapping batteries does not help. Swapping backplates (both samsung) does not help!

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