My Galaxy S9 Plus starts playing random audio after phone calls. - Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

I am at a loss for what else to do as for troubleshooting, for the most part I know what I am doing when it comes to tech/apps etc. However I have noticed something very strange, creepy too, in the last week and a half. Everytime I hang up a phone call a random audio clip starts playing on my phone. Sometimes the audio sounds like a recording (like the phone randomly recorded something while I was out and about and was replaying it. But I could not peg the location, so I figured its playing a recording, but it isn't from my whereabouts, still creepy), other times its random music clips, I wouldn't be surprised if this switches to inappropriate audio at this rate.
The audio seems to be cut at a 30-40 sec loop, yes it restarts itself and plays indefinitely unless:
I make a phone call, it stops. 50% of the time it resumes after the call.
I have to restart the phone 98% of the time to make it stop.
Or I hit the recent apps and click 'close all'. I'd like to specify only hitting 'close all' stops it, manually closing apps all apps from recents doesn't do the trick.
In my effort to troubleshoot I have tried to:
Close apps from the recents individually hoping it'd help me find the culprit app emitting the sounds. But I had no luck.
I downloaded Malwarebytes and have scanned my phone with it, it didn't find anything helpful regarding to this issue.
I have checked my android filesystem through the file explorer thoroughly trying to look for MP3's or any other relevant audio files.
I have gone into app info screen and force stopped almost all media apps such as spotify, youtube, instagram, fb etc any app that I may suspect to be playing audio in the background or an app I may have used recently. Force stopping it all yielded no results.
I even went into developer settings and dug into the running services, and cached processes and started killing them all one by one and it still didn't stop the audio!
I also made sure I didn't have any hidden or suppressed notifications making it so that the app playing the audio wouldn't appear in the notification panel.
The got the phone mid July, when I got it I factory reset it twice (it's just something I do with new phones). I set it up as a new phone, I am not a fan of letting Google/Samsung restore apps. I did restore the call log and messages through the Samsung backup service.
I haven't noticed any unusual drain that may have been caused by this issue. I would consider myself a power user and use my phone quite a lot through the day. I don't download random apps, most games I play are paid (fortnite/pubg being an exception) so I doubt it's some silly game throwing ads at me. I have Adhell installed and configured properly to filter out 80% of the ads on the phone. So while I could just go ahead and factory reset my phone, my curiosity would like me to get to the bottom of it. I found one more similar thread on the internet about something like this, here is the link to it. It's mostly inconclusive for the most part however the symptoms mentioned are similar to mine.
I have a feeling there is something going on at system level. I should also note the audio channel the audio is playing through is not the "Media" channel, because while this audio plays in the background, even if I play a song on Spotify or play a video on YouTube, this would continue to play on top of it. It persist even after the screen is locked! Interesting part is I can control its volume through the Media slider however.
I know this sounds like a creepypasta story but its been creeping me out the past few days. I genuinely thought someone was spying on me the first day or two before I bought into those big brother is watching conspiracy theories. But I am not located in the United States and I am sure no one is spying. But I have cleared all sensitive files from my phone just in case.
Any help or further troubleshooting ideas would be appreciated, I wish I could troubleshoot on demand too, but this happens once every five phone calls I take. So reproduction has been a pain. I hope this is the right forum to post in, I'd post in galaxy s9 forums, but I feel this is more in this forums ball park.

Why don't you ask it in here?
There is a section for Galaxy 9 Plus.
-=> https://forum.xda-developers.com/galaxy-s9-plus/help <-=
I believed you'll got better answer for sure!

Related

App Services seem to not be running even though they are

I just wanted to start by saying that I have no idea how this started happening or even when. Only that it started happening within perhaps the past month or maybe 2 months.
I'm having issues with two apps, BBM and PowerAmp. PowerAmp has this feature where if you plug in your earbuds it will resume your music and if you unplug your earbuds it will pause automatically. In probably the last month or so I've noticed that this has no longer been working from Poweramp even though this has been working since I've had it which is a long long time . I thought maybe the Poweramp service was being closed due to not enough phone memory but I would check and not only was the service running but I also had enough memory.
The interesting thing is that I'm having a similar problem with the BBM app. They have a service that runs which checks for incoming messages and in the recent past it too also stopped working. Both PowerAmp and BBM will work if I have opened the app in the past 5 minutes or so. As an example, if I open PowerAmp and use it a bit, close it, and within the next minute I plug in my earbuds it will resume playback. If I take out my earbuds and wait a long period of time and plug back in then no such luck. The same behaviour is happening with BBM.
Many people have similar issues specifically with BBM but keeping the Persistent Icon in their notification area has solved it. For me, it has not. I followed BBM's support which says to have the Persistent Icon on, check to make sure the app does not have background data restricted, and also to check to make sure that background data in general is not restricted. All checks are good. The other interesting thing is that when I switch from data to Wifi all of a sudden I will receive all of my BBM messages, so it seems that the service must be running I'd think?
I don't know if it's a coincidence between both apps or not. Any suggestions or things to try in order to get to the deeper root cause? I have a Nexus 4 and I'm on version 4.4.2 and I should have the latest version of both apps installed. I'm not rooted or anything. It's just a stock Nexus 4 from Google.
Thanks.

Spotify Opening Randomly

Anyone else noticed Spotify (or other apps) opening on their own?
I have Spotify open randomly a time or two a day, usually when I unlock the phone...it unlocks directly to Spotify. Every once in a while, it even opens as I'm using another app.
I don't have any automatic actions set for Spotify like opening when connecting headphones/Bluetooth/etc.
Anyone else have this happen?
I've noticed this too.
Good to hear I'm not the only one. Spotify for you too?
Noticed mine doing it randomly starting last night. I do have it installed for my Gear S3 but I haven't used it. But it's been popping up at random asking me to link with Waze or random stuff. I haven't even bothered to really read it because I've already backed out every time it clicks with me. But I do see it being deleted off my phone in short order the next time it does it..
My pixel 2 XL and Essential were both doing this exact same thing. It's gotta be the gear S3 causing it.
Aaaaah...yup. Has to be that. I have a Gear S3, too.

Apps' and Games' Crashes & Other Issues

*** I have no choice than to beg for help. So please please please help me. ***
So I'm going to tell you girls/guys the whole story. It's going to be a long one, so bear with me. I just didn't wanted to leave any info.
I've been using MIUI for a long while, in the beginning it was all great. But as I started installing more & more apps, I started having issues/lags while playing games. Then there is MIUI's ram management issue, i.e. If I had to run a heavy game/app, I had to clear out RAM(you know the special feature in MIUI). Other than I had network issues. For ex : Whenever I played PR Legacy Wars(internet intensive game), I suffered from a lot of LAG. And Tekken(officially by Bandai Namco on Play Store) also, Force closed once or twice.
So to fix all this, I decided to go with a Custom ROM, basically because of the RAM Management issue.
First I started using CM 14.1. In the beginning the results were good. Like the internet problem was fixed to 100%, PR ran nearly perfect. Other than that there was no RAM issues. But as I started installing more apps, I started having crashes. First it happened with HQ Trivia, then with C.A.T.S. & PR Legacy Wars.
What happened to each app individually :-
HQ Trivia - Every time I play a live game, the app would crash multiple times given that I tap on ''wait'' and phone keeps on processing the app, when I get the message "App stopped working".
C.A.T.S. - This is neither a graphic nor internet intensive game, but still when I was typing something in group chat, the whole system crashed, the phone rebooted from the Boot Animation not from MI logo.
PR Legacy Wars - This game is a bit graphic intensive & internet intensive for sure. Same like when I was typing something in group chat, the same thing happened as mentioned above. Keep in mind that crash should've happened when there was more load on phone like during a battle.
And some very heavy crashes. Like when I try to switch accounts between guest & usual, the system crashed so hard, that I couldn't use it, Not even the hard buttons, like power button won't even turn the screen on. The vibration motor started spinning and wouldn't stop. I literally have to open the phone and disconnect the battery cable.
So having no choice, I installed NOS N, but I haven't tried the account feature in it, in fear of what happened earlier to CM 14.1, As I was able to recover through that heavy crash 3-4 times, but I guess it was the 5th time, I wasn't able to get into the system and lost all data. Why I feared? Cause I'm having similar issues as in CM 14.1, not all of them but similar.
SO after installing NOS N, these are the issues I'm having :-
HQ Trivia - Same app crashing while playing live games.
Sonic Forces - Whenever I watch an AD, if it's longer than like 5 or 10 seconds, app would crash & restart. If it's small or interactive or even non-interactive, if I keep tapping on the screen, app doesn't crashes, otherwise it does.
Twitter - Kept crashing(first installed through TiBa). Issue fixed after I installed it through Play Store.
YouTube - Force closed once or twice. Sometimes when I'm watching a video, when I press back then tap on Home/Trending etc it shows white blank.
Games - If music is playing in background, whenever I exit the app, at the end, the sound kinda gets laggy/screechy.
It's not been that long since I've been using NOS N. And I didn't do any hard testing especially that account feature. So the whole OS hasn't crashed yet. But still these issues hurt in long term, especially the HQ problem. Also all these apps were first installed through TiBa backup, then I installed them through Play Store, so that there's no compatibility issue.
As this OS has a feature to kill apps by holding back button. If sometimes I have lag in PR Legacy Wars, it get fixed by killing & opening it again.
What do I need from you guys?
To tell me if this a hardware or software related problem. I can create some report or log, so you could help me better. Just tell me how to do it? Meanwhile I'll try installing other OSs.
PS: I may not reply immediately, but I will reply.

System is shutting down apps in background (i.e. Spotify)

I'm using the Mate 10 Pro.
I listen to Spotify in my car. Right now every time I enter my car, I have to start up Spotify on my phone, which is quite annoying. On my previous phone (Mate 7), I could add Spotify to the "Protected Apps" and it wouldn't shut down anymore.
Is there a way to solve it in Mate 10 Pro/Oreo 8.0.0/EMUI 8.0.0?
So far I have:
- Added Spotify to "Ignore Battery Optimization" (Status: "allowed")
- In Launch, I deactivated "Manage automatically" and set all three option active (Auto-launch / Secondary launch / Run in Background)
I don't know what else to do. Any help appreciated!
The stock music player app takes precedence over spotify and others. So if there is any sample music on your phone, it will try to launch that first. Maybe remove any locally stored music and try again.
microhaxo said:
The stock music player app takes precedence over spotify and others. So if there is any sample music on your phone, it will try to launch that first. Maybe remove any locally stored music and try again.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks, but I already did that. I removed all rights from the "Music" player and deleted all files in the same folder. I created a new folder, named it "My Music", so since then (about 1 month ago) the default Music player has not played anything anmore That's good so far. My issue is really just that it shuts down Spotify.
I noticed that when I'm at work. Maybe another hour later, I still see the Spotify icon on top of the screen, so it wasn't shut down. But sometimes later during the day, it's suddenly gone. So when I'm back in the car, I need to start the app again.
I also tried to hit the "open apps" button (the one next to the home button), then clicked the lock icon. But didn't help either.
I dont use spotify throughout the entire day, but usually as long as I wasn't playing a random video or gif online just before entering my car, spotify will start back up.
I cant say that it runs in the background all the time when not in use. Its like my car triggers it to re-open when it reconnects to bt.
I have a mazda 3 though, all cars seem to act different for BT connectivity.
The thing is, if I leave my car to go shopping or something quick and I get back in my car, it works perfectly fine.
Therefore by my logic, I can rule out the BT of my car. When this happens as explained before, the Icon still remains on top in the notification bar.
So, I guess in the end, for some reason my phone just shuts down Spotify.
Anyway, thanks for your input.
I Have the same problem with VPN App it work fine in background but After a while the App Closed Why?
Having a similar problem with VPN app and also with Youmail visual voicemail. No notification of new voicemails until I open the app. Any ideas? I also set to ignore battery optimization and launch manually.
You need to deactivate the battery settings of the app.
valerio.tosti said:
You need to deactivate the battery settings of the app.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That doesn't help. Apps still shut down in background.
FWIW, I have noticed that battery optimization (Launch in settings) changes can be hit or miss. Some apps perform as set. For instance, I have some items set to manage automatically and they seem to stop when I want them to. However apps like Facebook when Set to manage manually and run in background is off, it does not stop. Other apps set this same way will be stopped. Not really sure how it works actually.

Getting pop-up ads and random web tabs opening up constantly on s9+

So this happened about a month ago, and it seems like its increasing in frequency. I dont know what app is causing it (ive tried figureing it out but cant, i hadnt downloaded any apps when it started) but basically i get po up ads about every 2 minutes, sime are full screen, some are banners at the bottom. when i watch a video, an ad always plays in the first 1 minute, and when i connect my phone to the car bluetooth a random media player starts playing music. I tried a virus scanner (not sure how effective ti is but i used avast) and that came up with nothing. does anyone know how i can go about finding whats causing this?
There is actually an app for exactly your problem. Posted in a forum thread here:
https://forum.xda-developers.com/android/apps-games/app-appwatch-detect-app-causing-ads-t3899397
Hope it helps, good luck.

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