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Hi everyone,
I'm in a spot of bother, and really hoping someone can help to give some advice. This is my first Android phone, as you can probably guess, and I've been noticing some issues.
1) The first thing was the Martket not downloading, however after following some advice on forums it seems to be working okay now.
2) Today I've noticed that some applications are crashing. It's not the same ones, so far it's happened with Market, the internet browser, even some battery gauge which I installed. I don't have a note of the exact error message, but it always says it's encountered a problem with 'com.android.......' and needs to close, and then I have to click force close.
3) It's asked me to download an OTA update for the phone, but I've read mixed reactions on it. I don't have any issues with the proximity sensor, but I've read a few people have had the problem arise SINCE they installed the update. Would you recommend that I install it, or leave it?
4) The main issue that's concerning me at the moment is an issue with the memory card. I've had a few occasions where it's come up saying 'memory card unexpectedly removed'. I've checked the cover to make sure it's on and the memory card was in. At first, removing it and reinserting it, or restarting the phone fixed it. However, this evening it's not. If I put the memory card in the phone, it says it's preparing it, and whenever I access anything that needs the memory card, such as the camera, it comes up saying it's been removed.
I've tried the card that come with the phone, and that seems to work. However, I'm worried for two reasons a) I need to copy all my pics, music, etc from my old memory card to the new one that come with the phone, and I'm worried in case it might be something on there that has interferred with it. b) I'm worried that the phone might have damaged the memory card in some way, as I now can't even get my PC to access it.
If anyone has any suggestions or advice, I'd really appreciate it.
I have read similar problems with people changing the SD card before first use. It seems there are some system files on the SD. I recommend copying all data from the original SD card to the new one and then checking to see if you have the same problem.
I have updated my DHD over the air and it works fine
I have searched through XDA and read all the threads regarding the 'suspend process' issue. The specific issue is outlined in Issue # 11126 on the Google Code/Android project home...
http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=11126
I am trying to get to the bottom of this, as best as possible. For all intents and purposes, this really appears to be a mystery. Ultimately, it appears as though there is (currently) absolutely no specific reason a to why 'suspend' runs wild until the device is rebooted.
My question is (I know we can all only speculate):
Is there any chance that this could be Google account-specific?
The reason I ask is, I've been doing some "testing," just to try and make sense of this for myself. Here is what I've done/come across thus far...
- My fiancee's first MT4G was a black one manufactured in Taiwan. It had the inferior LCD-SH-C2 screen. Her battery was draining VERY quickly - i.e. before noon, without using the phone for much else other than texting.
- I enabled USB Debugging for her, to "rule out" the init process issue.
- Even though she only had Handcent, Facebook and Angry Birds installed, I removed all of them, leaving only Watchdog.
- I factory reset her phone, twice.
- For all of the above, the device was not rooted. I have since rooted her phone via the steps in this thread.
I'm in the process of creating a new Gmail account for her, exporting ONLY her contacts and then using that account for her new MT4G (Plum) that's scheduled to arrive today. I'm actually thinking of NOT using her new Gmail account at first though, so I can use her original Google account on this new, clean device and see if the suspend issue persists.
I might just be wasting my time, but I enjoy doing this and I don't think it's a complete waste to try and find SOME constant here. Am I nuts for thinking it's tied to the Google account? The Google account seems to be a black box of sorts. There is more than just contacts, apps and settings, yet there is no "window" into everything else that comes down - e.g. I can't log in to Gmail and "configure" it to not restore her wallpaper or WiFi settings. So that's why I say it's a black box of sorts, since it's doing more in the background than we have control over.
Nothing is truly random, at least not in the context of Android and the hardware affected. There has to be some reason why users of various devices, either do or do not experience this issue. Whether it's a specific action or the something that differs between one person's action vs. another person's, there has to be SOMETHING that's triggering this on her device, yet never triggers it on mine. I guess I'm just trying to flush everything out and hope that discussing it will help rule out/rule specific variables.
Let me know what you find. This is driving me crazy! I charge my phone at night, so when I head to work it's at 100%. By the time I'm heading home (4-430pm)... the phone is around 15% battery.
Watchdog tells me suspend ranges from 5%-49% at any given time. I've never had suspend drop below 5% except on fresh reboot. I've noticed, though, after a reboot that the suspend process will slowly work its way back up to using lots of CPU cycles (it starts at, say, .2%, then 10 minutes later its 3%... 30 minutes later its 5%... an hour later its 9%). Battery just gets hotter and hotter due to this.
I'll be checking back to see what you find! Thanks!
mwelliott said:
Let me know what you find. This is driving me crazy! I charge my phone at night, so when I head to work it's at 100%. By the time I'm heading home (4-430pm)... the phone is around 15% battery.
Watchdog tells me suspend ranges from 5%-49% at any given time. I've never had suspend drop below 5% except on fresh reboot. I've noticed, though, after a reboot that the suspend process will slowly work its way back up to using lots of CPU cycles (it starts at, say, .2%, then 10 minutes later its 3%... 30 minutes later its 5%... an hour later its 9%). Battery just gets hotter and hotter due to this.
I'll be checking back to see what you find! Thanks!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
According to XDA and Issue #11126, you're not alone.
What's really bugging me is that neither my first MT4G, nor its 1st replacement or its 2nd replacement, have ever done this. My fiancee's first phone did this. She is now using my 2nd replacement while she waits for hers to arrive (today). So a device that never exhibited this issue, over the course of at least a week of normal-for-me use, started exhibiting this issue for my fiancee maybe a day or so after using the phone.
I thought I had "solved" it when I didn't see it crop up the first day she used my replacement phone. She was quick to let me know I was incorrect.
So I've got serious pressure here - all of my MT4G's haven't exhibited the out of control 'suspend process' issue while I was using the devices, but with her, it does. <queue the jokes>
We own our own business, so we're in the same room all day long while we use our phones. I was the first to tell her, "it's something you're doing." I'm only repeating myself by saying that I blamed it on an app she installed or something she "did" to cause it. After factory resetting, what...2, 3 times...I'm starting to forget; after checking the apps that are installed (and removing all of them); after verifying every setting from USB Debugging, screen brightness, account sync, etc. I seem to at least be able to say, "every single setting, shortcut, widget, app or usage pattern, does not produce the issue on any device I have used with my Google account, whereas it does with my fiancee."
That's the most difficult part to get absolute - the usage pattern. She's doing such basic things though, but I know that even the slightest of difference can produce different results.
I will most certainly report my results, futile or not.
The only common denominator I've noticed so far is that it only affects Sense UI devices.
Chadastrophic said:
The only common denominator I've noticed so far is that it only affects Sense UI devices.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That seems to be the constant, to a degree. I'm seeing people state that they're having this issue on anything from the Samsung Galaxy S (i9000) to a Nexus running Cyanogen 6.1. That's people stating it though, so I'm not sure if they're actually experiencing the same issue or not.
I am biting my tongue, but I think I found another common denominator...I am going to post back in a coupla days once I've seen it last for this entire week.
hi,
i'm running cyanogenmod 6.1 on a desire hd and have been experiencing the suspend process problem exactly as described in this thread a nubmer of times now over the last week. so its definately not limited to devices running sense.
the only circumstances this behavior hasnt shown is when running 2g only with all other sorts of communications and sync off
zero_oli said:
hi,
i'm running cyanogenmod 6.1 on a desire hd and have been experiencing the suspend process problem exactly as described in this thread a nubmer of times now over the last week. so its definately not limited to devices running sense.
the only circumstances this behavior hasnt shown is when running 2g only with all other sorts of communications and sync off
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, it didn't seem 100% related to devices running Sense, so thanks for posting back to this.
My fiancee was experiencing this across her first two MT4G devices and has yet to experience the issue on her third and final MT4G. I want to see it run the rest of the week though before I share, but the issue did pop-up for her pretty much within 24-48 hours on her first two MT4G's.
Shlongwoodian: I have been following your posts as the "suspend" process has been affecting me since I received my phone the first day available. However, I am reluctant to send for a replacement as all else is great on the unit I have and there seems no gaurantee that a new phone fixes this issue.
I have tried Tmo and HTC and both seem clueless; therefore, I appreciate your research and look forward to any "fix" short of waiting for Gingerbread.
Anyone have any wisdom to pass on? This issue is driving me crazy! I've noticed it most on my black MT4G (w/the good screen) after browsing the web, youtube or using the media player. My wife's red MT4G (w/the inferior screen) has had no issues and her battery is amazing! The first day she got her phone her battery lasted 24 hours without even conditioning it! Granted she doesn't use it like I do mine, but it is still a huge difference. When this issue comes up on mine, I'm dead within 3-4 hours. I have Watchdog set so when it alerts me I just soft reset. That clears it up until it decides to come back at random intervals. It usually doesn't come back until I open the browser, etc. With as much as I use my phone (I am constantly on the road), it becomes a major pain to have to constantly monitor battery life. Any help is greatly appreciated!!!
Man, I am sorry to report that I gots nothin'. Ok, here was my original theory...
I was speculating that "something" inside the Google/Gmail account was the cause. My reasoning being, essentially, your info is stored in a database. When you get an Android device, that online database is synced locally with the phone's database. We each have different databases and there is more than just your apps, Market links, contacts, etc. I never exhibited the /suspend issue on phones that she experienced the /suspend issue on. I figured it was database-specific.
If a table contains a value, or rather, does not contain a specific value (or if columns are missing, etc.), it can cause an application to respond in a negative way. Sometimes, this causes an error to bubble up in an application. Other times, it doesn't. In my experience, I've seen much more subtle issues in databases, that don't cause errors or a crash, but instead just cause "undesirable results."
When my fiancee got her final, good replacement Plum Glacier, we started with a completely new Google account. We thought we nailed it, when a handful of days passed without seeing /suspend get out of control, leading to Android System and/or OS sucking down battery life. I think it was nearly a week into it and one day while she was out, she realized she lost battery life really quickly - i.e. left the house with 90% and by the time she got to the store, shopped for a bit and looked, her phone was down to like 30-40%. She knows how to check for /suspend and it was, of course, back.
It's still not something that can be completely ruled out, since it's not a very air-tight test. There could be something about my Google account (which I've had pretty much since Gmail beta was available) that's keeping me (and others like me) from getting it or that idea could be crap.
For some reason, I have never, ever seen this happen on my Glacier(s) running stock 2.2.1. Phones that I never saw the issue on, she saw the issue on. There is so much speculation around it, but it just seems like "some people" don't experience it and "some people" do. It's all over different devices, different skill levels, etc. No apps, same apps, whatever and it happens to some but not others.
Sorry to get anyone's hopes up. I'll keep looking for differences/similarities though and if I find anything at all I'll - or if anyone else finds anything, no matter how ridiculous it sounds (yes, we've tested the 'rock' and it doesn't appear to suffer from the /suspend issue) - post it here.
Thanks for trying! It was a good theory. So . . . now what? Is there any way to get this ranked higher with Google, HTC, etc. to get more people working on it? It is really driving me nuts! It mainly happens after I use the web browser, then put the phone on standby for some reason. I can't even use the browser any more without needing to reboot it to save battery life. There is another thread, but specifically for the Evo and I think one for the Nexus one, all with the same problem. What if a new thread were started that is not device specific? That way we can get more people to star it and maybe Google or whoever will pay more attention to it! I would hate to think that we are stuck with this problem until when and if we get upgraded to 2.3. I would suggest rooting and flashing a new ROM, but even those with custom ROM's are having the same problem, so that's not going to help. Thoughts???
jpiano said:
It mainly happens after I use the web browser, then put the phone on standby for some reason.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It truly is a mystery to this day. I've seen people say, "it happened right after I installed Handcent" or "it happens as soon as I do..." No one has come up with any concrete evidence thus far.
My fiancee has Handcent, I have Handcent. I used Handcent heavily, never had an issue. She stopped using Handcent - still has the issue. We've gotten so granular in our troubleshooting, we're literally tracking every step. LOL i.e. I pressed the trackpad to wake the phone, once; I unlocked the phone, I swiped my thumb once to view my Watchdog Widget on the screen to the left of my homescreen, etc., etc., etc.
So, for now, we just wait? My phone (and all previous phones) have been just fine. My fiancee however...yeah, I'm trying to find a fix pretty quickly.
One common theme that I've seen with this issue is that it only happens after I put the phone to sleep. I have never seen it crop up while actually using the phone. Maybe we're going about it the wrong way in trying to identify an app, etc that's causing the problem... perhaps it is simply the code involved in putting the phone to sleep and that's why there hasn't been any consistency with what one does to make it appear. In your experience, have you ever seen or heard of it showing up while the phone is being used? Perhaps it's just on mine that it works that way, but I thought it was worth mentioning. I know nothing about code or how android works so please forgive the noob comment if this is an obvious one. Merry Christmas!
I've got this problem big time. Returned my first phone because I thought it was the phone. First few days were good but lately its back and as bad as ever. First thoughts were angry birds twitter or wifi but I have no idea. If I can't figure this out I might have to sell this phone.
I will try to post some more thoughts. I think you're onto some good ideas here.
Sent from my HTC Glacier using XDA App
(Re-posting from the developer's Google blog where others are following this issue): Interesting about using the phone without a Google account. Not sure if this is relevant or not, but I've noticed something else with consistency. Granted I wasn't able to document the behavior through system panel at the time, but this has consistently happened. When suspend goes crazy, I can get it to stop simply by charging the phone! Even if I charge the phone for a few seconds, then unplug, it stays dormant without having to reboot. Noob speaking here but perhaps the part of android that actually logs the battery usage is suspending when the phone goes to sleep? When it us charging, this log is reset and clears the process from running. If this is even possible, then could someone write an app that clears this system log? Maybe by mimicking what happens when the phone is charging, we can at least temporarily clear the issue without the need tovl reboot? Again, I know nothing about all this so sorry if this is all irrelevant. Just sharing what I've noticed to be consistent. Thoughts??
Also, I saw on another xda blog (http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=870557&page=2) that someone linked this issue to a corrupt photo on the sd card. After formatting the card and restoring some files, says the issue has not returned!
jpiano said:
Also, I saw on another xda blog (http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=870557&page=2) that someone linked this issue to a corrupt photo on the sd card. After formatting the card and restoring some files, says the issue has not returned!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I wonder if you're on to something with the SD card. I've been thinking I haven't seen the suspend issue return on my phone in quite a while. I just realized that the only thing I've really changed is installed a new 16 gb SD card. Since then, no suspend process problems. For those who are having the problem still, I wonder if removing or formatting their cards would show any improvement? Worth a shot if at least to eliminate another possible factor.
Sent from my HTC Glacier using XDA App
That's cool that this thread is flushing out other ideas and possible variables. I like the idea of connecting it to the charger for a couple of seconds, but my fiancee is so used to just rebooting her phone each morning and sometimes again by mid-day, that it's easier for her to do just that.
jpiano said:
Even if I charge the phone for a few seconds, then unplug, it stays dormant without having to reboot.
Also, I saw on another xda blog (http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=870557&page=2) that someone linked this issue to a corrupt photo on the sd card. After formatting the card and restoring some files, says the issue has not returned!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I like the microSD Card notion. This is such a weird issue, that it's so easily associated with other items - e.g. applications, usage patterns, etc. This seems feasible though, but the only way to know for sure is to reproduce it. My fiancee experiences the suspend issue daily, if she doesn't reboot regularly. So, I should be able to take her microSD card and use it in my phone and get the suspend issue. I don't want to 'muddy' up by swapping microSD cards, so I'll try reformatting her card and see if that makes any difference. She usually sees the issue within 24-48 hours of a fresh boot, so it shouldn't be long before we see if that fixes it or not. I can check the card for errors, etc. as well.
werk said:
I just realized that the only thing I've really changed is installed a new 16 gb SD card. Since then, no suspend process problems.
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Click to collapse
I'll be upgrading to a 16 GB Class 10 soon, so I can give her my Samsung if need be. I'd really like to see if this is it though. It would explain the "some people get it and some people don't" pattern.
I also noticed that the minute I plug the phone in the problem goes away. Not sure why, just confirming it happens to me too. I also should note that when I returned my phone, they popped my old SD card into my new phone. So if there is an SD card issue with a corupt file/photo that could be something as well. I wonder woody if your girlfriends phone has had the same SD card after how many times did you say you traded it in? BTW, a side note, how did you exchange it so many times? After I took mine back to the store on day 14 they told me I wasn't able to exchange it again.
I do have a 16GB SD card but just haven't had time to install it. Wanted to double check which things I need on the new one from the old one, but it might be a good way to test this issue. Let me know some ideas before I swap the cards and maybe I can help test this.
Also, one more thing, what is the app you're using to log stuff? I'm just using Watchdog Lite right now.
I've got to figure this out or this is a dealbreaker for me. I have waited 3 years to upgrade phones, first time on Android, really wanted iPhone but wanted to stick with month to month from TMob. If this continues I think I will move to Windows Phone 7 or iPhone if I have to, but I really like this phone when the battery is not draining like a leech.
Thanks.
werk,
Just wondering what process you went through when you upgraded SD cards. Did you copy any files over to the new one or just start blank?
Thanks.
royhobbs said:
werk,
Just wondering what process you went through when you upgraded SD cards. Did you copy any files over to the new one or just start blank?
Thanks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Just straight copied the existing files over from the old card to new one (new one in phone connected via USB, old card in SD adapter in my laptops SD card slot). I think some Angry Birds files didn't make it due to long paths, but reinstalled it and no problems since then.
I've had the phone for about a week now, and it's been really crash-prone and unstable for the first couple of days. I previously had an HD7 for 4 weeks, so I immediately set up my DVP like I had the HD7 set up.
It was so buggy, I hard reset at least a couple of times in those few days. My most recent hard reset was on Sunday, and lo and behold, I didn't experience any crashes for 4 days!
That started me thinking. The difference between the previous hard reset and the current hard reset was that I hadn't loaded many apps or any mp3s yet - so I loaded the same amount of MP3s as I had before (about 8gb) and immediately any new programs started crashing! In fact, I think just about anything that wrote to the disk exhibited errors, from newly downloaded and installed apps to existing apps which does disk I/O. The marketplace crashed all the time while downloading or installing apps.
My best guess as to the cause of the issue is that the SD card is corrupting data. As long as you are using the internal storage, everything runs fine - but once data is written to the SD card, things are getting corrupted. I'm not sure about this, it's just a guess.
At the OS level, the internal storage is combined with the SD card into a single logical disk - AKA JBOD in RAID terms. I'm not sure about the OS-level algorithm it uses to determine whether or not to save to internal vs SD card, but my guess is that it writes to the internal first, then when that is exceeded, it writes to the SD card. Even after removing some MP3s, I still had crashes, so I'm guessing that it doesn't overwrite the same sectors that previously held data until all the "fresh" sectors have been used (ie it was still writing to the SD card).
If this is the case, then the culprits could be either A) Dell's crappy SD card drivers corrupting the data or B) a crappy quality SD card corrupting the data. Given their recent QC issues i'm inclined to think it's B - but I hope it's A because that would imply a software fix as opposed to having to replace hardware.
Either way, I'll write a program to test my hypothesis: It'll create a test files of a specific size and then read them back and check that the test data is correct.
Thoughts? Has anybody else noticed similar behavior after filling up their storage?
I suspected the SD card as well, which is why I included the remaining storage space in the options in the poll at http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=891295
That being said, some others have said that doing a system reset on their phone did not fix the crashing problems. There are 2 major unknown variables here of course - when the phone is using the SD card vs. internal memory, and whether everyone is experiencing the same type of crashing.
pjfan75 said:
I suspected the SD card as well, which is why I included the remaining storage space in the options in the poll at http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=891295
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if there were multiple causes for the all the crashes people are experiencing - most likely the SD card may be responsible for some of those, while other issues are causing more crashes.
Impossible to tell at the moment, though. But perhaps the reason why people associated wifi with crashing was that they were using the wifi to load more data than they were over 3G?
I've thought about the apps too. AP mobile is one that is involved on my list. Shazam, yelp, where, are others. I an make my hd7 crash with each of them. However, that does not eliminate sd card. Optimal read/write access speed will probably impact crash, lag, and performance.
Based on this thread it sounds like it's probably more of a driver issue.
alodar1 said:
I've thought about the apps too. AP mobile is one that is involved on my list. Shazam, yelp, where, are others. I an make my hd7 crash with each of them. However, that does not eliminate sd card. Optimal read/write access speed will probably impact crash, lag, and performance.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've used those apps on the HD7 and I don't think they ever crashed it - not nearly as often as the DVP crashes.
zaijian said:
But perhaps the reason why people associated wifi with crashing was that they were using the wifi to load more data than they were over 3G?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That and also at a much higher rate than 3G typically.
zaijian said:
Based on this thread it sounds like it's probably more of a driver issue.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't know if I would agree with that. I would hope that drivers would be the same on all devices. To have 1 fail and 20 not fail....is it driver? I would be curious to know what the failure rates would be. Sure we see alot of complaints here on this forum....but there is not a whole lot of traffic about failure of the DVP. All in All, I'm happy with the DVP. I also have a HD7...and I'm happy with that. I have them both sitting here...and when I make a decision to use a phone of my choice...I've chosen the DVP.
With all things being equal, if I get into a fight, the DVP can be used as a weapon.
I've used up quite a bit of storage but the only time I seem to get a crash is when I enable WiFi, otherwise my DVP seems to run stable.
efjay said:
I've used up quite a bit of storage but the only time I seem to get a crash is when I enable WiFi, otherwise my DVP seems to run stable.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have the same results, I went crash free for 2 days without WiFi I wanted to test it and turned it back on and it crashed within a few min.
I have a replacement coming from Dell but I doubt they will have it fixed. I'm hoping it would be something that can be fixed by an update.
Mine crashes too!!
I too am experiencing many of the issues that have been posted on this forum (crashing w/wo wifi, while in MP, or when an app needs data from the internet). Twice I have reached in my pocket, hit the power button to bring up the lock screen and nothing happens - just a blank screen. Hence had to pull the battery and reboot.
A couple of other things I have noticed that I am not sure I have seen on the forums. Does anyone else have a DVP where the top left edge and the bottom right edge are not flush with the bottom of the phone? It is slight, but I noticed it on day one. Also, I have a heck of a time with the accelerometer sticking. Sometimes it refuses to go back into portrait mode. No mater how I turn and twist it (360 deg).
Anyone else experience this?
I used to use the power button to get to the unlock screen, but after fumbling with it a few times in the dark, I switched to flipping out the keyboard, which does the same thing. And while it did often take multiple presses of the power button to wake the DVP, I have never had to pull the battery.
I've had the DVP since November 8th, and had it crash on my severely enough for a battery pull maybe 3-4 times tops. This is both on the "engineering" phone and the "retail" phone. The only difference I have with you guys - and this is pretty significant - is that I hacked my SD card pretty much within the first couple of days of getting it. I've upgraded to a SanDisk class 2 16GB.
Now, I haven't particularly filled it up; in fact, I have tons of space free. But, I'd like to set some facts straight:
1) The DVP has no internal storage. Just a few megs (~16MB or so) just so the OS can run if you pull the SD card. Nothing new here; we've seen this during the first days of the SD card hack thread.
2) If you fill up your storage, and applications request for IsolatedStorage, the request will most likely fail if you have (close to) zero storage free. If applications don't check for that, it will probably crash. I don't know if this is necessarily happening, since I don't have a crashing device to observe this behaviour, but that's one hunch. Some of you have said that the HD7 did not crash when you filled up the storage, which might throw my theory out the window.
3) The SD card used in the DVP is also a SanDisk - I tend to trust them with storage reliability. If it is indeed a driver issue, then Microsoft might have some share in the blame as well - MS writes drivers for the OEMs for WP7.
What we need to do is scientifically reproduce the issue. Instead of general data corruption, another thing to check is to see what happens as storage gets filled up.
kltye said:
What we need to do is scientifically reproduce the issue. Instead of general data corruption, another thing to check is to see what happens as storage gets filled up.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I attempted to do just that - I wrote a storage test app and ran it on my DVP, and it encountered no issues.
The app wrote test data, filling up 95% of available free space (around 13.3GB), then read it back in and verified the data. I'm now fairly confident that it's not the SD card or the storage drivers that are responsible for the crashing.
I did however, encounter issues trying to download the Rise of Glory game. I had turned wifi off, but it's large enough that it requires wifi or sync in order to download and install. Once I turned wifi on and retried the download, the phone crashed on me.
Let's see if we can verify the wifi + marketplace issue:
1) make sure phone wifi is off
2) connect DVP to computer, run Zune
3) via zune sync, verify that you can install a large game or app on your phone. It has to be one which you haven't downloaded before, as I don't think you can force zune to reinstall an app it knows you already downloaded.
4) disconnect the phone
5) verify the game runs correctly
6) uninstall the game on the phone
7) turn phone wifi on
8) go into marketplace on the phone
9) reinstall the same game and see if you have any issues with marketplace while downloading (freezing/hanging/etc)
10) if everything's still ok, verify that the game runs correctly
@Zaijian
I tried reproducing your flow on my DVP and it didn't crash. But, what is strange is mine freezes (only twice so far) @ random right after playing and trying to get to some other app or switching between app. This tends me to side on the memory as being the culprit or some other component being the culprit. Most likely could be memory related and how WP7 manages to kill an app. Is there a memtest kind of thing we could run on this DVP?
I wrote a wifi transfer testing app and ran it overnight - it transferred 4GB over my wifi (from my desktop to the phone) correctly and without incident.
So, i've confirmed that:
A) there's nothing wrong with writing a single large file to the file system
B) there's nothing wrong with transferring data over wifi
My next tests will be:
1) simultaneously writing multiple large files to the file system
2) simultaneoulsy writing files to the file system and transferring data over wifi
3) some sort of memory test to see if memory is getting corrupted
WiFi seems to be the issue
Not much question that mine locks up when WiFi is turned on. I have been experimenting with this issue for the past few days and while having WiFi on causes random lock-ups, not having it on makes it run without any issues.
Fortunately, most of the areas I use my phone have good 3G coverage so WiFi acting up is not a deal breaker but I certainly hope they are able to fix this with the impending update.
One consideration is could there be an app we all have that uses WiFi that is causing trouble? Has anyone had issues with this from a fresh device? I seem to recall having it lock up early on before I put many apps on it.
jetjockgordo said:
Not much question that mine locks up when WiFi is turned on. I have been experimenting with this issue for the past few days and while having WiFi on causes random lock-ups, not having it on makes it run without any issues.
Fortunately, most of the areas I use my phone have good 3G coverage so WiFi acting up is not a deal breaker but I certainly hope they are able to fix this with the impending update.
One consideration is could there be an app we all have that uses WiFi that is causing trouble? Has anyone had issues with this from a fresh device? I seem to recall having it lock up early on before I put many apps on it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
My problems seem to occur when I'm going through the marketplace and downloading via wifi.
I verified with my test app that wifi can transfer a large amount of data without errors. This leads me to believe that the wifi itself is not the cause of the issues, but that wifi in combination with other factors may be the cause.
zaijian said:
My problems seem to occur when I'm going through the marketplace and downloading via wifi.
I verified with my test app that wifi can transfer a large amount of data without errors. This leads me to believe that the wifi itself is not the cause of the issues, but that wifi in combination with other factors may be the cause.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I thought so too but I left the WiFi on and rebooting without accessing Marketplace has been causing lockups as well. In fact, I just noticed it was locked up after a reboot 10 minutes ago and, sure enough, I left WiFi on. I didn't so much as unlock the screen after the reboot although I have also had it lock up while accessing Marketplace.
jetjockgordo said:
I thought so too but I left the WiFi on and rebooting without accessing Marketplace has been causing lockups as well. In fact, I just noticed it was locked up after a reboot 10 minutes ago and, sure enough, I left WiFi on. I didn't so much as unlock the screen after the reboot although I have also had it lock up while accessing Marketplace.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'll test using wifi simultaneously with local disk I/O and see if that causes errors.
Hi all,
A few of us on the SD card list thread have tried this and it seems to be stablizing things....the theory as we are working with now is that the problem is due to a power control issue in the Samsung drivers for the phone, not especially in the card itself.
No ill effects have been reported as of yet, and the battery life seems to be on par with before the switch was made. It is a simple fix, and can be reversed easily.
I ran the phone for 2 months without a card, and with these keys toggled, it is actually FASTER than it was. I don't fully believe it, but it has been over a week and rock solid.
First off, you need to dev unlock your phone. See the thread here for simple and complete instructions: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=938106
Next off, you need to toggle the following 3 registry keys in the Registry Editor provided in the above post:
The keys have to do with MMC (internal memory) power management.The big speed improvements is in games/apps (Fruit Ninja opens and operates leaps and bounds faster than it did when the phone did stock!)
Code:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE>Drivers>SDCARD>ClientDrivers>Class>MMC_Class>DisablePowerManagement (Change to 0)
Code:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE>Drivers>SDCARD>ClientDrivers>Class>MMC_Class>High_Capacity>DisablePowerManagement (Change to 0)
Code:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE>Drivers>SDCARD>ClientDrivers>Class>SDMemory_Class>DisablePowerManagement (Change to 0)
One point of note here, do not be afraid if the phone locks up the first time soft resetting after these changes, mine did and it was fine after a battery pull.
Also, I would be interested to hear any theories about why this one made such a big difference when it seemingly affects only the internal storage. Maybe because the two storage devices are "bridged" by WP7?
Comment below with your experiences please!
If this gets enough test results, we will submit it to Microsoft. Thanks!
As I already mentioned:
Up to now I just did the SD card registry hack. The device is now stable for over 3 days, longer than ever before.
Battery life wasn't noticable affected, lasted for around 40h with moderate usage (thumbs up indeed).
In fact without this registry hack I wasn't able to get down to an empty battery without those reboting/dataloss issues.
But I need some more days, then I will change the MMC registry key also.
No speed improvements mentioned up to now.
I applied the hack to all three keys. So far, it is much less laggy. Not sure if that will return after 4+ weeks as before, but here's a pretty cool side effect:
After the hack, my screen does not stop responding to touch when the phone is placed on my desk or a soft surface, like a couch cushon. It was getting really annoying because I often place mu phone on my desk during the day for easy access, but every time I tried to onlock it, it would not respond unless I picked it up. Sometimes, it's nice to leave it lying down and operate it. Couldn't do that before, but I can now! WooHoo! Thank you for this.
I'll report back if it starts up again in a couple weeks.
Sent from my Focus WP7 using Board Express
Whoa! I just tested this and you are correct! More proof that the Samsung power drivers are full of problems. Who would have thought?
For testing purpose I changed the MMC Keys also and made some Videos (no I won't upload them). There were absoluteley no differences in app loading times (ok, i know the longer loading apps are pretty much all stored on the sd card, ) and also not in overall performance, although this isn't provable easily.
I changed the keys back to normal, but kept the sd card key change to 0.
I address the positive speed effects to sdcard key for now. Perhaps i will make some tests without any reg change in the next few days.
Still stable as hell!
Edit: Damn I forgot to test the not responding problem (even though i didn't notice it that often and badly)
Sebo1985 said:
For testing purpose I changed the MMC Keys also and made some Videos (no I won't upload them). There were absoluteley no differences in app loading times (ok, i know the longer loading apps are pretty much all stored on the sd card, ) and also not in overall performance, although this isn't provable easily.
I changed the keys back to normal, but kept the sd card key change to 0.
I address the positive speed effects to sdcard key for now. Perhaps i will make some tests without any reg change in the next few days.
Still stable as hell!
Edit: Damn I forgot to test the not responding problem (even though i didn't notice it that often and badly)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
As I mentioned above, I'm hoping it's not just a result of resetting something and it still returns in a few weeks. Although, the thing about the screen touch response not working when laying on something is COMPLETELY GONE! That alone is worth the setting change. It really was annoying for me the way I use the phone. Thank you to eveyone involved in finding this setting.
PS: From my perception, I don't believe my battery is behaving any differently. Although, I would imagine if it were scientifically tested, it surely would be using slightly more juice. But it still had the normal amount left in the evening, and I probably used it slightly more testing it out. Maybe getting the screen to perform better uses less power?
For the sake of completeness: I set the sd card key back to 1, and I do not experience any slow down in overall performance or in app loading times. Still I cannot reproduce any of those not responding issues you mentioned.
For today and tomorrow I will stay with this setting an will wait for a random reboot. Let's see what and when it happens.
tried this with a 16gb class2 sandisk... loaded it up to 9.25 left and the reboot monster came... but it was weird... it would rebllt like every 30 sec with no loss then poof all lost...then rendom self reboot all mem would reappear and start the reboot process all over.... now it didnt do this till it was unplugged.... plugged in it was fine... reformatted... re set up did the tweak... loaded and the same as before... so for me no... but im going to test it with another card on the list... heres to hoping....
but it does fix the sitting on the bed and unresponsive gimmick.....
So would this be worthwhile even for someone without an sdcard? For the screen response issue i mean. It's so annoying haha.
edit: Screw it i went ahead and did it hah. It def fixed the touch screen responsiveness issue!
Which cards?
Can you guys post the specific SD cards you are testing this with. I am curious to see if somebody has tested it with the Sandisk class 2 32gb card. Thanks.
knwldg0010 said:
Can you guys post the specific SD cards you are testing this with. I am curious to see if somebody has tested it with the Sandisk class 2 32gb card. Thanks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sebo's testing with a SanDisk Class 4 32GB card which ended up being more stable (before it failed and before he tried the registry stuff) than the Class 2s from Sandisk.
Based on what you have read, would it be best to get rid of the class 2 32gb card or wait to see if there is an actual fix? Since this seems to be a power issue based on the fix, does it really matter what class it is then? Thanks.
knwldg0010 said:
Based on what you have read, would it be best to get rid of the class 2 32gb card or wait to see if there is an actual fix? Since this seems to be a power issue based on the fix, does it really matter what class it is then? Thanks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Something to keep in mind is that this registry hack is relatively new. Some people managed to go for weeks without issues on an unmodified WP7 with a card. It's entirely possible that these hacks are just a stopgap, or a reset, and actually *fix* nothing.
Theoretically, the card shouldn't matter. If I hadn't locked my 32GB Class 4 Kingston to my old (bricked) Focus, I would try it with the current one and see if doing the registry tweaks fixes the slow sync issue on it. Someone in the SD Card List thread claims to have done the registry tweaks and it ended up failing badly too with a 16GB Class 2 Sandisk. However, the 16GB Class 2 Sandisk is one of the more reliable ones (without tweaks) through the limited testing this board has done, so it's possible he has a bad card.
In brief, it shouldn't matter (within reason) what brand/class/capacity you use. If this tweak is the real deal, it should work, especially if your only concern is random reboots. However, you still would want to avoid cards with extremely high class ratings at typically their random read/write is slow (which the most common usage of the storage in WP7). In terms of performance, there's no guarantee as to what these tweaks will do as the only consistent change has been that phones that would constantly reboot due to their cards aren't (yet).
However, to answer your initial question, I don't believe anyone has tested a Class 2 Sandisk 32GB card. I wouldn't put too much faith that your card will have the exact same results as Sebo's class 4 because we aren't certain what the cause is. We believe it's power, but we're not 100% sure. If you're already using the card in your phone, you don't really have much to lose. If you're not using it yet, then you only have something to lose if you, like me, don't have a Nokia/Symbian phone that you can use to reformat the card if it fails.
Good post fishface.... That's where most are thinking its a fix.. This is just a theory right now.. That's why there's another post wanting testers... my find was it did fix the sensitivity issue...theres no doubt on my end.. But card wise my 16gb class2 SanDisk worked before I tried this until I hit 15gb used... Then it went goofy... I tried it 5 times.. Same thing. Just about 15gb used was where the instability happened. Soon as the reg hack hit I read thru it.. I love reg edits.. Made my Omnia 2 &hd2 quite decent phones... That's when I saw the mention of others thinking this too.. So I took my 16gb class2 SanDisk that I freshly brought back to life, and decided to test it out... I posted the results before... Plugged in no issue.. Unplugged it went goofy at 12.7 used... I was stable at that point before without the edits... Not saying it doesn't help but it made mine worse... I'm still going to try other cards though .. I do think there is something to this... I might try different scenarios of the edit... What's it going to hurt..i mean were here for the same goal to help find a solution... Well except the lurkers..you all know who you are..lol. But again. Great post fishface...
Thanks for all of the info. I guess fix is the wrong word to use, but i was just trying to get an idea of what others have done. Whenever i would pass the 10gb mark, mine would do a full wipe after a couple of restarts. I still have my 32gb card in my phone, because there really is no point of taking it out and possibly loosing it. Plus i was hoping an official fix would come out so i could just apply the patch. I have been waiting to see when the MS update would come out so i could do a full backup before running test. Thank you for your help.
anyone tried messing with block sizes? Default is 128. I'm wondering if maybe your sd card has trouble with that block size its causing the lagginess. Who knows lol....
Sent from my SGH-i917 using Board Express
Also I'm still using my 32gb Kingston class 4. I have all 3 keys set to 0. And its still going strong other than that one reset I had. MMC block size 128 sd block size 128. If my sd card can't handle that large of a block size I would have instability.
Sent from my SGH-i917 using Board Express
Anyone know if this also fixes the song stuttering issue? That's definitely power related since it only happens in the last couple of seconds of a song if the screen is off. One you turn it back on, the music plays perfectly.
jeffgeno said:
Anyone know if this also fixes the song stuttering issue? That's definitely power related since it only happens in the last couple of seconds of a song if the screen is off. One you turn it back on, the music plays perfectly.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I haven't had a chance to test that yet but I'll post if I have any issues
Sent from my SGH-i917 using Board Express
I'm stuck. Made it through the first three downloads and have my phone unlocked.
Followed Registry Editor link and downloaded RegistryEditor 1.1.0.0.xap. My computer will not open up this file because it doesn't know what program to use, so I tried to download it straight to my phone and my phone says it doesn't support xap. What steps am I missing?
How do I get into the registry to change the three tabs?
Its been a long time since iv been this stumped, about a week ago my phone started acting very strangely, laggy performance, freezing randomly and occasionally rebooting itself, now its getting worse, getting to a point where the phone is probably rebooting itself 5-6 times a day, iv uninstalled every app, iv factory reset it, wiped cache, replaced battery, removed the SD card (in case of file system corruption) using Samsung Smart Switch did an emergency flash back to original Rom, installed every troubleshooting app out there, monitored RAM and CPU usage, all i can see is that the CPU suddenly spikes to 100% with no real reason, i cant link any particular app or process thats causing this, all of the cores on the processor appear to be coping with no faults.
The only thing i can think of thats causing this issue is either iv got a pending hardware failure on the board, or possibly bad blocks on the nand memory, however i cant see any simple way of determining this without rooting and using the likes of ODIN or other 3rd parties etc - linux commands etc.
I dont want to root it particularly if i can help it as i was thinking about selling it on to mazuma or the like and let them sort it out instead, but i think i might have to bite the bullet and try it.
Can anyone suggest anything that i might have missed?
Actually iv seen an existing thread which appears to match my issues, so iv installed wakelock on the phone for now which seems to be helping a bit, time will tell, however this isnt a solution but more of a work around, but im still thinking this could be a motherboard issue myself, however, as i think this phone is over 2 years old, i doubt samsung will replace the component, nor would they necessarily believe me if i turn around to them and say its the board that needs replacing!
Terry6680 said:
Its been a long time since iv been this stumped, about a week ago my phone started acting very strangely, laggy performance, freezing randomly and occasionally rebooting itself, now its getting worse, getting to a point where the phone is probably rebooting itself 5-6 times a day, iv uninstalled every app, iv factory reset it, wiped cache, replaced battery, removed the SD card (in case of file system corruption) using Samsung Smart Switch did an emergency flash back to original Rom, installed every troubleshooting app out there, monitored RAM and CPU usage, all i can see is that the CPU suddenly spikes to 100% with no real reason, i cant link any particular app or process thats causing this, all of the cores on the processor appear to be coping with no faults.
The only thing i can think of thats causing this issue is either iv got a pending hardware failure on the board, or possibly bad blocks on the nand memory, however i cant see any simple way of determining this without rooting and using the likes of ODIN or other 3rd parties etc - linux commands etc.
I dont want to root it particularly if i can help it as i was thinking about selling it on to mazuma or the like and let them sort it out instead, but i think i might have to bite the bullet and try it.
Can anyone suggest anything that i might have missed?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
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