When I first got my TP2 the battery life was great. Then I started adding tons of applications and tweaks and then suddenly one day the battery started to go crazy, it would drain in under 4 hours, with absolutely nothing running.
I started trying to track down the culprit. One thing I noticed right away is that my data connection would come on randomly. I'd shut it down, then a little while later is was on again. I turned off all the automatic updates I could think if (email, weather, stock, Windows update). With data, BT, wifi all turned off, screen off, nothing running, the battery would get hot and every minute would lose a few more percent. The phone was at this point basically useless. Because task manager showed nothing running I figured the battery had gone bad, or horrors, some fault maybe in the TP2. I took it to TMobile and got a replacement.
On my new phone, battery life seemed OK again. So, I did my Resco restore but it didn't work because I had password protection on the phone when I did the backup (not the TMobile password, but the one before that you get during boot up), so on restore it wouldn't let me into the phone saying the password was invalid (apparently something I should have known. grrr, bad Resco!).
So, I manually reinstalled everything again, not thinking to do it one piece at a time because I thought my battery troubles were over. I was wrong. Once it was all loaded up again, the exact same battery sucking began, and the data connection coming on again.
One thing I had noticed is that if I turned off TF3D I could see the icon for ESET virus protection running (it doesn't show in task manager). I knew I'd installed it, but because the TouchFlo screen hid the icon I'd forgotten about it. So, I went to that and clicked 'update' wondering if it was automatically checking for updates and so accessing the internet. But 'update' just gave an error message. So I figured the anti-virus wasn't going to be much use to me until updates were working, so uninstalled the application. BAM! (c) Emeril, battery problems ended!
I did a little googling and saw a couple of other references to ESET and battery drain on other phones, so I think that's been the problem. I don't know if the problem was the software itself draining the battery in its normal state, or if it was maybe constantly trying to make an internet connection to check for updates (but because that feature wasn't working it just kept trying).
I'd like to point out that I am in no way maligning ESET, it's totally my fault: 1) they do not yet claim compatibility for the TP2 ( http://www.eset.com/products/mobileantivirus.php ), and 2) I picked up the .cab from a link from one of the phone forums (not sure where or how any more, I have loaded up so much stuff), not from the ESET web site, so I could well have an older or bad version. I thought the software was freeware, but looking on the site I see it's just a free 30 day trial, so it's quite possible I had a cracked version. Their official version may well work with no problems.
But I did want to post this warning in case anyone else runs into battery drain issues.
Hi Iam an official reseller for the Eset antivirus. Just installed a version on my phone, will report back if drains my battery. How quick did it drain. If any probs i will report back to eset, to get sorted. Could just be the patched version. Funny enough the very firts pc version i got was a pirated version. Liked it so much much i thought sod it and paid for it.
Let me know if you wish to purchase it I can do a bit of a forum discount for you. same goes for pc version.
Hi, thanks for helping to try to get this resolved. The software ran very fast and I think could become a valuable addition once the WM6 viruses become more prominent.
The drain was *rapid* I'd say from 100 to 0 in about 3 hours, so if you do have the same problem, you should know right away. Also, the battery got warm to extremely warm, I might even say hot to the point that it was getting uncomfortable to hold. That certainly leads me to believe there were possibly two problems. One being that the software was for some reason maybe running aggressively in the background. The other that it appears to have been trying to connect to the internet every so often. I'm not sure exactly how often, it seemed somewhat random, but I'd say at least every 15 minutes (I would keep turning off the data connection whenever I saw it running). So I don't know if these are one and the same problem (that the software was trying to update and that was the code that was going out of control). Now that I have the phone working well again, I can have the data on constantly without anywhere near the drain I was experiencing, so the data alone was probably only a minor part of the issue.
When I tried to 'update' I got an error (I can't remember what it said). Is this still the case with the current version? If not then I can assume I have an old version and maybe the battery issue is gone now.
If you like I'd be willing to dl the 30 day trial and see what the latest version does.
Several hours later no battery drain. The software should only update itself 1 a week by default and at most every 3 days if set. Download the trial give a whirl. PM me if you want to buy and I can get a cuople of quid off, same goes for pc based one. This is extended to anyone else aslo.
Don't use any antivirus program on your phone. I've tried several antivirus trials on several htc phones (s620, s710, touch pro) and they all showed extreme battery drain. Since then I've stood clear of any antivirus program on my phone.
Well nearly 24hrs later and no significant bettery drain. I even ran a couple of scans. There is no reason why an antivirus should drain a battery, otherwise no one would have them on laprops either. It was probably down to the pirated version you had.
Let me know if you have any probs.
I never used a pirated one, I only used trials (that's why I tried so many ).
Maybe it's a different story these days, might have to try one again some time...
Hello all,
Not sure if anyone has had this happened to them as well.
I am looking to root the phone and this is the only thing holding me back in fears that would be a hardware issue and then can't replace. But thing that it is software.
Here is what happens, like in the mourning I will wake up and check time on device by just pressing lock once and put down (has happened even with out doing that) then will see that alarm won't go off and try and wake the phone with power button and will get no response from the device just black screen and phone is getting warm.
I will actually have to remove and reinsert the battery to get to come back on.
Has been doing this since the update. I have tried to go an uninstall all the programs I don't use and don't have anything on it that my mytouch is not running and that device has no problems. Tried master resetting the device a few times.
I have reset from the recover wipe data option and from spl neither seemed to help
Problem only seems to happen after the phone has been on for over 100 hours.
Weird thing I took notice is after a master reset it redownloads all the apps again right away. Don't know how to stop that.
Right now mine is running the stock software the shipped version manually update to official touch update from sdcard.
So my question is there anyway to have the phone keep the logs since logcat is reset when the phone is restarted to find the problem. Or if this something you all have seen. Any ideas would be appreciated.
Hopefully you have a software-only problem... and I don't know how to prevent logcat from resetting after restarting the phone... but I can recommend one possible solution...
1. Get the stock Google/HTC signed EPE54B firmware... http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=642811
2. Rename it to PASSIMG.zip, copy it to the root of your SD card.
3. Reboot in bootloader and select Bootloader from the menu. Your phone should start scanning for the PASSIMG.zip and ask you to apply the firmware update...
And, yeah... no you won't void your warranty by doing this, since this is a stock signed original firmware....
I get this (or a similar) problem too. I'm not yet sure if it's a hardware or software problem, and am therefore avoiding rooting my phone until I'm sure.
I have noticed that this happens more often, or at least seems to be more likely, when the phone is cold... I've not had it happen during the day (when it's nice and warm in my pocket), but when I leave it on my night stand whilst sleeping, or for an extended period on my desk at home, it seems to freeze up then.
I'm an electrical engineer and suspect that this problem may be due to silicon right on the edge of it's qualification range (similar to how some people are able to overclock to 1.2 GHz stably, mine is unstable even at 1 GHz... :-( ), I think my device is unstable at 998 MHz at whatever voltage it's running at currently (looks like Qualcomm changed the recommended voltage from 1.25 to 1.275 and finally to 1.3V over the course of early 2010).
See some of these commit comments for more details:
https://www.codeaurora.org/gitweb/q...it;h=6ede969b4418be5f8f2bd128d0cd4fbd3fd97e72
https://www.codeaurora.org/gitweb/q...it;h=ff61966464a2a2d2da36c0194d326370d3c3caeb
https://www.codeaurora.org/gitweb/q...it;h=a129aec2ec8b0b8ef9943e437415073620f15678
Based on them, I would guess we can expect more stability in the FroYo release (assuming it's using the 2.6.32 kernel, and is coming soon). In which case I'll wait.
I will try that rom next. In my tinkering I went back to erd and let it auto update to ere on its own. and will see how that does. If it fails again I will try the other rom. I can still revert back from that to erd if I want later right?
everything except the radio... i believe the radio can only be downgraded on an unlocked phone... so i've heard...
It happen to one of my nexus one too, the other one never hangs. It happen mostly when i'm charging on the dock with screen on.
I address this problem with HTC once, and they told me to try remove the micro sd card and see if it happen again. So i switch a newer sd into the phone and its running fine waiting to see if it hangs again if it does, HTC say will they come send a carrier over to fetch the phone to check it.
Running fine for 4 days already, just weird tho how can a sd card cause this?
Could also be a low memory issue with the stock ROM. My wife's does that until I kill a bunch of background apps. I look at the available memory and it's at 13MB. She also hasn't reboot her phone in weeks...so that's probably why it was low on memory. I guess the internal Android task killer doesn't do it's job very well!
When I switched my phone providers I had to also swap phones because my old carrier was CDMA and the new one was UMTS. As a result I bought off a friend an HTC Dream G1 which he was running some previously beta ROM on it (I never mothered to check what it was but it was apparently a beta).A week after I got it we decided to upgrade it to a "newer custom ROM and so I was persuaded to reflash the phone with FroyoByLaszlo 2.6.34.8 (Mod version 5.2, Android ersion 2.2.1). An accidential softbrick (forgot to add the fonts) and another reload later I had it working and I went home that night and went to bed.
That was two months ago. To this day I regret this upgrade as I have had nothing but hell come from this phone in the form of so many bugs, it makes my middle class apartment look clean.
Notably annoying bugs include:
-Sluggish performance. (it does not take fifteen seconds for the camera to start, 45 seconds just to call someone, and other apps that worked fine previously just love to hang.)
-Unresponsive controls. (if you force close something because you think the app ahs hung, sometimes the phone will continue to register the button as pressed and continue to force close anything that gets in its way.)
-Phone drops data connection. (if you leave the phone alone, it will just drop its data link and you must cycle the radio on and off to get it back.)
-Phone roams when it loses its signal. (I go into and out of a tunnel and in the middle of downtown Vancouver I go from full signal with 3G to roaming and no data. Again, you have to cycle the radio to get everything back.)
-SD card will not auto-mount properly. (it says the card is damaged (it isn't) when you (or it) restart the phone and can only be cleared and accessed by unmounting, removing and inserting the card, then remounting.)
-Phone apparently has no memory. (I made sure 32mb was free onboard and there is 3 gigs still free on the SD card (and enough free RAM just in case) yet when you try to download an app or you try to update something (no matter what size, like say a 120k update), it will download but then fail to install because it cites insufficient memory. Rebooting will not clear the problem. It also worked fine for the first week then decided to do this.)
-Apps do not respond to events. (I have on particular app that notifies me of preset USGS earthquake alarms and it worked flawlessly on the old ROM. On the new one it worked for about a week, then while it still had all its settings and was able to display past events it decided it was NOT going to notify me about them when the phone received them.)
-Phone crashes like nobody's business. (I can be playing with an app or even sleeping when the phone decides to go TU and reboot because it crashed.)
I have not even done any advanced tweaks. All settings are essentially stock. I have not even changed the wallpaper yet.
The previous owner of the phone had OCD and it was NOT mishandled. It also worked flawlessly for the six months he owned it. The only likely culprit is this god awful ROM and it makes me want to punch babies.
No. Really. I'm willing to walk into VGH, enter the infant ward and just start punching little kids just to express my anger on just how miserable this has made me in the two months I have owned it.
When we flashed the phone the page we got the ROM from said this was a stable release. This is anything BUT stable. I can barely even use google on the thing because it takes forever to do anything and everything wants to update but you can't because it's straight-out retarded.
Did you upgrade to 1.33.0013d and completely format your phone partitions before upgrading? It is best to format partitions when switching roms.
I'll contact my friend who did it and see what he did.
I'm assuming if tthis was not done I could potentially ahve a dirty kernel?
FroyobyLazlo 5.2 is the final build of FBL. Your running a old version. The drops in data, and other things are based of a lack of Ram possibly. I know it seems unlogical, but its Device 0. The catalsyt to the Zombie hords. :3 It
Sent from my myTouch_4G_Slide using XDA App
Yeah then, I have to switch to something else.
In fact, the other day I added an additional problem. After a reboot the phone is now stuck in roaming mode. For the mercy of my phone bill I'm locked out of using data or even amking calls.
Latest Thread Update :
16/04/2013 ---- Added Rob's DFG trick Method for new comers to save searching for it .
04/03/2013 ---- Added XXEMB1 as Most reliable freeze free build .
01/03/2013 ---- added advice on kernels with SDS Fix .
26/02/2013 ---- Added links to LagFix (fstrim) premium ,and DFG.
Now that the Galaxy S3 Sudden Death Syndrome has supposedly been fixed by the Update 7 by Samsung patched for Kernel and Recovery ,
There is some poping up posts about the Galaxy S3 freezing with lockups,Lockscreen not responding that requires pulling out battery
and ending up with unsual rebooting and bootlooping which is a very awkward and annoying issue, especially the Q&A section which contains
a lot of angry S3 users reporting this problem ; Ex
Galaxy S 3 keeps freezing every 5 mins (50+ freezes a day)
Galaxy S3 keeps freezing
Well i decided to make this thread in the benefit of spotting the problem and to make sure we have accurate causes and eventually elaborate a solution to this disturbing problem.
Share your experiences down by posting the ROM, the Kernel, the Recovery and the Bootloader that you are on right now, so we can filter the answers and relate them with the freezing problems on The Galaxy S3.
Reported Issue Reasons :
1) - Facebook app for Android.
2) - Google Chrome Browser.
3) - Some Samsung Based Android 4.1.2 builds/Roms causing freezing.
4) - In Some cases, Media Scanner causing lockups.
5) - In Some cases, Swiftkey Flow Bêta causing freezing.
Possible Direct Reason :
Originally Posted by : Rob2222
The freezes are caused by the sudden death fix. On that kind of freezes the phone unfreeze itself after 5-25 minutes.
The phone freezes when writing data to an affected eMMC block.
An eMMC block is affected, when it's internal block pararameters (as f.e. write count for that block) are in such a state, that these parameters trigger a corrupted block without SD-fix (4.1.1) or trigger a freeze with SD-fix (4.1.2).
When a phone is hitting an affected block with a writiing operation is completely unpredictable.
So these freezes can occur on almost each situation on the smartphone when it writes data.
But you have indeed a higher chance to trigger a freeze when writing much data.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Possible Current Solution :
I. If the phone freezes, wait until it unfreezes itself. I think this is the important part.
II. The DFG "Dummy File Generator" is only used to trigger the freezes.
III. I think you could also just wait for the freezes to be triggered by all-day-use, but this would be very impractical to wait 20 minutes to
unfreeze when you need the phone.
IV. So we write dummy data with DFG to provoke the freezes.
Highly Recommended Advice :
The write access to an affected block without Sudden Death fix seems to damage the data on this block which _can_ lead to a sudden death.
Because of that I would recommend to stay with KERNELS that have the Sudden death fix included, even if it could cause freezes.
Reported Most Stable " Freeze Free " Build/Rom :
XXEMB1 and all Custom Roms based on this build.
Dummy File Generator :
Alternate Working Solution :
LagFix (fstrim) Premium
Rob's Dummy File Generator Method to solve persistant freezes on the Galaxy S3 :
Rob's DFG Method , Please take a moment to thank him for his contribution to solving this problem.
Let me repeat it again:
Whoever has problems with freezes, please try this at least and give positive or negative feedback here. We have good experience with this method to sightly reduce and/or completely eleminate the freezes.
No, this means that the problems occur when writing the eMMC, not reading.
Try to wait for the phone to unfreeze (5-25 minutes) it seems that it helps and the freezes get less.
If you have that kind of freezes, that are caused by the SD-Fix your phone will unfreeze after that time without reboot.
To provoke the freezes you can also empty your internal storage as much as possible and then use the dummy file generator (generate all) to fill the internal memory 1-2 times.
After each run you can simply delete the dummy files with the delete button.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/d...nomunomu.dummy
Free up 8GB or more to have enough free space on internal memory.
If you have 8 GB free internal space, write 2 times dummy files. 2x8GB are 16GB. The internal wear leveling algorithm spreads these writes over the whole 16GB physical chip area.
There is a good chance that writing EACH sector on the eMMC resets/averages out the internal block data (f.e. write counters) that trigger the Bug and the Fix (Freeze).
If the phone freezes while writing the dummy data (it propably will), just let the phone do what it wants. It will continue to work after 2-25 minutes for each freeze.
This unfreeze after 5-25 minutes seems to have a positive effect.
You can have more than one freeze while doing this. Just let the phone do what it wants. If the dummy file generator crashs cause of a freeze, just restart the App.
When your finally able to write a amount of 16GB data (2x8GB dummy files) in subsequent runs without freezes you have a good chance that your freezes are gone for now or maybe even forever.
You need to write a minimum amount of 16GB data (or more) with this procedure! If you write less data, you didn't even need to thest this DFG method.
The idea behind it:
The SD-Fix causes freezes when writing eMMC blocks in a specific eMMC block parameter state. There parameters are for example the block write counter. Just some few blocks are affected, but when they get written, the SD-Fix freezes the eMMC. Now it seems to have a positive ("healing") effect to wait for the eMMC to unfreeze itself, which happens after 5-25 minutes. For all day use this is not very practicable. So we write just some dummy data to the eMMC to trigger the freezes when we do have the time to wait for the unfreeze. Thats all.
-- From the forums I monitor I get 80-90% positive feedback that the S3 gets again long-time-stable (usable) with this DFG-method.
I got from 10-15 freezes/day to only 1 single freeze in the last 2 weeks without factory reset.
-- Some people needed to write 60-80GB of data until the phone became stable.
In the hardest case (only 1 case) I know, someone wrote about 1TB (1000GB) of data and then the phone became finally stable. He didn't got warranty so DFG was his last resort and after that it finally got stable.
In most cases 20-60GB written data should be enough to get back the phone on a stable state.
If youre familiar with odin, you can also flash XXEMB5 or newer firmware, cause it seems this includes a new, better SD-Fix that doesn't casue freezes anymore. DFG is not needed in this case.
PIT File :
nhariamine said:
Now that the Galaxy S3 Sudden Death Syndrome has supposedly been fixed by the latest update 7 by Samsung patch for Kernel and
Recovery ,There is some poping up posts about the Galaxy S3 freezing and ending up with unsual rebooting and bootlooping which is a
very awkward and weird and annoying issue, especially the Q&A section which contains a lot of angry S3 users reporting this problem.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's a shame that this post has been mostly ignored in favour of the "SDS" one, but I do actually believe both issues are related. My I9300 is running stock - always has been - and suffered with "proper" SDS last November.
The initial symptoms were that my previously perfectly-behaved phone would would randomly FC apps that didn't before, and some of my photographs and video taken on the phone suddenly became corrupted and unusable.
Finally, one Saturday morning, I woke up to find the phone stuck in a boot loop, going from the "Samsung Galaxy S3" black-and-white boot scree to the first blue sweep of the Samsung logo, then reboot. It would power-off and power-on and I could enter ODIN or recovery modes fine, but it wouldn't boot any further.
I managed to get my photos and stuff off the phone through USB in recovery, and decided to wipe and flash the same stock ROM via ODIN.
This process failed - it couldn't partition the device correctly. None of the flash counters were reading anything so I popped it into my local Vodafone shop where they said it just needed the firmware popping back on and they'd have it ready in an hour.
I went back and they said they hadn't been able to load the software and it would have to go off for repair. *sigh*
It came back about 5 days later with a repair report stating that they'd replaced the "main board" - presumably because of the eMMC lockup bug.
It was only after this that the whole "Sudden Death" news came about and I realised what had happened to my phone. The eMMC check app says that my new controller is the same "faulty" version so I've been waiting with baited breath for "safe" official firmware.
The update system threw XXELL5 my way just before Christmas, and I thought that was that, but a coule of weeks ago the phone started hiccuping again. I knew I'd seen this before and my heart sank.
Last week another update was available, this time XXELLA. Since then, all hell has broken loose on my phone. It is locking up about 5 times a day. Initially, I was rebooting it manually (by holding in the power button). Tuesday morning I was woken by my wife saying "shouldn't you be up by now?" - glanced at my phone and it was frozen on the black-and-white boot logo - no alarm! Arrggh! It's dead!
Powered off, back on again and it booted fine. Hmmm, this isn't quite the same as before then. Having seen the advice about leaving it when it's locked, I've been doing that religiously and, so far, it's always woken up again by itself, but it's definitely indicative of a fault somewhere.
I've tried to check what's happening with adb logcat (I'm not rooted - fully stock - so can't see dmesg) and there is always some sort of I/O error when the freeze happens - often an sqlite database. Then, a couple of days ago, three photos and one video suddenly became corrupted.
I've realised that there are two issues, and only one of them has been "fixed".
The main problem, I believe, is that the flash memory is dying quite rapidly. We all know that flash memory has a limited write life, and wear levelling is supposed to extend that life beyond the typical lifespan of a device (say 5 years for a PC SSD drive?). For some reason, the flash in these devices is wearing out MUCH more rapidly.
The "faulty" eMMC controller obviously had a problem when dealing with faulty flash cells and would get stuck in a permanent loop, bricking the device. As far as I'm aware, the "fix" that has been applied prevents this permanent loop. The system still needs to try and handle disk errors with the flash memory, but it's not a permanent freeze any more and eventually (once it's finished dealing with flash faults - often unable to recover the problem) the system will break out of the freeze and carry on as before.
Sometimes this means that an app has bombed out as it couldn't read it's data correctly, but most people would either have forcibly rebooted their phone, or not notice as that app would just restart next time they used it. Sometimes, however, it means that something more important has crashed due to the disk I/O problem, resulting in the phone needing to spontaneously reboot itself.
What this boils down to is - yes, I believe that there has been a fix applied for the "faulty" eMMC controller getting stuck in a permanent, irretrievable loop. But no, I don't believe the actual original problem has been addressed - namely that the flash memory is dying at an unacceptably fast rate for ... well ... who knows what reason.
I do have a theory on that too. Recently a friend of mine was looking to change his laptop hard drive for an SSD. I investigated for him and decided that the Samsung 830 series would be his best bet, if he could get hold of them. And why not the newer 840 series? Well - that's purely because the "consumer" version of the 840 uses Samsung's latest triple level cell flash memory. Newer, faster, cheaper to manufacture almost certainly but ... more importantly in this case ... less resilient. How does 1000 write cycles grab you? They claim that the wear levelling algorithm in the drives mean that their lifetime is still pretty reasonable, but I'm not convinced in the real world.
Any idea what flash they use in the S3? I have no idea, but I betcha it's something (a) cheap and (b) new(ish).
I'm now at a bit of an impasse with my phone, however. When I returned it for repair last year it was properly frozen. No-one could do anything to fix it, the flash wouldn't format or write firmware - the only recourse was replacing internal hardware (or the entire phone).
This time, however, it works ... sort of. I'm occasionally losing photos I've taken and occasionally finding it's locked up and occasionally having to wait for it to recover. No repair centre has the time to "live with" my phone for half a day, waiting to see what happens with it - and even if they did, they'd blame a rogue app or "something left over from the upgrade" - they'll just factory wipe it, maybe flash the firmware and send it back again "repaired".
It's tempting to "lose" it and pay my insurance excess ... but even then, I won't know when the problem will strike again - but that's the thing ... I'm certain it would be back.
I used to love this phone. Now I can't rely on it. I can't rely on it storing the photos I take with it. I can't rely on it ringing when someone calls. I can't rely on texts getting through to me on time. I can't even rely on it waking me up in the morning.
It's sat next to me now,lying on the desk with the screen all shiny and black. I have no idea if it's fine, or frozen. Is someone calling me right this second? I have no idea. Oh, there we go - pressed the lock buton - it's awake. I shouldn't have to check my phone every ten minutes to see if it's working or not.
*sigh* sorry - rant over.
Suffice to say, that's my take on it. If I thought it would help diagnose something "fixable", I'd root and see what dmesg is doing, but I'm convinced this is hardware and I'm also certain that Samsung aren't going to take the blindest bit of notice.
I'm pretty sure there will be more and more people complaining that their phones are misbehaving over the next few months, but it's vague enough of a problem that the "repair" will be wiping - just long enough to take them over the first year warranty...
QorbeQ said:
It's a shame that this post has been mostly ignored in favour of the "SDS" one, but I do actually believe both issues are related. My I9300 is running stock - always has been - and suffered with "proper" SDS last November.
The initial symptoms were that my previously perfectly-behaved phone would would randomly FC apps that didn't before, and some of my photographs and video taken on the phone suddenly became corrupted and unusable.
Finally, one Saturday morning, I woke up to find the phone stuck in a boot loop, going from the "Samsung Galaxy S3" black-and-white boot scree to the first blue sweep of the Samsung logo, then reboot. It would power-off and power-on and I could enter ODIN or recovery modes fine, but it wouldn't boot any further.
I managed to get my photos and stuff off the phone through USB in recovery, and decided to wipe and flash the same stock ROM via ODIN.
This process failed - it couldn't partition the device correctly. None of the flash counters were reading anything so I popped it into my local Vodafone shop where they said it just needed the firmware popping back on and they'd have it ready in an hour.
I went back and they said they hadn't been able to load the software and it would have to go off for repair. *sigh*
It came back about 5 days later with a repair report stating that they'd replaced the "main board" - presumably because of the eMMC lockup bug.
It was only after this that the whole "Sudden Death" news came about and I realised what had happened to my phone. The eMMC check app says that my new controller is the same "faulty" version so I've been waiting with baited breath for "safe" official firmware.
The update system threw XXELL5 my way just before Christmas, and I thought that was that, but a coule of weeks ago the phone started hiccuping again. I knew I'd seen this before and my heart sank.
Last week another update was available, this time XXELLA. Since then, all hell has broken loose on my phone. It is locking up about 5 times a day. Initially, I was rebooting it manually (by holding in the power button). Tuesday morning I was woken by my wife saying "shouldn't you be up by now?" - glanced at my phone and it was frozen on the black-and-white boot logo - no alarm! Arrggh! It's dead!
Powered off, back on again and it booted fine. Hmmm, this isn't quite the same as before then. Having seen the advice about leaving it when it's locked, I've been doing that religiously and, so far, it's always woken up again by itself, but it's definitely indicative of a fault somewhere.
I've tried to check what's happening with adb logcat (I'm not rooted - fully stock - so can't see dmesg) and there is always some sort of I/O error when the freeze happens - often an sqlite database. Then, a couple of days ago, three photos and one video suddenly became corrupted.
I've realised that there are two issues, and only one of them has been "fixed".
The main problem, I believe, is that the flash memory is dying quite rapidly. We all know that flash memory has a limited write life, and wear levelling is supposed to extend that life beyond the typical lifespan of a device (say 5 years for a PC SSD drive?). For some reason, the flash in these devices is wearing out MUCH more rapidly.
The "faulty" eMMC controller obviously had a problem when dealing with faulty flash cells and would get stuck in a permanent loop, bricking the device. As far as I'm aware, the "fix" that has been applied prevents this permanent loop. The system still needs to try and handle disk errors with the flash memory, but it's not a permanent freeze any more and eventually (once it's finished dealing with flash faults - often unable to recover the problem) the system will break out of the freeze and carry on as before.
Sometimes this means that an app has bombed out as it couldn't read it's data correctly, but most people would either have forcibly rebooted their phone, or not notice as that app would just restart next time they used it. Sometimes, however, it means that something more important has crashed due to the disk I/O problem, resulting in the phone needing to spontaneously reboot itself.
What this boils down to is - yes, I believe that there has been a fix applied for the "faulty" eMMC controller getting stuck in a permanent, irretrievable loop. But no, I don't believe the actual original problem has been addressed - namely that the flash memory is dying at an unacceptably fast rate for ... well ... who knows what reason.
I do have a theory on that too. Recently a friend of mine was looking to change his laptop hard drive for an SSD. I investigated for him and decided that the Samsung 830 series would be his best bet, if he could get hold of them. And why not the newer 840 series? Well - that's purely because the "consumer" version of the 840 uses Samsung's latest triple level cell flash memory. Newer, faster, cheaper to manufacture almost certainly but ... more importantly in this case ... less resilient. How does 1000 write cycles grab you? They claim that the wear levelling algorithm in the drives mean that their lifetime is still pretty reasonable, but I'm not convinced in the real world.
Any idea what flash they use in the S3? I have no idea, but I betcha it's something (a) cheap and (b) new(ish).
I'm now at a bit of an impasse with my phone, however. When I returned it for repair last year it was properly frozen. No-one could do anything to fix it, the flash wouldn't format or write firmware - the only recourse was replacing internal hardware (or the entire phone).
This time, however, it works ... sort of. I'm occasionally losing photos I've taken and occasionally finding it's locked up and occasionally having to wait for it to recover. No repair centre has the time to "live with" my phone for half a day, waiting to see what happens with it - and even if they did, they'd blame a rogue app or "something left over from the upgrade" - they'll just factory wipe it, maybe flash the firmware and send it back again "repaired".
It's tempting to "lose" it and pay my insurance excess ... but even then, I won't know when the problem will strike again - but that's the thing ... I'm certain it would be back.
I used to love this phone. Now I can't rely on it. I can't rely on it storing the photos I take with it. I can't rely on it ringing when someone calls. I can't rely on texts getting through to me on time. I can't even rely on it waking me up in the morning.
It's sat next to me now,lying on the desk with the screen all shiny and black. I have no idea if it's fine, or frozen. Is someone calling me right this second? I have no idea. Oh, there we go - pressed the lock buton - it's awake. I shouldn't have to check my phone every ten minutes to see if it's working or not.
*sigh* sorry - rant over.
Suffice to say, that's my take on it. If I thought it would help diagnose something "fixable", I'd root and see what dmesg is doing, but I'm convinced this is hardware and I'm also certain that Samsung aren't going to take the blindest bit of notice.
I'm pretty sure there will be more and more people complaining that their phones are misbehaving over the next few months, but it's vague enough of a problem that the "repair" will be wiping - just long enough to take them over the first year warranty...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm really sorry for the issues you've been living with mate, sure thing is that what you said about memory lockups and blocking writing
firmware is totally true except mine doesn't freeze which is strange, mine is the affected model and is shown in eMMC brick bug check ;
-VTU00M
-06/2012
-Yes, Insane Chip.
The poll i made is permanant, but you have to post down Rom and kernel and recovery and bootloader to be more accurate to spot the problem and maybe some DEV can fix it as soon as possible.
Thanks for sharing ur experience with us mate.
I am totally stock jellybean not rooted etc. Was having bad problems with phone freezing and lagging so started uninstalling things to try and fix. I found the problem was chrome, I had chrome, chrome to phone and chrome beta on took them all off now running silky smooth again.
Sent from my GT-I9300T using Tapatalk 2
kiwiflasher said:
I am totally stock jellybean not rooted etc. Was having bad problems with phone freezing and lagging so started uninstalling things to try and fix. I found the problem was chrome, I had chrome, chrome to phone and chrome beta on took them all off now running silky smooth again.
Sent from my GT-I9300T using Tapatalk 2
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
First ever user to report Chrome as one source of the problem, thanks mate, if any other symptoms occur and have anything to do with freezing, let us know ok !
I made a similar thread here:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2127443
TL;DR?
Phone started to freeze too much,every 5-10 mins.
Unrooted went to total stock after a megawipe.
Phone died after 2 days.
GOt 16 GB motherboard replaced with 32 gb.
I dont get it, you have a 2 year warranty. If it happens, and im sure the vast majority wont have any issues, take it for warranty.
Sent from my GT-I9300 using xda app-developers app
---------- Post added at 06:50 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:49 PM ----------
eggman89 said:
I made a similar thread here:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2127443
TL;DR?
Phone started to freeze too much,every 5-10 mins.
Unrooted went to total stock after a megawipe.
Phone died after 2 days.
GOt 16 GB motherboard replaced with 32 gb.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This though seems vere interesting. Ive read that a few mention their board got replaced by a 32gb. Which prolly doesnt have the bug. So im guessing samsung is very aware of this bug.
Sent from my GT-I9300 using xda app-developers app
This though seems vere interesting. Ive read that a few mention their board got replaced by a 32gb. Which prolly doesnt have the bug. So im guessing samsung is very aware of this bug.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I suppose that freezing problem is occured when a device is severly damaged even when on safe kernel and recovery, as much as i hate to admit it i think freezing S3 is the last symptom before SDS. Let's hope it's not.
nhariamine said:
I suppose that freezing problem is occured when a device is severly damaged even when on safe kernel and recovery, as much as i hate to admit it i think freezing S3 is the last symptom before SDS. Let's hope it's not.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I got 16gb Motherboard replaced with 32gb.
So it may not be as bad as it seems :cyclops:
nhariamine said:
I suppose that freezing problem is occured when a device is severly damaged even when on safe kernel and recovery, as much as i hate to admit it i think freezing S3 is the last symptom before SDS. Let's hope it's not.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't know if this is true in every case (freezing S3 is the last symptom before SDS) since I have 4 or 5 freezes on 2 consecutive days about 2 months ago. After that the phone runs normally, not a single freeze since then. And another thing my SGS is the 32 Gb model which is supposed to be safe from SDS (it has a different version of eMMC)
thank goodness for this thread.
this phone has been killing itself up to 3 times in 10 minutes. i really dont know what the hell is going on with this.
i will try uninstalling chrome and see if it helps..
my phone is bone stock running 4.1.2 with the latest firmware updated just today.
data connection is maybe the problem
Hey guys,
i have these freezes too since i updated to 4.1.2.
but in my case it's only when i have mobile data connection or w-lan connection turned on. If i turn off any data connection, it works the whole day without freezing!
It's for two weeks now and today i decided to install CyanogenMod 10.1 to try if this solves my problem.
I'm about to synchronisize my apps (does it automatically when entering google account and choosing "restoren from my account") and the first freeze occured (W-Lan on). But this time the light of the touch keys is full functional. When i touch the screen, the background light of the touch keys turns on. But power button, volume up/down and the touchscreen are frozen.
What I've done:
- rooted and installed CWM
- Cleared Dalvik cache
- wiped all other cache partition and stuff
- installed CyanogenMod 10.1 nightly build 20130208
- factory reset and so on like described in the manuals for installing CFs
Original data of my phone before installing CyanogenMod:
Galaxy S3
AP: I9300XXELL4
CP: I9300XXELL4
CSC: I9300DBTELL1
Android Version:
4.1.2
Kernel-Version:
3.0.31-566833
[email protected]#1
No Branding.
So it is a bit confusing that this only happens with data connection turned on.
I've also read some threads with analytics of the update code and the SD fix so i am well informed now and think it's because of the eMMC bug where it tries to repair the corrupted sectors and freezes while doing this (cause after ~20 minutes everything is fine like nothing happened).
Has anyone an idea or a solution now besides sending it to the local dealer and change it for warranty reasons?
Thanks,
Dark Smile
Odp: **Ultimate Galaxy S3 Unusual Freezing Thread**
It happened to me once, about 2 weeks ago, just after the release of the new firmware LM2. So I have flashed back with PC Odin to the previous LLA but the problem persisted. The phone was freezing after about 5 minutes of use. Forced reboot was needed.
So then I flashed some older 3 files-low level firmware (can't remember what one) in PC Odin nd then back to LM2 again, and everything is alright since then.
Strange...
Wysyłane z mojego Nexus 7 za pomocą Tapatalk 2
After 2 Freezes it's running stable for the moment... i'll watch it over the weekend and give feedback.
Mine is freezing lots now.
First time it went to o2 repair (UK) they claimed they had fixed it, pretty sure they just did a factory reset (which I had done already 3 times). So when I collected it, it froze within 2 minutes.
I'm tracking this repair publicly at http://myo2repair.wordpress.com so you can check out how this sort of thing pans out.
Problem is it can be intermittent, so you could get a couple of hours without a freeze. So it's gone back to repair and they say no fault found. So a bit stuck now.
It will definitely happen again when it's returned. They say after 3 attempts they will give me a refurb device. Samsung themselves give you a brand new sealed device as a replacement. Recommend going through Samsung if in same predicament.
Yes mine also got replaced by a 32 gb one from samsung india today
Sent from my GT-I9300 using xda app-developers app
good news.
after updating today (and uninstalling google chrome) my SGS3 is no longer freezing itself every few minutes!
will report if it starts doing it again. If you dont see me post, assume all is good now.
freeze after 4.1.2
I've had constant freezes when I upgraded to 4.1.2. I tried many versions. all the same.
I rolled back to 4.1.1 and the phone is freeze free for one week now.
Mine started to behave strangely and then started to freeze constantly. Didn't happen after an upgrade, just started happening out of the blue.
So I wiped it completely and flashed it with the latest wanamlite rom (I was on a rooted stock rom before).
Now it only freezes once every few days (still it NEVER used to freeze before, ever).
I think it might have some connection to the facebook app. I've noticed it only freezes shortly after I have been using the facebook app.
SiggiJarl said:
Mine started to behave strangely and then started to freeze constantly. Didn't happen after an upgrade, just started happening out of the blue.
So I wiped it completely and flashed it with the latest wanamlite rom (I was on a rooted stock rom before).
Now it only freezes once every few days (still it NEVER used to freeze before, ever).
I think it might have some connection to the facebook app. I've noticed it only freezes shortly after I have been using the facebook app.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So far, users are reporting Chrome and Facebook as one of the sources of the freezing in Galaxy s3.More to come, Share ur experiences down
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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