Database Users

Haunted Device?

Hello,
Up until recently my nice new XDA Exec has been great. However, since yesterday it seems to have grown a mind of it's own which has me worried.
It's fine, and then all of a sudden, it goes very strange. The backlight starts to get really bright, then really dim randomly by itself. Then, applications start going odd. For example, the wisbar skinned startbars background disappears, and bits and peices in applications start to stop showing up. This is then followed by the device forgetting what is trusted and what is not. Trying to launch any program or utility results in a '<x> is untrusted, would you like to run' box coming up, even if it's Word, file manager or the most basic settings panels. Pressing yes allows the application to run, but it's very odd.
The first time this happened, I got a message saying there was insufficient power to support 'SD' (sd card?) even though it was on external power and there was no SD card in the device???
A few minutes after, the device freezes, leaving nothing but a soft reset as an option. After doing so, it all goes back to normal and runs fine. I'm yet to find any cause to this and would appreciate any ideas, it seems quite odd to me. It happens when both on battery and external power, so I can rule that out.
Any ideas? This is a relatively new device, pretty clean ROM with a few applications and the TrueVGA modification - however, it ran fine with all of these for a week or so, so I'm at a loss.
Thanks for your time, I would appreciate any ideas or thoughts

Just do a hard reset, all the problems will probably go away.

The solution is obvious. You need to call someone. But who you gonna call?
GHOSTBUSTERS

GaZ said:
The solution is obvious. You need to call someone. But who you gonna call
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Damn - beat me to it

Soft reset X10?

Does anyone know how to perform a soft reset on the X10 without losing any data and not having to take out the battery? Thanks in advance.

What exactly are you trying to do? I'm not sure I follow. Is it something that just turning the phone off then on again would solve? To me that would be a "soft reset".

I did soft resset, but you will loose data. You dont need to open the battery though. Sync you contacts with google and save your txt and other docs at your SD then soft reset.

not sure if you can soft reset this phone. it has a factory reset but you will lose your data, all data on the phone.
i sync through sony ericsson and just synced again to get my contacts back.

These reset phrases are used rather incorrectly and confusing I've noticed. To my understanding, these are what they mean:
Soft Reset: Restarting from a function within the operating system, ie. clicking on a Reset icon or using the power button to invoke the shutdown command.
Hard Reset: Forcefully restarting the phone by removing the battery, putting in back in, and switching the phone on again. eg. the phone froze and can't Soft Reset it.
Factory Reset: Just what it says, resetting the phone, losing all data to revert back to factory conditions. Don't even need to take the battery out then in again.
So I don't get what the OP is trying to do.... unless OP wants to Factory Reset it without losing data? Which is not possible. And what's with removing the battery? What does that do you good?

From what I understand, Hard Reset IS a factory reset. Soft reset is when you restart within the OS. Turning it off and turning it back on is basically soft reset.

ShadowFlare said:
So I don't get what the OP is trying to do.... unless OP wants to Factory Reset it without losing data? Which is not possible. And what's with removing the battery? What does that do you good?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Figured I'd insert the necessary icons in the appropriate places.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Sorry guys, I am coming from a Windows Mobile phone and I had to soft reset the phone few times a day to make it run faster. I was thinking if the X10 gets sluggish, I need to do the same but it doesn't sound like I do?

When you said without losing data and taking the battery out kinda confused us as to why would you lose data or needing to take the battery out just to Soft Reset it.
I was an X1 user, so Windows Mobile... so I know what you mean... needing to restart the phone when it's starting o slow down. So far my experience with X10, it's not like that. The longest I have been without restarting the X10 was 3.5 days, not because it's started to get sluggish, becuase it ran out of juice!
So far, I've never noticed any sluggishness if you don't restart the X10, bless the Android! Apart from the weird battery drain behaviour, I love my X10!

Immediately after restarting the phone, Task Manager says that the available memory is around 107 MB. (That is after killing all the unnecessary apps that are started at startup.)
After half a day, same apps running, I only have 77 MB.
After a couple of days without restart, I have seen numbers around 50 MB.
I haven't tested this thoroughly, but I feel that the phone responds faster after a restart. (Less lag in timescape, phonebook, etc.)
What is this memory leak, and does it seem right that a restart could improve performance?

There is no memory leak.
When you start an app, the app is loaded in memory.
When you exit the app with back button, the app will be kept in memory but in a suspended state (not using the CPU).
Of course, your RAM goes down but this is not a problem because Android is such a smart boy and will keep track of which apps are used often wnd which aren't so, when a new app will need RAM the less used is "unloaded" to make space for the new one.
Using task killers to kill apps and make RAM is bad.
Why?
1. Free memory is wasted memory
2. Starting an app every time is used will just drain more battery.
3. If is already in memory it will just change the state from suspended to running and will be there, running, in a second instead in 3 seconds or what ever is the load time for that app.
It makes you feel better when you see 200Mb free?
Use a task killer, set it to kill all the apps when the screen goes blank and after complain about the phone being laggy and the battery draining too fast.

It's not a memory leak.. it's the way the OS manages the memory.. it will leave stuff in memory in case you need to use it again, therefore being quicker.. using task killers, for example will actually slow the phone down a little, because it will have to load apps back into memory when you want to re-use them.. if it runs out of RAM then it will clear something from memory that isn't being used..
@TUX - Hahaha.. didn't see your reply til i'd typed mine out!!... SNAP!

Thanks for your replies. But I'm not sure I understand completely...
I sometimes kill apps that I won't be using for a long time. I check my e-mails in the morning, then I won't be using wifi for 12 hours, so I don't need the e-mail and browser apps during that period = I kill them. Is that unnecessary? Don't they use any of the battery at all? My first concern is battery capacity.
Also, my (poor?) understanding was that the phone uses some of the free memory when it starts new processes (for example, loading a contact's page). My second concern is to have timescape, contact management, etc running more smoothly.
At the moment, I only have ~30 MB available memory. My phone now uses ~3 seconds to start new apps. (No, not the ones I closed earlier today. ) 6 seconds for timescape (which was already running). Is that because it takes time to free up memory in order to run the new stuff?
When I shut down most of the apps (~100 MB free memory), it only takes 1-2 seconds to start new apps, including timescape (which was still running - not killed).
BTW, there seems to be a limit around 30 MB - even though I keep starting new apps, it does not drop below 30.
Final q... Does the phone store other stuff than apps in the memory? Perhaps hidden system processes? Running exactly the same list of apps (looking at task manager), I get very different amounts of free memory.

ShadowFlare said:
These reset phrases are used rather incorrectly and confusing I've noticed. To my understanding, these are what they mean:
Soft Reset: Restarting from a function within the operating system, ie. clicking on a Reset icon or using the power button to invoke the shutdown command.
Hard Reset: Forcefully restarting the phone by removing the battery, putting in back in, and switching the phone on again. eg. the phone froze and can't Soft Reset it.
Factory Reset: Just what it says, resetting the phone, losing all data to revert back to factory conditions. Don't even need to take the battery out then in again.
So I don't get what the OP is trying to do.... unless OP wants to Factory Reset it without losing data? Which is not possible. And what's with removing the battery? What does that do you good?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Firstly: http://www.sonyericsson.com/cws/support/phones/detailed/toperformasoftreset?cc=ie&cws4=true&lc=en
vince2398 said:
Does anyone know how to perform a soft reset on the X10 without losing any data and not having to take out the battery? Thanks in advance.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Secondly: http://www.sonyericsson.com/cws/sup...ormasoftreset/xperiax10?cc=ie&cws4=true&lc=en

Phone keeps rebooting on Auto-Update Time/Date

If I boot my phone up, go to the home screen, my phone will get the little soft popup s aying "Auto Update of Time/Date" and then everything pauses, and the phone "soft" reboots itself. Meaning it doesnt do a full reboot, but it comes back searching for a network, performing the media scan, etc.
I did a factory reset to get rid of this, and now it's back again. It's MAD annoying. Anyone else having this issue?

Yep I noticed the same thing with mine. I thought it was normal but I'm beginning to think otherwise. I'm getting some connecting to dm server thing as well.

Sucks, the phone's awesome but if it keeps doing this then it won't even matter.
One thing I noticed is if I let the phone sit, and load up it's usually okay. If I try to go into the phone settings while it's booting up, thats when I'll see the auto update note and bam, restart. It'll keep doing this until I either leave it alone or pull the battery.
Good to hear it's not something im doing.

deng this just started happening to me like 5 minutes ago
its getting a bit of annoyed
my phone was rooted and then i unrooted it and it still has the same problem

Do you folks have any Task-kill app running in the background?
I had the same issue as well when I had a Task Killer app running in the background. It seems the app is killing some service that is causing soft reset. I turned off the auto mode last week and this hasn't happened since then.
Hope this helps..

fix
if u download any gameloft games thats your problem my phone was doing that then i took the games from gameloft off and now it works great hope that helps

Certain apps can cause it, I also had a gameloft game cause it. If you need to get access to uninstall apps the phone should boot fine without a sim in it.
Sent from my SGH-T959

I am having the same problem, The phone keeps doing a soft reset. I noticed this happening after I tried to download a song from an app I installed on my phone. I deleted the app, and the problem still exists, it is REALLY ANNOYING

[Q] Galaxy Tab: Strange Stability Issue [Random Crashes]

I've had my Galaxy Tab (Verizon edition) now for under a week. Naturally, that means I've been installing apps on it every day.
Last night an issue cropped up that turns out to be a deeper problem than I thought.
To start, I'd randomly see a force close for the built-in Google Maps app. Force closes aren't necessarily unusual, but this was force closing every 10 seconds or so. And it wasn't running. No sign of it in any of the task manager or application manager or running services areas. Yet, it was crashing.
(Don't worry, the fun doesn't end there.)
So, I suspected the last couple of apps I installed and uninstalled them (more on this later). The problem didn't go away. Around this time, other apps started crashing randomly -- often without a force close (much more like how iOS apps crash -- a return to the home screen).
The crashing always coincides with a single short vibrate then a triple-vibrate about 5 seconds later when the app closes or the force close dialog comes up. This happens in nearly any app -- from the home screen (less common) to the Browser, maps, settings, gmail, 3rd party apps, etc.
But wait, there's more...
I wasn't observant enough the first time to notice that the suspected apps were never uninstalled. Now no app will actually install. When I perform the uninstall, everything seems fine. Until I reboot. Then the app is back, fully functional.
None of the apps are installed to the SD card. The device is not rooted. The device claims just over a gigabyte of internal memory free, and slightly under half the SD card free.
Anyone see any of this behavior? I'm hoping to avoid doing a factory reset -- while also unsure that it would even do anything if something else is wrong. And the two issues (crashing and uninstalls-not-sticky) aren't necessarily related.
This isn't my first Android device, either... I haven't seen this or anything like it on the G1, N1, Droid, Evo, Archos, or any other device, for that matter.
Thoughts? Ideas? Musings? Questions?
[Update: Device was replaced. If it wasn't a hardware problem, it was still good enough to prompt the retailer to replace it. They easily accepted, "The factory reset doesn't work." as a reason.)

Sounds to me like there is something wrong with the internal memory chip. I would return the device within the DOA warranty if I were you.

Seems that it probably is a hardware issue.
I tried a factory reset (which appears to be a very convenient way to boot in to recovery mode, BTW) and it was only able to delete a portion of data. All of the apps are still there, all the data, etc. (The SD card aside, the factory wipe doesn't touch that.)
So, back it goes for exchange!

I just started having the same problem today and I have not installed any new apps although I did update date my existing apps a few days ago. My phone is rooted but by your discription that's not the cause.
I did reset my phone and I formated my SD memory. I also use a code that I found to reset the phone to factory and reset everything. Non of this has solved the problem.
I'm still trying and I'll let you know it I have any positive results.
I'm on a Galaxy S Vibrant with 2.2 Firmware, Froyo and a 2.6.32.9 kernel

Safe Mode!

I'm starting to think I might have something wrong with my Note. From time to time I'll turn on the screen and go to do something, but it'll freeze, then go black and make the chimes sound it does when booting up. At first I thought touchwiz was restarting since it doesn't always make the chime sound, but now I'm pretty sure it's doing a full reboot.
Yesterday I got the freakout reboot, but this time it booted up into Safe Mode! I didn't even know there was such a thing on Android, but see the attached screenshot. It clearly says Safe Mode in the bottom left corner, and it deleted several widgets from my home screens, and in my app drawer it removed most of the apps from the folders I'd created, but left the folders.
Rebooting took the device out of safe mode, but didn't fix my foldered icons or home screen widgets. Pretty annoying.
Anyone else had any Safe Mode experiences? Any idea what might cause a spontaneous reboot into it?

Since you have AT & T in your profile, could it be that you're posting in the wrong thread?
If you have AT&T Galaxy Note I717, you should go here for assistance:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/forumdisplay.php?f=1494

Restart your phone. . My little boy managed to put my note into safe mode (dont ask me how cos i cant work it out how he did it) turning off the phone and restarting puts the phone back to normal
Sent from my GT-N7000 using xda premium

You enter safe mode buy touching the menu button while the phone boots. If you are not touching menu, then some ap/ software is causing this. Try a factory reset to see if that resolves the problem.

chasmodo said:
Since you have AT & T in your profile, could it be that you're posting in the wrong thread?
If you have AT&T Galaxy Note I717, you should go here for assistance:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/forumdisplay.php?f=1494
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No, I have the international Note. I did just buy an AT&T version, too, but haven't started using it.
I did reboot back into normal mode already. I was mainly wondering if booting into safe mode was responsible for removing all of my aftermarket widgets, non-stock app links in the bottom quicklaunch section, and taking everything out of the folders in my app drawer except for the stock apps. I guess I'll start removing apps and hopefully the problem will go away. The spontaneous reboot happens probably once every other day on average, but just to safe mode that once so far.

my phone used to go into reboot loops often and also very predictable. widgets would not load properly too.
The problem as per me is a buggy apps 2 sd move occurring in the phone (reproducible event every single time i recreate that situation).
Solution that i found the hard way after a lot of trial and error and a lot of frustration (needing to repeatedly reload all my apps) was to go into application manager and delete any apps that are present but blanked out without logos. They are always some apps that have been moved to sd card improperly by the phone.
Sometimes when you try to move many apps fast to sd card in sequence then the move isnt done properly and you get application manager showing the app size as 4kb or 8kb or 12kb etc when the actual app size is many times that or even several hundred kbs or mbs. you will need to uninstall all these apps and reinstal them slowly one by one instead of autoupdating market apps which just recereates the problem if the app has already been moved to sd card.
Also another reason not to auto audate apps that have been moved to sd card is that sometimes when you have many apps then this auto update feature when moving it to sd card does it improperly and previous properly installed app after the autoupdate will cause the device to crash because the sd move is buggy and when you go through application manager then the app size show is at variance with actual size and usually just shows 4kb 8kb or 12kb etc instead of usual size. You will then need to uninstal these apps and start all over again.
Since manually moving apps to sd one by one and removing autoupdate for these apps i havent had issues usually.
Once the phone even got stuck on data signal only and would not let wifi on and when ever switched on it would immediately disable it autoatically. couldnt solve this by rebooting or deleting apps or firmware update (not rooted) and had to do a factory reset to sort the problem.
This is not an issue with sd card as even brand new sd cards cause the same issue again. The problem does not occur if all apps are on internal memory or sd card is removed. so guess it is an issue with phone being unable to properly work when many apps are trying to access info on card that it cant access because of improper transfer to sd card. phone then freezes and goes into reboot loops sometimes for 8hours at a go! only sorts itself when the apps are deleted and works ok when same apps are reinstalled properly.
ps: wondering what the safe mode does though and when it is useful to start in this mode? any pointers anyone.

once i accidentally removed the battery while the phone was on. When i put the battery back and restarted it, it booted in safe mode.

Mine just went into Safe Mode. I had rebooted the phone and put it in my pocket whilst it was rebooting. I rebooted normally and got it out of Safe Mode. There is one very annoying thing and one quite good thing that has resulted from this though.
Annoying thing: Many widgets now need putting back onto the home screens
Good thing: All Apps in the App Drawer are now in alphabetical order !!!!

Use app zorter from the market or clear data of touchwiz. All downloaded apps will be sorted automatically.
Well I had safe mode once after unexpected reboot. Still wondering what the reason was.

I have random rebooting issues with my Note as well. It hasn't always done this but it has been happening for the last few months and it'll generally happen once every couple of days. It does seem to be somehow related to moving apps around as mentioned in previous posts because I've had apps fail to move to SD a couple of times and it has rebooted once or twice whilst in the middle of trying to move an app to SD. It'll also sometimes reboot when auto-updating an app as I can hear the boot sound happening at times when I'm nowhere near the phone. I don't have any apps showing up with a dodgy icon at the moment but I have seen some stuff appear like that in the past and the only solution was to uninstall and reinstall the app; although that's only fixed the app in question, it's never solved the general rebooting issues. The phone will also sometimes lock up and reboot when trying to launch application (this seems to happen more often with newly installed apps at first launch, but that might just be a coincidence).
The only other odd thing I've noticed, which might well be completely unrelated, is that the shortcut for one particular app (the full version of "Where's My Water?") continually disappears from a folder of shortcuts on my main desktop screen. The app itself is usually still on the phone and will happily launch from the app drawer, but if I create a shortcut anywhere else it will always disappear again shortly afterwards and it's literally the only app this happens with. The only reason I mentioned this as possibly related is because the app has appeared with a bad icon once and had to be reinstalled again as if the phone had lost track of it on the SD card.
Anyway, I do get the feeling that the reboots are happening when the phone can't find something on SD storage, or when it can't get data on/off the card fast enough or whatever. God knows how you'd get to the bottom of this or solve it though; the ICS upgrade will probably force me to do a factory reset of my phone so I'm hoping the issue will just fix itself as part of that process otherwise I'll just need to put up with being annoyed at it.