Database Users

[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

Issue with Atrix/Simcard - need help

I posted this in the Atrix Development forum under Gingerblur since that's what's currently on it, but it may just be a general Android issue so I'm reposting it here as well just in case:
OK I had something weird happen to my gf's phone yesterday. I don't know if this is Gingerblur related, but that's what's on it so I'm putting it here.
AT&T Atrix w/ Gingerblur 4.0 (Just haven't got around to going to 4.5)
So I put Gingerblur on it 2-3 months ago and it's been working great for her. So yesterday I was with her and we were going to install this market app (I can't remember what it was), but she hit Install on the market app, it changed to the OK button, but when she clicked OK, the button just flashed and just sat there and did nothing. i found that odd. So I had her see if she could sideload an app (not the same one) -so I downloaded it to the phone and clicked it to install it. I accepted it and it just said "Installing...." forever. So I told her OK the phone got out of whack or something let's just reboot it.
So we reboot it, and she complains that a lot of her apps show the default android icon for them (instead of their respective icon pics) and she can't run them. From what we noticed, these were all the apps that were moved with app2sd. Also, nothing will install from the market - you can get there, but you get the same symptoms as above. You can click "Install" on the app but when you click "OK" it doesn't do anything.
Under Settings/Manage Applications it shows all her apps installed so the phone still thinks all the apps are there. So I tell her to pick an app that she doesn't really care about and Uninstall it. She said that works, but trying to install it through the Market fails.
So she's freaking out. I tell her to let me at least back up what I can off the phone. So I try plugging the phone into my computer with the USB. I can't get the phone to be seen at all by the computer. I put the USB into Mass Storage mode/Nothing/etc, and even turn off/on USB Debugging - I just can't get this thing to be seen. So now I'm starting to worry.
We have an external SD card in the phone so I was able to start copying what I could under Setting/Files over to the SDcard.
Now all I'm thinking about is getting this phone working again so I'm starting to read how to recover the phone back to stock using this thread:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=991072
So I'm able to get it into the recovery state. So as I'm downloading the SBF, I notice it says to remove the SIM card too. So I shut it down, and remove the SIM. I boot up the phone regularly and I notice everything is working now as it should (minus the phone since the SIM is out), but all apps are there and working correctly and the market works as it should.
So immediately I nab Titanium Backup from the market and start backing things up. I tell her to go through the list and start backing up what she thought was important. So I'm thinking this thing fixed itself, but when I put the SIM card back in, we're back to the broken state again.
So.. does anyone know what's going on here? It seems like the phone doesn't like her SIM card anymore, but she can still make calls with it aside from the rest of the phone issues with it in.
If we need to take this back to stock, I will - especially now that I was able to back things up with TB.

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.

Moto Z Force - Restart Loop

I'm having this issue on my 2 week old Moto Z Force.
I actually noticed a similar issue on a display model in Verizon but chalked it up to just that.. a display model in Verizon and I carried on with my purchase.
I've had a few experiences where it randomly reboots and then it's good to go again. Seems to happen more frequently when the phone is in high use, so I suspected an issue with RAM being full? The restart seems to take place at the same part of the startup animation every time.
TODAY - phone was in pocket while I was on a call for work and I felt it vibrate on a consistent interval. When off the phone, I looked at the phone and it is in a restart loop. The only thing I can do at this point is hold the Volume Down key to get into BIOs (through the rebooting loop) and then I have the following uptions:
1) Start
2) Restart Boot loader
3) Recovery Mode
4) Power Off
5) Factory Mode
6) Barcodes
7) BP Tools
8) QCOM
9) Bootloader Logs
If I sit in this menu inactive for awhile it will timeout and just shut the phone off until I turn it back on and then the loop resumes. I'm beginning to think I need to go with option 5 here... any help is appreciated...
No new apps were recently installed. I barely used my phone the morning when getting to work besides charging it to 90+/- % on my way in.
First I buy a hand grenade of a phone, forced to return, and now I buy a phone that is actually showing me a big issue (it is getting hot too). I'm going to let it sit off before trying a Factory Mode. :crying:
Video of the cycle here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/v7dc6erfydj87ib/Skys Phone.MOV?dl=0

Better ask in a Moto Z Force subforum.

SteveHG said:
Better ask in a Moto Z Force subforum.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks Steve. Any suggestion on where would be best? I would have thought the Q&A would be accurate...

I have had this phone for just over two month and have not had any similar issues. I assume that you've already tried options 1, 2, and and 4. Have you also gone into recovery to see if you can clear the cache?
I would personally return it as broken, but I save everything important to my SD, just in case this kind of thing happens.

I had this very same issue. I did a hardware replacement with Verizon and the new phone works great.

broprah said:
I had this very same issue. I did a hardware replacement with Verizon and the new phone works great.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Awesome! Glad to hear that it worked out for you. Fingers crossed they don't give me a refurbished model (again, mine was 2 weeks old) and that I have the same luck as you.
rmonjay said:
I have had this phone for just over two month and have not had any similar issues. I assume that you've already tried options 1, 2, and and 4. Have you also gone into recovery to see if you can clear the cache?
I would personally return it as broken, but I save everything important to my SD, just in case this kind of thing happens.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have tried all of the options at this point and none of those work. I can't even get into recovery. Every option does the same thing... reboots, reboots, reboots, etc.
New phone should be here tomorrow. I've got the good old run around on this one though and I'm not happy about it with Verizon and Best Buy. Best Buy's return policy is 14 days and I ran into issues on day 16, no exceptions according to them and off to Verizon I go where I had to purchase a temporary flip phone for the week my phone has been out of commission.
I'm in need of a new SD card before I put anything on there, it has been flaky. The only thing I care about on my phone is the media (photos, videos, and music), all of which are on Google. The crap thing is that now I need to spend another X hours putting all my apps, passwords, etc. on it to my liking. Just did this when moving to the Note 7, then Moto Z Force, and now again with the replacement. Starting to get annoyed.

Update - when switching to the replacement device I found the issue followed to the new phone... Meaning the issue was with the SD card or the SIM card. Found it was an issue with the SD card after switching between the two phones and experimenting. Unreal. Who would have thought?!
I will be formatting the card and keeping this thread posted on if that resolves it or if it's time for a new card (as I mentioned above).

I am very hopeful with your post. My phone has been going crazy with the rebooting mode for two days now. I brought it into Verizon yesterday but all of a sudden (of course) it started working. Now today its gone back to rebooting, over and over and over again. 2nd day in a row I am going to waste my lunch hour and run to Verizon. This time I will ask them about a new SIM card. BTW... I just got a new (refurbished) less then a week ago.

TBabbs said:
I am very hopeful with your post. My phone has been going crazy with the rebooting mode for two days now. I brought it into Verizon yesterday but all of a sudden (of course) it started working. Now today its gone back to rebooting, over and over and over again. 2nd day in a row I am going to waste my lunch hour and run to Verizon. This time I will ask them about a new SIM card. BTW... I just got a new (refurbished) less then a week ago.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I just fixed my Moto Z Play by removing the SD card... for the second time... -_- I've had a previous issue where my phone rebooted as part of an update and it stopped seeing my previous SD card. After checking the SD card in various other systems, I found the SD card was completely shot. After some digging online, there is apparently an issue with the new Moto Z's that if your SD card isn't fast enough (somewhere around 85-90+ Mb/s)m, the Moto Z will slowly start to eat your SD card until it fails and causes issues for your phone. In this case, my second SD card failure was that my phone went into infinite booting loops until I removed the card. -_-
This card lasted longer, mainly I think due to the fact that it was larger and faster then my previous one, but it looks like I will need to get a new fast card.
Anyways, I hope this helps you or anyone else who comes across this thread.

About 2-3 weeks ago, the same thing started to happen to me, after that, phone started to act crazy...
-Bluetooth connection was working but glitching,
-Overheat (bottom of the phone) then started reboot in loop (until at start I'm able to turn off wifi). Did everything your supposed to do, clear cache, forget network, deleted my latest app, reboot, reboot in safe mode, remove sd/sim tray... the issues we're still there...
-After a few days of repeating all those steps (or don't know what I did), I finally got rid of the oveheat reboot loop when the wifi is on. But can only see and connect to 2,4g network, no 5g (doesn't see any) and no Bluetooth (turns on, but doesn't see anything), every other device in house works and connect like they should.
-the setting app, and the phone app started to be slow (freezes for a few seconds before the system ask you if you wanna wait or close the app, I choose wait and the app unfreeze)
-Ive tried the rsa (repair system assistant) from verizon without any fix
-finally decide to go for the factory reset. It fixed the freezing issues, works like a charm, but still no 5g wifi nor Bluetooth...
Is there a driver update possible for this ? Or because of overheat it might have damage the device...
I have the phone since September, never had any issues, went through all update, force droid edition xt1650-02, build ncl25.86-11.5, nougat 7.0 (wish verizon would update to 7.1.1 anytime soon), since its gsm unlocked, I'm using it on a Canadian network (Fido)

thanks for this thread. It was able to help me diagnose my wifes phone. The SD card she has been using since her DROID CHARGE (2011!!!) finally bit the dust in this phone. I swapped it out for a new Sandisk micro sdxc uhs-I up to 80 MB/s card class 10 and it booted. funny thing was she was not even storing pictures on the card.

Motorola Droid Z Force restarting (Bootloop)
My motorola z force has started to boot loop restarting again and again ... i have tried following
full formatting from recovery twice, phone starts well but when i turn on my wifi it keep restarting ..
if i turn my wifi off, the phone works good but as soon as i turn on my wifi boot loop starts again and again.......
i guess i need to flash the firmware but dont know how to flash new firmware ....
XDA very big name .. i need help....

alidanwer said:
My motorola z force has started to boot loop restarting again and again ... i have tried following
full formatting from recovery twice, phone starts well but when i turn on my wifi it keep restarting ..
if i turn my wifi off, the phone works good but as soon as i turn on my wifi boot loop starts again and again.......
i guess i need to flash the firmware but dont know how to flash new firmware ....
XDA very big name .. i need help....
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've had bootloops happen a couple of times for different triggers, and I still run the phone stock since release date with no updates ever taken. This has worked to correct the issue for me a couple of times. Give it a try:
Let your phone get down below 5% battery life, then plug into the turbo charger. Then fool around with whatever triggers the reboots.
Eventually the phone will not restart because the phone's battery needs to charge a little. When phone charges beyond 10% try to turn the phone back on, and see if boot loop persists. If it persists drain below the 5% battery life and try again. Usually, when I have fooled around with this scenario two or three times the bootloop has corrected itself.
Hope this works for you. Good luck.

Thanku, I will definitle give it a try .... and i am updated to nougat all updates till date installed...

Still restarts.... its been a month... without solution..

alidanwer said:
Still restarts.... its been a month... without solution..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
A couple of weeks ago, the restart loop happened to me again, and my usual tinkering while connecting and disconnecting Turbo Charger wouldn't work. So I did some research on "stuck power button" or "power button not working".
I did the following:
I blew with my mouth over the power button (kind of like puting your lips in position to whistle)
I also gently tried to clasp the power button using a pair of tweezers, but couldn't. Instead I just kind of lifted/tugged-on the power button from the top and bottom.
I feel like I didn't really do anything, but the phone has been working for over a week now. Maybe pure luck.
Its weird, this made me think it is a hardware issue, but somehow the phone reacts as if it were software related.
Give it a try. Hope you have some luck.

Phone won't shut down/ load apps

Hello guys,
you will find a detailed description of the encountered problems in the following lines:
1. DESCRIPTION
As stated above, my phone (randomly and not connected to any situation like hot temperatures etc.) won't load specific apps like WhatsApp, Netflix and my contacts. (While you try to open the application you will see the loading screen/splash screen of that specific app forever.) Furthermore, the phone won't shut down if one is pressing the "Restart-" or "Power-Off-Button". It will stuck at a loading screen (a blue animated circle [-progressbar], that shows the phone is about to shut down), which normally takes less than a second but in this case would take forever. (I've waited at least 5 minutes.)
Like I already said, the stated problem pop's up randomly and that's how it disappears too.
I know one significant (hardware-)change I did before the problem appeared:
I converted an SD-Card (SanDisk Extreme Plus 128 GB microSDXC which can read/write up to 100MB/s of data, that should be enough for the phone to function properly) to an internal storage with the help of the ADB-shell and the commands
Code:
adb shell
adb partition disk <Sd-Card ID> <Percentage>
2. INFERENCES
This worked fine and new apps do moved to the SD-Card, but I noticed that after rebooting, Netflix, WhatsApp and one other application I don't really remember showed an animation that will only be visible when a new app is installed and was never used before. The latter factor implements, that those app-paths somehow changed (maybe external -> internal -> external) and that's how the "new installation" happened. (I'm not really into android development, so please don't mind to tell me that this is complete nonsense. )
2.1 EDIT: After the last shut down and reboot, old emails that I've never read, popped up on my notification screen. (I can't explain this one.)
2.2 EDIT2: As of today, my mobile phone can't identify the SD-Card and throws error messages about my missing SD-Card. Because of that, my storage is full and I can't enter any application except Settings, Chrome and any other browser. I guess that was one of the causes that apps won't load in the last days but the phone kept identifying the SD-Card after a random time period,
this would explain why the problem would also disappear.
3. SOLUTION
I couldn't create a solution (that is working) out of this and that's why I'm here to get help from you guys!
Best regards,
sHootR'