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Freezing, phantom reboots, and battery app weirdness.

kendermouse

Newbie
I'm having a freeze problem. It's not terribly discriminate about what's happening when it freezes, so I don't think it's a specific app. Sometimes it even freezes on the lock screen.

I sort of suspect it may be partially due to memory/ram issues - I have every app that is possible to moved to SD, but of course, the bloatware won't allow it, and widgets won't work on SD.

The problem I refer to as phantom reboots is kind of weird. I'll have the phone sitting somewhere, not doing anything with it, and suddenly, I'll hear the little twinkly noises that say that the phone is booting up - when it's already turned on, I wasn't touching it, and it's fully charged, or is plugged into the charger, so it couldn't possibly be a low battery shutdown.

All the same, when I check, it has definitely rebooted, and is going through the process of reading the SD card and such, and any apps I had passively running in the background (usually my IM app,) are turned off.


The battery issue is semi-related, since it actively does cause freezing at times. It will often read as if the battery is dying, when in fact it still has at least a half charge or more. Then it will either freeze the phone, or shut it down.

The worst is when I'm actually on a call. If I don't have it plugged into the charger, somewhere between 5 and 20 minutes into a call, no matter how full a charge I had to begin with, it will decide that the battery is empty, and give me the alert, and then promptly hang up the call and freeze up, forcing me to pull the battery to get it going again.

This is most alarming, as it means that if I'm out somewhere away from a charger, and there's an emergency, I will likely have trouble when trying to call 911.

Oh, and I'm also having some trouble with texts not arriving as they should, which may be a software/app issue rather than a service issue, since there's also some weird timestamp stuff going on with the texting app, like the stamp saying texts are about two or more hours ahead of the time I actually received them.

My husband has a G2 Epic touch on the same family account and service area, and his texts are received just fine by everyone. But annoying as that is, it's not as imperative a problem as the first three, since for the most part, it's not something that will adversely affect me if there is an emergency.

I'm seriously considering rooting, because I suspect at least some of the issues are related to one or more of the OTA updates from Sprint, but I'm the type that needs babysitting for tech stuff, and I don't know anyone who can tell me how to root an Epic 4G, let alone someone who would be willing to babysit me while I did it.

I'm on Gingerbread.FC09, the ICS update never got to me, so I know it's not that.

Any suggestions or help would be appreciated.
 
KM, I'm having the exact same issues: the unpredictable lock-ups, the "phantom rebooting", and like you I'm on Gingerbread and never got ICS. To be honest I think this phone is no longer being seriously maintained by Sprint (apparently there were multiple problems the last time they tried to roll out updates to ICS, and they just don't think it's worth their time anymore).

One trick that may help you in the short term is to reduce the size of the unmovable bloatware. Reducing a 10MB app to 700kb is a great way to free up internal memory space and (maybe) reduce the weird problems you're having.

1. Go to the home screen, then into Menu/Settings/Applications/Manage Applications.
2. Then click the "All" tab.
3. Hit the menu softkey here and select "Sort by size", which will show you the biggest programs first.
4. Scroll down to the first app you don't care about (usually Asphalt, Sprint Football, etc) and tap on it.
5. One of those buttons on the screen, at the top right if I remember correctly, will be "Uninstall updates". If you do this with the bloatware I've found that this significantly reduces the app's footprint, even if you cannot uninstall it completely.

Hope those steps help!

Regardless, I'm thinking about rooting the phone, but like you I don't have a lot of experience with it. I'll probably follow the instructions on Cyanogenmod's website:
Samsung Epic 4G: Full Update Guide - CyanogenMod Wiki

If I have any luck, I'll post back here with tips.

If I have bad luck (!) I'll probably be jumping ship to the Galaxy S3 like so many other people. FYI, the SGS3 will be $50 on Black Friday at Sprint stores (and possibly other stores too).
 
Regardless, I'm thinking about rooting the phone, but like you I don't have a lot of experience with it. I'll probably follow the instructions on Cyanogenmod's website:
Samsung Epic 4G: Full Update Guide - CyanogenMod Wiki

If I have any luck, I'll post back here with tips.

If I have bad luck (!) I'll probably be jumping ship to the Galaxy S3 like so many other people. FYI, the SGS3 will be $50 on Black Friday at Sprint stores (and possibly other stores too).

Did you go ahead and root? And if so, did it work?
 
Did you go ahead and root? And if so, did it work?

Almost! With all the Black Friday sales I was really preoccupied helping my DW get a new Samsung GS3. Really nice phone, she's going to try it out for two weeks and see how much better it is than the old Epic.

(The Sprint Black Friday deal $49 for existing customers whose contracts are up, can't beat that price, but I'm holding out for a deal on the Note II.)

Which means I now have two Epics - one I can practice the rooting sequence on and play around with before trying it out on the phone I use every day.

If and when I do I'll be sure to post the experience.
 
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