Help Nexus 7 (2012) Randomly Unresponsive? Help!

[MrTripStack]

Hello, everyone! The name's Kenny and I've been having some issues with my Nexus 7 (2012) on/off for the last two weeks or so. I'm hoping somebody here can help me out!

I've had this N7 since around Jan 2013, iirc, and I haven't had any serious issues with it up until recently, besides my screen cracking and having to send it in for repairs. I've been using Android devices for many years now and I've never had anything like this happen to me.

A couple weeks back, my N7 started to randomly freeze and become responsive, forcing me to reboot it, and once that started, it would happen repeatedly every few minutes. I almost immediately decided to preform a factory reset and that got the tablet back up and running as usual and it's been working fine since.

A few nights ago, the problem came up again and after messing around on my home screen until it happened, I noticed that the lock up occurred at the exact moment my weather/clock widget loaded up, which usually takes about a minute or so to do so upon a reboot. Thinking that app was the issue, I quickly removed the widget and uninstalled the app, and the tablet has been working fine since.

Just a few moments ago, the issue started up again! I haven't installed any new apps/updates within that time span and only downloaded a few images from the web. This time, I decided to go through my entire app drawer and uninstall every app that I didn't trust with 100% certainty and downloaded a new app to remove any of the temporary files, cache, history, and all that junk that happened to be on my tablet.

Now it seems to working fine again, but I'm worried that this might start happening again in a couple days, so I'm wondering if anybody else has been running into something similar or might know of something that could be causing it. The only thing I can think to do next if it happens again is to finally venture into the realm of custom ROMs.

I appreciate any help!

 

[El Presidente]

It sounds like you're doing all the right things to try and diagnose the issue.

Have you just updated? A lot of the time, updates can cause app compatibility issues and I've found, it's never a bad idea to backup important info and factory reset after system updates.

 

[funkylogik]

Give the one tap widget that comes with this app a little try when things get rubbery https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=mobi.infolife.cache
Can't promise anything but I swear by it on both my devices.
It's just a fast way to clear app cache.
Don't bother using the scheduled stuff in the actual app :thumbup:

 

[MrTripStack]

It sounds like you're doing all the right things to try and diagnose the issue.

Have you just updated? A lot of the time, updates can cause app compatibility issues and I've found, it's never a bad idea to backup important info and factory reset after system updates.

As far as I can recall, my tablet hasn't gotten a system update since all this started happening. I factory reset my tablet when this first started happening and that seemed to clear things up for a long while, but now it's happening again. I might try another factory reset, but I'm not sure what else to do. Could it be possible that my tablet is just dying? I've never had that happen and I usually take really good care of my devices, but I'm starting to lean towards that. :c

Give the one tap widget that comes with this app I little try when things get rubbery https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=mobi.infolife.cache
Can't promise anything but I swear by it on both my devices.
It's just a fast way to clear app cache.
Don't bother using the scheduled stuff in the actual app :thumbup:

Thanks for the tip! I'll be sure to give it a shot when I get the chance. A one-tap widget to clear cache would be nice.

____________________________________________
Edit: So, I think I might've figured it out this time! I hope I did, at least...

After replying to you two the other night, I decided to perform a second factory reset and started completely fresh with no backups so I knew there would be no issues (software-wise, anyway). I started to re-download my apps little by little (a few every couple hours) in hopes that I could pinpoint which app(s) might've been causing the issue, but I wasn't finding anything. I went about my business as usual all of yesterday when I downloaded a few pictures and decided to crop one of them with the replacement gallery app I've been using since I've had this tablet; QuickPic. After cropping the photo and moving it into a different folder, the issue started again, even though the tablet's been running fine since re-downloading most of my apps and getting things back together.

I'm guessing that either cropping or moving photos through QuickPic was causing some sort of memory leak or something that forced the tablet to lock up repeatedly? After it started happening again, I decided to download and use that 1-tap widget funkylogik linked me the other day and that seems to have fixed the issue. I can only assume that this gallery app leaves some sort of temporary file on my tablet after cropping a photo. I am still using the app as my gallery, but I've been using the default Nexus 7 gallery if I need to crop anything, and things seem to be moving along smoothly for now.

It's possible that somewhere along the line, after one of the more recent Android updates, the app isn't completely compatible and leaves some funky temporary stuff around after cropping a photo.

Let's hope that was the issue! I'll stick around for a couple more days and see if anything changes and if not, I'll email the developer of that app to let him know what's going on. Thanks for all the help so far!