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Help WEIRD happenings to my Samsung Galaxy S2 Epic 4g... am I in the twilight zone?

chewedpup

Well-Known Member
Yesterday while my phone was on charge, the screen went sort of white and transparent and froze. Only way to solve it was to take battery out - then it booted up beautifully. No problem. Later on I wanted to uninstall something - my Uninstaller app was gone. I know I used it a couple of days ago - so where has it gone? Also, suddenly, no 4G service in my house. I have always had EXCELLENT 4g service at my house - very poor 3g, but my 4G has been outstanding. No, no 4g. Just a big fat X under the 4g signal. Hmm. Anyway, I went to googlemarket place and looked up MYAPPS, thinking uninstaller would be listed there - but it wasn't. So I downloaded it, no problem. I notice that when my phone rang, none of the custom rings worked - it was now all factory tones. Weird. When typing (I have swiftkey), ordinary words suddenly aren't recognized as words - for example, if I was trying to type in the word "monkey", the options that would show up would be Mone, monk, donkey. I'd finish typing in the word monkey and it still wouldn't show up as a recognizable word. Swiftkey has always been great at recognizing words - it gives you a choice of the three it thinks you might use and whatever word I intend to use is ALWAYS listed there. Now, not so much. Anyway...... i was looking for another app on my phone - gone. Downloaded it again - and am now noticing that several apps have disappeared.
My youmail app also disappeared and it took me ages to be able to reactivate it - but eventually got it back. If I had lost ALL my apps, I would understand it - but just a select few? Probably so far about 6? And no 4G? Resetting custom rings? Oh, and my SMS plus, when backing up, now it's backing up 308 objects. I only have about 10 new text messages on my phone - so it's obviously going into gmail and going into all my saved sms's and is backing those up too, or something. normally it only backs up the new text message that I have.
What the heck is going on? I called Sprint and asked about the 4g - they said there are no issues in my area and told me to take it to a store and get it checked out.
I know it has behaved weirdly since the last system update many weeks ago - I was unable to download any app for ages (always got invalid package file).
So I'm going to download Rom Toolbox light as per DonB's suggestion, then do a factory reset and see if that works - just because from one minute to the next, my phone has a life of its own and I don't know what is going to disappear next. I do not know why this happened - the charger is plugged into a surge protector.
Anyone got any ideas?
 
My issues were not nearly as extreme as yours, but I experienced some occasional app loss, screen freezing briefly on frequent occasions, and random menu pop-ups. The ICS update fixed some, but didn't fix others. My random menu pop-ups were better with the ICS update, then I installed the FH13 update and the random menu pop-ups are back to their odd behavior.

I also never know when GPS is going to work for me. If it decides not to work on whatever occasion I need it, a reboot is usually needed to get it back.

I'm not too impressed with Samsung. My HTC EVO was great the whole time I had it (other than battery life).
 
I know it was pretty drastic, but DonB recommended doing a factory reset - and while it was a few hours of work to get everything back the way I like it, I have to say it was 100% worth it. my 4G is zooming along, my apps are flying, no problems at all, and whatever the problem was before, making the apps disappear, stopping the 4G, everything is fine now. Yeah it's some work, but definitely worth it. I feel like I have a new phone again. I also notice that this factory reset has put the phone into a state of newness that is different from when I bought it - when I got this brand new, it didn't have this set up - so this factory reset has some different features and really is like having a new phone.
Thanks DonB.
 
I just got mine about a month ago (before that was htc) and i'm having same problems. I've done several factory resets and resets to the FH 13 ICS. I've uninstalled and reinstalled don't know how many times, battery pulls, restarts, et. I thought HTC fones were an interesting experience. Went with this one cause son said was really simple. Yep really SIMPLE...turn on 4G and it immediately goes to "zzzzzz". So, come back to my "TEACHERS' for my other fones..ANDROID FORUMS!!! am i crazy or is it this fone?? Granddaughter got this when first came out and loved it!! So..now what?
 
I'm not sure what to tell you. My random menu pop-ups have been happening no matter which version of Android I have running, so I'm leaning towards it being a hardware issue. My 4G does go to sleep if I'm not using it, but wakes up as soon as I open my browser. Not so with my GPS. Did you have good 4G coverage before?
 
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