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Anyone else have random reboot problems?

My Charge likes to randomly reset itself. I'm still yet to find out the trigger (overheating, low battery, time of the month, etc). But apparently, mine just randomly resets when the mood feels right.

Anyone else have a similar issue or has found a solution? I believe the issue became very noticeable after the last update but I'm not 100% sure that was the cause.

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jco23

is it a complete restart (meaning you see the Samsung logo), or just a hotboot (meaning you just see the animation at start)?

i did experience this when my was stock and i was using an app that required a lot of RAM, and thus caused the phone to slow down so much, that the only for it to recover was to reboot (and would be stuck on the boot screen for about 20-30 minutes).

boobdole

Heh, to be honest with you, I'm not 100% sure. Most the time I just hear my pocket say "droid" really loudly and then hear the machine sounds of the startup screen (which is obnoxious, I wish they had a way to turn that off). I think I might've caught it once or twice and it went all the way to the samsung logo. I do know that it's not accidently getting reset (I always keep my phone locked and there have been times it's been reset when just sitting on the counter).

It's possible I'm using an app that's requiring a lot of RAM but it's likely to be one that is running in the background because everything seems to slow down on my phone. Any idea if there's an easy way to determine what app it could be?

Personally, I don't like the way android opens and closes processes to "ready" them for me. It seems ridiculous that Maps is using 3% of my battery when I never use the app (I use an alternate gps app). I know I could uninstall it but should I have to uninstall an app just because android feels like being helpful and managing my tasks for me? This might be my last Android phone, unless they start to iron out some of these kind of features (which I imagine is a significant overhaul).

But I digress. Any suggestions to determining what app might be causing my phone to slow down/reset?

Verizon_Support

boobdole,

Hello! Thanks to the community for your suggestions! An app could very well be the cause of these issues. I would first recommend running the phone in safe mode and see if it behaves better. Next, I would do a hard reset, and only load one application back into the phone a day. That way you can see which app is causing the problem.

Safe Mode:http://bit.ly/n2EIBZ

Hard Reset: http://bit.ly/w21WpW

Thank you!

Katie H

VZW Support

Follow us on Twitter @VZWSupport

jco23

yes. if you go to settings, then running apps (might be under manage apps) - you will see a list of apps that are currently running in your background.

some tips that you may already know - when exiting an app, make sure to use the back button and NOT the home button. pressing the home button sometimes does not completely close the other app; having too many apps installed hinders performance - I try to keep mine to under 100 (currently at 78).

boobdole

You guys do realize how ridiculously disruptive a hard reset is, right? Most posts I see when people have problems, one of the first suggestions is to "hard reset" (ie completely wipe their phone). Is there really no other diagnostic tool you guys have that might help identify problems besides completely wiping a phone?

jco23

hard resets have never really solved any problems for me. I don't think they would suggest that on chargeforums.com

boobdole

Agreed. I just think it's a super lazy suggestion from people who don't want to take the time to really determine the root cause. yeah, it might solve the problem but it should be a last resort. it's on par with "reinstall windows" and that should fix your problem, when simply going back to a previous restore point makes a lot more sense.

Simbad

Yep It did it itself this morning freaky

boobdole

I think I found out another symptom of what might be causing the random reboots. So, because my phone has been slowing down a lot, I've been using a task killer to make my phone usable (it seems to be getting slowed down a lot and I still suspect the facebook app but the way android opens random programs in the background without me asking it to do so, I can't prove that's the app with the issue and I'm unwilling to delete EVERYTHING just to determine the cause) . . .

Anyway, normally, I will kill all applications and it'll say I have 132M of memory available or 100M of memory available. Earlier, I killed all my apps when the thing was running very slow and it appears it only gave me 60M of memory available (it definitely should've been more than that). I'm guessing that there's an app that either a) refusing to be killed by that process or b) a program I have set as an exception that is not being killed by this. Regardless, shortly afterwards, my phone reset itself in my pocket.

I'm guessing there's an app that's not releasing memory when it's killed (which is probably why people recommend not killing applications using these task managers) or one that's eating a significant amount of memory. Apparently, when the phone reboots, the memory is freed again. Sounds like I am going to have to try and find a way to make this process repeatable (as intermittent problems are very difficult to troubleshoot). Any ideas on the best way to go about this? I need to find a way to cause a given app to eat up a lot of memory and then kill it and see if it frees it up. If it takes hours to eat up all the memory, this is going to be a very slow process (and because of the way android opens apps in the background, it's going to be hard to determine if it's related to a SPECIFIC app if that's the case).

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