Kyocera Brigadier Display breaks down roughly once a week. Only a Factory Data reset can repair it.

Once a week, roughly, my Kyocera Brigadier display goes to sleep and only a hard reset can bring it back up. I replaced 3 phones with Asurion and they all do it. I found a fix, resetting the phone to factory settings, including full data erase. Then it works for about a week. Another thing that makes it work is swapping the Launcher in Settings/Home to the Free Win 8 Launcher (only one that works). That launcher can bring up the display once it goes to sleep but no other. Have tried Next, Go EX, etc. No luck. Anyone seeing this as well?

This is driving me insane.I've tried to call tech support at Verizon for a couple of days with no luck. Yesterday I was on hold fol almost 30 minutes listening to their muzak then I was disconnected. Today, almost like clockwork, the phone screwed up again. I'd drive down to the Verizon Store and ask Support there but it's late and I have to get to sleep so I can go to work tonight. I need the phone so I'm firing off the factory reset now so tomorrow morning what is the point of going to Verizon when it will work ok? Like Asurion Tech support they will scratch their heads and tell me the phone works and they can't do anything until it messes up again.

I was very happy with my Casio Commando 4G LTE but when it was damaged in a machine I contacted Asurion because I pay for their insurance. They couldn't give me another Commando. I had no choice but to get this phone. Saddest part of this story, I love this phone. It is awesome EXCEPT for this display nonsense....sigh.

Sorry for whining. I'm a little frustrated.

--Wesley

Accepted answers

GalaxyClass

glad your up and running again, & here is Kyocera tech link if needed. I would be looking for some possible updates for lock problem and maybe even new flash firmware down the road. But first shoot them off an e mail about your little bug, they may have a fix. http://www.contacthelp.com/Kyocera/customer-service

All comments

Verizon_Support

WesleyK,

I'm sorry to learn that this issue has become routine for you. It certainly shouldn't be that way. When did this first start occurring? You mentioned the display going to sleep and then not being able to bring it back up. Have you noticed if this occurs when you put the screen to sleep (power button) or when your display settings times out?

AndreaS_VZW

Follow us on Twitter @VZWSupport

WesleyK

Hello and thank you for the reply. This happens regardless of how the phone goes to sleep. It can timeout on its own or if I put the screen to sleep, it won't come back on when this problem starts.

One thing I do see occasionally. Not often, but sometimes when I try and hit the power button to wake up the phone the home screen will come back up but it blinks back and forth between a still image of the home screen (non-responsive) and the Stock background image.

That is one other thing I wanted to mention. It might be a result of the hard reset, when I hold the power button to restart the phone so I can access the phone, everytime the background image is changed back to the default blue water and sunlight background image. I don't know if this is related.

Lastly, when the phone is asleep and I can't wake the display, I don't think the phone itself is frozen or locked up. If I have my Bluetooth earphones on and the Audible app running I can hear the narrator without a problem. I can also use the button on the headset to start and stop the audiobook without a problem. I wanted to mention that in case it was relevant

--Wesley

WesleyK

A quick clarification. I re-read this and it might appear to someone that the phone does this all the time. It does not. The phone works great for roughly a week and then this problem appears. Then I have to do the factory data reset to fix the problem and then the phone works great again, well....for roughly a week.

This started from the first phone I got from Asurion. 3 days after I activated the phone it happened. I called Asurion's tech support and we were not able to fix it. They sent me a new phone. Ditto with that one except that it lasted maybe 5 days before it started. I called Asurion and after trying to fix it they once again sent me a new phone. I am on the 3rd phone already.

Quick note: Once, and only once so far and on the last phone Asurion had sent me before this one, I was able to fix the problem by utilizing the Settings Reset. I didn't have to do the full data erase with the factory reset but it only worked that one time so far and it fixed the problem for only about an hour.

Verizon_Support

I appreciate all of that information, WesleyK. Because this happens about once a week, troubleshooting may be difficult. Every time you have done a factory reset, have you uploaded your applications and information right away? Since this has happened with all of your replacements, we want to ensure there is not a third party factor that is affecting this. If you have confirmed this is not third party related, you would need to speak with Asurion's technical support.

AndreaS_VZW

Follow us on Twitter @VZWSupport

SherrieO

This exact same issue is happening to my husbands Kyocera Brigadier! It's almost every single Sunday like clockwork. You can't get it out of sleep mode without a hard boot. We did a factory reset on the original phone, we've hard booted and that brings it back but if you let it go to sleep you can't get it out of sleep mode without holding down the power button along with volume up. He's getting his third phone tomorrow. I really hope someone figures out what is causing the issue because the phone works great in between these incidents and it's extremely inconvenient.

Ov3rwatch

Exact same problem here. I have had this phone exactly 1 week tomorrow and love it. vibrant screen, loud speaker, its great and suddenly today it started doing this. exactly as you described. no matter how the phone goes to sleep this problem occurs, one way or another. upon hard resetting it, its back to the greenish blue sunlight through water background. havent tried hard restoring it yet but apparently im going to have to which sucks. I need this phone for work 24/7. Loved my Casio Commando before it, but the thing just got so slow i couldnt do anything. I would prefer that over not operating.

edjo71

I have a brigadier as well...just connected it a week ago since my commando 4G was getting slow. I don't know if it was related to this but I see the once a week thing and was wondering about it...yesterday which was about a week of having it the phone just rebooted and started from default settings which I had to start over with everything again...I didn't even touch the phone or made it do it...I don't have the phone sleep problem but if it keeps rebooting on it's own then I'm gonna be kissed...Didn't know if it was an update for the phone or what but I lost alot of stuff on it...hope this phone isn't just problems because I do really like it since I need a rugged phone

Ov3rwatch

After investigating it further, it looks like the issue is in the ROM from Kyocera not the device itself (physically). When first booting up i went into settings and activated developer tools. locked and unlocked quickly and the screen came back up with the prompt "Unfortunately, com.android.systemui has stopped." (you can do this part without dev tools by the way) Well, that is very unfortunate since it makes the phone unusable. Now with developer tools on i can see that when the device goes to sleep, com.android.launcher (the home screen) is writing its settings to the config file for com.android.systemui so it can return to the home screen properly when you wake the device back up from sleep, the problem is that something causes the launcher to crash in the middle of writing to this file. The conclusion i came to after some toying is that this configuration file gets corrupted by that, so when the com.android.systemui goes to use it, it crashes because the file doesn't work and it doesn't know how to continue. Now when you hard reboot the device it runs an initial test (to figure out why the device was powered off incorrectly) it detects the corrupted file and replaces it with the default configuration file. This is why you lose your wallpaper mixiMZR settings and your choice of keyboard after the reboot, however this file only holds up until the launcher crashes again which restarts the cycle. I cannot explain what causes the launcher to crash in the first place starting the problem rolling, but i will continue to monitor my device to see if i can pinpoint it.

I can only see 3 options here. Kyocera can either fix their buggy ROM, keep needlessly replacing devices, or us as users can root our devices and install a ROM that actually works. Personally if the first option doesn't happen ill likely root & ROM it because i don't want to continually deal with these issues, but i find it a bit ridiculous that that even has to be an option with a phone less than a week old (especially since it would void my warranty and my verizon insurance!). Root & ROM should only ever be a choice not a necessity. Verizon Wireless Customer Support If we could forward these findings to Kyocera somehow that'd be great.

WesleyK

Yes, I do remember seeing this com.android.systemui error several times. I forgot all about it until I read your post.

I've been trying to track down the reason for this nonsense and the only thing I've noticed, and its a stretch I know, is that the last time the display went on the fritz it did it rather quickly. I mean that once I did a factory reset the phone would be OK for about a week or so, give or take a couple of days. Well, barely two days after the factory reset I had plugged in external Sony Microvault USB/microUSB 32 GB drive to backup a few things. Well, after a long copy of about 8GB the app I was using to copy the files froze and the display was doing its nonsense again. This led me to believe that maybe having a microSD card plugged might somehow cause trouble? I really hope not because I love to have a lot of audiobooks with me and the internal storage is simple too little.

Either way, since that last factory reset after the Sony Microvault incident, I pulled the 32GB microSD card I had installed. I am using only the internal storage right now and I'm about 4 days in......I'll know soon if it helps.

Oh wait, I almost forgot. On one of the earlier Brigadiers they sent me I noticed that a launcher was able to fix the display but the display only comes on if I set that as the default launcher. It is called "Launcher 8 Free (fakeWP8) and you can find it at Google Play. I tried several other Launchers but this was the only one that would work. Kinda sucks because when trying to see if a launcher would work I found Go Launcher EX and I really like it. I can't stand Windows 8 or its layout so this just isn't an option for me.

postscript: FWIW, as others have mentioned, I also really like the phone when it works. In between the display problems the phone is great and I especially love the sapphire screen. My Commando 4G was working great but it finally encountered something it couldn't handle. I dropped it at work (the millionth time) but this time I kicked it accidentally and the cleaning guy was in front of me with a large commercial buffer. The phone got jammed between the frame and spinning disc and it cracked it. I had not choice but to give it up. The 1st Commando was slow but the Commando 4G was pretty good. The Brigadier, when it works, is the better phone though....

Ov3rwatch

Yeah i have developer tools enabled with system Log displaying atop everything im doing at all times (can get a bit annoying lol) so my hope is that im looking at the device and the logging when the failure occurs, so i can see it however i have full system logging enabled so even if i don't catch the initial failure it should be saved to a log file which i can access from developer tools on my PC. im hoping to catch the original cause for the screw up but its tedious considering i have no idea when the issue will arise.

GalaxyClass

I could not find any fix from Kyocera for your problem. I feel it's a possible ROM clock code issue but I don't see Kyocera doing a new flash for the phone. I think your down to LCARS & FDR. Post and give us your results.

WesleyK

Hello again GalaxyClass, yes...I can't find anything from Kyocera either....

For now I'm stuck as you say, with either LCARS or doing the FDR. Although....this time I noticed something I did not the previous times, which is why I'm updating.

This time, if I go to the Lock Screen Options (when the LCARS Lock Screen Go App is off and the phone is using the default Lock Screen) and turn them off the display will work properly. Unfortunately, I can't leave the phone that way because the power button gets bumped in my pocket and all heck will be caused with the touchscreen, etc.

Right now, I haven't done the FDR. Since I can wake the screen with LCARS I can run down to the Verizon Store and get their input. If I disable LCARS I can show them exactly what it is doing by enabling and disabling the Lock Screen Security (including the simple Swipe). I wasn't able to show them before because I didn't have time to go to Verizon immediately and once the FDR was done the phone worked fine for a week so what was I to show them? LOL

I think I'll get in touch with Kyocera again via the link you gave Galaxy, thanks for that again.

GalaxyClass

No problem Wes and I hope you and the others get this bug out.

chandear

I don't know if this would help but I took out my SD card and now it works perfect. I just got the problem today and found this forum before resetting my phone. I thought of taking out the SD card and seeing what that would do and now the problem has stopped with out resetting my phone. Hope this helps

KCandME

I have the same problem with my Brigadier.

It's very disturbing when the 'cute perky ones' at the verizon store tell me that there is nothing wrong with my phone and there is nothing they can do anyway.

Another problem I had with this phone is that the kyocera 'driver software' or whatever it installs on the computer when you hook it up to the computer with the usb, made changes to my computer;

There was the syswow page incident, which took forever to find and correct.

Then there was the svchost.exe incident...

And the best one was the changing of a server setting which made my little laptop behave like some sort of node or something. Data use went haywire and I had an accrual of GB data use that was going to cost me $250 for one month. 27GB of data and the month wasn't even over. My normal usage is in the 4- 5 GB range.

This phone ha been a NIGHTMARE!

nak500

Worst EXPERIENCE EVER!!!

Within a week this happened & my buttons started failing--I figured software (same issue as listed) & simple hardware fix. After being rerouted to Kyocera in error by my Verizon store, I just got my phone back after a month of waiting. Through-out Kyocera had no idea what was going on in their repair center, avoided my questions; corporate would ignore all messages; finally after 20 days someone told me the Customer Service department was told they were waiting on parts from Japan; repair center was saying it was a bad screen; no one knew where it actually was & when it would be sent. 20 actual hours of phone time with Kyocera CS. Received it yesterday & same day CS had said they still didn't know. Website says same. The phone came loose in an over-sided box with two thin pieces of foam; thing was rattling around. Kyocera told me Verizon; Verizon dealer told me Kyocera; Verizon CS said tough. This was ridiculous & phone is still having all the same problems! Had the phone in working condition & in-hand for less than 10 days of the first two months owning it; in-hand at all maybe a month. Verizon needs to get on this issue as Kyocera isn't. This tough phone is shaping up to be a tough brick until we get a root or Verizon steps in. Verizon only model? Common Verizon & step up to the plate! These software issues are YOUR problem as a buyer & supporter of these units!!! Why are we getting punished for upgrading? Paying? Fail.

WesleyK

An update finally came out today! I'm not sure yet of it will fix the display problems but I've been lucky I think....no more display screwups since the last time I mentioned above in October.

Regardless, at least Kyocera had released an update. I hope everyone ends up with an awesome working phone.

WesleyK

Just an FYI.

I can't say if the display not waking problem was fixed with update just yet because it is too new; however, I was able to test something and I am hopeful as a result.

I used to be able to cause the "glitch" by connecting my Sony 32GB Microvault flash drive to the phone and copying large amounts of data to and from the phone and flash drive. Yesterday, after I restarted the phone a couple of times once the update was complete, I tried to force the glitch. I moved over 20+ GB worth of audiobooks to and from the phone with no problems at all.

I'm holding my breath for now but it seems to have worked. <grin> I hope this is the end of the problem.

Good Luck everyone!