Samsung Fascinate update to 2.2 results in slow phone?

[Covicka]

I have had my fascinate for about 7-8 months, its never been FASCINATINGLY fast but it was always decent. I got my update on Friday and since then it takes about 30 seconds to get into texts, it takes at least 2 minutes to get facebook fully loaded and I try to delete pictures and it just says "deleting" but it never actually deletes them. I also have to force close so many times, its becoming hectic. Please help.

[NuDroidUsrr · Accepted solution]

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Covicka wrote:

I have had my fascinate for about 7-8 months, its never been FASCINATINGLY fast but it was always decent. I got my update on Friday and since then it takes about 30 seconds to get into texts, it takes at least 2 minutes to get facebook fully loaded and I try to delete pictures and it just says "deleting" but it never actually deletes them. I also have to force close so many times, its becoming hectic. Please help.

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  There is alot of talk that when you update the OS, that you should do a factory reset afterwards, which will clear everything out and start with a fresh device. It will reset back to stock 2.2, so you will not lose the OS update. Samsung suggested this to alot of the other devices that got their updates. Before you do this, please do your homework and research what is involved, and to make sure you have everything you want saved somewhere.

  To do this, you would back up your data, contacts, and anything else you want to save, mark down what apps you installed, and then do a factory reset which will reset the device back to the stock 2.2 device (SETTINGS | PRIVACY). You then restore your data and apps, and it should be good. Any apps that you have bought will come back down from the Market, and you will have to find and install the free apps that you want back on it. I know it sounds drastic, but if you search other threads out in the community, you will see others have done it.

 PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE MAKE SURE YOU HAVE YOUR DATA BACKED UP BEFORE DOING THAT PROCEDURE. I am not telling you to do this, so you do this at your own risk.

The SD card will be untouched from the reset.

Hope this helps.

[Covicka]

Thank you so much. I actually got very aggravated and impatient and called VZW and basically after numerous troubleshooting steps in the end I had to do a hard reset. This fixed my issues. Thankfully. Now the issue is, I keep going back to apps that I previously had to use them..And they aren't there. But I'm extremely thankful for the fix.

Thanks again for your help.

[SkyniteZero]

thats ok they had to send me my fourth fascinate since mine wouldnt upgrade and when it did nots it slow laggs alot and the battery drains faster then it did with 2.1 this phone has been giving me nothing but troubles and VZW isnt doing anything about it i even hard reset it and it still does the same thing.

[Covicka]

Wow, well since then I haven't had problems. That sounds like me with my enV touch, I went through like 5 phones and finally they decided to give me an early upgrade. Thank goodness, otherwise I would have lost my mind. Good luck.

[animal11674]

i have already been through the factory reset...didn't work still have a lag issue sometimes i can't even unlock the the screen.

[#7]

Here is a workaround for the issues of lagging and unresponsiveness.

First perform a factory reset (here is the alternate way since you can’t unlock your screen):

Turn off the phone> Press and hold the Volume Up / Down keys and the Power button simultaneously. When the Samsung logo appears, release only the Power button. >Display will show: 

1. Reboot system Now
2. Apply sdcard:update.zip
3. Wipe Data/Factory Reset
4. Wipe Cache Partition

>From the Recovery screen, press the Volume down key to select "Wipe Data/Factory Reset", press home icon to select option and wipe device.

>Display shows "All user data will be wiped out", press VOLUME Up to continue or VOLUME Down to exit. > Press Volume Up > Press Home to select "Reboot System Now" - device will reboot

Second continue to go through the set up and activation process.

***The “Feeds and Updates" widget seems to be causing the problem.  DO NOT SET UP THE FACEBOOK ACCOUNT IN “FEEDS AND UPDATES.”

Third remove the “Feeds and Updates” widget from the screen.

Once you take these steps you should see improvement on the phone.  Please repost if issues persist.  Thank you.

[dawgangel]

I cannot believe that all the "techs" I spoke with (and I'm on my THIRD phone) had no clue this was such a simple solution.  They kept telling me it was an app problem (I had not downloaded any apps) or a hardware issue.  I even said to one of the techs I thought it had to be some incompatibility issue with the resident software and they laughed at the idea!  Thank you so much for being the only informed person at Verizon!    You deserve either a raise or extra days off!  Acutally - please send a memo to your Verizon store employees so they actually know what to do!!!

[NuDroidUsrr]

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Covicka wrote:

I have had my fascinate for about 7-8 months, its never been FASCINATINGLY fast but it was always decent. I got my update on Friday and since then it takes about 30 seconds to get into texts, it takes at least 2 minutes to get facebook fully loaded and I try to delete pictures and it just says "deleting" but it never actually deletes them. I also have to force close so many times, its becoming hectic. Please help.

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 I have also heard there is problems with Facebook and the Status Widget on the home screen. Do you run that? That may be part of the problem also.

[Carutledge]

The hard reset seems just too extreme! This morning my phone was absolutely fine and now, its a wreck! I would've never updated, had I known this. What a waste of time and energy. Its bad enough I've got to reconfigure everything. The idea of re-entering info.... How do I even go about backing up my data? And how in the world do I upload it after the reset? Man i'd love to give Verizon a piece pgs my mind!!

[mkewhat]

I had the same problem with the lag ever since the update.  I tried deleting apps, msgs, etc. to no avail.  After reading the posts here, I removed the 'news feed' and the 'facebook' feeds from their respective pages and so far I have NO LAG! 

I did NOT do a reset.

Hope this helps!

[ladyj1180]

At the risk of sounding like an idiot, I'm going to ask how to remove the "new feed" from the facebook app? I really don't want to do a factory reset and lose all of my info. Thanks

[#13]

You can not delete the news feed from Facebook.  Thank you.

[HK_USP]

Both my girlfriend and I updated our Fascinate phones about 2-3 weeks ago via the over the air update.  Ever since then battery life sucks and the phones are very "buggy."  Just random quirks and issues ever since.  When opening the browser it sometimes just makes the phone vibrate then go back to the home screen.  My girlfriend is not receiving calls way too often (caller hears ringing like it's calling then goes to voicemail then leaves a voicemail....while my girlfriend never even got the call, never rang, no missed call alert, but all of a sudden gets a voicemail alert).  The sleep timer works when it wants to (very bad news considering this phone IS my alarm clock).  Phone gets random black screen and you have to do a battery pull to get it up and running again.  When I try to lock my phone, often times it makes a camera shutter sound and captures a screen shot.  I know there's more but that's all I can think of right now.  We've both had these phones since August of 2010 and never had a single issue until the day we did the Froyo update.  I did the factory reset on both phones and while it seems to have reduced the frequency of problems...they still DO exist.  I went into Verizon and talked to a customer service rep there and he said they've received NUMEROUS complaints since the update and there's nothing they can do.  I find that completely unacceptable.  I even asked if they can just re-load Android 2.1 back on it and he said they cannot.  He said that we just have to tough it out for now and hope that Samsung comes out with a fix.  What a joke......  And now that Verizon doesn't offer annual upgrades, what the hell is someone supposed to do? 

[radiocynic]

I've also had multiple issues since the 2.1 > 2.2 upgrade, including freeze-ups and general slowness. 

Since some other minor work-arounds have been effective, I'm anxious to see if removing the "feeds and updates" widget may help.  (I'm also trying to avoid a hard reset, not wanting to chance problems with backing everything up.) 

Another temporary fix I had success with is for the issue of horrific battery life with the 2.2 upgrade -- Go to Settings - WIreless & Networks - Wi-Fi Settings - Advanced, then set "Wi-Fi Sleep Policy" to "when screen turns off" instead of the default "never".  Uses noticeably less battery that way.

I also saw some improvement by going to the RAM manager tab (in Task Manager) and occasionally clearing both Level 1 and Level 2 of RAM.

Another issue I haven't yet figured out is a Bluetooth connectivity problem with my Ford Sync in my car.  Maybe about 30% of the time, the Bluetooth won't connect, or actively disconnects the phone.  (Rarely had been a problem with 2.1.)  Only gets fixed with a complete reboot, or sometimes by turning Bluetooth off, then on again, then it ALWAYS force-closes, then turning Bluetooth on again.  Ugh.

But obviously, this OS SHOULD work properly without having to jump through all of these hoops. 

Throughout this forum over the past month or two, I've seen multiple promises from Verizon, saying that Samsung was working on a fix / update for all of this.  Whether there will be a patch, or perhaps an upgrade to Gingerbread 2.3, ANYTHING would be appreciated.

Does ANYONE have any word on progress towards a fix?  There are truly THOUSANDS of dissatisfied customers suffering through these multiple problems.

I'd even be somewhat reassured if another Verizon rep posts here, even if just to say that Verizon and Samsung are indeed still actively working on it, not just cutting us all off into oblivion and hoping the problem goes away.

[CBurnett1362]

Yes! I've also had issues using my hands-free Ford SYNC system and this phone! I'm so glad to see I'm not the only one. I've been so frustrated with dropped calls while driving that I've turned off the bluetooth altogether and have resigned to the fact that I cannot legally make or receive phone calls while in my car, unless I buy a separate bluetooth device for my ear. Completely unacceptable. I shouldn't have to purchase separate equipment to use my phone in certain situations (i.e., while in my car).

I brought this issue up yesterday to a VZW tech here in San Francisco and he suggested un-pairing the device from the Ford SYNC system (and any other bluetooth devices that may also be paired with the system) and then re-pairing the device to SYNC. He said, "It may be as simple as that." I performed that un-pairing/re-pairing operation yesterday and made a call with success. Its too early to say that this has indeed worked, but here's hoping.

Its worth a try, radiocynic. Cheers.

[Spyc1]

I've owned this phone since October 2010 - it's been great until now!    I received the update on my Fascinate.. and ever since I can't do ANYTHING on it!!!  The screen will lock and then the screen becomes all horizontal lines.. the only way to "unlock" it is to pull the battery!!

In the last DAY it's froze 11 times!!!!!!  If I try to send more than 1 text to a person - if freezes. If I try to hang up from a phone call - it freezes! If I try to get to the browser - it freezes!  To say nothing of navigating through any programs i've downloaded.

I'm heading to the store tomorrow - I am so agrravated!!!  I'm almost tempted to go back to my EnV3! I'm so sick of this!

[melimel]

I loved this phone up until the automatic upgrade. Now, it's the WORST phone I have ever owned. After the upgrade, I had to do a factory reset and now the phone consistently freezes (and I'll have to pop the battery back in and out to get it to work again) and the battery life is half of what it used to be. Before the upgrade, it would last me ALL DAY -- now it only gets me to lunch and I haven't changed one thing about my apps. Everything is the same. Anyone know how to change it back to the original settings or fix the issue? HELP!

[TamaraH_VZW]

Thank You for your feedback, Community

We here at Verizon have received many calls, forums & tweets regarding the slowness of the Fascinate as well as the decrease in battery power since the 2.2 Froyo update.

I also have the Fascinate so not only can I sympathize, but I also empathize. 

We have taken your concerns and sent them to Samsung.

As of 7/12/11 this is the last response we in reference to the battery life & lagging of the Fascinate

Battery performance issues are still under investigation for the Fascinate; Maintenance Release expected soon to address these issues

melimel-unfortunately there is no way to go back to the previous software version. 

The good news is that we know Samsung is diligently working on software to correct these issues.

[skud]

I've owned the phone seince it came out after the update it did the same so I went to the store and thee said other update fried part of the phone and are about to do a full recall on the galaxy s fascinate

[HK_USP]

Downloaded the ED05 update the other day and it supposedly cured the incoming call issues.  That's good, I'm glad to hear that SOMETHING is being done, at least my phone is a phone again.  However, there are WAY more issues that need to be addressed than just that one.