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Help Few issues with phone

Craftymaw

Lurker
Jun 7, 2013
1
0
Wondering if this is normal or does it have to be sent to Samsung. This is my first smartphone and I am trying to grasp everything, but my memory isnt as good as it was.
1. Had called my carrier and updated my phone. Next day I couldnt call out at all, then had taken battery out, then it worked and had gotten all these texts that was suppose to have come earlier.
2. It seems like it is now getting slower to respond,(not like when I had first gotten it, not even a yr old yet(in Aug)) like whenever I hit the back button, it take forever for Facebook page to come up, it takes awhile for the icons on the home page to come on.
3. It was doing some weird things when texting a week ago but not as much now. I would get a grey screen when it should be white. I would try to text and the white box couldnt pop up. When I click on the back button it would take me to somewhere else all together when I was in texting.
Should it be sent back? If I do a reset, will it make it better and will I lose all the picture that I have on the phone. I know that I will lose my contacts and the apps that I had installed. Anything else I will lose? (My husband had put in a bigger sd card. Thanks for helping.
 
Hey Crafty, welcome to Android forums! :) I'll try to help you the best I can.
1) Well... this definitely isn't normal. :p Did you experience signal problems during this time period? Of course... you said the problem resolved itself right after a battery pull... That's really weird. When did this happen? I believe I know what update you're talking about. If so, I never had any of these issues.
2) It IS normal for a phone to kind of slow down a little with age, definitely if you have downloaded stuff onto it during this time. I know what you mean with the icons. Almost every time I 'back out' (press back repeatedly) of the internet, there is a significant pause until I see my icons pop up. You've had it for 10 months so I'm not surprised. Make sure you turn your phone off for a little bit every two or three days. If you don't, the phone will slow down. Make sure your RAM isn't really high (an app isn't being a RAM hog). If it is your phone will be kind of laggy. Make sure you clear cache on your apps. Cache can contribute to apps slowing down. Also make sure you aren't low on internal phone memory.
3) Where does it take you once you click the back button? That's really weird. The grey screen is odd, too. I've never experienced that. I have experienced the lag with the white box before. I just ignore it. Try downloading this app: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.trustgo.mobile.security&hl=en
and see if it finds anything weird on your phone. If you do a factory reset, most likely you'll stop experiencing these issues. You can save your contacts and pictures (I believe) to your SD card (meaning they can be restored), but everything else will be deleted. Sending the phone back is up to you. Besides number one (I don't know what went on there o_O), I'm sure everything can be fixed with a reset or just 'spring cleaning'. :p Hope I helped. :)
 
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Common issue with these smaller RAM phones are the excessive services running in the background. For example, even though I very RARELY use the Redbox app, it is ALWAYS running in the background. Found it the Redbox settings that it has a "receive notifications" option checked by default. Removed it, and now when I close RedBox app, the service goes away too.

Don't get too crazy with service killing, but it is something to look into.

Also, when you do notice the phone suddenly become unresponsive, try putting the phone down and leave it alone for a minute or so. Android has a decent automatic memory manager built in. It is just a little slow. When it sees that the phone is out of RAM, it'll do the right thing and kill/cache a task that isn't in use and suddenly the phone will work again.

Of note, worst offenders are any social media connected apps. Google+, Facebook, Waze, etc. So when using them, have some extra patience. While they run on these little phones, they are tested more against upper-mid range phones like the Galaxy S2 and higher.
 
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