Phone freezing often

[nickdalzell]

I've made sure to uninstall most of my apps and removed 1Mobile Market and re-enabled Google Play, and cleaned up a ton. but this issue persists. my phone is a low-end Android phone (runs Froyo, unrooted) made by Samsung (i'd post to the proper forum but it appears dead or otherwise inactive) and if i'm playing music from either the stock music player or even Play Music, for any length of time, the music starts cutting in and out and if i try to unlock to stop it, the phone is unresponsive, and seems to have an out of memory issue. the background is live and appears to keep animating but my lockscreen is frozen and refuses to respond to touch. the clock shown on it also is stuck. sometimes attempting to unlock over and over causes haptic feedback 'pulses' and the phone's music gets even worse and more choppy. the only solution is to pull the battery (my old BlackBerry Curve had a similar malfunction, also when playing music ironically, and battery pulls were the norm for BlackBerries)

the issue ONLY happens with the music. and ONLY music stored on the SD card (tried different SD Cards and they all have this problem) and whatever happens, even if the phone is working great, it acts as if CPU and RAM usage skyrockets all of a sudden. it is NOT an app, NOT dependent on one particular music app, ONLY happens with SD Card mp3s stored and read, and ONLY with the screen off and locked as normal usage. is this some kind of Froyo/Gingerbread problem? (it also happened on other devices that ran both versions, so it's not a phone-issue) it also happens in Airplane mode so mobile network/wifi has nothing to do with it. it's not convenient to have to reboot one's phone at work because of this (i use music to help me work when i'm doing a long job) and it does not matter if it's been on for a week or turned on the first day of the week. i cannot nail it down to one app, bitrate of song, or a problem with the SD card itself. either the phone has issues reading the SD card at random causin this or something is suddenly jumping up reading on the CPU and RAM even if all i have is stock apps going.

the phone has NO other problems, never crashes or displays ANRs, has excellent battery life, and never phantom boots, this is the only problem and a very annoying one as i cannot pinpoint its cause. Android ICS and JB seem immune to this bug also, meaning it has something to do with how GB/Froyo manages itself.

 

[SkyJackpot]

I've made sure to uninstall most of my apps and removed 1Mobile Market and re-enabled Google Play, and cleaned up a ton. but this issue persists. my phone is a low-end Android phone (runs Froyo, unrooted) made by Samsung (i'd post to the proper forum but it appears dead or otherwise inactive) and if i'm playing music from either the stock music player or even Play Music, for any length of time, the music starts cutting in and out and if i try to unlock to stop it, the phone is unresponsive, and seems to have an out of memory issue. the background is live and appears to keep animating but my lockscreen is frozen and refuses to respond to touch. the clock shown on it also is stuck. sometimes attempting to unlock over and over causes haptic feedback 'pulses' and the phone's music gets even worse and more choppy. the only solution is to pull the battery (my old BlackBerry Curve had a similar malfunction, also when playing music ironically, and battery pulls were the norm for BlackBerries)

the issue ONLY happens with the music. and ONLY music stored on the SD card (tried different SD Cards and they all have this problem) and whatever happens, even if the phone is working great, it acts as if CPU and RAM usage skyrockets all of a sudden. it is NOT an app, NOT dependent on one particular music app, ONLY happens with SD Card mp3s stored and read, and ONLY with the screen off and locked as normal usage. is this some kind of Froyo/Gingerbread problem? (it also happened on other devices that ran both versions, so it's not a phone-issue) it also happens in Airplane mode so mobile network/wifi has nothing to do with it. it's not convenient to have to reboot one's phone at work because of this (i use music to help me work when i'm doing a long job) and it does not matter if it's been on for a week or turned on the first day of the week. i cannot nail it down to one app, bitrate of song, or a problem with the SD card itself. either the phone has issues reading the SD card at random causin this or something is suddenly jumping up reading on the CPU and RAM even if all i have is stock apps going.

the phone has NO other problems, never crashes or displays ANRs, has excellent battery life, and never phantom boots, this is the only problem and a very annoying one as i cannot pinpoint its cause. Android ICS and JB seem immune to this bug also, meaning it has something to do with how GB/Froyo manages itself.

What's the exact name of your phone?

 

[nickdalzell]

Samsung Galaxy Precedent.
Android 2.2.1 Froyo
800MHz ARM-6 compatible
256MB RAM

Google Play Music and stock music player cause the problem after reading the stored music on any SD card and appears to have something to do with 'media scanner' as when i download a song, that little notification 'Media Scanner Running/Media Scanning Completed' shows up and during that process everything slows down to a crawl. i do not remember Eclair and Gingerbread having that notification, either. so something is either scanning the card during playback causing it to seriously slow down (possibly the player itself, and whether i am using Play or the stock built-in makes no difference) and eventually be unresponsive. i have found no means to disable this little scanning thing.

lock screen, screen off, phone in pocket, listen to ten or so songs, it is reproducable. sometimes it just slows down and touches don't register and if you keep trying, it slows down even more (this is if you can actually unlock it) and then all of a sudden the touches 'catch up' all at once and everything works again. other times, if the music starts stuttering or stops all of a sudden, you can bet a battery pull is required as something makes CPU usage skyrocket to 100%. i cannot find out what is doing it as the phone is frozen so i cannot even scan the apps under 'running services' to find out the culprit

what it seems like is the standard 'my device ran out of memory' issue. either Froyo is not able to multitask as well as ICS and JB (same SD Card has no issues in a Galaxy Tab 2 and even works perfectly in a chinese cheapie Trio Tab that runs ICS) or all the stock apps just can't deal with the minimal amount of RAM in my phone. even my previous ZTE Merit couldn't handle the same task despite having twice as much RAM. it does feel like the usual 'out of memory' error. phone gets slow, then unresponsive requiring a reboot, exactly like Windows. i have NOT installed a Task killer.

 

[SkyJackpot]

Samsung Galaxy Precedent.
Android 2.2.1 Froyo
800MHz ARM-6 compatible
256MB RAM

Google Play Music and stock music player cause the problem after reading the stored music on any SD card and appears to have something to do with 'media scanner' as when i download a song, that little notification 'Media Scanner Running/Media Scanning Completed' shows up and during that process everything slows down to a crawl. i do not remember Eclair and Gingerbread having that notification, either. so something is either scanning the card during playback causing it to seriously slow down (possibly the player itself, and whether i am using Play or the stock built-in makes no difference) and eventually be unresponsive. i have found no means to disable this little scanning thing.

lock screen, screen off, phone in pocket, listen to ten or so songs, it is reproducable. sometimes it just slows down and touches don't register and if you keep trying, it slows down even more (this is if you can actually unlock it) and then all of a sudden the touches 'catch up' all at once and everything works again. other times, if the music starts stuttering or stops all of a sudden, you can bet a battery pull is required as something makes CPU usage skyrocket to 100%. i cannot find out what is doing it as the phone is frozen so i cannot even scan the apps under 'running services' to find out the culprit

A very old phone but I think it will run smoothly and play your songs if you do a factory reset and be careful of certain programs that you install that are set to automatically start when you reboot, because even though they sit in the background they still eat some memory, of which your phone has very little.

I don't know how many programs you have installed or how many are set to automatically start but may E you can download a small application called System Panel Lite Manager and tell detail what programs you have open. That program also allows you to close programs and show how much processor usage the programs are using.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=nextapp.systempanel

 

[nickdalzell]

i am not going to factory reset my device. i got an entire theme that would be a total PITA to get back on. i would rather find the problem instead of treating the symptom the same way people do with Windows ('reformat and reinstall' --so tired of that solution)

other than Go Launcher/Locker and my live wallpaper not much else is installed (the books, play music, stock music, maps, etc are built in) the only other installed component is a Hewlett Packard 12C Financial calculator app. but it never runs unless i launch it and it closes when i'm done. nothing else freezes the phone, JUST playing music for a length of time from the SD card. that much i know. but it's not the SD card's fault either. tried three all having the same problem. something causes some kind of lag during reading the SD Card. as i stated i have never noticed 'media scanner running/media scanning completed' on any other device, and each time a song is downloaded, or if i receive an email, that notification comes up. each time it scans it lags like crazy. occasinoally i get a "microsoft activesync' looking icon (ying yang logo?) that i assume is background sync that also can lag it but i cannot be sure that it causes the music problem. i suppose i could disable it but i like my sync to be enabled to get certain alerts from things. disabling that and i don't get texts from my boss.

i also wondered if Go Launcher caused it so i disabled it for a day and it still froze meaning it's not launcher dependent either.

 

[Hadron]

It's not intrinsic to Froyo - back when my current device was using Froyo that never happened to me, nor does it now with Gingerbread. Though to be fair, while my device is limited it's not as short of RAM as yours.

Only when music is on SD is odd - why should storage device make a difference?

 

[nickdalzell]

that is exactly what i thought Hadron but streaming music from Play Music has no problems, but soon as it starts playing from my SD again (my library is a mix of music on Play and music on my SD Card and if i lose signal it automatically plays from SD only) if it does so for a length of time (roughly an hour or so) this problem will happen. it seems to have something to do with the 'media scanner running/media scanning completed' notification that occasionally comes up if *anything* changes on the SD card, be it an email received or taking a picture, or anything. i do not remember that notification on Froyo before when i had an MP3 player that ran the same version. it is merely an annoyance to have to reboot the phone at work but not a big deal if it cannot be solved, but i would love to pinpoint the cause as i'm just that way. i hate having unsolved mysteries.

 

[SkyJackpot]

i am not going to factory reset my device. i got an entire theme that would be a total PITA to get back on. i would rather find the problem instead of treating the symptom the same way people do with Windows ('reformat and reinstall' --so tired of that solution)

other than Go Launcher/Locker and my live wallpaper not much else is installed (the books, play music, stock music, maps, etc are built in) the only other installed component is a Hewlett Packard 12C Financial calculator app. but it never runs unless i launch it and it closes when i'm done. nothing else freezes the phone, JUST playing music for a length of time from the SD card. that much i know. but it's not the SD card's fault either. tried three all having the same problem. something causes some kind of lag during reading the SD Card. as i stated i have never noticed 'media scanner running/media scanning completed' on any other device, and each time a song is downloaded, or if i receive an email, that notification comes up. each time it scans it lags like crazy. occasinoally i get a "microsoft activesync' looking icon (ying yang logo?) that i assume is background sync that also can lag it but i cannot be sure that it causes the music problem. i suppose i could disable it but i like my sync to be enabled to get certain alerts from things. disabling that and i don't get texts from my boss.

i also wondered if Go Launcher caused it so i disabled it for a day and it still froze meaning it's not launcher dependent either.

Past programs that you've had on the device can also cause instability, as well as any modifications you may have made in the past, which can take many hours of setting and resetting kernel and system options etc to find a course, the same with Windows. An easier choice for many is to format and reinstall.

That isn't a choice for you however and I'm not sure if you wanted to install the System task manager which I asked you to at the end of the previous post which provides some more advanced information about what's happening.

 

[nickdalzell]

a system manager, much like the 'running apps' list in settings does very little if the phone freezes when locked and i cannot wake it up to find out what is skyrocketing my CPU, but i am betting the process.com.mediascanning process is the big problem. is it normal for the phone to constantly do that scanning thing if so much as ONE thing changes on the MicroSD Card? first week i had the phone and noticed this i installed Watchdog and it also couldn't help me as it froze when locked so i couldn't get into it.

what is really odd as it seems only the front-end UI freezes. everything else continues working, i still get notifications in the status bar, my live wallpaper is still animating fluidly, but interacting with the touchscreen is a no go. the lock screen, any foreground app like the lockscreen clock is frozen, but everything else continues running, and the clock in the status bar is fine. so whatever the case the actual foreground UI is what freezes, not the entire phone.

in the past i was addicted to task killers but reading into it i realized they are not needed and that 'Android will automatically free up resources as needed' which at the time i felt uncomfortable not being in control of what ran on a device i owned, and didn't like the idea of surrenduring control over what runs to the operating system, but it does seem that Android does NOT always free up needed resources on its own from time to time, since this problem has affected not only this phone but others running Gingerbread. it seems ICS and up are immune.

 

[SkyJackpot]

a system manager, much like the 'running apps' list in settings does very little if the phone freezes when locked and i cannot wake it up to find out what is skyrocketing my CPU, but i am betting the process.com.mediascanning process is the big problem. is it normal for the phone to constantly do that scanning thing if so much as ONE thing changes on the MicroSD Card?

There have been fixes for Media Scanner yes but they have been implemented on recent operating systems, not your version 2.2.1 which was released in 2010, so it wasn't worth me mentioning it.

 

[nickdalzell]

that would explain why later versions are immune but still...i find it odd that it runs the media scanner so often. move a file, it shows up. downlload email, pops up again. i don't recall that even happening in Gingerbread as much, it would run on boot but never while using it.

one time though when i was lucky to catch it while it was slowing down to a crawl, i looked at the RAM usage. it was using 238 out of 256 and i hit 'kill all' and immediately the phone sprang to life again. now i don't know why or what app was hogging so much but only six were showing, and most of them were background processes (facebook sync, contact sync, email, etc). normal usage of RAM is usually 216 or 192MB. apparently Froyo just cannot manage memory and i will have to accept it. or accept the *gulp* task killer method again. there is a definite memory leak somewhere.

 

[SkyJackpot]

that would explain why later versions are immune but still...i find it odd that it runs the media scanner so often. move a file, it shows up. downlload email, pops up again. i don't recall that even happening in Gingerbread as much, it would run on boot but never while using it.

one time though when i was lucky to catch it while it was slowing down to a crawl, i looked at the RAM usage. it was using 238 out of 256 and i hit 'kill all' and immediately the phone sprang to life again. now i don't know why or what app was hogging so much but only six were showing, and most of them were background processes (facebook sync, contact sync, email, etc). normal usage of RAM is usually 216 or 192MB. apparently Froyo just cannot manage memory and i will have to accept it. or accept the *gulp* task killer method again. there is a definite memory leak somewhere.

Indeed things in the past that have triggered the Media Scanner have included pictures stored in the browser cache and syncing picture data to google servers. The program I also suggested does a lot more for seeking the cause of resource hogging in your system.

You're not rooted or otherwise you could install a program to switch off the media scanner and manually switch it back on when adding pictures or music or videos

 

[nickdalzell]

if i were rooted i'd disable the Play Store update too, and use Market (saves storage). but i have caused more problems via rooting than i intended to solve so i am avoiding that plus rooting this phone involves some complicated and skilled Odin hacking which i am not too happy trying. i'll just have to install ATK again i guess.

EDIT: got the UI lag today and i think i pinpointed its cause. it seems that since my phone has extremely limited RAM (~256MB) that what is happening is that Go Launcher is being killed by the system when playing music or any app that takes a good amount of RAM. when i unlocked it today, it temporarily froze (again, live wallpaper keeps moving, but the launcher itself is not responding to commands or comes up blank and appears to be loading as if the phone has been restarted) and then revived itself, and Go Launcher finally appeared, and all the widgets in it loaded as if it had been rebooted. so what i did is enable the 'system persistant' in the Launcher settings to keep the system from killing it which may have two outcomes. 1) could cause the phone to crash completely, or 2) work fine. who knows? also, the problem became worse if the screen auto-rotated, sometimes causing Go Launcher to restart itself again, so i disabled that. now why the screen rotation would happen in standby is a whole other issue, but it did seem to happen worse if i was moving (the music getting choppy during playback) so perhaps the devs of the launcher didn't disable rotation in standby? but i read some forum post in XDA regarding rotation possibly bugging out the system and i never care to use it and can always turn it back on, after all, there is nothing more annoying than the screen auto-rotating for no reason and then watching every one of your widgets reload