Help DROID Incredible random restart/reboot problem

[Incrediblian]

I think mine may actually be the battery though. Whenever it reboots, I take the battery out and its really warm.

You and an army of others thought this. Many replaced their battery. Sorry to say, but I have yet to hear of one who reported a long term fix from a battery change.

Good money after bad.

 

[Skada]

I have 3 standard batteries and the extended battery and it happens with all of them...unfortunately! The no reboot from the standard battery might be from a cleansing of the memory from the phone.

Try doing the OTA *228 or *226 (sorry keep forgetting which is which) and update roaming capabilities. This helped my INC for a few days, then reboots started happening again.

Has anyone tried changing batteries? What was the result?

When i called 611 they said its a known issue, involving the battery. I didnt tell them that i was using the seido 1750 ..

so today i unpackaged my htc stock battery and put it in, not a single reboot. The other battery took a few days before i got a reboot, so ill give this one a few days before i draw any conclusions.

But this is strange that changing the batery would make the problem stop.

Could it be that everyone reporting this issue, was on a seido 1750??

I hate to add this point, because its really not relevant. But when i had my BB 8330 i bought the extended battery, and also had reboot issues. Went back to stock battery and had no issues.

HMMMMM HMMMMMMMMM

A few days i will know.

 

[DtEW]

I'm probably way late to the thread, but I solved the problem for the most part.

So what I had was a stock Incredible, stock battery, on Gingerbread 2.3.4 pushed by Verizon. Aside from Swype beta that was once installed (and I got sick of updating it ad infinitum), the thing was as Verizon-sanctioned as possible.

So as most people noticed, the crash and reboot-loop disease came later in the Incredible's otherwise well-functioning life. Some people think it was heat related, and some thought it was update-related.

What I found was that it was definitely heat-related, although I was unsure which component. Of course I had hoped it was the easily-replaceable battery, but several experiments with a fridge and an incubator (I work in a lab) and a piece of insulating hand towel placed between the differentially-cooled battery and phone seemed to suggest that it wasn't the battery.

My first suspicion was that perhaps the thermal management solution was somehow not working (dried-out thermal compound?). I voided my by-now-non-existent warranty by tearing into the phone and seeing how this thing was dissipating its heat. A bit to my surprise, the back of the motherboard was expected to transmit heat to the back of the AMOLED screen. There is no heatsink on the front, only Faraday cages that sat with an airgap off the tops of the chips. Some of the cages were painted dark on the inside, perhaps to better absorb IR and dissipate it to the outside.

Frankly, this was a shitty thermal management setup, so I broke out the Arctic Alumina and basically slathered these things with non-conducting, non-capcitating thermal compound.

Did this help?

Nope... or at least not well enough.

Having remember the "free" performance increase that had come from Froyo, I wondered whether the updated OS now allowed a larger CPU load with less idle cycles... and much like overclocking, the CPU had been slowly becoming less stable through the thermal cycles.

I figured, what did I have to lose?

I rooted the hell out of the thing. It was both not easy and sketchy with a high risk of bricking considering the SNAFU'ed phone. Managed to successfully get in Cyanogenmod 7.1. Still crashing, but at least no boot loop.

Played around with CPU governors and max frequencies. Ended up keeping the normal "ondemand" governor ("conservative" was sluggish), but underclocked to about 65% of its normal speed. Tweaked "backlight" (yes, I know it's AMOLED) settings and increased it to 9 steps (from the stock 5) and experimented to establish a conservative lighting profile, but actually ended up better as it was consistently soothing and readable at in all conditions.

I can now surf for nearly an hour on the thing without triggering the dreaded thermal crash. The phone is no speed demon... but at least it's back to being totally functional now.

Irony? Already got a Droid Razr Maxx on the way.

There is one lesson that I learned: root early, around when your warranty expires, and it looks like the process is stable and more-or-less worked-out.

 

[blumeany]

To me, it seems like the issue is definitely heat related and moreso when you are using the 3g connection than with Wifi. I rarely have the issue when connected to wifi. But when I am in an area that doesn't have Wifi, or I am out and about, that's when the phone is at it's worst. Seems to be worst when browsing the internet or using the G+ app (which seems to pull a lot of data vs. Facebook or Twitter).

I had just had the phone reboot on me while on 3g. I'm also running Cyanogen 7. As a quick test I went ahead and lowered the maximum cpu speed by a couple hundred mhz and starting scrolling through the G+ app like a mad man (Moderate G+ usage caused it to reboot earlier). Also opened some websites and the Facebook app. Seems fairly solid now.

For the record, I've also replaced the battery before. Haven't popped the phone open to look around though.

 

[Incrediblian]

I'm probably way late to the thread, but I solved the problem for the most part.

+++++++

I can now surf for nearly an hour on the thing without triggering the dreaded thermal crash. The phone is no speed demon... but at least it's back to being totally functional now.

Irony? Already got a Droid Razr Maxx on the way.

There is one lesson that I learned: root early, around when your warranty expires, and it looks like the process is stable and more-or-less worked-out.

Glad to hear you got some improvement in reducing the dreaded reboot cycle, but if you consider being able to surf "for nearly an hour" to be a "totally functional" phone, or the problem "solved" you have different definitions of functional and solved than most people.

 

[DtEW]

Glad to hear you got some improvement in reducing the dreaded reboot cycle, but if you consider being able to surf "for nearly an hour" to be a "totally functional" phone, or the problem "solved" you have different definitions of functional and solved than most people.

It's shorthand. Do you really need a full accounting of what I do on my phone? I think most people would understand that my testimony of a continuous hour of a lit AMOLED screen and 3G I/O is illustration of a sufficiently heat-generating activity that is a realistic test of the phone's current thermal stability.

I find it amusing that you can speak for "most people", and it almost sounds like you're threatened by the idea that somebody else might have found a solution to a problem you gave up on.

 

[Nick The Great]

It's shorthand. Do you really need a full accounting of what I do on my phone? I think most people would understand that my testimony of a continuous hour of a lit AMOLED screen and 3G I/O is illustration of a sufficiently heat-generating activity that is a realistic test of the phone's current thermal stability.

I find it amusing that you can speak for "most people", and it almost sounds like you're threatened by the idea that somebody else might have found a solution to a problem you gave up on.

I appreciate all the work and data you've given us. But the fact remains that you've found (at best) a band-aid solution for the problem. As a victim of this myself, I'd be PISSED if this was the official response to me.

It's like if there's a manufacturing flaw in your car's brakes. And the manufacturer tells you it's fine, if you only drive your car for no more than 15 minutes at a time, no faster than 35 mph.

 

[DtEW]

I appreciate all the work and data you've given us. But the fact remains that you've found (at best) a band-aid solution for the problem. As a victim of this myself, I'd be PISSED if this was the official response to me.

It's like if there's a manufacturing flaw in your car's brakes. And the manufacturer tells you it's fine, if you only drive your car for no more than 15 minutes at a time, no faster than 35 mph.

I have no disagreement with your opinion. Basically, this is about making the best out of the situation you have. The effort and end result is acceptable enough for some people, and obviously not for others. I came to terms with the fact that neither HTC nor Verizon was going to help me at this point, way past my warranty period. (Again, I'm not implying that I'm cool with the device crapping out for no good reason just because the warranty has expired. Planned obsolescence deserves to be a crime, esp. in this day and age when we're curbing our excessive consumption and we should be building things to last.) Not implying that the manufacturer should be let off the hook for this by any means.

It was just a way to get through the rest of my contract with a working phone. And I suspect some people might be in this boat as well, and might benefit from this "fix".

This is why I didn't look at a Rezound (aside from that horrible Beats crap).

The other lesson is, root rocks, as does the CyanogenMod 7.1 that it enables. It's not like one doesn't know what it does, but rather that only after you have it and lived with it will you suddenly realize the revelation that it is. It's the difference between knowing what chocolate is and having tasted it for the very first time.

 

[Incrediblian]

It's shorthand. Do you really need a full accounting of what I do on my phone? I think most people would understand that my testimony of a continuous hour of a lit AMOLED screen and 3G I/O is illustration of a sufficiently heat-generating activity that is a realistic test of the phone's current thermal stability.

I find it amusing that you can speak for "most people", and it almost sounds like you're threatened by the idea that somebody else might have found a solution to a problem you gave up on.

Relax. Don't be so touchy.

Huff and puff all you want, or distract from the point by tossing out silly and irrelevant comments about someone feeling "threatened" by your efforts. It doesn't change the obvious reality that making your phone work for "a continuous hour" (GASP!) is hardly the basis on which to claim you have "solved the problem for the most part."

I concede that you have, ultimately, found the solution to the problem, though: you bought a new phone.

Congratulations. Welcome to the club.

 

[txrxio]

I saw this thread a while ago and was glad it hadn't happened to me. Now it has. I had the occasional random restart and didn't think much of it. Got a bit more frequent so I uninstalled Airdroid, the only new app I had installed for a while. The problem seemed to go away. Then I got a 32GB memory card and a couple of weeks later it slowly returned. Then this week I had my phone plugged into the car charger as normal and it did an endless cycle of reboots for 30 minutes, eventually ending another 15 minutes after unplugging it. Since then I've had many single reboots and a couple of sort reboot cycles. I'm still a few months from an upgrade, so I am very annoyed. Before this all happened, I could see myself using this device for a few more years. I'm going to switch back to the smaller memory card. If it still occurs then I'll try rooting it. But it looks like these kinds of things only work for some people. Combined with the low memory warning issue and the fact that the market sounds like it is flooded with people off-loading phones with the same issue, getting another off Craigslist sounds like a bad idea. It wouldn't be quite so bad if it didn't yell out "DROID!"; when I am in meetings at work.

 

[Holydoc]

It wouldn't be quite so bad if it didn't yell out "DROID!"; when I am in meetings at work.

Put it on silent when you go into a meeting. That way when it reboots, it will still be in silent and will not say DROID.

 

[euph_22]

Put it on silent when you go into a meeting. That way when it reboots, it will still be in silent and will not say DROID.

I believe you can also install an app called Silent Boot from market. However, you will need to go into the phone's settings menu (somewhere) and disable fastboot. I believe it's under applications but I'm not sure (I don't have my Incredible at the moment).

 

[txrxio]

The Silent Boot app is probably the only way since it seems to ignore my saved settings and set the sound profile back to normal on some of the reboots (but not all).

 

[sdrawkcab25]

The Silent Boot app is probably the only way since it seems to ignore my saved settings and set the sound profile back to normal on some of the reboots (but not all).

You can also use ADB to change the boot up sound (to something silent), root is not required.

Edit: nevermind, think they moved where the boot animation/sound are, so root would be required.

 

[txrxio]

I can't say if this is a coincidence or not, and just typing here might jinx it so I'm not going to do any negative testing, at least while I still need to use it. I was having the problem on an almost daily basis and noticed that it most frequently happened in the car. At first I considered it could be a heat issue from the vents, so I started lying it on the seat next to me instead of in its holder next to those vents. This reduced the problem but not much. Then I noticed it happening most often just as I stopped the car, which got me thinking about vibration. I wedged a folded post-it note into the gap opposite the battery contacts, then pushed the battery in. It was tough to do, so it was wedged in very tightly. Also, putting the outer case back on was a bit tough and there is a slight bulge, although you can't see that when I put my own protective case on top. Since then (over a month ago), the reboot issue has almost completely gone away. It will reboot itself almost once a week (3 or 4 times so far, spread out by about 8-9 days each time), but not get stuck in a cycle. It might be a complete coincidence, or maybe not. One theory of mine is that the battery itself wasn't the issue, but that it would vibrate enough to cause one of the other components to flake out. Whatever the cause, my reboot problem has gone away.

 

[cmdroid]

So I started getting a reboot every once in a while starting about 4 months ago. It turned into once a week...then once a day...then once every 2-3 hrs which is why I started to look for a fix. Did the usual uninstall newer apps, disable this that and the other, keep phone very still...nothing...reboot. Found this thread and read through Page 1 - 18. Got to the very last update by 'txrxio' and thought...what the heck. Went to wife's home office...stole a midsize post-it (yellow to be precise). Folded it into a third ...wrapped it around the back of the battery (I have the Seidio Extended Battery) on the opposite edge of the contacts. Put it back together and bam. No reboots for the last month. None. Nada. I waited to post any results until I was sure that I wouldn't have another reboot and frankly forgot to post sooner. I even registered on this site just to let others know who might have this issue. No clue if this will work for everyone but my Incredible and I are friends again.

 

[txrxio]

It has been a couple more months, so I can safely say that it seems to have worked - with one issue. Taking photos where the flash operates will more than likely cause a reboot. Other than that, it still very rarely reboots at all, maybe once or twice in the last month. So I still think it is a vibration issue and that operating the flash on my phone causes the bad vibes (I can feel it vibrate several times before it attempts to take the picture and then crash, losing the picture). Maybe I'll try adding another post-it note to see if that completely fixes it.

 

[wildturkey00]

not working for me, I have the extend battery and tried this, same boot loop, maybe I will disassemble the whole thing and put thermal paste like the other person did, but try to see if there are other places that need it as well.

on a side note, this only started to happen to my phone AFTER I did a factory reset and clear storage.

 

[cdandrews]

Im in Greensboro NC... I got my phone around 8 olclock tonight and it hasn't restarted on me a single time... Knock on wood.

How did that turn out for you