Root Home (softkey) disappearance?

[erisuser1]

I recently over-flashed CELB 4.3 on top of CELB 4.1, and was using the phone in my usual manner, when I noticed that my "Home" softkey was no longer working - either long-press or tap. Didn't matter where I was - even on an ADW home screen, neither "tap" nor "long-press" did anything.

Here's where things got weird. I assumed it was a problem with CELB 4.3, so I rolled back to a recent CELB 4.1 nandroid backup - the same one I had overflashed with 4.3.

Same deal; no "Home" button. Panic!

I replaced my screen protector - because it was lifting right near the Home softkey (it was 15 months old, so time to replace anyway). No joy though - no Home softkey. More panic - do I have bad hardware?

Then I rolled back to an unconfigured July 2010 OTA ROM; much to my relief, the Home softkey was now working. Yeah!

I had several CELB 4.1 nand backups over the last two months, so I rolled back to a CELB 4.1 backup that was about one week earlier than my latest. Yay, the Home key worked there, too! So, clearly something happened - either something I did or an app update - that had bolluxed up the Home softkey.

A number of apps in the market had updated within the past couple of weeks, so I slowly added back in market updates for apps a couple at a time (into the restored backup), to see if maybe one of the apps was causing the trouble. Even rebooted a couple times too. But, the Home softkey is still working, after updating everything.

So, the only wildcard left is *me*. I suppose I could have easily fat-fingered a setting or something without noticing it... and I note that the ADW Launcher "General Behavior" menu has a toggle that I am unfamiliar with:

Sense previews (enabled)

Anyway, my problem is fixed - but I'm wondering if anybody else has experienced this same problem? Could be just a data-dependent bug in ADW, and once it happened, it got carried forward into the new ROM when I overflashed.


eu1

 

[doogald]

I've been using CELB as my primary ROM for a while now, and I've stepped up through each update, and I've had no problems with the softkey buttons. I do use LauncherPro Plus myself, though I have used it with ADW without issue, either.

Sounds like a random anomaly of some sort. Maybe there is a setting buried in CyanogenMod settings for the home key as well? Or in Spare Parts?

 

[cmajpwc]

Was your home button working when you were in an app to get back to the home screen? What happened with my phone when I first rooted and installed a rom with FroYo and Launcher Pro was that there was a setting to control the behavior of the home button. I couldn't go back to the home screen or view the screen previews, and no haptic feedback came from it either. After going through the settings in Launcher Pro I found a setting to select what I wanted the home button to do, and all was well again. I'm not familiar with ADW, but that was what was causing my problems in Launcher Pro.

I also run Nonsensikal 16.1, never ran CELB.

 

[zerocool79346]

Hmm, that's an odd issue. I've had a couple issues on 4.3 myself, the biggest being a terrible lag that I think probably has something to do with CPUBoost. If I wake the phone up and immediately try to do any activity (open app, switch screens...etc) it lags like the day I bought it with 1.5 stock on it, however if I wake it up and let it set for approx. 10 seconds all is well (generally). I've thought about NAND-ing back to 4.1, but because of a few completely unrelated issues I finally made a call to tech support and managed to snag myself an Incredible. I'll stick around here though, this place got me started haha.

 

[scotty85]

Hmm, that's an odd issue. I've had a couple issues on 4.3 myself, the biggest being a terrible lag that I think probably has something to do with CPUBoost. If I wake the phone up and immediately try to do any activity (open app, switch screens...etc) it lags like the day I bought it with 1.5 stock on it, however if I wake it up and let it set for approx. 10 seconds all is well (generally).

im also on celb 4.3 and have just a tiny bit of lag when starting to scroll the home screens or open an app. once the screens start moving its smooth as glass. this tiny bit of lag had been present in every froyo rom ive tried. none have been 100% smooth the instant you wake it up. its small enuff that its easy to ignore and doesnt bother me.

i have disabled cp boost and am using setcpu instead. id say maybe freeze cpu boost and give the other a try,but sounds like you found a solution

eu1 sorry i have no comments on your home key. mine is working fine,but ive only been on celb for a couple days. ill be watching here to see what you figure out

 

[zerocool79346]

im also on celb 4.3 and have just a tiny bit of lag when starting to scroll the home screens or open an app. once the screens start moving its smooth as glass. this tiny bit of lag had been present in every froyo rom ive tried. none have been 100% smooth the instant you wake it up. its small enuff that its easy to ignore and doesnt bother me.

i have disabled cp boost and am using setcpu instead. id say maybe freeze cpu boost and give the other a try,but sounds like you found a solution

eu1 sorry i have no comments on your home key. mine is working fine,but ive only been on celb for a couple days. ill be watching here to see what you figure out

Unfortunately my lag is not nearly small enough to ignore. I literally have to let it sit for about 10 seconds or it will not scroll at all. Once my Inc gets here I'm going to work with it a bit and see if I can't get it back to working order (was smoother than any Sense ROM I had ever run) but I don't want to mess with it enough to do anything in the next two days haha.

 

[erisuser1]

Just to be clear, I was not faulting CELB 4.3 - based on the testing that I did, it seems far more likely that it is a bug in ADW. I suppose that pressing the "Home" button causes an activity in the whatever the default Launcher is set to; if that is the case, then that would implicate ADW, not CELB. As I mentioned, it was something that was already present in my 4.1 backup, and simply got carried forward into the 4.3 over-flash.

( As a matter of fact, I remember that a few days prior I had experienced a strange behavior of ADW - I had a "folder" in one of my home pages that contained a number of bookmarks - and I could no longer tap on the folder and get it to open up. Restoring my saved ADW homepages from the SD fixed that problem - but it goes to show you that bugs are everywhere: in both the OS and the apps.)

cheers

 

[zerocool79346]

Just to be clear, I was not faulting CELB 4.3 - based on the testing that I did, it seems far more likely that it is a bug in ADW. I suppose that pressing the "Home" button causes an activity in the whatever the default Launcher is set to; if that is the case, then that would implicate ADW, not CELB. As I mentioned, it was something that was already present in my 4.1 backup, and simply got carried forward into the 4.3 over-flash.

( As a matter of fact, I remember that a few days prior I had experienced a strange behavior of ADW - I had a "folder" in one of my home pages that contained a number of bookmarks - and I could no longer tap on the folder and get it to open up. Restoring my saved ADW homepages from the SD fixed that problem - but it goes to show you that bugs are everywhere: in both the OS and the apps.)

cheers

The more I look at it, the more I am inclined to agree with you that my lag is probably based on an ADW bug. Bout to do some testing and see if that's the truth.

 

[erisuser1]

The more I look at it, the more I am inclined to agree with you that my lag is probably based on an ADW bug. Bout to do some testing and see if that's the truth.

If you are using very aggressive Android LMK (Low Memory Killer) presets with the Autokiller app (or other means of doing the same thing), the Launcher itself can get reaped when memory gets tight. That behavior is usually quite obvious when that happens, though, since you will see a homescreen with only your wallpaper on it, and then all icons get painted up.

Not so long ago when the BFS/CFS and governor changes were being worked into the new kernels, a fair number of people reported difficulties coming out of sleep, but that probably depends a great deal on the choice of governor, the kernel version, and also whether or not SetCPU was in use. (I have stopped using SetCPU - it seemed to be useful back around CFS V5/V6 timeframe, but now I get decent battery life & performance without any of the complications that SetCPU seemed to cause).

eu1

 

[zerocool79346]

If you are using very aggressive Android LMK (Low Memory Killer) presets with the Autokiller app (or other means of doing the same thing), the Launcher itself can get reaped when memory gets tight. That behavior is usually quite obvious when that happens, though, since you will see a homescreen with only your wallpaper on it, and then all icons get painted up.

Not so long ago when the BFS/CFS and governor changes were being worked into the new kernels, a fair number of people reported difficulties coming out of sleep, but that probably depends a great deal on the choice of governor, the kernel version, and also whether or not SetCPU was in use. (I have stopped using SetCPU - it seemed to be useful back around CFS V5/V6 timeframe, but now I get decent battery life & performance without any of the complications that SetCPU seemed to cause).

eu1

Yeah I had to quit using the SmartAss governor because it just didn't stand up to what I needed it to with the screen off (Pandora streaming and music). I have been using the OnDemand and the difference was night and day, I think I'll start experimenting with the other governors for a bit and see if that clears it up. Installing Go Launcher EX certainly made the issue more livable, so I'm betting the old version of ADW baked into the ROM was having problems handling the widgets I had on the screens.