Help HTC desire crashes and restarts randomly

[tpm76]

My phone started this shutting down due overheating a couple of weeks ago, phoned HTC this morning as i have had enough and to be fair the service was first class.
Phone getting picked up tomorrow morning and the standard 7-10 day turnaround.
Guy on the phone knew about the problem and said it really was a hit or a miss with the phone, some are perfectly fine and others have this problem.
He also assured me regardless of what software it comes back with and even if a new motherboard has been put in that all my backups would go back on to the phone....not so sure myself but thats what he said, seemed to know his stuff, not just a desk monkey from what i could detect from speaking to him.

99% sure its a heat switch off problem due to the fact i tested it in a rather odd way, had the phone running heaps of things at once with not one shutdown whilst it was in my Fridge!!
I then recreated the same load a few hours later in my room temp house and see ya later, shut down around 30 oC after just a few mins.

Anyways thats my findings with it and hoping this new board is going to fix the problems.

 

[Mosh]

standard 7-10 day turnaround.

Do note that's *working* days... so allow three "real" weeks.

 

[tpm76]

Yeah. not really expecting to see the phone again until sometime in the last week of Sept if i'm lucky! As long as they fix the damn thing i couldn't care!

 

[hrvoje123]

Hi everybody,

I have a same problem here, but curious in my case is that the phone starts to restarting indefinitely, ONLY, when I'm in the area without wireless signal AND with poor gsm signal. As soon as I'm at home or in my company where wireless is available, everything is OK!?!?

Also, when phone is in restarting cycle, only thing what I can do is to remove SIM card and then, again, everything works flawlessly. And it's working whatever I do (browsing (via WiFi of course), gaming, navigation...) The moment I put sim card back to the phone restarting goes again.

Sometimes although, after some time of cooling down, I can put the sim card back in and the phone works for couple of hours.

Strange thing is that I have phone for two months now and this problem started to appear just two days ago. I upgraded to 2.2 a month ago so I can't associate this problem with Froyo. Last thing I installed was Google Earth (via apk since it's not available on market in my country)

Have anyone tried with downgrading to 2.1 or maybe re-flashing with Froyo again. Is that even possible?

Thank you for any suggestions or advices cause I'm really desperate here!!!

BR

 

[Mosh]

hrvoje - I can't recall if it's on this thread or elsewhere, but I did read of other people who only had problems when using 3G. They could surf for ages using wifi, but within a short time of using the 3G connection the reboots occurred.

For them, it was the same solution as the rest of us - ship the phone away for repairs. In their case the motherboard *and antenna* were replaced.

 

[wee momma]

Well my phone has now ended up at HTC as well
Hoping they sort it out fast as its now a week and i miss it !!!!

Rang HTC today 13th Aug, (it's now being scanned so they say) wot ever that means? 4got to ask...DOH!! anyone know what that means?????????????
They recieved pne on the 7th Aug even tho cpw had pne on the 3rd Aug (slow or wot!!!!!!). gotta now ring Htc on Friday 17th Aug for yet another update. worst of all ,wne it's fix they send it bk to cpw who will then ring me to collect. Reckon its best if I keep n eye on the tracking repair..........just in case cpw are SLOW to ring. (which seems to be the case here.) O well will keep ya posted. with out come.

 

[hrvoje123]

hrvoje - I can't recall if it's on this thread or elsewhere, but I did read of other people who only had problems when using 3G. They could surf for ages using wifi, but within a short time of using the 3G connection the reboots occurred.

For them, it was the same solution as the rest of us - ship the phone away for repairs. In their case the motherboard *and antenna* were replaced.

Thank you Mosh for quick answer!

It seems there's nothing else to do than to get the phone for repairs and pray! :-(

Of course, before that, backup is needed, so does anyone can recommend software to BACKUP all data on the UNROOTED Desire?

Thanx again!

 

[Mosh]

Of course, before that, backup is needed, so does anyone can recommend software to BACKUP all data on the UNROOTED Desire?

Going back a few posts, someone tried a program (or the guy in their mobile shop did) and when they got their phone back they couldn't get it back.

I've just used the built-in backup that saves contacts etc on to the memory card. From what I've heard, this works fine - of course I don't know exactly how much of your stuff it backs up! Guess I'll find out when my phone is returned

 

[amg_1969]

Summary of my issues:

I got my Desire from Orange in April and all was well, everything just worked. Then in June the random reboots started and they became particularly annoying when using GPS in the car. From then on if I tried to use GPS the phone would more often than not reboot and using Sat Nav / Google Maps was out of the question as it would get hot and then reboot.

I started to log what I was doing whenever the reboots occured and I pinned it down to:

Using the Desire (media player / internet) when charging via USB
Using GPS at anytime

In the latter case, the time to reboot was accelerated if charging via USB. This seems to make the problem worse as the back / bottom of the handset gets very hot.

On Monday this week I rang Orange and reported the fault. They talked me through the hard reset but within 10 minutes I could re-create the reboots using the above scenarios and called them back. To their credit, they said I could have a replacement as it was less than 6 months old and this duly arrived on Tuesday morning.

I've been using the replacement for a day now and GPS / Sat Nav haven't failed. However, when I use this AND have the phone charging via USB it is still getting very hot. My gut feeling is that if I carried on using it as I had before, i.e.

Using the phone all day with it being charged by USB from my desktop
Using GPS / Sat Nav in the car and charging via USB

That the same problems will occur again. From now on, if I want to use GPS / Sat Nav I won't use the charger and will rely on battery power only. The same goes for using my phone at my desk; I'll continue to use the music player but will only charge the battery when I am NOT using the phone.

I reckon these phones have a design flaw that only appears after they've been heated up and cooled down over a number of cycles and charging the phone AND using applications just makes this worse. If this is the case then I hope that the new motherboards being fitted to your Desire's work better than before. From my point-of-view, I am going to be plugging it into a charger far less than I did before in the hope it delays any problems!

Hi Elsie,

an update for you, my Desire has been back one week and has worked 100% spot on, it has been on charge using 3G, GPS Google maps for the last hour and the temp is 28.8c. They changed the motherboard in mine, as I had exactly the problems you described, they clearly have a bad batch that needs the motherboards changing.

PS Just got an email from HTC saying my Desire is being shipped today, when it has already been back a week !!

 

[tpm76]

Well not the best start for me tbh, can't even get the thing picked up never mind fixed.
UPS supposed to be picking phone up between 9-1 today, still not arrived and creeping up on 4pm, oh how i enjoy wasting my day waiting on people who should have been by now

 

[steveroe]

Well not the best start for me tbh, can't even get the thing picked up never mind fixed.
UPS supposed to be picking phone up between 9-1 today, still not arrived and creeping up on 4pm, oh how i enjoy wasting my day waiting on people who should have been by now

UPS are a bit pants aren't they, mine was booked in for a pre 13:00 collection and they turned up at 16:20.

 

[Mosh]

UPS supposed to be picking phone up between 9-1 today, still not arrived and creeping up on 4pm,

Mine was due for 9am pickup. They tried to ring me twice while I was teaching, called them back and they were asking who I was and what I had to be collected! Turned out someone had cancelled the collection but they still had some record of it... or something. So they re-listed it and it was picked up around lunchtime.

Had problems with the delivery of the phone by another company, so it's not just UPS that suck.

 

[Elsie]

amg_1969

Please can you tell me how I can check the temperature of my battery? Is it an app? I can't see anything in settings.

Thanks

PS - I am glad yours is working ... just worried that my replacement phone will have the same issues as the first.

 

[nx1977]

Going back a few posts, someone tried a program (or the guy in their mobile shop did) and when they got their phone back they couldn't get it back.

I've just used the built-in backup that saves contacts etc on to the memory card. From what I've heard, this works fine - of course I don't know exactly how much of your stuff it backs up! Guess I'll find out when my phone is returned

Use mybackup pro, and you wont have issues restoring data as you would if the main board has been changed.

 

[Electrify]

Hi all,

I am having the exact same problem, only with the HTC Legend. At first I thought it was just when the phone was under heavy load, so I emailed HTC about it and they suggested that I use Android Task Killer to keep the memory free.

I can't say if it helped or not, but it still rebooted on occasion. The most common time was when I was on the phone at the end of the day when the battery was lower. It couldn't just be a memory issue, since after it reset I'd call the person back and it would continue to crash again shortly afterwards - even if I had just cleared the memory on the phone during a phone call! The phone would become warm, and the battery widget would read close to 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit).

I brought my phone to Bell to send out today, cause this way I can get a loaner phone in its place (HTC Diamond with Windows Mobile 6.1 ). Here's hoping it won't take too long. It is kind of funny though, cause when I first went to get this phone, the first one they gave me the antenna or something was damaged inside so they could not set it up. I figured the odds of the second one they gave me being defective were slim to nil. HTC may have some awesome features in their phones, but their quality assurance will have me think twice before I purchase one of their products again...

EDIT: I can't say if if an entire run of HTC phones were shipped with defective motherboards, or if a visible number of lemons slipped through, but I am confident that this extends beyond a "less than 1%" number of phones. I bring this up because Bell charges $45 for a loaner phone. So as far as I can see, the cost of my phone has jumped from $80 to $125 - and that includes 2 weeks of using a crappy WM device! When it does come back, I am going to write HTC an angry email letting them know I won't be buying any of their products again, and will recommend against them to others.

(Hopefully they'll send me some free coupons or something )

 

[tropland]

...thanks for raising this issue...just signed up to be in the loop, as I have the same problem.
Bought my HTC Desire on the 18th of July (therefore could be considered as new) on the airport in Singapore on my way to India, because my old N 97 experienced problems with the charger and due to my job I really need to be reachable 24/7.
It ran amazingly fast an without any problems for about 1.5 months (where my only problem was the battery lifetime, but I sorted that out and could live with one full day of using it before recharging). Then it started crashing and rebooting itself and at first I thought it was one of the apps that I had installed, so I removed all apps which I had installed within the last 2 weeks, but the problem remained. I waited for the Froyo update and hoped it would resolve my problem, but it is still the same and within the last 10 days it got even worse, just typing a new address might cause the next crash and basically every use of more than 3 minutes results in a crash. I managed to sort out that when it has restarted (sometimes after several retries, removing the battery and let it switched off for 5 minutes before restarting) I use it at a minimum of maybe 1 minute and else only for phone calls, that way it stabilizes somehow, or better it doesn't crash.
I wrote to the HTC service, which was very helpful, but in Singapore they told me that the phone accordingly to the serial number was shipped to Norway and from there redistributed to Singapore. My inquiry was forwarded to Norway and they answered (as I did the factory reset already 3 times by now) that they know about the issue and at the moment the only solution would be to have the motherboard replaced. Big problem for me, because I live in Bali and no service here, the number in Singapore and the ones in Jakarta, which the guy in Norway gave me, are not reachable. If I have to send my phone for repair, then I would need to buy a replacement phone and in that case HTC Desire would be the most expensive phone I ever bought and at the end totally useless, as I don't need 2 phones.
For the moment I am totally disappointed and really pi**ed off...HTC nice approach but far from reliable quality...unless HTC comes up with an acceptable solution, but quick, as I am going to Saudi in two weeks and definitely with a mobile phone.

 

[BubbaHotepUK]

I've had the exactly same symptoms as described above, and agree with Elsie's diagnosis - I suspect components are getting cooked or something.

Things reached a head on Friday when I couldn't even get the phone to reboot after removing battery, SIM and SD card! I left the battery out over Friday night & through most of Saturday day, and optimistically put it back together again Saturday evening. Amazingly, so far so good - not one crash since then. Fingers crossed it's righted itself. Wonder if there is something that needs to discharge fully before it's okay?

Ha - turns out my optimism was replaced. The crashing problem returned earlier this week, and the Desire has just gone back for repair, 10 to 17 working days I've been told.

 

[wee momma]

All has anybody ever considered contacting bbcwatchdog with their problems, as I,m sure if this was the Apple iphone it would be on the news and all over the papers.

 

[superted187]

Hi Gang,

Gonna wade in with an update - after noticing the problems and finding this topic about a month ago, I've only just booked the phone in for repair tomorrow.

Anyways, all I have to add is just how bad the phone has got!!!!

It will now reboot when it is barely luke warm - so I have no idea if it is down to heat. The phone will now just reboot if I'm trying to rattle of a text message, or if I'm just poking around the menus - not even doing anything intensive.

This one actually made me "lol" - After emailing HTC I got the usual "factory reset it, test it out, then arrange a repair" email back. So when I tried to do a factory reset from the phone settings; guess what happened? The phone crashed and then got stuck in a reboot loop!! Good thing I was in a good mood at the time, otherwise I would have wanged it out of the window (I think there is a rage comic in that somewhere!).

In the end I had to factory reset it from the boot menu, which predictably hasn't fixed anything (Got the phone to crash in under a minute after the reset!). Anyways, UPS are supposed to be picking the unwell device up tomorrow.

Somebody mentioned that they are no longer recommending the phone because it has let them down at the wrong times. Well, mine has done the same because of this crashing issue - but 3 of my colleagues, as well as my girlfriend, have the phone and haven't had this issue yet. And my colleagues are all techies, so you can be sure that they give the phones a lot of work to do!

 

[madkat]

@ superted187 - my phone is currently with HTC waiting for repair. It has been with them for over a week now (they received the phone on Monday 13 Sept) so I emailed them yesterday and this is the response I got:

"Hi, I have just looked into your repair, and it is still waiting to go into diagnostics, at this time our repair turn around is 15 working days from delivery to the repair centre so unfortunately, the phone may take a further 10 working days before we will return your phone. Thank you for contacting HTC"

So you may have to wait at least 3 weeks (15 working days) for your phone to be repaired

 

[Mosh]

Yeah, the turnaround is mental. I've not chased mine yet - maybe I should as they've had it over a week I think.

I noticed mine was getting worse as well and rebooting at room temperature. I think once it starts rebooting it just gets worse and worse into a downward spiral. I also gather it was a "batch" issue, so not all of them are like this - although a substantial number are. Like Superted, I've a couple of mates who've got them and had no problem at all. Guess I'm the unlucky one!

I was quoted 10-15 working days before I shipped mine back if I recall. I'll be paying close attention to those numbers as I'm paying a premium on my contract for this phone and the facilities it offers.

 

[madkat]

Just to let you know I can track the status of my repair by going to HTC's repair tracking page although it does not tell me that much.

 

[Mosh]

Just to let you know I can track the status of my repair by going to HTC's repair tracking page although it does not tell me that much.

Reminded me to have a look and after a week, it's finally changed to "we are currently testing your phone". I am currently picturing a technician sitting there going "oh, no - another one of these..."

 

[madkat]

Reminded me to have a look and after a week, it's finally changed to "we are currently testing your phone". I am currently picturing a technician sitting there going "oh, no - another one of these..."

LOL. Mines still saying "We have received your phone at HTC service center"

 

[Electrify]

What if you brought your phone to an authorized retailer and don't have a ticket number (or serial number off hand)?