Help Is my Droid about to completely lose its mind?

[johninbigd]

My Droid began acting very strangely yesterday. Here are some of the things its been doing:

* Notification bar opens up on its own
* Screen jumps around randomly as I'm swiping
* App drawer hung up halfway open and started shaking like mad
* Home screen stops responding and sometimes doesn't even display icons
* Device hangs for many seconds at a time intermittently, requiring a battery pull
* Home button and Search button stop responding to presses intermittently (and sometimes the home button would work just fine, but the search button was completely unresponsive no matter which app I was in)
* Trying to move an icon around would cause it to start jumping around wildly on its own, mostly over to the right side of my screen, before eventually returning on its own back to its original location
* My browser zooms in as I'm swiping, as if I'm using multitouch, but I'm only touching the screen in one place.

I've uninstalled any apps that I installed recently and I'm rebooting again...for the gazillionth time. I'll see if that makes any difference. I'm worried that the phone is just about to completely crap out on me. It locked up completely a few times yesterday and I had to reboot it. It went from being pretty reliable to suddenly being horribly unreliable.

Any thoughts?

FYI, I'm running stock 2.1.

 

[obutto]

Factory reset

 

[johninbigd]

I discovered that I now have a dead area on my touchscreen, too. It's over the search button and where the delete key is on the soft keyboard. I think the screen is starting to malfunction.

 

[fscholl]

My Droid was also going haywire, on 5/4. After uninstalling a pile of apps, and numerous reboots, it's become stable again. But I also now have the dead spot. When in portrait mode, it's about the right-hand-most 1/4 inch or so of the screen. Using the on-screen keyboard, in portrait mode, the right-most column of keys (p, l, <del>, search) are unusable. I was suspect of a hardware problem, but now that I see someone else with identical symptoms, I am considering it possible that it's a bad app. Any suggestions?

 

[johninbigd]

I saw someone else who began to have the same issues a couple of days ago, too. That seems absurdly coincidental. I really have no idea what the problem could be, though. I completely wiped my phone this morning and installed Cyanogenmod on it and a new kernel, and I'm still having the same problem. I can't figure it out. It's too coincidental to be a common hardware problem happening at the same time. However, if it were software, I think it wouldn't be happening to me now and it definitely is.

This is pretty strange.

 

[johninbigd]

I'd also like to say that it's the same keys that I'm having a problem with. This just can't be a coincidence, but I don't know what else could be causing this other than faulty hardware.

 

[fscholl]

I had been running the Swype beta app, which I thought might have caused some mis-mapping of the keyboard, and so have removed that, as well as a gaming emulator, comments on which suggested that there was faulty keyboard mapping. No improvement. But it's not just the software keyboard - it's that entire 'vertical stripe' on the screen. I also read some threads elsewhere suggesting that screen protectors may be trapping moisture on the screen and causing problems, so, removed that, but still no change. Can you think of any other apps you had recently installed? I have a few more recent additions to uninstall, then it's a factory reset...otherwise, time to cash in on my insurance policy...

 

[johninbigd]

My problems began a couple of days after trying Swype, so perhaps there is a correlation there. But I uninstalled Swype and was using ShapeWriter for a couple of days before this weirdness began to happen. I also had installed an app that makes my phone vibrate when ending a call. I had recently installed the Skyfire browser. I'm not sure what else.

Regardless, I completely wiped my phone and installed a new OS and kernel today and I still have the dead spots. So weird. My replacement phone should arrive tomorrow. I hope it doesn't end up with the same problem.

 

[fscholl]

Never touched shapewriter. I had also installed the Skyfire browser (and only tried it a couple of times), but that's now gone too. Good luck with your new phone. I assume you had to use your Assurion insurance policy? How much did they hit you for to get the new phone?

 

[johninbigd]

No need for insurance. This is a warranty issue. The replacement is free.

 

[fscholl]

How long after you got it? How long did it take them to send? And was this done just with a phone call?

 

[johninbigd]

How long after you got it? How long did it take them to send? And was this done just with a phone call?

I got mine the day they came out. I just walked into a Verizon store and told them I was there to swap out the phone because it was malfunctioning. I showed them the problem and within just a few minutes they had arranged to ship a replacement to me. I'm sure it will be a refurbished phone, not a brand new one.

 

[fscholl]

Did they let you keep the old phone until the new one arrives? I have a ton of stuff on my SD card which I'd like to keep, or at least back up elsewhere, and perhaps some data in the main ROM as well.

 

[johninbigd]

Did they let you keep the old phone until the new one arrives? I have a ton of stuff on my SD card which I'd like to keep, or at least back up elsewhere, and perhaps some data in the main ROM as well.

Yep. I just have a few days to ship the old phone back to them once the new one arrives. You keep the SD card and put it into the new phone. You can use Astro File Manager to backup your apps. I tried it today and it worked great. You can easily restore your apps from backup if you don't feel like downloading them again from the Market.

 

[fscholl]

Cool. I'll probably still do a factory reset before I go back to Verizon. I've been using AppMonster (formerly AppManager, I think) to back up my apps for months. I like that one better than ASTRO, because it will keep multiple versions of the same app (so, if there's a buggy version, it's easy to revert back to an earlier one).

 

[fscholl]

johninbigd - please let us know how you make out with the replacement. thanks in advance.