WOW the same here :laugh:
my sister told me her device stuck because of the damn facebook too :silly::silly:
**Ultimate Galaxy S3 Unusual Freezing Thread**
- Thread starter nhariamine
- Start date
WOW the same here :laugh:
my sister told me her device stuck because of the damn facebook too :silly::silly:
Sorry and glad to hear this, but other users are reporting freezing without Facebook or Chrome ;"Unknown Reasons" which is odd...
ok there is now many reasons to count in : the SDS fix ? but is happening on cm10.1 too ?? facebook or chrome ? many user have reported
i think if its the SDS fix it should happen on cm10.1 too , maybe some of cm user can help us
ok there is now many reasons to count in : the SDS fix ? but is happening on cm10.1 too ?? facebook or chrome ? many user have reported
i think if its the SDS fix it should happen on cm10.1 too , maybe some of cm user can help us
SDS in my opinion has nothing to do with freezing, but in some cases discussed on several threads, they said that the level of damage taken by the eMMC chips is what is causing freezes and eventually and upcoming Sudden Death, but not sure if this is right, will keep you posted !
but some people have reported the leaving the phone to unfreeze it self will help to get less freezes
maybe Sammy SDS fix codes are doing something in the background to fix the eMMC when the phone get freeze
but some people have reported the leaving the phone to unfreeze it self will help to get less freezes
maybe Sammy SDS fix codes are doing something in the background to fix the eMMC when the phone get freeze
Interesting ; Happened to me on friday iwas charging my phone normally and gone out, i returned home to check it and it was ice cold "Completely frozen" LED is off and phone completely off, pulled out the battery on put it back on and my S3 Booted successfully. Andreilux DEV of perseus kernel said that samsung didn't fix the problem entirely and that update 7 is not a "Permanant fix" for SDS and has got to have a complete kernel fix to prevent once and for all the SDS problem, so maybe this is one the disadvantages of the momentarily fix of SDS implemented in custom kernel and custom recoveries.
Interesting ; Happened to me on friday iwas charging my phone normally and gone out, i returned home to check it and it was ice cold "Completely frozen" LED is off and phone completely off, pulled out the battery on put it back on and my S3 Booted successfully. Andreilux DEV of perseus kernel said that samsung didn't fix the problem entirely and that update 7 is not a "Permanant fix" for SDS and has got to have a complete kernel fix to prevent once and for all the SDS problem, so maybe this is one the disadvantages of the momentarily fix of SDS implemented in custom kernel and custom recoveries.
yep as u said probably its not the Permanent fix
maybe Sammy trying to find safe way to update the eMMC firmware
or the Permanent fix :silly:and if its not implemented in kernels and recoveries the chance of getting dead phone is very high :crying:
yep as u said probably its not the Permanent fix
maybe Sammy trying to find safe way to update the eMMC firmware
and if its not implemented in kernels and recoveries the chance of getting dead phone is very high :crying:
Me and other fellow mates on xda who thought hopefully that the nightmare of SDS is gone,apparently it's not, probably it's getting worse and worse with every day of use, that why am not using my s3 for heavy stuff like always, i pull the battery out for the night just to put it back on in morning. i really like the s3, and this problem will influence my desire of if or if not i am going to buy the next flagship device from samsung.
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Overall,some Android 4.1.2 builds with SDS fix is one of reasons for freezing.
Hi guys!
I'm new here, I just registered in order to see if other people were having the 'freezing' problem. I got my Galaxy S3 in summer thanks to Vodafone, that gave me the phone free. It has always worked smoothly without any troubles, but it started to freeze last month, I can't remember exactly when it started but I do remember that it solved by itself, and it hasn't been freezing until yesterday. Yesterday I received a software update notification, and I decided to update the phone, I think it was 26mb to download, so it took just a few minutes to download and install, when it finished updating I saw the notification saying that the phone had been correctly updated, but when I tapped OK the phone froze then I restarted it by holding 10s the power button, and it's been freezing until now.
I've reading about this 'XXELLA' problem and I haven't been able to find a solution. For me, it's not a WiFi/Connection problem, it freezes anyway with/without being connection (I don't have 3G) and I'm not sure about how to unistall Chrome, there's only a 'delete updates' option in the App manager, and it downloads again by itself. I also read a possible solution in another forum: [...] In the dialler, type *#0011#. You'll go into the service mode. Select wi-fi using the menu button and you should see a toggle to disable WPS mode. Change it to OFF, I haven't tried that yet, but maybe I'll try that later. Is there any other solution? I know that the first time that I had this annoying problem it fixed by itself, but I'm afraid that the constant freezing may cause several damage to the phone, I think I'm going to send it to Vodafone since I have the phone in warranty.
Thanks for your time, and sorry if my English isn't correct, I speak spanish.
I'm new here, I just registered in order to see if other people were having the 'freezing' problem. I got my Galaxy S3 in summer thanks to Vodafone, that gave me the phone free. It has always worked smoothly without any troubles, but it started to freeze last month, I can't remember exactly when it started but I do remember that it solved by itself, and it hasn't been freezing until yesterday. Yesterday I received a software update notification, and I decided to update the phone, I think it was 26mb to download, so it took just a few minutes to download and install, when it finished updating I saw the notification saying that the phone had been correctly updated, but when I tapped OK the phone froze
then I restarted it by holding 10s the power button, and it's been freezing until now. I've reading about this 'XXELLA' problem and I haven't been able to find a solution. For me, it's not a WiFi/Connection problem, it freezes anyway with/without being connection (I don't have 3G) and I'm not sure about how to unistall Chrome, there's only a 'delete updates' option in the App manager, and it downloads again by itself. I also read a possible solution in another forum: [...] In the dialler, type *#0011#. You'll go into the service mode. Select wi-fi using the menu button and you should see a toggle to disable WPS mode. Change it to OFF, I haven't tried that yet, but maybe I'll try that later. Is there any other solution? I know that the first time that I had this annoying problem it fixed by itself, but I'm afraid that the constant freezing may cause several damage to the phone, I think I'm going to send it to Vodafone since I have the phone in warranty.
Thanks for your time, and sorry if my English isn't correct, I speak spanish.
Has been happening to me quite lately. At first it froze once or twice a day. But later thwarted frequency increased. But today the freezing kinda reduced automatically to 1 or 2 sec. But still I didn't wanna take any chances.
I had previously rooted my phone hence spent the whole evening today in the process of getting back warranty.
I tried everything. Rooting again, factory reset, wiping cache, reflashing 4.1.1. Nothing worked. I flashed 4.1.1 and again upgraded to 4.1.2. The freezes have increased now. The good news is I am bqck in warranty now.
Sent from my GT-I9300 using xda app-developers app
I had previously rooted my phone hence spent the whole evening today in the process of getting back warranty.
I tried everything. Rooting again, factory reset, wiping cache, reflashing 4.1.1. Nothing worked. I flashed 4.1.1 and again upgraded to 4.1.2. The freezes have increased now. The good news is I am bqck in warranty now.
Sent from my GT-I9300 using xda app-developers app
Omg, I've had this problem for the last week and it's getting worst by the day. Just today, I've had to hard reboot the phone 5 times because it didn't respond to anything. Last 2 days, I had people call me but I couldn't hear it ring because it was frozen! Arghh! I called Samsung just before and asked if they knew of this problem and the operator said yes and that the update could have been corrupted and to factory reset it. I'll give it a go tonight and see what happens.
This is pathetic! How can samsung do this to their flagship phone, what the hell is wrong with the samsung losers! My phone has constantly been freezing twice to thrice every damn hour. Initially i thought the problem is because i didn't hard reset after the 4.1.2 update so i reset my phone but the problem still exists. I am so pissed off that i am NEVER EVER buying a samsung crap. Go die samsung your company sucks, you rock at ruining android with your failass touchwiz.
I so wanna kill samsung irl! GOOGLE PLEASE BAN SAMSUNG AND DONT LET THEM USE ANDROID ON THEIR CRAP HARDARE! SAMSUNG DO HELL WITH YOUR BADA OS ******s!
I so wanna kill samsung irl! GOOGLE PLEASE BAN SAMSUNG AND DONT LET THEM USE ANDROID ON THEIR CRAP HARDARE! SAMSUNG DO HELL WITH YOUR BADA OS ******s!
I upgraded my phone to official Samsung unbranded 4.1.2 last week and got a lot of freezes too.
It just happened for a few seconds at first, but then the phone wouldn't respond until I restart it.
The freezes were more frequent when using the browser, and the keyboard while typing.
Now I'm using an AOKP based ROM for 3 days and haven't had a single freeze yet. I hope the phone stays that way and nothing is damaged.
Currently using Revolt Jelly Bean 4.2.1 / Baseband XXELLA / Siyah kernel 3.0.31
It just happened for a few seconds at first, but then the phone wouldn't respond until I restart it.
The freezes were more frequent when using the browser, and the keyboard while typing.
Now I'm using an AOKP based ROM for 3 days and haven't had a single freeze yet. I hope the phone stays that way and nothing is damaged.
Currently using Revolt Jelly Bean 4.2.1 / Baseband XXELLA / Siyah kernel 3.0.31
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I’ve been having this problem with my S3 since the last update. Last night I uninstalled the Chrome Beta browser, the regular Chrome browser and Google Currents, and I’ve not locked up since.
It could be a coincidence but this was based on advice on the Nexus 10 forum, my Nexus 10 was having similar issues.
It could be a coincidence but this was based on advice on the Nexus 10 forum, my Nexus 10 was having similar issues.
i did some fast searches and found Nexus 10 do freezes too
https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=39879
http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=1998496
http://forums.androidcentral.com/go...-10-locking-up-freezing-not-sure-what-do.html
http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=2015321
so WTF now
https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=39879
http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=1998496
http://forums.androidcentral.com/go...-10-locking-up-freezing-not-sure-what-do.html
http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=2015321
so WTF now
having the same problem here on stock JB. Sometimes I couldn't even unlock the phone, even though I could see notification light, but most of the time the app I was using would just freeze. In both cases I had to take the battery out and restart.
I thought Swift Key beta might have been the culprit and after I removed it I thought it was better... until tonight when it crashed again. I've also removed Chrome which has reduced the frequency of the crashes.
I even went to the bother of hard reseting and rooting my device. On the up side I removed a load of Samsung's bloatware and now my S3 is nice and snappy as it should be!
Pretty annoyed though, considering this is meant to be the flagship model. Considering getting a Nexus 4 until the S4 is out *sigh*
I thought Swift Key beta might have been the culprit and after I removed it I thought it was better... until tonight when it crashed again. I've also removed Chrome which has reduced the frequency of the crashes.
I even went to the bother of hard reseting and rooting my device. On the up side I removed a load of Samsung's bloatware and now my S3 is nice and snappy as it should be!
Pretty annoyed though, considering this is meant to be the flagship model. Considering getting a Nexus 4 until the S4 is out *sigh*
Happened with me 2 times in last 2 weeks.
I was doing nothing when it happened , looked at the phone, blue LED was on and it was not responding to anything. Held power button for 10 secs and rebooted the phone. It kept on happening until I disabled the data connection.
A week after it happened again,same blue LED notification came up and it started to heat again. This time I was not on a cellular network and I was in a wifi only area.. Rebooted couple of times by holding the power button.
I'm just waiting for the next occurance, btw, last 4 days, not a single reboot and it is still working fine.
I'm on crDroid ROM (4.1.2) with stock kernel with XXELLA modem,and have recently installed and used chrome,
I was doing nothing when it happened , looked at the phone, blue LED was on and it was not responding to anything. Held power button for 10 secs and rebooted the phone. It kept on happening until I disabled the data connection.
A week after it happened again,same blue LED notification came up and it started to heat again. This time I was not on a cellular network and I was in a wifi only area.. Rebooted couple of times by holding the power button.
I'm just waiting for the next occurance, btw, last 4 days, not a single reboot and it is still working fine.
I'm on crDroid ROM (4.1.2) with stock kernel with XXELLA modem,and have recently installed and used chrome,
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People, It's most likely a media scanner issue where it's crashing trying to cache a corrupt media file.
Just do a factory format then also format your internal SD and if the problem still happens then format external sd too incase you have media on it.
Start fresh.
I noticed this problem even before the sudden death "fix"
If you install "cool tool" from Play Store and monitor the i/o you'll notice that the device randomly spikes to 50mb/s which "freezes" the SGS3 for a bit.. This happened in AKOP/PA/CM10.1 and Stock. This DOES go away but it takes upto 1-2minutes but happens often and iratates you badly
After weeks I've nailed it down to the stupid media scanner again (Happens on SGS1 and SGS2) and disabled it and deleted the cache pics for it from /DCIM/.thumbnails/ and replaced/frozed the apps that uses it (Camera,Music Player,Gallery,media/video player ). I now use Camera 360,Power Amp , Quickpics and MX Player Pro. Each of these apps use their own internal media scanning and caching system.
I've went though ALL the roms you can think of from CM10.1 , PA and Stock and all the Kernels you can think of too.. It's not related to the EMMC/SUDDEN DEATH at all. It's your internal Android media scanner being a **** and corrupting your thumbnails or trying to get metadata out of some corrupted media file and also because you are jumping over to AOSP and STOCK all the time which uses a different method of thumbnail caches and so it corrupts some of the files which then it keeps trying to scan over and over. Rebooting the device when it's "frozen" can also corrupt files on the NAND.
Best fix for this is either disable media scanner service and replace the apps that needs it or FORMAT YOUR INTERNAL SD (This is very RARELY ever done) after you install a new rom (especially if you are jumping to Stock Samsung and AOSP and vice versa) as that nukes all the cache files and rouge media corrupted files.
Sidenote which is not related , Kernels that have governors that take into account i/o as cpu busy which then raises the CPU speed for i/o access in order to reach rest quickly sometimes also exhibit this "freezing" problem. Yank555 kernel is one. I still use it because it's feature packed but pick the normal governor.
I'm currently running Omega 42 and Yank555 if you are wondering and have no random freezes anymore. I was on Siyah kernel and dual booting CM10.1 before and didn't have any problems either.
My theory on why Chrome is crashing could be due to the media scanner trying to scan the chrome cache files and something in it is corrupt. You could put a ".nomedia" file in Chromes data location if you can find it , most likely in /data/ someplace. I've never had that problem so I never looked into it.
Just do a factory format then also format your internal SD and if the problem still happens then format external sd too incase you have media on it.
Start fresh.
I noticed this problem even before the sudden death "fix"
If you install "cool tool" from Play Store and monitor the i/o you'll notice that the device randomly spikes to 50mb/s which "freezes" the SGS3 for a bit.. This happened in AKOP/PA/CM10.1 and Stock. This DOES go away but it takes upto 1-2minutes but happens often and iratates you badly
After weeks I've nailed it down to the stupid media scanner again (Happens on SGS1 and SGS2) and disabled it and deleted the cache pics for it from /DCIM/.thumbnails/ and replaced/frozed the apps that uses it (Camera,Music Player,Gallery,media/video player ). I now use Camera 360,Power Amp , Quickpics and MX Player Pro. Each of these apps use their own internal media scanning and caching system.
I've went though ALL the roms you can think of from CM10.1 , PA and Stock and all the Kernels you can think of too.. It's not related to the EMMC/SUDDEN DEATH at all. It's your internal Android media scanner being a **** and corrupting your thumbnails or trying to get metadata out of some corrupted media file and also because you are jumping over to AOSP and STOCK all the time which uses a different method of thumbnail caches and so it corrupts some of the files which then it keeps trying to scan over and over. Rebooting the device when it's "frozen" can also corrupt files on the NAND.
Best fix for this is either disable media scanner service and replace the apps that needs it or FORMAT YOUR INTERNAL SD (This is very RARELY ever done) after you install a new rom (especially if you are jumping to Stock Samsung and AOSP and vice versa) as that nukes all the cache files and rouge media corrupted files.
Sidenote which is not related , Kernels that have governors that take into account i/o as cpu busy which then raises the CPU speed for i/o access in order to reach rest quickly sometimes also exhibit this "freezing" problem. Yank555 kernel is one. I still use it because it's feature packed but pick the normal governor.
I'm currently running Omega 42 and Yank555 if you are wondering and have no random freezes anymore. I was on Siyah kernel and dual booting CM10.1 before and didn't have any problems either.
My theory on why Chrome is crashing could be due to the media scanner trying to scan the chrome cache files and something in it is corrupt. You could put a ".nomedia" file in Chromes data location if you can find it , most likely in /data/ someplace. I've never had that problem so I never looked into it.
Interesting last post -- I'd jumped to the assumption my frequent freezes were eMMC related, but now I'm really not sure.
I can read the eMMC completely cleanly -- yet the hang still occurs. So maybe this is a kernel issue after all, and not a HW fault. Just yesterday I opened up a request with samsung to return the phone, and at the same time am seeing friends with *replaced* phones getting issues. Even when the board was replaced, and already (I presume) running up to date fw.
Ummm...
More info as I posted in another thread http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?p=37929853#post37929853
I can read the eMMC completely cleanly -- yet the hang still occurs. So maybe this is a kernel issue after all, and not a HW fault. Just yesterday I opened up a request with samsung to return the phone, and at the same time am seeing friends with *replaced* phones getting issues. Even when the board was replaced, and already (I presume) running up to date fw.
Ummm...
More info as I posted in another thread http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?p=37929853#post37929853
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66Latest Thread Update :
16/04/2013 ---- Added Rob's DFG trick Method for new comers to save searching for it .
04/03/2013 ---- Added XXEMB1 as Most reliable freeze free build .
01/03/2013 ---- added advice on kernels with SDS Fix .
26/02/2013 ---- Added links to LagFix (fstrim) premium ,and DFG.
Now that the Galaxy S3 Sudden Death Syndrome has supposedly been fixed by the Update 7 by Samsung patched for Kernel and Recovery ,
There is some poping up posts about the Galaxy S3 freezing with lockups,Lockscreen not responding that requires pulling out battery
and ending up with unsual rebooting and bootlooping which is a very awkward and annoying issue, especially the Q&A section which contains
a lot of angry S3 users reporting this problem ; Ex
Galaxy S 3 keeps freezing every 5 mins (50+ freezes a day)
Galaxy S3 keeps freezing
Well i decided to make this thread in the benefit of spotting the problem and to make sure we have accurate causes and eventually elaborate a solution to this disturbing problem.
Share your experiences down by posting the ROM, the Kernel, the Recovery and the Bootloader that you are on right now, so we can filter the answers and relate them with the freezing problems on The Galaxy S3.
Reported Issue Reasons :
1) - Facebook app for Android.
2) - Google Chrome Browser.
3) - Some Samsung Based Android 4.1.2 builds/Roms causing freezing.
4) - In Some cases, Media Scanner causing lockups.
5) - In Some cases, Swiftkey Flow Bêta causing freezing.
Possible Direct Reason :
Possible Current Solution :
I. If the phone freezes, wait until it unfreezes itself. I think this is the important part.
II. The DFG "Dummy File Generator" is only used to trigger the freezes.
III. I think you could also just wait for the freezes to be triggered by all-day-use, but this would be very impractical to wait 20 minutes to
unfreeze when you need the phone.
IV. So we write dummy data with DFG to provoke the freezes.
Highly Recommended Advice :
The write access to an affected block without Sudden Death fix seems to damage the data on this block which _can_ lead to a sudden death.
Because of that I would recommend to stay with KERNELS that have the Sudden death fix included, even if it could cause freezes.
Reported Most Stable " Freeze Free " Build/Rom :
XXEMB1 and all Custom Roms based on this build.
Dummy File Generator :
Alternate Working Solution :
LagFix (fstrim) Premium
Rob's Dummy File Generator Method to solve persistant freezes on the Galaxy S3 :
Rob's DFG Method , Please take a moment to thank him for his contribution to solving this problem.
Let me repeat it again:
Whoever has problems with freezes, please try this at least and give positive or negative feedback here. We have good experience with this method to sightly reduce and/or completely eleminate the freezes.
No, this means that the problems occur when writing the eMMC, not reading.
Try to wait for the phone to unfreeze (5-25 minutes) it seems that it helps and the freezes get less.
If you have that kind of freezes, that are caused by the SD-Fix your phone will unfreeze after that time without reboot.
To provoke the freezes you can also empty your internal storage as much as possible and then use the dummy file generator (generate all) to fill the internal memory 1-2 times.
After each run you can simply delete the dummy files with the delete button.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/d...nomunomu.dummy
Free up 8GB or more to have enough free space on internal memory.
If you have 8 GB free internal space, write 2 times dummy files. 2x8GB are 16GB. The internal wear leveling algorithm spreads these writes over the whole 16GB physical chip area.
There is a good chance that writing EACH sector on the eMMC resets/averages out the internal block data (f.e. write counters) that trigger the Bug and the Fix (Freeze).
If the phone freezes while writing the dummy data (it propably will), just let the phone do what it wants. It will continue to work after 2-25 minutes for each freeze.
This unfreeze after 5-25 minutes seems to have a positive effect.
You can have more than one freeze while doing this. Just let the phone do what it wants. If the dummy file generator crashs cause of a freeze, just restart the App.
When your finally able to write a amount of 16GB data (2x8GB dummy files) in subsequent runs without freezes you have a good chance that your freezes are gone for now or maybe even forever.
You need to write a minimum amount of 16GB data (or more) with this procedure! If you write less data, you didn't even need to thest this DFG method.
The idea behind it:
The SD-Fix causes freezes when writing eMMC blocks in a specific eMMC block parameter state. There parameters are for example the block write counter. Just some few blocks are affected, but when they get written, the SD-Fix freezes the eMMC. Now it seems to have a positive ("healing") effect to wait for the eMMC to unfreeze itself, which happens after 5-25 minutes. For all day use this is not very practicable. So we write just some dummy data to the eMMC to trigger the freezes when we do have the time to wait for the unfreeze. Thats all.
-- From the forums I monitor I get 80-90% positive feedback that the S3 gets again long-time-stable (usable) with this DFG-method.
I got from 10-15 freezes/day to only 1 single freeze in the last 2 weeks without factory reset.
-- Some people needed to write 60-80GB of data until the phone became stable.
In the hardest case (only 1 case) I know, someone wrote about 1TB (1000GB) of data and then the phone became finally stable. He didn't got warranty so DFG was his last resort and after that it finally got stable.
In most cases 20-60GB written data should be enough to get back the phone on a stable state.
If youre familiar with odin, you can also flash XXEMB5 or newer firmware, cause it seems this includes a new, better SD-Fix that doesn't casue freezes anymore. DFG is not needed in this case.
PIT File :11
It's a shame that this post has been mostly ignored in favour of the "SDS" one, but I do actually believe both issues are related. My I9300 is running stock - always has been - and suffered with "proper" SDS last November.
The initial symptoms were that my previously perfectly-behaved phone would would randomly FC apps that didn't before, and some of my photographs and video taken on the phone suddenly became corrupted and unusable.
Finally, one Saturday morning, I woke up to find the phone stuck in a boot loop, going from the "Samsung Galaxy S3" black-and-white boot scree to the first blue sweep of the Samsung logo, then reboot. It would power-off and power-on and I could enter ODIN or recovery modes fine, but it wouldn't boot any further.
I managed to get my photos and stuff off the phone through USB in recovery, and decided to wipe and flash the same stock ROM via ODIN.
This process failed - it couldn't partition the device correctly. None of the flash counters were reading anything so I popped it into my local Vodafone shop where they said it just needed the firmware popping back on and they'd have it ready in an hour.
I went back and they said they hadn't been able to load the software and it would have to go off for repair. *sigh*
It came back about 5 days later with a repair report stating that they'd replaced the "main board" - presumably because of the eMMC lockup bug.
It was only after this that the whole "Sudden Death" news came about and I realised what had happened to my phone. The eMMC check app says that my new controller is the same "faulty" version so I've been waiting with baited breath for "safe" official firmware.
The update system threw XXELL5 my way just before Christmas, and I thought that was that, but a coule of weeks ago the phone started hiccuping again. I knew I'd seen this before and my heart sank.
Last week another update was available, this time XXELLA. Since then, all hell has broken loose on my phone. It is locking up about 5 times a day. Initially, I was rebooting it manually (by holding in the power button). Tuesday morning I was woken by my wife saying "shouldn't you be up by now?" - glanced at my phone and it was frozen on the black-and-white boot logo - no alarm! Arrggh! It's dead!
Powered off, back on again and it booted fine. Hmmm, this isn't quite the same as before then. Having seen the advice about leaving it when it's locked, I've been doing that religiously and, so far, it's always woken up again by itself, but it's definitely indicative of a fault somewhere.
I've tried to check what's happening with adb logcat (I'm not rooted - fully stock - so can't see dmesg) and there is always some sort of I/O error when the freeze happens - often an sqlite database. Then, a couple of days ago, three photos and one video suddenly became corrupted.
I've realised that there are two issues, and only one of them has been "fixed".
The main problem, I believe, is that the flash memory is dying quite rapidly. We all know that flash memory has a limited write life, and wear levelling is supposed to extend that life beyond the typical lifespan of a device (say 5 years for a PC SSD drive?). For some reason, the flash in these devices is wearing out MUCH more rapidly.
The "faulty" eMMC controller obviously had a problem when dealing with faulty flash cells and would get stuck in a permanent loop, bricking the device. As far as I'm aware, the "fix" that has been applied prevents this permanent loop. The system still needs to try and handle disk errors with the flash memory, but it's not a permanent freeze any more and eventually (once it's finished dealing with flash faults - often unable to recover the problem) the system will break out of the freeze and carry on as before.
Sometimes this means that an app has bombed out as it couldn't read it's data correctly, but most people would either have forcibly rebooted their phone, or not notice as that app would just restart next time they used it. Sometimes, however, it means that something more important has crashed due to the disk I/O problem, resulting in the phone needing to spontaneously reboot itself.
What this boils down to is - yes, I believe that there has been a fix applied for the "faulty" eMMC controller getting stuck in a permanent, irretrievable loop. But no, I don't believe the actual original problem has been addressed - namely that the flash memory is dying at an unacceptably fast rate for ... well ... who knows what reason.
I do have a theory on that too. Recently a friend of mine was looking to change his laptop hard drive for an SSD. I investigated for him and decided that the Samsung 830 series would be his best bet, if he could get hold of them. And why not the newer 840 series? Well - that's purely because the "consumer" version of the 840 uses Samsung's latest triple level cell flash memory. Newer, faster, cheaper to manufacture almost certainly but ... more importantly in this case ... less resilient. How does 1000 write cycles grab you? They claim that the wear levelling algorithm in the drives mean that their lifetime is still pretty reasonable, but I'm not convinced in the real world.
Any idea what flash they use in the S3? I have no idea, but I betcha it's something (a) cheap and (b) new(ish).
I'm now at a bit of an impasse with my phone, however. When I returned it for repair last year it was properly frozen. No-one could do anything to fix it, the flash wouldn't format or write firmware - the only recourse was replacing internal hardware (or the entire phone).
This time, however, it works ... sort of. I'm occasionally losing photos I've taken and occasionally finding it's locked up and occasionally having to wait for it to recover. No repair centre has the time to "live with" my phone for half a day, waiting to see what happens with it - and even if they did, they'd blame a rogue app or "something left over from the upgrade" - they'll just factory wipe it, maybe flash the firmware and send it back again "repaired".
It's tempting to "lose" it and pay my insurance excess ... but even then, I won't know when the problem will strike again - but that's the thing ... I'm certain it would be back.
I used to love this phone. Now I can't rely on it. I can't rely on it storing the photos I take with it. I can't rely on it ringing when someone calls. I can't rely on texts getting through to me on time. I can't even rely on it waking me up in the morning.
It's sat next to me now,lying on the desk with the screen all shiny and black. I have no idea if it's fine, or frozen. Is someone calling me right this second? I have no idea. Oh, there we go - pressed the lock buton - it's awake. I shouldn't have to check my phone every ten minutes to see if it's working or not.
*sigh* sorry - rant over.
Suffice to say, that's my take on it. If I thought it would help diagnose something "fixable", I'd root and see what dmesg is doing, but I'm convinced this is hardware and I'm also certain that Samsung aren't going to take the blindest bit of notice.
I'm pretty sure there will be more and more people complaining that their phones are misbehaving over the next few months, but it's vague enough of a problem that the "repair" will be wiping - just long enough to take them over the first year warranty...6
I'm really sorry for the issues you've been living with mate, sure thing is that what you said about memory lockups and blocking writing
firmware is totally true except mine doesn't freeze which is strange, mine is the affected model and is shown in eMMC brick bug check ;
-VTU00M
-06/2012
-Yes, Insane Chip.
The poll i made is permanant, but you have to post down Rom and kernel and recovery and bootloader to be more accurate to spot the problem and maybe some DEV can fix it as soon as possible.
Thanks for sharing ur experience with us mate.5
First ever user to report Chrome as one source of the problem, thanks mate, if any other symptoms occur and have anything to do with freezing, let us know ok !
