**Ultimate Galaxy S3 Unusual Freezing Thread**

Have you experienced Unsual Permanant or partial freezes on you Galaxy S3 GT-I9300?


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nhariamine

Senior Member
Mar 5, 2012
495
611
Oran, Algeria
Latest 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 :

Originally Posted by : Rob2222

The freezes are caused by the sudden death fix. On that kind of freezes the phone unfreeze itself after 5-25 minutes.

The phone freezes when writing data to an affected eMMC block.

An eMMC block is affected, when it's internal block pararameters (as f.e. write count for that block) are in such a state, that these parameters trigger a corrupted block without SD-fix (4.1.1) or trigger a freeze with SD-fix (4.1.2).

When a phone is hitting an affected block with a writiing operation is completely unpredictable.

So these freezes can occur on almost each situation on the smartphone when it writes data.

But you have indeed a higher chance to trigger a freeze when writing much data.

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 :
 

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QorbeQ

New member
Feb 7, 2013
1
11
Now that the Galaxy S3 Sudden Death Syndrome has supposedly been fixed by the latest update 7 by Samsung patch for Kernel and

Recovery ,There is some poping up posts about the Galaxy S3 freezing and ending up with unsual rebooting and bootlooping which is a

very awkward and weird and annoying issue, especially the Q&A section which contains a lot of angry S3 users reporting this problem.


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...
 

nhariamine

Senior Member
Mar 5, 2012
495
611
Oran, Algeria
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...
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.
 

kiwiflasher

Member
Nov 21, 2011
36
2
Auckland
I am totally stock jellybean not rooted etc. Was having bad problems with phone freezing and lagging so started uninstalling things to try and fix. I found the problem was chrome, I had chrome, chrome to phone and chrome beta on took them all off now running silky smooth again.

Sent from my GT-I9300T using Tapatalk 2
 
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nhariamine

Senior Member
Mar 5, 2012
495
611
Oran, Algeria
I am totally stock jellybean not rooted etc. Was having bad problems with phone freezing and lagging so started uninstalling things to try and fix. I found the problem was chrome, I had chrome, chrome to phone and chrome beta on took them all off now running silky smooth again.

Sent from my GT-I9300T using Tapatalk 2

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 !
 

htcsnap93

Senior Member
Nov 14, 2010
844
191
I dont get it, you have a 2 year warranty. If it happens, and im sure the vast majority wont have any issues, take it for warranty.

Sent from my GT-I9300 using xda app-developers app

---------- Post added at 06:50 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:49 PM ----------

I made a similar thread here:
http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=2127443

TL;DR?

Phone started to freeze too much,every 5-10 mins.
Unrooted went to total stock after a megawipe.
Phone died after 2 days.
GOt 16 GB motherboard replaced with 32 gb.

This though seems vere interesting. Ive read that a few mention their board got replaced by a 32gb. Which prolly doesnt have the bug. So im guessing samsung is very aware of this bug.

Sent from my GT-I9300 using xda app-developers app
 

nhariamine

Senior Member
Mar 5, 2012
495
611
Oran, Algeria
This though seems vere interesting. Ive read that a few mention their board got replaced by a 32gb. Which prolly doesnt have the bug. So im guessing samsung is very aware of this bug.

I suppose that freezing problem is occured when a device is severly damaged even when on safe kernel and recovery, as much as i hate to admit it i think freezing S3 is the last symptom before SDS. Let's hope it's not.
 

camil

Senior Member
Jul 20, 2008
120
70
I suppose that freezing problem is occured when a device is severly damaged even when on safe kernel and recovery, as much as i hate to admit it i think freezing S3 is the last symptom before SDS. Let's hope it's not.

I don't know if this is true in every case (freezing S3 is the last symptom before SDS) since I have 4 or 5 freezes on 2 consecutive days about 2 months ago. After that the phone runs normally, not a single freeze since then. And another thing my SGS is the 32 Gb model which is supposed to be safe from SDS (it has a different version of eMMC)
 

vet4snak

Member
Jul 9, 2012
13
0
thank goodness for this thread.
this phone has been killing itself up to 3 times in 10 minutes. i really dont know what the hell is going on with this.
i will try uninstalling chrome and see if it helps..
my phone is bone stock running 4.1.2 with the latest firmware updated just today.
 

Dark Smile

Member
Feb 9, 2013
41
7
Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra
data connection is maybe the problem

Hey guys,

i have these freezes too since i updated to 4.1.2.

but in my case it's only when i have mobile data connection or w-lan connection turned on. If i turn off any data connection, it works the whole day without freezing!

It's for two weeks now and today i decided to install CyanogenMod 10.1 to try if this solves my problem.
I'm about to synchronisize my apps (does it automatically when entering google account and choosing "restoren from my account") and the first freeze occured (W-Lan on). But this time the light of the touch keys is full functional. When i touch the screen, the background light of the touch keys turns on. But power button, volume up/down and the touchscreen are frozen.

What I've done:
- rooted and installed CWM
- Cleared Dalvik cache
- wiped all other cache partition and stuff
- installed CyanogenMod 10.1 nightly build 20130208
- factory reset and so on like described in the manuals for installing CFs

Original data of my phone before installing CyanogenMod:

Galaxy S3
AP: I9300XXELL4
CP: I9300XXELL4
CSC: I9300DBTELL1
Android Version:
4.1.2
Kernel-Version:
3.0.31-566833
se.infra@SEP-64#1

No Branding.


So it is a bit confusing that this only happens with data connection turned on.
I've also read some threads with analytics of the update code and the SD fix so i am well informed now and think it's because of the eMMC bug where it tries to repair the corrupted sectors and freezes while doing this (cause after ~20 minutes everything is fine like nothing happened).

Has anyone an idea or a solution now besides sending it to the local dealer and change it for warranty reasons?

Thanks,
Dark Smile
 

sebarkh

Senior Member
Oct 7, 2010
1,178
184
Warsaw
Apps & Games
Odp: **Ultimate Galaxy S3 Unusual Freezing Thread**

It happened to me once, about 2 weeks ago, just after the release of the new firmware LM2. So I have flashed back with PC Odin to the previous LLA but the problem persisted. The phone was freezing after about 5 minutes of use. Forced reboot was needed.
So then I flashed some older 3 files-low level firmware (can't remember what one) in PC Odin nd then back to LM2 again, and everything is alright since then.
Strange...

Wysyłane z mojego Nexus 7 za pomocą Tapatalk 2
 

ezman

Senior Member
Nov 28, 2006
66
2
Mine is freezing lots now.
First time it went to o2 repair (UK) they claimed they had fixed it, pretty sure they just did a factory reset (which I had done already 3 times). So when I collected it, it froze within 2 minutes.
I'm tracking this repair publicly at http://myo2repair.wordpress.com so you can check out how this sort of thing pans out.
Problem is it can be intermittent, so you could get a couple of hours without a freeze. So it's gone back to repair and they say no fault found. So a bit stuck now.
It will definitely happen again when it's returned. They say after 3 attempts they will give me a refurb device. Samsung themselves give you a brand new sealed device as a replacement. Recommend going through Samsung if in same predicament.
 

raghavmax

Senior Member
Nov 24, 2010
118
14
Nagpur
Yes mine also got replaced by a 32 gb one from samsung india today

Sent from my GT-I9300 using xda app-developers app
 

vet4snak

Member
Jul 9, 2012
13
0
good news.
after updating today (and uninstalling google chrome) my SGS3 is no longer freezing itself every few minutes!
will report if it starts doing it again. If you dont see me post, assume all is good now.
 

alishankiti

Senior Member
May 3, 2007
144
0
freeze after 4.1.2

I've had constant freezes when I upgraded to 4.1.2. I tried many versions. all the same.

I rolled back to 4.1.1 and the phone is freeze free for one week now.
 

SiggiJarl

Member
Jan 21, 2012
30
5
Mine started to behave strangely and then started to freeze constantly. Didn't happen after an upgrade, just started happening out of the blue.
So I wiped it completely and flashed it with the latest wanamlite rom (I was on a rooted stock rom before).
Now it only freezes once every few days (still it NEVER used to freeze before, ever).
I think it might have some connection to the facebook app. I've noticed it only freezes shortly after I have been using the facebook app.
 

nhariamine

Senior Member
Mar 5, 2012
495
611
Oran, Algeria
Mine started to behave strangely and then started to freeze constantly. Didn't happen after an upgrade, just started happening out of the blue.
So I wiped it completely and flashed it with the latest wanamlite rom (I was on a rooted stock rom before).
Now it only freezes once every few days (still it NEVER used to freeze before, ever).
I think it might have some connection to the facebook app. I've noticed it only freezes shortly after I have been using the facebook app.

So far, users are reporting Chrome and Facebook as one of the sources of the freezing in Galaxy s3.More to come, Share ur experiences down
 

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  • 66
    Latest 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 :

    Originally Posted by : Rob2222

    The freezes are caused by the sudden death fix. On that kind of freezes the phone unfreeze itself after 5-25 minutes.

    The phone freezes when writing data to an affected eMMC block.

    An eMMC block is affected, when it's internal block pararameters (as f.e. write count for that block) are in such a state, that these parameters trigger a corrupted block without SD-fix (4.1.1) or trigger a freeze with SD-fix (4.1.2).

    When a phone is hitting an affected block with a writiing operation is completely unpredictable.

    So these freezes can occur on almost each situation on the smartphone when it writes data.

    But you have indeed a higher chance to trigger a freeze when writing much data.

    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
    Now that the Galaxy S3 Sudden Death Syndrome has supposedly been fixed by the latest update 7 by Samsung patch for Kernel and

    Recovery ,There is some poping up posts about the Galaxy S3 freezing and ending up with unsual rebooting and bootlooping which is a

    very awkward and weird and annoying issue, especially the Q&A section which contains a lot of angry S3 users reporting this problem.


    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
    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...
    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
    R: **Ultimate Galaxy S3 Unusual Freezing Thread**

    I did the dummy file creation twice and now the phone seems to be working fine again.
    I don't know how the Samsung fix works, nor why the problem seems to be solved now. Anyway, the procedure seems to work, thank you very much.
    5
    I am totally stock jellybean not rooted etc. Was having bad problems with phone freezing and lagging so started uninstalling things to try and fix. I found the problem was chrome, I had chrome, chrome to phone and chrome beta on took them all off now running silky smooth again.

    Sent from my GT-I9300T using Tapatalk 2

    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 !