[Q] Phone Freezing Over Night

---

Apologies if this has been posted before, I did look but couldn't seem to find the exact same issue.

I've had my phone for just under a year, no real problems. But late last month it restarted over night and since then it started freezing every night when I left it charging. At first I thought it was crashing but the charge light would still be on but all buttons would be unresponsive. The only thing I could do to regain control of my phone was to remove the battery.

I contacted HTC who suggested factory reset...which I don't really want to do. As my phone was only freezing once a day (over night) it wasn't all that bad. To be honest I thought it was an issue with it charging.

For reasons I can't remember, I removed an app that I never used; it was using 2mb space and couldn't be put on the SD. Once removed, the freezing stopped happening and there was much rejoicing...until last night.

I decided to download another app and the freezing happened again over night. I've since removed that app but here's the rub, why is this happening?

The fact it's happening whenever I download more apps to my phone seems to point to a memory issue but my phone has 1.6GB on the SD and 53mb on the phone itself.

I still haven't tried a factory reset and as I've had it less than a year, HTC said I can return it; but there's no guarantee this will fix it and I like my little phone, so if there's a way I can resolve this issue I'll rather do that before trying more drastic measures.

I hope someone can help.

Are you rooted? If that's the case, and, you are charging the phone when it is switched off, what you are experiencing is a known bug.

Also, although unrelated, it is really not recommended to charge your battery overnight or for extended periods. Charge only till it is full.

Nope, not rooted. Just a plain, bog-standard out the box Wildfire.

Thanks for the heads up regarding the charging though Since I bought it (July last year) I had been charging over night on most days but I'll switch to just charging it for a few hours till it's full now.

I guess in case it'll help I'll give a little more info: While charging I leave my phone switched on and I rarely restart my phone unless it drops signal. Only recently with the freezing have I had issues with using it and had to restart it frequently. I'm not a techie person so I've not played around with the phone other than putting on apps, where possible I put them onto SD. My phone is unlocked and I use it on the O2 network.

make a factory reset bro. it tells u whether the issue is with hardware or software. kept under charging mode just heats up the phone by a little level. this dont normally freeze the phone.
but if u r downloading something with data connection, or bluetooth, or wifi and kept charging overnight, then the battery gets overheated heavily which freezes the phone. it is quite normal and is experienced by people who keep overnight downloads.

and further there may be application conflicts in ur phone, which make it slow and freeze. i expect this is the issue with u.

if u r sure that u r not using any data connections, then i suggest u to factory reset ur phone. before that backup all the data. i dont understand what makes u from not doing the factory reset.

Over night my phone is idle while charging. Though I have data enabled (no wifi at home), it's not downloading anything and I have auto sync switched off.

I would have thought if this was an application issue it would have started after installing this dodgy app and also continue until I unistalled. This hasn't been the case. When it started happening I hadn't installed anything other than updates for weeks or maybe months. During the week while it was having this issue, I had installed 1 app (Photoshop).

It has only frozen once during the day, right after work; that was the time I finally thought I'll have to factory reset. So I was writing down all my apps in a notepad so I knew what I had and where they were (I'm fussy with my screen setup). I decided to remove 2 apps I never used (8Pen and Photoshop), I thought I'll leave it 1 night just in case and that night though it never froze, so I didn't reset.

Since then it's been working fine for 3 weeks till last night when I downloaded another app. So it seems random, it's not associated with a particular app and comes and goes.

The reason I'm cautious about factory resetting is that it deletes everything. Though I have backed contacts up to MyLookOut and to my SD card, I'll still loose my apps and data and so I'm not keen on doing it. Not using wifi means it's heafty on my 500mb data package to redownload them again and then I'm unsure if i'll have to upgrade to Froyo again.
End of the day it just seems like a "Turn it off and on again" answer and as it comes and goes and doesn't seem to have a reason why it happens so randomly I don't want to factory reset if there's another way.

Originally Posted by Idavoll

Over night my phone is idle while charging. Though I have data enabled (no wifi at home), it's not downloading anything and I have auto sync switched off.

I would have thought if this was an application issue it would have started after installing this dodgy app and also continue until I unistalled. This hasn't been the case. When it started happening I hadn't installed anything other than updates for weeks or maybe months. During the week while it was having this issue, I had installed 1 app (Photoshop).

It has only frozen once during the day, right after work; that was the time I finally thought I'll have to factory reset. So I was writing down all my apps in a notepad so I knew what I had and where they were (I'm fussy with my screen setup). I decided to remove 2 apps I never used (8Pen and Photoshop), I thought I'll leave it 1 night just in case and that night though it never froze, so I didn't reset.

Since then it's been working fine for 3 weeks till last night when I downloaded another app. So it seems random, it's not associated with a particular app and comes and goes.

The reason I'm cautious about factory resetting is that it deletes everything. Though I have backed contacts up to MyLookOut and to my SD card, I'll still loose my apps and data and so I'm not keen on doing it. Not using wifi means it's heafty on my 500mb data package to redownload them again and then I'm unsure if i'll have to upgrade to Froyo again.
End of the day it just seems like a "Turn it off and on again" answer and as it comes and goes and doesn't seem to have a reason why it happens so randomly I don't want to factory reset if there's another way.

u r worrying about loosing data on factory reset. but do u know that u can backup each and everything on the phone including the apps downloaded from market.

ok, i will try to give a software solution. first uninstall all the file managers and app managers in your phone. then go to market and download "ANDROID ASSISTANT". this little app has many features. explore it and u will know its potential. it has a nice option called QUICK BOOST. when u press this quick boost on a heavily stuck phone, u will feel like ur phone got a new life. it makes the phone response faster in seconds.
and further it has auto boost option, which can be set to a minimum of 10minutes. this auto boost will help u in preventing the freeze issue. hope it works. the present version of android assistant is 2.3.3

trying to attach u that one

Many thanks.

How do you backup apps? I know they'll appear in the download list but I'll rather not have to redownload them all, plus I have a few not from the marketplace. I've read that during a factory reset even apps which are apparently "saved" on the SD card are removed because they're not 100% saved onto it. So if you know of a way to back them up I would be most grateful.

Thanks for the Android Assistant.apk too, I'll be sure to look into that! Though I always thought anything that force closed apps wasn't always good - I previously used Task Killer and removed it after being told it could be the route of a force close email app issue I was getting.

Edit: Just got back home and during the journey my phone had frozen!! I had hoped it was a space issue but I've not downloaded any new apps and have even removed some during the day. So my previous thought that this was some how connected to storage on my phone must be wrong. So what on Earth can it be? It's not constant, in fact, like I said I've had this phone for 9 months give or take and it's been fine. So why now and why only sometimes does it freeze?

Originally Posted by Idavoll

Many thanks.

How do you backup apps? I know they'll appear in the download list but I'll rather not have to redownload them all, plus I have a few not from the marketplace. I've read that during a factory reset even apps which are apparently "saved" on the SD card are removed because they're not 100% saved onto it. So if you know of a way to back them up I would be most grateful.

Thanks for the Android Assistant.apk too, I'll be sure to look into that! Though I always thought anything that force closed apps wasn't always good - I previously used Task Killer and removed it after being told it could be the route of a force close email app issue I was getting.

Edit: Just got back home and during the journey my phone had frozen!! I had hoped it was a space issue but I've not downloaded any new apps and have even removed some during the day. So my previous thought that this was some how connected to storage on my phone must be wrong. So what on Earth can it be? It's not constant, in fact, like I said I've had this phone for 9 months give or take and it's been fine. So why now and why only sometimes does it freeze?

yes freezing also happens when there is very low phone free memory. when ur apps get filled in phone and keep on decreasing its memory, it is more likely that ur phone gets freezed. its always better to keep a 30MB free phone memory. remember data and cache also use phone memory, so the free memory will be generally unpredictable with minor errors. have u got any idea of a windows pc freezing. a windows pc freezes if there is some errors in registry. that is the reason why i have suggested u to make factory reset first to eliminate the software issues.
u asked me a solution to backup ur apps, right.
firstly i wanna introduce u about the backing up of applications.
android applications will be in the .apk file format and u know this. this .apk file is an installable archive just like .exe of windows OS. opening the .apk files from a file manager installs the program files of that application. but when u download the applications from android market, u will not get the .apk files. the android market installs the program files directly. but we can still create an .apk file from these program files and app managers will do that function. both the files im attaching u below will do that function.

here im attaching u two applications (.apk files)
one is APP CONTROL. i recommend u to use this. it can be used with android assistant installed. both of them work fine. the APP CONTROL version i gave u is an older version and is a full version. A newer version of APP CONTROL is available in the android market, but it is not free. so i strongly recommend u to use this. it has a great feature to backup all ur apps at a single click. the apps backed up by it will be saved as .apk files under the path
MEMORY CARD/backups/apps

i recommend u to back up all ur phone and mem card apps at a time with a single click. explore this APP CONTROL.
i dont want to give a detailed explanation of the other file ANDROID APP MANAGER, because i wont recommend u to use this. im just attaching u this because of only one reason, that APP CONTROL is presently not a full version. using of it is entirely at your personal intrest.

I took your advice and did a factory reset - backed everything up so it wasn't as painful as I first thought it would be. Managed to reinstall everything and so far so good (touch wood) but the original issue was sporadic and so only time will tell.

I have noticed since the reset that my phone memory, which was 50mb before, is now 100mb. So hopefully this will mean that I'm not forced to limit what I download.

Such a shame the Wildfire doesn't have more memory

Thanks again for the help and I'll post if the issue occurs again.

Originally Posted by Idavoll

I took your advice and did a factory reset - backed everything up so it wasn't as painful as I first thought it would be. Managed to reinstall everything and so far so good (touch wood) but the original issue was sporadic and so only time will tell.

I have noticed since the reset that my phone memory, which was 50mb before, is now 100mb. So hopefully this will mean that I'm not forced to limit what I download.

Such a shame the Wildfire doesn't have more memory

Thanks again for the help and I'll post if the issue occurs again.

that 50 MB and 100 MB may be due to app memory + cache memory. if u have interrupted the download android apps from market, and have every downloading app partly downloaded and interrupted. then that partly downloaded apps go to the cache memory of MARKET application. u can try and check this.
similarly there will be cache memory for every application. i expect all those cache memories got built up and ate 50 MB of ur phone memory. if it is so, it says that how vigourously u have used ur phone regarding applications.
these cache memories wont get cleaned just on restrating phone, and u should manually clean them either through the phones inbuilt process or through the applications having keywords of cache cleaner.
there is somewhat that i dont like in android apps. which is the application doing extra functions other than its name. now a days, u can see many file managers in android market. and those file managers suppose to have the fuction of explorer of android file system. but they will have additional features like combined app manager, cache cleaner, uninstaller, installer.
this makes the different applications conflict with each other and slow down the os. thats the thing i hate here. i have to choose priority in apps, and sometimes need to avoid nice apps due to that reason.