Odd Galaxy S behaviour

[Teebor]

For about a week now my Galaxy S has been running really slowly, I had been unable to play youtube videos and games were just REALLY slow

To get the best function out of the phone I would typically have to restart the phone, even when using a task killer app.

The task killer app that I had never showed anything that I could say was "wrong" but it did show apps running which I had not started like imdb, youtube, bbc iplayer, and bbc news apps. But for some of these I figured its ok as they may be updating articles etc. Besides it was not all the time they were running, I just happened to notice that they were sometimes running.

Last night it came to a head when I turned the phone off and it would not turn back on, I ended up doing a factory reset to get the phone to work. Then just to be safe I wiped all storage and updated the firmware.

The phone is now working and better than before (possibly due to the firmware update from 2.2.3 to 2.3.3)

Anyone know if this is typical behaviour from a Galaxy S?

On the apps side I scrupulously check app requirements before download and only consider an app for download if it has several thousand downloads and ratings. Unless I absolutely can trust the source like google, bbc, etc

[Nick H. Supervisor]

Funny you mention this, as I had the same problem the other day. Except that I didn't try looking in to causes, I just restarted it since I hadn't restarted it or turned it off for about a week. Turned it back on and everything was fine again.

[carmatic]

do you mean the videos and games are really choppy, or they take a long time to load up?

because of the way the filesystem on the phone works, it works fastest when theres tons of free space on the phone's internal memory card

[Teebor]

do you mean the videos and games are really choppy, or they take a long time to load up?

because of the way the filesystem on the phone works, it works fastest when theres tons of free space on the phone's internal memory card

A bit of both, to keep the internal memory card free I normally install everything or move it to the external SD when possible.

But ultimately it almost felt to me like a slow degredation of the OS until it finally gave up and would not fully boot any more.

The three finger factory reset worked a treat though, but I lost everything of course

[Detection]

Maybe there is an app installed that has a memory leak ?

[techbeck]

So after the factory wipe, does it perform ok BEFORE you load an apps? I have a Galaxy S phone and no issues. Perhaps you just got a bad phone.

[Teebor]

Maybe there is an app installed that has a memory leak ?

I thought that, which is why I installed the task killer app from the market so I could see what was going on, other than system related things running I couldn't see anything else "bad" I did try ending everything that was possibly installed by me but it didn't seem to help.

So after the factory wipe, does it perform ok BEFORE you load an apps? I have a Galaxy S phone and no issues. Perhaps you just got a bad phone.

Yeah been running fine for close to 6 months with apps on it, then the last week it just behaved "odd" being all slow and choppy with games and videos. Now I have reset it and installed the latest firmware and its running faster then ever before. Before the firmware update it was running how I would have expected it to run, which was about the same as when it came out of the box.

Worryingly my girlfriends told me her phone is now behaving like mine was just before it died. So I'm going to backup her phone tonight and then put the new firmware on and see what happens.

I did wonder if it has something to do with me having some 200 texts stored on the phone however my girlfriend texts a whole lot more than I do and she even tried to see what the limit was on the phone but hasn't experienced the same issues as me.

[techbeck]

Yeah been running fine for close to 6 months with apps on it, then the last week it just behaved "odd" being all slow and choppy with games and videos. Now I have reset it and installed the latest firmware and its running faster then ever before. Before the firmware update it was running how I would have expected it to run, which was about the same as when it came out of the box.

Worryingly my girlfriends told me her phone is now behaving like mine was just before it died. So I'm going to backup her phone tonight and then put the new firmware on and see what happens.

I did wonder if it has something to do with me having some 200 texts stored on the phone however my girlfriend texts a whole lot more than I do and she even tried to see what the limit was on the phone but hasn't experienced the same issues as me.

So applying the firmware fixed your phone? If so...then I wouldnt worry about it and just see what happens from here. Also, 200 texts wouldnt be the issue at all. We are not in the first days of texting and your phone can hold/store thousands without a problem. I currently have a couple thousands texts on my phone I have not cleared out yet. My phone runs fine.

[Teebor]

So applying the firmware fixed your phone? If so...then I wouldnt worry about it and just see what happens from here. Also, 200 texts wouldnt be the issue at all. We are not in the first days of texting and your phone can hold/store thousands without a problem. I currently have a couple thousands texts on my phone I have not cleared out yet. My phone runs fine.

Thanks guy :) thats kinda what I though but it was the only thing I could think of which could cause the problem. I've reinstalled some of the last apps to be installed on my phone and it still seems happy so I am not going to worry about it again for now, Backups will become more regular though rather then 3-4 months apart.

[techbeck]

Thanks guy :) thats kinda what I though but it was the only thing I could think of which could cause the problem. I've reinstalled some of the last apps to be installed on my phone and it still seems happy so I am not going to worry about it again for now, Backups will become more regular though rather then 3-4 months apart.

Just be aware of what apps you install incase the problem resurfaces. It could be an app that cause the issue, or just something with the phone.

I do a TB of all my apps whenever I download several updates. About once a week. If I make any changes to the ROM...apply a theme, patch, new KB...things like that... do a nandroid backup.

[Prince781]

For about a week now my Galaxy S has been running really slowly, I had been unable to play youtube videos and games were just REALLY slow

To get the best function out of the phone I would typically have to restart the phone, even when using a task killer app.

The task killer app that I had never showed anything that I could say was "wrong" but it did show apps running which I had not started like imdb, youtube, bbc iplayer, and bbc news apps. But for some of these I figured its ok as they may be updating articles etc. Besides it was not all the time they were running, I just happened to notice that they were sometimes running.

Last night it came to a head when I turned the phone off and it would not turn back on, I ended up doing a factory reset to get the phone to work. Then just to be safe I wiped all storage and updated the firmware.

*Sigh* Android. :/

[LiquidSolstice]

Erm, a task-killer app will just make things worse, WAY worse, if you're using Froyo or above.

[techbeck]

Erm, a task-killer app will just make things worse, WAY worse, if you're using Froyo or above.

True...I just have the built in process manager on my Vibrant. I only use it if a program doesnt close. Sometimes Angry Birds doesnt like to go away.

[AJerman]

The Gingerbread update will help greatly. Samsung's stock 2.1 software was terrible, their Froyo build was a little better, but Gingerbread is just fast. If you want to really unlock the potential of your Galaxy S though, you need to put a custom ROM on it. Samsung may make great hardware, but they don't seem to be capable of putting a good software package on it. Between RFS (the file system type they use) and TouchWiz, they can bring the phone to a crawl. The custom ROMs that people are building now, built off the official Gingerbread release, are incredibly fast. My phone has basically no lag at all anymore.

Also, as a tip, someone mentioned task killers are bad, and this is very true. As an alternative, if you ever want to kill an app, just hold the home button for a couple of seconds and the task switcher dialog will pop up with a button to go to the built in task manager.