Mobile Phones Go Crash-Crash?

[Jason Dunn]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.smartphonethoughts.com/index.php?topic_id=3947' target='_blank'>http://www.smartphonethoughts.com/i...p?topic_id=3947</a><br /><br /></div>I've written up a little editorial piece over at Smartphone Thoughts about mobile phones crashing - go check it out if you're interested.<br /><br />"Somewhere along the way, mobile phones became real computers, and when that happened, they started acting like computers: they crashed. Walk with me down this path...until the year 2000 (give or take a year), mobile phones were just that: phones. Sure, they might have had a game or two, and a few tried to include calendar functionality, but the vast majority of people used them as phones, nothing more. I've had various cell phones for over a decade now, and I don't remember any of my early cell phones crashing or locking up. They just worked, but they only did one thing: phone calls..."

[easylife]

Pocket PCs go crash-crash too! :mrgreen:

[egoz]

Or, in Asia, viruses are starting to show up. No doubt another Jihadi tactic to bring the Western world to its digital knees.

.rob

[Ed Hansberry]

I've had to reboot my nokia 3650 twice today. :grumble:

[nirav28]

My Nokia 3650 crapped out on me a few times in the last month.

This morning I couldn't make a call , because I had too many applications open and not enough free RAM. Thats the message I got when I hit the send button! Had to shutdown the phone and restart. :roll:

[mgd]

My first mobile phone to constantly crash or lock up was the Nokia 6210. My SE T68i has been acting funny since a recent firmware upgrade. Now it does all kinds of strange stuff. :(

[masaki]

Well, maybe I'm just lucky. I've never had to reboot my T68i. I've been using it since the week it first came out. I use the T68i's features all the time. Not just making phone calls and never had a problem aside from the slow menu. I had recently upgraded the firmware to R8A. It's still going good. No crash to date.

[slicksurf]

I have a 7650 which I'm now selling as I settle down with my new SE P800 (iPaq will always be there though). The 7650 is almost identical software wise to the 3650. Anyway, both the 7650 and P800 crash occationally, but both ALWAYS accept incoming calls, sometimes the outgoing call feature dies, but incoming has never crashed, so worst case senario, I can still be contacted. Can the same be said of the Orange SPV? I wouldn't know, don't own one.

[krisbrown]

No, the cold reality is that my 7650 is about 50x more reliable than the SPV, I have had to hard reset the thing 3x now(full ipsm clear lose all settings and apps) I can go a week with the 7650, recording videos till the memory's full, downloading apps and video's off WAP, without one reset needed. It is just a far-far more stable OS.

[maximus]

My motorola T720 never crashes on me. Quite a stable device, even with the camera attached almost all the time.

[ctmagnus]

I have an Audiovox 8300 (incidentally, the thinnest phone available in Canada :mrgreen: ) that I figured out how to crash when I first got it. I was so excited! I could cause a phone to crash!

[yawanag]

This is a timely topic for me. Last week, I got tired of soft resetting and finally gave in and did a hard reset.

I got everything back just like I like it and yesterday it starts the same nonsense all over again.

My Start Menu does not have all the programs on it.

The Start Up has no items at all in it.

I have a hardware button assigned to Contacts and I get the error: "Error opening the shortucut or locating the target filename." The only way I can get to Contacts is to tap on the phone icon and tap on the Contacts icon on the taskbar. Hate that I can't get to the phone numbers when I need to call someone.

It freezes like crazy.

I can't understand how I can have everything working and go to bed, wake up and it's back to reinstalling again.

Kind of wish they had something like "System Restore" like Win XP. That way I'd have something to go back to when it was working.

[Janak Parekh]

I got everything back just like I like it and yesterday it starts the same nonsense all over again.
You have a Pocket PC Phone, if I remember correctly, right?

I use one daily and it's very stable. Have you considered it might be one of the apps you use? I know this is time consuming, but hard reset it again, use a minimal set of apps, and see how it fares.

--janak

[Janak Parekh]

My motorola T720 never crashes on me. Quite a stable device, even with the camera attached almost all the time.
You should have seen the original T720s -- the ones with CDMA on Verizon. Perhaps the most unstable phone Motorola ever released! A bunch of firmware updates finally fixed it, and Motorola got the thing stable by the time the GSM version came out.

--janak

[denivan]

Kind of wish they had something like "System Restore" like Win XP. That way I'd have something to go back to when it was working.

I'm not sure, but does a PocketPC Phone have an SD slot ? IF so, you could backup to it using pocket backup plus, it's like a System restore that can be done in five minutes ;)

[cyclist]

Kind of wish they had something like "System Restore" like Win XP. That way I'd have something to go back to when it was working.

I'm not sure, but does a PocketPC Phone have an SD slot ? IF so, you could backup to it using pocket backup plus, it's like a System restore that can be done in five minutes ;)

It does, you can, and I have!

The trick is to install pocket backup plus to the SD card, and to create self restoring exe's for the backup. When disaster strikes hard reset, then use the self restoring exe to restore. Up and running again in about 10 minutes.

Even better, pocket backup plus can be set to automatically create the backups so you don't forget to do it, and it keeps multiple backup files so if you don't spot the problem immediately you can use an older file for the restore.

[denivan]

The trick is to install pocket backup plus to the SD card, and to create self restoring exe's for the backup. When disaster strikes hard reset, then use the self restoring exe to restore. Up and running again in about 10 minutes.


I was not sure about PocketPC Phone's, but I myself use Pocket Backup to make self restoring exe's to CF. Pocket Backup however isn't installed on CF itself, so I'm doubting that this is necessary, the self restoring exe's contain a 'demo' version of pocket backup that works for 10 days, so IMO it's also okay if you install the program in RAM. Anyways, this backup solution works great, when disaster strikes, you're up and running in no time !

[PlayAgain?]

The problem with mobile phones is you can't fix them very easily by simply replacing components. You can't just swap the sound card or the graphics card.

[slicksurf]

I've finally had a chance to play with an SPV phone, and I'm sorry to say, that within a few minutes of playing with it (Media Player generally) I got the thing to crash. Just froze. Waited 10 Minutes, no life, so pulled the battery.
Such crashes do happen on the 7650 (Particularly with Doom), but like I mentioned before, the basic phone still works. The SPV didn't. You can soft reset a 7650 to bring it back. A Hard reset is never needed (unless your selling it).
The P800 hasn't crashed on me to the point of loosing all my stuff (only program crashes), but I'm a bit concerned at how my Memory Stick Duo (what a rip off) gets totally corrupted every so often.
Will smartphonethoughts go into the realm of symbian phones ever. I'm still looking a for a usefull forum for it.

[Jason Dunn]

Will smartphonethoughts go into the realm of symbian phones ever. I'm still looking a for a usefull forum for it.

Nope.

Check out www.allaboutsymbian.com

[slicksurf]

Cheers Jason.

[Jeff Rutledge]

Well, maybe I'm just lucky. I've never had to reboot my T68i. I've been using it since the week it first came out. I use the T68i's features all the time. Not just making phone calls and never had a problem aside from the slow menu. I had recently upgraded the firmware to R8A. It's still going good. No crash to date.

I can make my T68 crash, but only when connected via Bluetooth to my iPAQ 3870. When I'm using a BT connection, my iPAQ hangs at least once per hour and every once in a while (though rare), I have to reset my phone. One time I had to yank the battery.