icons disappearing from home screens... lil help

[andrewdoane]

I've been having the same problem for months. I am hoping CJ is right and switching back to wallpaper gallery backgrounds.

 

[PJ_ED]

I had Screeble installed when I was having the problem. I unistalled Screeble a few weeks back and am no longer having the problem. Not sure if that was definitely it but no problems now. Too bad, I liked Screeble. It could be the way it acts with another program...???

 

[cj1896]

An update after another week of experimenting:

I noticed that my internal memory was getting extremely low (which was part of the problem) from regular usage. If I rebooted the phone it would start out at roughly 75mb's and by the time the homescreen problem would arise it could be as low as 34mb. What I have done that seems to work is manage application>running services and kill all of the non essential services, then I go into manage applications>user apps>sort by running>sort by size and kill any of the non essential apps. I also kill some system apps which don't actually close but this seems to have a positive effect. After doing this I return to the roughly 75 mb amount. I haven't had this problem for a while now. I just wish there was a easier way to keep it from happening.

 

[andrewdoane]

Update: I've switched to wallpaper gallery background, and I've not had the problem once in almost 48 hours. Before I did that, I was having the problem multiple times per day. I am getting more and more sure that this is a fix and not just a coincidental lucky streak.

 

[Chillson]

Update: I've switched to wallpaper gallery background, and I've not had the problem once in almost 48 hours. Before I did that, I was having the problem multiple times per day. I am getting more and more sure that this is a fix and not just a coincidental lucky streak.

I'm actually going to try this as well, though I know my father has a picture he took as his background and he has never complained about losing his icons from the home screen.

 

[Chillson]

Update: I've switched to wallpaper gallery background, and I've not had the problem once in almost 48 hours. Before I did that, I was having the problem multiple times per day. I am getting more and more sure that this is a fix and not just a coincidental lucky streak.

I'm actually going to try this as well, though I know my father has a picture he took as his background and he has never complained about losing his icons from the home screen.

That wasn't it either, that actually only lasted an hour or two haha. I'm thinking it might have to do with whatever widgets I have that continually run in the background to refresh data?

 

[andrewdoane]

If I had to guess based on my experience, yours, and cj1986's, I think it really is about available memory. For many people, they are using so little memory that they can have whatever they want as their background and it won't cause a problem (this would be the people who aren't even reading this thread because they haven't had the problem). Then there would be people who are using so much memory that this one reduction won't make a difference (Chillson). Then there are people like me who are right on the borderline of causing the problem, so that any little reduction in memory usage will move me into the low memory usage zone of not having the problem.

Test this theory - remove two or three of your widgets and see if the problem goes away for 24 hours.

 

[Chillson]

I didn't remove any widgets, but what I had done is reduced Beautiful Widgets refresh rate from 15 minutes to an hour, which I think was the key.

 

[chrispt]

I just had it happen today and the only widget that was left was Handcent. I also noticed earlier that I had received a notification sound from Handcent that only partially sounded and then all my notification sounds went mute. I went ahead and uninstalled and re-installed Handcent to see if it fixes the issue.

 

[cj1896]

If I had to guess based on my experience, yours, and cj1986's, I think it really is about available memory. For many people, they are using so little memory that they can have whatever they want as their background and it won't cause a problem (this would be the people who aren't even reading this thread because they haven't had the problem). Then there would be people who are using so much memory that this one reduction won't make a difference (Chillson). Then there are people like me who are right on the borderline of causing the problem, so that any little reduction in memory usage will move me into the low memory usage zone of not having the problem.

Test this theory - remove two or three of your widgets and see if the problem goes away for 24 hours.

I think it does come down to memory as well. I haven't had this happen to me for a while here are the multiple things I have done.

#1 - I am using launcherpro. It seems to leave more available memory in addition to being the best current home replacement IMHO.
#2 - Rather than just hitting home when using a lot of memory (maps, large pages in browser etc) I hit back and go through the screens to exit. I think it frees up memory as you do it. I have had a lot of success using this method and recommend it because it is easy and doesn't require someone to change much.
#3 - When exiting the browser I close whatever page I am on and go all windows back to my homepage.
#4 - Running the latest build of Bugless Beast. Whatever pete did to free up the memory has done wonders for me.

Those are my recommendations. I haven't had this happen for a while it seems like.

 

[Droidzilla61]

Icons disappearing from home screens

I have found that after I changed my wallpaper to a larger image file (958 X 512) my icons kept disappearing rebooting brought them back and so did the force quit. But if you reduce the size to (640 X 480) it functions as designed. Since I have reduced image size I have NOT lost my home screen icons in a week!
dancedroid