Droid Sudden Death Syndrome

[MrEWorm]

My wife got a new Droid 1 about a month ago. It' is her first smart phone and she is enjoying the features. Yesterday she was adding a contact, lots of battery left.
The screen went black on her. The unit somehow shut itself down. It would not restart. I plugged in the charger but there was no response to that.
I drove over to the Verizon store (we were about 5 minutes away). Suddenly the Droid powered itself back up again.
The store clerk said it wwas because she had Advanced Task Killer running. I told him that he was dead wrong and not to insult me again. He replaced it with a new phone.

Questions:
What happened?
If the phone had been rooted, would we have been warrantyless?
Can Task Killer cause this?

 

[akiir]

my phone did something similar to that, but it never started back on. It completely killed itself. Verizon had no idea what happened. I dont think task killer would mess with it since most other people use that on there droid. I wasn't using it when mine died.

 

[BayouFlyFisher]

Most other people do not use that app (Advanced Task Killer). A lot of phone sales people put it on new phones because they are not informed about how Android OS actually works.

Here's a little android os info relative to task killers:

The android operating system is nothing like Windows/Palm/RIM/Etc. Android loads apps in memory so they will be immediately available when you need them. Let me stress, these apps are not "running" in the sense that programs run when started in Windows. They are simply sitting in memory. You don't have to worry about them, as they do no harm just staying in memory until needed. If android needs additional memory, it will remove whatever needs to be removed in order to have the amount of memory it requires. Forget about watching how much free memory you have because it changes as the operating systems needs change. Delete any task killer the idiot Verizon reps convinced you to install, or that they installed. Killed apps will, in most cases, be put right back in memory by android.

 

[hookbill]

My wife got a new Droid 1 about a month ago. It' is her first smart phone and she is enjoying the features. Yesterday she was adding a contact, lots of battery left.
The screen went black on her. The unit somehow shut itself down. It would not restart. I plugged in the charger but there was no response to that.
I drove over to the Verizon store (we were about 5 minutes away). Suddenly the Droid powered itself back up again.
The store clerk said it wwas because she had Advanced Task Killer running. I told him that he was dead wrong and not to insult me again. He replaced it with a new phone.

Questions:
What happened?
If the phone had been rooted, would we have been warrantyless?
Can Task Killer cause this?

If it wouldn't power up again you did the right thing by returning it. If it were rooted, that would have violated the warranty but if they can't get it to power up they can't see that it's rooted.

Can Task killers cause this? Well, they can definitely cause some issues, but I've yet to hear of one taking out a Droid completely. You should avoid Task Killers, they are not necessary. ATK in particular has been shown many times to cause issues, if you don't believe it well take a look at my post count. Doesn't make me smarter then anyone else but it shows how much time I spend in the forum and that I see a lot of things. I've personally recommended taking out a task killer and it's fixed issues. But truthfully I've never seen it kill a phone.

Don't know what caused it. It could have been a bad app. Or maybe just a defective phone. Hard to say.

 

[Shadez]

Mine did this the other day. Im not rooted. An it also experienced the 'Possessed Droid' syndrome, where it just started clicking things on its own etc etc. I couldnt do anything to control it, screen was perfectly clean.. 10 mins later it started working better then it ever has. More responsive, faster, etc. So instead of trying to find out what the real problem was, I just assumed that Motorola just has this randomly happen to droids so that when it starts working again your that much more appreciative of it

 

[Backnblack]

A lot of phone sales people put it on new phones because they are not informed about how Android OS actually works.

Sales should not install anything on a device. period.

 

[GAPACmedic]

I've had 2 Droids die on me in similar fashion, one minute it's working fine then BAM !!! nothing. On mine you coud see the screen light up but there was nothing there and you had to do a battery pull to get it to power down.

 

[MrEWorm]

Mine did this the other day. Im not rooted. An it also experienced the 'Possessed Droid' syndrome, where it just started clicking things on its own etc etc. I couldnt do anything to control it, screen was perfectly clean.. 10 mins later it started working better then it ever has. More responsive, faster, etc. So instead of trying to find out what the real problem was, I just assumed that Motorola just has this randomly happen to droids so that when it starts working again your that much more appreciative of it

Gratitude, a great concept.

 

[Big Ry]

id love to know how many people on here axtually know anything about computers. android DOES run like windows. apps are storred in the memory the same way as windows. go to windows task manager and youll see all running saying theyre using 0-1% of the cpu just like android. doesnt seem like much right? add that up over a number of apps plus the ones youre using at the time and youre maxed out. if youve installed ATK and DONT see the difference in responsiveness, youre a fool.

 

[gadgetrants]

My wife got a new Droid 1 about a month ago. It' is her first smart phone and she is enjoying the features. Yesterday she was adding a contact, lots of battery left.
The screen went black on her. The unit somehow shut itself down. It would not restart. I plugged in the charger but there was no response to that.
I drove over to the Verizon store (we were about 5 minutes away). Suddenly the Droid powered itself back up again.
The store clerk said it wwas because she had Advanced Task Killer running. I told him that he was dead wrong and not to insult me again. He replaced it with a new phone.

Questions:
What happened?
If the phone had been rooted, would we have been warrantyless?
Can Task Killer cause this?

First, I love that you trust us enough to ask if Task Killer is the cause, when you tore the VZ associate a new orifice for asking the same question. I like your way of doing things!

Second, I agree with hook: task killer bad, stay away. It's unlikely to explain what happened to your wife's phone, but they're still bad.

Third, your description sounds an awful lot like a hot phone. I suspect--since you weren't using it at the time for navigation or overclocking it to 1.0GHz--that it was running at a normal temperature. But that's pretty much what an overheated phone would do.

Keep us posted on how the replacement is doing!

-Matt

 

[gadgetrants]

id love to know how many people on here axtually know anything about computers. android DOES run like windows. apps are storred in the memory the same way as windows. go to windows task manager and youll see all running saying theyre using 0-1% of the cpu just like android. doesnt seem like much right? add that up over a number of apps plus the ones youre using at the time and youre maxed out. if youve installed ATK and DONT see the difference in responsiveness, youre a fool.

That was a pretty harsh assessment. As you inch closer to that masters degree, I hope you remember to maintain a basic sense of kindness and consideration for others, even if they don't see what you see. (It's too late for me...two decades in academia have turned me into a ridiculously snarky guy! :icon_evil

Now let me try and point out something you may have overlooked. We are all in agreement that APPS GO INTO MEMORY. Android, Windows, Linux, etc. No debate there.

The earlier post--which I find convincing--emphasized that Android not only keeps active apps in memory, but also many that are inactive or sometimes even terminated (i.e., not using any CPU cycles). Perhaps you remember this from Windows....it's called TSR, in other words, TERMINATE AND STAY RESIDENT. So the point is that RAM stays filled to near-capacity, regardless, and that Android intelligently shuffles apps in and out of memory as processing needs change. If that's right, than a task killer would be at cross-purposes with the design of the OS...and cause all kinds of wonkiness.

-Matt

 

[BayouFlyFisher]

id love to know how many people on here axtually know anything about computers. android DOES run like windows. apps are storred in the memory the same way as windows. go to windows task manager and youll see all running saying theyre using 0-1% of the cpu just like android. doesnt seem like much right? add that up over a number of apps plus the ones youre using at the time and youre maxed out. if youve installed ATK and DONT see the difference in responsiveness, youre a fool.

You start off pretty good - trying to make a technical argument supporting your position. Not too bad, flawed, but at least trying to attack the problem from a technical point of view. But then you utterly fail by resorting to calling your "foes" NAMES.

Let me point out a few things about this fool: I got my Droid in November. The store rep put ATK on it. As soon as I understood how Android worked, I deleted ATK. I rooted and overclocked in early January. I've tried almost every custom rom out there. My current setup give me the following benchmarks: Setcpu Short 132, Setcpu Long 402, Linpack 19.6, Quadrant 1716. Not too bad for a droid that hasn't had ATK since late November.

 

[MrEWorm]

First, I love that you trust us enough to ask if Task Killer is the cause, when you tore the VZ associate a new orifice for asking the same question. I like your way of doing things!

Second, I agree with hook: task killer bad, stay away. It's unlikely to explain what happened to your wife's phone, but they're still bad.

Third, your description sounds an awful lot like a hot phone. I suspect--since you weren't using it at the time for navigation or overclocking it to 1.0GHz--that it was running at a normal temperature. But that's pretty much what an overheated phone would do.

Keep us posted on how the replacement is doing!

-Matt

Yep, I jumped his case immediately. Asking here was just to verify mu gut instinct that he was handing me a line of crap.
We had been out at an air show for several hours (90 degrees and not a lot of shade). Maybe the phone overheated but I'm still glad they switched us out to a new one. I have an identical Droid, we got them the same day, no troubles with mine.
I'm looking forward to Froyo. Honestly, the phone does everything I ask of it now.

 

[czerdrill]

id love to know how many people on here axtually know anything about computers. android DOES run like windows. apps are storred in the memory the same way as windows. go to windows task manager and youll see all running saying theyre using 0-1% of the cpu just like android. doesnt seem like much right? add that up over a number of apps plus the ones youre using at the time and youre maxed out. if youve installed ATK and DONT see the difference in responsiveness, youre a fool.

lol wut? Linux and Windows Memory Management and disk paging are like night and day...

 

[kodiak799]

I started out with a task killer, then moved to an automated task killer. Had some issues with Home++ that may or may not have been related, and ultimately deleted the task killer. Noticed a significant improvement in battery life immediately. And this makes sense, because especially new users learning this phone, most don't exclude certain apps or services from the killer Android will always try to run. So what ends-up happening is the killer (I had mine run every 30-60 minutes) terminates something and then Android uses more cpu and battery to re-start it then it otherwise would if it was kept in the background.

As for the benefit of task killers, just use a little common sense: if you have to run it manually or auto every 30-60 minutes, still plenty of time to fill up the ram and you phone is probably running just fine on its own most of the time. If you see an improvement, it's probably a rogue app or two that is poorly coded you should just delete.

The other thing I've noticed: if you have a lot of news apps like I do, many of these default to update/poll frequently so they pop into memory every so often (and use a bit of battery). Make a habit when you install new apps of checking to see if they have auto-refresh enabled, and if you don't need that turn it off or ideally set it to auto-refresh when only when launched.