widgets don't work

[antaine]

I have a Droid Razr Maxx HD running system 9.18.79.XT926.Verizon.en.US and Android 4.1.2., and I'm having a problem with widgets updating. I began by thinking I was having a problem with certain widgets, but now it seems to me that they are all having an issue.

Whenever I have a widget that should change over time (especially Simple Calendar from mycolorscreen and 1Weather from 1Louder) they don't. They seem to be very finicky (Simple Calendar will only load properly on boot if WiFi is on, while 1Weather will not update its info if WiFi is on (even if there are no WiFi networks in range and the phone is using the cell network) or if the cell network is in use (as in a phone call).

Once a failure occurs, the widget will never again update until it is deleted and re-added or the phone is rebooted. I have been driving the good people at 1Weather crazy for the last two weeks trying to diagnose this problem and they can't replicate it.

I have also downloaded several other calendar apps and weather apps (AccuWeather, Weather Bug, the other Simple Calendar, and more) and this issue affects them all. This tells me that it's not just an isolated case of a bug in a widget.

Will someone help me double check my settings -- I've made sure that I've enabled all the background syncing and whatnot that I can locate, but it's possible that I've missed something. Has anyone else encountered this? Is this a bigger problem (like with Jelly Bean) than I imagine?

This is really driving me crazy, and it makes virtually every really useful widget useless.

Thanks,
Antaine

 

[leeshor]

At first I was thinking WiFi problems would cause almost all of your issues but a few things you said about data based refreshes threw that out the window. If you can't indentify some type of system management app like a task killer or power management that is the cause I would say factory reset it.

 

[antaine]

I don't have a task killer or any system management things other than whatever came on the phone. It took me more hours than I'd like to admit to get this phone set up when I bought it, and so I'm not going to consider a factory reset without a 100% guarantee that it will solve the problem. It's hassle enough to have cleared cache, uninstalled, and reinstalled the apps in question (sometimes multiple times). I simply don't have the time to spend a day setting up my phone all over again (especially when there is a likelihood that it will not solve the problem when all is said and done).

So before I nuke it by doing a factory reset, what should I check, settings-wise? I don't remember having installed anything or changed any settings regarding data, but that doesn't mean that I didn't a year ago, following some website tips somewhere, and simply don't remember having done it. I don't normally tinker with such settings, so please forgive me for needing a bit of a step-by-step to get this solved without wiping everything and starting from scratch.

What made you think WiFi was accounting for all the problems (because I've kinda narrowed it down to the WiFi being the culprit, I just don't understand how or why)? What did I say that made you decide that wasn't it? I may have poorly described or explained something.

 

[leeshor]

The way you described the problem I don't think anyone could make a suggestion that would really help unless it was cleaning up dirty system cache. There is an app called Clean Master that may help but it sounds like it's either cache or hardware. No 2 people have the same apps or combination of apps running so any firm answers would be scarce at best.

 

[antaine]

...sigh...I did a reboot into recovery mode and cleaned the cache that way. Didn't work. I tried Clean Master. That didn't solve it either. I deleted some apps like MacroDroid that would theoretically be running all the time. Still nothing.

I find it really hard to believe that there is nothing I can do but wipe my whole phone and spend hours redownloading apps, reassociating hundreds of contacts with their photos, and setting the whole thing back up in the blind hope that it might make some difference in the way these widgets work with no particular reason to think that it would.

There were apparently widget related problems like this when Jelly Bean first came out for the Droid Razr Maxx HD, but I have been unable to determine if there was ever a fix decided upon (my research has been inconclusive). I may have been suffering from the problem all along, but I have only recently tried to use SimpleCalendar and 1Weather...prior to that, I didn't use any widgets that needed to show live updates of things.

 

[antaine]

Problems with Android 4.1.2 update to Motorola DROID RAZR and Motorola DROID RAZR MAXX

"It seems that there are quite a few owners of the Motorola DROID RAZR and Motorola DROID RAZR MAXX who wish that they could go back in time so that they could refuse to accept the recent update to Android 4.1.2 that they have received. According to one source, his Motorola DROID RAZR went from being a dream to a nightmare after the update. For example, when he is on a call and another call comes through, both conversations are dropped. Widgets placed on the screen are no longer updating and certain apps are no longer working at all. Our source owns the Motorola DROID RAZR MAXX and says just about the only part of the phone not affected is the long battery life from the 3300mAh cell." [emphasis mine]

 

[antaine]

And just to be clear, it isn't that the widgets never update their information. If I run them off the cell network only, and never have anything interrupt an update (like a phone call, dead zone, or use of wifi), then they work just fine. The problem comes up when they have their first update failure. Instead up updating normally after that, they simply stop displaying updates altogether.

 

[leeshor]

Very strange. I hate to suggest it but it sounds like you need a factory reset.

 

[mountainbikermark]

Does your phone have a Power Saver mode? If so is it on? If on could you try turning it off and see if that helps?
Also do you have any battery saving apps or virus protection apps? If so have you tried turning them off?

As stated above there are no 2 people with the same combination of apps but it could be another app is causing the bugaboo by not playing nice with the Android system or your widgets. It really does sound like SOMETHING is telling your widgets not to refresh under certain circumstances to me. It's just a matter of narrowing it down and, if possible, eliminating the culprit. I've had apps that after an update cause bugs in something totally unrelated and by process of elimination have been able to find the culprit and eliminate it.


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[antaine]

hm...no power saver setting that I can find. I have no task killers, battery savers, or antivirus (I used to have avg, but I uninstalled it weeks ago)

If I were to do a factory reset, how should I back up the phone? Are photos and whatnot in jeopardy? Is there some kind of cloud service thing that would make restoring it easier?

 

[leeshor]

hm...no power saver setting that I can find. I have no task killers, battery savers, or antivirus (I used to have avg, but I uninstalled it weeks ago)

If I were to do a factory reset, how should I back up the phone? Are photos and whatnot in jeopardy? Is there some kind of cloud service thing that would make restoring it easier?

If you aren't rooted some or most of the data will be lost. Apps can be reinstalled from the Store. As for photos and such I would install DropBox and set it to upload the photos automatically - over WiFi. Videos can be sent there too unless you exceed the 2GB free limit. I would also suggest AirDroid or directly connecting to your computer to get what you can.

Also there is an app called truBackup that works well and will backup quite a bit, even to DropBox.

The short answer is that (excluding any OS updates) your phone will be like new. Data and installed apps will be gone but not the stock apps the phone came with.

 

[antaine]

I thought what was on the external SD card will be lost (and apparently there's some kind of internal SD card partition, too? I was never quite sure how that worked)

 

[leeshor]

Most current phones only have single partition internal storage, not certain about yours but if you have a microSD card sloe I would use it as your phone may have 2 different internal storage areas and the reset would clean it up, big time.:icon_eek:

 

[antaine]

I began to backup my phone at 9am. It's now after 8pm and I'm still not done restoring it all after the factory reset. I tell ya...this business had better have fixed problems I didn't even know I had, for all the trouble it is...

 

[antaine]

I did the reset...major PIA, and it didn't solve the problem. Apparently, there is an issue with live updating widgets and Android on several models of phone (mine included). So the reset was not necessary, and there is no fix until they fix Android. Setting my phone back up is fourteen (14) hours of my life I'll never get back.

I did find what might be a dirty workaround for it, though, only I can't figure out how to implement it.

If I go to Settings>Apps>Running Applications>Show Cached Processes and tell Homescreen to Stop, it forces it to redraw all the widgets, which then come back with the current information. I've used SmartActions, MacroDroid and Tasker, but I can't quite seem to figure out an automated task that would stop Homescreen on a regular basis (either once an hour or when the phone wakes up).

Does anyone know how I could automate such a thing on a NON-rooted Droid?