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Phone turns itself off

For the past week or so, I've had the strangest issue. My phone turns itself off. I'll have the phone next to me and use it for a minute, put it down, then go to look at it again and its off. Have to press the reset button to get it back on.
Now, normally I'd assume something is wrong with the phone, but this makes me wonder. It turns off everyday when I am driving to/from work, in the same general area (between 2 roads about 1-2 miles apart). It's not just me experiencing this - my fiance does to. We both have the Fuze as well. When we went out last night, they both turned off on the way out, and again on the way back.
I'm wondering if it is a tower issue, or if it could be an issue with the phone (they are around the same age). I'm running a 6.5 rom on mine, while he is running a 6.1 rom, which he worked on himself.
Has anyone else experienced anything like this? I'm trying to figure out what causes it, and if it is outside the phone, if there is something to do. We are both on AT&T as well.. It's really driving me nuts.

I suspect extraterrestrial interference.
Seriously though, the fact that it happens to both phones does not make sense.
I have never heard of towers having the ability to do anything other than sending signals.
Unless you have installed a remote controll program such as Sprite Terminator that is not functioning correctly, this is certainly an anomaly.

Nope, no remote control programs.
Everyone around the office is joking about extraterrestrial interference. I have never heard of towers causing issues like that.
I must say, it's kinda freaky. I only really started to pay attention as I'm reaching my 1 year with the phone soon, and if there is an issue, I want to get it fixed.

The only thing which comes to mind is worrying close to the little green men screwing you about!
It would appear from your message that the phones only, and always, turn off when in the same location (or moving through that location atleast).
Assuming this is correct, then i would hazard a guess that there is some kind of EM interference in that area which is causing the phone to power off.
As to what that is... unless you are passing close by a military radar i cant think what would be causing such interference (airport surveillance radar shouldnt do it, nor will an aircraft weather radar unless its very old, and you're way too close to it [if so, i hope you dont want kids!], also a microwave transmitter shouldnt do it [again unless you're very close] and they are strictly LOS so should be positioned well above you).
Finally, all i can think of is a below ground electricity cable, but again - if you are getting enough EM radiation from that, your phone turning off is gonna be the least of your troubles.
If you figure it out pls let us know - i'm intrigued!

Wanted to post an update on this.
The past few days, nothing has happened. Guessing whatever was causing it is now fixed (or gone). Oddly enough, I walked to the printer and came back to my desk and my phone had decided to restart itself today.
I think my phone is possessed now..
Thanks for the ideas - I'm assuming it was something interfering, but have no idea what. Northern Virginia is a military area, so maybe that is to blame..

Antenna Issue : No Network Access

Ok so this has happened every night I have had the Captivate (3 nights), I go to bed at night and in the morning where my signal bar should be I have a circle with a slash through it (no network). When I go to bed I will have like 2-4 bars of service but something must happen and I lose all network functionality. I have to restart the phone which solves the problem but is a serious pain. This also happens sometimes randomly throughout the day.
Any ideas if this is a common problem with all Captivates or if it is a hardware or software issue?
I like this phone and if I can get it to work properly I love it more than my iphone but not getting service is a buzz kill and I will return it. (Bought it unsubsidized for $500 because I couldn't deal with my iphone anymore)
Note: I live in Tampa which generally has good AT&T service and have had no other problems with other phones

Did you turn off the phone and remove the sim card for a few minutes?? According to an at&t rep doing that solves network issues.
The problem I had today was that the phone showed full bars, but I couldn't send a text or make calls. I took the reps advice and it's fine for now.

Well I will give that a try tonight and see how it goes and post back tomorrow with my results. I really love everything. Else about this phone and would be a shame of I had to get rid of it because of silly antenna issues. Thanks for the advice!
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using XDA App

Are you sure you don't have any power saving apps on that are turning off the radio after a few hours? Did it happen when it was stock with no programs installed? Might try and flash it back to stock and see if that solves the problem.
Otherwise you could always walk into an AT&T store and ask for another one and see if it still happens.

Well last night it did the same thing after removing the sim for about 10 minutes before bed.
And as far as knowing if it did this before I rooted it.....well...I owned the phone for maybe 10 minutes after unboxing it before I rooted it. So I have no idea if it is because it is rooted. I don't have any apps on it for power saving purposes and nothing should be killing the radio. Problem is that it isn't like airport mode is on...its completely out of service and the only way to get service back is to reboot. Turning the radios on and then off again while the phone is on won't work...it must be a reboot.
I will probably end up returning it and trying one more Captivate before I look else where for a new phone. But after seeing this screen it would be hard to look at any other phone twice.

iphone4 would be a good screen alternative
ur antenna issue is unique and a new phone will probably fix it. id get that sim replaced too.

The new iPhone would be ok...but I can't go back to an iPhone. I have had 4 of them (2 first gens) and I am so bored of them. And I know people rave about the iPhones new screen but side by side with this phone I would take the extra screen real estate anyway.
And I did consider getting a new sim card too. I think I will wait until towards the end of my 30 day return policy and trade in for a new one.
Thanks for all the help guys

koppelmanwj said:
Ok so this has happened every night I have had the Captivate (3 nights), I go to bed at night and in the morning where my signal bar should be I have a circle with a slash through it (no network). When I go to bed I will have like 2-4 bars of service but something must happen and I lose all network functionality. I have to restart the phone which solves the problem but is a serious pain. This also happens sometimes randomly throughout the day.
Any ideas if this is a common problem with all Captivates or if it is a hardware or software issue?
I like this phone and if I can get it to work properly I love it more than my iphone but not getting service is a buzz kill and I will return it. (Bought it unsubsidized for $500 because I couldn't deal with my iphone anymore)
Note: I live in Tampa which generally has good AT&T service and have had no other problems with other phones
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Click to collapse
I've had mine since July 18th and had never have this happen...till this morning. When I pulled it off charger I noticed the signal meter what a circle with a slash. Well, I dont get great reception in my apartment so it didnt phase me until I was on my way to work and still didnt have a signal. So, I turned it off and back on and then it had a signal. So I dont know what was up with that. I'll keep an eye on it tomorrow to see if its something thats going to happen regularly.

Hmmm...so I'm not the only one having this problem. Yeah I don't get superb service in my apartment but I have also never really had any other network problems with other phones.
Wonder if there is something that kills the network if you don't have a decent signal for a certain period of time. I just wish it wasn't everyday. On the brightside nobody will wake me up with emails or texts or calls.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using XDA App

[Q] wi-fi not Sensation-al at all, any hacks?

I thought I had my weak wi-fi problem licked, by using "wi-fi best performance" in the settings.This is my second Sensation, I took one back for awful wi-fi and speaker, this one no better even after discovering the "best performace" setting.
I first took the sensation to a Mickey D's nearby, as I know they have wi-fi. Not a blip. I tried with and w/o "best performance", nothing, nada, I parked right next to where customers would sit, as well as tried a couple other areas in the lot. Nothing at all when I scanned.
I then went to another McD's. Pretty much same thing, even though one spot in the lot, I got 1 bar/poor, but not stable to make a connection. I assumed it was theirs, but maybe not,didn't say Wayport or attws. I also parked as close as I could to a sports bar that has wi-fi, again not a blip. I was inside that sports bar the other night, and even though it seemed to get a decent wi-fi signal inside, kept saying "page not found". If I used 2/3/4 G (actually only 2G was working in there), I could get web pages.
I came home after my first trip to McD's, grabbed my laptop, my Sensation, as well as my original HTC Dash, which I decided to try a unused SIM card in. I couldn't make calls of course, but I could connect to wi-fi at my house.
So I set sail with all 3 devices. I went back to the first McD's I tried a half hour earlier, and parked again right outside where the customers sit. Good to excellent signal on the laptop. A consistent 1 bar signal on the Dash, but stable and functional, and it definitely showed McD's sign in page - attws hotspot plus a Wayport icon showing also. The Sensation - not even a hint of wi-fi service again.
Any updates or hacks that will make the wi-fi more normal?
Or else the thing is going back. If I have to eat $50 for the T-Mo store restocking fee, so be it, but now I'm reading people are getting phones from Best Buy and Costo (I assume Sam's Club maybe too) and getting pretty long periods to try them out and no restocking fee. So I may do that. The T-Mo store is 14 days, and I had the first Sensation 7 days, plus the new one 4 so far. Thanks.

I agree 100%. My wife's Vibrant gets 3 bars strong from my bedroom (where the wifi is) to my living room, my Vibrant only gets one bar, and often just disconnects all together???? WTF???? Not so Sensational right? I hope a better ROM or some kind of fix becomes available soon.

Look guys, there are already dozens of threads on this. Can you repost this in one of those?
Just trying to avoid clutter
Thanks guys
BW

[Q] complete signal loss

Iv had the AT&T One X since the 4th and so far I love it! I haven't had any wifi issues or bootloops or anything, the only problem I'm having is the phone will randomly lose signal completely (0 bars, little x next to the signal) and wont get it back unless I put it into airplane mode and turn it back off, or reboot the phone. In the 6 days Iv had it it's lost signal 3 times, once on the road where I normally get at least 3-4 bars, and the other 2 happened at some point over night while I was asleep. Has anyone else been having this problem? Also do you think it's a software/radio problem that can be fixed in a update, or would it be hardware in which case I should take it to the store and exchange for a new one.

I've had this problem myself. Had the phone for 19 days now and I think it's happened to me 3 or 4 times.
I can guarantee it's fixable with a software update, even if the problem is hardware-related. At the very least, the software could detect the lack of signal and automatically cycle in and out of airplane mode to fix the problem without user interaction. But I'm sure whatever fix we get will be much more reliable than that.
WHEN we get the fix is another question...

Thanks for the reply. I figured it might be a software issue since you can cycle airplane mode and get it back and I don't really want to take it down to the AT&T store for an exchange in fear I wined up not able to set up gvoice or start getting wifi issues and the like lol. so far the signal drops are far and few in between making it an annoying issue rather than a critical one, and I read we've got root now so even if HTC/AT&T twiddle their thumbs and pretend nothings wrong I'm sure the community can save the day lol

I would swap it out Azure. My first HOX did exactly this, and I saw it reported elsewhere on a number of other devices. To me that says it's most likely a bad radio flash on some handsets. I suppose you could try and flash the RUU that was posted, as it most likely includes the radio as well.
I got tired of all my calls going directly to VM without ringing. And not being able to send out texts. My replacement works much better (or rather, how it should've from the beginning).

agentdr8 said:
I got tired of all my calls going directly to VM without ringing. And not being able to send out texts.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Was this problem intermittent?
My phone has been doing this randomly, except it never went to voicemails, just hung up after like 30 seconds.
Wondering if I should switch it out also.

Had this problem for a day. Took my phone to the at&t store and they changed out the sim card and I haven't had a problem since.
Sent from my HTC One X using XDA

usfslacker said:
Had this problem for a day. Took my phone to the at&t store and they changed out the sim card and I haven't had a problem since.
Sent from my HTC One X using XDA
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I never thought about the sim card being a possible problem...might run up to the store when I get the chance and swap my sim out and see if that fixes it, if not I'll just swap the device out and hope all's well

The CSR actually swapped a new micro sim first, since the one provided via online sales was an older one (most likely from the iphone 4/4s batch). It didn't seem to fix the problem though.
And yeah, the problem was very intermittent. One second it would be working fine, and the next it would show the "x". Sometimes the bars would come back immediately, other times it wouldn't until I rebooted or cycled airplane mode. Luckily it happened while I was at the store; it's much easier to convince a sales rep to swap a phone when they can witness the issue(s).

Yeah it's only happened to me twice since I got it on the 4th... it'll be very hard for me to convince them that there's an issue haha... maybe I'll head down there if it happens at a time when I'm not in class or something. I'm sure if I mention returning it/their policy I'll get a swap.

agentdr8 said:
The CSR actually swapped a new micro sim first, since the one provided via online sales was an older one (most likely from the iphone 4/4s batch). It didn't seem to fix the problem though.
And yeah, the problem was very intermittent. One second it would be working fine, and the next it would show the "x". Sometimes the bars would come back immediately, other times it wouldn't until I rebooted or cycled airplane mode. Luckily it happened while I was at the store; it's much easier to convince a sales rep to swap a phone when they can witness the issue(s).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
next time my phone drops signal I'll take it into the store and see about a sim swap in hopes that'll fix the issue if not then I'll reluctantly swap the unit out (I've grown rather attached to this one xD)
**EDIT**
strange...woke up today and my phone completely lost signal again, normally there's a few days between each event but this is the first time it's happened twice in a row =\

So it happened again, I'm going to go get it switched... but it says on the Mobile network section of settings, "Disconnected because service is unavailable."
There is clearly almost full signal strength, and I have never been without service where I live.

I was expereincing constant network drops all of yesterday due to an outage. However, it's back to normal for me today. So it may be possible there's an outage near you as well.

I think it is more AT&T than your phone. I was in down town buffalo at a swim meet with 5 bars of hspa+ on my blackberry bold that has a great radio. I had data but it was slow dial up slow. There were maybe 100-200 people at the meet and it was at a community college. The only other time I had this was when I was in a car that was driving by the buffalo bills stadium. Voice worked but I had no data. I guess too many people using their cell phones.

Definitely not AT&T, my SE Xperia x10 worked perfectly fine, never had any trouble with signals.

I also encounter the intermittent signal drops on my 4 days old AT&T one x.
It seems to me that the One x doesn't hold signal as good as the iphone, my 4 and 4s usually get around 2 bars in some really remote locations of the building I work. But the One X just drops signal completely. I'll see if I can do a sim swap like some others suggested.

I'm starting to think it could be an issue with lte phones because the same thing was happening to me on my galaxy note with 2 different sim cards and 2 different devices and now it's happening on my hox
Sent from my HTC One X using Tapatalk 2

it has happened to me 3 times in 5 days. All 3 times I was either:
1. in a poor reception area and it came back on its own, i did not have to use airplane mode.
2. was using BT streaming in car and using car charger, once car charger was unplugged, signal came back.

One X has issues
Definitively problems with the phone.
I have three.
They just drop signal completely. One will work, the other will not. Only way the signal will come back is if you turn the phone on and off again. I love everything about this phone....except it isn't a very good phone.
Also, typically when I turn the phone back on, that is when I get my text messages. Nice.

Yeah I figured out it happens when I lose signal (a couple buildings on my schools campus don't get reception), and then the signal won't come back until I reboot or airplane mode.. this is after a sim swap.
Oh and do I need the box my phone came in to swap it?
Sent from my HTC One X using XDA

I have had this issue as well being on the Rogers (Canada) network. I started a thread as well and my theory is there may be a hardware issue reading the SIM cards.
Every now and then I get a "preparing SIM" message pop up on my screen. Also, I lost signal once and in frustration I slapped the phone into my palm VOILA! signal came back full.
This is the second One-X I've gotten from Rogers so there may be a design flaw somewhere. The problem is this behavior only pops up intermittently and cannot be recreated at will. This makes troubleshooting very difficult and practically unprovable in the eyes of providers.
Hopefully there are more reports of this problem and the carriers push back on HTC to resolve the problem.

Excessive Tower Switching Causing Chronic Dropped Calls

Hi guys. I've got a saga to describe for those of you who are interested, but I'll try to keep it brief. I think it really boils down to one or two simple issues.
I've had Verizon phones for a long time, in Central Illinois. Probably about 10 years now. Rarely had problems with dropped calls. My previous phone was a Droid 1 ... worked great, very rarely (as I recall) had dropped calls.
Then in January 2012, as the Droid was killing me with general Android lag and unresponsiveness (but voice was still fine), I upgraded to a Galaxy Nexus. Loved it for Android performance. For the first 3 or 4 months I had it, I don't recall it giving me any undue trouble .. dropped calls were minimal if any, I think.
Then sometime around April or May, started getting a ridiculous number of dropped calls. Mostly at my home, throughout the day, but not just there, I've also experienced them a mile or two away from my house. The neighbor hood is fairly wooded, but that's never been a problem before.
Additionally, my wife has a "feature phone" (non-smartphone) also with Verizon and very rarely if ever has dropped call problems.
The topography at my house is along a river, we're right near a high bluff overlooking the river, with line of sight (besides the trees, of which there are not a ton, really) for at least a mile or so across the river. I think we're possibly within range of several cell towers.
I notice at most points when I'm in my house, using some apps that help you track signal strength and show you the cell tower ids, that I'm mostly one just two different ones, both of which seem to be maybe about 1 mile away. Also, if I'm walking up one flight of stairs, I pretty reliably see that same app showing the phone switching among possibly as many as 4 or 5 towers, in the space of about 5 or 10 seconds!
I suspect this may be caused by the topography in my area.
I also suspect that most of my dropped calls *may* have something to do with being in range of so many towers, or with the phone switching too frequently (or unnecessarily, really) among the towers, while I'm on the call, if this is possible (I have very little technical knowledge of cell phone radio technology -- hence this post).
Now, I've done a fair amount of research and talked to Verizon customer support about this at length. They've actually been very patient and good with me, but we still haven't arrived at the solution.
I originally thought the problem my be the Galaxy Nexus, but after getting a warranty replacement on that one, and even getting to try a Droid RAZR and then finally the GS3, I'm seeing virtually the exact same behavior on all of the phones. The symptoms do *not* seem to be directly related to signal strength exactly. I get usually about 50 - 60% of the total bars (maybe 3/5 or 4/5) in most parts of the house, yet *still* get these persistent drops.
Verizon's final best solution for me, basically, was to use a Network Extender. Despite my misgivings towards this, I have acquired one and it does seem to solve the problem for me, when I'm home, and when I'm in range of the device (its range seems pretty good in my house). One big problem with it though, ridiculously, is it seems that whenever it's on, my wife's Verizon phone starts dropping calls (and it never does otherwise). So there's a Catch-22 there, added to the fact that I'd rather not have to be running a Net Extender *and* the fact that I still see other drops when taking a walk or driving at least a mile or two from my house.
So, for those of you still with me, I'm wondering if
a) my theory about excessive switching, etc., is plausible, or if you have another one based on the facts I've outlined
b) if doing something like flashing an alternate radio ROM (I barely even knew there were separate ROMs for the radio -- I've done some rooting before of Android, but not the radio) might give me some more control or better performance. It'd be great if there were a setting somewhere where I could tell the phone to be less willing to switch towers or to give a higher preference to one tower, at least while in a certain GPS area (I know, I'm sure it's a reach).
Anyway, looking for a little education into why your opinions are of what may be causing this and if I have any remedies available that are feasible and may actually help.
Thank you for your attention and expertise.