"Magic" fix for many common issues (so far). - Moto G Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

The Moto G is prone to all sorts of little problems, most of which gradually grow into system instability and performance issues. Generally these are fixed with a simple factory reset, but for some reason that sometimes fails to help. I was having a lot of trouble with my phone, overheating, aforementioned performance and stability, etc... and a factory reset seemed to help, but as time went on and I used my phone, they would return.
My last problem, about 4 or 5 days ago was that my phone just constantly kept resetting itself, in addition to the UI crashes I was having before that. After desperately trying to factory reset and clear the cache and all sorts of stuff, I got nowhere. It would hang up at the factory reset process and just keep going forever. I eventually decided to use the reformat option in TWRP and now everything is great. Time will tell if it holds, but it seems solid.
The major concern I have right now is the root cause. I think that many Moto Gs were shipped with bad memory, which I will test when I look for/find an app for it, which as anyone experienced with computer repair would know can lead to all of these issues and even data corruption, which I think is what might be causing these weird issues. So if anyone has anything to add or correct me on, please be my guest. But for all of you out there struggling with these bugs, give it a try and see if it helps.

Related

unable to start camera

so prior to being on venom 4.2, i was on venom 3.xx. i had no problems prior.
i flash 4.2, and had no problems related to the camera not working. i had other problems though, after reflashing 4.2 those problems went away, but now a new problem came up.
after a restart, i can use the camera maybe once, or take one photo. after that, the screen through the camera will be frozen on screen. i can still take pictures, but it will only be off what is on the screen. after closing the camera, or force closing it,upon trying to open the camera app again, it barely loads, then force closes automatically and i get an "unable to start camera" bubble on screen. i can see only the grid outline of the camera, off center and such very briefly ontop of my wallpaper.
i can do a reset on my phone, and resume taking pictures, sometimes i am fine to continue, other times its the same problem. this is a very common recurring problem for me.
looking at my apps, i see 2 cameras installed, one is the new 5.0, and the other is the old 4.xx camera. i have frozen the 4.xx camera before through titanium, and it doesnt fix it. should i uninstall the 4.xx camera altogether?
subsequent reflashing of this rom doesnt fix this issue. and i dont know what else to do rather than reflashing the rom from a blank slate. previous reflashings have been on top of the current rom.
i would rather not have to start new as this phone has crappy amoint of space, and i cannot back up all my apps and settings.
i dont know if it is kernel related. prior to 4.2 i was using elemental x, after 4.2 i switched to beastmode since i wasnt soff.
is there perhaps a way i can manually start the camera through root browser?
If you've got both versions of camera in your app drawer I'm guessing you dirty flashed the ROM, which has most likely caused your problems. Clean flash the ROM and see if it fixes your issue. This is why I'm totally against dirty flashing anything.
I don't understand how you don't have space to back up your apps, I have a backup of every app I've ever used and still have tons of space left over. The fact that you mention backing up settings troubles me, restoring system settings after flashing a new ROM will more than likely cause problems for you.
When you're flashing a ROM don't do it the lazy way, do it the right way, perform a full wipe (cache/dalvik cache/factory reset/system) and start clean. It only takes a few minutes to setup your ROM from scratch. Restore your apps but don't restore any system data.
Sent from my Evita
thanks for the reply.
as suggested, I did a complete reset. wiped the caches, factory reset, and system reset.
installed from scratch. But i am still having the camera issue?
now its just not loading at all. black screen, then close. no error message. and no unable to start message.
could it perhaps be a hardware issue at this point?
without restoring anything, under apps, I still see two instances of the camera app. one at 5.1, and one at 4.2.2. can anyone confirm this is normal?
the only thing out of the ordinary, within the past few months, my phone has been getting crazy hot at times. specifically right below the lens of the rear camera. I was getting this heat from charging, or even certain apps. Definitely attribute that to the age of the phone. as apps that ran smooth when the phone was new, no longer are so.
I dont know if the heat can cause hardware damage?
also, not sure how relevant this is in the context of my situation. but apps that use the camera do not work either when the camera is needed, such as snapchat and instagram.
Since the clean flash did you at least end up with only the more recent version of the camera in your app drawer? You could be looking at some kind of hardware malfunction, or even a problem with the ImageSense proprietary chip that is utilised to operate the camera. The fact that the camera works sometimes would suggest that all is not lost. Have you tried flashing an aosp ROM to see if anything changes? I'd suggest trying that, and if that doesn't work you should try running an RUU to see if a completely stock setup will help.
The phone heating up near the camera lens isn't abnormal for this device. The amount that it heats up can change significantly depending on the ROM/kernel that you're running. You should definitely try not to use CPU intensive apps while the device is charging.
Sent from my Evita
timmaaa said:
Since the clean flash did you at least end up with only the more recent version of the camera in your app drawer? You could be looking at some kind of hardware malfunction, or even a problem with the ImageSense proprietary chip that is utilised to operate the camera. The fact that the camera works sometimes would suggest that all is not lost. Have you tried flashing an aosp ROM to see if anything changes? I'd suggest trying that, and if that doesn't work you should try running an RUU to see if a completely stock setup will help.
The phone heating up near the camera lens isn't abnormal for this device. The amount that it heats up can change significantly depending on the ROM/kernel that you're running. You should definitely try not to use CPU intensive apps while the device is charging.
Sent from my Evita
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
no, the clean flash still left both cameras in my "manage apps", i have never seen two camera icons in my app drawer.
as of right now, i cannot get the camera to run in any way. even with a reboot. The only reason I really did the clean reflash, was because the camera wasnt working at all today. I did a bit more digging around, and it seems like this is a fairly common problem for the one x. there seems to be quite a few people, even on stock roms, that cannot seem to remedy this. and a few have chalked it up to a hardware problem, some have been confirmed, and others not so much.
I really dislike flashing this phone. ive encountered so many hiccups and scares(mainly a few soft bricks here and there). I really prefer the "if its not broken, it doesnt need fixing approach" here, granted my camera is shot.
one of the reflashes today was giving me wifi errors with wifi not even turning on. I really want to avoid potentially more problems, unless a fix is deemed more definite. Thank you for all your help timmaaa!
im just in need of a new phone now. so many problems, and so many things the phone can no longer do effectively. random reboots, overheating, battery life, even the charging rate. this phone has become crap. Ive always hated the lack of expandable memory. I really dont know why I didnt choose a different phone over this at the time.
i really like the htc one, but i feel like many of the nuisances in the one X will follow over.
chinaman_chong said:
no, the clean flash still left both cameras in my "manage apps", i have never seen two camera icons in my app drawer.
as of right now, i cannot get the camera to run in any way. even with a reboot. The only reason I really did the clean reflash, was because the camera wasnt working at all today. I did a bit more digging around, and it seems like this is a fairly common problem for the one x. there seems to be quite a few people, even on stock roms, that cannot seem to remedy this. and a few have chalked it up to a hardware problem, some have been confirmed, and others not so much.
I really dislike flashing this phone. ive encountered so many hiccups and scares(mainly a few soft bricks here and there). I really prefer the "if its not broken, it doesnt need fixing approach" here, granted my camera is shot.
one of the reflashes today was giving me wifi errors with wifi not even turning on. I really want to avoid potentially more problems, unless a fix is deemed more definite. Thank you for all your help timmaaa!
im just in need of a new phone now. so many problems, and so many things the phone can no longer do effectively. random reboots, overheating, battery life, even the charging rate. this phone has become crap. Ive always hated the lack of expandable memory. I really dont know why I didnt choose a different phone over this at the time.
i really like the htc one, but i feel like many of the nuisances in the one X will follow over.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There's nothing wrong with this phone. Given the right amount of knowledge and care the thing doesn't skip a beat. Even though there is no such thing as a soft brick (a phone is either bricked or it isn't), whatever it is that people experience in those so called "soft brick" instances is caused by user error 99% of the time. I've seen it time and time again.
Any phone available on the market can experience any amount of issues if it isn't handled correctly. You got unlucky and your camera is most likely shot, but any other problem you've encountered comes with the territory of flashing unofficial firmware and software, it isn't anything wrong with the device itself. These are possibilities you need to be comfortable with if you're going to modify your device.
Yea, I assumed there were gonna be risks when I rooted my phone. Dont know if any of the issues I had were related to rooting or not.
The soft brick scare I had was due to a flash that went wrong for no apparent reason.
another update on my phone. I noticed my front facing camera has no issues whatsoever. unluckily for me, I cannot even access my camera, to toggle to the front facing camera to even attempt to check it out. Instagram also does not allow me to switch either, it just gives me an error saying it cannot connect to a camera, then closes. snapchat's rear facing camera is just a black screen for me, but it doesnt force close, so I am able to toggle to the front camera, and it works just fine.
is there a setting or something I can modify, for now, so the front facing camera is the default?
my brother's one x recently went out this year too. I am gonna try to salvage his camera, and see if it will fix my problem.
I have not taken apart this phone yet, is the camera soldered or held in with connectors?
Have you tried an RUU yet like I previously suggested?
Sent from my Evita
chinaman_chong said:
I really dislike flashing this phone. ive encountered so many hiccups and scares(mainly a few soft bricks here and there). I really prefer the "if its not broken, it doesnt need fixing approach" here, granted my camera is shot.
one of the reflashes today was giving me wifi errors with wifi not even turning on. I really want to avoid potentially more problems, unless a fix is deemed more definite.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If a couple hiccups and scares are too much for your, then it might be that modding phones is not for you. These types of things happen time to time to even those experienced with flashing ROMs. Occasional setbacks and troubleshooting is just part of the game. If that is too much for you, than don't play.
As timmaaa already mentioned, failure to boot is not the phone's fault; and its almost always a matter of user error and not following the procedures properly.
chinaman_chong said:
im just in need of a new phone now. so many problems, and so many things the phone can no longer do effectively. random reboots, overheating, battery life, even the charging rate. this phone has become crap. Ive always hated the lack of expandable memory. I really dont know why I didnt choose a different phone over this at the time.
i really like the htc one, but i feel like many of the nuisances in the one X will follow over.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Random software errors like random rebooting, overheating, etc. are often easily remedied with the proper steps. They are likely not issue with the phone itself, but rather a result of improper steps while flashing the ROMs. I've flashed many ROMs on this device, and have never suffered any such issues that I couldn't solve easily.
As for your other complaints about the phone (lack of expandable memory, why you didn't choose another phone), I don't know why you even posted them, as they are not constructive. Those still on this forum are mostly here because we love the phone and remain loyal to it. Your comments aren't going to help your issue, and will only annoy fans of the device. Better to keep such comments to yourself.
If you hate the phone so much, go buy another one and be done with it. But crying about it isn't going to solve anything.
I would suggest you follow timmaaa's advice, and flash the appropriate RUU to "start over". S-off is highly recommended before RUU, as running certain RUUs with S-on and SuperCID will brick the phone.
I have the same device and the same problem.
It doesn't depends of firmware or kernel or camera app..
I thought it's hardware problem but it is not. Because i was changing the camera module and it doesn't helps((
Don't know what to do with this issue(

[Q] Nexus 5 lags on Lollipop

Hi,
Sorry if this has been posted before, I didn't find anything related on here though.
Since updating my Nexus 5 to Lollipop when it was released, it has been a huge annoyance most of the time. Fresh after a reboot it's fine but the longer I use it (it usually starts after about a day), the worse it gets. It lags badly, sometimes freezes and apps get killed constantly (even if I only go back to the homescreen for a second, apps are being closed immediately). I did a factory reset which didn't help for very long, tried a different ROM (Paranoid) and regularly clear the cache (which also helps a bit but not for very long either). The RAM is never fully used and I have several GB of disk space left, so I can't explain why it's behaving like this.
I don't know what else to do or to try and while I found a couple of articles via Google, I didn't come across any solutions that helped. I hope you can help me, I don't want to go back to Kitkat...
Thanks,
Manu
Pretty sure you're talking about the memory leak issues that MANY people have experienced. 5.1 will hopefully resolve a lot of them.
This was my first guess, too. But wouldn't a memory leak use up all the RAM? I usually have a fair chunk free even though my phone is barely usable anymore. Nevertheless, I will flash the factory image this weekend and hope for the best!

Is it just me, or does Lollipop kind of suck?

Ever since upgrading to Lollipop, my phone has become a huge pain in the ass.
Music will shut off randomly. I wonder if this is some kind of garbage cleaning behind the scenes, because Pandora/Music/Spotify will all just cut out at random.
The battery life is beyond awful. I can't last a normal workday anymore.
Performance sucks. Everything has a slight delay. Random freezes all over. Google play store takes absolute ages to get anything done.
I don't know. Am I alone?
Xinlitik said:
Ever since upgrading to Lollipop, my phone has become a huge pain in the ass.
Music will shut off randomly. I wonder if this is some kind of garbage cleaning behind the scenes, because Pandora/Music/Spotify will all just cut out at random.
The battery life is beyond awful. I can't last a normal workday anymore.
Performance sucks. Everything has a slight delay. Random freezes all over. Google play store takes absolute ages to get anything done.
I don't know. Am I alone?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well...in my house I have a G3, M8 and Note 4 on Lollipop and do not see your issues. All the issues you mention seem to relate to transfer of data. Are you on wifi? Is the router going bad? Are you on LTE? how many bars? These all seem to be signal related issues, especially batter drain, not Lollipop.
My s5 is snappier since lollipop, all in all its better imho
Sent from my SM-G900P using Tapatalk
Xinlitik said:
Ever since upgrading to Lollipop, my phone has become a huge pain in the ass.
Music will shut off randomly. I wonder if this is some kind of garbage cleaning behind the scenes, because Pandora/Music/Spotify will all just cut out at random.
The battery life is beyond awful. I can't last a normal workday anymore.
Performance sucks. Everything has a slight delay. Random freezes all over. Google play store takes absolute ages to get anything done.
I don't know. Am I alone?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I am in 100% agreement. Since the update, my phone (and my wife's GS5) is borderline unusable. It reboots randomly a few times a day, usually when I am actually relying on it for something. It is slow to do anything and the battery is just terrible now.
I know that many will say to do a factory reset (I already cleared the cache on both and it did nothing), but that is a huge pain for us due to our work email, which is painful to have cleared and add back on.
rs1990 said:
I am in 100% agreement. Since the update, my phone (and my wife's GS5) is borderline unusable. It reboots randomly a few times a day, usually when I am actually relying on it for something. It is slow to do anything and the battery is just terrible now.
I know that many will say to do a factory reset (I already cleared the cache on both and it did nothing), but that is a huge pain for us due to our work email, which is painful to have cleared and add back on.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well ... You could look at it like this: What is more painful to deal with? Random reboots, lag, and general unreliability? Or the investment in time it would take to wipe it clean and start from scratch? Maybe a corporate store could help you to transfer and set up what is really important to you if you need technical help or you don't really have the time to sink into it. Just a thought.
The ota uograde may cause a lot of these issues. A fresh install of lollipop either from stock odin image or a Sprint technician is recommended. The last if you're not comfortable saving/backing up your phone.
I would have to agree. I was stock unrooted and took the OTA update to OA6. My phone was not very stable and would sometime hang on a boot forcing a battery pull. I wiped everything and flashed the [STOCK ROM][5.0] OA6 Android L Deodexed and my phone has been great since then.
DurhamHusker said:
Well ... You could look at it like this: What is more painful to deal with? Random reboots, lag, and general unreliability? Or the investment in time it would take to wipe it clean and start from scratch? Maybe a corporate store could help you to transfer and set up what is really important to you if you need technical help or you don't really have the time to sink into it. Just a thought.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, that is kind of a good point. I just keep hoping that they will update or "fix" something that will make it magically work again so that I don't have to install my corporate crap again. Probably wishful thinking though.
Wish that I could be rooted like I used to be and just use Titanium Backup, but work killed our ability to root if we want to use our phone there (amazing that little trick they have used on us...they no longer pay for phones or service, but we have to abide by all their rules if we really want to work extra hours and go above and beyond for them...such suckers we are).
Bit of an update: I installed the OA6 Stock rooted rom and cleared all of Sprint and Samsung's god awful apps. The phone runs great now. I was going home with 7% battery life before, now it's 40-50% despite the exact same usage patterns.
I can't really say whether it was the factory reset that happened in the process, or the removal of all the bloat. I was so fed up with "HEY USE YOUR PHONE AS A REMOTE" and "CHECK OUT THESE AWESOME UPDATES FROM SPRINT" notifications that I didn't bother testing the phone before removing all the crap.
But anyway, anyone who is having problems...consider trying this. My knox is 0x0 btw, the mobile odin trick works.
I actually bit the bullet and did a factory reset. It was somewhat painful, but in the end, worth it. It is much better now. My only remaining problem seems to be an issue with Spotify...It eventually causes random reboots when playing music.
My side annoyance with the factory reset...Google needs to backup everything for us to do this. It was annoying to have some things done by Google, some by Samsung, and worse, some not done at all. The process could be done much better.
Hmm.. I agree with the lack of satisfaction with Lollipop. I have problems with bluetooth, slow system, crap battery life, random crashes, loss of features I liked on KitKat, etc. I did use a clean, stock image and ran it unrooted for a while, but still had problems. I just finished rolling back to KitKat and will wait for 5.0 to be more stable before trying it again (or until the S6 comes out)

Data partition access gets slower and slower until wiped, regardless of ROM

Been noticing a bit of a weird issue, the last few months (maybe since global FW 12.0.2.0.QEEMIXM?).
When I install a ROM, I format /data, wipe everything else, and start fresh. Everything runs smoothly... for a little while. But after about a month or so, it starts getting slower and slower - slower to boot, slower to start apps, just about anything that involves reading the data partition. And it's not just app bloat or anything - even TWRP starts taking several minutes to boot, and then another several minutes at "Updating partition details..." every time it needs to do so. I was wondering if it was just the ROM I was using (AOSiP latest), but I tried switching to ArrowOS and it's doing the same thing. I've got Magisk and EdXposed, but all I'm using EdXposed for is MinMinGuard, and turning it off doesn't help (plus, like I said, this even affects TWRP).
Has anybody else been seeing this, and does anyone have a solution? As it is, I've been having to wipe and set up all over again every month or so once that slowness gets unbearable. Didn't think to grab a logcat before wiping again just now, but I'm sure it'll be back before long.
Note that I am going through exactly the same thing, I think it is a problem of the UFS of the storage, maybe it is corrupted or damaged because doing a writing test, I see that this is what derives in the slowness, for now I still do not see how solve it, I think the same thing happened to MI8 users, did you manage to solve it or did you just give up
lsolis293 said:
Note that I am going through exactly the same thing, I think it is a problem of the UFS of the storage, maybe it is corrupted or damaged because doing a writing test, I see that this is what derives in the slowness, for now I still do not see how solve it, I think the same thing happened to MI8 users, did you manage to solve it or did you just give up
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Never really found a fix, but I did notice some ROMs are affected by those slow-downs and some aren't. I've switched phones now, but I was using this PA Ruby ROM up until then and it never seemed to slow down. TWRP still took longer and longer to start up over time, though, so I still have no idea what was up.
thanks for the recommendation at least to use it while I buy another mobile, what a pity that my equipment ended up like this, that it fails with that poor quality disk by xiaomi, cheap is expensive

Having a few problems with the Pixel, enough to consider returning it.

Been using Samsung phones since the S7, and decided to give the Pixel a try, see what all the fuss is about. And I have to say, it's a bit of a let down so far. I have constant problems with it. My recents button of all things stops working sometimes, and I have to restart the phone, that's the only way to get it to work again. And to add the icing on the cake, when I restart my phone, it seems to forget my Galaxy Watch 4, then won't allow me to reconnect to it at all! Just clicking the connect button in the Bluetooth menu, and nothing happening. I actually have to factory reset the watch to get it to connect again! This will be my third reset. I'm getting to the point of being afraid of resetting my phone.
Is it a step too far to return it and go back to Samsung? Anyone else have this problem, or a solution?
The issues seem to be software related. Perhaps a factory reset WITHOUT restoring a backup would fix stability. If it's just too buggy, you'll have to decide whether it's worth waiting to see if Google fixes the issues in a timely manner or just return it.
Guyinlaca said:
The issues seem to be software related. Perhaps a factory reset WITHOUT restoring a backup would fix stability. If it's just too buggy, you'll have to decide whether it's worth waiting to see if Google fixes the issues in a timely manner or just return it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, I might give this a try first before going through all the hassle of returning.

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