Strange phone issues with Samsung Galaxy S

Hi,

I bought a Samsung Galaxy S about a month ago, and have been having odd problems with it since the off. Has anyone else had these sort of symptoms:

1. I occasionally lose my data connection - the icon disappears from the top of the screen and whilst I can still make and recieve calls and text messages, I cannot download anything in any app. The only way I've found to get my data connection back is to reset the phone. This happens maybe a couple of times a week.

2. My WiFi seems to suffer from a similar problem. I can be browsing the web on Wifi, then suddenly I'll not be able to download anything anymore. The wifi icon is still visible, but I'll basically be unable to download anything until I switch the wifi off and back on again. Then, it starts working as normal again.

In both these above scenarios, I think I've narrowed it down to primarily happening after I use the Android Market, but it's difficult to tell as it's very intermittent.

3. A couple of times since getting the phone, I've been unable to make or receive any calls. Even switching the phone off and back on didn't help - my signal bar was showing I had a signal and my data connection was still active. Couldn't tell if this was a network problem or not though as there weren't any people nearby on the same network as me. After a while, it started working normally again.

4. The email client randomly lost all of my email settings. One day I was receiving all my emails, the next day I had no email accounts set up at all.

5. I installed Sensor Dump and Phone Explorer to see what data was coming in from the sensors, and have noticed that the light sensor never sends any data. Is this normal?

I also have the usual slow-down issues, etc, but the above have got me stumped as I can't find anyone else reporting the same issues. When I first got the phone, I went crazy installing a load of Android apps, so initially I blamed the software I'd installed. After a reset and being a bit more selective with the apps I install and use, I'm still getting the same issues. I just can't pin down whether this is a faulty phone that I should return, or if there are software issues either relating to the way I'm using the phone or just with bugs in the firmware.

Has anyone else had anything like the above happen with their Galaxy S?

Thanks,

Chris.

thanks for the reply - at least I'm not completely alone!

I have the automatic brightness turned on - which is why it seems odd. To be honest, I've never actually see the auto brightness do anything. It always seems to be the same brightness to me.

Cheers,

Chris.

ProfWolfMan said:

Hi,

I've experienced no.4 some times. My inbox did not show some older mails.

Click to expand...

Click to collapse

I think it might be normal that older mails disappear from the inbox after some time? My problem was that everything went. I had three email accounts set up, all downloading emails every hour. Then, one day I went into the email app and there were no accounts at all! I had to set it all up from scratch again.

I hear there are better email apps available for Android, so I'll probably switch to one of those soon.

Nik_B! said:

I bought a Galaxy S on Orange UK in July. I'm having the same problem as 1. quite consistenly now.

Click to expand...

Click to collapse

I'm actually getting this happen a lot now. It seems to be getting worse, which makes me think it might be a hardware fault. I generally lose my data connection once or twice a day minimum, but some days the phone is virtually unusable.

I have found that it's more likely to happen after using Wi-Fi, so my other thought is that when coming out of Wireless mode, the phone may not switch the normal 3G/HSDPA data connection back on. Most of the time I can fix this by putting the phone into flight mode and then back out, but sometimes it needs a complete reset.

The other problem I've noted with the data connection is that sometimes it seems to rapidly switch between HSDPA and 3G - the data icon at the top of the screen keeps going from '3G' to 'H' then back again. I guess it has something to do with signal quality but it only seems to happen when the phone is showing a good signal strength (four bars). The problem I've found when this happens is that it virtually locks up any ongoing data transfers, making it impossible to download a webpage or check my emails. Strangely the only way I've really found to stop this happening is to move somewhere where my signal strength is weaker, such as indoors, which then seems to make the phone stop attempting to use HSDPA. I can't find a way to switch off HSDPA from within the phone's settings while leaving 3G on.

I really am now finding that using this phone is an increasingly frustrating experience. I've found even more weird faults, such as sometimes my text conversations show the wrong people's names up against them, and then my replies go to the wrong people. It's like an insane, shiny mess of a phone!

Chris.