For what it’s worth, my phone is rooted and I’ve flashed a different rom onto it: CyanogenMod-7.1.0. That’s not caused the problem though, I did that ages ago. Actually, I did that within an hour of getting the phone! A few days ago my Samsung Galaxy S started malfunctioning. I uninstalled recently installed apps but the problem persisted. These were the problems:
- screen flickering when charger plugged in
- charger sometimes not being recognised as supplying power
- battery indicator jumping around to more or less random indication levels
- not switching off properly but instead showing the battery indicator permanently, with a yellow warning triangle and a little image of a thermometer superimposed on that, as shown in the following video:
I phoned my mobile phone company (Three) and their technical support took the usual approach of repeating everything I said but altering its meaning slightly, with the result that what should have been a five minute call took half an hour. The fellow at the other end of the phone claimed that he had never heard of the fault before. Three’s proposed remedies involved either sending the phone back to them for a physical repair (Which was going to cost between £30 & £90. Unless I refused the repair, in which case it would cost me £20. It is still under warranty!) or performing a factory reset.
I should mention that I am fastidious in looking after my phone. It never gets wet. I’ve never dropped it and it hasn’t received any impact trauma either.
I read various threads which suggested that there was a hardware fault with the USB port. Various people suggested that their phone had “magically” cured itself. That is, of course, impossible, unless water penetration had been the cause of their problems. Several people said that they had cured the problem by cleaning their USB port. Others proposed physically moving it, either “up” or “down”. The consensus seemed to be “down”. Then I saw the following video guidance, which is very tempting.
I’m going to record all the steps I’ve taken here in this post. First, I backed up all my apps and data with Titanium Backup. The free version is good enough to perform that crucial job. Next, just in case, I’m going to perform a factory reset.
The factory reset completed. The first thing to do is download Titanium Backup from the Android Market, sorry Google Play, grr what a silly rebranding exercise. With that, I can restore all my apps. First I have to allow applications from unknown sources (Menu – Settings – Applications – Unknown Sources: ticked!). Next is a batch process under Titanium Backup: “Restore all apps with data”. The tell tale sign is that this has the largest number next to it. This process takes each app in turn. The phone asks whether I want to install each one. I make some individual decisions not to install certain apps, stuff I don’t use any more. Silly games and the like. Chess is the only game worth playing, clearly.
As I suspected, this did not cure the problem. Next up, I think I should try to clean out the USB port somehow… I will report back…