O2 Xphone locking up, confirmed, reproducible

[Guest FRiC]

I don't know if many people would care, but I can now 100% reproduce the homescreen lockup during standby problem. (This is also the lockup when near large metal object problem.)

Anyway, this only affects some carriers, so if you've never experienced seemingly random lockups, chances are you will never be affected. We have four GSM carriers here and this problem only affects the 900 MHz carrier (TH AIS). The two 1800 MHz carriers (DTAC, Orange) are completely unaffected. I don't have a 1900 MHz (Thaimobile) SIM to test 1900 MHz.

To reproduce the lockup I place my phone between my PC tower case and the 17" EIZO CRT monitor. The phone locks up when it receives any incoming call, SMS, MMS, or does any contact with the cell sites. The monitor does the wave thing, but the phone no longer responds and the battery must be pulled to restart the phone. Once it's locked up, it still behaves as it's on the network since I can still place calls to it, and the monitor waves as though there's an incoming call, but the phone is completely unresponsive.

The phone doesn't necessarily have to be near large metal objects. The problem probably is related to signal strength or signal disruption. My phone locks up quite often when I'm at one of my company's apartments, but that particular apartment is almost completely unfurnished, but it's located outside of the city...

Workarounds:

- change carriers

- don't place phone near objects that could cause interference

- keep the backlight on (!)

There's a different problem that I'm looking into right now. It's the problem where the phone appears to be in service since it still has working signal bars. But in fact it's no longer on the network, and people calling to your phone will be redirected as if the phone is turned off. And if you try to place a call on the phone, it just beeps and does nothing...

Sorry for the long post.