Overclock issue: possible lemon?

[Guest jonathanbaker1]

Interesting issue I ran across recently. I bought a BJ2 (black model) and had successfully overclocked it to 276 with no problems. ((needless to say, I'm very familiar with Omapclock and how to properly use and configure it. Overclocked several phones.))

Occasionally I got it up to 288 but kept it at 276.

Well, being vain, I exchanged it for the Burgundy model. I've only had this one for a day or so. Now this model hasn't had the well-documented lockup at stock speed, yet! But as soon I set it to 276, it locks up within seconds. I can run it at 264 but what's the point (260 stock). I know hundreds of users have their BJ2s overclocked to 276 and sometimes 288 with no problems.

I'm afraid that I've gotten a lemon.. Maybe I'm just being vain again, but I don't want to get a week or month down the road and have it start locking up more. So what do you think? I think I'm going to return it for one that hopefully can reach 276.

[Guest thelostsoul]

My question is, what's the point of overclocking it? You're putting your device's stability at risk, risking damaging the phone permanently, draining the battery faster, creating more things for it to load and manage, for what? about 15mhz? 20? 25? Unless you're running an application that specifically needs more CPU, there's no reason to use any overclocking. It's dangerous and causes more damage than it's worth.

As for if you have a lemon, you can't say it's a lemon because you can't overclock it. Overclocking is incredibly sporadic. What works for some might not work for all. That said, test all the stock features of the phone, eg. things it's designed for. If those all work, you do not have a lemon.

[Guest jonathanbaker1]

I see your point. In my experience, and from other users, there shouldn't be any reliability issues at 276. The benefits speak for themselves, including a much improved response time for all applications and menus. Video playback is dramatically improved too. As far as battery life, I don't believe it changes much if at all.

[Guest MadSci]

I see your point. In my experience, and from other users, there shouldn't be any reliability issues at 276. The benefits speak for themselves, including a much improved response time for all applications and menus. Video playback is dramatically improved too. As far as battery life, I don't believe it changes much if at all.

Well I can give one good reason for overclocking. I have 2400 Contacts in my OUtlook Contact file, and at the standard speed the BJII is pretty pokey about finding the contact you are looking for. Upping the processor speed to 276 makes a HUGE difference. Not the expected 6% decrease in time to display the Contact, more like a 50 to 75% decrease!

I don't know why exactly, but I have seen it happen each time I lower the speed, and then push it up again.

As for the speed at which Photocontacts can retrieve the correct photo and display it, the same sort of effect is also seen.

At speeds greater than 276, the phone gets wonky and tends to lock up. At 296, it just doesn't work.

As far as I can tell, no-one has reported damaging their BJII by overclocking, probably because it becomes disfunctional at markedly higher speeds.

My $0.02

MadSci

[Guest JamRWS6]

Well I can give one good reason for overclocking. I have 2400 Contacts in my OUtlook Contact file, and at the standard speed the BJII is pretty pokey about finding the contact you are looking for. Upping the processor speed to 276 makes a HUGE difference. Not the expected 6% decrease in time to display the Contact, more like a 50 to 75% decrease!

I don't know why exactly, but I have seen it happen each time I lower the speed, and then push it up again.

As for the speed at which Photocontacts can retrieve the correct photo and display it, the same sort of effect is also seen.

At speeds greater than 276, the phone gets wonky and tends to lock up. At 296, it just doesn't work.

As far as I can tell, no-one has reported damaging their BJII by overclocking, probably because it becomes disfunctional at markedly higher speeds.

My $0.02

MadSci

I agree,

I had my BJ1 overclocked for over a year and never had any problems.

[Guest thelostsoul]

I left my computer on non-stop almost every day/night for about 5 years. I was constantly told that's risky. I ignored the comments. Not too long ago, my graphics card burned out, and some internal components of my system have failed. Now if I leave my computer on for more than 2 days, the whole system goes haywire. Keyboard LED's start flashing, mouse and keyboard stop functioning, screen remains locked or starts flickering. If I try to reboot immediately after that, it'll fail at the BIOS. I have to let it cool for a while before restarting.

Moral of the story: even if something appears to be working, even if it's been going for a year, if it's risky, you're taking a risk. Just because I can bend my fingers back and they'll stay that way for a while, doesn't mean I should force them to stay that way forever. Same thing with your phone. It's not designed to operate at higher speeds. Overclocking is always given with a "Use at your own risk" warning. I ignored this on my old PDA and paid the price for it. Lost a LOT of data. That was overclocking from 206mhz to ~220mhz.

I'm not saying don't overclock, and I'm not saying it doesn't have it advantages. I'm saying use it carefully.