Blank Screen of Death

[Guest gavzter]

Hi All,

Firstly, apologies for the first-post question.

I'm getting random blank screen of death: where when the phone is in standby mode, ie screen off, and I cant get the screen to come back on until I soft-reset.

It can be fine 99% of the time, ie press the power button and the screen lights up as it should do. But, seemingly randomly the screen stays blank although the phone does seem to still be on(?!)

This can happen any time whether it is plugged into the charger or not. After 3 hard resets and no change, I'm a little stuck.

Does anyone else suffer this problem and/or fixed it by rom updates? I assume it's not a hardware issue....?

I'm running a branded vodafone omnia:

PDA: i900XXHH1/ACHH1

PHONE: i900BUHG5

Glad to hear anyone's thoughts..

Thanks,

Gavin

[Guest pdaphonemaster]

Hi All,

Firstly, apologies for the first-post question.

I'm getting random blank screen of death: where when the phone is in standby mode, ie screen off, and I cant get the screen to come back on until I soft-reset.

It can be fine 99% of the time, ie press the power button and the screen lights up as it should do. But, seemingly randomly the screen stays blank although the phone does seem to still be on(?!)

This can happen any time whether it is plugged into the charger or not. After 3 hard resets and no change, I'm a little stuck.

Does anyone else suffer this problem and/or fixed it by rom updates? I assume it's not a hardware issue....?

I'm running a branded vodafone omnia:

PDA: i900XXHH1/ACHH1

PHONE: i900BUHG5

Glad to hear anyone's thoughts..

Thanks,

Gavin

I experenced the sam issue and thought it was a hardware fault and got a replacement. The second one also showed the similar symptom. I was on the original rom DXHG4. After many shoftware isolation excercise, I pretty much concluded that it was the Samsung widget. For the patches of periods where no problem was experienced I was using Samsung today plugin 2. But in all the cases where I has screen black out issues as you described, I had the widget interface on.

I am now on rom DXHI1, and this problem has yet to surface. I activated the widget interface to see if this rom has this issue. So far so good. Plus, the battery drain issue with rom DXHH3 seems to have been solved with this rom.

Try not to use Samsung widget. Better yet upgrade the rom to DXHI1.

Hope this helps.

[Guest gavzter]

Thanks for the reply!

I'm using today 2 rather than the widget home screen, so can say that's not the cause in my case..

I read on another forum that activating the etiquette feature (silence when you turn the phone over) caused this for one guy.

I have this feature enabled too, so I'll disable this feature now and report back..

Thanks again,

Gavin

[Guest pdaphonemaster]

Thanks for the reply!

I'm using today 2 rather than the widget home screen, so can say that's not the cause in my case..

I read on another forum that activating the etiquette feature (silence when you turn the phone over) caused this for one guy.

I have this feature enabled too, so I'll disable this feature now and report back..

Thanks again,

Gavin

Right, I always had the etiquette feature on. I will disable it now. But as I posted earlier, no problem with DXHI1 so far.

[Guest thegoodly]

im currently using HI1, and still get this black screen, that requires a soft reset. as far as i can make out, for me anyway, it seems to only happen if i leave wifi on and let the back light go off.. very strange.

[Guest gavzter]

well, with the etiquette feature off and wifi off all day today, I've had the blank screen of death twice and it's only 5.45pm.

Interestingly I can confirm that the phone is still active as I rang my phone whilst it was in this state and it rang. bizarre.

There is seemingly no common explanation, or for that matter a comon fix, for this bug. ;)

I'm going to flash HI1 tonight and see if this works for me ....

Gavin

[Guest snoopy-doopy]

Hi

I've never got a freeze. I'm running SPB Shell (no widget) an S2U2

PDA : BHHG6

TEL XXHG3

[Guest TWDtony]

I had the same problem - infact I had the blank screen more than 10 times in 24 hours (and the phone was only 24 hours old!)

Since then though I have been toying with trying to fix this or replacing the Omnia with a HTC Touch Diamond...

What I have tried so far:

1. Turning OFF Wi-Fi - No Result (still blank screened)

2. Closing all apps before locking the device - No Result (still blank screened)

3. Removing all the apps that I had installed (TomTom 7 etc) - No Result (still blank screened).

4. deactivated the Samsung homescreen Widget (Now using Samsung today plugin 2) - RESULT!!!!! NO MORE BLANK SCREENS....

My phone has now been on for 15 hours and it hasn't blanked once... Not concrete proof I know but it's looking good ;)

[Guest pdaphonemaster]

I had the same problem - infact I had the blank screen more than 10 times in 24 hours (and the phone was only 24 hours old!)

Since then though I have been toying with trying to fix this or replacing the Omnia with a HTC Touch Diamond...

What I have tried so far:

1. Turning OFF Wi-Fi - No Result (still blank screened)

2. Closing all apps before locking the device - No Result (still blank screened)

3. Removing all the apps that I had installed (TomTom 7 etc) - No Result (still blank screened).

4. deactivated the Samsung homescreen Widget (Now using Samsung today plugin 2) - RESULT!!!!! NO MORE BLANK SCREENS....

My phone has now been on for 15 hours and it hasn't blanked once... Not concrete proof I know but it's looking good ;)

Yes. I had the similar experience. When SS widget was on, I get blank screen of death but not when I was on SS 2. This was when I was in DXHG4.

Upgraded to DXHI1 and no more blank screen of death even with SS widget.

[Guest gavzter]

48 hours since flashing to HI1 and no blank screen of death as yet :wacko:

Although I haven't activated the etiquette feature and have stuck with Samsung Today 2.

Sorted.. I hope ;)

Gavin

[Guest Reuben (MY)]

are you using spb time? i remember once i install some software that controls the backlight and my screen is blank as well when wake up from sleepmode. forgoten what's the software but quite sure it's one of spb software. try diggling around all software and see if there are any option to control wake up status.

[Guest ShaneO]

1. Turning OFF Wi-Fi - No Result (still blank screened)

2. Closing all apps before locking the device - No Result (still blank screened)

3. Removing all the apps that I had installed (TomTom 7 etc) - No Result (still blank screened).

4. deactivated the Samsung homescreen Widget (Now using Samsung today plugin 2) - RESULT!!!!! NO MORE BLANK SCREENS....

My phone has now been on for 15 hours and it hasn't blanked once... Not concrete proof I know but it's looking good ;)

I found this site by Googling for this problem. My i900 is only 5 days old and has Blank-Screened many times! I tried option 4 and all is now working fine!

Thank-you for posting your discovery.

[Guest TWDtony]

I found this site by Googling for this problem. My i900 is only 5 days old and has Blank-Screened many times! I tried option 4 and all is now working fine!

Thank-you for posting your discovery.

It seems I may have been a little premature with the "Whoopeee - it's fixed" post above - it's black screened twice today already and to be honest I cannot afford to have a phone that I have to get out of my pocket every 5 minutes and "prod" to see if it's still awake... I'm going back to T-Mobile later to slap the salesman about with it and then to demand a HTC Touch Diamond. ;)

[Guest ShaneO]

It seems I may have been a little premature with the "Whoopeee - it's fixed" post above - it's black screened twice today already ...

That's a real shame. Mine is DEFINATELY fixed as it was blank-screening several times each day, and since your original suggestion I have not had a single problem. (Now a full 24 hours has passed).

Maybe it's because my ROM is a fairly early release? (DXHG3)

[Guest Reuben (MY)]

try disabling Power Saving Mode found 2nd last tab in Battery setting page.

i notice when this option is checked, and wireless power save is disabled, whenever i use wireless, the screen will goes standby and cant wake up. but once i disabled it, it works like normal. i'm on HI1 with widget team, didn't see the screen stay blank since i disable Power Saving.

[Guest James(UK)]

I never had this problem before this week ( I've had my omnia 6 weeks..)

Samsung UK said return the phone I am jiffy bag that they will provide and be without the phone 2 weeks.....mmmmm not helpful...

so I thought about this and the only things that I changed this week were power save and Ettiquette...Power save seems to make no difference however turning off Ettiquette seems to have doen the trick..

If it does not blank screen all week I will assume this is fixed and then I will try with ettiquette back on again and let you all know

Edited October 5, 2008 by James(UK)

[Guest saznpins]

I only started having this problem when I upgraded to HI1 :wacko: I have never used the Widget screen, and power save has always been disabled on my device. I guess I'll either try HI2 or HI3, or maybe downgrade back to HH2 since I ran that ROM for a week and a half and never had the black screen once ;)

To help me (and others perhaps) decide... I know it hasn't been out long but anyone try HI3 and notice an improvement with this problem?

[Guest Unisoldrew]

I only started having this problem when I upgraded to HI1 :wacko: I have never used the Widget screen, and power save has always been disabled on my device. I guess I'll either try HI2 or HI3, or maybe downgrade back to HH2 since I ran that ROM for a week and a half and never had the black screen once ;)

To help me (and others perhaps) decide... I know it hasn't been out long but anyone try HI3 and notice an improvement with this problem?

Ditto for me.

Although i've also experienced this problem once so far.

[Guest vlodek]

I got sometimes the blank screen after installing SPB Mobile Shell.

It happened once or twice a day after going to stanby.

I uninstalled the SPB and it still had the blank screen so i restored from backup to situation

before installing the SPB Shell. And then everything was ok . Anybody also see

connection between SPB shell and blank screen ? Is there any setup on SPB to resolve this ?

[Guest Evrae]

I got sometimes the blank screen after installing SPB Mobile Shell.

It happened once or twice a day after going to stanby.

I uninstalled the SPB and it still had the blank screen so i restored from backup to situation

before installing the SPB Shell. And then everything was ok . Anybody also see

connection between SPB shell and blank screen ? Is there any setup on SPB to resolve this ?

I have had mine nearly a month and had my 1st real crash last night. The only thing I could think of is when battery is low, there is some conflict in programs to be kept open. I had Coreplayer running, bluetooth on for listening via my headset and my wifi on as was waiting for a confirmation email. When charged, it had froze while charging making impossible to wake. I did a soft reset and it loaded up screen but never asked for my pin so my phone was totally locked up. Tried without sim and still unusable. I guessed a format button config and hey presto, working again now. I had mobile shell installed too but didnt like it.

[Guest stuzathegreat]

Hey Guys

Im getting this as well (DXHI3/DXHI3).

Now some more info. I run the windows mobile standard today screen - no fancy samsung stuff here - and have cut out all my apps except TomTom, which I use currently with an external GPS. I do not use WIFI and I have turned off the "Enable Power Save mode" in Settings->power. Etiquette is also off.

The two things I simply cannot turn off are Push email and TomTom. Apart from these, my phone is pretty much stock now.

Now something to add:

We used to get this on Toshiba G900's and then one day a firmware update was released and it vanished. I strongly suspected in the case of the G900 that if you tried to wake it whilst it was downloading emails that this would be the time you would get it. If this is the case, all we can do is wait for Samsung to release a fix like Toshiba did ;)

I have also noticed that in MY case, the Omnia is actually still running and that if you hold the power key down (as if you were forcing it to turn off), it will eventually wake up. Once it has woken up it will be incredibly slow and is not useable. This does suggest however that its not "crashed" but that a process/task/service is taking up all the CPU time. I have tried leaving it for a while once this has happened to see if the task would finish but alas, I have not seen this.

Anyone any thoughts? Do you guys use email, either push or pull?

Edited October 10, 2008 by stuzathegreat

[Guest grandiotk]

I had the same problem.I tried everything till 3 days ago and I found the solution for me.Its because of wifi and power settings.

1.Power Settings = Turn off device 5 minutes turn of backlight 30 seconds all two boxes checked (Battery Power)

Turn off lcd when calling (unchecked)

Tv out unchecked

Power Save unchecked

Enable wifi power saving mode checked

2.Wifi Settings= Menu-Advanced Turn on available network notification unchecked

Turn of wi-fi if not connected in must be 5 minutes

This worked for me .In 3 days nothing happens about Blank Screen of death

I also use S2U2 and Mobile Shell with these settings.

[Guest stuzathegreat]

.....

This is interesting as I have done many of the things you suggest above and so far.... not a single screen of death .... and the phones been on, in constant use for about 6 hours.

However, my wifi was never switched on anyway as I don't bother using it as I have an unlimited data plan. I will see how the phone behaves for the next few days and then slowly start adding back the applications i've removed for these tests.

Fingers crossed, maybe we have discovered the fix somewhere between us?

Edited October 9, 2008 by stuzathegreat

[Guest stuzathegreat]

Spoke too soon!

OK this time I took my time (well the omnia's sweet time) and VERY slowly over about 15mins got into task manager.

The service thats causing our issue is ........

DEVICE.EXE

This litle b*&stard is taking up somewhere between 85+90% cpu and not letting go of it. This is why the phone *appears* to have crashed when the screen is black. In fact, it is trying to wake up but doing it VERY slowly.

Here is what I have discovered about Device.EXE so far:

Device Manager (Device.exe)Device.exe loads audio drivers, battery drivers, keyboard drivers, mouse drivers, NDIS drivers, notification LED drivers, serial drivers, PC Card drivers, USB drivers, and any other driver that exposes the stream interface. Device.exe loads most of its drivers with ActivateDeviceEx, and these drivers expose a stream interface. For more information, see Device Manager.

from this url

so, it appears this is a device driver issue and if it is, then only Samsung will be able to fix it. ;)

Edited October 9, 2008 by stuzathegreat

[Guest stuzathegreat]

OK logged this issue (Device.exe) with "William" on the Samsung helpline number of 08457 267864. Seemed a very helpfull guy and rather than just fobbing me off, decided he needed to look into this and would get back to me within 2 hours.

Who knows guys .... could we be on the verge of a breakthrough? Am I talking to myself? Is there life on other planets? How do you measure the taste of a peanut and what does chicken taste like?

edit: I called this the "Blank screen of death" issue and have said that a lot of us have been trying to diagnose this online.

Edited October 9, 2008 by stuzathegreat