[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] TerraOne:
Replacement phone followup

Well I've had the replacement phone for 24 hours, and so far the gsiff demon has not made any appearance despite taking it back to the trigger-zone (my campus) and putting it through the ringer, varying all settings every which way. However, I won't really trust the phone until I've had it back and forth to campus for a couple of weeks without it happening.

In my previous post, it would happen every time I traveled to campus (few miles away). My theory was that something was happening in the switch back and forth between the campus wifi and verizon's 4g lte network to trigger a hot boot and the runaway gsiff process (but I also think there was something going on with TouchWiz on that phone, cuz it often crashed just before the hotboot but I don't know which is really the chicken and eggs of the 3 events).

This was only a "gut feeling" type theory based on the fact that it would happen in the same location and it happened whether or not GPS services and so forth were enabled. The only time it DIDN'T happen is when i had both wifi and mobile data (and their "auto on" triggers) disabled, but that's no fix because it's no longer a usable smartphone at that point.

I've been reluctant to put all my old apps on the replacement phone. Kind of want to see how it does on its own first before loading up a bunch of apps vying for the battery and processor. I will note that battery drain seems much more stable and consistent/even on the replacement. The previous S3 could drain from 100 to 94 % during one use (email, some surfing, a video, facebook/twitter, etc), and then hours later repeat the same usage but it would drop from 80% to 49% in the same amount of time/usage. Nothing was very stable about that phone.

This one is far more smooth so far, just feels different.

My "gut feeling" also honed in on the Facebook app for some reason. It's very persistent despite task-kill set up, and runs the phone too much even when it's not being used. That "katana" process was always in BetterBatteryStats with the previous S3. I'm intentionally refraining from installing it for a while to see if anything goes nuts upon installing it (subsequent to couple of weeks of a stable phone, if I'm so lucky this time).

Will update every couple of days, or if it happens, as soon as gsiff rears its nasty self on the replacement phone too.

---------- Post added at 12:09 PM ---------- Previous post was at 11:54 AM ----------

GPS may be a contributing factor to the battery drain after gsiff goes active, but I don't think it's the ultimate culprit.

Gsiff and extreme battery drain was happening to my previous S3 regardless of whether or not GPS was enabled. I almost always had GPS disabled as a matter of course because I rarely use maps anyway and wanted to save the battery, but gsiff still ran away whenever I traveled with the phone with either wifi or mobile data enabled.

---------- Post added at 12:19 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:09 PM ----------

See my posts in this thread. I've had a replacement phone for only 24 hours now, but so far no sign of gsiff even after taking it to where the previous phone always encountered it and varying all the settings on and off in every combination possible. I tried to make it hotboot and trigger gsiff but so far so gsiff is a no-show. I'll keep reporting back how the replacement phone handles.

My gut is telling me gsiff is being triggered by a hardware issue, perhaps the radio components had a bad lot/run - who knows at this early point, until Samsung gets enough of them back to be worth their investigating it. The VZW manager told me mine was the first she's heard of coming back, so I'm thinking that if this were a software/firmware/kernal issue that many more people would be bringing them back for extreme battery drain and overheating. My phone, by the time I got to the VZW store, was literally like a hot potato - felt like it was going to melt.

Fingers crossed my replacement holds up...

---------- Post added at 12:42 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:19 PM ----------

I never installed Adfree or anything like it on my first S3 and it was still plagued by gsiff daily - constantly hotbooting with gsiff runaway, 50% of battery draining within 1.5 hours, and so forth.

Every combination of GPS settings had no effect on reducing gsiff's occurrences - it most often was turned completely off as I rarely use maps or other location-dependent services, but I also left it on a couple of times to see if GPS being DISABLED might have been causing the issue, but gsiff showed up as if it didn't care one bit whether GPS was on or off.

What did have an effect on reducing the gsiff occurrences was disabling and preventing both wifi and mobile data from turning on, but I only tried that on one trip because, well, I needed the use of my phone on campus and disabling them every time I drove somewhere just wasn't practical. I should have tried that a few more times though to be sure, that would have been more thorough.

So far the replacement S3 is without hotboot and gsiff occurrences despite putting it through heavy use with intent to stress it into hotbooting with gsiff. I repeatedly toggled gps and wifi and mobile data on and off while walking and driving around campus outdoors, but also indoors where it would have more trouble locking in presumably, but so far no gsiff.

But it's still early - I won't trust it for a couple of weeks of doing this without a gsiff runaway making an appearance, and even then I'll probably always be checking for it now that confidence in the phone is shaken.