[Sprint Samsung Galaxy S 4 Android Development] NoSoup4you22:
S4 problems

Hey, sorry in advance. I'm having some big heap problems with my Galaxy S4 running OctOS, and debugging is hard when all the threads I google refer to buttons that don't exist in my menus and ****. I'm tempted to just go to the phone store, throw myself upon the mercy of the big carriers and get an overpriced bloatware-laden phone+contract like a noob, but I'd like to know if there's any chance to save mine first.

Sprint Galaxy S4 SPH-L720T

Rooted

Carrier is Ting

OctOS version OCT-M-R1-6.0.1-20160319

Baseband version L720TVPUCOH1

I got the phone used in 2015 and activated it with Ting according to their instructions. I used TriforceROM until recently, which may have been based on Lollipop... I don't know the differences, honestly, I'm a computer guy, not a phone guy. Everything was fine, aside from my weak old battery, the bluetooth skipping with my car stereo, and the SIM card slot being ****ty and thinking it's not inserted all the time. Calls/messaging/data still worked despite that, however.

About a week ago, I got an email from Ting warning me about data usage - 955mb! I normally use 200-300 a month at the most. This may have been related to an odd "failed to update - not enough space" error I got a couple days prior. For the record, I have plenty of space. Sounds like it's probably Android trying to update repeatedly. Anyhow, I had just had 20 dollars taken from me for absolutely no reason at all, and I was extremely pissed. I made a backup in CWM - which didn't work at ALL, and I later had to recombine the .tars and rip out my contacts manually - and tried a bunch of different ROMs, figuring an official one or a new one would make it stop.

Stock ROM for Sprint Galaxy S4: Modem didn't work. Odin gave error at bootloader step when trying to flash modem firmware.

Stock Rooted Marshmallow: Same as above.

Basic CyanogenMod: Modem worked, but no Play Store - I didn't figure out to install Gapps at the same time as ROM until I already had moved on to OctOS.

OctOS: Worked, used up till now.

It seemed alright at first, but proved to be very unstable. Let me try to recall all the stupid, stupid problems I've had...

-Phone reboots when getting directions to a location in Google Maps/Navigation. This comes and goes arbitrarily, but if it's happening, it keeps happening every time until I give up and try later.

-Phone app freezes less than a minute into a call. Have to take out the battery to restart. This is also an intermittent, but repeating problem.

-Randomly just didn't have any mobile data for a couple hours, no matter what I did. "Solved itself" when I switched batteries... Must be a coincidence. I rebooted that damn thing 10 times before then, though...

-Random, unpredictable crashes - not all of them internet related, but it seems to skew that way.

-Battery drains way more quickly than it did under TriforceROM

-Worst of all, the background data usage happened again. Over 800mb on the 26th! It doesn't even seem to be reflected in my phone's data usage menu, but I don't know whether to trust it anymore.

I'm down about $40 for nothing and I wanna kill somebody. Ting wouldn't do anything about it the first time, and now I'm gonna issue an ultimatum. I need my phone for work and I work in two days, so if I don't have a definitive solution by then it's new phone, and if they won't refund me, new carrier. Probably with unlimited data. After all, how do I know this isn't gonna start happening again someday?

I'm really fed up with Android honestly, after owning a couple phones running it. I don't know how people can deal with an OS that's in such flux. So many versions, so many potential incompatibilities and issues. I'm fairly decent at computer programming, for crying out loud, and I find modifying/fixing Android confusing. I've never managed to get an installation/app suite that didn't bother me in some way. And yet iPhone is too limiting. Would appreciate any advice you guys can give.