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cookerdonkin · ‎26-02-2016

Just 5 days after buying a new Smart Ultra 6 and I'm almost ready to thrown in the towel & return for a refund...

1) Phone so unstable - frequent crashes (then red Vodafone logo reboot sequence)

2) microSD card spontaneously dismounting (a few times a day)

3) App "buttons" disappearing randomly from my home screen folders (those apps I've moved to the microSD card)

4) Grey "ghost" substitute icons appearing (sometimes) in place of the colour app icon (again those apps moved to microSD card)

5) Good 64Gb Sandisk microSD was formatted to FAT32 (not exFAT), then loaded with plenty of apps and photos etc from old phone, seemed OK initially, but now phone very unstable. Took microSD card out and ran Windows repair which found a problem and repaired it, but same problems recurred when put back in Smart Ultra 6.

6) When I "lose" the mounted microSD (on random disount), the normal App name (shown in Settings>Apps>ON SD CARD tab) is "corrupted". So e.g. instead of seeing just the word "Asda" against the app icon in the Setting list I see "com.asda.android" and (e.g.) "com.booking" instead of just Booking (for the hotel booking app). No idea where the "com." prefix is coming from...

And then ... the phone sorts itself out and everything is back to normal (and all apps on microSD card are fine)...albeit until the next glitch

Is anyone having similar stability problems?

Would I have been better formatting the 64Gb microSD as exFAT?

Any comments or support much appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

cookerdonkin · ‎29-02-2016

I said I would provide an update (and I hope closure) on the stability problems I had been having with my new Smart Ultra 6 after applying all your advice...so here goes.

What follows is a long read, so in summary, I think the phone is sorted! I I just hope I'm not tempting fate by making this claim too early.

Conclusion: The phone is now everything (positive) that the spec suggested it should be and I would buy the same phone again, with the caveats I describe below.

So a massive thanks for all your advice on the forum.

Here are the detailed steps I went through (there may have been a better way, but - as a layman - this is what I did):

STEP 1) I tried to Move each app from the "difficult" 64Gb microSD card back to the phone's (Internal) memory by pressing the "MOVE TO PHONE" button for each App (in Settings>Apps>ON SD CARD tab), but as the whole thing was so unstable it didn't work very well (took forever/hung), so I resorted to Uninstalling each app (those Settings>Apps>ON SD CARD tab) from within the Google Play Store. This seemed to work (& spookily quick). I left other "data" stuff (photos etc) on the microSD card.

STEP 2) Took microSD card out of the phone and mounted on Windows, ran a disk check (errors found) and repaired. Took a backup of the microSD to my PC. Put microSD back in phone.

STEP 3) Assessed whether phone stability had generally improved, by using phone as normal (minus the

Uninstalled apps). Did this for a few hours, while accessing the "data" on the microSD card and (e.g.) taking new photos.

Insight: phone stability much (100%?) improved, felt "solid" and I could read and write (e.g. photos) to the microSD card.

Conclusion: LESS likely to be the microSD card itself OR the microSD card reader in the phone. MORE likely to be one or more Uninstalled rogue apps, which hadn't been handled well by the phone or android when moved to the SD card. And that this bad App handling had (potentially) caused errors/corruption problems on the microSD card when it was abruptly "unexpectedly dismounted" several times while within the phone (albeit seemingly fully repairable when taken out and mounted under Windows, by Windows scan and repair utility). As a layman, this feels like a bit like the same scenario as when we were told NOT to pull a USB stick out of a PC abruptly, without properly ejecting it first.

The next bit was about trying to get back to a fully loaded phone. I was still unsure whether the 64Gb microSD card should have been formatted FAT32 (which is what I had done using the Ridgecrop utility on my PC) or exFAT. I wanted to try exFAT instead. There had been a suggestion on the forum that I should let the phone do the formatting (rather than on a PC) and the phone would choose the format it wanted. But I didn't know where the "Format SD card" option was in the phone Settings menu. I wondered whether if I chose the "Erase SD card" option under Settings>Storage whether this would ERASE SD card and THEN a prompt would appear offering me the opportunity to (Re)Format the SD card in the phone to its desired format.

STEP 4) Took backup copies of the new files on the microSD card (just a few new photos taken etc to test stability).

STEP 5) While microSD card in the phone, ran the Settings>Storage>"ERASE SD CARD" option. After the Erase, there was NO prompt to (Re)Format the microSD card in the phone, so I assumed it was still in FAT32 (i.e. as I originally pre-formatted it in my PC)

STEP 6) Took the microSD card out of the phone and mounted it on my PC to format it exFAT. Checked Properties of the microSD card and found it was (already) exFAT!!!! Can I can only assume the "Erase SD card" option in the phone had silently (Re)Formatted the microSD card to exFat from FAT32?

STEP 7) Put microSD card back in phone and reinstalled (from Google Play Store) all the STEP 1) Uninstalled apps (the ones that had been originally MOVE(d) TO SD card), but this time left these freshly installed Apps ALL sitting on the phone's Internal memory.

STEP 😎 Reassessed stability by going into each of the freshly installed Apps to see if any of them caused problems on the phone. All seemed fine.

Insight: the apps themselves are probably fine.

Conclusion: It is probably moving one or more "rogue" apps to the microSD card that is the cause of the problem. Wanted to find out which apps were "rogue". [I haven't got total clarity on which are the culprits, but I have been able to categorise (in my terms) Apps as either Higher or Lower risk to stability if moved to the SD card]

My thinking was that those Apps which were less sophisticated / dormant until I CHOSE to access them would be safer bets to MOVE TO SD CARD (whatever Settings>Apps said for each App). Those that regularly refreshed (e.g. weather Apps) would be higher risk.

STEP 9) Went to the Widgets screen to see which of the Apps which Settings>Apps said I could "MOVE TO SD CARD" (button not greyed out) had Widgets. Decided that I would leave all such Apps WITH widgets in Phone (Internal) Memory, whatever Settings said I COULD do.

STEP 10) Looked at each of the Apps WITHOUT widgets which Settings said I could MOVE TO SD CARD and identified those which seemed to "have a life of their own" (alerts, refreshes etc) and also decided NOT to MOVE (these) TO SD CARD too. This left me with about 50% of the original MOVE TO SD CARD apps which I felt confident I could safely MOVE TO SD CARD, so I did. The total size of these moveable (to SD) apps was about half of those I chose not to move, so only about 33% of the Phone's Internal memory I had hoped to save was actually saved by moving my "safe subset" of MOVE TO SD CARD Apps to the microSD card.

I am now assessing whether the stability problem has entirely gone and so far it seems so.

I hope I don't have to trouble the eForum on this issue further - fingers crossed!

Many thanks once again.

View solution in original position

BandOfBrothers · ‎26-02-2016

Hi @cookerdonkin

You could test another Sd Card in the phone and if you feel necessary perform a back up and factory reset to see if that helps.

Due to the short time of owning this phone and the issues being encountered my personal decision would be to thinking to return it under the 30 day faulty phone clause.

Current Phone >

Samsung Galaxy s²⁴ Ultra 512gb.

hrym · ‎26-02-2016

I didn't think you could transfer apps that are on an sd card from one phone to another - don't you have to reinstall them on the new device?

Certainly it sounds as though the issue here is card related and testing it in another device would be handy if you can. Failing that, have you tried formatting the card in the new phone? That can sometimes stabilise things.

It's also possible that this is a resource issue, so can you try running the phone for a while without the card? If it's stable, that would tend to point to the card. If not, then a backup and factory reset might fix things.

Failing that, I think the phone will need to go for repair. It's possible that the fault if in the card reader.

Edited to add: I've also seen reports of issues with some 64gb cards in some devices. There shouldn't be a compatibility issue at this size, but if you could also try a 32gb card, that would be handy too.

63johnw · ‎26-02-2016

I agree with @hrym when I tried in the past to move apps from one phone to another via SD card it didnt work.

cookerdonkin · ‎26-02-2016

Thanks for such a comprehensive response. Sorry for my sloppy language/punctuation re the apps load...yes did reinstall all apps from scratch from Google Play store. It was the photos that I copied from the old phone. I agree that the issue seems related to the microSD card, though it will only be through the diagnostics you (and previous respondent) suggest that I will find whether it is the microSD card itself, the phone card reader hardware or Android. I must admit to some underlying concern i have that more recent versions of Android (since Gingerbread) seem (to me at least) to be less robust/capable in handling microSD cards reliably, including far fewer apps being able to be moved to a microSD from the phone's own memory. I never had these sort of problems in my good old Huawei G300 days! But then that phone was limited in many other ways, not least 512Mb RAM! Thanks again

cookerdonkin · ‎26-02-2016

I'm also still not sure whether I would be better off formatting the 64Gb microSD in exFAT format or stick with FAT32 (which I did on my Windows PC)..I wonder what format the phone would format exFAT or FAT32 if I format it in the phone? I'll have to try it out

hrym · ‎26-02-2016

The thing with formatting the card in the phone is that it should choose the version it's comfortable with. Arguably, what that is doesn't matter to you as all you want is for it to work.

I've used sd cards in devices from Gingerbread onwards and haven't had any trouble, though they've never been larger than 32gb. The ability to move apps to the card comes and goes, but I don't use it simply because it gets messy if you change or remove the card. Moving apps to the card has gone in Marshmallow, which has the option to format the card as internal storage. If you do that, though, it only works in that device, so using it as a means of making content portable is off the agenda. On the other hard, it's a convenient solution to the problem of devices with very little storage.

Some time ago, I had the opportunity to try a Vodafone Smart device which had an overlay on Android that pulled any card it found into the memory pool without specifically formatting it. Some apps, or at least their data, turned up there and it could be specified as the default location for the camera and downloads. It worked well and I've since used the card in other devices (deleting unwanted content, obviously).

Don't ignore the possibility of the issue being with the card's size, even if the specs list it as being compatible. If you haven't already seen it, there's a comprehensive Wikipedia article that explains the technology and formats (up to 32gb is SDHC - FAT32, 64gb of SDXC - exFAT). Sandisk also have a neat and clearer table, but I'm not sure if I can link to that, it being a manufacturer site. You'll find it under a Google Search for "sd card spec".

cookerdonkin · ‎26-02-2016

Wow! This forum seems to have a huge wealth of experience and knowledge and I'm very grateful that you have shared it so freely. I intend to put all the advice into action over the weekend and post an update after experimenting in the hope it might help others.

63johnw · ‎26-02-2016

I was reading yesterday that samsung and LG have disabled the marshmallow feature for using the SD as internal memory.

I remove apps to SD card normally but my Sony Z3 has a 16G internal memory so kept filling up with apps so had to use the SD card for storage of some apps.

63johnw · ‎26-02-2016

Sorry the feature is disabled on the S7 and G5.

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Smart Ultra 6 - spontaneous app loss from home screen folders & microSD unexpectedly dismounting