My intertubes just stopped without warning
January 16, 2011 2:58 PM   Subscribe

Why does the data connection periodically die (dailyish?) on my Droid Incredible?

Nearly every day for the past couple weeks, the "3G" icon has disappeared from my status/notification bar. I still have a solid signal and can make calls and send or receive texts. I just can't connect to the internet in any apps (they don't even try; "no connection" errors appear immediately). WiFi still works, just not the cell network data. I restart the phone, and it works fine again as soon as it's rebooted.

This hasn't happened while using the data connection, in other words, I haven't observed it die during use. But I'll wake the phone up after work, for example, to listen to Pandora on the ride home, and discover then that it's not working. I'm not sure at what point it stops. It's probably due to some app I installed, but I've put a bunch of stuff on there lately and can't itemize the changes. Any guesses as to what's going on would be wonderful.
posted by The Winsome Parker Lewis to Technology (7 answers total)
 
Do you have wifi turned on all the time? On my Samsung Galaxy S, if it detects a wifi signal, that will cause the 3G symbol to be replaced by the wifi signal-strength icon. I've noticed that toggling the wifi on and off (e.g., to preserve battery when not in a wifi zone) can sometimes cause apps to think no network is available (even though 3G is always available).
posted by axiom at 3:13 PM on January 16, 2011


Response by poster: That could be the problem. One of the things I recently installed was a wifi toggle switch widget. I'm trying to save my battery by turning off wifi while away from home and back on again when I return.

So this wouldn't indicate a bug with the widget, but rather a bug with the OS that would be triggered even if I switched wifi on and off manually, right?
posted by The Winsome Parker Lewis at 3:17 PM on January 16, 2011


My boyfriend had this problem when he was using a higher-capacity battery than what the phone had come with. I believe that switching back to the original battery may have solved it - but I will be watching this thread for alternate solutions.

So, if you're using a battery that did not come with the incredible, you might try swapping it out for the original.
posted by kellygrape at 3:45 PM on January 16, 2011


Response by poster: Yikes! I do use a high-capacity battery, but I've done so for months and this is a recent problem. I hope it's not related to that... this phone is a major battery hog and I don't think I'd be able to revert back to the stock one at this point. I wouldn't be able to get through a day!
posted by The Winsome Parker Lewis at 4:04 PM on January 16, 2011


So this wouldn't indicate a bug with the widget, but rather a bug with the OS that would be triggered even if I switched wifi on and off manually, right?

Yes, that's my belief. I have seen this behavior when using either the pull-down wifi toggle or the toggle available through an app that sits on one of the desktops. Try not toggling your wifi on/off (that is, turn it off and leave it off) for a day and see if you still get this problem.
posted by axiom at 6:55 PM on January 16, 2011


Response by poster: I'll give it a shot. Thanks for the insight!
posted by The Winsome Parker Lewis at 7:23 PM on January 16, 2011


This happened to me regularly on my Incredible, and it is/was a problem for several people. I went through lots of troubleshooting on my own, and basically it could be generally solved by a reboot, but what a hassle. Eventually I went through the process of restoring the phone from scratch. It was a pain, but didn't have any problems after that.
posted by shinynewnick at 11:25 AM on January 17, 2011


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