Hardware keys not working

[dwedel]

Hello,

I have just recently bought the Samsung I7500 and was wondering if this is a known software bug or if my phone has an actual hardware flaw;

1. After a little usage (browsing/gmail etc) the following keys stop working "home", "dial" and "menu". Reboot does not solve the problem, but quite often they come back to live after some time for then to stop again later on.

I have tried factory reset and did not install a single app from market in case that's where the "bug" came from, but still have the same problem.

(the battery also drains in one day even with Wifi, gps, 3g and little to no usage, which I've read quite a few other people struggles with on www.android-hilfe.de)

[crazythunder]

well, if you can read the language on that site,why didn't you ask for help there? i smell advertisement for a competitive website here. anyone else?

[dwedel]

Well, I can't speak german, I have used google translate to read some posts there since there aren't many other countries which have got the Samsung Galaxy yet, but have not found anything regarding the hardware keys not working.

But thanks for a helpful answer though

And for the advertisement bit, why on earth would anyone advertise a german website for a mainly english speaking audience, I just thought I would share the information I found which I found helpful, but if the forums on this page are not supposed to be for information sharing then I will stop "advertising" for helpful sites.

[crazythunder]

just our way of weeding out the spam. sorry if i offended you. but the spam bots are very creative with terminology etc. just had to make sure you weren't spam. and believe it or not, people will advertise their friggin 20 year old lawnmower for sale if given the opportunity.
who did you buy it from? why not just report it as defective and be done with your troubles? the phone is so new,you might not get a ton of responses right away out here or anywhere just yet.

[dwedel]

Understandable, no problem :)

Just hoping anyone can clarify if my phone is faulty or not.

Just a tad annoying not having the menu button working, can't write a new email, only reply to once I have recieved.

[dwedel]

Problem solved;

Appearantly on some of the I7500 the camera button gets stuck in between being pushed in and completely out, when that happens a few of the other buttons won't work either.

Stupid by design as you might call it, and no wonder that it happens randomly.

Ah well, just the battery issue left then, but supposedly a new firmware within the next few weeks will sort things out (and some people claim that the battery gets a lot better after 10-20 charges) fingers crossed :D

Hope this is useful for anyone else struggling with the same issues.

[konzern]

how are you liking the phone?

i know alot of people had high hopes for that phone but the low ram made them forget about it.... do you experience any lag?

[dwedel]

Well, since this is my first smartphone I'm probably not the best person to ask since I don't have much to compare with.

BUT: I am so far very pleased with the phone, both speed and functionality, not experienced any lag so far, but then again not tried any heavy games. Youtube, surfing, mail etc is smooth :)

[chriseboy]

I also have the menu - home and call keys affected. Additionally I have the off button menu changed, only turn off available (normally silent etc are also options).

I thought it was a software problem, many factory resets and firmware upgrades. Then I figured out it was hardware, and a simple way to fix it... VERY GENTLY AND SLOWLY bend the bottom part (with the buttons) back and forth a little until a click is heard, then the other buttons return functionality.

I lose the buttons at least once every two days or so.

Re the rest of the phone and experience - best geek phone ever (but probably not consumer friendly).. Here come the caveats...

- Every now and then it will turn itself off (also seen in http://androidforums.com/samsung-i7500/7405-problem-i7500-randomly-shutting-itself-off.html) ***
- slips out of the hand way too easily.
- DO NOT take the plastic protection of the screen. Yes it looks better without, but after two seconds of use its covered in finger grease. However, at least in my case, the plastic was too large so I've had to cut it up a little.
- touching buttons, swapping apps etc will cause the music to stutter a little, put on a flat surface and left alone no problem. (may just be an .ogg thing though)
- sharp movements (like a bag hitting it) will cause the battery to partly dislodge, so that a restart is only possible with properly reseating the battery.

Re speed, lags etc, absolutely no problem (aside from the music one), the battery life is great but can be largely affected by default settings. After conditioning, listening to music for 1hr will only hit 1-2% of the battery life (with sync / wifi / GPS / bluetooth turned off, and 2G only on).

As with most new toys playing heavily with them drains the battery life, but I easily last 10+hrs with heaving petting, whereas iPhone users I know would have to recharge during that time at least once. If you use it as a normal phone with occasional music / games / browsing it will last 2-3 days no problem.

*** After some research and changes in my usage behaviour I don't have this anymore (firmware I7500XXIG8). I seems that apps that eat up processing power seem to cause a kind of thrashing in the os / phone and it doesn't get to recover, replacing battery and powering is the only way. So far its not happened to me again. I use taskmanager to remove running apps just to make sure and the phone seems ok overnight.

[kam187]

*** After some research and changes in my usage behaviour I don't have this anymore (firmware I7500XXIG8). I seems that apps that eat up processing power seem to cause a kind of thrashing in the os / phone and it doesn't get to recover, replacing battery and powering is the only way. So far its not happened to me again. I use taskmanager to remove running apps just to make sure and the phone seems ok overnight.

Do you mean firmware I7500VIAIG6 ? I think I7500XXIG8 is the baseband version. Are you able to use the Samsung PC suite or are you getting 'unrecognised device' ?

[chriseboy]

Do you mean firmware I7500VIAIG6 ? I think I7500XXIG8 is the baseband version. Are you able to use the Samsung PC suite or are you getting 'unrecognised device' ?

Yes I mean that firmware version, taken straight of the phones info screens. I wish I had written down the previous firmware version, but alas I did not :<.

I actually only upgraded the firmware to try and stop this problem. I do read German but the existing posts weren't that helpful for this problem. Also lots of existing English (and German) posts were regarding the HTC phones and kept advising soft resets, which I can't seem to replicate on the galaxy.

Samsung PC suite can do the firmware upgrade / recovery (didn't work the first time I tried) but beyond that its all "unrecognised device" (even with USB debugging on) but I had that for the first firmware version as well.

[kam187]

ahh ok.... yeah I dont get random reboots with the new firmware either (as reported on all the forums). But in the taskbar widget (part of taskiller) I can see dialog boxes that have launched - probably saying something was force closed.

I hope they fix this soon :-/