AquaMail making phone crash?

[SanderNijdam]

Hi,

After a long time testing I'm getting convinced that AquaMail is causing crashes of my phone. Whenever I have AquaMail active, my phone crashes on average once per day. What happens exactly is that my screen stays black and I cannot do anything except removing the battery or, sometimes, very-long-press of the power button and then restarting the phone. This mostly happens when I take my phone of the charger in the morning.

Due to its unpredictability this was very hard to test, but I now am getting convinced that AquaMail is the culprit. This behaviour started when I started using AquaMail. Since then I have frozen AquaMail two times for about one week each (with Titanium). During these periods the phone was working normally.

I started with AquaMail around December 15th (the Play-store version) and have since upgraded a few times (including some betas), but they all behave the same.

This only happens on my phone (Galaxy S2, rooted stock Android 4.1.2), on my two tablets I also run AquaMail but didn't have any problems.

I realize this is not an easy thing to tackle but I hope it can be fixed in some way.

Greetings, Sander.

[Rachel Ambler]

Sander,

Your observations may be somewhat askew. What you've noticed here is an element of cause and effect but not the true cause and event.

It is entirely possible that there is something fundamentally wrong with your phone that is causing this and that just the sheer presence of AquaMail is enough for those problems to manifest themselves.

Not saying that this IS your issue, just that it's a very distinct possibility. I had an issue with my old Droid Incredible once where, every time I tried to do an app update the phone would reboot. Installing apps from Amazon and sideloading worked fine.

Turned out in my case it was a bad SD card. Once I took the card out, the problems went away, put it back in and they were back. There was no outward obvious signs that, in my case I had a bad SD card, no errors were reported otherwise, I just found out in sheer desperation. Even formatting that card and putting it back in didn't solve the issue. However when I put a new one in, I was golden.

Again, not saying this is anything like your issue, just a cautionary tale of thinking that something is at fault (Google Play Store in my case) when it is actually something else entirely different.

[Kostya Vasilyev]

Thank you Rachel for being logical

To original poster: an app crashing an operating system / device is so Windows 95.

Android is a memory protected - preemptively multitasking - security enhanced - blah blah - modern operating system.

If it crashes, it means something is wrong with the device or its system software.

Maybe this is a better explanation of what I'm trying to get across:

http://www.jwz.org/xscreensaver/faq.html#server-crash

You crashed my X server! You bastard!

I'm sorry. But the fact is that an X server crash is, by definition, a bug in the X server.

The rule is that absolutely nothing a client program throws at the X server should make it crash. When an X client does something wrong, the server is supposed to return an error, causing the client to exit. If the server itself goes down, that's a bug in the server. There may also be a bug in the client -- but probably not.

This also goes for DRI, GL, and any vendor- or hardware-specific libraries you might be using. If something in xscreensaver caused your display to freeze, or logged you out, or made your monitor explode, I can pretty much guarantee you that the bug is in your X server or your video driver, and not in xscreensaver.

On the other hand, who am I kidding.

Yes, it's my app, it uses a secret code to make Android freeze. AquaMail is also known to cause earthquakes, nuclear reactor meltdowns, genocide, and early baldness.

Feel free to contact me over email for a refund.

[JokerMan]

Hi

I found exactly the same problem. My Nexus 4 crashes occasionally, what is called SOD (sleep of death) and cannot be waked up with power button (but for example new mail LED is still blinking - it's not turned off). After hard reset, or long press of power button restarts and on battery graph i can observe HUGE battery drop. I was trying to fing what application can cause that, but it happens all the time (sometime twice a day, and sometime once a week). I was uninstalling app after app to find "buggy one". No effect. So i was sure that's a hardware problem. I've send phone to service, and they replaced battery and mainboard. And week after... Sleep of Death again! (before send to service phone was wiped). I realise, that Aquamail is only suspected application (it was installed always as first and only i did not uninstall). I noticed that my period of automatic email check is parralel to crashes. I turned off automatic synchronisation and SOD never show again since a month :| I have PRO version of Aquamail, Nexus 4, FW 4.4.4. stock, no root. Im sad, because it's best email software i ever had on a phone... And i need to have email check

[Kostya Vasilyev]

Are we talking about "crashes"? Or "sleep of death"? Or high battery drain?

Those are not the same.

You can view per-application battery stats in system settings, just click "battery".

On a Nexus 5 that's sitting on my desk, with Aqua checking mail in 4 accounts every 15 minutes, Aqua is listed as responsible for about 5% of total battery use. This is on a WiFi connection.

Found this discussion in the Android bug tracker. Don't believe that everyone who posted there uses Aqua.

https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=35139

Still, if you decide to make a debug log, I'll be happy to look at it.

[JokerMan]

I think we talk about the same... It's a matter of semantics. If phone does not react on power button to wake up, but is not turned off somebody will call it crash, and somebody else - sleep of death.
I cannot verify application causing it using battery graph - because it looks like a drop - while this moment battery stats does not work. Just shows before and after state, like from 90 to 50% in one "pixel". Phone is not turned off, but look like hanged up (for example LED about new email was still blinking). Of course sometime phone will turn off, when battery reach 0%...
I was absolutely sure that was hardware problem but now i have almost new phone (new mainboard and battery) - and it happen's again. How to make a debug log? I'll try.

[mikeone]

Creating debug logs for in-depth diagnostics:

http://www.aqua-mail.com/?page_id=232

[Kostya Vasilyev]

Semantics means "meaning". Meaning is important.

To you it might be all the same -- "stuff doesn't work" -- but to me, I have to know what I'm chasing.

System settings -> battery does show per-application stats, and it's built-in, no need for a third party app. If you see Aqua there, and with a large percentage, then that's something.

On the other hand, a sudden drop in overall battery charge does not tell me much -- and as I already mentioned, there are over 200 users who reported this issue just in the Android bug tracker, linked above. I'm positive that not every single one of them uses AquaMail.

Not questioning what you're seeing, it's just that when there is a system level issue, a perfectly valid code sequence in an application (mine or someone else's) may have unfortunate consequences. I'm sure you understand my logic here.

A debug log? Sure, why not, if you can make one and actually capture the issue there.