Spooky! Mine misbehaved similarly for the first time Sunday Oct 9th, from the moment I tried replying to my first TXT of the day. That conversation was ridiculous, had to retype each reply multiple times while "hello r u still there?" was incoming as the other party thought I wasn't responding... please excuse the delay, we are having technical difficulties! Decided it was better to give up and just CALL instead.
First off, this is not, according to LookOut free edition, any known malware infection. Whenever I see several unrelated clients experience similar symptoms, malware tends to be a culprit, but not in this case.
My detailed scenario:
R2D2's physical QWERTY keyboard would allow me to type at most a dozen keypresses before typing cursor would disappear, TXT composition window would freeze. There would be no response for up to 5 seconds, then it automatically backed out of the current TXT thread to my main threads listed by contact name, whereupon the remaining characters I had typed would show up as a search string (as if I had typed from my threads list to begin a search query).
The most peculiar thing to me is that my auto-save to Drafts wouldn't capture the partial messages either. So I would say the problem was as if my "back" button on keyboard or home keys was intermittently stuck, causing the current TXT window to bail out & return to previous screen... however: when I *intentionally* use the Back button, TXT app would normally auto-save the partially composed message as a Draft. The same was true previously when an incoming call would interrupt a TXT composition. In this case it was more like I hadn't typed anything at all, again and again, which drove me slightly batty I must say.
I then avoided the physical slide-out keyboard and used on-screen multi-touch (stock) to compose TXT, and when it would hiccup after a few on-screen keystrokes, at least it allowed me to tap the TXT entry field and resume w/ on-screen keyboard, after a few seconds' wait. So then I had to assume this was not a problem with just the physical keys but more like a software glitch.
Ask your doctor whether you have Phantom Back Button Syndrome?
Shortly after diagnosing this as an Android vs Motorola or 3rd party software problem, not necessarily R2D2's fault, then the stock Browser started having immediate Force Close errors as soon as it tried to load Google's mobile homepage. Add to that: since 2.3.3 OTA update from Verizon, random reboots, some other random force close issues in other apps, etc... same drill others have reported.
So let's narrow down the software contributors to this problem, I thought, focusing mainly on TXT first...
Next I used SMS Backup & Restore App to wipe out my 5900+ messages from the TXT app history to see if it was a storage/database problem in Android. No improvement. I restored the TXT history, defeated, only to be reminded of the Motorola bug when using Ritesh Sahu's app: date & timestamps for all SMS show the date/time of restoration, not original thread order... GRRR! Known Issue #4, if you're following his app blog.
(Not your fault Ritesh, I blame MOTOBLUR for that icky problem).
So I used Titanium Backup and MyBackup apps to zip an archive of all installed apps and settings, and Zemna AppList Backup to make a live backup of my Android Market links. The goal was to have a selective restoration list rather than reinstalling all current apps and their alleged respective bugs. (thank you Ti Backup for successfully restoring apps from offline zips, by the way).
Sidebar: Microsoft take note, please, I WISH Windows OS could do this for software recovery just like Android did for me today.
I also went a step further and used Norton Ghost to make a full image backup of the SDHC (original 8GB MicroSD) card which came installed with R2D2, to my Windows XP notebook.
I took a deep breath after reading the necessary steps, then...
I moved onto full data/settings backup and FACTORY RESET including ERASING THE SD CARD "for good measure."
This solved the TXT entry problem so far. Now i'm using Titanium Backup's restore feature to bring back "essential" apps for my day-to-day business... no more games & fun stuff while R2D2 is in observation for further behavioral problems, back to serious business only for a while. Call it probation, while I figure out if I can rework this SMS restoration before Motorola patches it.
I suspect the underlying problem was a CACHE glitch. It seemed like the predictive text dictionary was mid-suggestion when the TXT composition went bonk each time. I have seen mention in Titanium of "clean up the Dalvik Cache," so I would also like to think I shouldn't have to run a complete factory reset every 2 weeks, but we shall see (I guess!)...
Some of the 2.3.3 GingeR2D2 new features are welcomed, but I didn't know I was inviting new bugs, too. Of course, this is a popular definition of upgrade: take out old bugs, insert new bugs.
Sent from my R2D2 using DroidForums
