topic Re: BUG: Xperia Z reboots continously in Z Series

BUG: Xperia Z reboots continously

asbjorneliassen — Sun, 14 Apr 2013 22:13:15 GMT

Hi.

I got my new Xperia Z on Friday, and today it started rebooting continously.

I'll try to describe what I think could be relevant information for this error.

Today I was travelling and on the bus to the airport I noticed that I was getting low on power (~50% charge) while playing music with walkman. I went into the power settings and switched on stamina mode, power save and the wifi thing.

The phone still worked as it should by this time.

Later when entering the plane I switched the phone to flight mode and now the problem started to happen.

After switching to flight mode, I wanted to restart the phone to see if it started up in flight mode as it should do. I pressed the power button and then the "switch off" field on the screen.

The phone now switched off, and after a few seconds restarted again to my surprice. After booting up it almost immediately reboots again, and so it continued until the battery got empty. (I had about 25-30% power on the battery at this point).

The phone is on for about 5-10 seconds which makes it almost impossible to do any adjustments on the phone while it's on.

Observation: The phone get quite hot while this is happening.

After getting back home I charged the battery but that didn't help. I do however get the phone to power off now by pressing the power and vol+. (had to google that)

In short I think either some of the power save functions or flight mode has a bug that got triggered unless this is a hardware issue. (But I'm not the expert.)

* I do have some media recorded on the device that I would like to get out of the phone. Any advice on this matter would be appreciated.

* Any advice on getting the unit into an working condition again would be awesome.

* I'm not too impressed that this happened after three days of use.

Asbjørn Eliassen

Re: BUG: Xperia Z reboots continously

asbjorneliassen — Sun, 14 Apr 2013 22:20:51 GMT

I'll add a few more notes.

I have tried removing the memory card and the sim card.

I also had finished listening to walkman a while earlier when the trouble started.

Re: BUG: Xperia Z reboots continously

Zann_H — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 08:53:22 GMT

What you are facing is certainly new. Some how or another, your phone is gettin into a bootloop which could have been caused by anything at all. But most probably, a necessary file has gotten corrupted.

Since you can't do a factory reset, the only option left is to flash the firmware again. To do that, fire up Sony PC Companion and select Support Zone. If you dont' have it installed, just google and d/l it. Make sure you phone has been charged first before you do this. Just dont' plug it into the phone yet.

Follow the instruction and select the th right phone. Make sure you read the instrctions properly. Before you reinstall the OS, there is an option to format data. Make sure that you don't if you want to keep your files intact. If not, the internal sdcard will erased. I'm not able to give you the actual steps cuz i'm on a Mac right now and my w7 is at home.

Wish you all the best. Good luck!

Edit: Apparently the update service doesn't allow that option to not erase data. You can try use Flashtool instead. But if your data is not important, just do the update anyway.

Re: BUG: Xperia Z reboots continously

asbjorneliassen — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 11:49:26 GMT

Thanks, but this seems not to help. PC companion can't see my phone when it's off, and it's not on long enough to do anything useful in the software.

Here is a video of the device rebooting: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKjDP9ZvusE&feature=youtu.be

Re: BUG: Xperia Z reboots continously

asbjorneliassen — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 06:10:33 GMT

Seems like I'm one of few that have hit this bug yet (I did get a confirmation on youtube that another person is also having the same problem), so I guess I'll just send it in for service or just return the device as a faulty device.

I'll post an update when I'm finished.

Asbjørn

Re: BUG: Xperia Z reboots continously

larsts — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 08:52:15 GMT

Hi,

I'm experiencing exactly the same situation - my phone is now a mirror image (video rather) of the video you made.

Did you manage to resolve this?

BTW; In my case flight mode was not part of the equation. Seems to have died some time during the night, despite having decent amount of battery life left the evening before (but wasn't plugged in during the night). After having plugged it into the charger the following morning and tried to turn it on, the continuous loop of restarting started.

Re: BUG: Xperia Z reboots continously

asbjorneliassen — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 08:58:33 GMT

I got hold of support, and was told to do a repair from the pc companion software with the phone shut off.

I tried the non destructive route first by selecting support zone-> update software -> start

This didn't seem to work as the phone disconnected a few seconds after I inserted the USB cable. (reboot of computer/phone was tested too).

I then tried the "repair phone" (link on the update software window) function which is a data-destructive reinstall of the operating system, this worked. The phone is now working again, but I have lost all data on the phone unfortunately (I have had some days to think this through though....)

All in all, I'm happy now, I have had my lesson and made the camera save data to my SD card intead of to the internal one.

Let's hope Sony gets this fixed, because I get some messages on youtube that this bug bites other people too.

Re: BUG: Xperia Z reboots continously

asbjorneliassen — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 09:02:05 GMT

I suggest you bother the support personell at Sony for this and reinstall the phone software again.

I think it is important that they actually get some feedback on this so they might acknowledge the bug.

I just hope that this isn't one of those bugs that I need to fix every other day until it gets fixed.

Re: BUG: Xperia Z reboots continously

larsts — Sun, 21 Apr 2013 10:37:00 GMT

went through repair process earlier this week. worked fine till last night, when it suddenly started the rebooting routine again.

I'm repairing again as we speak - hopefully it'l work more than a few days this time.

Re: BUG: Xperia Z reboots continously

asbjorneliassen — Sun, 21 Apr 2013 14:48:26 GMT

I hit it just now too, and I'm pretty sure it happened at the point where my battery had 10% power left. That's when i had set the power save to kick in.

So for the Sony officials in here I think I have a simple procedure to see the bug for yourselves:

Set a power save limit. Swith on the power save function.

Wait for the batttery to reach that limit.

Watch the phone reboot continously. (doesn't get better when charged either)

My guess is that this is either a driver bug, power save service bug or some application bug that happend when I change the power save limit.

I wonder what the price for finding bugs are?

Asbjørn - waiting for the phone to charge so I can reflash it...

Message was edited by: asbjorneliassen - Typo

Re: BUG: Xperia Z reboots continously

GeoffH — Sun, 21 Apr 2013 17:46:54 GMT

very good info and needs attention from Sony as you are not alone

Re: BUG: Xperia Z reboots continously

alexgvishiani — Wed, 22 May 2013 06:00:36 GMT

i have the same problems with rebooting, but it happens only in some exact location
of my city, not depending on battery lever or anything else. recently my phone
was updated with new version but the problem still exists. yesterday it started
rebooting, i couldn’t do anything, but then removed SIM card and it stopped
rebooting. then i changed my location and phone was ok! maybe it has problems
with provider stations, or 3G (when i am lucky to turn off 3G, during rebooting
process it stops rebooting, sometimes). SONY please help:)

Re: BUG: Xperia Z reboots continously

joepvanderben — Wed, 22 May 2013 07:41:07 GMT

probably the best you can do is restore your phone with Sony update service, and try to copy the problem, so... try another simcard from an other provider, and set your location to the location were your phone crashed. if the problem accours with another simcard, you know that something is up.

and have you turned on: wifi on location?? this could maybe also the problem

alexgvishiani wrote:

Re: BUG: Xperia Z reboots continously

glacian79 — Sun, 09 Jun 2013 02:27:46 GMT

Same problem here, brand new phone. Tried methods above to reset but no joy. Happen on first reboot after updating firmware and then inserting a vodaphone sim. Could that be related?

Re: BUG: Xperia Z reboots continously

glacian79 — Sun, 09 Jun 2013 03:14:48 GMT

It's been a month . . any one know if Sony has given this issue any attention?

Re: BUG: Xperia Z reboots continously

asbjorneliassen — Sun, 09 Jun 2013 13:34:57 GMT

Hard to say given that sony, (and all other manufacturers) won't allow access to their internal registred bug-databases

I assume they must have caught this one. Question is more whether a fix will be released in the near future. Technically if they can't release a fix for this a lot of their commersials are wrong and this might be a reason for for filing a warranty issue in the future.

The fix for now is to avoid stamina and low batt power save functions.

It would be really nice if Sony (and all other manufacturers) could post a list of known bugs in their units, whether they will be fixed and some approximation on when.

A faster release cycle on firmwares would also be nice. Fix one bug, release, fix another release and so on. No need to wait for all bugs in every firmware. I could update my phone twice a week as long as I knew bugs were squashed.

Re: BUG: Xperia Z reboots continously

glacian79 — Sun, 09 Jun 2013 22:48:45 GMT

I eventually fixed it by following the instructions below what I think was your youtube video, so thanks very much for posting that. Also filled out a help form at the support website but still haven't heard back from that.

I wonder if cyanogen mod is the way to go in order to circumvent the culture of secrecy entrenched in Sony that you described ?

Re: BUG: Xperia Z reboots continously

alexisc — Tue, 06 Aug 2013 01:56:14 GMT

I actually have the same problem here. I'm trying to do a repair using PCC. My problem is posted in a discussion here: http://talk.sonymobile.com/message/509585#509585

Re: BUG: Xperia Z reboots continously

kikomann — Mon, 07 Oct 2013 18:21:07 GMT

i had this problem too.. it stop booting continiously when i switched off the wifi. and when turning the wifi on again, it suddunly reboots again and again. i don't know what happened but a few hours later, it is ok again. but i will try to reinstall the update. too bad for this one that i love sony but i think it's time to switch brand.

Re: BUG: Xperia Z reboots continously

cjfs — Fri, 25 Oct 2013 05:14:06 GMT

I have the same problem with my 3-month old Sony Xperia ZR (bought in Malaysia).

-Phone reboots every 20 seconds

-Touchscreen freezes before rebooting

-Sim card is not recognized

-PC companion cannot recognize the phone when it's off

I tried restoring factory settings but it didn't help.

I really want to fix the bug on my own as I don't have time to send it to a service centre and I need the phone for my job.
I will follow the available videos and update everyone on the progress.

Let's hope that I can fix this and stick with Sony.