New A500, Keeps turning itself off?

[DoWooder]

Hey

I just got an A500 2nd hand. So far I think it's great. However, If I set it down for a couple of minutes, the unit is powered off. If I click the side power button quickly, nothing happens. I have to hold it in. Even then some times I have to try a couple of times to get it to come on. When it does come on, it fully boots, not just turn the screen on. When it's on I can click the screen on and off without it rebooting.

The screen is set to timeout after 5mins. It seems when it times out, that's when it locks up and I have to do a full reboot.

Am I missing a setting, or do I have a problem?

Thanks

[Ads]

[Icebike]

Hey

If I click the side power button quickly, nothing happens. I have to hold it in.

Thanks

Are you sure you aren't turning it off when you hold it in?
There are certain settings that can make your tablet slow to wake up, and then people think it is off, press longer, and it turns off.

To wake the tablet, press, one second max. Let up, wait.

If you tablet is slow to wake up, turn bluetooth on. This tricks the wifi-bluetooth chipset into staying awake and not go into
as deep a sleep state. (Uses a tiny bit more power, but nothing to worry about).

Also in settings / network / WiFi settings, set wifi disconnect policy to never. (This actually saves battery).

When the tablet wakes up, it usually connects to the net before the screen is displayed. If that connection has to wake the
wifi chip from the deep sleep state it can take a while.

[DoWooder]

Hi

Thanks for taking the time to reply. I tried the things you suggested and it's still doing it. Pressing the button quickly once and then waiting, even for 5mins, does not turn the device on. Even holding it in for several seconds does not always power it on.

I noticed a thread further down where a lot of users are reporting the same problem. How annoying. I'll continue to investigate.

[juhni]

Just got an a500 yesterday and haven't had this issue(yet). If your not interested in rooting it then check and make sure you have the latest updates installed.

Sent from my A500 using Android Tablet Forum

[DoWooder]

I'm tempted to root. Will read up on it. Thanks

[Icebike]

Guys, instead of rooting, call tech support and exercise your warranty. Once you root, you may not have a warranty.

[Douvie]

Especially if your A500 is well and truly BRICKED.

[shenvalleyrider]

This is exactly what my year-old Acer 500 tab is doing. It began shutting itself off right after I installed the latest update about 2 months ago. Until then we'd had no problems with this great device. Does anyone have a fix?

[Mrhelper]

This is exactly what my year-old Acer 500 tab is doing. It began shutting itself off right after I installed the latest update about 2 months ago. Until then we'd had no problems with this great device. Does anyone have a fix?

Most of this thread discusses a problem where users were having to force their tablets to power down after some period in sleep mode, and the problem in most cases was probably an app that was hanging and preventing each user from accessing the GUI to regain control of the device. It would not necessarily have been caused by the same app for all users. This condition can be caused by any number of apps, either built-in or loaded by users.

If your tablet is a year old, it is possible that the battery is dying, so you should check the state of the charge when this happens to rule that out. It's more likely that you are encountering a problem with some app or built-in tablet software though. As I noted above, this could be something you installed, or something that came with the update from Acer.

You need to verify whether or not your tablet is becoming hung while in sleep mode. The next time you encounter the problem, press and hold the power button for at least 5 seconds. If you feel no vibration, then your tablet was apparently on, but likely hung on a bad process/app. When the unit is already on, and you then hold the power button for 5 seconds, it forces the tablet to power down unconditionally. It does not vibrate as it does on a normal shutdown. The operation is similar to pulling the plug on a desktop PC -- i.e., it simply removes the power without shutting down any of the programs or doing any normal shutdown preparation/cleanup.

After you shut the system down, then a subsequent push of the power button with a 3 second hold will power it back up, and you will feel the tablet vibrate while starting.

If this is what you are seeing, then the next step is to find and eliminate the cause of the problem if possible. Start with removing any apps that you may have loaded before the problem first occurred.

You state in your post that this started after the latest update. I assume that you mean the update to ICS. You can verify this in Settings-->About. ICS is Android version 4.0.3.

I've worked with a number of users who encountered a similar problem, and we narrowed that problem down to a sync issue that occurred while the tablet was in sleep mode. That particular problem apparently only occurs with ICS, and not Honeycomb (Android 3.2.1, the previous version before ICS).

If you are having that problem, then there are a few things you can try that have worked for others. Any one of these will prevent the sleep/sync/hang problem if that is really what you are encountering.

1.) Turn off sync for all accounts under Settings-->Accounts & sync. You can do this on a per account basis, or use the on/off toggle master switch at the top right of the screen. You email will still download when you access it, but not in the background. You can still sync accounts manually with the automatic sync options turned off.

2.) Forget your wifi connection under Settings-->Wifi. Just select a connection and press the Forget button. This will require that you set it back up, and is not a very practical option, but it does prove whether or not you are seeing this problem.

3.) Power down your AP/router to prevent sync connections. Again, like option 2, this is not a practical solution, but I mention it because it has some test value.

The sleep/sync/hang problem appears to occur as follows: When the tablet is in sleep mode, and sync is turned on, the device will periodically turn on wifi, and connect to the AP for internet services so it can sync. If it works, it completes the sync operation, turns wifi back off and goes back to sleep. When the hang occurs, the tablet will not wake up, and has to be forcefully powered off. I do not know why this happens for some user and not others. I suspect it may have to do with unique characteristics of certain networks that trigger a bug in the ICS sync services or wifi driver. It could also be caused by subtle differences in hardware between devices.

Note also that if option 1 does not work, but options 2 and/or 3 do, then the problem is likely some other app requesting and getting network connectivity during sleep mode. You'll then need to run that down by eliminating apps.

If none of the options noted above help, then you may want to try removing apps to eliminate potential causes. Some apps do not work as well as they did on Honeycomb, so even if you were running these before the update, you could have a problem with them now. For some, Chrome Beta causes frequent hangs and system crashes/reboots. Dolphin and the stock Android browser can be high background CPU consumers.

A Factory data reset may also be useful, especially if you did not do one after the ICS update.

Please post back here with what you learn. Thanks.

[gingernut]

Most of this thread discusses a problem where users were having to force their tablets to power down after some period in sleep mode, and the problem in most cases was probably an app that was hanging and preventing each user from accessing the GUI to regain control of the device. It would not necessarily have been caused by the same app for all users. This condition can be caused by any number of apps, either built-in or loaded by users.

If your tablet is a year old, it is possible that the battery is dying, so you should check the state of the charge when this happens to rule that out. It's more likely that you are encountering a problem with some app or built-in tablet software though. As I noted above, this could be something you installed, or something that came with the update from Acer.

You need to verify whether or not your tablet is becoming hung while in sleep mode. The next time you encounter the problem, press and hold the power button for at least 5 seconds. If you feel no vibration, then your tablet was apparently on, but likely hung on a bad process/app. When the unit is already on, and you then hold the power button for 5 seconds, it forces the tablet to power down unconditionally. It does not vibrate as it does on a normal shutdown. The operation is similar to pulling the plug on a desktop PC -- i.e., it simply removes the power without shutting down any of the programs or doing any normal shutdown preparation/cleanup.

After you shut the system down, then a subsequent push of the power button with a 3 second hold will power it back up, and you will feel the tablet vibrate while starting.

If this is what you are seeing, then the next step is to find and eliminate the cause of the problem if possible. Start with removing any apps that you may have loaded before the problem first occurred.

You state in your post that this started after the latest update. I assume that you mean the update to ICS. You can verify this in Settings-->About. ICS is Android version 4.0.3.

I've worked with a number of users who encountered a similar problem, and we narrowed that problem down to a sync issue that occurred while the tablet was in sleep mode. That particular problem apparently only occurs with ICS, and not Honeycomb (Android 3.2.1, the previous version before ICS).

If you are having that problem, then there are a few things you can try that have worked for others. Any one of these will prevent the sleep/sync/hang problem if that is really what you are encountering.

1.) Turn off sync for all accounts under Settings-->Accounts & sync. You can do this on a per account basis, or use the on/off toggle master switch at the top right of the screen. You email will still download when you access it, but not in the background. You can still sync accounts manually with the automatic sync options turned off.

2.) Forget your wifi connection under Settings-->Wifi. Just select a connection and press the Forget button. This will require that you set it back up, and is not a very practical option, but it does prove whether or not you are seeing this problem.

3.) Power down your AP/router to prevent sync connections. Again, like option 2, this is not a practical solution, but I mention it because it has some test value.

The sleep/sync/hang problem appears to occur as follows: When the tablet is in sleep mode, and sync is turned on, the device will periodically turn on wifi, and connect to the AP for internet services so it can sync. If it works, it completes the sync operation, turns wifi back off and goes back to sleep. When the hang occurs, the tablet will not wake up, and has to be forcefully powered off. I do not know why this happens for some user and not others. I suspect it may have to do with unique characteristics of certain networks that trigger a bug in the ICS sync services or wifi driver. It could also be caused by subtle differences in hardware between devices.

Note also that if option 1 does not work, but options 2 and/or 3 do, then the problem is likely some other app requesting and getting network connectivity during sleep mode. You'll then need to run that down by eliminating apps.

If none of the options noted above help, then you may want to try removing apps to eliminate potential causes. Some apps do not work as well as they did on Honeycomb, so even if you were running these before the update, you could have a problem with them now. For some, Chrome Beta causes frequent hangs and system crashes/reboots. Dolphin and the stock Android browser can be high background CPU consumers.

A Factory data reset may also be useful, especially if you did not do one after the ICS update.

Please post back here with what you learn. Thanks.

Hi. Just new to Android and picked up a cheap Acer Iconia A500 very cheap from a friend. It's only a year old and hardly used.

We upgraded to ICS 4.0.3 and I played around with it for a number of day. Love it. But one thing was that it powered off quite a bit and I need to boot it up quite a bit. The behaviour was quite random in nature, I could be using it for 20 minutes, set it down for 10 minutes and when I went back to it, it would not come out of standby/sleep and so I had to hold the power button down for 7 or 8 seconds to get it to power up (sometimes had to double / triple click the power button. But on the other hand, I could leave it for a couple of hours and come back to it and it would be OK.

I found this forum and the above post has, I think, resolved the problem. A did a factory reset and since then, a simple click on the power button brings it back to life, even after leaving it over night. I will keep and eye on it today. I won't touch it for a good bit of the day and if it comes out of standby on the first click then I know the problem has gone away.

Thanks