Phone screen keeps going blank

[Reidy36]

Morning all,
I have a Samsung galaxy S3 and I am about to throw it at the wall.
I have noticed recently that it is a lot slower when I go to do something, if I touch the screen it takes seconds sometimes for anything to happen.
When I go to click to send a text, it ends up going back to the home screen, the same at times if I go to make a call.
It has now started going to the blank screen then back when playing games, I have lost 3 lives on Candy Crush this morning because of this.
Any suggestions? There is obviously an issue somewhere. Could you please put it in moron speak for me as a simpleton.
TIA

 

[Barrysprout]

I've never came across a problem with my S3 that a restart didn't solve, but failing that you might need to do a factory reset to make sure none of your installed apps are conflicting.

 

[tdodd]

Agree with restart first, but before you go all out on a factory refresh (which will wipe out downloaded programs, system settings, texts and call logs) just try removing your memory card, assuming you have one. That may accomplish nothing at all, but it's worth a shot, just to see if there is something about the card which is slowing things down. If that has no effect then a factory reset does sound like the next step.

Out of interest, have you applied any ROM updates recently. I have a Note so I don't know the rollout schedule for the S3, but some people have said that the JB update likes to do something with storage and removing the external storage (temporarily) might allow the phone to sort itself out more easily following a factory reset.

 

[Reidy36]

Thanks guys. Will do a restart. May have a look at installed apps, I have added a few lately so maybe a conflict there.

 

[Barrysprout]

Probably should have added to make sure you use the back up function before a restore :bonk:

I changed my S3 (olour change) last month and all call logs, texts etc were transferred. Then you can reinstall the apps from play store from your list of purchases/downloads. If you end up going down this route though don't install everything at once as you may find the culprit by adding them one at a time and testing functionality.

 

[Reidy36]

Just gone into my apps and looked at ones that are running.
At times only have 18mb of free space. Tried shutting some down, but they keep restarting.
Think this could be a problem?

 

[stupar]

Sounds like you have a defo app issue.
I would roll back the phone by uninstalling the apps in the order of most recent installed to oldest.
All it takes with android is one rogue app to bring the whole system to its knees.

I've encountered your situation plenty times and everytime the resolution was to uninstall the very last app I installed and all would be good again.
Hopefully this works for you too.

Note - there are some apps that will never be truly killed (process wise) as they can be tied into the system running.

 

[tdodd]

18MB free sounds very, very low to me. As it happens I performed a factory reset on my Note just yesterday. It's running the latest stock Jelly Bean ROM. I only installed the bare minimum of apps which I use regularly and 15 hours later, now that the phone has settled down, I have around 300MB free with no "user" apps running.