This weekend we were going to be out of the house and neither DH or I have a cara charger for our phone. We both have HTC Droid Incredibles from Verizon and he has an extended slim battery from Seidio. Since I use my phone a lot more – really I should call it a mobile device – my battery runs down a lot quicker. I have been cycling between the two HTC stock batteries that we have (the original from my phone and from DH’s phone) so that if I am on a long trip away from a power source I can continue to use the device without much interruption.
Well, that idea went out the window on Sunday morning. I powered down the phone and switched out the batteries so I would have one fully charged extra. It sat for about two hours ’til 7 am and according to Yeyda it powered on by itself. She is always trying to get her hands on my Droid to play games so I find this hard to believe, but I let it go anyway figuring it wasn’t that big a deal. When I finally had a chance to unlock the screen and check my emails I was faced with a dozen or so force close errors.
Oh, crap! What happened? There was nothing I could do then because we were getting ready to go out the door. I rebooted and the same thing happened. My favorite app that helps keep my other apps organized in neat little folders and properly categorized is AutoApp Organizer and that was not working at all. All my widgets from that app were not loading so none of my icons or folders would open. So, sadly I had to uninstall it. I tried to reinstall only to be faced with the same problem. Thankfully, Google Maps was still working so I could help DH navigate to our destination, but nothing else was working. I lost all my contacts which thankfully were backed up by Verizon’s backup assistant. I was able to reload them in a matter of minutes OTA while we were on the road. Things were still not working. The rest of the day since I was with DH I just let it run out of battery and stuck it in my purse. There was no sense fretting over it when I needed to enjoy my day and pay attention to the days programs.
Monday was full of anxious anticipation and worry. I didn’t want to have to uninstall every non-stock program I had one by one. I didn’t want to do I hard reset. So, upon searching for my present issue “htc droid incredible force closes all apps” in Google I came upon a thread in DroidForums.net that seemed exactly like what I was experiencing. The user with a Droid Incredible powered down, switched batteries, powered up and then every app forced closed upon startup! The more I read about the problem the less confidence I had that it was going to be an easy fix. Looking at the list of more than 200 non-stock apps (yes, I had become an “app-hole”) I started freaking out. I didn’t think I needed a full-backup app for my phone, but the more I reflected on the time and energy it was going to take to get the device back to it’s previous state without a backup I knew I had made a mistake by not acquiring one. My contacts and SMS messages were backed up. All my folders from the internal storage and the SD card had been copied to my PC. Backup Assistant from Verizon had synced all my contacts. HTC Sync had synced my calendar and contacts also. So I had bits and pieces here and there, but nothing comprehensive that had details about what apps I had installed and could restore them, also.
I still had network access so I got on the market and looked for an app that would at least be able to backup my app list. I found one called Zemna AppList Backup. It backed up my app list and saved it to the SD card. I tried to access the backup and it crashed the program, but at least I had the list.
I hemmed and hawed and finally at 2:35 PM EDT I bit the bullet and did a hard or Factory reset on my HTC Droid Incredible. The options chosen was to reset the phone and the internal storage because I didn’t know where the problem lie exactly (and I had copied all the contents of the internal storage). The SD card would not be touched, supposedly. The device shut off, rebooted and went straight to the update download screen. Phew, one worry averted – the latest update would be downloaded and reapplied. Then the phone rebooted again and went to the system settings asking what language I would like to use. I chose English and the programming screen came up. The phone dialed Verizon and led me through the prompts. Ten minutes had passed and I had a phone that was back to factory default and programmed with my cell phone number! I knew it worked because as soon as my phone was loaded someone sent me a text confirming that it worked!
When I found a place in the house that had good network signal I opened the Market (it required me to enter my Google account credentials) and downloaded AutoApp Organizer and Zemna AppList Backup. Right away AutoApp worked. Zemna immediately found the applist backup on my SD card and I was able to view it – NO Force Close! What was nice about the applist is that it allowed me to see the apps current status on my device – Installed/Not Installed – and I could click on the app name and go directly to their page in the Market to download it again. How nice to not have to manually write down and then search for each app individually. It’s actually nice to start from scratch with a list of what was on the device before. This way I can choose to reinstall only the ones I used regularly.
Last night I reloaded my Hotmail and GMail account credentials so I could get my email and calendar information. This morning I synced the phone with my Outlook calendar and Outlook Express contacts through HTC Sync and it worked without a hitch. The only thing that is working rather glitchy with the device now is that the radio for the data network is not coming back on. It could be that I reached a traffic cap and Verizon has cut me off for a while. Actually, I hope that is the problem and not something more serious with the inner workings of the device. When the network comes back online for me I will definitely be downloading a full backup utility for my phone and all it’s settings.
Here are the backup utilities that were suggested in DroidForums.net:
AppBrain
Nandroid Backup
Titanium Backup
If you have a Droid Incredible I suggest downloading these apps from the Market:
AutoAppOrganizer
Advanced Task Killer
Zemna AppList Backup
If you are a Tweep, and on Facebook, MySpace, Foursquare, or GoogleBuzz:
TweetDeck for Android
Firstly, I’m a mom and wife. Professionally, IT consulting is my job and blogging is the outlet for my passions. I write about things that affect the everyday life of a stay-at-home parent or any parent for that matter such as parenting, relationships, discipline, the media, product reviews, giveaways, social media, food, cooking, gardening and anything else that might come my way.
