Dial and Home buttons stopped working

[lovehatesex]

As like everyone else I have been getting annoyed with my battery life, so I decided to run it down and let it die. (BTW, it took an hour for it to die from 4% with nonstop usage, WiFi turned on, and GPS turned on for half of it) After it died I plugged it in for a minute, and turned it on. Well my green dial AND home screen buttons have stopped working, completely. I have tried turning the phone off, and back on again... hasn't helped. And since it died, when I hold the red end button to shut it off, I notice "vibrate" isn't an option. Those 3 things have changed since letting it die and turning it back on. Any ideas on what happened? Did me letting the battery die fry something???? I'm pissed, because I know if I call Tmo they will automatically want you to do a factory reset, but I honestly don't want to.

Any suggestions on what to try before resorting to factory reset?

[Infinatenothing]

the battery dying sould not effect your hardware seems like you got a bad unit to me and its a coincidence it failed after your battery died.

[kaysesoze]

That happened to me before, and I did a factory reset and it fixed the problem. I'm not sure if it was an application or game that I added but haven't had the problem since.

[gsxrmike04]

thats a software related issue not hardware

[darthbuddha]

I have noticed sometimes my G1 when jumping from a app to home it does kinda lag.

[K.Krstnsn]

mike... ive never had communications with some one actually from or lived in or even been to rhode island...

HI!

ps vermont either

[LeandroMan]

I too have a similar problem.

SYMPTOM:

1. Home Button Not working, stopped working.
2. Dial Button Not working, stopped working.
3. Power Button No longer locks the screen, it only darkens it.

These problems began this morning except it didn't happen after the phone died from battery exhaustion (like [lovehatesex] explains above). My recent activity was:

1. Installing "Zombie, Run!" (Tons of fun)

2. Using "Any Cut" and adding every possible shortcut to see where it leads. I believe I might have gone to a shortcut that changed a phone setting making the home button stopped working and the phone button stopped working :(

I too am resisting a hard reset.

[tiki]

Looks like somebody needs to write an app to save all your ANDROID setting to the SD card so we can do factory resets w/o worrying about losing all our stuff..

[JmasterJ]

Im having the same problem has u and leandroman

what happen to mine was i installed bubble that stupid measuring app and toggle then my notifcations bar stopped working and i couldnt pull it down anymore so i turned my phone off when i tried it on it worked again but i got the same stuff thats happening to u to. I did to also use anycut but it was before all that happen

sady im goin to reset everything:(

make such u tell google about this problem so they can get it fixed

[sayitisntso]

I have the same problem. It happened when it said I was low on storage, but when I checked my storage, I was fine. I only have a few apps. It should not have given me this message. But I emptied browser and text messaging, from there my phone was no longer logged into my gmail account. It took me awhile to figure out that I had to start from scratch as if a new phone, but I got it working. FYI I also lost my contacts, and even after clearing out storage my phone kept giving me that message that I had no storage. SOOO now my home button does not work. It's bad enough I have to spend hours keeping my computers running but now I have a retarted phone! :( I really had no idea that the day I bought it, it had just come out two days before. :eek: You'd think I would know this since I am a Google Groopie.:o I hope they fix this problem.

[RxR55]

Hey guys,

Exact same thing happened to me.
I installed RC30 ota and after that, my call and Home stopped working.
They would wake up the phone when locked but would not bring back to home or bring up the dialer.

Managed to fix it via a factory reset.
I backed up all my pics ringtones etc on the Sd card. Made a list of the apps I liked. Made sure gmail had my contacts synced.
Did the reset...setup my gmail...put up my background, downloaded all my apps again and synced contacts.
Was up and running again in 10-15mins.

[JohnnyLicious]

this happend to me right now

i used anycut and put all the shortcuts i can use ahhaah

gotta hard reset now blah

hope they fix this.

[mrescandon]

Hey - I've had my black G1 for exactly one week and everything was smooth until this morning. All of a sudden, the home key and the call button don't do anything when pressed. Physically the buttons are fine and I can tell that they still function as they will bring the device back if the device is locked - but the home button won't take me home, long pressing it won't bring up the recent applications screen, and pressing the call button does nothing as well. This is happening seemingly out of nowhere.

I called T-Mobile tech support and the only thing they suggested is taking it back to the store. That is going to be my last resort because A: The store I bought it at is a long drive from my house and B: if I do take it back I'm probably not going to do an exchange I'll probably just ride out my contract and buy a new phone possibly with a different carrier in a month. I generally don't give a device a second chance, for whatever reason.

Has anyone else experienced this problem or have any ideas of a solution? I was using this device heavily last night and there were no problems at all. The device did fully die (battery drained) and I plugged it back in to charge it this morning. I've done a soft reset 3 times - no fix there. The only thing I haven't done is a factory reset - and the tech support lady told me that if I did a factory reset then I wouldn't be getting future OTA updates from google/T-Mobile and there's no ETA on when that service would resume (I had no idea doing a factory reset has this effect).

Any ideas? Oh and one other bit of weirdness - the device won't lock anymore. If I hit the end call button the screen will go black - but upon pushing any key the device will come back up fully - I don't see the time/t-mobile screen that tells me to press menu to unlock. This is also a new thing.

Any help or suggestions would be appreciated. Also - let me know if you think taking the device back is my only option. I really liked this thing for a week.

Thanks - peace!

[MrGibbage]

I have not heard of anyone else reporting a problem like yours. You know, hardware problems do happen, I'm sorry to say. If that's your decision, then I guess you can live with it. But I can tell you that there are literally THOUSANDS and THOUSANDS of extremely satisfied G1 owners out there, but don't keep it because of us. Do what you need to do.

[dkw0417]

I had it right after I let the phone go until it killed the bat one day. Do a factory reset and it will be fine.

YOu can search the forums for instructions on the factory reset.

[dkw0417]

It was the exact same prob and you will get the updates when they are sent out, but you might be stuck on RC19 until they start sending updates out again. Unless you can find the RC30 update and then follow forum instructions on how to manually install it. Again search the forum, that is how I got my RC29 update when I got tired of waiting for tmobile.

[mrescandon]

Hey thanks - the exact same problem? That's good to know that it was fixable (well, and troubling that this is something that is going on).

That's weird that it happens after letting the phone die completely - a lot of people recommend to condition your batteries by letting it die completely. Maybe it's a very rare thing.

I'll give the factory reset a try. I was RC29 out of the box I believe and upgraded to RC30 OTA a few days ago. Didn't really see a difference other than being able to "reboot" from the keyboard :]

[pllb]

I've yet to hear of this issue but I hope you get it sorted out. I feel your pain, I went through 3 handsets and all of them had some sort of problem and the tmo store was an hour bus ride from where I'm at. So that's basically 6hrs travel time total plus the time spent waiting for the bus and waiting in line at the tmo store.

[mrescandon]

UPDATE: I can verify that a factory reset fixes this problem. Hopefully we will see a fix soon from Google to whatever is causing this problem.

Thanks for all the help.

[dkw0417]

You welcome,

[Keith]

I have this happen the first week I owned the phone. A reset corrected it.

[gico2107]

I cleared default google account on my T-Mobile G1 then restart.
After that, my home button become useless. When press it, it'll do nothing.
Usually if I press and hold power button, it'll display two options : shut down or silent mode. But now it only display shutdown option.
If I press power button, it doesnt lock keypad as usual, it just stand by.
Any help please!!!

[webrun]

I got your answer right here: My G1 did exactly that two days ago -- the home button just inexplicably quit working. So I did a "factory reset", and it works perfectly again.

Download from the Market, the applications Astro and MyBackup. On Astro, you can backup all your Market downloads. On MyBackup, you can backup your Bookmarks and your Home page icons (and when you restore after reset, they go back exactly where they were before). No need to backup your Contacts -- those will appear back on your phone from Gmail.

If by chance, this doesn't restore use of the Home button, then I would suggest you call T-Mo tech support for advice, but this fixed the problem for my G1, so I assume it was a software corruption issue.

Go forth and reset!

[Grimm]

The Same thing just happened to me. This sucks.

[Dixie]

Wow, all these little "adds character" touches are getting very interesting on our happy little phone.

Grimm and gico, let us know if a factory reset solves the problem.

[Grimm]

How do you backup the market downloads with Astro? I've got too many apps to lose everything

[PET-BASIC]

(In Astro)
Menu -> Manage Applications.

Check them all, and hit backup.


Badda-bing badda-bam your apps will start backing up.

[Grimm]

Ok, got it. Now what about this factory reset? should I remove my sd card when I do it? and also, how do I do it?


P.S. Thanks for all the help

[Grimm]

I figured it out, the restore fixed the home button issue, I'm gonna load my apps back on now. I'll keep you posted.

[gico2107]

thanks very much, webrun. factory reset really solve my problem

[Grimm]

Yeah, I'm back in action too. I wonder what caused it tho? Probably some sketchy app I installed, I didn't put back near as many after the restore.

[webrun]

What causes the Home button to quit? I don't know for sure. I think in my case, I loaded something on my G1 sort of by mistake (long story). Anyway, I am suspicious that it may have somehow corrupted the OS software of the phone.

In any event, after it happened, since the G1 is a computer, I figured like most computers, most problems are software, not hardware related, so I thought the best thing to try was a factory reset, in case of software corruption. Et voila, luckily, it worked!

I also figured if I were to call T-Mo tech support, they would probably tell me to do a factory reset first anyway.

[inportb]

Hm, the symptom resembles what some people get from a botched Setup Wizard. It's usually fixable by re-running Setup Wizard to completion (using Any Cut) in that case.

[aspiers]

Hm, the symptom resembles what some people get from a botched Setup Wizard. It's usually fixable by re-running Setup Wizard to completion (using Any Cut) in that case.

Thank you SO much! I searched everywhere for a solution to this because I really didn't want to do a factory reset, and I finally found your post which fixed it for me.

I have only had my G1 three days and already have had to rerun the setup wizard twice to fix this. I don't know what's causing it - presumably some rogue application? - but it's definitely a serious bug which needs looking into. Even worse, in my case it seemed to be preventing me from receiving calls - all incoming calls went straight to voicemail. Do you happen to know any more about what might cause it, and why it happens? Thanks!

For the benefit of anyone else with this problem, here are the full details of how to fix it without a factory reset:

1. Install AnyCut from Android Market
2. Go to the home screen
3. Long press on the wallpaper
4. Tap "Shortcut"
5. Tap "Any Cut"
6. Tap "Activity"
7. Choose "Setup Wizard" from the list of activities
8. Tap "OK"
9. There should now be a Setup Wizard icon on your home screen. Follow the wizard through to completion and the dial / home / hangup hardware keys should now be behaving normally again.

[aspiers]

Good news, it can be fixed without a factory reset! See:

http://androidcommunity.com/forums/showthread.php?p=132726#post132726

[aspiers]

Good news, it can be fixed without a factory reset! See:

http://androidcommunity.com/forums/showthread.php?p=132726#post132726

However it's a serious bug and the cause needs to be prevented ...

[inportb]

Hm... this is interesting. The fix has always been permanent for me. If you keep seeing this problem, perhaps you need to reboot the phone... or the factory reset may be the only solution.

[titico]

hello, i'm really new here but i've had the same problem with the tow buttons, and it turned out just perfect with the AnyCut app.

Thank you =)

[Sowmya]

Thank you SO much! I searched everywhere for a solution to this because I really didn't want to do a factory reset, and I finally found your post which fixed it for me.

I have only had my G1 three days and already have had to rerun the setup wizard twice to fix this. I don't know what's causing it - presumably some rogue application? - but it's definitely a serious bug which needs looking into. Even worse, in my case it seemed to be preventing me from receiving calls - all incoming calls went straight to voicemail. Do you happen to know any more about what might cause it, and why it happens? Thanks!

For the benefit of anyone else with this problem, here are the full details of how to fix it without a factory reset:

1. Install AnyCut from Android Market
2. Go to the home screen
3. Long press on the wallpaper
4. Tap "Shortcut"
5. Tap "Any Cut"
6. Tap "Activity"
7. Choose "Setup Wizard" from the list of activities
8. Tap "OK"
9. There should now be a Setup Wizard icon on your home screen. Follow the wizard through to completion and the dial / home / hangup hardware keys should now be behaving normally again.

Thanks a lot ..It worked perfectly.

[benge]

I've been having this problem on my girlfriend's G1 for ages now, we've already done 3 factory data resets on the darn thing. Same issues as everyone's already listed, home & dial buttons not working but lighting up when you press them, screen lock has disappeared although enabled, all calls to the phone go to voice mail, long press power button menu only shows 'power off' option, also a problem I haven't seen listed so far; her default notification ringtone automatically set itself to some stupid jangly music.

After this happening for the forth time, I went looking for answers and found this thread. I was over joyed when I read that anycut'ing a shortcut to setup wizard and running through that would sort the (really annoying) problem. Only problem was there were two lots of most things in the activities part of anycut (e.g. two 'setup wizard' selections to chose from). I chose the first one which when loaded , brought up the location consent part of the wizard the just disappeared when I hit next. I then tried the 2nd setup wizard option in anycut which launched the setup wizard from the start. I thought I was on a roll now, but unfortunately the wizard just kept force closing right after signing in with her un & pw, so now I've bit the bullet and done yet another factory data reset.

I personally mess about with my G1 quite a bit, trying out different home replacements and the like, but she's only installed a handful of apps & hadn't installed anything for ages, so I really don't know what makes it happen.

If anyone hears of another way to fix this problem without using the setup wizard or even better, a permenant fix, please put it up here and save the last of my hair from being pulled out, I will appreciate it greatly.

Many thanks for all the help so far :)

[jaydeejj]

I'm bumping this because this just happened to me also. I too tried to anycut thing to get the setup wizard and just like the above post, it just force closes.

[rserling]

I'm bumping this because this just happened to me also. I too tried to anycut thing to get the setup wizard and just like the above post, it just force closes.

Same here, basically. Setup Wizard asks permission to use location, then on clicking Next it disappears. Nothing else.

My hopes were up, but it looks like i'm reset-bound.

[danbeale.dot]

dont mean to bump but this also happened to me when i was downgrading my cyanogen rom's i am resisting a hard reset as well as i dont really wanna go through the hassle of setting it all up again.
if anybody can help then please let me know?

[simms22]

dont mean to bump but this also happened to me when i was downgrading my cyanogen rom's i am resisting a hard reset as well as i dont really wanna go through the hassle of setting it all up again.
if anybody can help then please let me know?

if you were on the experimental build , there is a fix on xda....

" wipe, downgrade to stable, wipe , upgrade to experimental "

[Garry]

I've ran into this problem after downgrading from Cyanogen 4.11.1.1 to 4.0.4 (due to some incompatibilities) ... I still have the nandroid backup from the 4.11 installation, which works fine when restoring ... Problem is that the setup tool crashes when trying to register with google, which prevents me from using the fix listed earlier in this thread ... could anybody who this works for maybe try and see what the setup tool actually fixes/changes?

[Garry]

Same here, basically. Setup Wizard asks permission to use location, then on clicking Next it disappears. Nothing else.

My hopes were up, but it looks like i'm reset-bound.

Setting up the anycut stuff, you may have noticed there are two setup wizard entries ... they are different ... the second is the one you want ...

[ausariang1]

my setup:
tmobile g1
1.6 donut
several apps

symptoms:
dial & home buttons not not responding
unable to receive incoming calls everything goes straight to v/m
missing options in power off menu

this happened to me once when i was using cupcake as well. i called tmobile their only solution was a non-solution (factory reset). i have several apps with about 47MB of free space. i recently noticed that it did this after connecting it to my g4 powerbook (OS X 10.5.8) via usb cable and mounting the SD card. factory reset was the only fix. repeated the action but i could not replicate the issue.

has anyone had the problem with no incoming calls?

[Chihuahua]

Can anyone tell me what the advantage is of installing a non factory operating system??? It seems to be nothing but trouble.

Excuse my lack of knowledge in this matter.


PETE

[mistakenkindness]

I too had this same problem and was able to correct it.

I was using CM-4.1.99 and I upgraded to the stable 4.2.2 because my home and send key stopped working and it was the newest stable version. After the upgrade my home and send keys still did not work. I did the Anycut trick provided above and it did not work. I looked in anycut and there was 3 different entries for Setup Wizard. I tested each one and the 3rd one was a charm. The set up wizard completed and now I can use the home and send keys. I hope this helps for others.

[abwesend]

Hi All,

due to all the symptoms this topic is hard to find, but here seem to be at least some of the users.

:) Good news:
The issue is already tracked. (known at Android issue tracker)

:mad: Bad news: Its ranked really low.

:) Good news: We can change it.

:D Task for all of us:

go here:

http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=2394

and vote!

Comment-there is unnecessary if there is no new finding. Detailed description and hints of course welcome.

Furthermore (as this is hard to find) add aa android-issues link here if you find this issue higher ranked again, filed at another id.

Let's see if we can trigger the fix :)

Regards,
-abwesend

[checktravis]

i also had the two set up's in my listing. this post seemed to fix me up:

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Google+Mobile/thread?tid=2cbbb593a6235873&hl=en

after going to settings > applications > manage applications > Google Apps and select Clear data, i ran the wizard again. this time it didn't crash, but just went back to the log in screen again (with no error). i then restarted the phone and it seems to be all good now (for now, knock on wood)

[orangelunchbox]

I could not get the Setup Wizard to run without force closing and I did not have a "Clear Data" option in settings > applications > manage applications > Google Apps (I only had a greyed out "Clear cache" option).

I was still able to fix it though with:
1. Settings > Accounts and sync > Add account
2. Choose Google Account and re-add your original google account.

Worked fine after that.

[ythu54]

Tanks to the tips I found here, I fixed my problems without reset via the Setup wizard installed by AnyCut. There are 3 Setup wizards. You need to use the third one that sets up the google account.

[fduncan]

I just installed ShorterCut in an attempt to address this issue, but I am not seeing the Setup Wizard among items that I can create a shortcut for.

(this is for an HTC G1)

Once I select Shortcuts / ShorterCut my options are:


Select a shortcut
System settings
Recent activity
Empty shortcut

> Edit properties
> Create shortcut

Where is this 'Setup Wizard' of which you speak? It sounds very handy...

Nothing under recent activity or System settings (or Applications) appears with any mention of Setup.

Thanks for your help!

[Leon1025]

Problem Solved:

Go 2 market

download dg quickcut

create desktop shortcut>activitys>look for setup wizard select the last one

go to home screen and run setup wizard :D :D and ur done