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MayaB

Hello!

I have a Sony Xperia Z5 Compact with Android 7.1.1. which started crashing on each phone call. It happened for the first time in the beginning of February. I thought it's a one time thing and ignored it. In the last month however I can't have a phone call without my phone suddenly showing a black screen, a flashing red light and restarting. It's extremely annoying. Even after it restarts the device is incredibly slow. On two separate occasions my phone crashed 3 times in a row. At the same time the battery level dropped by 15-20%. The device itself also got much warmer than it usually is.

I wanted to make a factory settings reset, but I can't seem to make a backup. The automatic backup setting doesn't work since the very beginning (it says "last backup 570+ days ago" and every time it tries to backup during charging I see the notification "backup failed") and when I try to use the Xperia Companion on my PC I get the following error:

I'm on the end of my nerves and I desperately need help. I have to do some very important (and most probably lenghty) calls tomorrow and I definitely can't make it with a phone that doesn't support phone calls.

Please help!

NunoSEN2

Hi @MayaB;

Have you tried restarting the phone in safe mode and test it? Safe Mode

MayaB

I just started it in Safe mode, but I don't really know how to test it. Just try to make a phone call? I guess I'll call another phone and leave the connection up for a longer time to see if my phone will crash then.

And should the safe mode help me with the crashing or with the backup problem? Or with both?

Sorry for asking so many questions, but smartphones are not my strength.

One more thing. From time to time I see the message "rcahandler stopped working". What does it mean and how to fix it?

NunoSEN2

@MayaB;

The Safe mode is just to see if a third party app is causing your problems because in safe mode the phone is working just with the apps that came when phone is new.

Just use your phone normally in safe mode and see if you have any problem, if not than some app that you installed is causing the problem you have and you need to find out wich one, starting by uninstalling apps one by one until your problem is solved (start with the ones you installed by the time the problem appeared).

MayaB

@NunoSEN2

Thank you very much for the suggestion to use Safe Mode! This way I managed to go through multiple 20+ minutes conversations without my phone crashing. That's a giant relief, but it's not a solution for the future. I can't always switch to safe mode, when I need to have a longer call.

Apparently there is a problem with a specific app. Unfortunately I don't remember installing anything new in the last couple of months since the problem appeared, but I may have just forgotten it. Is there an easy way to see the order of installation by date or at least the date on which each app was installed?

Each time I switched to Safe Mode, I saw a message right after the power up: com.sonymobile.rcahandler has stopped. And the last time I turned the phone on in the normal mode I saw further two messages: com.sonymobile.crashmonitor has stopped and com.sonymobile.rcahandler keeps stopping. I have no idea what these messages mean and how to fix the problems which are causing them. Is there some tool, which could scan the phone and help me analyze the bugs?

NunoSEN2

Hi @MayaB;

I think your best bet is performing a software repair with Xperia Companion and install the third party apps one by one until you find wich one is causing the problems.

Try making a phone backup without backing up the apps data (if you will make the backup with Xperia Companion unselect the backup of "others").