Alcatel PULSEMIX problems after Cricket Update

A

I have 2 Alcatel PULSEMIX phones. They were working fine until the point the last Cricket Updates got installed in mid-August. Since then, and exactly then, the battery started to go down within about 5-6 hours, earlier it lived for more than a day with no charge. The phone is hot, sometimes burning my skin when in my pocket. Now both phones are doing the same and as they received the Cricket Updates with about a week difference, I could exactly confirm that the Cricket Updates caused this issue, nothing else has changed. How can I roll back these last updates? Or how can Cricket fix my phones? They are totally useless now, they are always on the charger. and not mobile phones any more. The problematic Update build number is 4F7UCY7. 

 

 

25 replies

Marlena_Cricket
Userlevel 3
Badge +5

Hi alcateluser, 


Thank you for visiting and posting on our Cricket Community Forum! We're sorry to hear that you are having issues with your devices. Unfortunately, there is no way to reverse the update. However, if your devices are less than a year old, then you can file a Warranty Claim. For more info on how to file a claim, click here: https://www.cricketwireless.com/support/orders-and-activations/warranty/customer/warranty.html

K
I have exact same issue on pulsemix. I filed a warranty claim and returned my phone, but they sent the "refurbished" phone with the maliciius update already installed. Off course the battery dies 100% to 0% in 4 hours. This issue is a software issue. There is no hardware problem. So warranty return process cannot fix this issue.
D
Userlevel 1

This happened to me as well. It happened directly after the cricket software update. The upper half of the phone gets warm too, at all times. If I lie the phone down, and hover my hand over it, I can feel the warmth radiating off it. The drain increased from 48% in 24 hours (I hardly use my phone) to near 100% in 12 hours. The computer USB can barely keep up. Since this is directly related to the Cricket Software Update, I don't think a hardware ticket will mean much of anything.

Edit: Is there a way to find out if the Cricket Software Developers are troubleshooting their latest update on Pulsemix phones?  The heat is troubling, and this can't be good on the battery.  Filing a warranty claim and replacing my Pulsemix with another Pulsemix with the exact same problem, doesn't seem like an option to me.

Marlena_Cricket
Userlevel 3
Badge +5

Hi Kei, 


Thank you for visiting & posting on our Cricket Community Forum! If you are experiencing a problem with your Warranty replacement device, please contact the Warranty Dept directly at 1.855.654.7151 for assistance.

Marlena_Cricket
Userlevel 3
Badge +5

Hi DWBierbaum,


Thank you for visisting & posting on our Cricket Community Forum! You can also file a Warranty Claim on your device if it is malfuntioning, and it is less than a year old. To make a warranty claim, please contact the Returns Center at 1-800-CRICKET (274-2538) for assistance. The support center will troubleshoot the device malfunction over the phone and provide instructions for the warranty return, if applicable.

K
Dear moderator, how would you completely ignore the thoughts we are sharing on this thread, and suggest filing a warranty return? This is not a hardware issue, so the warranty return is not a solution. If the software developer is not working to fix the latest update, all pulsemix on the Earth stay as junk.
I might have found a workaround though. If I turned the battery saver mode on, the battery drainage and CPU catching heat ceased. Please, pulsemix users, try turning on the battery saver mode on all the time.
D
Userlevel 1

Thanks.  I'll try that, though I don't remember it working for me, but that was before I did my first factory refresh.  I'll post an update if this works for me.

As for the moderator, I think those are bot-driven responses, and not replies by an actual person, so I wouldn't get frazzled by it.  This is the modern economy, where screamingly stupid bots are in charge of all initial customer service. :smileywink:

D
Userlevel 1

It's been two hours, and my battery is already down to 86%, and it feels warm, so that was a bust for me.

Edit: Well, I plugged it in to the Computer USB port to charge after that, and after an hour the charge was up to... 78%!  With Battery Saver on!  Sigh.

K
Oh they are the bots? I never thought of it!
Let me share what I did to make it work. This morning I charged my phone with power off( to fully charge; with power off, the problematic background process is not running, so I can charge without problem). Turned it on it was 100%. I unplugged the charger. I turned the battery saver on manually, but the battery drainage is present. Then I turned the phone off again, then turned on. This time the battery saver mode stays on. After that, the battery drainage and the CPU heat seemed to be gone.
What I guess here is that the problematic background process starts when I turn the phone on. Once it's turned on, I can't stop it with the battery saver mode. But if I restart the phone with battery saver already on, somehow it prevents the problematic background process to start running. Please be careful that plugging the charger would turn off the manual battery saver mode. So you need to charge the phone fully when the phone is turned off.
V
I have 3, update pushed a week & a half out of warranty. Cricket blamed Alcatel & Alcatel blamed cricket. Cricket has offered warranty or upgrade (I had mentioned out of warranty already but they still suggested it). Alcatel at least offered I could send the phones to them to be reprogrammed but I'd be without 3 phones for possibly 2 weeks when you include shipping. Update date was August 15th. 7 hour charge only getting up to 58% is ridiculously. I can only get a full charge if it's powered off but unfortunately it's also my alarm clock so charging overnight only works when I don't. I just hit them up on messenger again, let's see what they say this time.
D
Userlevel 1

BY JOVE!  I THINK  THAT WORKED!  As per your advice, I turned on battery saver, then turned off the phone, and plugged it into the charger... then I forgot about it till about a half hour ago.  I then unplugged it and turned it on, and the battery indicator came up with that little plus sign on it.  A half hour ago it was at 100%, and right now it's at... 100%

Thank you for that tip.  Now I just have to remember to turn off my phone before charging it, and hoping nobody calls me! ;)

Oh, and Velvet, if push comes to shove, you could see if Alcatel would be willing to accept the phones one phone at a time, and you can send the next one when you recieve the previous one...

K

Bierbaum, I’m glad to hear that it worked for you too!

But it is still a workaround. We demand cricket and alcatel to fix this battery drainage problem as soon as possible, and push the new update to all existing pulsemixes.

J
The Alcatel Pulsemix may be one of the worst phones ever distributed in the market. My phone doesn't work with my home router, when I connect to it, it goes in a bootloop until I turned off router so I can disable WiFi on phone so the bootloop stops.

My workaround was setting up a WiFi hotspot on my laptop and then connecting the phone to WiFi from there. Battery life is still great

I haven't done the latest update as my brother has the same phone with the latest August update and his phone dies super fastttt as you all mentioned on this thread.

I'm waiting to have this phone either rooted for the 4F7UCV0 build so I can remove all the bloatware or just totally install TWRP and scrub the whole software with a new custom Android Oreo 8.0 ROM and work from there. I've heard there aren't any bugs reported from others who has done this already with the Alcatel Pulsemix.

Seems like they won't fix the battery drain/heat issue until a phone blows up or explodes because this isn't a concern for them.

Look into installing a new room for this phone, the software should fix this battery issue as it's worked on my other ASUS Zenfone. The phone was dying, so I installed a custom OS Rom on it and the battery drain issue got fixed. It's definitely the software doing something and affecting the battery.

***Installing a custom ROM on your phone will void warranty as well as rooting your device***

Hope this helps
J
I have two pulsemix phones and both warranties ended in August! Both phones go from full charge to 15% within 2 hours then suddenly turn off. Both my child and I need them for safety issues but both phones are pretty much useless. Solutions needed ASAP. Thank you
D
Userlevel 1

For some reason, just turning battery saver on doesn't stop the power drain.  For what it's worth, the above mentioned silly method works at taming this problem:

  1. Turn on Battery Saver in Settings,
  2. Turn off your phone (hold that bottom side button till the shutdown/restart icons appear, and select "shut down")
  3. Plug into the charger. (You'll notice the phone vibrate, and the initial Alcatel screen momentarily appear)
  4. Unplug from the charger after it's fully charged.  Do this before turning on the phone.
  5. Turn on the phone.  Only do this after unplugging from the charger.

It actually works for taming the power drain issue, until you turn off battery saver mode, or recharge your phone while in turned on/standby mode (which itself turns off battery saver.)

There are significant drawbacks to this method:

  1. No wi-fi calling
  2. alarm doesn't work. (discovered this the hard way.)
  3. Calls to a turned-off phone are of course an exercise in futility.

I get around point three by charging the phone while it's on (from the wall socket charger.  The computer can't keep up with the drainage), and just go through the whole routine above in rapid sequence, only waiting long enough for that Alcatel screen to go blank before unplugging the charger.  That said, I feel like I've got basically a highly over-engineered flip-phone instead of an actual smartphone. :smileyfrustrated:

 

A
You do not need to turn off the phone for charging. You can just use airplane mode, then you may enable the wi-fi. In this case the phone is not completely dead, at least the alarm and e-mail is working, no phone calls, unless the wi-fi call is working for you. (BTW, I think that is also a very buggy app, I cannot get rid of it.)
C

Thanks.  This worked for me also.  It looks like you have to turn on the power with the battery saver already on for the battery saver to prevent the rogue background process causing the problem to start.

If you turn the battery saver after you turn on the power, the rogue process has already started and the battery saver does not stop it so that it does not help.

You can charge the phone with the phone on but charging automatically turns off the battery saver so you have to unplug the phone from the charger, turn on the battery saver, turn the phone power off and then turn back the phone on.

I contacted Cricket on this.  They said it was Alcatel's issue and gave me Alcatel's  phone number.  I told them that even if it was Alcatel's issue it should be Cricket's responsibility to make Alcatel fix it.

D
Userlevel 1

For anyone still interested in this.  I have since bitten the bullet and bought another phone (Nokia 6.1), and put the SIM card in that phone.  An interesting effect is, it solved the power drain issue on my pulsemix, not having a SIM.  I can now run the Pulsemix as a wireless smart-not-phone device that doesn't get warm, and is STILL AT 100% an hour and a half after I charged it!

The only two things I did were a.) removed the SIM card, and b.) in the MyCricket app (which I installed on the new phone) I turned off the Cricket Wireless Manager setting there.

If anyone is up for some experiments, you might try:

  1. Going into your MyCricket app, click that little sprocket in the upper right corner, scroll down to the bottom setting, which is the Cricket Wireless Manager, and turn it off.  It should take a while.  When it's done, reboot the phone, sans battery saver, and see if that did anything.  I don't hold hopes for this one.
  2. Try turning off your phone, removing your SIM card (slide it out of that little metal sleeve near top center, after prying off the back of the phone), and restart the phone, sans battery saver, and see if the power is still draining on your device.  If not, then try turning off your phone, reinserting the SIM card (or downright buying a new SIM Card kit from walmart or bestbuy, and installing that), then restarting the phone.  See if the power drain once again rears it's ugly head.

Since I've moved on to another phone, I'm too lazy to attempt moving on to part two of experiment 2, myself, so I'll leave it to those who may still be interested in the results of this.

Otherwise, well, the Pulsemix will make a nice internet-enabled mp3 player droid-pod kind of device.

M

This happened to my Alcatel device as well, about a month ago Alcalel sent me a refurbished Pulsemix to solve the high cpu usage issue under warranty. Everything worked as it should for the last few weeks until Cricket forced the 4F7UCY7 build update on the already replaced phone. Once again the replaced phone's cpu load average spiked up from 6-10 all the way to 20's and the battery once again is used up in hours. The battery saver trick is helping alot as it has dropped the CPU load average to 10-12. Its a good work around but is there any hope Cricket has even acknowledged the issue or is Cricket trying to sabotage these phones?

R
Cricket update and warranty are horrendous. Makes me want to rip off their heads and shout in their ears they are driving me insane. I bought an Alcatel for my husband. We have returned it to Cricket 4 times only to get same phone then same update then same problems of overheating and battery draining. I think a battery is going to have to overheat explode and kill someone before cricket does anything
Marlena_Cricket
Userlevel 3
Badge +5

We're sorry to hear that your husband is experiencing issues with his device. All of our new phones have a 1-Year Warranty if you are past the 7-Day return policy. 

M
My phone is not overheating like it was before I sent it back in however it continues to drain down at a ridiculous rate! I even purchased the battery back suggested to me by the gentlemen who recommended this phone to me! (Big mistake asking him)! My phone has been on the charger since I woke up at 7am. I have turned it completely off twice for 3 hours each time and still I only have 85%. And it tells me it is 5 hours to a full charge!! Are you KIDDING ME!!!!
M
I don't know about everyone else's phones, but i kept mine one the charger from 6pm on Friday until 7am Saturday with the Battery Saver on and the phone turned off. When I got up I turned it on to find I had only 83% on my Pulsemix. I used it about 2 hours (actually only made a couple of short phone calls and played one game of Suduko) My battery charge dropped down to 33%. I plugged it back up and turned it off again for about 3 hours. It stayed on the charger for the rest of the day and the night, mostly turned off! This is ridiculous! Cricket should give us phones to use until they can fix the problem that the software created! Not good customer service!!
D
Userlevel 1

Yes.  I've learned my lesson with this, and bought a phone that isn't locked to a carrier, and uses Android One, so I get regular monthly updates for my stock android device.  I no longer have wi-fi calling, but that was so hit-or-miss when I DID have it, that I don't miss it at all.  Also, my new Nokia 6.1 has much better antennas and/or signal reception than the Pulsemix.  I downloaded the MyCricket and Cricket Visual Voicemail apps, after installing the SIM from the Pulsemix into the handy little slide-out tray of the Nokia and letting the phone set itself up for Cricket near automatically.

I still have the Pulsemix, and strangely, without the SIM card, it no longer has battery drainage problems, and works fine as an ersatz... er... droidpod?... wifi connected media player and app running device.

I kind of imagine the software support team for these near free devices as two guys locked in a closet, who are responsible for an entire line of devices from flagships on down, so freebie/low cost devices are so low on the "to-do" list for these guys that we'll never see an update to fix this for months, or years.  Lack of support is the REAL price for cheap devices and service, so I can't really complain when this stuff happens, since I should factor in that it WILL happen, when I go for the cheapest option.

R
This is happening to me as well and my phone lags and is so slow I can't watch videos or take videos

Reply


Terms & ConditionsCookie settings