BlackBerry® Pearl™

[Falos]

After boots I get a vague popup with the following warning:

Uncaught exception:

java.lang.NullPointerException

The symptoms are a little weird. Call history is not logged, unless I miss the call, in which case the small outer screen sometimes becomes frozen sans autodim with the normal callerID display. Missed call or not, after one call (usually) the phone seems to become partially disabled. The media player refuses to run video or audio files. Sometimes, further recieved calls will neither vibrate nor tone, only LED flash.

At first I was fixing it with a hard reset via battery removal. It was only a minor quality-of-life issue as I make almost zero calls per month. Later I discovered I could restore what I noticed missing with a very short outgoing call - eventually I just started dialing out to a machine and hanging up before even ringing out.

This is a pretty indirect bandaid fix, though, and figured I should come here to see if could address the issue properly, fate pending. The handset is a Pearl 8220 from 2008 and probably started acting up around 2010.

[sdgardne]

Hi and Welcome to the Community!!

There's pretty much no diagnosing those -- they are the equivalent of the random errors in Windows for which tracing the root cause is fruitless. Basically, these are the last out in the programming code -- some event occurred for which there is no handler in the code. The fix is a code update that handles the event...but, again, knowing what the event is is pretty much impossible. So, there are a few things to try:

Sometimes, the code simply becomes corrupt and needs to be refreshed -- just like a reboot:

• Anytime random strange behavior or sluggishness creeps in, the first thing to do is a battery pop reboot. With power ON, remove the back cover and pull out the battery. Wait about a minute then replace the battery and cover. Power up and wait patiently through the long reboot -- ~5 minutes. See if things have returned to good operation. Like all computing devices, BB's suffer from memory leaks and such...with a hard reboot being the best cure.

If it won't boot up cleanly, then you may need to try Safe Mode:

• KB17877 How to start a BlackBerry smartphone in safe mode

There might be an updated code set from the carrier -- check them via this portal:

•  http://na.blackberry.com/eng/support/downloads/download_sites.jsp

The toughest possible cause is a badly behaving app. To find it, there are a couple of options. One is to see if you can read the log file:

Go to the home screen. Hold down the "alt" key and type 'lglg'. (You will not see anything while you type).This will bring up the log file. Scroll down (probably many pages) untill you see a line that says 'uncaught execption'. Click on this line. The name of the app will be in the info. Alternative methods for bringing up the logs are in this KB:

• KB05349How to enable, access, and extract the event logs on a BlackBerry smartphone

The other method is to remove apps one at a time, waiting a while in between (I usually recommend a week), until the problem ceases...thereby discovering the offending app. Still another method is to reload the BB OS cleanly, leaving some time between adding other apps onto the BB so as to be able to determine exactly which one is the cause.

Good luck and let us know!