Droid100's Bug Log & Gripes

[droid100]

I'm entering week 2 with the phone and here are the bugs I've encountered and things I feel are missing from the platform.

Warning: Not all of this is phone specific and I consider myself a power user. You may think some of these are a stretch.

Personal Bugs/Gripes:

- Screen goes black when on a call. I can't get it to wake up unless I slide the keyboard out. (MAJOR)

- Home screen does not rotate. Rotation only works when inside an application.

- All FREE IM Clients Suck. Every one of the free clients, repeatedly disconnects. They're almost unusable. I'm afraid to pay for one and be stuck with it if it does the same thing. Someone has mentioned that you get a 24hr period to get a refund on apps. I now have to find a functional pay for app. (Original IM Client Thread: http://www.droidforums.net/forum/dr...ed-reliable-im-client-suggestions-please.html)

- EMBARRASSING battery life(MEEBO?!). Not an actual bug, but what a pain. I basically have to be near a wall outlet at all times. It's died on me when visiting a friends house for a 4hr+ period with no active use. I know all the tricks to try to improve the battery life, but still, its very weak. I have Wife & Sync on but nothing else. Also, pitiful battery life is no excuse when I'm paying you this amount of money for a device. Edit: I switched to Google Talk, after giving up on the free chat clients. My battery life has seriously been extended. Try it on your side, and see if it gives you the same results.

- Camera Focus/Shutter LOUD. The camera makes a seriously loud beep sound when it focuses and the shutter sounds louder than an SLR. You can turn this off by turning the sound on the phone to silent which is nice but just something you have to remember to do. Is it possible to change the sound files on this?

Missing?:

- Cant upload videos over 3G. if your video is larger than 5M it forces you to use wifi. Way too small of a filesize, should be 10 or 8 minimum.

- Missing "Mark all as read" in the native email client.

- Google voice requires 10 digit number when dialing out. It appears to dial out using the Verizon number if the 3 digit area code is not there. Not a huge deal, but certainly an inconvenience if you want Google Voice to be "invisible". Am I doing it wrong?

- Can't open an audio stream in the web browser and then change to another application. Not sure if this is by design, or a bug, but inconvenient when listening to a podcast in the car and you want to check an email that has arrived. (VERY Iphone-ish...)

- Can't play a youtube clip & take a picture/video at the same time(I know, just saying, you can't). Yes, not at all necessary, but the need has presented itself. My kid starts to sing when I play music videos of stuff I don't have on MP3 and I want to take a video of her when it happens. Why doesn't the app go into the background? This actually rebooted my phone when I tried it. Insignificant, yes, but it would be amazing.


Please let me know if you have solutions to any of the above... I may have just missed something or am not taking advantage of some free app.

More to come as I log more miles...

 

[jleachma]

I have no problems with battery life at all. In fact I just drove back from San Antonio, TX to Lafayette, IN yesterday with google maps and the GPS location on and the battery still had some juice when I got home!

I do have them problem with the screen not coming back on when I am ready to end a phone call though. Really the only complaint I have on the phone. Hopefully this update on Dec. 11th will take care of this!?!?!

 

[UltimateX]

Turn off email push, this is a huge draw on the battery. I have mine set to a 10 minute interval.

 

[jleachma]

Check out the phones, battery use under settings. I bet "display" has been using most of the battery. Once I turned my brightness down I noticed a huge difference.

 

[garrett]

answers are in red

Bugs/Gripes:

- Screen goes black when on a call. mine does this too but as soon as i take the phone away from my face it comes back to life without having to hit any buttons or doing anything. (theres a light sensor on the front left of the phone that can tell when the phone is up against your face/cheek)

- Home screen does not rotate. From what i have read this is done this way by design. if you want a rotating home screen you should check out some of the home replacements as some of them offer this

- All FREE IM Clients Suck. This i cant say anything about as i only use GTalk and it works flawlessly. i even used this on my blackberry as i like it better then BBM and almost everyone i know uses it already

- EMBARRASSING battery life. maybe you have an app running in the background that is killing your battery. i have at least 50 apps and have everyhting on (bluetooth, GPS, WIFI, sync, and the brightest screen setting) and i get a good 30 hours out of my phone and im a pretty heavy user. 100+ text's/IM's a day 30-50 emails and plenty of browsing on both 3G and Wi-Fi. I also use it as an mp3 player in my car


Missing:

- Missing "Mark all as read" in the native email client. this i agree with it would be nice to have

- Google voice requires 10 digit number when dialing out. this is simply a software issue, the only way to get this fixed is if google gets enough requests for it.

- Can't open an audio stream in the web browser and then change to another application. sure you can i have done this numerous times.... opened and audio stream from shoutcast and it starts playing though stream furious and then i can open any other app or browse elsewhere with no issues

- Can't play a youtube clip & take a picture/video at the same time. this is kinda over the top.... best option here is to play a song and then just use the camera because the phone can do both of those at once.


Please let me know if you have solutions to any of the above... I may have just missed something or am not taking advantage of some free app.

More to come as I log more miles...

 

[mjs31]

Screen goes black due to a sensor in the upper left corner. It is designed this way so your face does not click buttons while on a call. When you pull it away from your face it should come back on unless you are blocking the sensor.

Battery life if right on par with the other smart phones I have had. 4 hours is crazy low so something else you have running is eating the battery. As mentioned, screen brightness is the typical killer.

Home screen will also rotate if you open the physical keyboard. I agree that it should rotate without having to do this.

Mark as read, select all, etc...is one I miss as well.

Not really sure about your other issues.

 

[cereal killer]

Turn gps off when not in use. Turn off auto dim (for blank screen issue) and do turn down brightness Just with these three you will notice a difference in battery life.

 

[DroidGurl]

I had the blank screen thing too but switched my display to never go off and it hasn't happened since. I don't like worrying about the screen being left on by accident so will try resetting it at times to see if the issues went away.

I have having issues with the text field not activating on touch, mostly in the vertical mode but sometimes in horizontal. At other times I can type on the Android keyboard but although I get the little pop up confirm of the letter being selected it doesn't type into the text field.

My email (not the gmail account) locks up and has to be closed by the program.

These issues are minor - I really like the phone a lot. Other than these few bugs, the biggest room for improvement IMO are:

1. Phone ease of use - I have messed up several calls being unable to find the phone app and disconnect or the screen blanking thing.

2. Major lag time taking a photo with the flash on. It's a lot better with the flash turned off but it's literally several seconds from depressing the button to the photo capturing with the flash active. By then the person is not smiling anymore or is blinking etc.

BTW my battery life improved incredibly after I turned the display brightness down almost as low as it would go - I can still see it easily, even in daylight, and no more weird fluctations (it would get brighter then go dimmer as I operated it before). I also installed the power widget on the home screen, I keep the tools on it managed. Sync is off at night, GPS only when navigating or doing map searches, etc. Really quite an amazing little device.

 

[UltimateX]

It is also missing an "unread email" folder. I have rules that drop certain emails into subfolder and the only way I can know that I have unread email, is to click on the account, select folders, scroll down and then I see the email. And unfortunately there is no indication that an unread email actually exists until I do this.

 

[Martin030908]

Auto-brightness saved me a ton of battery. This beautiful display does eat the battery life. To me the auto-brightness should've been enabled out of the box. Screen will provide appropriate brightness based on the amount of light in the area (room, car, office) that you're in.

 

[KungFuGeek]

i have to say, if your battery is draining quickly, go to settings, about phone, battery use, and see what is using up the battery. Its possible one of your IM clients is keeping a connection open constantly or something similar.

 

[vonfink13]

here are my issues with my droid....it doesnt clean up the dog crap in the yard...it wont eat its veggies...it always burns the microwave popcorn...leaves the toilet seat up(this one drives my wife nuts).....it refuses to use the search function in the droid forum...other than that..it is perfect...battery life is great..work and home e-mail work perfectly...browser and gps have been flawless...i love my droid...i am a very happy droid owner...

 

[droid100]

Thanks for the tips! I do have my screen brightness turned all the way down, and according to the task-killer, nothing running in the background. I also don't use the GPS, just Wifi and the background Sync service. I'm going to keep playing with the settings and run a few tests.

I'm going to raise the BS flag on your 30hours of service. I pretty sure every person could turn every service off and never get near 30hours.

 

[myx]

Home screen does not rotate. From what i have read this is done this way by design. if you want a rotating home screen you should check out some of the home replacements as some of them offer this

I found this on the Google Android Developers site - Issue 4555. Aparently this it is not just us. This is a known issue.
Issue 4555 - android - android 2.0 home screen wont rotate with keyboard closed except when in car mode - Project Hosting on Google Code

it doesnt clean up the dog crap in the yard.

There's an app for that.

it wont eat its veggies

You have to open the keyboard.

it always burns the microwave popcorn.

This is a known bug and the the Googlys are working on it.

leaves the toilet seat up(this one drives my wife nuts)

Does she want equal rights? Nuff said.

 

[KungFuGeek]

my best so far was 18 hours without charging, and i was left with a 30% charge, minor use that day, maybe one 10 minute phone call, half an hour of pandora, and a dozen or so text messages.

Really, check your battery use, if it doesn't show anything all that much, its possible you may have a bad battery.