Any tips from Droid users?

This phone is driving me nuts b/c I can't get my email to work on it, and it doesn't notify me if someone responds to one of my posts or someone else responds to a post I did on facebook. My blackberry always did and I got used to that. Is this phone supposed to do that?

It may be something you have to set up in your settings. I dont use FB but I would imagine that in your FB settings (it should load it up the same way as a computer or youll have to look around for the settings link) and in there it should have the things to set up the notifications. Wayyyy back when I did have FB it was set up on my BB and I had to go into the settings on the phone to set up the sounds etc but I also had to go into the FB settings to set up the mobile notifications. If I remember correctly you can also set this up logged into FB off your computer in the mobile settings.


With your email, some emails are not compatible with Google. Its not the Droids themselves its Google that makes it all funky. One email accounts that Ive heard that has a lot of problems setting up is hotmail. I had yahoo set up easy pesy on my Ally but eventually I just sat down one day and transfered all my email stuff from yahoo to Gmail.


Check out the forums on Verizon Wireless website, alot of people on there can help you set it up also androidforums.com and even just googling Android Forums or help can give you some assistance. The handbook things that the phones come with now are pretty much useless some even need to be downloaded off the web. A friend of mine has the HTC Eris and her book was pointless (as is my Allys) and she needed to download it.

It will take some getting used to coming off a BB to Droid, they are soooo different from each other but I think that Droid as an operating system is wayyyy better and way more technologically advanced...but thats just my opinion.

I'm going to butt in here for a minute and ask a droid-ish question. I have the HTC Droid Eris, which I guess is like a very very simple droid phone, but it's good enough for me. My first smart phone, I don't do a whole lot with it, email, a bit of internet, only have a few apps, weather, 3 games, and a sticky note app, it's called Color Note. I live off that. Otherwise, I'm not very good with the technical stuff, with this task killer and whatnot, never heard of such things before! (and I'm not even 30 for another 24 days yet!)

Oh right, my question.. what's a good Calendar app? The calendar widget thingy (?) that was already on the phone is not right. Whenever an All-Day event comes up, whether it's something I've added like a birthday, or something that's already in the google or whatever calendar like Halloween, it is a day early! So, if I have the actual calendar up, with the whole month, Halloween will be on the 31st. If it's the 30th today, and I have my homepage up, with the calendar icon thing there, it will say "Oct 30", and to the right of the date say "Today: Halloween (all day)". Appointments that are not all day appear on the right date, likwe dr appointments, but the all day thing bugs the heck out of me. And I like my events to just be there on muy home page, or i'd never think to actually open the calendar everyday to see if anything's going on. I need it right there. But come December 24, it's going to tell me today is Christmas Day!

ANNOYING!

Sorry for taking over.. I'm done now.

Originally Posted by 3CatsN1Dog

I had yahoo set up easy pesy on my Ally but eventually I just sat down one day and transfered all my email stuff from yahoo to Gmail.

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I decided to just switch facebook and my forums and stuff over to the gmail account they had me set up with the phone. I figured that the email acct that I have now is through our internet/cable service we have here, and when we move it will be disconnected and I'll have to get a new email anyway. For some reason though, Amazon won't believe me. LOL I keep putting in the right email and password, but it says it's wrong. I don't know what it expects. haha Oh well.

make sure you have your ping or push notifications turned on. That was my problem. And also make sure to check when your email account checks for new mail.
I didnt have a smart phone, so my facebook sent messages to my phone on a regular basis, now I cant get them to turn off! I have unchecked it so many times on my facebook page! It works for about a day, and then they start coming back! GRRR!

As for a calendar app, I just use my google calendar for everything. It sends alerts to my phone that way!

Another thing I havent seen mentioned:
Regular gloves will not work with touch screens, just to warn you! But they do make touch screen compatible gloves now! (Gary got me a pair for Christmas )Or you can get some conductive thread and just sew a quick patch into a pair of gloves you already have!

Originally Posted by kara_leigh

OMG that alarm would drive me nuts! I'm terrible at math. ! I use one of the softest alarms I can find on my phone, and I get up fairly well.

Those games sound fun, I'll have to look for them. I already downloaded Angry Birds and I played it forever last night but I'm stuck on one level. *grumble*

So from what I'm reading, what we just bought will be absolete come spring?? That kind of sucks. I thought we were getting good phones, not almost junk. *sigh*

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There's Angry Birds walkthroughs available Just google Angry Birds 5-13 or whatever, and you'll find a youtube walkthrough.

And your phone is not "almost junk". They are always upgrading phones, and changing them, so no matter when you get a phone, it'll probably be replaced within 6 months!

Originally Posted by kara_leigh

This phone is driving me nuts b/c I can't get my email to work on it, and it doesn't notify me if someone responds to one of my posts or someone else responds to a post I did on facebook. My blackberry always did and I got used to that. Is this phone supposed to do that?

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Is your Facebook set up to email you when someone responds or whatever? If it is, then you may just need to edit the phone settings for it to check for email every 15 minutes or whatever, and notify you.

Originally Posted by DarkMavis

Oh right, my question.. what's a good Calendar app? The calendar widget thingy (?) that was already on the phone is not right. Whenever an All-Day event comes up, whether it's something I've added like a birthday, or something that's already in the google or whatever calendar like Halloween, it is a day early!

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You've probably just got a reminder set up for the day before, or the date is wrong in there somehow. It's not the calendar itself

Erica- I have that color notes widget too....Im horrible at remembering to take a grocery list with me to the store and that thing has saved my life many a times. Bf was ready to kill me when he would ask what I need and Id tell him Ill let you know when I find it..LOL He is a list person and Im not...Im a walk thru the aisles till something pops to my attention...lol As for the calender thing, it may be the settings in the calender also that it notifies you the day before. When I set my calender I have to make sure to go thru all the settings or it will notify me the day before instead of my usual hour prior.


Does anyone else have an Ally?? Im only wondering because since I got my new update over Thanksgiving week my touch screen is goofy. Sometimes its hyper responsive and other times it doesnt recognize anything. Supposidly the Ally is getting all these new updates to make the phone more Froyo ready but Im not holding my breath. Another question in regards to Froyo and rooting. If the Ally gets Froyo will it be Flash compatible. Im hearing mixed responses about this. Also if I root my phone (Ive been doing a little reading up on this) what other benefits is there to rooting besides just being able to get rid of all the bloatware, like City ID, FB, Myspace, Twitter etc....My main concern is being able to get Flash Player on my phone and when we bought them we were told numerous times that it would get Flash.......now Im just getting cranky cuz I feel jipped.

Originally Posted by 3CatsN1Dog

My main concern is being able to get Flash Player on my phone and when we bought them we were told numerous times that it would get Flash.......now Im just getting cranky cuz I feel jipped.

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Do you have any Flash support at all? You should at least have something like Flash Lite 3 on there as other phones running 2.1 and with comparable stats have it.

If, when, you get the 2.2 upgrade you could have flash. You'd have to look through all of the custom roms out there to see what exactly each one has, but I'd imagine they all have worked in some sort of flash support - or at least the well known ones would have (CyanogenMod, Raptor, and Velocity- seems to be Ally users favorite)
Just remember that Adobe's Flash (and Adobe products in general) has several bugs itself. Some people never encounter them and others get frequent crashes. If you go the rooting/rom route, back up and frequently make backups after in case anything happens (buggy app crash).
Other benefits are speed, performance, and complete control of your phone. For people on a carrier like AT&T there's even more benefit as the phone then isn't restricted.

ETA: Look into skyfire if you don't have it. Hopefully your phone can handle it.

Okay, one more problem...any ideas??

My phone keeps rebooting itself, over and over again. It's done it probably a dozen times just this afternoon. It did it a few times yesterday also. I thought maybe I was doing something wrong, but then I realized it was doing it when I was just holding it in my hand, not using any programs or pushing any buttons. From what I read on the Motorola and Droid forums, it seems I have a defective phone and they suggest turning it in for a new one. Do you agree or have other ideas?? Thanks!!

I should mention that my husband's phone, that we got at the same time, has never done this.

If I do turn it in for a new one, does that mean I have to re-upload all of the apps that I have uploaded since I got the phone? *sigh*

While its on, sync all of your data to those accounts you made. Yes, you will have to redownload everything. It's just like it would be if you suddenly replaced your computer, your new one wouldn't magically be set up it's own. Making sure everything is on the accounts and backed up will make set up easier, though.

Now, there is a very likely chance that you installed something buggy on your phone that could be doing this. What did you install that your husband didn't? If you're willing to try before returning it you can download a logging app and share what it says - if its an app you can avoid that one in the future and leave feedback in the market to warn others.

If too much hasn't been changed I should be able to figure out your log file.

ETA: CatLog is the one I was thinking of that I see recommended a lot. It's free. I just wasn't sure if I was remembering the name correctly so I had to double check. You can set it up to email the log file.

I'm not sure if Android could go into a kernel panic (seems that it should be able to, it has a modified linux kernel - 2.6.34 for froyo, iirc)... But that's the sort of thing that renders linux unable to boot. If your phone isn't even able to go that far you'd have to download debugging tools and check it out via USB. (not something I've done, obviously, but something I could do if I had to - so I can't help step you through that. Android communities with a lot of modders and app developers would be able to help for that)

The only things I really have are "big" things, like slacker radio, imdb, facebook, kindle, weatherbug, a couple games (angry birds and fishing), epicurious, and a retro clock and retro calendar (that I have on my homepage so I can see the date and time easily). Otherwise that's it.

I have to say I didn't understand anything you said in the last post. lol Sorry.

Originally Posted by kara_leigh

I have to say I didn't understand anything you said in the last post. lol Sorry.

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I kept it simple except for the very last part, which wasn't that technical really. Reread some of it, give yourself some credit and use google to look up anything too complicated. Learning new things is good.

But to simplify it more. Some stuff you can back up if you can get your phone to stay on. I suspect a software (app or OS) issue verses hardware because you've added quite a bit in a short time.
If you could install an app to record what is going on I could look at the record.

Your other option is to reset the phone, install no apps for a few days, and see what happens.

Just don't make your Droid explode.

Man claims his Droid exploded

If you can believe that, I mean.

The easiest thing atleast for your contacts etc, is back up assistant. For your pics, take the SD card out and get them onto a computer right away if you have any that you cant bear to be rid of. Its possible you got a buggy phone from the system updates OR its possible that the phone being new and just activated is on a constant update. Take it into a Verizon store and ask them to do a hard reset, call tech support (Im going to be doing this with BOTH my buggy Allys in hopes that they will just let me upgrade both lines [we have an upgrade now and one in July and Im sick of calling them every couple of days that my phone isnt working]) Anyhoo off my tangent, go those routes first because its possible your phone is being goofy so trouble shoot it with a tech person on the phone or go into the store (a real corporate store, sometimes the random Verizon Authorized sellers only sell refurb phones and they are known for being buggy and messed up). I think a hard reset should take care of your issue.

One question, does it do it all the time, like all day long or is it only certain times of the day? I had to turn my auto sync back up assistant off because it kept restarting my Ally, also some apps will make your phone goofy. Also, did you download a FB app? It should have already been on your phone because its a standard Verizon menu App now for smartphones.

^Are there actually authorized dealers and corporate stores that have people that would know anything? We don't have those around here.. Maybe Tulsa might, though I kind of doubt it. I have yet to walk into a store other than a computer repair shop and not deal with someone who doesn't know anything. (sad, but also amusing at BestBuy when I stump someone so they run off and leave me alone)

That's pretty much why I suggested, if she could, that she try to get a record of what's going wrong.
Speaking of, why don't you install CatLog and see what you can catch?

As far as I could tell, mine didn't have facebook on it. I couldn't find it anywhere. It isn't on my husband's phone, I just checked.

It seems to do it all the time, unless my phone is plugged in to the charger...so it doesn't do it at night. Well, I'm asleep so I guess I really don't notice if it does or not. I just think it's strange that it happens to my phone and not my husband's phone.

I don't understand why it matters when I put the apps on or when. Some people out there have TONS of apps on their phones and don't have this problem. I didn't think I really downloaded very many.

Could someone tell me how to delete an app? Is it possible? I don't have any pictures on my phone yet, other than a couple stupid ones when I was testing my phone out.

We're headed out for a bit now, going to Costco, etc, so we'll be stopping by the store where we got our phones.

Settings>Applications> Manage Applications.

And yes it matters. For better or worse, you can download and put anything you want on your phone. This means that someones half-a**ed app could be upload for you to try out. They could, aside from doing a poor job making it, put all sorts of malicious code in there. (btw, always pay attention to what an apps wants access to when you go to install it. Some shouldn't need to get to certain things like your contacts)

This is why good linux distros are slow to approve and put programs into their main ftps. It's also partially why I can't really blame AT&T for restricting app access (I just wish they wouldn't restrict it as much and had a better process for getting stuff approved).

Poor coding can cause the OS to crash. Most windows users have experienced this with a program or more likely a driver (especially right after a new version of windows comes out). Plus you could have an app that may not have been developed to work on the lasted updates for 2.2, thus it conflicts.
So yes, what you put on there matters. You're not holding a simple cell phone, you have a computer.

We went to talk to someone at a Verizon place yesterday, and he said it was b/c my phone never updated itself. He updated it, and so far it hasn't restarted itself since then. So far, so good.

Thats good.

I try and keep my rule of thumb with apps to the bare minimum. Mainly because a lot of problems Ive read about regarding phones geing bonkers or skitzing out is because people go nuts downloading every possible app that floats their fancy. I only have 7 apps and 2 of which I could delete because I dont particularly need them on my phone, app killer, euchre (boredom cure), Kindle, slacker radio, solitaire (another boredom killer), weather bug and a background app that I use to send bf funny pictures.

I can live without Slacker and the background apps because I have an ipod so I dont really need the radio and the background app I rarely use only when bf needs some cheering up or something to laugh at.