MikeRivers
Newbie
I was hoping to find a forum dedicated to this phone, but so far no luck.
This is my first post here, so a little about me and why I'm here. I've been using dumb phones on the AT&T GoPhone prepaid plan for a dozen or so year. It suits me well - I rarely make or receive phone calls so it's been the cheapest way to go.
I've owned a Samsung Tab 10.1 Android tablet for a couple of years. I didn't buy it, I won it in a drawing. It's been pretty useful, though, as both an alternate to a laptop computer for short trips and to fill up with tools that help me on the job sometimes. I got the notion that I couldl carry those useful tools in my pocket rather than in my bag if I had a smart phone. I picked up an Avail 2 when they were cheap, played with it for a couple of weeks, and returned it. It did most of what I wanted, but it was pretty sluggish responding to my touch, and the screen was a bit too hard to read for this old man with 12.5 diopter glasses. When AT&T started selling a refurbished Radiant for $35, I thought I'd give it another try, and here I am. I've only had it for a few days but I studied the manual before I bought the phone. It works OK, but I'm discovering more annoyances.
AT&T support has been wretched (for every phone I've had, nothing new here) - they know less than I do. So I'm hoping that some folks on this forum have been annoyed at the same things that I have and have solutions, or have found the undocumented buttons that solve my problems. I'm not eager to jump into rooting unless that's clearly the answer to all of my prayers, but here's what I'm looking for right now.
1. I'd love to get rid of that four note plus bang announcement that I've turned the phone on. When I'm just carrying it, I usually leave it off until I want to make a call or when I'm expecting a call. I know . . . I'm not normal. But that sound is really annoying, and sometimes it's embarassing when I'm around people and turn the phone on.
2. The Avail 2 had a setting that automatically turned off network data when connected to WiFi. I can't seem to find that on the Radiant. Since are both ZTE phones, I expected a certain consistency in operation. I normally keep data turned off anyway, but it was convenient to not have to remember to switch it manually.
3. On a similar note, my tablet has a setting that allows apps to turn on the GPS when they need it, and turn it off when they're closed. That's a great battery saver. I can't remember if the Avail 2 had that feature, but I don't see it in the Radiant.
4. When I first activated the phone, it found my Google account and "recovered" the apps loaded on to my tablet and installed them on the phone. This was both good and bad. The good part is that I was going to install most of those apps on the phone anyway. The bad part was that (a) - I wasn't expecting it, and (b) when I realized what it was doing, while it was going on, I kept seeing messages about not being able to install this and that app, of course going past too fast to take notes. I suspect that the ones that it didn't install may have been tablet-only versions, but it would have been nice to know what it was going to do, asking me if I wanted to do it, and telling me the results. Hopefully this was a once-in-a-phone occurrence.
Possibly related to this was that when I looked at the list of WiFi connections, I found all of the ones that I used on my tablet on its last trip out. On the tablet, I can tap on a connection and remove it from the list (a hotel that I'm not planning to return to soon, for example), but I couldn't find that function on the Radiant. That list can grow mighty long after a few trips. I usually do housekeeping on the tablet and would like to be able to do so on the phone, too.
5. There are a number of ways to change from normal ringing to vibrate-only, to (I guess - not sure exactlly what "silent" means) neither ring nor vibrate. I did something in my fumbling around that opened a pop-down menu in the "notifications" area that let me select one of those three options. Of course I didn't know what I did to make that menu appear, but looking through the manual I saw that holding the Power button did that. It did, once or twice, but most of the time, it did one of its other two functions, locking the screen or bringing up the Restart/Airplane/Power Off menu (which also has the sound/vibrate/silent icons). Os there a trick to pushing that button?
I realize that Android is just a framework and that every manufacturer makes up his own variations but I don't think I'm dreaming of anything unsual here. Some of these things may already be built in and I just haven't figured that out yet, so please be gentle with me. But the documentation sucks (the full manual is little more than a 75 page version of the 6 page quick start guide). I feel like I'm playing a video game here, something that I have to stumble on solutions and hope I remember what I did.
Any help here? Even a clear "You can't do that on this phone" would be a step in the right direction.
This is my first post here, so a little about me and why I'm here. I've been using dumb phones on the AT&T GoPhone prepaid plan for a dozen or so year. It suits me well - I rarely make or receive phone calls so it's been the cheapest way to go.
I've owned a Samsung Tab 10.1 Android tablet for a couple of years. I didn't buy it, I won it in a drawing. It's been pretty useful, though, as both an alternate to a laptop computer for short trips and to fill up with tools that help me on the job sometimes. I got the notion that I couldl carry those useful tools in my pocket rather than in my bag if I had a smart phone. I picked up an Avail 2 when they were cheap, played with it for a couple of weeks, and returned it. It did most of what I wanted, but it was pretty sluggish responding to my touch, and the screen was a bit too hard to read for this old man with 12.5 diopter glasses. When AT&T started selling a refurbished Radiant for $35, I thought I'd give it another try, and here I am. I've only had it for a few days but I studied the manual before I bought the phone. It works OK, but I'm discovering more annoyances.
AT&T support has been wretched (for every phone I've had, nothing new here) - they know less than I do. So I'm hoping that some folks on this forum have been annoyed at the same things that I have and have solutions, or have found the undocumented buttons that solve my problems. I'm not eager to jump into rooting unless that's clearly the answer to all of my prayers, but here's what I'm looking for right now.
1. I'd love to get rid of that four note plus bang announcement that I've turned the phone on. When I'm just carrying it, I usually leave it off until I want to make a call or when I'm expecting a call. I know . . . I'm not normal. But that sound is really annoying, and sometimes it's embarassing when I'm around people and turn the phone on.
2. The Avail 2 had a setting that automatically turned off network data when connected to WiFi. I can't seem to find that on the Radiant. Since are both ZTE phones, I expected a certain consistency in operation. I normally keep data turned off anyway, but it was convenient to not have to remember to switch it manually.
3. On a similar note, my tablet has a setting that allows apps to turn on the GPS when they need it, and turn it off when they're closed. That's a great battery saver. I can't remember if the Avail 2 had that feature, but I don't see it in the Radiant.
4. When I first activated the phone, it found my Google account and "recovered" the apps loaded on to my tablet and installed them on the phone. This was both good and bad. The good part is that I was going to install most of those apps on the phone anyway. The bad part was that (a) - I wasn't expecting it, and (b) when I realized what it was doing, while it was going on, I kept seeing messages about not being able to install this and that app, of course going past too fast to take notes. I suspect that the ones that it didn't install may have been tablet-only versions, but it would have been nice to know what it was going to do, asking me if I wanted to do it, and telling me the results. Hopefully this was a once-in-a-phone occurrence.
Possibly related to this was that when I looked at the list of WiFi connections, I found all of the ones that I used on my tablet on its last trip out. On the tablet, I can tap on a connection and remove it from the list (a hotel that I'm not planning to return to soon, for example), but I couldn't find that function on the Radiant. That list can grow mighty long after a few trips. I usually do housekeeping on the tablet and would like to be able to do so on the phone, too.
5. There are a number of ways to change from normal ringing to vibrate-only, to (I guess - not sure exactlly what "silent" means) neither ring nor vibrate. I did something in my fumbling around that opened a pop-down menu in the "notifications" area that let me select one of those three options. Of course I didn't know what I did to make that menu appear, but looking through the manual I saw that holding the Power button did that. It did, once or twice, but most of the time, it did one of its other two functions, locking the screen or bringing up the Restart/Airplane/Power Off menu (which also has the sound/vibrate/silent icons). Os there a trick to pushing that button?
I realize that Android is just a framework and that every manufacturer makes up his own variations but I don't think I'm dreaming of anything unsual here. Some of these things may already be built in and I just haven't figured that out yet, so please be gentle with me. But the documentation sucks (the full manual is little more than a 75 page version of the 6 page quick start guide). I feel like I'm playing a video game here, something that I have to stumble on solutions and hope I remember what I did.
Any help here? Even a clear "You can't do that on this phone" would be a step in the right direction.
