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Help 2.1 Problems - Issues - Quirks

Adding to the numerous other problems I'm having with my Hero, lately my phone has become non-responsive. Yesterday I received a phone call but couldn't answer it because the entire screen was black (it was lit, just all black) so I had to listen to the phone ring and ring and ring while I frantically hit buttons hoping it would do something. It didn't. A similar thing happened today but this time I was stuck at the lock screen while the phone rang but couldn't get it to unlock (and since when do you have to do the slide lock to answer the phone?). After a few rings to got a force close error for HTC Sense. Real classy.

I'm still having the problem of simultaneous outgoing phone calls to the same person. A few days ago I called my girlfriend and we had been on the phone for about 5-10 minutes when she received a call coming in on her call waiting. It was my phone calling her. So we both just switched over to the other lines and continued our conversation while a second call was "on hold" between our phones.

I've been back and forth with Sprint since March on this phone and keep getting the runaround. I finally asked for the legal department last week and was told I'd be referred to an account executive. That was 6 days ago and I've heard nothing back. My next call will probably be to the consumer affairs division of the state attorney general. I've been with Sprint for 10+ years and apparently once they get you to renew your contract, they care nothing about fulfilling their obligations to you. This is the worst customer service I have ever received from Sprint.
 
SoloWinter said:
I had to listen to the phone ring and ring and ring while I frantically hit buttons hoping it would do something. It didn't.
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That happened to me with an alarm in the morning. The alarm just rang and rang and the screen was frozen so I could not get it to stop until I turned the phone off.
 
I am starting to think Sprint put out this update to push us out of the Hero to buy the Evo as quickly as possible. Dailer lag is ridiculous.
 
Almost all my problems can be related to the Hero just being too slow.

1) Sometimes I call the wrong person because *just* before I click on the name in the call history it shifts down and I end up clicking on the wrong name.

2) Sometimes it takes 20-30 seconds to dial out. Seriously. I think there is NO way it can be still waiting to dial and click dial again, sure enough I end up on two calls.

3) Keyboard is very laggy

4) No protection from pressing touch screen when phone is next to face. I have actually conferenced in two people accidentally to a current call.

5) My Text messaging seems to stop working intermittently. I'll notice I haven't gotten a text for a few days, ask my friends if they are texting me and they say yes. Sure enough I reset the phone and I can receive texts again, but the ones I missed never come in.

6) The text messaging app on 2.1 seems to take forever and ever and ever to bring up a contact. Worked fine before upgrade.

7) Sometimes my call screen that lists current phone calls switches to a "Current Call" screen with much less information where I just have to flash back and forth using the call button.

Most of these things were already happening, but got even worse on the 2.1 upgrade. I have a call scheduled with Sprint support tonight. We'll see.
 
8) Can't limit synced google contacts to only pull from a certain group. Instead it uses this My Contacts special group.
 
I just got an HTC Hero on the 18th with the old software 1.5 on it.....Do you reccommend the update, what is your honest assesment please?????
 
The few new features of the 2.1 update are definitely *not* worth the issues involved. I thought maybe they were exaggerated or it wouldn't apply to me, but... instead I ended up finding *more* problems that weren't even mentioned here. Please, do not upgrade if you like your Hero and want to continue enjoying it.

I realize some people have probably upgraded and didn't really notice any problems. And maybe they even *prefer* 2.1. But honestly, with all the issues there are, do you want to take that chance?

If you *really* want to try it out, the best thing you can do is root your phone, find the closest unofficial version of 2.1 to the real thing, and try that out. If you don't like it, you can always go back. Or find any of the other better versions out there.

Honestly, I wish I would've done that myself, but I figured since I didn't see many problems that would've related to me, that I'd be alright. Now I'm wanting to throw my phone out the window, get a replacement, and hope it comes with 1.5 on it so I can never repeat this horrible mistake again.

Oh, I'd like to add a new problem, once again relating to texting, that I've noticed. Sometimes, when I go to reply to somebody (in an existing thread with that person), and I try to send a message, I get an error about having to enter a phone number to send it to. If I back out, let it save as a draft, and then go to drafts to send it, it works fine. Not something that happens frequently, but enough to really annoy me.
 
Gamesoul Master said:
If you *really* want to try it out, the best thing you can do is root your phone, find the closest unofficial version of 2.1 to the real thing, and try that out. If you don't like it, you can always go back. Or find any of the other better versions out there.

Honestly, I wish I would've done that myself, but I figured since I didn't see many problems that would've related to me, that I'd be alright. Now I'm wanting to throw my phone out the window, get a replacement, and hope it comes with 1.5 on it so I can never repeat this horrible mistake again.

...
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Why don't you take your own advice, root your Hero, and install a custom ROM? ZenEXP is very fast and virtully lag free.
 
JB in AZ said:
Why don't you take your own advice, root your Hero, and install a custom ROM? ZenEXP is very fast and virtully lag free.
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Way ahead of you... lol. After posting that, I decided to look and see if 2.1 had been broken yet (as far as I knew, it hadn't been, mainly because I underestimated the scene on how fast they could do it). And when I saw it *is* cracked, I reverted to the original .5 update, rooted my phone, and installed Fresh 2.1.2. It's... a little bit better than 2.1 OFW, but still a bit laggier than 1.5 on messaging, and has a few quirks of its own that bug me a bit. So I'm going to try out ZenEXP, and if I don't like that, I'm going to find and use a good 1.5 CFW.

And yeah, 1.5 had issues. But most of those 1.5 threads were created before 2.1 came out, and I'd definitely take the few issues I had with 1.5 over the many issues I had with 2.1.

All in all, the best solution no matter what, seems to be to root your phone, back it up, and then just try different firmwares until you find the one that suits you best. And yeah, I know that's been said a million times around here, but you can't fully appreciate just how true that is until you do it. Rooting really *is* as easy as they say it is (even manually), and from all angles, it puts you in a much better position to set up your phone exactly as you want it to be.
 
Gamesoul Master said:
Way ahead of you... lol. After posting that, I decided to look and see if 2.1 had been broken yet (as far as I knew, it hadn't been, mainly because I underestimated the scene on how fast they could do it). And when I saw it *is* cracked, I reverted to the original .5 update, rooted my phone, and installed Fresh 2.1.2. It's... a little bit better than 2.1 OFW, but still a bit laggier than 1.5 on messaging, and has a few quirks of its own that bug me a bit. So I'm going to try out ZenEXP, and if I don't like that, I'm going to find and use a good 1.5 CFW.

And yeah, 1.5 had issues. But most of those 1.5 threads were created before 2.1 came out, and I'd definitely take the few issues I had with 1.5 over the many issues I had with 2.1.

All in all, the best solution no matter what, seems to be to root your phone, back it up, and then just try different firmwares until you find the one that suits you best. And yeah, I know that's been said a million times around here, but you can't fully appreciate just how true that is until you do it. Rooting really *is* as easy as they say it is (even manually), and from all angles, it puts you in a much better position to set up your phone exactly as you want it to be.
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I felt the same way. Had my Hero since release day in Oct, and didn't ROOT till the day Sprint released 2.1. LOL Now, I am so glad, because it really was easy, and it really gives me options. THAT is the key. Just be sure to make a nandroid backup before flashing any new roms.

Zen rom is very smooth and fast
 
I made a nandroid backup as soon as I rooted. I figured I'd just keep that one until I found a CFW I really liked. And thanks to your advice, I decided to just try ZenEXP right away instead of trying other versions of Fresh or 1.5 CFW's.

And boy am I happy I did. I must say, *this* is what I wanted out of my Hero when I got it. *This* is the kind of experience I had hoped for when I first heard about 2.1. I was slightly concerned about there being some problem with Gmail not syncing (and MyBackup wouldn't restore my contacts either for the same reason), but I simply manually synced it and it worked perfectly fine. So I'm extremely happy right now. It looks pretty cool, everything is nice and fast, and it's just... overall the best experience I've had on the Hero so far.
 
Ok I know that these questions probably all ready have been addressed, but there are alot of threads, and I don't have time to go thru them. so here goes:

1st off, I can't seem to use the keyboards from the market. I bought the Smart keyboard pro on my phone when it had the 1.5 on it, but now since the update, I can't use that keyboard.

My phone lags soooooo much right now since the update. :mad:

Also when I'm making a phone call, it takes up to a min for the phone to actually start calling the person. Even when someone is calling me, my phone won't ring on my end till the second or third ring.

When I'm texting someone, the words won't show up half of the time in the display screen....

HELP:confused::confused::confused:
 
JB in AZ said:
I was the felt the same way. Had my Hero since release day in Oct, and didn't ROOT till the day Sprint released 2.1. LOL Now, I am so glad, because it really was easy, and it really gives me options. THAT is the key. Just be sure to make a nandroid backup before flashing any new roms.
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While I have no use for the NFL and NASCAR apps, the Sprint Navigation app blows Google Navigation away and I've become a big fan of the Sprint TV app since I've been able to watch World Cup on it when not in front of my TV.

If I root, will I lose these apps? What about HTC Sense?
 
SoloWinter said:
While I have no use for the NFL and NASCAR apps, the Sprint Navigation app blows Google Navigation away and I've become a big fan of the Sprint TV app since I've been able to watch World Cup on it when not in front of my TV.

If I root, will I lose these apps? What about HTC Sense?
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Nope, you won't loose them, altho you may have to add them, depending which rom you choose. I added sprint nav back in to my Zen rom, without issue. haven't tried Sprint TV.
 
A Sprint rep has confirmed in the official Sprint forums that Android 2.2 will *not* be made available for the HTC Hero. I guess Hero owners have reached the end of the line for upgrade support. This really angers me since I just purchased my phone at the end of February and entered into a new 2-year contract for a phone Sprint failed to tell me wouldn't be upgraded to future versions of Android (2.1 was avail in Jan even though Sprint delayed the release, so 2.1 would have been the current version of Android when I purchased the phone).
 
SoloWinter said:
While I have no use for the NFL and NASCAR apps, the Sprint Navigation app blows Google Navigation away and I've become a big fan of the Sprint TV app since I've been able to watch World Cup on it when not in front of my TV.

If I root, will I lose these apps? What about HTC Sense?
Click to expand...

Technically, you won't lose *anything* when you root. Rooting just gives you, basically, administrative privileges on your phone, which allows you to do things and use some apps that you normally wouldn't be able to do/use.

However, flashing CFW is a different story. Doing *that*, you will usually lose those apps (depending on the CFW you pick). But as JB said, you can usually just add them back in as you please. It's the beauty of rooting.

@MrsKim: Those are merely some inherent problems to 2.1. There's really only three things you can do. You can root your phone and install a better firmware (best option), wait for Sprint to release an update that fixes these issues (which seems unlikely at this point, the way things are going), or get a better phone. Your first issue about the keyboard I have little idea about, except that maybe for some reason, it's simply not compatible with 2.1. That's something that somebody who's actually used it would have to address.
 
New thing I've recently noticed. When I'm on a call & another one comes in, the phone will beep to notify me but the screen stays black so I can't see who's calling me. Much less answer the call. Just a little thing but annoying...like everything else wrong with this p.o.s!
 
I keep getting "Sorry! the application HTC Sense (process com.htc.launcher) has stopped unexpectedly. please try again." and can NOT get my phone to load, done 5-7 hard re-starts on my phone, Looks like sprint is going to be replacing it...
 
Honestly, I haven't touched the built-in browser since the first few days I got my Hero, back in November. I use Dolphin Browser because it's faster, nicer, and can actually be closed when you're done. Just stay away from the HD one, as it seems to take much longer to load pages and do anything... lol.
 
SoloWinter said:
the Sprint Navigation app blows Google Navigation away
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In what sense? It's much slower (loading...), voice input is more cumbersome; no picture of final destination; haven't used enough because of aforementioned but I don't believe any POIs either. Sprint Nav appears to be only a subset of Google Nav, please let me know what I'm missing!

SoloWinter said:
A Sprint rep has confirmed in the official Sprint forums that Android 2.2 will *not* be made available for the HTC Hero. I guess Hero owners have reached the end of the line for upgrade support. This really angers me since I just purchased my phone at the end of February and entered into a new 2-year contract for a phone Sprint failed to tell me wouldn't be upgraded to future versions of Android (2.1 was avail in Jan even though Sprint delayed the release, so 2.1 would have been the current version of Android when I purchased the phone).
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It is kinda BS but I'm not surprised as long as it took 'em to work 2.1 out. Scary though when a phone just about a 10 months old is no longer supported. Correct me if I'm wrong folks, but the antiquated iPhone 3G got a 4.0 facelift did it not?
 
I dont really want to go back and read 9 pages of thread but at any point has HTC manned up and said they would address these issues or said if there is a remedy? Im about a month into this "software upgrade" if you can even call it that. And I am ready to throw my phone into a wall. The random reboots at least a minimum of 10 times a day the lagging, and I can go on and on. From what HTC told me a good "handful" of people are having problems. It seems like sprint doesnt care and htc isnt in a hurry to keep people loyal to their products.
 
I'm pretty sure these issues would be on Sprint to fix, not HTC. And no, as far as I've seen, they haven't really owned up to it, pretty much sticking to that "only a handful of people" philosophy on the topic.

If you're pissed about how 2.1 is running on your phone (as I was), root your phone and install CFW. ZenEXP is a great choice, and there are other options out there... many of them much better than 2.1 OFW. Hell, you could even install a custom 1.5 firmware if you were relatively happy with 1.5. You'd get all the benefits of 1.5, with some extra features and perks. The key is in rooting your phone, which is relatively simple.
 
Apparently some EVO users have been experiencing problems with a recent upgrade. But check this out:

While the vast majority of consumers successfully downloaded and installed the most recent HTC EVO 4G software update, we have received a handful of reports from customers having some issues with the update. In light of this, HTC and Sprint have decided to temporarily halt distribution of this software release until we can investigate further. We expect to be able to resume software updates shortly.
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There are probably hundreds of HTC Hero and Moment users with problems yet a handful of EVO users prompts Sprint to take action. Granted, I have yet to hear of a bricked Hero or Moment, but the problems we're experiencing are very disruptive are probably affecting an exponentially larger group of customers than this handful of EVO users.
 
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