Help 2.1 Problems - Issues - Quirks

[scottmbolt]

I am having weird signal problems as well! The signal bar will do weird "flash" between 0 and 3 bars, up and down up and down it will go. Its so ****ing weird. Where I live, I never got good service in the first place, usually between 1 and 3 bars indoors. But now after the update, its just seems like its trying hard to get the signals, and its flashing like I said before. WEIRD.

 

[Kelmar]

I am having weird signal problems as well! The signal bar will do weird "flash" between 0 and 3 bars, up and down up and down it will go. Its so ****ing weird. Where I live, I never got good service in the first place, usually between 1 and 3 bars indoors. But now after the update, its just seems like its trying hard to get the signals, and its flashing like I said before. WEIRD.

Try THIS. Between that and the problematic radio a lot of my problems have been fixed.

 

[kayropr]

Not sure if anyone has mentioned this but I didn't see any indications on the first page.

I'm having various problems, some significant and hugely problematic, others I don't care to worry about until a bug fix is released.

Significant problems:
1. signal - 1.5 in the chicagoland area I had pretty much 4 or more bars everywhere, indoors and out. with 2.1 It fluctuates every couple of minutes from full bars down to one bar and even no signal. Much more of a problem while opening/updating apps, and surfing the web.

2. Inconsistent EV-DO internet. strangely some websites just don't work. For example, I cannot open Tom's Hardware: Hardware News, Tests and Reviews... AT ALL... it loads 70% and stops.
Also, it only works in certain "hot" spots. At work with 1.5 I used it everywhere with no problems, even inside elevators. Now I sit in the break room, and depending on which seat I am in, either I will have internet, have slow internet, or have no internet. (seating being like normal 4 seat lunch tables)
*** Twice I got some sort of a network connection error where for about 6 hrs each time I was not receiving any text messages, internet connection, app functionality or anything else that a phone like this should provide (only thing that worked was basic outgoing phone calls, not sure about incoming maybe I just didn't receive any)... Only fix was to shut down the phone and turn it back on.

3. Battery life - it was never that great to begin with. Now it's worse, much worse. (I think it's attributed to the problems listed above. I speculate my phone is constantly searching for a steady signal for phone calls as well as EVDO and it's killing the battery)


(I however have not had any problems with apps such as sprint navigation, and maps)



question: How long do you think it will take for a sprint OTA bug fix?? Is it possible to revert back to version 1.5 in the meantime??? I mean this phone is completely useless to me if I can't send texts and use the web functionality when I need it!!!

I've notice the same issue with the signal strength but when I go and look under settings>about phone>network and check your signal strength as long as it is between -1dBM and -90dBm you are good (means you are close to a tower) once you pass -90dBm to -100dBm that means you are getting farther away from the closest tower. My phone has shown no bars with-50dBm. I've been able to make phone calls and received the too. We may just be having a signal strength display issue.

I remember that during my Instinct days the M800 had some issues like that too. It would not display the correct signal strength but never gave me problem.

Your 2nd problem hasn't happened to me. Sorry about that!

I've had battery life issues since the 2.1 update even thou I've read that some people are having better battery life now... I'm jealous of them. ;-) I've made changes to my settings to save more battery life with no luck. Last night I read that apparently the HTC battery widget uses a lot of power so this morning I took it off my screen to test. I used that widget during my 1.5 days and never had battery problems. Today after 2.5 hours of uptime and 25 mins of awake time my phone still has 90% of battery left. We will see how far can I go today. Last Friday I had to charge my phone after 8 hrs of uptime and 3 hrs of awake time.


-------------UPDATE 11:10 AM CST---------------
My phone has been on and off the charger for 5 hrs and 15 min, my awake time is 1 hr and 20 mins and my battery is at 70%. The HTC battery widget appear to be screwed up like others have mentioned in other forums. Maybe HTC re-wrote the widget code for 2.1 and the developer screwed something up.

 

[sgtoaf]

At 70-80% and off the charger for 8 hours? Have you even used the phone at all? This just doesn't seem realistic, unless you lightly/light-moderately use your phone.

A Couple brief phone calls and about 10 texts, 10 minutes of wifi and surfing probably. I am not a heavy user at all except on work days. I was comparing it to before removing battery and removing battery widget. Last night I was down to 7 Bars left after at 9pm. The other three nights after upgrading to 2.1, I would be down to three bars when I would put it in the charger at night. I was on vacation last week so I was home most of the time. As for my signal, I have an airwave at home so I do not get much of a signal in my house. Outside I get around -93 to -100 dmb. Will see what today brings!

 

[Drewray]

Problems -

- Bluetooth headsets and other bluetooth capable devices not recognizing, pairing or streaming.

- Bookmark sort setting is not being saved

- Same Audio problem as 1.5 had.

- Gmail notifier won't show label even when label is selected.

- Random reboots

- The camera sometimes causes the Auto Backlight feature to be disabled and brightness gets turned up all the way and doesn't revert back to Auto Backlight.

- Vibration while typing. The vibration decreases as you type and sometimes it doesn't vibrate at all.

Issues -

- Unable to add unlisted cities in HTC Weather app 2.1.

- Landscape keyboard reported as consistently laggier than before

- Volume buttons no longer snooze alarms. Must wake up, physically look for small Snooze button on screen and press it (or apparently, the trackball) to snooze an alarm.
Issue not fixed by having proper settings for Volume keys.

- On-screen camera controls are now ALWAYS oriented for phone to be in landscape orientation.


Quirks -

- Small version of HTC Digital Clock widget has date off-center when in 24-hour format (e.g., they just hid the "AM" or "PM" but left the date left-justified...looks odd).

- No setting for you to turn off a short vibrate chirp when it connects any call.

- Taking a photo can no longer be done "one-handed" -- reason is that trackball scrolling to zoom camera no longer works - *Updated* Slide finger anywhere on screen to zoom.


If you'd like to report something new to the list please post it. If you found a fix for any of the above issues please post it.

HTC Sense seems to continuosly, randomly change the photo for my contacts from the Phone / contact assigned to the facebook assigned photo... Very annoying!

 

[antpasq]

New Feature? WOW!

I had this problem when I first got the phone in December 2009. At that time I was able to defeat this outgoing call vibration with help from Sprint customer service. I don't remember how though. I spoke to both Sprint and HTC customer service after this update and they both blamed each other for this feature being undefeatable now. HTC said they did so due to Sprint's request and Sprint said they had no control over HTC with some features. They said it is a helpful feature as it tells you when you make a call. Really?!?! I thought dialing a number was a good enough indication that I made a call. The vibration is annoying. As another post indicates you can change this feature if you root the phone. I wish I was smart enough to figure out rooting. If someone can point me to the Idiot's Guide to Rooting?

 

[Drewray]

My phone has a problem with performing it's most basic function...being a phone.

1. When I call my mom using my contacts I always have to hang up and call her back because it sounds like Darth Vader has taken over my phone (and I'm the only person she has that problem with).

2. When I select "Call" the phone takes me immediately back to the home screen and a minute later it might finally call that person. Sometimes if it takes too long I will go back and try to call that person again and it will connect...however in the middle of my call it will put the person on hold and then call them again.

3. If I'm on the internet when my phone rings the lights will start flashing and it will not show me who is calling.

4. My peeling "End" button will not end the phone call if I press it once...I have to press it multiple times for the call to actually end (after all it is pretty unsafe to look down to unlock the screen and then select "End Call" if I'm driving down the interstate).

5. I'm really tired of the phone ringing 1x on my end before going to voicemail - because the person calling me has already sat through several rings.

While I hate having everyone's facebook contact info show up in my call log I know that lots of other phones have that feature so I will suck it up and deal with it.

I thought it was me... Wow... I am experiencing all of the same issues you reported... It's very frustrating!!!

 

[330D]

I had this problem when I first got the phone in December 2009. At that time I was able to defeat this outgoing call vibration with help from Sprint customer service. I don't remember how though. I spoke to both Sprint and HTC customer service after this update and they both blamed each other for this feature being undefeatable now. HTC said they did so due to Sprint's request and Sprint said they had no control over HTC with some features. They said it is a helpful feature as it tells you when you make a call. Really?!?! I thought dialing a number was a good enough indication that I made a call. The vibration is annoying. As another post indicates you can change this feature if you root the phone. I wish I was smart enough to figure out rooting. If someone can point me to the Idiot's Guide to Rooting?

You can't root the update, YET. The devs will work to find a way, but until it happens, you are stuck... sorry.

look here:
http://androidforums.com/all-things-root-sprint-hero/81304-warning-official-2-1-a.html

 

[Drewray]

I'm finding a minor annoyance with contacts that also have a Facebook link.

Regardless of how many times I manually set a contact's photo to something different, it will always change back to their Facebook photo after a certain amount of time.

Annoying, as there are some friends of mine with Facebook photos I don't care to see on a frequent basis.

I have changed this about 50 times since the update to 2.1... I agree, it VERY annoying. The HTC sense UI is supposed to be their flagship functionality. You would think they would have focused on getting it implemented right!

 

[TheButcher]

I called Sprint yesterday about my problems with wifi not working and I can not sync contacts to my facebook account (whenever I do, I get an error and my data connection fails). I got bumped up to level 2 tech support and the best solution they could come up with was to send me a new phone that would have 1.5 on it.

 

[Alan Ross]

Anyone else have this problem? My phone reboots every time I try to open any navigation or map app. All other aspects of my upgrade to 2.1 work just fine . My phone is faster and better in most ways over 1.5 except for this.

I found the problem. When I updated Google Maps it screwed everything up. So I uninstalled the update and everything worked fine. I'll wait until the update is fixed.

As for 2.1 I am thrilled with it. Everything works well with the exception of the minor annoyances listed elsewhere in this thread. I can wait for fixes.

 

[astrobill]

As for 2.1 I am thrilled with it. Everything works well with the exception of the minor annoyances listed elsewhere in this thread. I can wait for fixes.

Unless people keep threads like this and report things to HTC and Sprint, there won't *BE* any fixes...they're ready to focus on Evo and other things. Gotta' keep the pressure on....otherwise, they would probably consider themselves DONE with Hero updates and fixes...

 

[chennyboy2002]

I've notice the same issue with the signal strength but when I go and look under settings>about phone>network and check your signal strength as long as it is between -1dBM and -90dBm you are good (means you are close to a tower) once you pass -90dBm to -100dBm that means you are getting farther away from the closest tower. My phone has shown no bars with-50dBm. I've been able to make phone calls and received the too. We may just be having a signal strength display issue.

I remember that during my Instinct days the M800 had some issues like that too. It would not display the correct signal strength but never gave me problem.

Your 2nd problem hasn't happened to me. Sorry about that!

I've had battery life issues since the 2.1 update even thou I've read that some people are having better battery life now... I'm jealous of them. ;-) I've made changes to my settings to save more battery life with no luck. Last night I read that apparently the HTC battery widget uses a lot of power so this morning I took it off my screen to test. I used that widget during my 1.5 days and never had battery problems. Today after 2.5 hours of uptime and 25 mins of awake time my phone still has 90% of battery left. We will see how far can I go today. Last Friday I had to charge my phone after 8 hrs of uptime and 3 hrs of awake time.


-------------UPDATE 11:10 AM CST---------------
My phone has been on and off the charger for 5 hrs and 15 min, my awake time is 1 hr and 20 mins and my battery is at 70%. The HTC battery widget appear to be screwed up like others have mentioned in other forums. Maybe HTC re-wrote the widget code for 2.1 and the developer screwed something up.

I was not using Battery Widget and my battery life is still much worse than it was before. I used to be able to get a day's usage out of my hero with 10-20% to spare from like 7am-12pm. Now, Get low battery warnings at around 4-5pm. Has anyone else experienced this?

 

[Alan Ross]

Unless people keep threads like this and report things to HTC and Sprint, there won't *BE* any fixes...they're ready to focus on Evo and other things. Gotta' keep the pressure on....otherwise, they would probably consider themselves DONE with Hero updates and fixes...

Totally agree. I just think most of the abuse heaped on Sprint over the past few months was unjustified.

 

[Kelmar]

I was not using Battery Widget and my battery life is still much worse than it was before. I used to be able to get a day's usage out of my hero with 10-20% to spare from like 7am-12pm. Now, Get low battery warnings at around 4-5pm. Has anyone else experienced this?

Yes, change the default Network connections using [How-To] Better battery life, reduce Time Without Signal. - xda-developers

Needs to be done each time the phone reboots

 

[kellysa111]

I read on the Sprint forum that using the original USB cord that came with the phone has helped some people with this problem. It's worth a shot.

I am using the original USB cord for my phone. what I meant to say is that I connect my zune charger to the same port as my phone.

 

[bluemark]

Sorry that the suggestion didn't apply. Here's a link to the thread with some other suggestions on how to solve your problem.

Hero by HTC:Loss of USB connectivity from HTC Hero...

 

[kshaff03]

I echo the issues with text messaging. I've noticed some other quirks, but this by far appears to be the most annoying.

When using the text messaging application in landscape mode, the keyboard is nearly unusable. It is not the keyboard, it is the application. I have tried a 3rd party keyboard with the same results. I've used the HTC keyboard on other applications in landscape with acceptable results. This is slow even with no message history.

In my opinion, keyboard is not usable in landscape mode for messaging. This is a very major problem. I must find a workaround for this soon.

I think we've been ripping sprint for taking so long to get this out. Now I'm thankful that Sprint held the release up until now. I couldn't imagine if this actually would have come out a couple of months ago.

 

[matty032]

I have no issues with the keyboard lagging in landscape, or portrait in any app. Keyboard is the fastest I ever had on a phone, on screen, or physical.

 

[Tinwoodsman]

My worst problem has become the inability to gets most incoming calls. I answer my phone within 3 rings and about 60 to 70% of my calls go to voicemail. While I like the whole Android thing, it is still afterall a phone.

I never bitched about the release timeframe of 2.1 because I have worked with communications software developement for over 25 years. It seems to me that HTC or Sprint or both did not do a very good job of regression testing prior to release. New features always have a way of impacting stable software. Hopefully they will get a bug fix release going soon.

 

[MafiaCrusader]

I am also having a problem with the Bluetooth after the 2.1 update. On 1.5 I could play music through my car audio system through bluetooth with no problems, could make calls and everything, but after this update the music playing through bluetooth is roughly 1.5 to 2 times faster than it should be and it will randomly slow down then speed up again. Nothing I do fixes the problem either. The phone still connects and I have no problems with making and receiving calls its just the audio that is messed up badly. It kinda makes me want to go back to 1.5 just so I can play music again. Otherwise I'm loving the 2.1 update.

 

[dkproductions]

I have had a few of the same issues as others.

1.) facebook contacts and no way to disable them from the phonebook search or contact list. It's not a horrible thing but because of the next issue it is,
2.) 2.1 has given me dialing issues. i've had more problems with pocket dialing (even with the phone locked). How is that that in my pocket it will activate itself, but I have to touch the screen two three times to get it to respond.
3.) seems as though the touch is off (going to recalibrate), but i had several instances with the trackball too. I attempted to call the last number dialed but it kept calling someone else. At one point someone on facebook...
4.) the emergency dialer needs a feature to hold the button for 2secs or more before activating the dial pad. somehow (again while in my pocket), the screen is activated and the emergency dialer opens.
5.) there is definitely a lag between the time the phone rings and we see who it is.

 

[howiesf]

Add me to the list. Im rally ready to file a suit to get HTC and Sprint to listen to to us consumers. ZThis phone is reming me on the Treo 650 - first bath.

I thought it was me... Wow... I am experiencing all of the same issues you reported... It's very frustrating!!!

 

[AzPhotoMan]

I actually emailed both of them earlier today & haven't gotten a response yet from either. Shocking, I know! Somewhere in this discussion I put a copy of the email I sent. I'll update if/when I hear something.

Thanks Whiskeypawz. Maybe it is just becoming a lost cause. Sprint and HTC probably do not care anymore since the EVO will be out soon. They will probably just tell us to go buy one of those.

 

[dksnet]

Until 2.1 bugs are fixed, I wish I could reinstall 1.5......... Normally I'm all for upgrades but this one SUX...........
Is there a way to reverse the rom back to 1.5? Imma noob to all this......