Are the Atrix "issues" common and/or fixable?

[Norcalz71]

First android phone for me, hoping to pick up my Atrix tomorrow, I'm sure it will be worlds apart from my curve BB 8310 Curve.


Just wondering, for all the gripes I have heard regarding the phone so far, are these things that, in some way or another, plague most phones at release? Random bugs here and there, people finding nit-picky stuff to dislike, etc etc? Things we can expect Moto to quickly catch and fix and/or offer replacements in the event of a major issue that a few people seem to have experienced?

Or is this phone, for all the hype, truly a bigger overall "letdown" than other flagship type phones in recent memory?

 

[redrider67]

I came from an IPhone 3GS and the Atrix is 10 times better, no issues for me at all.

I know the H+ backhaul isn't turned on yet and knew that going in, still getting about the same speeds with the Atrix as I did with my Iphone.

People will gripe anytime a new phone comes out, for me and what I use the Atirx for it does everything I need it to do. Best part for me where I dropped at least 5 calls per day with my Iphone, haven't dropped a call since Monday since I activated the Atrix.

 

[jroc]

Since it just came out, I think its gonna be like most phones when they launch. There will be bad phones and issues here n there.

Most first batch of phones have issues. Recently we have seen this with the iPhone 4, Droid X, EVO, Droid 2, etc, etc.

There may be a maintenance update if its enough software problems for more than a few ppl.

As long as there are no what some may consider showstopper issues (Galaxy S line GPS issues is an example) it should be fine.

 

[Norcalz71]

That's about what I figured, it's just difficult to tell when the majority of threads are people complaining about "issues" as opposed to an equal number discussing the "pros".

The only things people are talking about that I would be directly concerned about are:

The camera, I am hoping thats a software thing that can be tweaked because so far the pictures don't look that great especially for a flagship phone and i was looking forward to that.

The screen, people are talking about it not being up to par with the iphone and/or captivate...I'll have to wait and see tomorrow if I really think its not crisp enough for me.

Any major failure issues.

The data speeds I know will improve (and im currently on edge, so anything is an improvement). Stuff will get hacked, updated, and improved, so I see most issues being a moot point after a short while.

 

[DT]

The display is terrific, and I don't see any Pentile distortion. I like it a good better than my Captivate, which didn't have nearly the level of detail and I always felt was a bit over-saturated. For text chores, the Atrix is clearly better, for movies/graphics, some people might prefer the Captivate.

I haven't encountered any major hardware "failures", i.e., subsystems/components that are more or less not functional. Like someone pointed out, the GPS on the Captivate made it nearly unusable. The lag on the Captivate made it nearly unusable and that was a system wide issue (at least the GPS was limited to map/nav and geo positioning apps enhancements). For me, the camera probably represents the worst quality component.

Here's my breakdown of the general functions/components, and my rating 1-10 of each:

9.0 Performance (should hit a good 9.5+ with dual core optimizations)
8.5 Display (I put more points into text, 4" is perfect, ~275 PPI)
9.5 OS (I'm generally a big fan of Android)
8.0 Standard Apps (web/email/SMS/etc.)
8.5 Phone (call quality, ease of use, features)
7.5 Cell Data (could be, should be faster eventually)
6.5 Still Camera (I think there's a good 1.0-1.5 more value with different firmware)
8.0 Video camera (the motion video seems much better, tells me it's a "soft" issue)
8.5 Build (it's excellent, I don't mind some plastic in a cheap consumer device)
9.0 Battery (seems outstanding)
9.5 Extra features (multi-color LED notification, sd slot, HDMI out, docks, webtop)

That's ~8.4 overall which feels like close to the total score I'd assign without doing the math.

For reference, without doing a detailed breakdown, I'd probably put the Captivate at about a 7.0 (main hits are GPS, performance) and the iPhone 4 at close to the same, close to a 9,maybe an 8.8 or so (FTR, the iPhone 4 loses points for me from the OS/iTunes, no modular hardware, smaller display, but for the most part the hardware implementation is excellent).

Some people might also ding the Atrix because of the potentially un-mod-able ROM, which isn't a huge deal for me.

 

[Norcalz71]

Very detailed breakdown, thanks man.

I also agree that the vids I've seen look WAY better than the stills, and of the stills I've seen, those in natural outdoor sunlight are WAY better than in indoor lighting. Definitely hoping theres some kind of software fix and/or possibly a camera app will become available to tweak iso/white bal./etc.

I just need to get my hands on the thing and go to town with it.

 

[Evil.Bonsai]

I've had ONE random issue with the sound driver/subsystem:

was using LIGHTNING BUG app for ambient sounds. Phone works fine with it, but there is a noticeable " " when screen orientation changes. Not really a big deal to me. However, once, it seems as if the sound driver (for lack of a better term) appeared to 'cut out' in that ALL sounds sounded garbled and weak. I closed the lightning bug app and opened the music player and it was doing the same thing: music was garbled and very weak sounding. I power-cycled and the sound went back to normal. Hasn't repeated.

 

[aztooh]

The screen complaints seem mostly unfounded, although there have been some images that looked subpar on my unit. I've only taken a couple of photos indoors and they really disappointed me. Need to get out in some natural light and check it out.

DT, you give "standard apps" an 8, including things like email, web and sms. Coming from an iPhone, I'd have to give that category like a 3. Email on the iPhone is fantastic, one thing I'll miss for sure. Web and sms, I'm using 3rd party apps (dolphin mini, handcent, google voice), which would improve my rating, but I'm talking out-of-the-box rating. The ability to use other apps for those functions helps the OS earn its high score to me.

 

[colnago]

...DT, you give "standard apps" an 8, including things like email, web and sms. Coming from an iPhone, I'd have to give that category like a 3. Email on the iPhone is fantastic, one thing I'll miss for sure. Web and sms, I'm using 3rd party apps (dolphin mini, handcent, google voice), which would improve my rating, but I'm talking out-of-the-box rating. The ability to use other apps for those functions helps the OS earn its high score to me.

Email is more of an "Android" issue vs. Atrix...the generally accepted alternatives are K-9 Mail (for POP3/IMAP accounts), and Touchdown (for Exchange accounts), as they have proven more robust and less issue prone.

FWIW on the camera, there was a software update which resolved some of my Nokia's issues, which are similar to the Atrix's.

 

[razholio]

The screen complaints seem mostly unfounded, although there have been some images that looked subpar on my unit. I've only taken a couple of photos indoors and they really disappointed me. Need to get out in some natural light and check it out.

I'm really sensitive to the pixelation of the pentile layout and did not like my craptivate screen because of it. However, when I spent a few minutes with an atrix demo unit, I noticed that while some GUI elements looked pretty bad, black on white text (and other elements) looked great. I started to think it was just color that suffered the 'pentile effect', but then remembered that the pictures I looked at didn't seem to have the same problem.
I'm beginning to think that the 'pentile effect' is exacerbated by older android GUI elements that are being scaled up to the higher, non-standard resolution of the atrix display. Anyone with an atrix care to comment?