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Help New Spectrum driving me nuts

M

mhotel

Lurker
My original DINC died last month so Verizon replaced it with a Spectrum. After several updates and reboots, it was running 4.0.4. Not as nice as 4.2 on the Nexus 7, but useable -- or so I thought. Ran out of memory despite having only a few small apps installed and moving everything possible to the SD card. Apparently some artifact of the multiple OS updates, mostly fixed by a factory reset and reinstall of the apps. Still only has 400 mybtes free thanks to all the Verizon bloatware. Memo to self: 4.x phones need more than 4GB. The system seems S-L-O-W. Takes 30 seconds to wake up when plugging/unplugging the charger. About half the times I unlock the phone, the clock/weather widget only displays partial digits, then updates 5-10 seconds later.

The big problem is the touchscreen, which seems to go nuts on a regular basis. When it gets this way, pressing and holding the "1" key to get voicemail will enter a string of digits like 222332213232322233113323232 and sometimes try to dial them. Swiping to unlock can turn into an exercise in futility chasing the "eyeball" with my finger. Pressing the "Phone" icon will bring up Messaging over and over again. Trying to make calls I get 2-3 digits from each keypress and the phone becomes completely unusable. Rebooting, pulling the battery and safe mode have zero effect. This behavior is consistent across three phones at this point, and Verizon says "well, you can always sign a new contract and get a different phone." I'm not ready to do that just now and find it crazy that my 4+ year old DINC was significantly faster.

One other note is that the 2.x Sense phone app was significantly better than the (presumably) stock 4.x phone app. The lack of history-based predictive name lookup makes it necessary to dial 6-8 digits before I can make many calls. Is there a config option somewhere that will enable this?

thanks in advance...
 
mhotel said:
My original DINC died last month so Verizon replaced it with a Spectrum. After several updates and reboots, it was running 4.0.4. Not as nice as 4.2 on the Nexus 7, but useable -- or so I thought. Ran out of memory despite having only a few small apps installed and moving everything possible to the SD card. Apparently some artifact of the multiple OS updates, mostly fixed by a factory reset and reinstall of the apps. Still only has 400 mybtes free thanks to all the Verizon bloatware. Memo to self: 4.x phones need more than 4GB. The system seems S-L-O-W. Takes 30 seconds to wake up when plugging/unplugging the charger. About half the times I unlock the phone, the clock/weather widget only displays partial digits, then updates 5-10 seconds later.

The big problem is the touchscreen, which seems to go nuts on a regular basis. When it gets this way, pressing and holding the "1" key to get voicemail will enter a string of digits like 222332213232322233113323232 and sometimes try to dial them. Swiping to unlock can turn into an exercise in futility chasing the "eyeball" with my finger. Pressing the "Phone" icon will bring up Messaging over and over again. Trying to make calls I get 2-3 digits from each keypress and the phone becomes completely unusable. Rebooting, pulling the battery and safe mode have zero effect. This behavior is consistent across three phones at this point, and Verizon says "well, you can always sign a new contract and get a different phone." I'm not ready to do that just now and find it crazy that my 4+ year old DINC was significantly faster.

One other note is that the 2.x Sense phone app was significantly better than the (presumably) stock 4.x phone app. The lack of history-based predictive name lookup makes it necessary to dial 6-8 digits before I can make many calls. Is there a config option somewhere that will enable this?

thanks in advance...
Click to expand...

You could just try a third party dialer like Go Dialer. They tend to have a lot more responsivness.

If you're not scared to root/unlock the phone. You could install something CM10.1 based and have some 4.2.2 smoothness.
 
mhotel said:
My original DINC died last month so Verizon replaced it with a Spectrum. After several updates and reboots, it was running 4.0.4. Not as nice as 4.2 on the Nexus 7, but useable -- or so I thought. Ran out of memory despite having only a few small apps installed and moving everything possible to the SD card. Apparently some artifact of the multiple OS updates, mostly fixed by a factory reset and reinstall of the apps. Still only has 400 mybtes free thanks to all the Verizon bloatware. Memo to self: 4.x phones need more than 4GB. The system seems S-L-O-W. Takes 30 seconds to wake up when plugging/unplugging the charger. About half the times I unlock the phone, the clock/weather widget only displays partial digits, then updates 5-10 seconds later.

The big problem is the touchscreen, which seems to go nuts on a regular basis. When it gets this way, pressing and holding the "1" key to get voicemail will enter a string of digits like 222332213232322233113323232 and sometimes try to dial them. Swiping to unlock can turn into an exercise in futility chasing the "eyeball" with my finger. Pressing the "Phone" icon will bring up Messaging over and over again. Trying to make calls I get 2-3 digits from each keypress and the phone becomes completely unusable. Rebooting, pulling the battery and safe mode have zero effect. This behavior is consistent across three phones at this point, and Verizon says "well, you can always sign a new contract and get a different phone." I'm not ready to do that just now and find it crazy that my 4+ year old DINC was significantly faster.

One other note is that the 2.x Sense phone app was significantly better than the (presumably) stock 4.x phone app. The lack of history-based predictive name lookup makes it necessary to dial 6-8 digits before I can make many calls. Is there a config option somewhere that will enable this?

thanks in advance...
Click to expand...

I know exactly how you feel. I'm on my 4th replacement Spectrum from Verizon. Being that each one is a refurbished phone that was probably sent back to them by someone else, each one has had its little quirks, some serious. I didn't hesitate to demand another until I got my current Spec, which runs well enough for me to live with.
I would advise you to do the same. Then I also agree with yoinx about rooting and flashing one of our 4.2 ROMs.... Bye bye bloatware!
 
Anybody else seen this kind of touchscreen weirdness? I was thinking it was a capacitive versus resistive thing (we have very low humidity this time of year -- like 6% low) but according to Verizon the DINC also had a capacitive touchscreen.
 
If it only does it with charger plugged, bad charger (been there). If it does it without, get yourself a "new" phone. That's not normal. I have noticed this happens with water droplets on the screen, ect, not in differences of humidity. Hell, I've used mine in the shower.
 
If you *do* get a new phone. Do yourself a favor and keep a backup of your phone on the computer that you can copy over. That way once you root/unlock you can just restore your nandroid.
 
As steamer said the touchscreen weirdness happens when you have the phone plugged in to a non stock charger. Pretty much any other charger will make the phone bug out when trying to use it. And also like steamer said if you are getting it when not plugged in then get another phone.

And if you want 4.2.2 then root and flash one of the five 4.2.2 based roms we have. I'm finding that pacman is the best.
 
As far as the touchscreen issues go, I have found that wiping the motion sensor off(with a t-shirt or cloth) located on the top right of the screen helps.
 
admn81 said:
As far as the touchscreen issues go, I have found that wiping the motion sensor off(with a t-shirt or cloth) located on the top right of the screen helps.
Click to expand...

You mean next to the camera? Pretty sure that's the light sensor

Sent from my VS920 4G using Tapatalk 2
 
Yoinx said:
You mean next to the camera? Pretty sure that's the light sensor

Sent from my VS920 4G using Tapatalk 2
Click to expand...

Iirc it's called the proximity sensor and it is responsible for adjusting to the movements of the phone...ie whether or not to auto rotate.
 
admn81 said:
Iirc it's called the proximity sensor and it is responsible for adjusting to the movements of the phone...ie whether or not to auto rotate.
Click to expand...

Hate to argue.. but...

Proximity sensor works through changes in gravity or electromagnetic fields. When the phone is placed next to a larger object (ie your head) the gravity of the larger object is felt by the phone and reported accordingly. If it's an EM type, the larger object changes teh EM field inidcating an object.

Rotation should be controlled by your phone's gyro. Usually a small mass suspended by springs inside a container. These are very small for a phone as they don't need to be very accurate. When the phone is moved the mass changes direction in one of the six axies. This changes is felt as a change of impedance for all the axies. This translates into a motion whether it is rotation, tilt, or roll. Usually this same principle is applied for acceleration as well. I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't the same device for our phone. Acceleration being the rate of change in the mass over a fixed period of time. This would also be applied for speed.

I don't doubt that the proximity sensor is near the earpiece since that makes the most sense. However there is no mechanical or electrical reason for it to be exposed. The exposed part is definitely the light sensor. It needs to be exposed in order to measure lux. Wiping it off may improve your phone's ability to auto adjust your backlight... but that should be the only benefit you gain.

A savvy coder could use the camera as a motion sensor, but we don't have a motion sensor like you would think like, in say, a motion detector light.

Some apps do things like this. For instance, LUX uses the light sensor to determine lux and can use the camera to measure lumens.

If you're ever interested in anything about this you can use an app like elixir to see what sensors your phone has, the specs on it, and what it's reading.

*edit*

Correction, our phone has an optical proximity sensor. It emmits IR and uses a photosensor to detect how much light is reflected back. It's a pretty crappy way to do it, but it's likely cheap and does the job of indicating when the phone is placed near your ear.


Sent from my VS920 4G using Tapatalk 2
 
There have been times when I've had problems with the screen turning on during a call, but when I clean that little sensor the problem goes away, so either the proximity sensor is there, or the screen on during calls is based on light?
 
Nokoko said:
There have been times when I've had problems with the screen turning on during a call, but when I clean that little sensor the problem goes away, so either the proximity sensor is there, or the screen on during calls is based on light?
Click to expand...

Most of the sensors for phones aren't that perfect. For instance, depending on the way that the app smooths your light sensor's input, it'll jump your brightness all over the place. I assume the proximity sensor is similar in that it doesn't always provide smooth data.
 
I'd do a ED Recovery Flash, and then OTA it up to the latest ICS. From there, root and root uninstall the bloatware. My Spec is running rooted stock ROM without the custom bootloader, and just by removing the bloatware, I have gotten a huge increase in speed. I would almost say its faster than CM10.1, due to the performance issues that were plaguing it.
 
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