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Help *Official* Atrix Problems/Issues Thread

For some reason the green light on my phone blinks all the time now, it just started happening today. I had AT&T transfer all of my contacts from my old phone to the Atrix, other than that there is no notable changes to the phone. A restart fixes it until I receive a text, then it blinks even if I dont have a text message. Ideas?
 
zipkhan77 said:
Love the phone, but i still am not getting any texts and its been well over a day since I switched over. :mad:
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Call AT&T back, make sure they re-enabled your text plan. I had the same issue, wasn't able to send or receive texts so I gave them a call and it turned out the guy that activated me neglected to re-add it to my plan.
 
My old phone was a Razr V3, so you know I am clueless about Android. However, I use Linux on my laptop, so I am not completely computer illiterate.

I have had my Atrix 4G for about ten days and generally I like it, but there are some things that are intolerable. One is the way Motorola and AT&T tie you to their way of doing things. E.g., I was trying to figure out how to change the spelling of my name on my Motoblur account and apparently you need to factory reset the phone or something. And to find that out I had to join a Motoblur forum, and you cannot unsubscribe yourself. Once they have your e-mail address they will never let it go.

I would like to get rid of the corporate stuff, but I have some reservations:

1) Locating my phone with the GPS and motoblur.com is cool. If I root the phone I will presumably lose Motoblur, so will there be alternate ways to find the phone? (I lose phones regularly, so this is really critical.)

2) I haven't had any problems with the phone, but what about the warranty?

3) What exactly does rooting the phone accomplish? All the web pages that I read assume that you know what it does and why you want to do it. I think it means you reformat and install Android as the completely open source OS it was designed to be.

4) Can one root the Atrix 4G? If so, are there links to a how-to? (I probably should have made this the first question.)

Thanks in advance for any answers and suggestions.
 
I'll answer what I can of your questions.

1) If you root the Atrix you will NOT lose MOTOBLUR. Therefore, you can continue to use it and it's various features. Should you want to use a different launcher instead of MOTOBLUR, you can do this as well. ADW EX/LauncherPro/Go Launcher EX are all popular launcher apps that will run just fine on the Atrix. (Note that even by using one of these other launcher apps you will still have MOTOBLUR on your phone).

2) I'm not sure what the warranty coverage is for the Atrix, sorry. Perhaps someone else will chime in with the answer?

3) Rooting does not involve formatting your phone or re-installing the Android OS. As for what rooting gives you, this link should answer that: Why Root - Android Wiki

4) Yes, it is possible to root the Atrix. I've done it on mine. The XDA Dev forums are one place that can provide instructions. Link: [MOD] aRoot [ root - init.d - sideloading ] - xda-developers

Hope that helps. :)

John Jason said:
My old phone was a Razr V3, so you know I am clueless about Android. However, I use Linux on my laptop, so I am not completely computer illiterate.

I have had my Atrix 4G for about ten days and generally I like it, but there are some things that are intolerable. One is the way Motorola and AT&T tie you to their way of doing things. E.g., I was trying to figure out how to change the spelling of my name on my Motoblur account and apparently you need to factory reset the phone or something. And to find that out I had to join a Motoblur forum, and you cannot unsubscribe yourself. Once they have your e-mail address they will never let it go.

I would like to get rid of the corporate stuff, but I have some reservations:

1) Locating my phone with the GPS and motoblur.com is cool. If I root the phone I will presumably lose Motoblur, so will there be alternate ways to find the phone? (I lose phones regularly, so this is really critical.)

2) I haven't had any problems with the phone, but what about the warranty?

3) What exactly does rooting the phone accomplish? All the web pages that I read assume that you know what it does and why you want to do it. I think it means you reformat and install Android as the completely open source OS it was designed to be.

4) Can one root the Atrix 4G? If so, are there links to a how-to? (I probably should have made this the first question.)

Thanks in advance for any answers and suggestions.
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Yea mines gets a bit hot but other things are just little quirks that are not even worth mentioning an db thats cause I game like a maniac on this thing in aww at how much battery time it has lol
 
ranphi said:
I'll answer what I can of your questions.

1) If you root the Atrix you will NOT lose MOTOBLUR. Therefore, you can continue to use it and it's various features. Should you want to use a different launcher instead of MOTOBLUR, you can do this as well. ADW EX/LauncherPro/Go Launcher EX are all popular launcher apps that will run just fine on the Atrix. (Note that even by using one of these other launcher apps you will still have MOTOBLUR on your phone).
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Thanks for the clarification and the links.

I do not understand about "launcher." I definitely want to get rid of Motoblur, although I still need a way to find the phone via its GPS. Motoblur makes me feel like I am running Windows. "We know what is best for you." For example, I discovered that the sales dude at the AT&T store set up my Motoblur account with the wrong name. And I am unable to change the name on the account myself. In order to discover this I had to go to the Motoblur forums, and to get into the forums I had to register, a process that required personal data almost requiring the social security numbers of my children. And once I discovered that the forum did not have the answer, I found that I cannot unregister from the forums. What is this need that Motorola has to control the people who buy their phones? I thought that getting an open source Android phone would mean I would be free from this kind of stuff.

Maybe what I want is to install vanilla Android. But will the phone still work with AT&T? Or could I then go to a different carrier?

At this point I am so unhappy with the way I am locked into Motorola's control of what I can do with my phone that I am seriously considering just returning it.
 
A "launcher" app is an application that runs on Android and provides your main interface and UI with the operating system. Android comes with its stock launcher but a good chunk of the phone manufacturers slap their own UI on top of Android. MOTOBLUR is the launcher that Motorola has created and tends to put on their phones.

At this point in time there's no way (that I've seen, anyway) to completely get rid of MOTOBLUR from the Atrix. Best you can do is not have any of the MOTOBLUR widgets running and get rid of any shortcuts/icons you have on the MOTOBLUR desktop, and then install a third party launcher app from the Android Market. This is what I've done since I don't like MOTOBLUR, and now I'm running ADW EX as the launcher for my Atrix.

If you're interested in the GPS-tracking and remote-wiping of data from your phone like MOTOBLUR provides, there are multiple apps in the Android Market that provide the same service. (I use "Seek Droid").

There's also no way to install "vanilla Android", as you put it, on the Atrix. Motorola has locked down the bootloader of the Atrix and this makes it very hard to hack the Atrix so that you can run custom ROMs on it. Maybe eventually somebody will figure out a way to unlock the bootloader but it seems pretty iffy from what I've read of other Motorola phones that have employed this technique. It's not impossible, but unlikely.

And I agree with your feelings of resentment over Motorola being so controlling with their phones. I don't like it either, even though I am quite happy with the Atrix due to it's performance and solid construction.



John Jason said:
Thanks for the clarification and the links.

I do not understand about "launcher." I definitely want to get rid of Motoblur, although I still need a way to find the phone via its GPS. Motoblur makes me feel like I am running Windows. "We know what is best for you." For example, I discovered that the sales dude at the AT&T store set up my Motoblur account with the wrong name. And I am unable to change the name on the account myself. In order to discover this I had to go to the Motoblur forums, and to get into the forums I had to register, a process that required personal data almost requiring the social security numbers of my children. And once I discovered that the forum did not have the answer, I found that I cannot unregister from the forums. What is this need that Motorola has to control the people who buy their phones? I thought that getting an open source Android phone would mean I would be free from this kind of stuff.

Maybe what I want is to install vanilla Android. But will the phone still work with AT&T? Or could I then go to a different carrier?

At this point I am so unhappy with the way I am locked into Motorola's control of what I can do with my phone that I am seriously considering just returning it.
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ranphi said:
And I agree with your feelings of resentment over Motorola being so controlling with their phones. I don't like it either, even though I am quite happy with the Atrix due to it's performance and solid construction.
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I loved the phone, but this afternoon I returned the Atrix 4G. I'm back to using my ancient Razr V3 until I figure out what to do next. All I know right now is that my next phone will not be a Motorola and the carrier will probably not be AT&T.
 
Sorry to hear that. :( Good luck with whatever smartphone you end up getting. Hopefully it will be a better experience for you. :)


John Jason said:
I loved the phone, but this afternoon I returned the Atrix 4G. I'm back to using my ancient Razr V3 until I figure out what to do next. All I know right now is that my next phone will not be a Motorola and the carrier will probably not be AT&T.
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My phone sometimes has trouble "waking up" from idle/sleep mode. It typically happens when I have an application running while it goes into sleep mode.

I usually have to hold the power button until the power-off prompt shows to wake it back up, although I've never had an issue where this method doesn't work. Just seems odd.
 
instrucrat1 said:
My finger print reader became unresponsive twice and on restart no issue. I ignored it but just wana know if anyone else also faced same issue.
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My phone will do this occasionally. I think it has something to do with leaving applications running when the phone goes into sleep mode. When this happens I just use the PIN to unlock the phone.

I'm not sure exactly how the fingerprint scanner works, but I'm guessing there is some process running on the phone that needs to interpret the print. It could be that another app taking priority of the phones hardware or something, and can't be interrupted.
 
Laptop dock will not allow me to access any external hard drives I plug in via the two USB ports. I had two external HDs (250 GB and 500GB) and neither are readable on the dock. When I plugged in the 500GB model it said it was 'unmountable'. Any ideas?

Also, does anyone know if having launcher pro will affect the docking capabilities (laptop and car)?
 
-Battery life sucks

-Freezes in photo gallery occasionally

-Car can't remember Bluetooth. Only phone I have had to have this problem so its not the car. (2010 Lancer Ralliart)
 
John Jason said:
I loved the phone, but this afternoon I returned the Atrix 4G. I'm back to using my ancient Razr V3 until I figure out what to do next. All I know right now is that my next phone will not be a Motorola and the carrier will probably not be AT&T.
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Can you explain the problems with Motorola & AT&T?

From few of your posts in this thread, it seems you had no issue with phone.
Why did you returned Atrix?
 
ParagP said:
Can you explain the problems with Motorola & AT&T?
From few of your posts in this thread, it seems you had no issue with phone.
Why did you returned Atrix?
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I already posted it here:

http://androidforums.com/motorola-atrix-4g/289917-returning-my-atrix-threads.html#post2413920

Since that posting I have opened an account at T-Mobile and have bought a used MyTouch G3 for $80. I haven't closed the AT&T account and ported the number over yet, but that will probably happen soon.

Oh, and at the time I returned the Atrix I thought that the capping was done in the SIM card. In fact it is in the firmware someplace. They did the same thing with the Inspire. I am not pleased with Motorola for requiring activation, and I don't like AT&T because they are expensive and they lie.
 
dagrubb said:
Anyone having issues sending videos to other phones via mms? Specifically the iphone.
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I haven't seen this issue since the G1 days but yes, it is a known problem that occassionally pops up with the iPhone and many older messaging phones. The technical reason found by folks much more well versed than myself was with the codec the iPhone and older feature phones use (especially Samsung and Sanyo phones), they use a proprietary codec for the 3gp standard (or something) while Android and Java based and more recent feature phones use a common open source codec. The issue back then was that the videos show up asa slideshow because the proprietary codec reads the file as a series of images, not as the video it is. There was much discussion about this a couple of years ago in the HTC Dream/G1 threads over at XDA developers forum...
 
One issue I have which to some might not be an issue(or is the opposite of issues on past phones, is that the screen is TOO responsive.

There are times when Im barely even touching the screen and it indicates a press and performs that function. The worst is when Im typing a text or email and it selects letters twice or something like that.

Like I said though, it has been worse on old phones where it doesnt recognize the touch at all. Would just be nice if we can calibrate the screen a bit.
 
Hello guys,

I recently grabbed the new Motorola Atrix as my new phone with Bell (Canada)... Everything works really well except 1 thing...

Sometimes during the day, only 1/2-3 of my SMS are being received by my friends... It's a really weird situation because my Atrix clearly tells me that the SMS have been sent, etc.

So I ended up calling Bell tech support to see if something was wrong on their side. I called them 3 times (3 days in a row) and each time they told me the same thing: they can see that all of my messages have been sent and delivered to the recipient... They even tell me that they have a confirmation number that clearly confirms that the SMS have been delivered to the other person...

The fact is lots of my friends have reported not receiving my SMS (or only some of them) and I keep getting messages back like What???? because they only received 1/3 of the whole discussion...

I have tried sending SMS to Roger's, Fido's and Bell's phones (other service providers in Canada) and it all does the same thing at different time during the day (it happens spontaneously... and I never know if some of my messages are being received or not..)

The 3 times I called Bell, they asked me to send SMS to different phones of them to see if everything was fine and unfortunately, everything went fine...

I'm really pissed at the moment because something is wrong either with the phone or with Bell. Bell also told me it might be a network problem (CDMA vs HSPA+), but the same problem appeared with my sister's BB Curve 3G...

I will most likely return the phone back and send it to the repair departement (epic waste of time), but it's really frustrating that everything else seems to work perfectly...

BTW: I'm kinda experienced with phones so I've already tried everything I could think of (battery pull, etc etc)

Any suggestions??

Thanks
 
Sad day took back my atrix today. Have had 3 in the last 2 weeks. First one the screen did this shaking thing and went unresponsive as well as just start doing things on its own and I couldn't stop it. The voice command function kept coming on for no reason. arg. took it back same day to get new one. Worked Awesome!I seasoned the battery and was getting great usage times out of it. I wasn't ever worried about throughout the day. No problems. Oh wait the flash wasnt working correctly. One of the dual led lights was flickering when taking photos and videos. Then while testing it in video mode, after about 15 seconds both the LED's would blink on and off. AAARG again. Btw camera quality pretty weak. Back to the store for new one again. Test it a bit in store, all seems good, no flash issues. Less than 24 hours in and same issues as first phone. Shaking , unresponsive, doing whatever it wants. Had to power of the screen and unlock the phone again to get it to respond. BWHAAAAA! I really liked this phone and am sad but no faith left in motorola atrix quality control. Should have focused on making sure the phone worked better instead of making a laptop doc that costs the same as a cheap laptop and has no features that would really make the combo revolutionary! Curse you motorola. I really wanted this phone and wanted it to be as wicked as it should be but now just bummed.:(
 
I've had my Atrix about 2 weeks now, have been testing it out to see how I like it... So far, I really love it, and am fairly new to Android so I have a lot to learn with the customization part (just got LP Plus, now to learn how to use it lolz) But at any rate, I've not had any major problems except........

At one point my icons on the screen had some sort of glitch and all of them looked stacked on top of each other in the top left corner (I'm trying to remember if I had LP installed and it was maybe an issue with that, and might have been, but not certain.)

Also, as I've seen some posts regarding, the call quality seems to sorta sound... crackly? Hard to explain, but sometimes it's not bad... just not something I've had an issue with with ATT or signal/reception issues here, so I assume its the phone... almost like the speaker has a rattle to it. Again, isn't always, sometimes its fine.

I think the battery's doing pretty good, when I had LP loaded it drained quicker, hope to learn more about it and figure that out.

No errors, FC's, and everything seems to load super fast, so I love that. I guess I'm just sort of wondering if you guys think I should swap it for another since I'm still in my 30 days. My few issues seem minor, but I don't want them to become a bigger problem and just wondering if any of you have experienced any of this. Thanks for the help as always!
 
S1mon28 said:
I will most likely return the phone back and send it to the repair departement (epic waste of time), but it's really frustrating that everything else seems to work perfectly...

BTW: I'm kinda experienced with phones so I've already tried everything I could think of (battery pull, etc etc)

Any suggestions??

Thanks
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DId you exchange the phone for another one? It might be a SIM card issue. Did you try using a friend's Bell sim card and see if you got the same issue? Maybe get a new sim card.
 
The phone only works on speaker phone unless you turn off the bluetooth button at the bottom left on the phone. It comes on every time you call ..
 
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