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Droid 2 Gingerbread 2.3.3 Update SUCKS

Gingerbread does nothing for the phone and trashes the music player. Even if you had cover art showing in the music player for all your albums in Android 2.2, and this was not easy to do, 2.3.3 adds an additional hoop to jump through: none of your songs can have apostrophes in the titles, otherwise you get the grey disk for the whole album.

Tech support NO HELP, and no rollback option to 2.2.

What serious software enterprise does not have a disaster recovery plan? Verizon.

This kind of QA throws my opinion of the whole franchise into question. Didn't they test the music player?

Comments

Issues4Droid2

The Android System Library scanner, which does a complete scan after battery removal, reinstall, power on, fails to find art in folders with files containing an apostrophe in the file name. Which is a joke, because this is a legal character in Windows file names, and lots of songs are downloaded to Droids from Windows computers.

BlueTacoMan

I found after update none of my album art displayed. Tried reseating SD, copying it off then back on, Verizon asked me to do a master reset. Finally I renamed the file to AlbumArt.jpg no other variations worked.

EN3

Verizon could have and should have made this an optional update. Now I do comprehend that motorola/google dose not want this to be optional but I am certain that if verizon would have express their desire to not require this so called update. Both Motorola & Google Would have conceded to verizon's request, After all verizon is their number 1 customer. Bottom line I feel as though my phone has been adversely affected by this update. That verizon Contractually has the Legal right to force this so called update However From a ethical point They have sacrificed their customers opinions in order to placate motorola & google.

I am even more upset with about verizon Is not informing me before doing the update that there would be significant changes once the update was applied. Furthermore when my phone woke me up at 230 in the morning saying that there was an update I would have postponed it if I knew it would adversely affect and that there was significant changes that is update has done.

Bottom line I believe verizon dropped the ball so to speak with this update. In the future I would like to see verizon at least have the common courtesy of telling their customers that there will be Significant change to their phone before making those changes.

Very Disappointing verizon very very disappointing....

EN3

Jimfitzgerald. Why would it upset you that people or voicing their opinion? That is what the fourms are for. Bottom line it would not have hurt verizon to make it optional and now perhaps next time they will. Finally if no 1 complains then they will never change anything.

nsbear

I agree that this update was not a good and not having a rollback option is unheard of. It negatively affected my phone's performance. Before the update, I could go a couple days without having to charge my phone; however, since the update my phone charge doesn't even last a day. Has anyone else experienced this problem since the update?

wavereels

Made my phone unreliable to say the least. I've had the Droid 2 global for 7 months and need to get out of it ASAP - this update has made it essentially a brick. Sometimes it works - most of the time it doesn't. Half of my apps are gone or not working. Battery life is worse. Messaging is horrendous. Sounds like I am not alone here.

breezex

Ah, but it sucks so sweetly! Best update yet. All the apps and functions that I use work well and I use my phone heavily.

wavereels

enlighten me on how to get the green message indicator light to STOP blinking all day - i now never know when or if i have new messages. oh yeah and maybe tell me how to get my apps and widgets back to working properly. actually if i could just get my older version o f my phone back id be happy. this update killed my phone. literally.

Suzanna

I have also had the same problem since the update. Makes me mad! Now I have to carry my charger with me and hope there is an electrical outlet where I'm heading cause I have no car charger.

Suzanna

I have also had the same problem since the update. Makes me mad! Now I have to carry my charger with me and hope there is an electrical outlet where I'm heading cause I have no car charger.

EN3

You can list me on the significantly reduced battery life. It also seems to me that it is taking longer to Charge the phone then it use to.

Another point according to the motorola droid forums verizon now has made this change to gingerbread optional on droid two's that have not had the update yet. If anybody else knows it this is true please let me know or let us know. Also according to dan over at the motorola forums the main reason for the update is to make it easier on motorola and verizon tech support they no longer have to ask what version operating system a caller is using, they know its gingerbread. Below is the link to the Motorola forum where they are saying when I just stated...

https://supportforums.motorola.com/thread/57038?start=135&tstart=0

ENCOM

Here are some of my complaints. Verizon and Motorola need to get to work!

Problems

~Battery seems to charge slowly.

~Battery drains quickly. The battery usage indicator says the Display is using 59% of my battery, Phone Idle is using 11%, and Cell Standby is using 10%. I barely get 12-15 hours off my battery and I’m not using it. I’ve turned the brightness down, I don’t use Live Wallpaper, and I generally leave the display black while I’m work. My battery was great before the gingerbread downgrade.

~Predictive text doesn’t work well. Turning off Auto-correct errors and turning off Auto-punctuate helps. Many times I select a suggested word in the in the ribbon and nothing happens. I have to press the space bar and back up to insert punctuation.

~Email retrieval- My Hotmail account seems to fetch every 15 minutes. It used to fetch more often. I don’t remember what it was set to, but I think I had it every 5 minutes. My Yahoo account won’t update and retrieve emails; I have to manually fetch new emails. If a new Gmail email appears, it plays a ringtone even though my ringtones are turned off for emails.

~Youtube application does not work. Many times when I try to play a video the screen goes black. Sometimes a warning appears saying the video cannot play. Either way, Youtube doesn’t work with GB.

~Youtube does not work directly from the internet browser either. Youtube doesn’t work with GB.

~Sometimes while typing in the Google Scrollbar, the bar doesn’t move and I can’t see what I’m typing.

~The soft keyboard is way too big in notepad and when editing contacts. It’s useless. If I didn’t have the slider keyboard, I couldn’t make edits.

~It only happened once so far, but when I tried to edit a notepad, my phone shut down. That never happened with Froyo.

~Pressing Save in Notepad now closes notepad. I don’t believe that happened with Froyo.

Lost Features

~Battery manager- with Froyo I could go to Settings - Battery Manager and see if I had 80%, 60%, etc. battery life left. I don’t care if Bluetooth is using 3% of my battery, Phone Idle is using 5%... The current battery manager is useless. I realize there are apps for this, but why download a 3rd party app when the old system had this integrated into it.

~Emoticon on the soft keyboard- It takes three key strokes to get it now.

~Birthdays/Anniversaries in the contact are feature are gone. Anything added in Froyo is displayed but cannot be edited.

~Satellite enabled icon no longer in Navigation bar- A satellite icon shows when Navigator is being used, but so does the blue Navigation Arrow. You removed a good icon and added a redundant icon.

~The seven buttons at the bottom of the screen that allowed you to jump from screen to screen. There are still page indicators, but they are useless.

~My music library list no longer displays 90% of the album artwork. Since it displays some but not all, it seems like more than just a setting.

Poorly designed features

~The white hazy “cloud” at the bottom of screen is annoying. The Text Message Icon is white and the Internet Browser Icon has white in it. It just looks bad.

~The white background for the settings feature makes it hard to read. My email has the white background as well. The black background was awesome!

~The top Navigation bar has poorly designed icons that are hard to differentiate from each other.

~Email Fetch schedule is too slow. I want to check for emails more frequently. This may be part of a grand plan to save battery life, but I was happy with the performance of Froyo. I can make my battery last even longer by turning off the phone; but that isn’t a very good idea…

~What are the circular arrows that occasionally show up in the top navigation bar? Is this an update in progress? Please stop that. You’ve done enough damage to my phone. My phone runs real slow when this displayed.

breezex

Has anyone seen an official announcement from Verizon that one can now permanently decline the Gingerbread update? What does the message say when you do the Menu > Settings > About Phone > System Updates and you are still on Froyo.

My D2G is running Gingerbread and all I get is "Your device is up to date! No update is necessary at this time.."

Opinion: What I think happened is someone canceled the update just prior to Verizon/Motorola pulling the update to fix the encryption problem. Now that the update is temporarily unavailable their phone no longer prompts them to update because there is no update available and not because it is now optional.

Tyler23

My phone actually works just fine, I love the new update. I don't see any difference in the battery. And of course with me being a teenager I am constantly texting. I use Handcent SMS because you can change the styles. But for some reason whether I am texting or using the Facebook app, after typing the word "my" or "your" and I press the space bar after the last letter then the apps freeze and I have to go to Manage Apps and force stop. It's ridiculously annoying!!! Other than that I have no problems what-so-ever. I have yet to try the Music app.

EN3

@jimfitzgerald, my mistake I see what your saying. As for me I have never asked for the update nor did I want it.

So far still don't know if verizon has truly made this update optional. I have yet to receive a response from Verizon. I will update the board if I hear officially one way or the other.

km58

I'll learn to live with this "update" but am very disappointed that no notice of any kind was sent. I didn't know what the heck was going on, and whether this was an Android update or some kind of push from my work email. Verizon, how about sending an email that explains what the update is and what is new/changed. You know who we all are. It's messed up some of my icons, especially those from AutoAppOrganizer; the captions no longer appear, just a small gray oval. The applications access is no longer a centered button/slide. It took trial and error to figure out how to get to the applications without going through Settings. The white cloud at the bottom of the screen, as another posted noted, is quite annoying. If icons must appear at the bottom of all pages, let me choose which ones they are!

Lots of mistakes, here, Verizon, most especially your failure to communicate.

r454g

I have seen the same issues as everyone else. I would also add that I can no longer read much of the various displays including my contacts due to the greatly reduced font size. To add insult to injury, the color scheme is terrible, blue on black, gray over gray progress bar. I'm trying to remove it from my phone now, but no luck. I tried the factory data reset thru the menu and it still installed gingerbread. I'm going to try try the keyboard reset next. If I can't roll back the update, the phone will go back as I can hardly use it now.

truebluesubaru

Wow, I didn't realize the font size changed TOO!! I just thought my eyes were getting so bad that I needed to use my glasses to make a phone call. I cannot stand this update. It's been about a week and a half and I still can't get around in it. It took away all my speed dial #s, I can't drag icons to my home screen anymore, the contacts icon it put on didn't work (said I didn't have contacts installed), and I keep getting lost on unfamiliar screens when trying to do things I've done a million times before with no problem. I kept telling it no when it was asking to do the update mainly because it said it would have to reboot and would take several minutes and I just didn't want to take the time. I SO wish I would have kept hitting cancel.

Called Verizon an hour ago to see if there was anyway I could uninstall the update and was told no, that it was permanent. Not only that, but there is no user guide to help you through all the changes. I could deal with all the inconvenient changes if only there was an instruction manual to go with it. How irresponsible to force an update and then not have any support for it. If anyone knows where I can find a user guide for gingerbread, please let me know. PS I haven't noticed any battery difference like most people, but I don't use my phone constantly either.

MY PHONE WORKED GREAT AND I WAS VERY HAPPY WITH IT UNTIL GINGERBREAD. And what a stupid name.

MwazzzUp

I'll just jump on the bandwagon here since the Subject line reflects precisely how I feel.

Motorola Droid 2 is device. Ever since the forced update to GB, having 2 issues with WIFI:

1. WIFI constantly connects/disconnects at work. It is an open system but requires a generic password to login. It takes a bunch of tinkering to eventually log in, but it will disconnect randomly after 2 mins, 5 mins, 1 hr. No pattern. At home, there is no problem whatsoever. Solid as a rock (WPA2). Have already set sleep policy to NEVER and battery saver is set to PERFORMANCE MODE.

2. No longer automatically checks my Yahoo mail when I come home (via WIFI). Used to work 100% of time.

Prior to GB, I did not have either of these problems. I would love to revert back to prior version since the GB benefits do not outweigh the problems I now have with WIFI. I am going to post this as a separate topic as well to see if others have encountered WIFI problems post GB.

Thanks for listening and for any offers of help to resolve.

cricket78

I will chirp in as well.. this is rediculous! I just got my droid, was putting updates on, and wanted to upgrade it to gingerbread.. so I did it..stupidly..it worked GREAT until I did it. Now I can't use the PHONE function..it tells me that "this function is not installed." So I uninstalled it..still won't work..reinstalled a different "app" of it..still wont' work.. am needing a factory reset but can't call out! HELP!

gman11555

I got my gingerbread update on 9/10 with not problems. I have the R2-D2 Droid 2 and it has never been rooted. Since the update my phone randomly reboots itself at least 2-3 times a day. And being that you can't silence the R2 boot animation this is extremely bothersome. Also the phone tends to run alot hotter than before and the stock music player wont play .wav files and tends to crash alot. The GPS doesnt seem to locate as well and the icons on the task bar are hard to read, Blue on Black really???. I have tried the *228 updates, a hard reset, a soft reset, uninstalling all apps that arent necessary. If anything it gets worse everyday. I really hope Verizon or Motorola are listening to these complaints and working on a fix.

jrbuetow17

I'll add into this as well. I loved Froyo and it worked amazingly for how I used my phone. Now here's a list of all the things wrong post upgrade that have been **bleep** me off to no end:

1. Screen doesn't always auto dim after being idle.

2. Battery life sucks absolute balls. A single charge used to last a full day with heavy use, now I'm only getting maybe 5hrs.

3. Data push is non-exsistent now, and fetch doesn't work either. This is on my Yahoo and GMail accounts. I have to manually fetch for both.

4. The phone will randomly reboot itself with no error messages shown before. Sometimes this will happen up to 6 times a day.

5. Some of the visual changes are nice, but some are entirely too difficult to see.

6. An auto-start update at 2:30am EST??? REALLY???

Seriously, Verizon. This needs to be fixed ASAP. Otherwise, this loyal customer will be terminating his contract and account early no matter the cost.

unknown

gman11555 wrote:
I got my gingerbread update on 9/10 with not problems. I have the R2-D2 Droid 2 and it has never been rooted. Since the update my phone randomly reboots itself at least 2-3 times a day. And being that you can't silence the R2 boot animation this is extremely bothersome. Also the phone tends to run alot hotter than before and the stock music player wont play .wav files and tends to crash alot. The GPS doesnt seem to locate as well and the icons on the task bar are hard to read, Blue on Black really???. I have tried the *228 updates, a hard reset, a soft reset, uninstalling all apps that arent necessary. If anything it gets worse everyday. I really hope Verizon or Motorola are listening to these complaints and working on a fix.

I do apologize for the issue; I understand how this can be frustrating. Product support is aware of the issue and permanent resolution through a software update will be issued soon. As a temporary work around I would offer for you to try a factory data reset. Follow the steps below

From the main screen, touch menu tab

Touch Settings

Touch Privacy

Touch Factory Data reset

User has the option of Erasing SD Card - if desired check "Erase SD Card"

Touch Reset Phone

Touch Erase Everything

I hope this helps. Thanks.

gman11555

@SammuelP

Thank you for your reply. I did try that and unfortunately it still reboots randomly at least once or twice a day. I have removed all non stock apps and it still does it. I will anxiously await an update to correct this problem. Thank you.

unknown

Since you’ve done the master reset please PM me your name and number and I can see what other options we have for you. Hope this helps. Thanks.

x0steph716

This update is ridiculous. I cant even end a call without taking my battery out and it keeps shutting itself off and wont hold a charge. i dont understand why they didnt just not update it since the gingerbread update for droid x sucked so bad.....

TheWolfen

I, too, am having a lot of problems with this update. Battery life has been reduced and notifications quit working randomly. I can't send or receive texts at random intervals and it takes a reboot to fix it. I am also having intermittent call problems where if I receive a call I can't hear the caller and they can't hear me. It takes a reboot to fix that as well. It seems to just be incapable of sending/receiving any form of data/voice/text at times. I did have problems with sending and receiving texts ocassionally before the update, but it is much worse now. I've had to reboot my phone 4 times since installing the update yesterday.

I'm going to try a factory reset. Hopefully that will resolve the critical issues. If not, I'll have to take it in to the store.

jbtinthegop

My phone simply doesn't work. I guess I'll be at the @#$%@W#$^%$^ Verizon store tomorrow ... probably won't be alone.

firefly1399

I am having the same problem with the notification light blinking for no reason! My phone froze and turned itself off and when it turned back on the light started blinking. I called Verizon and they told me I would have to factory reset the phone and I told them no because the last time I called with a problem and they told me I had to reset the phone I waited a few hours and the problem fixed itself. I am hoping the same thing happens with the mesage light... it is driving me crazy!

geckodad

Droid 2 Global, Gingerbread pushed last Friday night

Feel fortunate because most functions are working better than as reported on the Community pages. Somewhatg different look and feel as should be expected. Without advance communication, though, or helpful hints, or other notifications, it is unfortunate users are left to their own to figure out what is going on and how to cope.

Here are a few problems I have seen and would appreciate any recommendations on fixes.

1. Stock music player - restore the album art. It is embedded in the files, displays correctly in third party apps, but not in stock music player or downloadable (free) Google music. Clearly a bug in the new version of the application. Don't like all of the ads associated with the free third party players and not quite ready to buy one if the stock player is going to be fixed soon.

2. Battery life/display - battery seems to last shorter than before but it was never great. I use Advanced Task Killer, darken the display as a habit as soon as I don't need to see something on the screen, run JuiceDefender in background - all as recommended by Verizon in-store clerk when I first purchased the phone last Christmas. Using Juice Plotter, I can see that it drops in a couple of hours largely attributable to display power consumption. Keeping it dark and only using intermittently it can last for most of a work day. Would like to have the settings>battery & data manager show remaining capacity again.

3. For first couple of days, some apps would disappear from their Home pages. Re-added them a couple of times, tried different home pages, experienced same problem. Did reboot, battery removal, etc. Seems to be holding stable for now.

4. Would like to see a help widget or on phone app to help orient to Gingerbread UI features, techniques. Maybe it is there but I can't find it.

5. Occasionally I lose the lighting behind the four permanent icons at the bottom of the phone (etched in glass), even when the phone display is on. That never happened before. Is there a setting that needs to tweaked or just a bug or an intentional feature?

6. I use the camera a lot since it is often with me and my DSLR isn't. I miss the adjustable ISO on the stock camera app which marginally helps with the terrible graininess associated with the physical sensor built into this model handset. Hopefully future models will correct this shortcoming (hint to Motorola). This is really attrocious quality at all ISO settings even in bright daylight compared to BBerrys, iPhones, etc.

Thanks for listening.

Westy543

Just stoppin' in here to say this release is an absolute mess on my Droid 2 Global. Who thought "HMM, THIS LOOKS STABLE" is beyond me. The overall UI seems worse since there are bright white backgrounds everywhere (I much preferred the dark grey / green, the blue's okay I guess). The issue of "ANDROID OS" randomly going into death mode and sapping a full battery in half an hour and overheating the phone unless restarted is gone (that was a rare but on the previous build I guess), but in the process they've sapped the battery display in the options, managed to FUBAR my music folder on my SD card (several albums just randomly split into multiple albums, now I'm forced to use custom playlists). On top of that my phone no longer understands what "repeat this song" means on any music app, and will only repeat a single song once. If it's something by itself in a folder and I set it on folder repeat, it's fine. Album art as started has blown up as well.

That's not even counting that apps disappear from screens and other minor issues.

Reading another thread I guess I'm on gingerbread now. No me gusta. $:\$

garciapliz

Received the Gingerbread update two days ago and am not liking this update. Each time I unlock my phone I am defaulted to the dialer screen. The battery life is horrible and need to keep recharging my phone after 3 - 5 hours. While I like the font change I would much rather return back to Froyo.

reemazz17

I registered just to reply to your message because it is exactly what is happening to me. The only way I can text or search for anything on the internet to use the talk to text feature. Neither 1 of my keyboard is functioning properly. The text messages lock up and then the entire apt force closes. Same thing happens when I try to use gmail. I type about 3 words in the whole thing locks up and force closes. My other apps are all force closing as well. The phone get extremely hot in the back. And my battery life sucks even juice defender can't help me. if this does not get resolved soon I'm finding another carrier. I switch from at&t to verizon but I might just have to switch back. My phone has become absolutely useless I wish I never downloaded this crap

reemazz17

Yessss why is it doing that? I would write more but my keyboard just froze up and forced closed on me

reemazz17

My screen does not respond to touch. Cant use either a keyboard on droid 2 both freeze up and force close. Can only use talk to text feature to type. Phone randomly shuts off can't connect to server message constantly popping up. All apps force closing and lagging.

vanessas_vzw

Good afternoon reemazz17.

Have you tried enabling Safe Mode on your Droid 2, and then disabling it? If not, please try this, and then a Hard Reset. Below I have provided you with links that have steps to do both of these options.

Safe Mode Droid 2

Hard Reset Droid 2

If this does not work, please send me a Private Message, and I will be happy to personally assist you.

Thank you,

Mel_121

After installing the new update my camera doesn't work as well and won't let me focus before taking the picture and my music app (that came installed on the phone) doesn't work. This is ridiculous. Don't you guys CHECk the systems before you send them out?? If anyone knows anything I can do so I can use my camera again and all its functions please let me know. I use it a lot.

musicismiremedi

Your not alone at all.

joaninha21

In all honesty these resets do nothing but fix it for a short a\mount of time. I bougth a smart phone so that I could save my music and my picuters on it. I paid over $200 for a phone that would work, not something I had to continuously reset. I want a real solution, not a temporary fix.

lalareads

Well folks, it's the end of January now and I don't know about the rest of you but I haven't seen any fixes for this update.

The problems I'm having most are a little different than what's posted here.

1. GPS not working properly - I use the Shopkick app and it always has trouble reading my location, saying it can't locate me and go outside or use Wifi. Neither options help. I may have to reload 10 times before it can "find" me and load the nearby stores. The same for Checkpoints - has trouble navigation-wise. And Navigator will crash repeatedly while I use it to drive somewhere. I have to keep restarting the app and reselecting the address.

2. Google Services Framework problem - I keep getting a message that this service stopped unexpectedly and has to force close. It refers to process com.google.process.gapps. I hit ok and the phone just continues whatever app I was in when I got the message. Sometimes it happens often. Don't know if it's part of the GPS problem.

3. Apps on SD card won't appear in my folders. I created folders on my main screen to organize my apps. If the app is on the SD card it will not appear in the folder, even though I was able to successfully drag and drop the app into the folder. I tested this by moving an app back and forth a few times, and I could only get the app to appear in the folder if it's in the phone. Note that I was able to set the folders up and use them for months this way, so it's not some Android limitation like with widgets.

4. Recently, my phone screen won't turn on when I complete a call and I have to slide out the keyboard in order to do anything.

Has anyone else had the navigation problem? I'm thinking about factory resetting my phone, but I'm dreading it.

C'mon Verizon, fix the problems you introduced!

serenityashley

I have experienced just about every problem I've seen reported anywhere about the Gingerbread update for months now. They sent me a new device, but, of course, they all come updated already, so it resolved NOTHING. I've hit the point now with my phone that every two to two and a half weeks now I've got to run the factory reset. Yes, you read correctly--EVERY two and a half weeks, at best.

I've spoken to Verizon several times about the issue, and while customer service has walked me through what they can on the phone, they've not been able to provide a solid resolution, as obvious from above. The past two or three times I've called I've gotten as far as it is an issue between the programmings on the phone, and that they're working to resolve it.

I'm going in today to see if I can't try to upgrade early. I asked them earlier if I could, and they said that they couldn't at this time, because I wasn't eligible; however, this is getting unbelievably ridiculous. While I can live without my data plan, I unfortunately can't go without a phone at this time, due to family emergencies and the like.

I'll let everyone know if I'm able to get anywhere with this or if I get any sort of new answers.

a2supercrew

Both my wife and I use our D2G's for email access at work, especially while on-call.

Since Gingerbread has broken CorporateSync, we have lost the most important function, and very reason we have Smart Phones.

I worked with our Exchange Administrator, and we determined the policy setting preventing our phones from sync'ing with Exchange.

The mailbox must be set so a password is not required. When the policy is enforced, the phone won't sync.

We are also experiencing a long list of other problems described in the above posts. Losing our email has the biggest impact. It is VERY frustrating! The phones are only a year old. They worked GREAT prior to this "UPGRADE". We have another year before we can replace these phones, and they are useless to us!

tee523

nope. you are definitely not alone. after the forced update I've had nothing but problems with my Droid 2 Global. I wish I knew all this before and had the choice to update or not

a2supercrew

They actually FORCED the upgrade on my wife's phone. She had been declining it every morning for months. Suddenly one morning, her screen was different looking, and email no longer worked.

We may try going into the Verizon Store to complain in person.................

tee523

Have you found out what the circle arrow is? I have that pop up and have no idea what it is or how to stop it

a2supercrew

Sorry, we've not seen a circle arrow pop up.................

Thinking about an iPhone..................

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