As many Verizon Bionic users have experienced, the .905 update has caused some major problems with connectivity to 4G and WIFI. The past week I have been agonizing over this, as my GFs Bionic has not experienced any of the issues I have been with my Bionic phone:
After reading on other forums, and here at Verizon regarding the .905 update issues customers are reporting, I decided to run a few side-by-side tests of each of our Bionic phones. Low and behold, my GFs Bionic would get great reception to our WIFI router, 4G, and surf normally...JUST LIKE MINE DID UNTIL RESCENTLY.
I tested both phones side-by-side in the same locations throughout our apartment in San Francisco, with results that I could reproduce over and over(at least 10 tests, including reboot of my phone.
Her phone is still running the .902 version, and mine the .905. It seems aparent that the .905 update has caused the issues that everyone is experiencing. I am unsure why her Boinic has not updated to .905 yet, but the performance of the .902 Bionic phone is overwhelmingly superior to my phone, the .905.
The .902 Boinic phone would connect, full bars WIFI from over 20ft away from our 802.11BGN router, while the .905 phone would only get full bars when less then 2ft from the router. I tested this at a local coffeeshop we frequent as well this afternoon, with the same results. The .905 Bionic phone would not connect successfully to standard web pages, Facebook, or other social networks with browsers, or the apps. Load times were in exccess of 5+ minutes, if it connected at all. Again, NO PROBLEMS were experienced with the .902 Bionic phone.
In addition, the .905 phone was unable to create a Yahoo account from the Accounts menu, throwing a "Unable to create account, please try again later." error after factory resetting. The .902 phone continues to load Yahoo contacts, and accounts with no issues.
Verizon support really needs to listen to their Bionic customers, and at least, offer a flash update to uninstall the .905 update, and re-flash back to .902. Without this fix, customers may be forced to pay a $100-$299 warranty replacement or insurance replacement fee to obtain a refurbished Droid Razr or other phone that has not been discontinued(if your lucky, and not sent another .905 Bionic). And yes, you read that correctly, Verizon employees at 2 locations have informed me that the Bionic is no longer supported, as the phone is no longer sold in new condition, and the contract with Motorola for this model has been cancelled.
Whether these statements are true, your guess is as good as mine, but one thing rings true from testing:
Please, please can Verizon offer us a Verizon supported flash utility to get us back to functional, running, and happily surfing Verizon Bionic .902 customers?
It's the obvious band-aid we need!
*I have over 10 years experience in software and hardware Quality Assurance Engineering.
This is good work.
Personally, rather than confront the useless Verizon bureaucracy or hack my phone back to .902 I'm just going to wait and see if ICS solves all of this. (As has been mentioned elsewhere.)
I am confused and disappointed that the Bionic is being sunset so fast. They should at least expedite our discounted upgrade when they pull stuff like this.
Start a new topic or ask questions in the open forum.
