Droid 2 Gingerbread 2.3.3 Update SUCKS

[Issues4Droid2]

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?

[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....

[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.

[musicismiremedi]

Your not alone at all.

[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

[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.

[jbtinthegop]

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

[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.

[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.

[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!

[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.

[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

[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.