Motorola Droid 4G Disappointing (understatement)

[boohoo]

My first data plan.  Expected great things from the advertisements.  Have all of the problems now seeing in this forum from having to take out the battery to reset the phone to get it out of sleep mode, to 3G performance when I have a connection, to not being able to connect to my wireless network even when I am sitting right next to my router.  To boot, the OS update made things worse.  And I bought a new phone and Verizon will only offer to replace with a refurbished....not a happy time.  If I want it fixed, have to send back to Motorola but not sure they will be able to improve the situation if these problems are still common to all users and sw related vs hw.    boo-hoo  Guess I should have gotten an Apple.

[Joey301]

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boohoo wrote:

My first data plan.  Expected great things from the advertisements.  Have all of the problems now seeing in this forum from having to take out the battery to reset the phone to get it out of sleep mode, to 3G performance when I have a connection, to not being able to connect to my wireless network even when I am sitting right next to my router.  To boot, the OS update made things worse.  And I bought a new phone and Verizon will only offer to replace with a refurbished....not a happy time.  If I want it fixed, have to send back to Motorola but not sure they will be able to improve the situation if these problems are still common to all users and sw related vs hw.    boo-hoo  Guess I should have gotten an Apple.

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What can we do? I have tried everything that I can think of. After reading the results of the upgrade in the varous forums, I am not going to pursue the OTA. The phone is not offering me the OTA, and I will not try to do it manually.

What is almost as disturbing is how the hype continues. The latest version of Consumer Reports lists the Bionic as Verizon's best phone. This from a group that is supposed to be attentive to consumers. I don't think they even tried this phone.

For the most part, the companies involved, Verizon, Motorola, and Google tend to present this issue as just a little noise from whiners. What I see is that so much of the technology on sale at the moment is more hype than substance. The FCC needs to get involved, but they will not. Our complaint needs to be more public...Facebook, Cnet, Twitter...because complaining on the forums does nothing.

 I agree about the Apple

Joey

[reallyniceguy]

I think the majority of people are not having problems. The reason we hear so many complaints is because people will complain when there is something wrong which imo I think its good to complain. That way the manufacturers are aware of this. This phone is based of the motorola atrix on att. I would continue contacting motorola and verizon to get then to report this to the manufacturer. Mines works fine and I would not swap it for the razor for many reasons. I am pleased and Im going to buy the moto active on income tax time.

[jroal]

If you think the user experience with apple is better, think again.  Actually apps on IOS crash far more often than they do on Android (around 4x worse in some cases).  I guess with apple you don't need to worry about 4G because it is not an option.  There are many other things about apply that are not an option.  Also, only about 1/3 of the apple apps are free whereas 2/3 of the Android apps are free.  If you buy into the apple ecosystem, you are married to apple for everything.  Apple makes all their money by overcharging its customers and making them use all apple stuff forever.  Forget options, you are now married to apple.

I have 3 Bionics in the family.  I also have Droid 1, Droid 2, Droid 3 and Xoom WiFi.  Android keeps getting better and better.  The Xoom has ICS.  I also had the complaint on Bionic about the 3G not connecting.  That seems better with the updates actually (contrary to the posts here).  Sometimes when that happens you can enter airplane mode and then exit it again.  This can be done by holding the power button until the menu pops up (same thing you do to shut down).  When you exit airplane mode it re-initializes all the radios and reestablished a connection.  If that does not work a reboot usually does.  I have found more recently that the issue has pretty much gone away.  Also, this was an issue with all the 4G devices, not just Bionic.  Some were worse than others. 

[Pinzgauer]

Don't know guys. Mine works great now. I get speeds of up to 12 Megs on 4G. Processor is insanely fast.
I wouldn't trade mine.
Thanks ....

[bearone21]

what happens if you don't enter sleep mode, everything better?

[LOUcifer]

I'm in the Tampa market and I've NEVER gotten anything faster than 5-6Mbs except for one time at 2am I got a 9 and change

[detroitjames]

Oh My God!!! ONLY 6 mbps???? on your PHONE???? Good luck finding any other service provider that would even sniff 6 mbps.

[brownstone706]

Maybe if you got a life it would magically start working.

[gadgetfreak]

WHEN it works, I absolutely love this phone! But I stress WHEN....

I never had many 4g problems before the OTA update. After the update, I am having frequent problems of losing 4g, not transferring to 3g, and missing texts and phone calls. Some of these issues are nationwide Verizon issues, as someone I work with has a Thunderbolt and he looses 4g as well. I have a Droid X as a work phone and most of the time when I lose data completely, the Droid X is still getting 3g. Even if I switch the Bionic to 3g only, it still doesn't work (Unless I already have a 4g signal).

Before the update, I could be connected to two simultaneous Bluetooth connections (Torque OBDII with Elm327 and stream music to my car radio). After the update I can't do that anymore.

[jroal]

I got up to 24Mbps down and 18Mbps up.  That rivals a good cable modem.  To get that on mobile is awesome!  3G may give 1.5Mbps on a good day. 

Yeah, there have been a few glitches with 4G.  Also the transfer from network to network can be less than seamless at times.  Make sure you don't have a bunch of data intensive background processes running.  This can block the transfer to another link.  Don't use backup assistant.  Disable it by not entering a pin to set up sync.  Make sure other services are not hitting the network too often (like email sync frequency).  If you still can't connect to certain network types, cycle airplane mode.  Hold down the power button until the menu pops up.  If that does not fix it, a reboot usually does.  If you want a 3G or 4G connection, turn OFF WiFi before rebooting.

[ts47]

You can't complain until after you install the latest update (.902).  It was released 3 days ago.  Go to settings>about phone>system updates to install.  I was part of the soak test before the update was released.  Virtually everything about the phone is greatly improved.  Motorola did a really great job with this one.  The Bionic now performs the way we all wish it had since the beginning.

If after you install the update your phone is problematic, your options are to:

1. Do an extended battery pull - for a minute or more.  If that doesn't work,

2. Do a full reset of your phone.  You will need to reinstall your apps afterwards.  If that doesn't work,

3. Have Verizon send a replacement.

The vast majority of owners are loving the new update and have few if any problems after the update.

jroal above is correct.  There have been two studies recently that found Android has surpassed Apple's IOS in stability - fewer app crashes. 

Message was edited by: ts47

[eraser310]

I got 30 Mbps down and 16 Mbps up in the Cincinnati area. Normal speeds are between 12 Mbps and 20 Mbps.