Annoyed with my Droid.....

[1stdroid]

I picked up my droid at 7:30 AM EST on 11-6-09. I'm quite sure I was the first in SW Michigan to get the phone. After some trouble early on, and a couple of phone exchanges, things have stabilized, sort of.

Aside from the other features that simply do not function as advertised, yesterday, I was trying to work in the yard and listen to music. The player pauses at random after maybe 1/2 a song to 1-1/2 songs. I killed all apps via Advanced App Killer and then cycled the power. Same crap.

I thought just maybe the headphone jack connection was intermittent and causing the pause similar to my ipod. Nope. While listening, I deliberately wiggled the jack around to try and make it pause and cannot.

I don't know how many others feel this way but, this phone is just not ready for prime time. I'm a VP of R&D. We develop electronic devices, etc. This phone smacks of a design that was released too early. It needed more time in the hardware/firmware debug stage.

Anybody know how to make the music player work?

[warrior21]

I know my phone is definitely ready for prime time so I would say it's just your phone. Maybe you can list some of the other problems or features you are having trouble with so we can help you out with them. As for the advanced task killer, it tends to cause more problems than it solves and there really isn't a need to have one on the phone so you should reconsider having it.

[hookbill]

I picked up my droid at 7:30 AM EST on 11-6-09. I'm quite sure I was the first in SW Michigan to get the phone. After some trouble early on, and a couple of phone exchanges, things have stabilized, sort of.

Aside from the other features that simply do not function as advertised, yesterday, I was trying to work in the yard and listen to music. The player pauses at random after maybe 1/2 a song to 1-1/2 songs. I killed all apps via Advanced App Killer and then cycled the power. Same crap.

I thought just maybe the headphone jack connection was intermittent and causing the pause similar to my ipod. Nope. While listening, I deliberately wiggled the jack around to try and make it pause and cannot.

I don't know how many others feel this way but, this phone is just not ready for prime time. I'm a VP of R&D. We develop electronic devices, etc. This phone smacks of a design that was released too early. It needed more time in the hardware/firmware debug stage.

Anybody know how to make the music player work?

I really think you need to do a bit more reading in this forum for saying the phone is not ready for prime time. Have you tried other smart phones to compare it with? I'm willing to bet you haven't because if you did you'd realize that it's the best smart phone out there.

I have a theory that anybody who purchases a Droid should own a Blackberry Storm first. After you own one of those, you really appreciate how good the Droid is.

Doesn't make it perfect it's a known problem about the music issue. I've seen lots of people talk about it, I'm sorry I don't know of a fix but search around a bit and see if you can't find one.

[toddegreene]

I got my Droid the same time you got yours, and had the same music player problem. The native music app is definitely lacking. Try TuneWiki or 3Cube (I got this with a ROM and am not sure where it's available). Once I switched to a third party app, the problem went away. Other than the native apps being rather basic (most have been replaced by third party apps), my Droid has been all that I expected.

[Cornholieo]

Not sure what you want it to do, but for myself, I have been totally happy with my purchase. I purchased the Moto Droid on release day and cut my contract short with AT&T (iPhone 3G) and even before rooting the phone have never looked back and wondered why I did it.

It took me a while to take the plunge into rooting my phone, because I was scared I would brick my phone and piss my wife off. I didn't and since then the phone became more amazing than it already was. It even makes my wife who has a iPhone 3GS look at it with envy.

Even if you choose not to root your phone do this... Get a Google Voice account (you will find people on this forum giving them out about once a week), put Google Voice on your phone and use the Google Voice number as your primary number. Get rid of Text Messaging with Verizon and do all your texting through the Google Voice application. This gives you free texting and even if you never become happy with your purchase, you will at least be happy with the money your save.

[cplus]

My Pandora and music player used to do exactly that but ONLY on Jrummy's remix which I have never tried again because I like my phone to work right.

Oh, and my phone is PRIME TIME READY thanks to P's BB. But I still liked the phone when it was stock until I learned it could be so much better...

[takeshi]

I don't know how many others feel this way but, this phone is just not ready for prime time.

I don't but I don't have the problem that you're experiencing (and I don't use app/task killers, FWIW). It's interesting that you assume your experiences with the Droid are conclusively indicative of how the other million+ Droids operate as well...

Every device I've worked with can have problems. Every manufacturer makes lemons.

Have you looked into other music apps to see if they exhibit the same behavior?

[Explosivpotato]

Some of the stock apps are a little lacking, yes, but there are plenty of replacement options, both free and paid, in the market. Don't like how the music player works? Get a new one. Just like a regular computer. Don't like how windows media player works? (who does?) Download another music player and use that.

My droid is ridiculously fast and stable now on Bugless Beast 1.0, running at a solid 1.2 GHz. My keyboard has worn in and bubbled nicely, and I couldn't be happier. I think that android requires you to not be afraid to mess with it to get the best user experience. Wether that be rooting or just downloading another music player, you gotta customize it to get the full experience.

Sent from my Droid using Tapatalk

[1stdroid]

Thanks to all that offered constructive advice. To those of you that just want to talk about how great a device is relative to another, I just don't see that. To say a jammed finger feels good when compared to a broken leg is just goofy. Sorry.

I'm simply saying that with reasonable expectations out of the gate, I didn't give up on the phone even after 2 had to go back. 1st problem was the 1st day. The speaker in the handset was defective and sound quality was barely functional. The next phone went back after a couple of weeks after much reading about how to resolve the random power down issue. I truly believe that is hardware infancy problem. Again, I didn't give up. I bought my son the same phone the same morning. He has not had those issues but, has had a couple of others.

We have read much on this forum and others trying to get things right. I have sacrificed frequently used features such as voice dialing. It doesn't even pass the laugh test on this device. If you say, "call Jason" the phone either doesn't recognize it or thinks I said Denise. Now, I speak very clearly and also understand the nuances of voice operated devices. I have others, including my vehicle. My previous motorola phone worked almost flawlessly in this regard.

So, while I wasn't trying to offend anyone with my opinion, I think those of you making assumptions about what I have or haven't read, tried, or whatever, should consider trying to keep an open mind. To you, buying a device with advertised features that simply do not work may be OK and you may actually enjoy researching and rooting and resolving these issues but, there are those of us who expect the resident apps to actually work. Then, if we we want enhancement, the research, etc., is fine and expected.

There are features of my droid, and from what I read, many others, that simply do not work or, do not work well. I have lost all the pictures on the phone. I have had every text message simultaneously erased. And, if I thought about it, there are more. These are not unique problems to me or my phone. At least, not according to other forum members.

So, I'll close again with a thanks to those confirming this is another known problem and that potentially, a third party app will help. I really like this aspect of the phone and have used the stock music player since the first week I owned it. Only last night while trimming shrubs did it start to just randomly pause. I tried everything short of yanking the battery to try and reset it.

As I said, and this is only my opinion, the phone is simply not ready to perform reliably in the initial relase hardware and latest Verizon firmware.

Believe me, I wish it was. I want these features to work.

[itzkr0me]

Are you on 2.1? Wasn't a new player released with 2.1? Sorry to hear about these issues, my incredible (and my droid before it) are/were flawless with regards to music playback.