honestly im not liking this phone much

[oakasrtheshiz]

so this is my first smart phone, and first verizon phone. and for being a "smart phone" its seems rather dumb. for all the comercials about the iphone cant do this cant do that..etc..droid you cant send mass text messages. you cant send a message more than 160 character? seriously? you can't or atleast i havent figured out how to compose a message and then select some1 from contacts. cant view messages while on thee phone? DOESNT come with a manual.

 

[cereal killer]

Grab Handcent from the Market. It's free and will do all that for you.

Don't like to use the phrase "there's an app for that" but I said it : )

Good luck

 

[silverx10]

Honestly, it doesn't seem like the phone is the one with the issue in this relationship.

Definitely concur with cereal on this one.

 

[eliassami5]

All of Verizons phones are limited to 160 characters per txt, if you have more than that then it will split it up into multiple txts...live with it.

You CAN send mass txt, go into the messanger > new message > enter in your first contact by phone number or by entering the first few letters of their name, after done with the first contact then a comma will appear, enter in your second contact, then your third contact, and etc. After you are done entering in all of you contacts then go ahead and send the message. From now on that "group" will be saved in your messages threads so you can send more messages to the same people.

The manual can be found online.

 

[cereal killer]

Lets not have the thread go downhill folks. He's new and just needs some help. He could have used a little more tact but he didn't. So lets try and help him out

Thanks.

 

[Martin030908]

downside to open development with a less tech savvy crowd.... sooo many of these 'angry' droid owners don't realize simple apps are needed to create YOUR phone's functionality. (not blaming OP or anyone for that matter)

I agree there are some basic features that should be incorporated into the stock OS but most issues are simple fixes with an app. this is why i think this forum has grown so much.... it's not stuff the VZW rep is gonna be able to help with, it's the end users

 

[texasPI]

so this is my first smart phone, and first verizon phone. and for being a "smart phone" its seems rather dumb. for all the comercials about the iphone cant do this cant do that..etc..droid you cant send mass text messages. you cant send a message more than 160 character? seriously? you can't or atleast i havent figured out how to compose a message and then select some1 from contacts. cant view messages while on thee phone? DOESNT come with a manual.

Let's focus on the other factor of this equation shall we? You CAN search the internet. You CAN find the manual. etc.

Sometimes a "smartphone" is only as smart as its user. I'm really not trying to be down on you but rather encourage you to stick with it and learn it more in depth by searching here and other sources. You'd be surprised by how quickly you can find answers by searching with a question like, "can <whatever> do this or that?"

Believe me, I do it all the time, so I'm not a holier than thou type. Heck I do it in bed and something pops in my head I grab the Droid and do it.

 

[Martin030908]

<-- some of us get a little addicted to trouble shooting and searching :icon_eek:

 

[pilot25]

downside to open development with a less tech savvy crowd.... sooo many of these 'angry' droid owners don't realize simple apps are needed to create YOUR phone's functionality. (not blaming OP or anyone for that matter)

Pure example of great tech marketing. Somehow somewhere tech companies have brainwashed you that it's okay to not fully develop a product before it's ready. Oh yes, wait for an app that someone wrote to make the product better. "We the corporation don't want to spend profits on such nonsense when some user will do it for us. We'll just explain how tech related it is and "smart" end users will do all the work for us" More money for us and you feel tech savvy. yeah....."

 

[eliassami5]

downside to open development with a less tech savvy crowd.... sooo many of these 'angry' droid owners don't realize simple apps are needed to create YOUR phone's functionality. (not blaming OP or anyone for that matter)

Pure example of great tech marketing. Somehow somewhere tech companies have brainwashed you that it's okay to not fully develop a product before it's ready. Oh yes, wait for an app that someone wrote to make the product better. "We the corporation don't want to spend profits on such nonsense when some user will do it for us. We'll just explain how tech related it is and "smart" end users will do all the work for us" More money for us and you feel tech savvy. yeah....."

yea...thats why 60-70 percent of apps on the android market are free

Motorola built the phone with features that it thought its customers would use and need..obviously some people will want it to do more and more things. How do you expect a company like Motorola to cater to every single one of the people right out of the factory? Thats what apps are for.

And its been said before..most or all of the things he was complaining about can already be done by the stock OS, so im getting the feeling you didnt read the thread before posting.

 

[skourg3]

One reason for needing apps to add some of these functionalities that can't be done with the stock OS is also bloat.

If you look at the PC market, one of the major faults with Windows (especially Vista) is that it is too "bloated." This means that it comes with too many "features" that slow the PC down and are unnecessary to a large number of people. With Linux, you start off with a less-bloated system (although popular distros like Ubuntu are creeping up there) and add functionality afterwards (which takes much more learning/effort than doing it on Android, in general).

On a smartphone, with limited resources, bloat becomes even more of a problem. Adding a couple MB to the size or memory usage seems small, but it can quickly add up when you're only talking about 256MB total. Some people don't need certain functionalities, and if you do, it is easy to add with an app. Some people don't like this structure, but I would be very surprised if Google didn't have reasons for many of these decisions.

Another possibility is that Google planned to add some of these features and then apps did it first. If it's been done, someone else is supporting it, and it is offered for free, why go through and redo the work to have to support it yourself? Just sayin'.

 

[oakasrtheshiz]

not to be an as$ here or anything but 90% of these responses are completly useless. i didnt say i wanted an iphone, i said something about the marketing, i also said i just got verizon which doesnt have an iphone. so thanks for your absolutly useless input there edmvr6.

so when i type in a name into the compose it doesnt actually come up with a name it turns it in to a number and then does not put a comma for more users. i did get ez text which seems to work but now i have to go to that instead of messaging which is kind of inconvienent. as far as verizon breaking the txt well its not sending the 2nd half which is really irritating. obviously im here trying to find answers. im just saying that alot of things seem thus far to be fairly inconvienent. things a normal cell phone does i have to search for an app to do it. just not what i expected.

 

[Martin030908]

not to be an as$ here or anything but 90% of these responses are completly useless. i didnt say i wanted an iphone, i said something about the marketing, i also said i just got verizon which doesnt have an iphone. so thanks for your absolutly useless input there edmvr6.

so when i type in a name into the compose it doesnt actually come up with a name it turns it in to a number and then does not put a comma for more users. i did get ez text which seems to work but now i have to go to that instead of messaging which is kind of inconvienent. as far as verizon breaking the txt well its not sending the 2nd half which is really irritating. obviously im here trying to find answers. im just saying that alot of things seem thus far to be fairly inconvienent. things a normal cell phone does i have to search for an app to do it. just not what i expected.

give Handcent a shot... it replaces the stock messaging so you only have one app to go in to.... it automatically splits 160 characters to new texts... after it splits 3 it automatically converts to MMS. Handcent will also handle MMS, and when typing in contacts..... it does change to their number AFTER you've selected the contact (it is kind of annoying in case you wanna double check who you're sending it to real quick)... and it will put the comma after each entry...

it's not a normal cell phone... by any means... wasn't meant to be

 

[skourg3]

In no particular order:

For text apps: I recommend Handcent (though I've never used eztext). Simply replace the Messaging shortcut with the Handcent one, that problem is solved (or at least that's what I did).

For Verizon breaking the texts: After a certain size, the default text app sends it as an MMS instead I believe. If not, it just splits it up, in which case other verizon users will receive multiple texts, and non-verizon users will have varying results. I've had non-verizon users get combined texts and I've had them get only the first half. I *think* handcent splits them up automatically and sends them separately.

Texting multiple people: So, when I go into texts, and hit new message, and click in the To: box, I can start typing in a name. When I do, suggestions pop up underneath, I press the one I want, their name and number show up (ie John Doe <555-555-5555>, ). Click back in the box after the comma, it lets you type in more names, same process, repeat. Clunky, but the function works. If the comma doesn't show up for you, try typing one in yourself.

I hope this is a little more helpful.

 

[oakasrtheshiz]

reminds me of something else when i send a pic it says converting to mms charges apply. or something along those lines..