New User Problems, Questions

[hinky]

1) Keyboard

The narrow keyboard is too small for me but I'm doing well with the other two. Just took some practice. Body Glove case is cut out to give space at the top of keypad..

Thanks - Yes, I am cutting out the Body Glove. Solid case with good protection otherwise.

5) How can you backup the phone?

Astro(app) will back up apps to SD card. Otherwise, make sure sync in enabled to your Google account. I haven't figured out how to save icon and widgets positions (complete back up).[/QUOTE]
Yes, this is a major PITA.

Another HUGE miss I'm hoping will be dealt with - why can't I assign the buttons? That stupid worthless camera has a button that I keep hitting by accident and would be better served as an email or dialer button. Preposterous that it can't be reprogrammed from what I read.

One last bit - the only app I have is the CompanionLink software installed on the new Droid.

The process com.google.process.gapps has stopped unexpectedly. Please try again.

It's occurring far too often. I think it's the software above...

 

[hinky]

And in a thought... K9 makes switching to the Droid worthwhile, no matter what the PITA. The iPhone can't touch that client, multiple signatures, etc. Google or Moto should have paid off the author for its rights. It's a work of art, love it. Just need a way to quickly look and tag emails for mass deletion. Otherwise... love it.

 

[Lars]

To each his own...

I'm not normally the person to get fired up in an online forum, but I have seen more complaining in this thread than anything I have read over the past couple months. If you don't like it, go find something else that suits you better. Plenty of suggestions have been given to help you with your droid experience, and you continue to gripe about every problem you run into. Did you ever think that the droid is just not for you?

I personally love the droid, and so far any issues I have had have been quickly resolved with a couple hours of searching around and tinkering with the phone. I love that the phone is bare bones from the box and that I can download apps to customize the phone to my liking.

It is clear that you need all the bells and whistles out of the box, and that you aren't willing to take the time to make the phone meet your needs. I again suggest you quit complaining and go find a phone that suits you.

 

[R1Lover]

And in a thought... K9 makes switching to the Droid worthwhile, no matter what the PITA. The iPhone can't touch that client, multiple signatures, etc. Google or Moto should have paid off the author for its rights. It's a work of art, love it. Just need a way to quickly look and tag emails for mass deletion. Otherwise... love it.

K9 is based on the stock mail app and just has a few things added to it.

To each his own...

I'm not normally the person to get fired up in an online forum, but I have seen more complaining in this thread than anything I have read over the past couple months. If you don't like it, go find something else that suits you better. Plenty of suggestions have been given to help you with your droid experience, and you continue to gripe about every problem you run into. Did you ever think that the droid is just not for you?

I personally love the droid, and so far any issues I have had have been quickly resolved with a couple hours of searching around and tinkering with the phone. I love that the phone is bare bones from the box and that I can download apps to customize the phone to my liking.

It is clear that you need all the bells and whistles out of the box, and that you aren't willing to take the time to make the phone meet your needs. I again suggest you quit complaining and go find a phone that suits you.

I agree, the OP needs to go find another phone and leave the droid to people who like it. Enough already.

 

[jimnutt]

For gmail, you can have it pull down all the messages in your pop account. Then they'll be archived and searchable in gmail. Also look for the "Data Liberation Front" web page (I don't know the url off hand). It's a bunch of google people who have developed tools for archiving and backing up your data from google.

 

[TJM]

This thread is informative to say the least, but WOW :icon_eek: is about all I can say. It must be frustrating for him trying to customize his Droid the way he wants to. Hope he can work it out, and thanks for your patient replys.

 

[MuzzleBuster]

And in a thought... K9 makes switching to the Droid worthwhile, no matter what the PITA. The iPhone can't touch that client, multiple signatures, etc. Google or Moto should have paid off the author for its rights. It's a work of art, love it. Just need a way to quickly look and tag emails for mass deletion. Otherwise... love it.

Thanks for K9!
I didn't know about it.

Much much better.

 

[hinky]

To each his own...

I'm not normally the person to get fired up in an online forum, but I have seen more complaining in this thread than anything I have read over the past couple months. If you don't like it, go find something else that suits you better. Plenty of suggestions have been given to help you with your droid experience, and you continue to gripe about every problem you run into. Did you ever think that the droid is just not for you?

I LOVE IT!!! In every forum there is a guy who has nothing add except:

"I couldn't help myself but read this thread. I have nothing useful to add except that your thread is making me upset about how happy I am with my toy. Please go away!"

I personally love the droid, and so far any issues I have had have been quickly resolved with a couple hours of searching around and tinkering with the phone. I love that the phone is bare bones from the box and that I can download apps to customize the phone to my liking.

It is clear that you need all the bells and whistles out of the box, and that you aren't willing to take the time to make the phone meet your needs. I again suggest you quit complaining and go find a phone that suits you.

Perhaps you should sit back and learn that there's more to a phone than finding the right games.

Outlook sync is probably one of the most basic contact conduits provided in virtually every phone. It was HELL trying to find something that works and, right now, the only thing that MIGHT work will cost $50. You don't think I have a right to complain? Not just the cost, but having to go bananas looking all over the place just to find a way to get my CONTACTS into the phone?

Please... the Motorola Droid months out is an embarrassment out of the box. Apple is plug and play. HTC will teach Motorola a serious lesson in this, mark my words. If I had an HTC device (which DOES include Outlook sync and a manual and much more) I'd probably have hit the ground running much faster.

As it is, if you bothered to read the thread, I found many amazing apps and things that SHOULD have been included or at least considered. The basic offering sucks. Everything must be replaced. The fortunate thing is that others have created great replacements - even open source - and the challenge is finding them. Now after getting great help here, I'm much happier to say the least.

 

[hinky]

This thread is informative to say the least, but WOW :icon_eek: is about all I can say. It must be frustrating for him trying to customize his Droid the way he wants to. Hope he can work it out, and thanks for your patient replys.

Fortunately I got everything working incredibly well, FAR better than the iPhone I had which was irritating beyond belief. The beauty of open source...

As I mentioned to the prior poster, I think Motorola's package BLOWS. HTC is very good at getting you up and running. To think that I'll have to pay $50 just to get Outlook sync (which you have to search and find and nothing mentioned to you) is absurd. Something as drop dead simple as sync to and from outlook should not be a problem.

Email - K9 is awesome. Totally awesome. It has almost everything I could want and, most importantly... it works. Love it.

The other items are a little sketchy although there are replacements, e.g. launchers like Home++ and Pandahome, to deal with the awful OS handling of applications. Even the Palm OS of 10 years ago did a better job, where you could put your apps in categories and cycle through them easily.

There also needs to be much better help and a manual for the Droid that makes it easier. As I said, Motorola's packaging sucks, everything from the cheap box. I'm sorry they seriously skimped on RAM too but at least it's not terribly fatal. HTC will clean their clock shortly but hey, at least I got a Droid with a real keyboard and now it's set up much the way I like. It took a while but thanks so much to you guys, really.

 

[Lars]

To each his own...

I'm not normally the person to get fired up in an online forum, but I have seen more complaining in this thread than anything I have read over the past couple months. If you don't like it, go find something else that suits you better. Plenty of suggestions have been given to help you with your droid experience, and you continue to gripe about every problem you run into. Did you ever think that the droid is just not for you?

I LOVE IT!!! In every forum there is a guy who has nothing add except:

"I couldn't help myself but read this thread. I have nothing useful to add except that your thread is making me upset about how happy I am with my toy. Please go away!"

I personally love the droid, and so far any issues I have had have been quickly resolved with a couple hours of searching around and tinkering with the phone. I love that the phone is bare bones from the box and that I can download apps to customize the phone to my liking.

It is clear that you need all the bells and whistles out of the box, and that you aren't willing to take the time to make the phone meet your needs. I again suggest you quit complaining and go find a phone that suits you.

Perhaps you should sit back and learn that there's more to a phone than finding the right games.

Outlook sync is probably one of the most basic contact conduits provided in virtually every phone. It was HELL trying to find something that works and, right now, the only thing that MIGHT work will cost $50. You don't think I have a right to complain? Not just the cost, but having to go bananas looking all over the place just to find a way to get my CONTACTS into the phone?

Please... the Motorola Droid months out is an embarrassment out of the box. Apple is plug and play. HTC will teach Motorola a serious lesson in this, mark my words. If I had an HTC device (which DOES include Outlook sync and a manual and much more) I'd probably have hit the ground running much faster.

As it is, if you bothered to read the thread, I found many amazing apps and things that SHOULD have been included or at least considered. The basic offering sucks. Everything must be replaced. The fortunate thing is that others have created great replacements - even open source - and the challenge is finding them. Now after getting great help here, I'm much happier to say the least.

I will gladly be that "guy" when it comes to your approach in this thread, although that was not my intention. You began your second post by talking about how "sorry" this device is. I am seriously asking, if you are so upset that the droid does not offer you everything you need, then why not switch it for something that suits you? Many great suggestions have been made on what you can do to make this phone work for you, but apparently nothing quite meets your idea of a quality device. Perhaps an HTC...you have spoken very highly about their products throughout this entire thread.

I'm sorry you didn't find my post useful, but I am simply looking at the big picture.

 

[hinky]

I will gladly be that "guy" when it comes to your approach in this thread, although that was not my intention. You began your second post by talking about how "sorry" this device is. I am seriously asking, if you are so upset that the droid does not offer you everything you need, then why not switch it for something that suits you? Many great suggestions have been made on what you can do to make this phone work for you, but apparently nothing quite meets your idea of a quality device. Perhaps an HTC...you have spoken very highly about their products throughout this entire thread.

I'm sorry you didn't find my post useful, but I am simply looking at the big picture.

What's the big picture? Go away, you aren't happy? Thanks for the intuitive observation. If you read the thread, it's clear I had to overcome the limitations of Moto's product to get it up to par.

1 - I need the hardware keyboard and no Android device will be on Verizon (I have a contract) for a long while. Virtual doesn't cut it for power emailers, IMHO, or at least not for me.

2 - What in the world are you talking about that "nothing" makes the phone work for me? Did you even bother reading this thread?

3 - The fact is that Moto has released hardware that doesn't showcase Android very well. It takes someone with technology savvy and patience, such as myself, to get it to where it should be. Thanks to others here, as I said, out of the box the Droid sucks. But once you can be educated on how to improve it, it's very useful.