Razr, ICS, and me...

[angryquaker]

Greetings, Earthlings. I am a frequent reader here, very infrequent poster. In fact, I think this is my second or third post, ever. My wife and I upgraded (?) from OG Droids to Razrs back at the Valentine's Day promotion, buy one get one. Good deal. I was giddy as a school girl with excitement, less so at this point. My beloved OG Droid was always solid as a rock; rooted, ROM'd, and quite customized to my liking, never had any real problems I couldn't solve by reading. My Razr seemed to be quite excellent on GB. I rooted, but didn't feel the need for any custom ROM or significant "in-depth" modifications. Hers started having issues with the speaker and heating up in May, right around day 92 or so. She's now on her third CLN replacement for similar issues, and I've just received my first CLN device. My original Razr was smoothly and easily wiped, unrooted, and restored to factory condition thanks to the excellent "DroidRAZRUtility" program found here, it is boxed up and ready to return. At any rate, my initial Razr kinda freaked out starting just after installing ICS. There was some intermittent heating, battery draining about 1% per minute for no good reason, and whether it's related to the speaker or 3rd party SMS programs and tones, my custom ringtones and notifications began to play at very low volume, or revert themselves to silence or "stock" tones. When plugged in to the computer with the USB cable (the way I've charged ever since I can remember, but likely changing now), my custom ringtones don't work at all. Most irksome. Making and using my own MP3 tones wasn't a problem on my OG Droid, and the Razr seemed to be fine with them on GB (rooted or not) as well, not so much now with ICS. I'd been using Handcent for a couple years, so I installed GO SMS to see if Handcent is at fault, and I experience the same very low volume notifications with GO SMS. The SD card doesn't seem to function quite the same with ICS, so I've removed, backed up, reformatted and generally fiddled with that a few times. I'm not sure if this is all just culture shock from GB to ICS. I rather hope it is, and that I'll eventually learn ICS (or the .215 update will solve at least some issues). Honestly, we're considering trying a different phone altogether, since we've both had such vexation with the Razrs. I was so very fond of my OG Droid, and I had the absolute highest of hopes for the Razr, but I must admit I'm somewhat disillusioned at this juncture. So here I am. Before I go all Samsung or HTC, I thought I'd open it up to the forum here, and perhaps get some assistance from y'all. I look forward to hearing your suggestions, as Verizon's tech support does not seem to be very well-versed on the Razr, even one of them who said he uses it himself. Has anyone else experienced similar unexpected behavior with "home brewed" ringtones and such?

 

[bwass]

I have been having problems to, not with ringtones (i use stock ones), but extreme battery drainage and crashing constantley still love my razr but im afraid i might get fed up if this keeps up

 

[bwass]

I have been having problems to, not with ringtones (i use stock ones), but extreme battery drainage and crashing constantley still love my razr but im afraid i might get fed up if this keeps up

 

[electricman58]

I would tell them you would be willing to "Downgrade" but really its un upgrade to the BIONIC on GB,
if they can get you the refurbished ones, since they no longer have new! Then ROOT them and disable the update file
so it will stay on GB! The Bionic is almost the same phone as the Razr, so you will be more than happy with the exchange
if you want to stay the Motorola way!!! I have the Bionic, Best phone i've ever had!!!dancedroid

 

[TisMyDroid]

Greetings fellow earthling! Hmmm, let me see if I can help. Without a doubt, Razr is a very different beast than the og droid but I know my og would never be able to do what my Razr can. But it was much simpler to figure out. Let me see if I can tackle your experiences or most of them one by one.

• Speaker has been a problem on some Razr's... those may actually be(and most likely are) hardware issues.
• Heating up- There were problems on GB where if you had a poor 4g signal the phone spent time switching back and forth and tryinfg to stay connected to 4g that it would heat up. People would place it on 3g only mode and only use 4g when they needed or had a good signal. This seems to have been solved on ICS. BUT you will have to put your phone on LTE/CDMA network mode (because ICS has it on global mode by default). There are still other things that can cause ICS to heat up and use lots of battery: Having wifi on when there is no wifi available or having 3g/4g data on when there is very weak data available (not very common unless you are out in the boonies with no towers).
• Ringtones and notification tones can be changed in settings and can be optimized even more using an app such as Volume + or Audio Manager.
• Custom ringtones and notification tones do not play while plugged into pic because they are stored on the sd cards and not accessible to your phone under mass storage. The custom tones either have to be moved to the internal phone storage to work while on pc in mass storage mode or I believe, but not 100% certain, they will work if you are connected to pc as a media device.

Hope this helps. Believe me, many of us are still getting accustomed to the culture shock of ICS but once you get to know it, it works pretty well.

 

[94lt1]

Welcome aboard

 

[SallyC]

Another thing to remember with custom ringtones, is to store them on your internal memory. If they are stored on your external SD card they may revert back. There's more info about how to do that here.

 

[angryquaker]

Thank you for the responses, TisMyDroid and electricman58. I shall take the suggestion regarding the Bionic under advisement, we'd considered going with that model to begin with. I'm not sure if it is relevant, but in my initial post, I failed to mention that my wife has not installed ICS; she remains on GB. In reverse order, Tis:

• I moved my custom tones to internal storage this morning by simple drag-n-drop using my computer, to the obvious folders in the phone's internal file system. I'd read at some point that you must have root access in order for them to be placed in the correct locations, and I have yet to root this CLN phone. The tones do show up now in the same lists as "stock" tones, but as of this morning were still not functioning at full volume when connected as a media device, or mass storage. I'll continue testing this as I can. *Note that two (2) representatives at Verizon reported that this is not normal behavior, that media files should be accessible through the phone's interface when connected via USB.*
• The separate settings for overall volume and various tones and alarms were unknown to me until I read about them here. With all settings at maximum, I continue to be subject to barely audible tones. Stock tones seem to function normally. I'm aware of Volume+ and similar, but had hoped to avoid using such if it could be avoided. It is curious that the tones would have worked normally on the GB OS, I suppose it could be related to ICS.
• I set my phone to LTE/CDMA after reading about it here (from one of your posts, if I'm not mistaken). I've not done so on the wife's, but will do so upon her return. I will report whether she continues to be beset by heating.
• I had also read that the speaker on these phones leaves much to be desired, which is most unfortunate. I remain hopeful that some acceptable level of service may be achieved, but I don't know that I'm interested in having a phone that just plain sounds bad by design. Again, mine generally seemed fine on GB. I tried to take a call today on speaker phone (which is my typical preference), and had to switch it off, as I was unable to bear the sound quality.

Thanks to you, too, Sally.

 

[SallyC]

Last edited by angryquaker; Today at 06:59 PM. Reason: Just to thank Sally

Awww, that's so sweet. Thank you.

 

[TisMyDroid]

It is a little relevant that your wife is still on GB because as you have noticed, some things do work differently on GB than they do on ICS (yes, I know... that probably sounds like the understatement of the year for you right now, lol). Her GB does not have global network. That comes with ICS, which is actually an added bonus for ICS if you ever travel outside the country... because you are actually able to use a foriegn sim card on your Razr now.

If you are in a very weak 4g area, it is best to keep the phone on 3g only mode. Again, getting there is different in GB than it is for ICS. My experience has been that ICS handles the 4g/3g mode quite well (and I live in an area where there is no 4g) and have not had to put my phone on 3g only mode. It can be done on ICS but it involves installing the LTE on/OFF app. For your wife though on GB, she can go into her data settings and enable 3g only mode from there if she needs to.

SallyC has an excellent post on saving custom tones in the link in her post above yours. She knows her stuff and is definitely worth a look. If I had it saved to my favorites (I do now) I would have included it in my post.... very helpful inofrmation.

I have not had problems with my speaker (knock on wood) and I use mine often when on calls but I do find I need the boost from the other apps I mentioned for my alarms.

You also mentioned the .215 leak. I do have that installed on my Razr and it works well. I was not having problems with the original .211 ICS so I do not notice much improvement from .211 but most everyone else who installed .215 has noticed a huge improvement and love it. It might be worth looking into doing.

 

[TisMyDroid]

Awww, that's so sweet. Thank you.

Oh my, yes it is!:biggrin:

 

[angryquaker]

I'm back to report. It seems the speaker *volume* issue may be related to Handcent. I installed GO SMS. It's OK, I'm sure it's a fine app once I get used to it and get it tweaked in (I was on Handcent from about 2008, so pretty used to it). My custom tones play at (or very near) full volume on GO SMS, but the speaker continues to sound as though it's struggling. There is distortion which was not present on GB. If I was still using my original Razr, I'd suspect that the speaker could have failed over time, but this damnable CLN replacement should be good, right? The problem started on my first Razr when I installed the ICS update, so I'm suspecting ICS. It doesn't mean I'm necessarily right, but it's my inclination. I had planned on having a chat with someone from Motorola's tech team this evening, but alas, they are located in the UK, and only available 9am to 4pm their time, which severely limits the window of opportunity for me to get in touch. In other news, the purple "candy coating" is starting to flake off my wife's purple Razr, and she's about as mad as a one-legged waitress working at the IHOP. My haptic feedback is also wonky when I'm writing a text. I get the feedback on the first several characters, and then it just stops. And, although I may be alone in this, I rather miss auto-correct, as I have large fingers. I just tried to call my voicemail to check the speaker phone on a whim, and discovered that I cannot make nor receive calls for no apparent reason. Texts and internet are fine. It just keeps getting better and better. :dry: Edit: the inability to place or receive calls was related to a setting apparently to do with the LTE ON/OFF app. *sigh*

 

[bwass]

And, although I may be alone in this, I rather miss auto-correct, as I have large fingers.

You can manual turn auto correct on in the settings for the keyboard

 

[angryquaker]

Another update with some information which may be of use to others, and some venting. I found the auto-correct setting shortly after posting about it. Felt like a bonehead. Anyhoo, Motorola does have US-based support. For some reason, when I went to their website it thought I was in Great Britain. There's a very small icon in the lower right-hand corner of their site to change your location, easy to miss if you're not looking for it. I changed it to USA, and voila. Chatted with their tech support (available 9am to 8pm CST), who recommended sending our phones in for repair. It's free of charge, but usually takes 5-7 business days plus transit time to/from wherever their repair center is located. He also suggested that Verizon may provide a "loaner" phone while yours in "in the shop." I'm still not sure how we're going to proceed from here. It is quite discouraging to receive CLN replacement phones after paying for full coverage insurance, and being well within warranty, only to have said CLN devices also exhibit unexpected behavior. It is discouraging to have the manufacturer suggest sending in said CLN replacement devices for repair. Logic would dictate that the replacement devices have been to the repair facility already. Wouldn't one think that's where they're restored to "Like-New" condition? I've had this one less than a week. I understand that the majority of Razr users don't have issues, but it is frustrating that we've had issues with five (5) Razrs at this point. I rather enjoy tweaking and customizing, but I grow weary of Factory Data Resets, and it seems completely counter-intuitive that the manufacturer would suggest I should need to do so on a device which they've supposedly restored to like-new condition. I'm off work today, so I may try starting back at square one, I may also try the leaked .215 update. I just don't know at this point.

 

[TisMyDroid]

Angryquacker, that is extremely frustrating. It's hard to know what your best option is, sending it in for repair or just having Verizon send you another replacement. There are stories of many getting several replacements and finally getting one that is perfect. On the other hand, there is the possibility that motorola will fix it better than a replacement. I am not sure what their track record is on repair but someone may chime in on their experience. I'll keep my fingers crossed for you.

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