a questions re: answering calls

[boatman2220]

When you unlock the phone be sure it vibrates before sliding it.

 

[Nedaroth]

This drives me nuts. You complain about the safety hazard and yet you talk on your phone while driving which is a KNOWN safety hazard.

The only thing my Droid gets used for while driving is navigation. Everything else can wait and if it cannot, I will pull over.

I agree 100% but outside of using it in a car it is a pain in the ass to need to use the slider to answer a call and there is no good reason for it.

Sometime the thing won't swipe and you loose your call, i feel down the road they will see this and finaly rethink it.

 

[bigjohn]

just drove across the US, NY to Cali, so I had plenty of time to mess with the droid as a multifunction device over 5 days in the car. And yes, doing anything with your phone while driving is less safe than ignoring it. That said, this trip would have been more difficult and less fun without the droid.

- navigation was extremely helpful when trying to stay on a particular freeway while navigating around a strange city. Most of the time though it was more like, turn left, drive 600 miles.
- only time I lost navigation/gps was in part of Nevada (took i50, so absolutely nothing out there but frozen ice and desert). Overall impressed with network coverage for 3g.
- spent quite a bit of time in the snow/fog/ice in unfamiliar territory. Being able to see where the road was going to turn in advance was really useful.
- making calls sucks and I don't think it's safe, needs to be fixed but has been covered to death.
- receiving calls, np with a BT headset.
- music was on shuffle or pandora, so again, no touchy touchy needed.
- found that any indicator light (email, txt, missed call) was really irritating. 10 minutes, np, 12 hours, water torture. Obviously this can be turned off. I just turned off sync.
- even at dimmest setting screen is too bright at night, so i tended to turn off unless absolutely necessary.
- Latitude was regularly just wrong. Find it curious that various apps using GPS give different results.
Side NOTE: California law requires gps attached to a windshield to be within 5" of the left or 7" of the right side. I put my droid on the left to get used to it. This has to be the least safe place to stick something you plan on referring to while driving (other than your lap or the ceiling). Looking to the left and down pulls your eyes significantly off trajectory, while looking center and down is relatively benign.

Just for giggles, here's what i50 looks like in winter, and for most of this i had gps. kids, don't take photo's with your droid when your doing 60 on ice unless your a trained professional.

 

[Steve H]

For me the solution was simple. Forward my calls from my cell to my On-Star system.

 

[LordKastle]

Don't worry when Droids begin to navigate and drive cars automatically we will not have to worry...until then stop worrying about the "dangers."

Changing the volume or station can distract you just as much even if its on the steering wheel. What's next...are we going to say we should have automatic respirators hooked up to our bodies just incase we take a deep breath and get distracted on the road..

I do understand wanting an aspect of the phone that can automatically answer the phone with a press of the button to bypass the unlocking aspect, but I'm speaking in general not because of the danger in the car.

 

[Tuktanuk]

This drives me nuts. You complain about the safety hazard and yet you talk on your phone while driving which is a KNOWN safety hazard.

The only thing my Droid gets used for while driving is navigation. Everything else can wait and if it cannot, I will pull over.

Agree 100% If the call coming in is that important; pull over and take it. Every single time I get stuck behind some person who is driving terribly; it's because they are texting or dialing or talking on the phone. 30 years ago; people just drove and called when they got somewhere.

 

[MWNS]

Answering calls sucks

I'm not driving, I'm not tending to little children, I'm not operating subway trains, I'm not working with sharp tools.... I'm sitting in my damn couch and I STILL can't answer the damn phone because of some kind of "bug" that won't let the slide bar go completly to the right! Unlocking it "without a call coming in" works just fine but for some reason I loose calls trying to get the damn thing to slide over. Very frustrating!! FIX IT!!

 

[reggin]

Maybe you have been sitting on the couch too long and have potato chips or chicken grease on your finger...hahaha...

 

[MWNS]

Is there a Droid Dr. in the house??

Funny Reggin... and I can joke with the best of them but so far this thread has many people with the same problem but no one has answered their question.

"Why does it take multiple attempts to unlock the phone when a call is coming in?"

It doesn't take multiple attempts when a call is NOT coming in, so there's a bug somewhere.

I don't want to hear how unsafe it is to talk and drive, I don't wan to hear from people who don't know the answer but instead high-jack the thread and go off topic. I want to hear from someone from Motorola who has an answer.

"Is there a Droid Dr. in the house?" Or are we, the paying customers, supposed to figure out all the solutions??

 

[cowgirlaround]

answering calls

I know exactly what you are talking about. I called and talked with tech support yesterday regarding this very question. I had trouble prior to the recent software upgrade as well as now. On average it takes at least 2 swipes to answer the phone. The tech support didn't have any great answers and she is didn't know of that being an issue. However, she did agree you should be able to answer it with one swipe. She is sending me out another phone to try out in case it's just my device, but it honestly I'd agree that it's likely a bug since I don't have trouble with my touch screen doing anything else. One thing I will say is that things like this won't get fixed if people only write about it. You also need to be calling in so that they can be aware we are all irritated by these things so it can be fixed. I love my droid as much as the next person, but if you can't answer a simple phone call what is the point of it being a phone?

 

[lag6267]

However, she did agree you should be able to answer it with one swipe.

I was able to answer a call with one swipe before the latest update to the OS. It used to arch up and wasn't a problem. Now that I have to drag it across it just doesn't seem to go all the way and I have to try over. I've missed calls because I couldn't answer and it's really annoying.

 

[Laurence5905]

The flick to answer is really annoying and unsafe. However,It is much much worse to talk to a person in the car next to you* than it ever is using a cell phone.

No, it's not. Read the studies. A person in the car with you can point out hazards, and stop talking if road conditions suddenly change.

The only safe way to use your phone in the car is not at all (or, as a navigation device).

I have to disagree. You're assuming the passengers in your car are actually going to be paying attention to road conditions. In my experience, they don't. People in the car are a bigger distraction than talking on a hands-free Bluetooth headset because most folks have a tendency to look at the people they're talking to, not at the road. Worse yet are the folks who move their rear-view mirror so they can see the person they're conversing with in the back seat. *ugh* With a BT headset, you never have to take your eyes off the road, not even to answer the call. (And if the Droid had BT-activated hands-free dialing, you'd not have to look at the phone to place a call -- hence the reason I don't place calls while driving anymore, unless I'm stopped at a red-light.)

Of course, any conversation can be distracting, whether the person is in the car or not. But there's no law against having a conversation while driving, nor should there be. If you're such a bad driver that you can't talk to someone else while driving, maybe you shouldn't be driving. I can totally see, however, that having to reach over and pick up the phone and swipe the unlock-button would be a distraction -- so I will agree with you that not using a BT headset while driving is a safety issue.

 

[Laurence5905]

I'm not driving, I'm not tending to little children, I'm not operating subway trains, I'm not working with sharp tools.... I'm sitting in my damn couch and I STILL can't answer the damn phone because of some kind of "bug" that won't let the slide bar go completly to the right! Unlocking it "without a call coming in" works just fine but for some reason I loose calls trying to get the damn thing to slide over. Very frustrating!! FIX IT!!

That's the first time I've heard about this... Very weird... It's never happened on my Droid... Are you running any sort of home-screen-replacement apps, or lock-screen-replacement apps? Maybe they're interfering with it?

Very weird problem...

 

[cupfulloflol]

When I am work sometimes I will either have my hands full, or worse yet dirty. In order to answer the phone I have to put things down, or clean my hands (or just smear whatever over the screen). The slide to answer has a few times led me to slide to realize that I have failed to slide 100% properly, when I am not giving it full attention. I am sure it is a problem with the user more than the phone, but an option would be nice.

I know a headset, which I actually own, would solve my problems. I just don't like to use it. I don't find it comfortable, I dislike how I look with something in my ear (I feel like I have a hearing aid), and it drains my battery more than now.

 

[nuguy]

@MWNS:

Perhaps what you wrote is a typo, or I have your fix!
When the droid rings if you slide to the right it sends the caller to voicemail intentionally, sliding to the LEFT answers the call.

Not being a smarty, just trying to help!