Have To Vent About This Phone!

[zunebuggy]

I just got the Droid Bionic and I am ready to ditch it. In the store, I told the salesperson that ALL I wanted a phone for is email, text messages, appointments and phone calls. I don't use it for anything else. So I want notifications for email, text, calls and appointments to have different sounds for each contact and type of appointment reminder. I got this working half way with the Gmail app and the pro version of light flow. Although sometimes I get email and text message notifications with the default notification sound instead of the one I had set up for the contact, but hey I guess I have to live it. I like to know by listening who is calling, emailing or texting so I know whether or not I need to stop what I'm doing or it can wait... The next issue was I wanted a hands free texting/emailing application that will work through the Bluetooth. I download one called Jarvis and connect by Bluetooth headset at work. I get a text message and it begins reading it aloud over my phone's speaker. My Bluetooth is connected. I search and search through the phone settings and I don't see where I can make the sounds go to the Bluetooth headset when connected, but hey this would be a nice feature instead everyone around my cubical hearing my text message. I Google this and find out everyone else with the Bionic has this issue too and it's just a thing you have to live with this particular phone. Now when i got this phone, I had to set it up with a Gmail account. That was fine. I had one. But this account happened to have every contact I have ever known saved in it and all of them went automatically to my phone. I went through several hours one night of deleting the contacts that I didn't need on my phone so it wouldn't take me 30 minutes to scroll through to the names that begin with W. After doing this, it did a sync with my Gmail again and added them ALL back! So then I got smart and deleted the unwanted contacts from Gmail... The phone synced and added them all back there as well!! AHHHHHH! And in the Gmail notifier section, I found out to get individual contact notifications for Gmail, you have to set up labels and rules in Gmail. I took the time to do this and it was working great. Now all of a sudden without changing anything I no longer get any notifications for any emails for Gmail and if I log into Gmail and check, I have like 50 emails from various people. Sorry to rant but this phone does not do one thing I want it to OR I am just not technical enough to be able to configure it (and keep it configured) for this things I want it to do. Oh I work as a software developer, not that it means anything... I don't write phone applications but I do write fairly sophisticated C# applications and I never had a problem with any of this stuff working on my Blackberry Storm. Ugh! I also have OCD so this makes all these issue 10x worse! I like being organized and this is not the phone for anyone who wants to stay organized. :angry:

 

[Faintestidea]

Sounds like you should of stuck with blackberry, it did what u wanted it to do

 

[DoctorV]

Sounds like you should of stuck with blackberry, it did what u wanted it to do

Agreed. When I see a giant wall of angry text I'm inclined to believe that this phone is not for you. I would suggest going back to Blackberry as well. You may have too many needs that an Android phone can't provide. From what I hear if emailing and texting and notifications are a top priority for you then Blackberry seems to excel in that area.

 

[zunebuggy]

I agree. It died at the time I was eligible for an upgrade and I let the salesperson talk me into this... I was happy with just getting another B.B. of any model.

 

[redspawnsilver]

I have set my phone to different rings, notification colors and other different things for my e-mail and texts to tell them apart and it works great for business use. But everybody has different needs for their phone, I suggest you try and locate some apps with this phone that will help you out, you may be pleasantly surprised with what you come up with....! Also, read up a little bit on the phone, some things you may have changed yourself accidentally but again it is your choice...

 

[fastpakr]

Why don't you try breaking out the individual issues you've got into a separated list so we can look at them one by one?

As to the bluetooth issue, are you using an A2DP headset?

 

[zunebuggy]

I have a Plantronics ATT V521 headset and in my car I have a IOGEAR Solar Bluetooth Hands-Free Car Kit GBHFK231. I do not know if they are A2DP. The IOGEAR does not work very well so I would be just as happy to use my Plantronics in the car and in the office.

Thank you.

 

[TatDroid]

I'm afraid I couldn't make it through your WOT, but in answer to your first issue - I have 3 email accounts on my Bionic (Gmail and yahoo), and I have all 3 set up with different audio notifications. I am doing this with stock email software only, I have no special apps installed for this.

Android can be a pretty complex OS when you get into all the custom settings that are available. It may even take you more than 1 day to learn how everything works.

 

[zunebuggy]

I don't want a notification for each email account. (And I can figure out how to do that easy enough). I want it for each contact. For example: My Dad is a carpenter. So I want a ringtone for him that sounds like an electric saw, for text messages from him I want a hand saw sound and for email from him I want a hammer sound. Then I can be anywhere with my phone and hear the sound and know exactly who it is from and what type of communication it is. AND I'd really like my bluetooth headset to be on and read text and emails to me. It's 2012... Seems like my phone should do that AND I know people who have phones that do that, but apparently I should have talked to them before buying this phone.

 

[redspawnsilver]

Pairing for your V521

Subsequent Pairing
If you’ve already paired your headset with another device, or you have
trouble pairing your headset, follow these steps:
1. Turn ON the Bluetooth feature on your phone.
TIP: For most phones, select Settings/Tools > Connections > Bluetooth >
On. See your phone’s user guide for more information.
2. Turn the headset off by pressing and holding the call control button until the
indicator turns red and then turns off.
3. Turn the headset back on by pressing and holding the call control button until the
indicator flashes red/blue. The headset is now in pairing mode.
4. Use the commands on your phone to locate your headset.
TIP: For most phones, select Settings/Tools > Connections > Bluetooth >
Search > 5XXPlantronics. See your phone’s user guide for more information.
5. When prompted for the passkey, enter 0000.
When pairing is successful, the indicator on your headset flashes blue. Your
headset is now connected and ready to use.

 

[zunebuggy]

I don't want a notification for each email account. (And I can figure out how to do that easy enough). I want it for each contact. For example: My Dad is a carpenter. So I want a ringtone for him that sounds like an electric saw, for text messages from him I want a hand saw sound and for email from him I want a hammer sound. Then I can be anywhere with my phone and hear the sound and know exactly who it is from and what type of communication it is. AND I'd really like my bluetooth headset to be on and read text and emails to me. It's 2012... Seems like my phone should do that AND I know people who have phones that do that, but apparently I should have talked to them before buying this phone.

 

[redspawnsilver]

Pairing Solar Bluetooth GBHFK231

1. Turn on the Bluetooth connection on your phone and enable the pairing mode of the Bluetooth connection. Make sure your phone and the Car Kit is no more than 3 feet apart. Make sure the Car Kit is powered off.
2. Long press the MFB button of the Car Kit for 6 seconds to enter the pairing mode. Your cellular phone will now start to look for the Car Kit.
3. When the Car Kit is found, your phone will display “GBHFK231” from the list of devices, and you will be asked to enter the pairing code. Enter “0000” and press OK to establish the connection.

 

[zunebuggy]

Yes it is paired just fine. It could be the Jarvis software is no good. I also tried My Motospeak but this will not work with the Plantronics at all. It was written to be mainly compatible with only Motorola bluetooth devices.

 

[brianjr1]

I don't want a notification for each email account. (And I can figure out how to do that easy enough). I want it for each contact. For example: My Dad is a carpenter. So I want a ringtone for him that sounds like an electric saw, for text messages from him I want a hand saw sound and for email from him I want a hammer sound. Then I can be anywhere with my phone and hear the sound and know exactly who it is from and what type of communication it is. AND I'd really like my bluetooth headset to be on and read text and emails to me. It's 2012... Seems like my phone should do that AND I know people who have phones that do that, but apparently I should have talked to them before buying this phone.

The Bionic does all of that. Within apps and contact settings you can select different noises for almost everything. As well,you can change which contacts show up by hitting the "menu" icon within the contacts list and going to display options. OR you can just simply hit the search button and look for the contact you're trying to get a hold of.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Droid Forums

 

[Fokkerdmr]

Don't be ashamed of your WOT... There are still people on the forums that have a long enough attention span to get beyond the second sentence and enough time and patience to use punctuation and grammar while writing.

About your issue about the Google contacts that keep showing up. It sounds like you moved from a 'feature' phone (e.g. not a smartphone) and are now in the realm of the smartphone experience. Much of the experience on the phone (and with other applications and websites) is about consolidating, organizing and merging together everything. Coming from the "I'll configure it all myself, thank you very much" perspective, it can be frustrating to have the phone think it knows best. You'll probably find that other applications you use will do the same thing - assume they know better than you what you want, and they'll either configure and enable it by default, or they may ask you with a "hey, do you want me to just set it up for you?" type question - to which you'll probably say yes, and then find it's not to your liking. I certainly had the same experience as you when I first got my phone. I had them migrate my contacts from my old phone, and then after adding the google account, I went home only to find I had hundreds of contacts that I frankly don't care about from ancient e-mails.

At any rate, the fact that the Bionic syncs all your gmail contacts into its contact list is just a setting. Rather than deleting the contacts one by one, you can just tell the phone to ignore all the gmail contacts and use only the ones in the phone itself. The "phone only" contacts list is the same type of list you probably managed on your previous phone.

I have upgraded my Bionic to a later version of Android (ICS or "Ice Cream Sandwich") so my default contacts application is likely to be different than yours. But, here's what I do to limit the contacts that are shown.
1. Press the "Contacts" app (or choose it from your list of apps).
2. Press the "Settings" button and choose "Contacts to Display"
3. Select "Customize" at the bottom of the list
4. Ensure that the group "Phone" is enabled.
5. Uncheck the one listed as your gmail account for Google contacts.
6. Go through any others that are listed and turn them off (assuming you don't actually want to show those contacts).
7. Choose OK to save your settings.

Regarding your texting question, I've been using a program "Go SMS" as my texting application. It allows me to set per-contact notification settings (e.g. different "ding" when a message comes from each contact) includig whether to vibrate the phone, etc.
I also use Go Contacts, and Go Launcher Pro. Working together, they're great and they offer a nice range of customizations. You can always turn them off and return to the "stock" behavior very easily.

I don't know about the bluetooth behavior - I don't use a BT headset. But, you might find that there is an application you can load which will set up the behavior your looking for. That's one thing about the Android phones - there are a lot of little "customize/tweak" apps in the Play Store.

HTH...