Many Issues

[e.weston5]

I've only had the Droid Incredible for a few days, and have already had a few minor problems.

First, the facebook app has yet to load my facebook page. It will load my "friends" but not mine. Everytime I try to view "my profile", it says no content and an error message pops up saying "an error has occurred while fetching data [null]" It has been doing it since the day I brought it home. I thought maybe it would eventually start working, but hasn't yet. It also will not load most of my photo albums, or my "friends" photo albums either.

Also, at the Verizon store, the salesman suggested I download the "advanced app killer" app, basically just to "kill" all of the open apps I have, I am assuming to save the battery. Every time I open the app to "kill" open apps, it will tell me I have about a dozen apps open, such as my gallery, a few games, slacker radio, etc, even if I haven't used or opened any of those. Perhaps, these apps open automatically, but if they do, what is the point of the "app killer" if the phone is just going to act on its own free will anyways?

The other day, my phone "freaked out". It kept sliding from the home page, to my favorites, to the empty screen at the end, back to home, and so forth. I couldn't click on anything, or get it to stop and stay at the home screen.

Yesterday, I turned it on with a notification of a new text message. I went to my messages in the phone, only to find that I couldn't open the new text message, because all of my messages had been deleted. I had not manually deleted them, nor had I selected to have the old text messages deleted when they reached any limit.

It seems the same thing has happened to my emails, although I have many emails in my account, and have sent many emails from my phone. It is only showing that I have three emails.

The GPS is also a bit off, the location it recognizes is usually close to where I am, but a few blocks off. This could be because I live in a big city, and with all the tall buildings, the signal maybe got lost in translation?

I am not what you would call extremely technologically literate, but I am not completely dense, so I can't help but to think these are "phone problems" and not just "user problems". It could be that I just happened to have been given a shotty phone with hardware problems. So I will need to exchange it for a new one. I am wondering if anyone else has had any of these problems?

 

[BayouFlyFisher]

I've only had the Droid Incredible for a few days, and have already had a few minor problems.

First, the facebook app has yet to load my facebook page. It will load my "friends" but not mine. Everytime I try to view "my profile", it says no content and an error message pops up saying "an error has occurred while fetching data [null]" It has been doing it since the day I brought it home. I thought maybe it would eventually start working, but hasn't yet. It also will not load most of my photo albums, or my "friends" photo albums either.

I only have two suggestions for the faceboot issue as I don't use it: 1) Go into Manage Applications and clear cache and data on that app. 2) this one may not be possible, but try to uninstall the app and then reinstall it.

Also, at the Verizon store, the salesman suggested I download the "advanced app killer" app, basically just to "kill" all of the open apps I have, I am assuming to save the battery. Every time I open the app to "kill" open apps, it will tell me I have about a dozen apps open, such as my gallery, a few games, slacker radio, etc, even if I haven't used or opened any of those. Perhaps, these apps open automatically, but if they do, what is the point of the "app killer" if the phone is just going to act on its own free will anyways?

See writeup below.

The other day, my phone "freaked out". It kept sliding from the home page, to my favorites, to the empty screen at the end, back to home, and so forth. I couldn't click on anything, or get it to stop and stay at the home screen.

Was it plugged in? Using non-stock chargers and once in a while non-stock usb cables has caused this very issue.

Yesterday, I turned it on with a notification of a new text message. I went to my messages in the phone, only to find that I couldn't open the new text message, because all of my messages had been deleted. I had not manually deleted them, nor had I selected to have the old text messages deleted when they reached any limit.

This has happend to quite a few folks. It seem there are two things people are doing: 1) switch to an different app for texts such as Handcent. 2) Get an app from the market to backup your text messages.

It seems the same thing has happened to my emails, although I have many emails in my account, and have sent many emails from my phone. It is only showing that I have three emails.

The natvie email app removes emails from you phone once they have been downloaded by your pc. Switch to using the Gmail app for all your emails. It doesn't do that. See my writeup below.

The GPS is also a bit off, the location it recognizes is usually close to where I am, but a few blocks off. This could be because I live in a big city, and with all the tall buildings, the signal maybe got lost in translation?

In settings/Locations & Security make sure Use GPS and Use Wireless are checked. Or if you are going to be using only GPS, uncheck the Use Wireless Networks.

I am not what you would call extremely technologically literate, but I am not completely dense, so I can't help but to think these are "phone problems" and not just "user problems". It could be that I just happened to have been given a shotty phone with hardware problems. So I will need to exchange it for a new one. I am wondering if anyone else has had any of these problems?

How Android Manages Processes

In Android, processes and Applications are two different things. An app can stay "running" in the background without any processes eating up your phone's resources. Android keeps the app in its memory so it launches more quickly and returns to its prior state. When your phone runs out of memory, Android will automatically start killing tasks on its own, starting with ones that you haven't used in awhile.
The problem is that Android uses RAM differently than, say, Windows. On Android, having your RAM nearly full is a good thing. It means that when you relaunch an app you've previously opened, the app launches quickly and returns to its previous state. So while Android actually uses RAM efficiently, most users see that their RAM is full and assume that's what's slowing down their phone. In reality, your CPU—which is only used by apps that are actually active—is almost always the bottleneck.

Why Task Killers Are (Usually) Bad News

Apps like Advanced Task Killer, the most popular task killer in the Market, act on the incorrect assumption that freeing up memory on an Android device is a good thing. When launched, it presents you with a list of "running" apps and the option to kill as many as you want. You can also hit the Menu button to access a more detailed "Services" view, that lists exactly which parts of each application are "running", how much memory they take up, and how much free memory is available on your phone. This set-up implies that the goal of killing these apps is to free up memory. Nowhere on the list does it mention the number of CPU cycles each app is consuming, only the memory you'll free by killing it. As we've learned, full memory is not a bad thing—we want to watch out for the CPU, the resource that actually slows down your phone and drains your battery life.
Thus, killing all but the essential apps (or telling Android to kill apps more aggressively with the "autokill" feature) is generally unnecessary. Furthermore, it's actually possible that this will worsen your phone's performance and battery life. Whether you're manually killing apps all the time or telling the task killer to aggressively remove apps from your memory, you're actually using CPU cycles when you otherwise wouldn't—killing apps that aren't doing anything in the first place.
In fact, some of the processes related to those apps will actually start right back up, further draining your CPU. If they don't, killing those processes can cause other sorts of problems—alarms don't go off, you don't receive text messages, or other related apps may force close without warning. All in all, you're usually better off letting your phone work as intended—especially if you're more of a casual user. In these instances, a task killer causes more problems than it solves.

[FONT=&quot]Emails: I don't know what email app you use, but try this. It saves battery power and in some cases emails arrive quicker. This scheme will have you using only the Gmail app on the phone for all email accounts whether they are pop3 accounts or Gmail. Go to the Google Gmail inbox on your computer and log into the Gmail account. On the top right of the screen is an option called Settings. In there is an option to have the Gmail program poll your regular, non-Gmail accounts (From the inbox; Settings/Accounts & Import/ Check mail using POP3). Provide the email address and the password. The Google Gmail program will then poll your other accounts on a frequency from 1-5 minutes and push the email immediately to your phone. The polling frequency is determined by each account's activity - more emails = faster polling. This saves battery power because on the android OS pop3 accounts are polled at a frequency of 1-30 minutes and that really eats battery. Because the phone goes and checks those accounts for mail whether there is mail there or not.[/FONT]