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OK so from what I can gather looking at this forum and various stuff on the web the issues with this phone are (not in order of importance)
1. UI lags. However, this can be overcome via a 3rd party launcher and some 'Nand' hacks? which pardoxicallly means limited app memory again !
2. The GPS is unreliable. It can be fine one time and refuse to lock on another time?
3. The WiFi connection is also unstable for many users?
4. The battery life is not very good out of the box but improves after a few recharges? However, its still difficult to get a full day if using it heavily?
5. Samsung have a poor record when it comes to updates. There is no guarantee when / if the phone will be updated so it should be bought based solely on the features it has today?
Have I got this about right ? Anything missing or just wrong ? Are there any known fixes for issues 2 and 3 above.
Please note this not an attack on the phone I am considering buying and, as much as possible, I want to understand upfront what the issues are.
Don't forget Kies is rubbish and there's no apps for Android on the Kies marketplace, despite what the manual says.
If you are on a Mac (and presumably Linux) you have to enable USB debugging mode to be able to mount it as a USB storage device.
1 and 2 applies to my phone and I must be having a memory leak issue. My available memory drops pretty steadily throughout the day even after killing all the apps with a task manager. I need to reboot once or twice a day or the phone dips below 100mb. My guess is this is also the cause of the laggy UI.
My gps is quick to get a fix but it drops often for no good reason.
The wifi has been flawless for me, I'm on a 802.11n only network.
My battery is ok, not great but not bad either.
I still love this phone and I would buy again even with these minor annoyances.
Wifi wont reconnect when waking up from standby mode...(sometimes)
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App
1- pretty minor problem IMO, i don't bump into it a lot. Let's see what samsung will do.
2- From what i see, after upgrading a firmware the problem is solved, in most of the cases.
3- Seen reports, but i didn't bump into problems with it even once.
4- After comparing with a nexus one, an HTC desire and a motorola milestone, i can clearly say that currently, after 5-7 charges, the SGS has the best battery in the android market.
I manage to squeeze over 3 days of moderate use from my device, or 2 days of heavy use.
5- I can't really say anything about it, samsung does have a poor support record for it's devices.
I'm running firmware XXJF3
1.Lag) applies to me, with any launcher. it's ok most of the time, but when it happens it is very annoying.
2.GPS) No problems so far. Not using it much for navigation, thus. Just for stuff like checking into foursquare and buzz.
3.WiFi) No problems now. I had a strange problem with wlan not working at all at my first day with the device, but I did a factory reset once and since then I never had any problems with networking anymore.
4.battery life) Everything just as with the nexus one or G1: I need to charge it at least once a day, unless I do not really use it.
5.update support) It's annoying, and it's a shame. But except for the nexus one, there are not really better alternatives with better update support out there. At least here in Europe. Motorola and HTC and Sony all abandon their devices after a few month as well.
We can only hope that Samsung thinks this is something that is worth doing better than in the past, and better than the competition currently does. Or that building custom ROMs based on upcoming Android Versions on the Galaxy S is not going to be as difficult as psychoace thinks.
If Samsung fixes the blackout/lag issues soon with a new firmware, I'm going to keep the device. Most of the time it is a great mobile. I even like touchwiz 3.
MetaDude said:
OK so from what I can gather looking at this forum and various stuff on the web the issues with this phone are (not in order of importance)
1. UI lags. However, this can be overcome via a 3rd party launcher and some 'Nand' hacks? which pardoxicallly means limited app memory again !
2. The GPS is unreliable. It can be fine one time and refuse to lock on another time?
3. The WiFi connection is also unstable for many users?
4. The battery life is not very good out of the box but improves after a few recharges? However, its still difficult to get a full day if using it heavily?
5. Samsung have a poor record when it comes to updates. There is no guarantee when / if the phone will be updated so it soils be bought based solely on the features it has today?
Have I got this about right ? Anything missing or just wrong ? Are there any known fixes for issues 2 and 3 above.
Please note this not an attack on the phone I am considering buying and, as much as possible, I want to understand upfront what the issues are.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
1. Yes I get lag. Very irritating on the supposed "most powerful phone around". On original jf 3 firmware though, but will surely try the new rom from modaco as I don't think I could live with this in the long term.
2. Only time I tried to use google navigation, it let me down badly.
3. Generally been ok but for the first time today I had wifi icon but no internet connection. Had to restart phone (toggling had no effect).
I've had other issues as well, complete lock ups, mass storage randomly not working, and other weird seemingly random behaviour.
Overall, so far this has been a frustrating device to live with. Things can only get better I hope.
Latest firmware seems to have solved almost all of these "problems"
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=718621
Latest firmware released today solved the lag problem.
Not sure about the others. never had problems with the GPS.
Wifi connection was solved 2 firmwares ago
Each time I flash new ROM, I go test GPS performance with GPS Test to see whether something changed.
What I'm interested in is primarily lock on speed, and also how solid the lock to satellites is, but that's secondary. (since froyo, the locks seem pretty solid, no more sudden drops like in eclair)
What I noticed is that even with same firmware this varies quite a lot, even when I try to make the test conditions vary as little as possible (I always test it from the same spot and hold it the same way to ensure similar signal propagation. I can't control the weather, but as it's winter, it usually overcast).
So my question is, do you find you lock on speed varies a lot with same firmware and in same conditions?
Mine can vary from a few seconds (rarely) to losing the patience after few minutes of waiting for the lock! (more often)
Is this normal or am I having some weird issues?
Because if this kind of huge variation is normal, then all my testing is pointless!
Same thing here, but used to me more "consistent" with original rom (2.1 from Bell canada, can't remember wich one). Now on jl2 it takes longer to get a fix and weather seems to impact more.
same problem...
gps works extremely unconsistant.
me and my girlfriend have same phone with same firmware and 99% same apps installed. if we put the phones next to each other the gps signal is sometimes the same somethimes really different. we tried to find out how this could be but didnt find any difference. some days ago i turned my gps on as we were at the city together and it took really long to get the location. and then looke dat google latitude and holy **** my girlfriend got the cirrect position there even without taking it out the pocket and her gps was turned off lol. thats a bit scary sometimes.
now i installed gps tracker booster to stay at the same location if im indoor. otherwise it jumps from one location to another all the times and latitude says ive driven 4000km in a day just because i was at home and walked from fridge to the toilet...
I wonder if it has anything to do with hardware antenna issues. There was a thread here somewhere. It might be, and yet it might not be. I'd like to be able to check if I have this hardware issue before risking my phone and surely voding the warranty.
It does seem to be somewhat software dependent, but that isn't enough. Inconsistency proves nothing
I could also swear it's getting worse with the time. In 2.1 I used to be able to get a lock in half a minute or so in the worst case (even if it wasn't solid). In 2.2 it was better but in 2.2.1 versions it was all over the place. Usually amazing just after installing the ROM, but then going downhill. So maybe it's just worsening with time or oscillating with ROMs. I'd need days of flashing and testing to get it sorted out - possibly.
Total confusion... In the end I'll just buy a dedicated GPS with a big antenna. Exactly what I wanted to avoid by getting the Galaxy.
Well, i did a lot of testing with my Galaxy S.
The only conclusion i got is that different roms impact the time the Gps takes to aquire lock.
I also concluded that is due to GPS hardware keeps losing the sinal makes you apear in places which in reality you're not or showing that you are going across a road when you are stopped.
In this case A-GPS diminuishes your acurracy.
t1mman said:
Same thing here, but used to me more "consistent" with original rom (2.1 from Bell canada, can't remember wich one). Now on jl2 it takes longer to get a fix and weather seems to impact more.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I got slow fixes with JL2 too. But I am now testing "MS based" which improves lock time a lot (less than 20 seconds). I need more testing to make sure that my device is still accurate however.
bluecluster said:
Usually amazing just after installing the ROM, but then going downhill. So maybe it's just worsening with time or oscillating with ROMs.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Exact issue here... Lately I thought that I have some kind of bad habits due to installing new roms. But now i see, that I'm not the only one with this.
nalu_pl said:
Exact issue here... Lately I thought that I have some kind of bad habits due to installing new roms. But now i see, that I'm not the only one with this.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I had a "new" issue one time where it got all over the place so I deleted the data and redownloaded it (with GPS Status) and it fixed it. Might be that it keeps old data instead of refreshing it.
But it's not related to the time to fix
Hey guys,
I've been with the forum for a couple of years already but got caught of guard recently. I got a mytouch4g in december and it had been working great except for power amp and one or two other programs that I obtained and installed. I reset the phone to factory and reinstalled everything and it started running great again. Mind you, I haven't rooted the phone or really had the need to since it does everything that I've wanted to do to it if I were to root it. Recently in the past couple of days though, the performance has SEVEARLY dropped. Its dropped to the point where the swype on the phone won't even function properly half of the time. I've continue to soft reset the phone hoping it'll clear out the OS and function properly but it keeps slowing down. I was hoping someone may have been receiving the same issues and might be able to help me out. Also, I've noticed that whenever I'm in an area where I have poor coverage, the phone begings to heat up a lot and drains my battery. At work its been happening but it stopped when i managed to connect to the wireless. Its still consuming a pretty high amount of my battery though. I've tried searching for these symptoms but wasn't able to find anything.
Any help is greatly apprceiated, I know this community is one of the best out there. Thanks guys!
Also, has anyone been receiving any issues with their wireless radio or their cell radio with the phone is tilted on its right side to view videos?
When you notice the issue happening, try to go into settings>about phone>battery>battery use and see what is consuming most of your battery-sometimes certain apps you download can cause issues....
Yes, problem is definitely with one of your apps. Get watchdog lite and monitor your system for couple of days to see what takes up resources. Or, start fresh and add apps one by one and see where you start having problems. Also, certain live wallpapers can bog down system beyond believe... learned it the hard way.
As far as radio perfomance - every phone will have a certain position in which signal degrades. Just a nature of the beast.... something will always block antennas one way or another.
Hi,
i noticed months ago the following on my IDEOS X5 (german) concerning bad battery life. It could be the reason why there are so many different reports regarding bettery lifetime of the U8800.
First - why did I start to investigate: because the phone sucked about 5-10% per hour while not beeing used / lying on my desk, so after max 20 hours the battery was empty. But this did/does not always happen....
What I did: it took some time to get used to android (its my first droid) and learn how to troubleshoot. A month after I got this phone I learned that the GSM-code *#*#4636#*#* will show you very useful information concenring battery/phone usage. I started to play around with the phone (factory reset, install/remove apps, enable/disable different options like 2G/3G/WLAN etc...) always keeping an eye on the 4636-infos.
Result: When I use WLAN the phone simetimes enters an "state" when it never again enters "sleep state" and the battery gets sucked as stated above. I switched off WLAN for a week and this did not occur while standby time increased to 48 hours and 4636 stated an "phone awake" percentage of below 20% (normal usage). Once I reenabled WLAN again it took about an day of WLAN usage to reproduce the bug and "phone awake" time increased to 100% while standby time decreased to below 20 hours. ONLY rebooting the device recovers from this "state". I further noticed that this does not happen if just WLAN is available but no 2G/3G (phone had no SIM). My conclusion is, that the
"You May Be Charged"-Popup is the culprit. It does lock the phone to this "state" for some reason, mybe when the WLAN connection is dropped while the phone is not used (traveling). Can someone reproduce this on his phone (maybe not german)?
Resolution: IMHO none. I send the device twice to reseller for service. First time the complete mainboard was changed without success regarding the battery drain. Second time nothing was done - they just returned the device to me.
Thanks.
This is a known problem, that already has a thread...
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1043760
This is affecting ALL Froyo Roms, if you want battery life, install Oxygen or CM7...which are based on Gingerbread.
There is no point in discussing this issue anymore, this is a very well known problem and Huawei doesn't care.
Sending the phone back to manufacturer won't help at all.
Thank you for the hint - it realy looks like the same issue. Knowing more about the nature of this issue could give people not willing to install custom roms a possible solution. Can someone move this thread over to that one?
katu2006 said:
This is a known problem, that already has a thread...
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1043760
This is affecting ALL Froyo Roms, if you want battery life, install Oxygen or CM7...which are based on Gingerbread.
There is no point in discussing this issue anymore, this is a very well known problem and Huawei doesn't care.
Sending the phone back to manufacturer won't help at all.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
But Huawei is about to release official 2.3 in Q3 atleast I hope...
andreasha said:
But Huawei is about to release official 2.3 in Q3 atleast I hope...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Everyone is looking forward to official 2.3, but we'll have to wait and see if the "sleep" bug will be sorted.
katu2006 said:
Everyone is looking forward to official 2.3, but we'll have to wait and see if the "sleep" bug will be sorted.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I hope some more bugs are straightened out like headphones and internal mic at the same time. Headset button to work. Battery time!
none of my android phones could use the phone's mic when headphones were plugged in
I saw a solution for the mic-with-headphones-problem a few days ago, either here or at modaco (do not know if it is confirmed working though).
fajabird, I know that you want this to work with the ROMs provided by Huawei. Huawei obviously does not care too much about providing the community with updates (they do not even have gingerbread-support by now). This is the downside of this low priced phone.
Let me just say this: It took me about one hour to understand the ultimate-guide at modaco. It took me another hour to decide which ROM I want to use. If anything goes wrong at the installation I can easily start over again. Now I have a fully working phone with Android 2.3.5 with a battery that lasts at least 2 days, sometimes 3(if I do not play any games within that time). Of course I understand that you are probably very pissed at Huawei for providing a ROM with a bug that serious.
if you find that fix again, let us know where to look
darkado said:
if you find that fix again, let us know where to look
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It is to be found at the Android-development-section, right here. Note that you cannot use the mic of your headset after applying this
too bad, it would be awesome to be able to use both
XphX said:
I saw a solution for the mic-with-headphones-problem a few days ago, either here or at modaco (do not know if it is confirmed working though).
fajabird, I know that you want this to work with the ROMs provided by Huawei. Huawei obviously does not care too much about providing the community with updates (they do not even have gingerbread-support by now). This is the downside of this low priced phone.
Let me just say this: It took me about one hour to understand the ultimate-guide at modaco. It took me another hour to decide which ROM I want to use. If anything goes wrong at the installation I can easily start over again. Now I have a fully working phone with Android 2.3.5 with a battery that lasts at least 2 days, sometimes 3(if I do not play any games within that time). Of course I understand that you are probably very pissed at Huawei for providing a ROM with a bug that serious.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi, thank you for sharing your experience with me. I always wanted to update to some custom roms but the time I started investigating this issue there was no stable one out there. On the other hand I thought there might be a dev interessted in more details regarding this issue helping him to sort out this nasty bug for whatever reason.
Can someone tell me, if his U8800 also has the ambient light sensor but like mine does: it won't reduce the brightness, just increase works. Thanks.
fajabird said:
Hi, thank you for sharing your experience with me. I always wanted to update to some custom roms but the time I started investigating this issue there was no stable one out there. On the other hand I thought there might be a dev interessted in more details regarding this issue helping him to sort out this nasty bug for whatever reason.
Can someone tell me, if his U8800 also has the ambient light sensor but like mine does: it won't reduce the brightness, just increase works. Thanks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Mine reduces brightness but does it quite weird sometimes like adjusting several times without the light around me changing...
Mine always adjusts it way too low. If I am inside the brightness is always on minimum. I use the power-widget on the homescreen. I only change it at night, it is on max. for the whole day (the max. brightness is still kinda low, especially if it's sunny).
fajabird said:
Hi,
i noticed months ago the following on my IDEOS X5 (german) concerning bad battery life. It could be the reason why there are so many different reports regarding bettery lifetime of the U8800.
First - why did I start to investigate: because the phone sucked about 5-10% per hour while not beeing used / lying on my desk, so after max 20 hours the battery was empty. But this did/does not always happen....
What I did: it took some time to get used to android (its my first droid) and learn how to troubleshoot. A month after I got this phone I learned that the GSM-code *#*#4636#*#* will show you very useful information concenring battery/phone usage. I started to play around with the phone (factory reset, install/remove apps, enable/disable different options like 2G/3G/WLAN etc...) always keeping an eye on the 4636-infos.
Result: When I use WLAN the phone simetimes enters an "state" when it never again enters "sleep state" and the battery gets sucked as stated above. I switched off WLAN for a week and this did not occur while standby time increased to 48 hours and 4636 stated an "phone awake" percentage of below 20% (normal usage). Once I reenabled WLAN again it took about an day of WLAN usage to reproduce the bug and "phone awake" time increased to 100% while standby time decreased to below 20 hours. ONLY rebooting the device recovers from this "state". I further noticed that this does not happen if just WLAN is available but no 2G/3G (phone had no SIM). My conclusion is, that the
"You May Be Charged"-Popup is the culprit. It does lock the phone to this "state" for some reason, mybe when the WLAN connection is dropped while the phone is not used (traveling). Can someone reproduce this on his phone (maybe not german)?
Resolution: IMHO none. I send the device twice to reseller for service. First time the complete mainboard was changed without success regarding the battery drain. Second time nothing was done - they just returned the device to me.
Thanks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hey there friend, I've detailed much of this and been through a lot of troubleshooting. It did not appear to be the "You may be charged" popup as I disabled that whenever I changed ROMs. I never did get a solution for any of the Huawei ROMs, it just seemed like bad code as Dzo pointed out with the WiFi driver.
A very simple solution for me was installing one of the 2.3 ROMs, they are quite stable at the moment, especially Oxygen (although I use MIUI). You will find much better battery life with these.
Best of luck,
Ryan
My stock rom 2.2.1 Shows Android System 97% battery usage and battery drains 50% in 19minutes! With wi-fi, 3g, Bluetooth, everything is off and even i do not use it.
Flash latest official 2.2.2, wait for official 2.3, flash the custom 2.2.2 rom void or flash a custom 2.3 rom. I would recommend flashing the latest 138 or 162 to get the latest modem baseband or manually install the AMSS.bin.
Sent from my Ideos x5
andreasha said:
Flash latest official 2.2.2, wait for official 2.3, flash the custom 2.2.2 rom void or flash a custom 2.3 rom. I would recommend flashing the latest 138 or 162 to get the latest modem baseband or manually install the AMSS.bin.
Sent from my Ideos x5
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I can't because phone do not use my external SD card somehow. In android i see files but in recovery-it does not use external sd.. I ask in forum why-but nobody answers
Backup ur data on it and format it. If that doesnt work ill send you a guide how i fixed mine, its just a partition error.
Sent from my Ideos x5
andreasha said:
Backup ur data on it and format it. If that doesnt work ill send you a guide how i fixed mine, its just a partition error.
Sent from my Ideos x5
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I formated it via phone, then via PC - it works in powered on phone in android, but in recovery it doesn't it only sees sdcard as internal memory, if i try mount sd-ext shows error, can't mount.
Also i have problem if i use pc to copy some files to internal memory-phone switches storage mode OFF! and i can't copy files to internal 2GB memory..strange
I recently moved to g2 from galaxy s3. Every thing is good except for gps which takes as much as 90 seconds sometimes to get a lock. Normally its over a minute most of times, though once its locked its very accurate like error ~ 4m
However this came as an suprise since my old sgs3 i9300 used to get lock under 30s 99% of times.
Is the gps performance of g2 not that great or is it rom related? im on cloudy 3.3 with dorimanx kernel..
Your going to get about 20 different circumstantial answers here... but the GPS performance on the LG G2 has always been crappy. It's a combination of hardware/software issues and barring getting something fixed by LG, there probably isn't a great solution. I've tried a variety of software fixes, to varying levels of success, I've tried taking the cover off and futzing with the antennas... but nothing makes the GPS that great. I actually think it got worse for me since Lollipop dropped.
I have read about the possible hardware fix which also some people do on the Nexus 5 as it has similar hardware internally. It is to do with the parts which form a connection to the back plate of the phone containing the GPS antenna. This is why some people claim if you pinch the phone in the right place with thumb and finger (i.e. thumb over screen and finger behind) it can form a better connection and provide better GPS.
Then I also read of software fixes. The main ones I know of are:
1: Using various different apps which supposedly "fix" your GPS by doing different things, like tests and/or modifying settings on the fly and/or resetting GPS data.
2: Using a dedicated modified gps.conf file. You will need to be rooted for this. Search on these forums for this.
3: Using the "device only" setting in the normal LG G2 menu under location services, as opposed to the "use wifi for increased accuracy" kind of setting.
I have tried none of these yet. My GPS is very random. For some journeys (it seems to be the ones I don't need it to work on) it works fine, then when I am in a rush and need it to work, it does not! I noticed that when pinching the back of the phone on what I would call the "left side" as you look at the screen about 3/4s of the way up, it changes the magnetic field readouts in the GPS status app. Whether or not this is just to do with earthing the phone or something....I don't know.
Annoyingly, I did not rely on my GPS much before Lollipop and therefore cannot tell if it was Lollipop that caused it to become...well.....unusable frankly. For me, it can either fully work or it can fully not work and not even get a lock no matter what I try. or it can do something in the middle. It's totally unreliable and I would take it back but I know what will happen. It will get sent back to me several times with "no fault found" and "phone factory reset" by the shop I bought from. I would rather (even still in warranty) try the hardware mod myself and the software stuff. Maybe the update to Lollipop 5.1.1 will fix it...who knows.
Has anyone tried going back to Kitkat to see if this fixes? The problem is....time to do this. We should not have to test these things out. This is basic stuff and it should work, especially on the latest stock firmware.
oh i see, so its just not me.
That's really disappointing i must say, as rightly said by post above me, this is basic stuff should work perfectly out of the box and that too this device is from a big manufacturer not some cheap Chinese stuff...
Anyway I'll try to see if gps.conf improves things as I think i might have optimized one lying around from my old hd2.
Also did anyone try to experiment with different radios? Back in old days it used to have good impact on gps performance.
And i also felt gps on KK was better but i couldn't be sure as i had KK rom for very small time before moved to lollipop.