Screen isn't auto rotating.

**fribur** · 04-01-2012, 08:32 AM

I have had my phone for 6 Weeks now and I love it!

Unfortunately my phone screen orientation is no longer consistently auto rotating when I turn the phone sideways. Here are a few specific examples.

1. I use the dolphin browser. It does not turn to landscape mode anymore. I have checked, and in settings for the browser it is set to auto rotate.

2. The screen does not rotate in the you tube app. This means no full screen videos which is frustrating. Haven't found a setting to change there.

I should point out that in the operating system display settings the screen is indeed set to auto rotate.

Sent from my DROID RAZR using Tapatalk

**isaacdibb1095** · 04-01-2012, 08:37 AM

Originally Posted by fribur

I have had my phone for 6 Weeks now and I love it!

Unfortunately my phone screen orientation is no longer consistently auto rotating when I turn the phone sideways. Here are a few specific examples.

1. I use the dolphin browser. It does not turn to landscape mode anymore. I have checked, and in settings for the browser it is set to auto rotate.

2. The screen does not rotate in the you tube app. This means no full screen videos which is frustrating. Haven't found a setting to change there.

I should point out that in the operating system display settings the screen is indeed set to auto rotate.

Sent from my DROID RAZR using Tapatalk

I would bring it back to Verizon and get it replaced under the 1 year warranty because it sounds like a screen hardware problem..
Hope this helps and good luck!

**fribur** · 04-01-2012, 08:50 AM

I should probably also point out that landscape orientation does work when I specifically set it that way in an app. For example in Dolphin browser I can set it to landscape and it will work that way. It just won't auto rotate.

Sent from my DROID RAZR using Tapatalk

**Cpt Spau1ding** · 04-01-2012, 10:08 AM

Mine was doing that after a day or three without rebooting. Soft reset would return normal rotation. I was considering a factory data reset, but then my headphone jack started screwing up and I ended up calling Verizon and getting a refurb.

**fribur** · 04-04-2012, 11:18 PM

Well... A soft reset seems to have fixed the problem. Hope it doesn't return.

Sent from my DROID RAZR using Tapatalk

**jimjacobs2** · 05-25-2012, 06:35 PM

my autorotate started failing today. then I recalled that earlier today I was "calibrating" the level in the "Swiss Army Knife" app. I also recalled that the calibration was a little wacky. So, I uninstalled that app, and LO AND BEHOLD, my autorotate began working again in all apps. So, maybe there is a problem with that particular app, or the level in any such app has a bug.

**newstorm2guy** · 05-26-2012, 10:59 AM

This happens every once in a while. But every time the phone is acting up if I do a soft reset everything seems to come back normal.

**CharlieL3** · 05-26-2012, 07:33 PM

I'm new to the Maxx. Is a soft reset the same as powering off and on, or is there another procedure for that?

Thanks.

**tperry** · 05-27-2012, 01:43 AM

Originally Posted by fribur

Well... A soft reset seems to have fixed the problem. Hope it doesn't return.

Sent from my DROID RAZR using Tapatalk

It will. Known bug that is fixed by restarting phone. I had the same problem in the car dock in that the maps and navigation would only display in portrait but the car dock applet would be in landscape.

Sent from my DROID RAZR

**les_elkins** · 05-31-2012, 09:42 AM

Let me add another note....

Had the Maxx for about a week, then the auto-rotate issue appeared. Soft reset and hard reset didn't fix it. Also had the problem in safe mode. Removed any apps I could think of and still had the issue. A bubble level app appeared to work correctly, so the accelerometer appears to be fine.

One note is that when I used the camera to take a picture, then tapped the picture to go to the gallery view, the auto-rotate *did* work. Only with that approach, though- when I went from 'home' to the gallery, it still didn't work.

The day the auto-rotate problem cropped up, I did have the phone tethered to a PC via USB. Not sure if that was the trigger, but it was about the same time....

A factory reset *did* fix the problem. Here's hoping I don't have to repeat the process, since this is a royal pain.... Feel like I just got it configured the way I wanted and then had to re-start.

-Les

**carracerz14** · 05-31-2012, 01:09 PM

I'm sure all of us RAZR users have had this problem at some time. Just do a reset with power+volume down and it will fix it. Yes its inconvenient but hey.

Sent from my RAZR MAXXIMUS!!!

**les_elkins** · 05-31-2012, 01:54 PM

Power and volume didn't fix it for me.

(Hoping it doesn't return, so I don't have a chance to try this again.....)

**les_elkins** · 06-01-2012, 09:30 AM

Dang.... Without thinking about it too much, I plugged the phone back into a USB cable connected to a PC, and the problem is back. It doesn't fix itself when I do a reset via power-volume, and it also doesn't fix itself in safe mode. Really reluctant to factory reset the phone, but this is seriously frustrating....

**kingmeow** · 06-11-2012, 08:07 PM

Well, this certainly is interesting! About 10 days after I got my Maxx, I noticed Google Sky Map wasn't working. The moon was in the middle of the screen no matter where I was oriented. Then I installed a compass app and that wasn't working either. The compass would point to a specific (same) heading each time I fired up the app.

Since I'm new to Android coming from a Blackberry (yuck!), I thought I was doing something wrong or there was a setting that wasn't set. So I brought it back to the store and while I was waiting for my turn, they had a working Maxx on display. Low and behold, everything worked on that one, even the same compass app that I installed on mine.

The guy who helped me is a phone fanatic so he knows the industry pretty well. He first did a soft reset to no avail. Then a factory hard reset was done and that did not fix it either. A new one was ordered since they were out of stock. I asked him if he ever saw that happen on a Maxx and he said no.

Well, I got a new replacement (since it was within the 14 day period) and I just encountered the same thing again! I've only had the new one for 7 days. It has already happened twice and both times a soft reset fixed it. This is sounding to be like a bug given what was reported above. Funny thing is that when I went to get the replacement he said a woman just came in the store that morning saying that the 90 degree screen rotation didn't work. A soft reset didn't fix it but for her a hard reset did!

At this point I have not pin pointed any specific conditions or events that would trigger this issue. I'm not a gamer nor hacker so I haven't done anything that is out of the norm.

I can live with a soft reset even though it's a pain and it should be fixed. I just hope that I don't have to do a factory reset. Just like another poster above said, it's a lot of work and time to customize a new phone back to where you like it. Luckily for me it was only 10 days and I didn't have much on it.

Crossing my fingers it won't happen again. All the other functions of the phone work fine and I do like this phone's battery life.

So how can we bring this to Motorola's attention?

**Matthew Androus** · 03-05-2013, 06:58 PM

For those of you that are having the problem with the rotation only in the dolphin app, I know why. The app has a built in feature where you can walk and unlock screen rotation through the app. I have an iPhone, not an android, but I use dolphin as well, and when I locked my screen rotation through the app I could not unlock it until I deleted and reinstalled the app. The only way I knew how to lock and unlock screen rotation was if the app would sense your phone was being rotated a gray rectangle would appear on the screen with a lock symbol and you would tap that to alter it. I looked in settings and could not find any way to do it. If my phone had rotation lock off but the act had it on I could not make it rotate back to portrait mode from landscape. If it is only affecting your dolphin app it is probably the problem I just mentioned, but obviously if it affects other apps then it is a hardware problem.

**davegutz** · 04-09-2013, 06:18 AM

My root cause was traced down to a seting in RealCalc calculator app that allows user to set orientation in RealCalc. For some reason it applies it's setting to the operating system and it gets stuck. I uninstalled RealCalc and immediately the problem went away. Then I reinstalled RealCalc and am careful not to select manual orientation setting. All is well again.