Stuck

[jefboyardee]

Okay, and sorry for these dufus questions.

I activated it, I guess, because it had me locate email addresses and Google calendars and such. Then it asked me to choose a Sprint ID, so I chose Clean. That gave me a snowy mountainside to look at, the date and time, a lock icon and a speaker icon. But if I touch those icons or any of the hardware buttons and nothing happens, just more snowy mountainside. I presume it?s not because it?s still charging the battery,

That?s not good, and to make things worse, they did indeed deactivate my old phone, so I can?t even order pizza. I presume it?s all because of something I did along the way and am asking for more help. Thanks again...

 

[outdors21]

Wow. Never heard of that. I am no help...but just wanted to post my sympathies. Sorry man.

 

[cordell]

You should have gotten a email that explains activation. There is a code that is in the email called MSL# and you need that, if no email I advise to call.

 

[jefboyardee]

Thanks for the kind words that imply it might not be me after all.

I taught it three new tricks. The power button still reacts, and from there I can put it in silent mode or airplane mode, can even turn it off. But even removing the battery, counting to ten, replacing the battery and turning the thing on still results in that pretty picture.

 

[jefboyardee]

You should have gotten a email that explains activation. There is a code that is in the email called MSL# and you need that, if no email I advise to call.

I did, but it apparently thinks I did it myself too, saying:

========================================

Account:#########

We successfully switched the phone on your account impacting:

Account number: #########

Phone number: ###########

You can now use your new phone to make and receive calls. Your data services are being transferred to the new device, but this process may take up to one hour to complete. Your rate plan and data services have not changed.

We will send you an updated overview of your services within 3-7 days. To review your account details right away, please sign into My Sprint on sprint.com.Thank you for

========================================

 

[jefboyardee]

A classic case to say W T F: I picked it up again while it was charging. It suddenly asked me to permit USB storage and gave me one choice, that being Yes. So that’s what I did and now, as far as know, it’s behaving properly. Buttons respond, pages swipe... I even tried a call, using a number that the cloud actually spat out to me.

All I can figure is that either it was busy loading data from the cloud, but there wasn’t much, or Sprint was on drugs that just wore off.

Stay tuned for another episode of rediculousity.

 

[shortyjacobs]

My apologies if this is a dumb answer, but this happened to my dad.

It isn't a lock button, its a slider. Press the lock and slide your finger to the right, that will unlock your phone.

Sent from my phone...excuse the spelling mistakrs

 

[jefboyardee]

I think you got something there. I must of stumbled over that when I was desparately pushing shiny things around. Oh well, with the patience of y’all, I’ll get closer and closer, and someday answer a question for someone who just fell off the same bus I did.

 

[trekkie1701c]

What the above poster said. Unfortunately on touchscreen phones having one point of contact on the screen to unlock it doesn't work (I tried it on my Centro and the phone would constantly get unlocked and then make calls in my pocket while I had the app that did that installed). You'll need to tap and slide the icon all the way over in order to use it.

You'll probably also want to know that you need to slide your finger across the screen to access other things; side to side goes through different home screens, up and down scroll through app lists/web pages, and if you touch the notification bar at the top, you can pull it down to see more details on your notifications (and even tap things like text messages to see them ).

 

[jefboyardee]

Yes thanks, I’m seeing that happen. As for the passcode slider, I changed it to the dot pattern which works a bit more intuitively. I can’t begin to tell you how different this is than a 2002 cutting edge Samung i500!

 

[cmags]

Also when you connect the chord to the pc and get the usb connect screen, you can hit the back button to cancel the connection and just let the phone charge. This leaves the sd card accessible to the phone whereas the usb connection turns the sd card into a usb drive and the phone cannot access it at the same time.

Sent from my LS670 using Tapatalk

 

[jefboyardee]

Rather than pollute this forum with a new thread for every little question, I?ll throw a few in here:

My Google contacts are conveniently divided into groups. But when I look at contacts on the droid, it?s an endless list with no categories. Further, they?re all sorted by first name.

1. Can the droid categorize contacts?
2. Are there contact sorting options?

Added a few contacts in google, thought they?d sync to the droid overnight, was surprised they didn?t.

3. All the widgets I?ve seen for ?sync now? cost money. Isn?t there a free version, or already a trick I haven?t learned?

The droid was charged to about 75% when I put it to bed. When I woke it up, it had dropped to about 60%.

4. Doesn?t it charge whenever it?s plugged into my PC? Does it or the droid sleeping interfere with that?

 

[jefboyardee]

Thanks, it does indeed charge faster with the usb off, and the droid off for that matter.

 

[ccrs8]

Rather than pollute this forum with a new thread for every little question, I?ll throw a few in here:

My Google contacts are conveniently divided into groups. But when I look at contacts on the droid, it?s an endless list with no categories. Further, they?re all sorted by first name.

1. Can the droid categorize contacts?
2. Are there contact sorting options?

Added a few contacts in google, thought they?d sync to the droid overnight, was surprised they didn?t.

3. All the widgets I?ve seen for ?sync now? cost money. Isn?t there a free version, or already a trick I haven?t learned?

The droid was charged to about 75% when I put it to bed. When I woke it up, it had dropped to about 60%.

4. Doesn?t it charge whenever it?s plugged into my PC? Does it or the droid sleeping interfere with that?

1) Don't know
2) Somewhere in the contact settings on your phone is the option to sort by first name or last name. The names won't display "last, first" but they'll be sorted by lastname and when you start scrolling along the list the first names will dim down so the last names are prominently displayed.
3) You should go in to your phone settings and look at the sync and account settings. Make sure your google account settings are set to sync your contacts and then also make sure that the "background sync" option is turned on. Then your contacts will sync automatically.
4) I don't know about charging via the computer. If it is plugged in to the computer and the USB connection is turned on (ie so the sdcard is mounted to your computer as a drive) then perhaps that is using a bit of juice. I purchased a slew of super-cheap wall chargers from Amazon and have them all over the place (by my bed, at my desk, by the TV, at my office, etc.), so I just use them for charging. The phone is back to 100% every morning when I wake up.

 

[jefboyardee]

Another chapter of “It’s Probably Just Me, But...”

1. (Categorize Contacts) I might do something like addding spaces or some character that makes the seldom-used names appear after the often-used.

2. (Sorting Contacts) I might try swapping businesses names with person names, or at least first names with last. But I don’t see a Contact Settings, and can’t find any choices like the ones you mention.

3. (Sync Now) Again, my settings doesn’t have anything called Phone Settings, and the closest name, Call Settings, doesn’t mention anything sync.

4. (Charging Overnight) Tonight I’m not allowing USB access in hopes that it sleeps more soundly, the poor thing.

As incredible as this thing is, I find some minutiae pretty half-baked.

 

[s33ker]

jefboyardee, I think you need this video: YouTube - How to Use a Phone Tutorial

 

[jefboyardee]

I purchased a slew of super-cheap wall chargers ... The phone is back to 100% every morning when I wake up.

Apparently, when connected to a USB port on my PC, it doesn?t charge at all when the PC is sleeping. So your wall charger idea is the only sure-fire method.

As for sorting, the only way to separate the often-used contacts from the seldom-used is to designate the former as Favorites. Oh boy. Hard to understand why Google Contacts allows sorting and new groups, but that all disappears on its way through the cloud.

I thought that a cutting-edge smartphone should at least be able to do what my nine-year old rudimentary smartphone does.

 

[jefboyardee]

I guess I figured it out: The Contacts List is actually a Contacts Bucket. To categorize them, I have to make a folder for each category, name it, then add all the corresponding contact shortcuts to the folder. Then my desktop will reflect the categories on Google Contacts. But of course, if I change a category in Google, I have to remember to change it in my desktop folder too. Still don’t seem right, but it’ll work.