D2G OS quirks - finally too much

Thomas Lucas

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Jan 24, 2013
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My D2G is a ruggedly constructed and a cool phone, but the OS quirks stopped me from getting another Motorola phone. I'm not going to compare the hardware aspects of my Galaxy S3 to the D2G, but I am going to point out that the D2G quirks weren't just my imagination. This was a 2-1/2 year old D2G that was upgraded to gingerbread OTA. It was never rooted until after my 2 year contract was complete. No ROMs were ever loaded - just got root access. Root/no-root, quirks remainded the same.
1). Memory Management - The D2G was always loading up the LOST.DIR with file fragments. Sometimes the fragments were individual photos stored on SD card, and sometimes it was sections of code from apps which had stopped working. I would clean out the LOST.DIR and stuff would start showing up again within a day or two. I've cleaned hundreds of fragments out of the LOST.DIR on the D2G. On the GS3, I've seen 2 fragments appear in the last month.
2.) Camera / Gallery - My D2G was awful as a camera. Most of the time, the phone had to be rebooted to get the camera app to function. Original camera app or downloaded camera apps didn't matter. The phone usually failed when the app was called. When it would take pictures, you never knew if it REALLY took them. It would go throught the screen motions and make a shutter click, but many times there was a 0 byte length file on the card, or in memory, and there was no stored picture. Also, even it here was data on the card, everything had to be processed by Gallery before there was an accessible picture. The issue was that gallery failed to do it automatically most of the time, so there were no pictures until I unmounted & remounted the SD card. If I loaded a bunch of pictures on the phone by USB cable, then I'd have to reboot and call the gallery app in order to get the process started. And gallery would frequently choke & crash, so adding pictures sometimes took 10 or 12 reboots to get processed. I recognize that the SG3 has more horsepower than the D2G, but the camera and gallery have always worked as expected. The GS3 takes pictures and you can find them in the gallery.
3.) Frozen phone - probably ought to be under memory management. Not a dead battery issue. Phone would have charge and just stop functioning. No calls, messages, alarms, etc. I started out with all sorts of apps at first, but by the second year I'd stopped installing anything in the background because I thought it might be making things worse. Nope - things were bad enough witht the stock features. Another frequent reboot issue.The call quality was always fine, IF the phone was capable of functioning. Doesn't happen on the SG3.
4.) Battery Life - Ehhh. I got used to carrying a charger everywhere. The SG3 simply has a bigger battery in it.
5.) Unexplained battery drain - The D2G would be acting fine for a couple of weeks, then it would run hot and just keep sucking the battery down. This was another reason I left most of the background apps off. The Battery Use apps always pointed to "Android OS" as the culprit. Finally figured that it was something amiss with the weather widget; the one widget that I would always get around to restarting. If the phone got hot, then I'd uninstall the weather widget. After the phone charges up again, I could restore the widget and the problem wouldn't appear again for a couple of weeks. Probably ought to be under memory management, too. Has never happened on the GS3.
6.) Loss of sound - Same as all of the other issues. Phone works for a while, then nothing out of the speakers or ear jack. A reboot restored sound to the phone. I installed a "test speaker" app to punch every once in a while to see if the sound had crashed while I wasn't looking. Again, never happens on the SG3.

I think the D2G was decent hardware saddled with a buggy OS. The major wait for the Gingerbread upgrades, the bug problems with the upgrades, and no future upgrades, sure didn't win my respect as a customer. All of these issues are noted in the forums. Maybe I was just lucky enough to get them all frequently. There was obviously no help coming from Motorola. My point is that the quirks were not generic Android quirks; my GS3 & my wife's Rezound haven't had any of these issues. I thought about donating the D2g to a shelter, but I was afraid it wouldn't work when someone needed it.
 

Mermaidfyre

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Feb 23, 2013
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Just wanted to support your well written observations.
I have precisely same model. Purchased from Verizon Wireless in July 2011.
I have had precisely ALL the same problems.
I got no where with Motorola either.
I feel the same way about donating the device. I can't in good conscience, which is unfortunate as so many people need these donations.

Thank you for your well written post. I hope it does some good somehow.
 

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