The wife is really struggling with her Droid

[richpjr#AC]

My wife had been toying with getting her first smart phone (mainly for email). Having gone through the pain of a BlackBerry Storm, I steered her to the Droid and she finally picked one up a couple of weeks ago. And, she pretty much hates it. She is not a techie in any way, shape or form and leaves it up to me to figure things out and show her. The basic phone is pretty simple and she picked that up pretty quick. But two things are absolutely driving her crazy to the point of, ugh, thinking seriously about returning it and getting a Storm 2, even over my strong objection.

The first thing that is driving her crazy is the erratic email delivery. After she first told me about it, I browsed around and saw a ton of people struggling with POP3 email issues, which unfortunately, she uses. The night before last I set up her Verizon email to forward everything to her Gmail account since this reportedly fixed things for a lot of people. She still had troubles yesterday with it, though I understand Gmail itself was having problems. I can't fathom how in this day and age they can't make POP3 email more reliable. The one and only thing that my Storm does better than the Android is email, but if that's her primary use, it's kind of hard to argue against it. I'm not sure where the problem is and if 2.1 will fix things, but she only has 2 weeks left to return it so she will have to make a decision before then.

The second thing that is driving her crazy is somehow either the phone or her clusmy fingers are somehow switching notifications off randomly. She'll set up the phone to vibrate or make the rattlesnake alert sound when an email or text come in and somehow the notification is getting turned off and she is missing them. I don't know the phone well enough to know if she is accidently toggling it somehow or not, but it could very well be.

I'm not sure what she is going to do, but she is pretty unhappy with her first smart phone. Of course, she didn't suffer through the Storm's early days like I did, so she has no idea what smart phone hell is like!

 

[Emilluminati]

The first thing that is driving her crazy is the erratic email delivery. After she first told me about it, I browsed around and saw a ton of people struggling with POP3 email issues, which unfortunately, she uses. The night before last I set up her Verizon email to forward everything to her Gmail account since this reportedly fixed things for a lot of people. She still had troubles yesterday with it, though I understand Gmail itself was having problems. I can't fathom how in this day and age they can't make POP3 email more reliable. The one and only thing that my Storm does better than the Android is email, but if that's her primary use, it's kind of hard to argue against it. I'm not sure where the problem is and if 2.1 will fix things, but she only has 2 weeks left to return it so she will have to make a decision before then.

I setup all my email accounts to be forwarded to my gmail account and now I don't have any issues with my mail at all.

 

[bmderuosi]

Hello, sorry to hear that. I think the best thing for her would just get a bberry tour or curve 2. My gf recently decided to go the way of the smart phone. One think I knew is touch screens would not work well with her and she really only needed email and limited browsing. I set everything up for her on the berry and showed her the basics, email, bbm, phone, and browsing. She loves it (went with curve 2 because of the optical track pad and its pink go figure) and has had no problems since purchase. Hope the advice helps.

 

[Phil Nickinson]

Hey, Rich. Sorry your wife is having troubles.

Yeah, the best thing you can do about the e-mail is to have Gmail pull in her POP account. Here's how to do that.

As for the notifications, it's not just her. There's something screwy about them in Android, and if anybody can tell me what I've been doing wrong all this time, I'm all ears.

My wife had been toying with getting her first smart phone (mainly for email). Having gone through the pain of a BlackBerry Storm, I steered her to the Droid and she finally picked one up a couple of weeks ago. And, she pretty much hates it. She is not a techie in any way, shape or form and leaves it up to me to figure things out and show her. The basic phone is pretty simple and she picked that up pretty quick. But two things are absolutely driving her crazy to the point of, ugh, thinking seriously about returning it and getting a Storm 2, even over my strong objection.

The first thing that is driving her crazy is the erratic email delivery. After she first told me about it, I browsed around and saw a ton of people struggling with POP3 email issues, which unfortunately, she uses. The night before last I set up her Verizon email to forward everything to her Gmail account since this reportedly fixed things for a lot of people. She still had troubles yesterday with it, though I understand Gmail itself was having problems. I can't fathom how in this day and age they can't make POP3 email more reliable. The one and only thing that my Storm does better than the Android is email, but if that's her primary use, it's kind of hard to argue against it. I'm not sure where the problem is and if 2.1 will fix things, but she only has 2 weeks left to return it so she will have to make a decision before then.

The second thing that is driving her crazy is somehow either the phone or her clusmy fingers are somehow switching notifications off randomly. She'll set up the phone to vibrate or make the rattlesnake alert sound when an email or text come in and somehow the notification is getting turned off and she is missing them. I don't know the phone well enough to know if she is accidently toggling it somehow or not, but it could very well be.

I'm not sure what she is going to do, but she is pretty unhappy with her first smart phone. Of course, she didn't suffer through the Storm's early days like I did, so she has no idea what smart phone hell is like!

 

[richpjr#AC]

Hey, Rich. Sorry your wife is having troubles.

Yeah, the best thing you can do about the e-mail is to have Gmail pull in her POP account. Here's how to do that.

As for the notifications, it's not just her. There's something screwy about them in Android, and if anybody can tell me what I've been doing wrong all this time, I'm all ears.

That was the guide I used to set hers up. I'll check with her tonight to see if mail worked better. So others are having notification issues besides her - hopefully that is fixed in 2.1.

 

[prometheus]

Sorry about the problems, that sucks.

If you are forwarding to gmail then you should be cool. Android using gmail is as good (or better) than bb at email. You mentioned her "verizon" email... what is that? Agreed though, Android non-gmail email is NOT pretty.

As far as turing off notifications... it could be as simple as just turning down the volume to silent via the volume toggle bar (the button on the side of the doid). Have her religiously put the phone into "sleep" mode before putting it in her pocket / purse - push the power button (briefly) - She's probably hitting the button in pocket / purse.

 

[CPatt44]

Get her a Curve 2. No problems to be had with email there.

 

[richpjr#AC]

Sorry about the problems, that sucks.

If you are forwarding to gmail then you should be cool. Android using gmail is as good (or better) than bb at email. You mentioned her "verizon" email... what is that? Agreed though, Android non-gmail email is NOT pretty.

As far as turing off notifications... it could be as simple as just turning down the volume to silent via the volume toggle bar (the button on the side of the doid). Have her religiously put the phone into "sleep" mode before putting it in her pocket / purse - push the power button (briefly) - She's probably hitting the button in pocket / purse.

Sorry, I have Verizon FIOS and her primary email account is a POP3 account on it. I did the forward trick so I'll check and see how that worked. I'm sure she is not putting the phone into sleep before putting it into a holster she wears on her belt. I'll mention that to her.

 

[deersnypr]

Download "ring guard" from the market. Its free and will help prevent her from accidentally silencing her alerts with the side toggle volume buttons.

 

[daThomas#AC]

The native email app is less than properly developed and my guess is Google doesn't really mind that since they want everyone in the gorg-averse.

K-9 is pretty buggy too in my opinion. We'll see if they improve the native email client with their next update.

 

[takeshi]

I can't fathom how in this day and age they can't make POP3 email more reliable.

I can't fathom how people are still using POP accounts "in this day and age".

Push is the way to go IMO. Wish I had some useful input but I only use an Exchange account with my Droid.

 

[mjones73]

K9 handles POP e-mail correctly...

 

[Chiefvelo#IM]

My wife had been toying with getting her first smart phone (mainly for email). Having gone through the pain of a BlackBerry Storm, I steered her to the Droid and she finally picked one up a couple of weeks ago. And, she pretty much hates it. She is not a techie in any way, shape or form and leaves it up to me to figure things out and show her. The basic phone is pretty simple and she picked that up pretty quick. But two things are absolutely driving her crazy to the point of, ugh, thinking seriously about returning it and getting a Storm 2, even over my strong objection.

The first thing that is driving her crazy is the erratic email delivery. After she first told me about it, I browsed around and saw a ton of people struggling with POP3 email issues, which unfortunately, she uses. The night before last I set up her Verizon email to forward everything to her Gmail account since this reportedly fixed things for a lot of people. She still had troubles yesterday with it, though I understand Gmail itself was having problems. I can't fathom how in this day and age they can't make POP3 email more reliable. The one and only thing that my Storm does better than the Android is email, but if that's her primary use, it's kind of hard to argue against it. I'm not sure where the problem is and if 2.1 will fix things, but she only has 2 weeks left to return it so she will have to make a decision before then.

The second thing that is driving her crazy is somehow either the phone or her clusmy fingers are somehow switching notifications off randomly. She'll set up the phone to vibrate or make the rattlesnake alert sound when an email or text come in and somehow the notification is getting turned off and she is missing them. I don't know the phone well enough to know if she is accidently toggling it somehow or not, but it could very well be.

I'm not sure what she is going to do, but she is pretty unhappy with her first smart phone. Of course, she didn't suffer through the Storm's early days like I did, so she has no idea what smart phone hell is like!

you Should have your Wife try the Pre plus. Palm has always had a great contact manager and the integration seems to be great and very easy to use. There isn't a lot of press on this device right now and that too bad because it is a very nice solution for a lot of users.
I think it is a lot easier than a blackberry for a newer user and the gestures are great.
I have a Droid she has a new pre. She had to have a keypad i thought that was the best option available.
good luck

 

[dwhall]

I can vouch for ring guard... Love it!!

 

[claustin]

you Should have your Wife try the Pre plus. Palm has always had a great contact manager and the integration seems to be great and very easy to use. There isn't a lot of press on this device right now and that too bad because it is a very nice solution for a lot of users.
I think it is a lot easier than a blackberry for a newer user and the gestures are great.
I have a Droid she has a new pre. She had to have a keypad i thought that was the best option available.
good luck

I'll second that. Coming from a BB a Pre would be a decent upgrade if she's not digging the Droid. Not many apps though.

 

[nox]

I'm actually tempted by the Pre's looks.
Makes me want to buy it >.>

 

[MBSMD]

Palm's stock is doing very poorly, for what its worth. I suspect Palm is ripe for a takeover.
A year ago, they had lots of promise. But they sat there with the same hardware, locked in to exclusivity with the #3 carrier and doesn't appear to have done much in the way of hardware development since, Pre/Pixi Plus not withstanding.

WebOS is a very nice OS, but they've made a lot of mistakes IMHO. Meanwhile, Android's growth continues to climb. Sure it's no equal to RIM yet, but while every carrier has or will have multiple Android models - all sharing the same app store, Palm has but two models on two carriers.

I'm sorry your wife is having issues with the phone; not sure what she's doing, but I've not experienced any of the issues she's seeing. However, my non-techie wife seems to do well with her iPhone. Maybe think about that. If she's having trouble with the Droid, she's going to hate the BlackBerry's ease-of-use factor.

 

[ridavid81]

forget the BB, forget the droid, forget the palm pre. she will have trouble with all of them. people like that are best with a basic phone like a motorola razr or something. not worth the trouble or hassle.

 

[richpjr#AC]

After switching over the Verizon email to forward to Gmail, the long pauses with no email delivery seem to have gone away. I loaded ring guard on so I'll see how she likes it.

 

[ikith]

Use your gmail account as a push server:

Works awesome! I use it myself.

For the second by default your phones notifications toggle with the main volume so if she turns it to vibrate her notifications will do the same. You can change this by going to sound hitting ringer volume and unchecking the check box that is there and setting your notification volume all the way up.



I hate people that suggest alternate apps when the functionality is there people are just to lazy to find it and end up wasting phone space by downloading some app that does the same thing with a pretty ui. (I heart shell)