Can't figure out how to answer the phone! Nothing to press. Moto E4

[CJ Mac]

Okay, so just this week my husband and I bought our first-ever smartphones, the budget Moto E4. Seems like the highest of technology compared to our old LG Tracfones.

But here's the thing: I've set up my phone and it seems to work fine (although I don't find that the fingerprint idea is very secure--rarely asked for it), but I don't know if I did something wrong with my husband's phone or if there's a problem with it.

Testing by calling from our home phone, my phone will show a black screen with a phone symbol in the center and white dots radiating outward. Swipe right to answer, left to reject. (THAT took a while to figure out!) But with my husband's phone, when I call it, it rings but the home page stays as is and there's nothing I can press to answer it. No phone symbol anywhere. Even when I click the green phone which is what you hit to make a call. It brings me to my contacts but still doesn't show any way to answer the phone.

We did get Geek Squad protection. Should I just call them or does anywhere here have an idea?

Thanks!

 

[B. Diddy]

When your husband's phone rings, does anything appear in the status bar at the top? While it's ringing, swipe down from the top of the screen and look at the notification panel -- anything there?

 

[CJ Mac]

Been trying to answer you, B. Diddy for the longest time. Finally had to log out and log back in to get this reply box.

At any rate, I finally chatted with Motorola support and this was the simple solution:

Settings. > App > 3 dots > reset app prefereces > reset apps

That did it!

While I've got you (and we love Crow, btw, we're in the middle of watching a Japanese one), do you know if it's a bad thing to turn off notifications for all apps? A friend of mine said that those notifications eat up your battery and that I should turn them all off. I was able to do it for my phone in one fell swoop, but can't remember how I did it and can't do it for my husband's phone.

 

[B. Diddy]

Glad you figured it out! It's a little odd that you had to reset app preferences -- that suggests that some other app became the default to answer calls, but this would mean that your husband installed some 3rd party phone dialer app at some point.

I'd keep your notifications on. The amount of power the notifications use is pretty minimal. However, what can contribute to battery use would be certain apps that give you the option to constantly refresh data in the background -- for those apps, look in their options and change the refresh interval to something longer, so that it's not frequently waking the phone in order to refresh.

Always nice to hear from another MST3K fan! It was an earth-shattering event when the show recently came back on Netflix -- it's riffing heaven!

 

[CJ Mac]

Thanks--only just found this reply. (Is there a way to get notifications for responses?) How would I identify apps that keep refreshing in the background?

Oh about a 3rd party app. Not that I was aware of. Oh wait, maybe it was installing the T-Mobile app. I thought it might be helpful, but I don't think it is. (And my husband wouldn't know how to install an app to save his life.)

 

[B. Diddy]

The first thing to do would be to go through the settings menu of each app to see if there's an option to adjust the refresh interval. For some apps, you can't control it, so you can get an idea from their overall battery use. You could also use a wakelock detector app, which can tell you which apps are waking the phone and how often. GSam Battery Monitor can do that, but I'm not sure if the phone has to be rooted.

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