Don't Bother Checking for ICS it is NOT ready

[NickA]

But seriously folks. I'm sure any one of us can list downfalls, bugs, likes and dislikes to no end.
.......
Thoughts?

My thoughts are that you, sir, are the king of the long posts!

 

[robertGregory]

why thank you...

 

[rbess1965]

But seriously folks. I'm sure any one of us can list downfalls, bugs, likes and dislikes to no end.

A big joke as far back as I can remember, was that most of us - when buying windows - we're Microsoft beta testers and we even paid for it etc... That has some truth to it today...

Of course Windows has become so much nicer. and stable, most of us stayed on XP, skipped over vista, and went to 7, which I have to say is the most rubust / reliable windows of all - even over XP. XP took years to stabilize and Microsoft did it in a very short period of time with Windows 7. And although I just read a thread / article about upcoming Google / android initiatives - where the sentiment was "WOW! the other operating systems won't hold a candle to what Google / Android have in store for us..." Well, I can say the same about Microsoft's upcoming Windows 8.

In all fairness before I comment on it with IMHO du jour. I tried the beta of Windows 8 when it came out - and to boot, I have a very funny story about Windows 8 and AT&T strangely, but I won't iterate on that at the moment - unless someone out there is curious enough to hear the funny story... Anyway, I hated Windows 8, thought it was going to be a shoddy silly overlay to Windows 7 in a desperate attempt by Microsoft to stay afloat and dig their claws back into the mobile market. I was wrong....

I downloaded the Release Preview of Windows 8 and I am of the firm belief that this OS will take the desktop, tablet, and mobile (maybe) markets by storm. So I say the same set of comments about Windows 8 that some say about Google's / Android's future.

So, what does this have to do with ICS not being ready? well, here it goes.

Most new soft technology these days - comes broken out of the box. Ideally, as a consumer, we want what is "the latest thing", and we want it to work. But that is not "always" the case. In a previous post I jousted Google pretty hard - calling android a big science experiement... am I right, well, some may agree, ans some would not. It's all what you are comfortable with - and willing to accept I guess...

The issues I have, as a consumer, is getting caught in the crossfire of corporate marketing tug-o-war, in my current case Motorola (razr maxx), Google (GB / ICS), and Verizon. Which by the way, Verizon now will allow you to tether for free (it's included in your data plans now).

Here I am, the consumer, just signed a two year, and coming to realize that I will be spending 199.00 (phone), + 135 / month for my plan. That to me is outrageous for what I get. Even if I trimmed down my plan to 80 / month, it is still insane...

Now, I am a former AT&T prisoner recently extradited to the Verizon DOC (Department of connections), and somewhat experiencing the same treatment from Verizon - with a few exceptions...

But here is what I have.

I have an expensive phone - claiming to be one of the best, yet the OS does not work the same way day to day, the apps do not work the same from day to day. It's not that bad, but when I start a program day after day (in this case I will refer to Motocast) I would experct to get the same results, and it just does not happen. I am using one app as an example out of 10 apps that show the same instability...

And I am paying a lot of money for it...

So, the question is, and probably better suited for another forum, are the dollars spent for products and services equally matched. This forum topic suggests we are not.

Thoughts?

I guess I find myself realizing that we're always going to behind something else newer and cooler. I feel that owning the Maxx with Gingerbread, being a seasoned OS, has really been the sweet spot for phones. I felt like in reliability, quality and battery life, it has been very comparable to the mighty iPhone. Maybe a little behind in screen tech but more fun in other ways the androids provide. It really has been the best of the two worlds for me. Now becoming the experiment of a new OS and facing some irregularities on my trusted device is making me a little concerned about the whole plan. Point is that it?s should be obvious to everyone that it is way better to own a solid device at the mature end of the OS cycle rather than needing to have an OS in its infancy, but we all get caught up in the what?s new hype and hit that 'Accept' button to get our piece of it. We'll just have to see how it goes now. In Google we trust right!

 

[stockandroidguy]

Still waiting in so Cal.

Sent from my DROID RAZR using Android Central Forums

 

[bradenfontaine]

ICS on the Razr is buggy. The soak has ended and I voted for it to go back to the devs for further refining. It is not ready for the average user.

Sent from my Razr Maxx dripping ICS all over the floor

 

[rbess1965]

I'm with Brad on this one. Even a simple transition of the keyboard from portrait to landscape is having trouble redrawing the keyboard for me to make this post. It just feels like it's using more ram and acting like it's getting low on memory like my 512ram Samsung Charge did. It reminds me of when you loaded up that fancy new Windows OS on your one year old computer and the patches just kept coming. Every new one bogging it down further. And the battery better improve or this isn't going to fly with me. This result includes about 6 hrs of sleep last night. That 78% display equates to over 4 hrs of screen on time. Also noticing something else. Seems like, can't be sure, that the brightness levels on the display seem off. I've had my work profile set to 25% for months now and it's been fine. Since the update, 25% looks a whole lot darker to me. I felt the same way about the Wi-Fi Signal strength Icon. I was seeing only one bar sitting in the same room as my router. That's not consistant either though, because last night I had full bars. I don't know what's going on, just know I'm not enjoying it.

Sent using Droid Razr Maxx

 

[kingmeow]

Mr. Gregory, you should be writing a Blog! I'm sure you will have a lot of followers!

 

[droidntn]

It is not ready for the average user.

Sent from my Razr Maxx dripping ICS all over the floor

Scuse me...I beg your pardon, I am NOT and AVERAGE user.
hahahahaha.

 

[B. Diddy]

I'm with Brad on this one. Even a simple transition of the keyboard from portrait to landscape is having trouble redrawing the keyboard for me to make this post. It just feels like it's using more ram and acting like it's getting low on memory like my 512ram Samsung Charge did. It reminds me of when you loaded up that fancy new Windows OS on your one year old computer and the patches just kept coming. Every new one bogging it down further. And the battery better improve or this isn't going to fly with me. This result includes about 6 hrs of sleep last night. That 78% display equates to over 4 hrs of screen on time. Also noticing something else. Seems like, can't be sure, that the brightness levels on the display seem off. I've had my work profile set to 25% for months now and it's been fine. Since the update, 25% looks a whole lot darker to me. I felt the same way about the Wi-Fi Signal strength Icon. I was seeing only one bar sitting in the same room as my router. That's not consistant either though, because last night I had full bars. I don't know what's going on, just know I'm not enjoying it.

Click to view quoted image


Sent using Droid Razr Maxx

A last resort to try would be a factory reset--that seems to have helped a number of people with the battery issue. Regarding the display, it seems that the lower limit of brightness has been adjusted down, so 25% would also be dimmer than before. I would think you could adjust your work profile to something like 35-40% to achieve the brightness you're used to. I like the new display calibration, because the new lower limit of brightness is now dim enough for comfortable use in a dark room at night. Before, I had to use a 3rd party app like Screen Filter to get it dimmer.

By the way, how many charge cycles have you gone through since the update? As I mentioned before, it seemed to take 3-4 cycles before the battery life returned to normal for me.

 

[carracerz14]

ICS on the Razr is buggy. The soak has ended and I voted for it to go back to the devs for further refining. It is not ready for the average user.

Sent from my Razr Maxx dripping ICS all over the floor

I am having no problems with it. No lag, no redraws. No keyboard issues. Nothing. Every thing is as smooth and flawless as it could be. Did you guys factory reset? Its a good idea to do that and start fresh for a major update like this. Who knows you could have something that's not working with ics right.

Sent from my RAZR MAXXIMUS

 

[crimsonking#AC]

I called Verizon today for increasingly frequent data drops and a "Network Error. Please check the network!" message on every phone call. After getting p to level two, she said the update was "released" on the 23rd, and gave me an 800 number to Motorola to have them push it to me, and see if it fixed my issues.
Motorola told me to go stuff it, but did say it was being rolled out to customers currently. I would "get it when I got it".

 

[carracerz14]

I like the fact that I can just dial too - it's cool, simple, yet the prompt "type to search" is misleading, makes me part of the "ok, what am I doing wrong crowd" - almost think it's an android humor... kinda like the pc's which "require" a keyboard plugged into it yet stop in the bios screen with a message "Keyboard failure or not present, press F1 to continue..."

oh boy

The type to search refers to using the number buttons to type. You start typing a contacts name using the T9 and the contact pops up

Sent from my RAZR MAXXIMUS

 

[rbess1965]

A last resort to try would be a factory reset--that seems to have helped a number of people with the battery issue. Regarding the display, it seems that the lower limit of brightness has been adjusted down, so 25% would also be dimmer than before. I would think you could adjust your work profile to something like 35-40% to achieve the brightness you're used to. I like the new display calibration, because the new lower limit of brightness is now dim enough for comfortable use in a dark room at night. Before, I had to use a 3rd party app like Screen Filter to get it dimmer.

By the way, how many charge cycles have you gone through since the update? As I mentioned before, it seemed to take 3-4 cycles before the battery life returned to normal for me.

Thank you for confirming the display levels. I was hoping it wasn't just me making things up. You are correct, about 40% is the new 25. Interesting. I've had it since Sunday so maybe 2 real charges I guess. I haven't actually let it drop below 50% until yesterdays testing so it may take a few more full dischargers. I've also uninstalled Go Launcher and reloaded it to see if that helps anything. Bites because I have to redo it all. Factory reset may be in order but I'm putting it off in hopes I won't need to. I certain will though if that's what it takes. Thx

 

[Loki0402]

I called Verizon today for increasingly frequent data drops and a "Network Error. Please check the network!" message on every phone call. After getting p to level two, she said the update was "released" on the 23rd, and gave me an 800 number to Motorola to have them push it to me, and see if it fixed my issues.
Motorola told me to go stuff it, but did say it was being rolled out to customers currently. I would "get it when I got it".

I've had this data problem since switching to the razr maxx. I am actually on my fourth one since mid-april. And about to get another one, but they did offer for me to switch to another 4g device. I opted to wait to see if the update fixes the issues.

Sent from my DROID RAZR using Android Central Forums

 

[JHBThree]

So people are getting the ICS update for razr (maxx) - I got mine, and it definately needs work. Is it stable for the most part, well that's TBD.

They need to:

1. Remove a prompt in the phone dialer - which suggests to the user to type the name of a contact yet no text area exists to pop the keyboard - basically it's misleading you to believe that you can access contacts right from the phone dialer - the answer is tap the left most hard key at the bottom of the phone which will prompt you to search for contacts... They need to clean this up - more intuitive.

2. If you do an OTA and have an exchange account setup you may lose the ability to maintain your push option - and you may not have all the options that ICS truly brings to corporate email (which are more than GB). You will know there is a problem if you had an exchange account setup prior to the OTA update and afterwards the syncing for that account cannot be made active. Fix: remove the account and re-add it. You will then have syncing ability and more corporate email options...

3. The overall intuitiveness of ICS - just a few days working it, needs to be understood, if you have worked GB then ICS is a bit removed from it... Google changed everything around virtually. Of course, and this is a slap on Google / Android, they have to consider the user's when making a product - not the developer. I say this because I am a developer and it is not a good habit / practice to change everything up. People want continuity over bling (new features). They should plan to change just a couple features each release not the entire feature set.

Personally, and I do not know who's with me on this, but although I agree that android is way more advanced as a featureset than apple, the android OS is really in it's infancy moving into it's childhood - I'm saying it's not mature. I am looking at android as a giant science experiment - when all I want to do is operate a phone. That is where apple has it over android IMHO, simply because on iphone everything just works - there is something to be said for that...

I'd rather see google focus on maturing their core OS than adding neat features. I am almost ready to give up 4g and the maxx for an iphone, why?

1. I know if I turned on the iphone the next day it would simply work. The android experience is simply unpredictable.

I feel sorry for apple users though, as they are slowly exposed to tiny tid-bits of features -and they somewhat feel wowed each time they get a new phone, cause they were just handed a few more pixels, 300mhz higher in core, and a program they can converse with - siri, when we have had vlingo and a few other apps that did the same etc. Yet, their phones work - and they do not look the other way (anywhere else) for technology, they trust apple.

Sorry for the rant, but this phone thing is a game only, and the carriers are draining money out of our pockets faster than hones go through battery cycles.

at least google could improve the overall quality of their products...

one more thought...

one of the writers on this forum seem slanted towards conformity and a slave to the carrier's ways. He seems to slap users around a bit for being adventurous (rooters) or people who want to pimp their phone experience. I have a few words for him - not bad words, just some thoughts...

I have rooted my phone, to gain control over carrier marketing tactics and to protect myself against collateral data usage from unremovable applications...

1. I do not like the fact that carriers lock down apps that eat our data packages behind the scenes. And to most of us, unknowingly. Most of my friends only have 2gb data packages and cannot seem to make sense why from day to day they go through data when they only consume 50 - 100 k in email yet megs are missing (consumed) on a daily basis. But when Google Play constantly primes for updates and is defaulted to download those updates over our data plans - that is pure theft, not a buyer beware issue...

Note: yes there are controls and features which will help suppress data usage, but there are a family of applications which are frozen / locked and cannot be deleted (netflix, nfl football, etc) which are more often than not running in the backgroud jockying anonymous user information or checking for updates etc. They cannot be removed or truly prevented from running in the background. we have bee forced to babysit our phones for power and collateral data consumtion - yet cannot be uninstalled.

"Rooting takes care of that." So, if you want to tell users that they are busting their warranties or going against contracts etc thats cool, I can see the right thing to do in that set of statements - it's all good, yet where is the fight against the carriers who seem to beat us into a state of acceptableness with respect to using part of our data plans for their marketing purposes. I mean consider the following:

Comcast charges 46.00 a month for all-you-can-download (almost) data. by almost I mean they do have a 256gb limit for that price. Now, carriers typically charge now 15 for a single GB, but even at 20 for 2gb, do the math, effectively we are paying 128x the price vs cable... That is insane.

and our phone data is not even federally regulated for QA on measuring accurate quantity.

it would be a percentage of people who might tell me that I do not have to buy a phone plan, that is true, however it does not change the fact that carriers are commiting theft by deception and have contracts that really state we have no recourse...

that is all.

So basically, you're complaining because Google has made changes that are absolutely necessary for android to compete and you don't like them.

Sent from my DROID RAZR using Tapatalk 2

 

[tkolgen]

I've had this data problem since switching to the razr maxx. I am actually on my fourth one since mid-april. And about to get another one, but they did offer for me to switch to another 4g device. I opted to wait to see if the update fixes the issues.

Sent from my DROID RAZR using Android Central Forums

I'm in the same boat as you are with the data dropping problem. I went thru about 5 or 6 phones and did everything from safe-mode to uninstalling all my apps and adding a couple a day to see if it was an app. Somethings help it but at the end of the day it still drops data. The past week or so I've noticed that the problem has been less of an issue than before but I don't know if it's because I get a new phone every week or if Verizon is actually doing something to fix it. I don't think its your phone I think it is a network issue and they are too embarrassed to admit it.

 

[robertGregory]

I figured as much but its a tad unclear are we bact to t9, hmmm

 

[robertGregory]

Yes, factory reset was definately done - better than that - this was a litteral out of the box setup - meaning verizon sent me the phone a day earlier and the update came suprisingly enough...

 

[Sandman333]

I for one will be happy when Sunday gets here and all the people saying "It's not the end of Q2 yet" can STFU.

Sent from my DROID RAZR MAXX using Tapatalk 2

 

[robertGregory]

So basically, you're complaining because Google has made changes that are absolutely necessary for android to compete and you don't like them.

Sent from my DROID RAZR using Tapatalk 2

I think I have a right to complain. Compete with what (or who)? Apple is not a threat - with the exception that their stuff just works...

My biggest complaint is that they drastically change the interface or feature set. Actually it might not be a google issue anyway... Who does carrier specific development? I'd lay it on them, as the user cannot sustain major changes. then on top of bugs it makes it that much harder to deal with...

There was a response above stating that 4.0.4 is buggy - and it is. Not terribly so, but it is.

Really, they should give an option to "completely" start from scratch vs. just an upgrade in place keeping your settings etc.

As a razr owner, we are also deprived of 4.0.4 features - that other carriers provide their 4.0.4 devices. For example, there are other devices, on sprint etc that received the 4.0.4 upgrade and can change the 4 icons on the lock screen - we cannot, verizon / motorola removed that feature from the build - WHY?

Maybe I should have just got an iPhone, or the next windows phone... but I did not.

Finally, about complaining...

I think I have the right to; as I am dishing out large amounts of cash, trapped in a contract, for this quality of product....

When has it become acceptable for companies to offer low quality technology - pitch it as the greatest thing, charge big dollars for it... and we do nothing about it...

seems to be the way of the world now - which really blows...

should I not be complaining because I opted in? hmmm