No picture messaging, alarm snooze, buddies now, etc :(

[amirsgarbunk]

Hi everybody
I'm new to Android with At&t's galaxy s2 and having all kinds of problems, hoping someone has heard of or can help with any/all of them. I've had the phone for 4 days now and am getting ready to take it back unless I can figure out what's up ...

Buddies now:
I've tried adding a handful of my favorite contacts to one of my pages with buddies now, but the contacts I assign to them are randomly wiped clean. The blue square itself for each contact is still there, but it's as if i just dragged fresh icons onto the screen and need to assign contacts to them.

Alarm snooze:
My alarm isn't going off after I snooze it. The initial alarm goes off at the designated time, but after I slide the 'snooze' thingey, it doesn't go off again (and i walk into work an hour late.) Have tested it throughout the day and cannot repro. Saw someone have similar issues in the forums, but only after downloading an app...tried that and could not repro.

Picture Messages
I can't seem to receive picture messages. On three occasions this week, from three different people (but all iPhone users) I receive a picture message, but the picture is received as a video. When i press 'play' it's just an image of the first frame of the video, and the progress bar indicates that the video is playing for 5-or-so seconds (when no actual video is playing...)

Can anybody lend a hand?

 

[UK_Alum_02]

I posted the about the same issue with receiving text pics. Another user was having the same problem so it's not just you (us). Now that I think about it, the pics were received from an iphone user if that has anything to do with it. I don't guess I have received one from any other type phone. Sorry, I can't help.

 

[tunie]

You might want to try calling AT&T about the mms picture issue. I know AT&T had to roll out an update for iPhone users so they could send mms pics/sounds to Android phones in a format the Android phone supported. From what I read, the issue could be your mms settings and for that, it might save you some time if you called AT&T. I have a Samsung Infuse and when I receive pics off and on, they come through as videos. It's not a problem, but it's weird.

I don't use Buddies Now, so I can't help you there.

As far as your snooze issue goes, it sounds to me like a setting in your clock. In my stock clock, one of the settings allows me to select snooze once, twice, 3x, 5x or 10 times and then I can select how long I want each snooze to last i.e. 5 mins, 10 mins, 15 mins or 30 mins. If you open your clock and press on the alarm you set up, it will open the options you have available for that alarm. Then press on Snooze under Notification and it will open your snooze options for the alarm. Even though this is on an Infuse, I would assume it's similar on the S2 because I think it's the same clock.

 

[amirsgarbunk]

There's no 'notifications' option in this version of the clock...for now I downloaded and will try a different clock, but I'd expect the stock clock to work. I get the feeling (from browsing forums and research) that "stock apps" don't necessarily imply stability.

As for buddies, forget it. I give up and won't even try to repro...just gonna link contacts on one of my pages. Again, failure to show from a stock widget...makes me grumpy.

I'll holler at At&t about MMS...that's an unacceptable failure in my opinion. Picture messaging is standard ... my dad's 3 year old PoS flip phone can send/receive picture messages, and my $200 bleeding edge phone cant. That's inexcusable.

All in all, really miffed with this phone

 

[amirsgarbunk]

Sorry, to be clear: I've set all the standard snooze options in my clock and am still getting random failures. Most of the time the snooze works, but often (20% or more) the alarm is shutting off after I snooze it. Played with it for an hour today, sometimes it would come back from a snooze, sometimes it wouldn't. I had it set to 3-minute snoozes, a max of 10 times. Also tried 5-minute snoozes and saw the issue, albeit randomly/rarely.

 

[amirsgarbunk]

Just got off the phone with at&t, after trying a few things to fix the picture messaging thing and failing, they advised me to go back to the store I got my phone from and swap for a new one. At this point, I'm hopeful that the quirks are all a product of the physical device itself.

 

[UK_Alum_02]

I don't think that will do any good but I wish you luck. You are at least the third person here who has mentioned the issue. I'd be curious if someone could post that there pic messaging was working as it should (without the play button).

 

[tunie]

There's no 'notifications' option in this version of the clock...for now I downloaded and will try a different clock, but I'd expect the stock clock to work. I get the feeling (from browsing forums and research) that "stock apps" don't necessarily imply stability.

As for buddies, forget it. I give up and won't even try to repro...just gonna link contacts on one of my pages. Again, failure to show from a stock widget...makes me grumpy.

I'll holler at At&t about MMS...that's an unacceptable failure in my opinion. Picture messaging is standard ... my dad's 3 year old PoS flip phone can send/receive picture messages, and my $200 bleeding edge phone cant. That's inexcusable.

All in all, really miffed with this phone

It's not really a notifications "option". It's just a heading and "snooze" is listed under it. If you press "snooze" it gives you options. I'm sorry if they're not the same, or similar. I thought they were, but I could easily be wrong.

Stock apps are okay, but the market definitely offers apps with much better options. In regard to mms, it could be that your phone has a glitch, who knows, but I did read about the issue and that a call to AT&T seemed to resolve it. I'm not sure it's the phone's fault. Everything I read seems to point to AT&T messing this up for some.

I know how you feel. You're not the only one whose gotten frustrated over initially setting up and using the phone. I came from Blackberry for many years and there were things on my Android phone that seemed counter-intuitive. I also didn't get a big kick out having to set up -everything- and I do mean -everything-, when the Blackberry came ready to go out of the box. I really was quite frustrated, like you. Now that I've used the Infuse for 2 months, I've gotten used to it and do appreciate the configuration options I have that I didn't have with Blackberry. Give yourself a little time to acclimate. It's not just a phone. It's a mini computer. The phone is truly ahead of the rest. Once you get things set up in a way that works best for you, you won't have to mess with it again. Then, you can just enjoy it.

 

[tunie]

Sorry, to be clear: I've set all the standard snooze options in my clock and am still getting random failures. Most of the time the snooze works, but often (20% or more) the alarm is shutting off after I snooze it. Played with it for an hour today, sometimes it would come back from a snooze, sometimes it wouldn't. I had it set to 3-minute snoozes, a max of 10 times. Also tried 5-minute snoozes and saw the issue, albeit randomly/rarely.

Glad you're going to exchange it. You shouldn't have issues like this out of the gate, especially with something as simple as the clock. I must be software glitch. Get a new one and don't look back! I'm sorry I couldn't be of more help.

 

[tunie]

I don't think that will do any good but I wish you luck. You are at least the third person here who has mentioned the issue. I'd be curious if someone could post that there pic messaging was working as it should (without the play button).

The odd thing here for me is, sometimes it works fine and sometimes the pics come through as videos. I can't reproduce it at will, so I have no idea what's causing it to happen. I'm on the Infuse, not the S2. I wonder if anyone else using other Samsung phones have experienced this. I've heard the Infuse is similar to the S2 so, if that's true, maybe that's why I'm seeing the problem along with S2 users. If you've only seen 3 people with this issue, do you think it's an isolated glitch? I really couldn't find many Android users on the Internet with this issue. Most of the complaints seemed to have to do with the iPhone and iPad.

 

[UK_Alum_02]

Not sure, I need to have someone that uses something other than an iPhone send me a SMS.

 

[G.murph]

I use a Samsung Captivate and ever since the 2.2 update all my mms messages have come in as videos. I usually just open it then hit pause. Kind of annoying, but I've gotten used to it.

 

[78Staff]

Some similar comments...

Buddies, I am using and have not had this issue - my contacts sync from Exchange, not Gmail - so not sure if any relevance there...

Alarm - Actually this morning I think the snooze fail happened to me as well. Not 100% sure but have tested today and it works every time. So it may have been operator error on my part...

MMS - I'm also not seeing the pics it seems...using both stock and GoSMS apps. Limited testing sending sms from my gmail account, but I would think it should still work...

 

[cajunrph]

I'm having the same buddies now issue as well as the mms issue. I can't say the mms issue occurs with non iPhone mms as I have only received iPhone mms. But the buddies more issue is happening more often. Kind of aggravating on that front because I use the buddies now quite often.

 

[78Staff]

Some similar comments...

Buddies, I am using and have not had this issue - my contacts sync from Exchange, not Gmail - so not sure if any relevance there...

Alarm - Actually this morning I think the snooze fail happened to me as well. Not 100% sure but have tested today and it works every time. So it may have been operator error on my part...

MMS - I'm also not seeing the pics it seems...using both stock and GoSMS apps. Limited testing sending sms from my gmail account, but I would think it should still work...

Buddies - no change, but I did quit using them.

Alarm - no failures since, so much have been operator error

MMS - another operator error, I was sending my test MMS to txt.att.net vs mms.att.net. Once I sent to the correct one the image showed up fine. However, I did get an error on a MMS from a 4S user... saying "too large or unable to view" or something like that. It was a screenshot of the phone so I doubt it was too large.