heviarti

So what's the deal with this? I've been using an android for probably six months now, and I've noticed some really broken stuff. Copy and paste is almost unusable, text entry fields that outstrip the screen size behave strangely, it's nearly impossible to place the cursor.... these are all very simple things that don't work properly. Storage is hinky at best, and any time I go out of mass storage mode it can take several mount/remount cycles for my gallery contents to update, the boot time is atrocious.... am I the only one noticing this?

dan330

you need a laptop

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Liamo_210

What phone to you have and what version of android are you running?

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heviarti

I have a laptop. That still doesn't fix any of the broken stuff on my phone.

valorian

Copy paste is no issue at all for me on my phone. I do it all the time with no issues. Not sure what you mean by "text entry field outstrip the screen". I usually zoom into the text entry fields to better paste content. again with cursor place. No big deal to pinch zoom to get a proper cursor placement if needed.

If you can give clearer example of the issues you are having and tell us what phone you have we may be able to help. Posting rants like this does nothing.

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Liamo_210

It really depends on what phone and version of the os you are running as well the last 3 android versions have improved it by leaps and bounds and well your problems could be explainable if you are running outdated software on an outdated device

fdbryant3

Since most people do not seem to have these problems and Android is growing in marketshare, I would suggest that no Android is not horribly crippled.

My advice start with answering the above question as to which device you have and what version of Android is it running.

Kaiser17

Its not Android, its your phone.. when it comes to Android it matters on the phone if you will have a good experience or not.. its not the OS, get a better phone and you'll see how well Android runs.

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Liamo_210

It could be both if he has a really old phone that's running something like froyo or an earlier version. As android was not as polished as it is now back then.

El Presidente

heviarti, if you let us know what device you own, we might be able to help sort some of your issues.

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heviarti

I'm running an LG Optimus Zip I bought new in August. It's running android 2.3.4, and yeah, it's pretty broken.

Text entry fields especially under Vbulletin will not activate in a size equal to or lesser than the screen. When the text outstrips the size of the entry field port, it bounces to the top with every carriage return, and does not return to the proper line until ten characters are typed. If you happen to get out of the text entry field, good luck getting back to the bottom. In almost any text entry field in the browser the little triangles that appear to notify you of the shift mode do not display.

How about the fact the browser wants to re-download an image which is being viewed, rather than saving it from the ram? This doubles data usage, in the cases the download doesn't fail (for no obvious reason).

El Presidente

I'm guessing those issues are phone specific? I can't really say I ever recall having problems like that on my devices.

Have you tried a different browser as opposed to the one that comes with the phone? What about a different keyboard?

jefboyardee

You hurt my Optimus’ feelings, but it’ll keep behaving and copying and pasting like it was supposed to.

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Last edited by jefboyardee; February 19th, 2013 at 03:42 PM.

NeXuS4

As someone who has worked for a company that sells the phone in question I can personally attest to the fact that the optimus zip is an unmitigated piece of garbage. OP probably bought it at Walmart thinking he was getting a good deal on a straight talk phone.

NEMESIS007

It's probably your phone or outdated OS. 2.3.4. is ancient now. I am on 4.2.1 and I have not experienced any of what you mentioned. Without a doubt, Android has come a long way and earlier versions has had their fair share of issues. Try to update to 4.2.1 and then report back to us. Good luck!

heviarti

Keyboard is a slider; it's pretty well the most that can be expected of a keyboard. I have seen a copy of Firefox for android, but according to google play I can't install it (reason not explained).

Until they started offering the iphone, this was pretty well the best they had to offer.

As far as I know I don't have any option for upgrade. I've definitelyseen any type of message that a software update was available for anything other than applications.

Last edited by heviarti; February 19th, 2013 at 04:16 PM. Reason: didn't see other responses.

SulkyAndroid17

Your phone is basically an Optimus S/V with an overclocked processor and keyboard. So, unfortunately in this smartphone world, you are outdated. I have a friend who has the same phone. It's not as bad as some of you make it out to be. Not worth $149.99 anymore but it's okay.

The reason Firefox won't install is because of your processor. You have an armv6. Firefox is for armv7 and up. You can try Firefox Beta. It may work better.

heviarti

Outdated doesn't necessarily answer why the software was released if it behaves so badly. I'm really curious who it is I grab by the stacking swivel and explain that there are major bugs.

I don't see why the device you run it on should make a difference as to whethe the basic functions work; if I install Linux on a brand new machine or a 2.8 ghz lga775 I expect the same results at a different speed.

That being said this phone cost $180.

mikedt

You could try writing to...
For the attention of CEO Koo Bon-Moo,
LG Corporation,
LG Twin Towers,
20 Yeouido-dong,
Yeongdeungpo-gu,
Seoul 150-721,
SOUTH KOREA

Tell him you think the phone is a lemon, with the reasons why, and what is LG going to do about it.

I'm serious, if you can't get satisfaction out of a company due to a bad product or poor service, go straight to the top. Write to the CEO at their head office, don't email or phone. You may not get a reply from the CEO personally, but all these corporations do have a head office PR department. Who knows, you might get a brand new top of the range LG phone out of it, and maybe compensation as well.


Probably depends on what GNU/Linux OS you install. A crap one or a good one? If the software is flawed, it's not going to be good on a top-end machine.

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Last edited by mikedt; February 19th, 2013 at 10:32 PM.

lightsleeper23

It actually does make a difference what device the software is on. The same version can behave drastically different from phone to phone depending on what the manufacturer has done to it. Only nexus devices have a truly pure android os.

SulkyAndroid17

Linux is a kernel not an operating system. Android is Linux and it works similar to what you stated above. However, unlike it's desktop cousins, Android is not as quite as flexible. Your phone's system is compiled for your phone and your phone only. There is no universal binary for android that can be installed on any phone. This is both a strength and a weakness.

Lg makes so many devices that it can't possibly catch all the glitches and errors. Conversely, this is why iPhone, Xbox, and PS3 appear so stable and smooth. All their time is spent on a single platform where they squeeze all the power they can.

If you compare your phone to the Optimus Q and then the S you'll see your running on hardware from late 2010. So don't hold your breath on Lg to do anything. If you want to update your device then you'll need to find a 3rd party ROM. It can be a night and day difference in performance on devices like these.

Also, have you tried a simple factory reset to solve your problems?

Last edited by SulkyAndroid17; February 20th, 2013 at 10:37 AM.

El Presidente

If you can't get the Firefox Beta to work, look at Boat Browser or Boat Browser Mini, both are pretty lightweight and should run well on your device.

alicemenezes

That's a lot of problems. All that stuff works completely fine on my phone. Probably a problem with your phone or you need to re install the OS or upgrade.

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Stuntman

There are many differences between different phones that run Android. Android needs to be modified to be able to run on each phone. Many companies make many different models of phones. You can expect that their flagship models (which yours isn't) is going to work better than other models.

Much to my chagrin, it seems that keyboard sliders are going out of style. HTC had already announced last year, that they are no longer going to invest much in phones with physical keyboards. I think other manufacturers are doing the same or have already done so. My wife's Galaxy Q was also a keyboard phone and I found it to be a rather poor phone with more issues than higher end phones I have used.

Sorry, I wish I had better news for you. Different Android phones vary in quality and yours is likely not a high quality phone.

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heviarti

I've noticed this on two separate phones. After all, I found out about this carrier from a friend. I have taken the time to duplicate the bugs on another unit.

That being said, I've run Slackware linux on x86, sparc, and Alpha over the last 15 years.

I don't think an aftermarket ROM is going to help, I believe I am disallowed that as well as as tethering or rooting the phone by the User Agreement. I do sort of wish they offered the Sony Xperia. Unfortunately the only way I could get the Xperia is the GSM model, which will suck in this area because AT&T and T-mobile's service suck. It's not as if I'm unwilling to upgrade, it's primarily a question of availability of an acceptable device.

SulkyAndroid17

Okay? Again, Linux is a kernel, not an operating system. You might as well compare Windows and Mac to Android.

TOS are vague enough that Straight Talk could do just about anything they wanted to you. Straight Talk barely allows you to even watch YouTube. At most Straight Talk will just shut you're service off. Let's say you bought a computer. You wouldn't let the store tell you that you're not allowed to have administrator rights or use the OS of your choice, would you? I think the same should hold true for smartphones.

Last edited by SulkyAndroid17; February 20th, 2013 at 06:10 PM.

chanchan05

I agree that the OP's issue has nothing to do with Android the OS as much as it has to do with his phone. I am still using a 2year old Galaxy S variant on stock ROM and I don't experience the issues he mentioned. The only ones that I have experienced crashing are more recent games like Subway Surfers and Bad Piggies, but its a given that my phone has barely enough RAM ro handle these after the customization I've made.

The main differences being I have a former flagship device, which means Samsung gave more effort on this unit, unlike yours which is not an LG flagship device.

Sent from my GT-I9003 using Tapatalk 2

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heviarti

Alright, here's one for you... I know this is definitely software: in Browser hit a letter key. The letter hit appears in the search bar. If you continue typing the highlighted letter is deleted by the next letter typed. You end up with spurious crud like 'hevrolet trucks'.

And what's the deal with not supplying adequate storage on the phone, then Børking the ability to send text messages when it runs out? The only non-stock apps I have on the internal storage are facebook and france 24, and all I have left is 18 meg (which should be enough to save about a million text messages in). It really doesn't make much sense; much like basic software functionality differing by architecture.

Demache

I couldn't tell you about that one. I don't have a hardware keyboard on any Android device I own, so its impossible for me to duplicate that.

The second part is a very strange issue I noticed on my old phone as well (or at least, many people did, I generally tried to keep mine above 50 MB internal). Its a very old issue, since that was back in Android 2.1. Android does not like it when you start running low on internal memory and will literally start throwing fits and exhibit strange behavior (text messaging not working is one of the first people notice). There is a reason for it, but I can't remember (it might be cache or something, its been a good two years since people would ask about that every day). As far as I remember, the only real solutions were freeing up space (clear your cache) and install ALL non-system apps to the SD card.

Over the last year it really hasn't been an issue since devices are getting larger internal memory storage now. So your dealing with an issue that most likely either has been addressed in newer devices, or workarounds have been made in older ones. Sorry about that.

Last edited by Demache; February 21st, 2013 at 11:49 AM.

Bnice

Android is far from cripple, you can't use a low end Android device to define the OS. First things first you have many options to choose from when purchasing a Android device. From low end, mid-range to the top of the line not to mention the different manufactures that put their own twist to the OS. Something to think about,your on 2.3 and the OS has advance to 4.2.

LG Optimus Zip Specifications | Features List

SulkyAndroid17

I don't think I understand. It's normal for highlighted letters to disappear when you type over them. Try it in Chrome, Microsoft word, or this forum.

Your phone has 150MB of internal storage and not everything can be moved to the SD card. Android likes to use that space too.

With that being said, I have device for each version of android from FroYo to JellyBean (excluding Honeycomb). They all work very similar to each other. Sounds like you just have a bad device. If you won't flash a ROM then try a factory reset, or send it for repair under warranty.

lightsleeper23

No. That is not androids fault. Again, that is the phone. You don't think everybody's phone deletes letters at random while they're typing do you? And the low memory is just because of the cheap phone too. Hey I had an optimus q a year and a half ago, with the slide out keyboard. It had the same issues. Except the low memory, because I had an sd card and put my apps and everything on that. Not much you can do about the physical keyboard. But you can try a different on screen keyboard from the play store like touchpal or something and that MIGHT even help.

chanchan05

1. That's normal. Even on Windows or Mac, if you highlight a letter on the browser search bar and start typing, it is typed over. The key is, don't highlight it. In my phone, I could just type straight without having your issue. I tap on the browser search bar and type my query with no problems. However I also have a software keyboard, not a hardware one, so can't really try replicating your issue.

2. Because your phone is cheap, LG sacrificed internal memory to keep it from getting more expensive than the price they want to sell it. My phone has about 2GB internal memory dedicated to app installations alone, with a separate drive for onboard storage and then my external SD card. Out of the 2G alloted for app storage, 24MB for Facebook is really nothing.

Again, mostly I repeat, you're shooting yourself in the foot by buying a cheap phone and then complaining. If you want iPhone-like performance, and even better, get something that costs like an iPhone too ($600), or something that has specs similar to a former flagship device. Android isn't crippled. Your phone is.

Last edited by chanchan05; February 21st, 2013 at 05:12 PM.

Stuntman

LG is not the only company and Android is not the only OS where manufacturers can skimp on hardware that results in a poor experience. I had a Nokia N97 and it had some issues that were partly due to lack of hardware that is capable of handling all of the software they tried to cram into it. Their lower end, mini version had better hardware and ran better.

heviarti

I did in fact install a 32 gig card, and moved everything off I could. Unfortunately neither France 24 nor Facebook will allow themselves to be moved out of the internal memory. Also, I can't use the dev kit trick because I don't have a windows box to install it on. Pretty much everything I have is either Linux, bsd, or some type of commercial unix. When I got it I had plus/minus 50 free meg. I think the biggest app I installed other than Facebook was about ten meg (mx player). I've avoided frippery like games; after hearing about fruit ninja I looked at it, and it was 20 meg.

I agree it's normal to delete highlighted text, I just don't think that it's normal that new user input would be hilighted for deletion. It doesn't make sense. If the default behavior when you start typing is to fill the search entry field, then immediately deleting that text is counterproductive.

I've been attempting to come up with the Kbox tarball, to couple with my terminal emulator. For some reason downloading it consistently barfs. Fact of the matter is anything other than an image, a PDF, or things downloaded via google play seem to barf. Bluetooth works alright except for file transfers to anything other than a phone device. It would be nice to be able to shuttle files to and from my iPad with the phone, but that seems to barf too.

Even if i could be free of the TOS, I don't know how likely one is to brick their phone replacing their ROM. I can't necessarily zorch my phone right now. I'm also told this particular variant has been patched more heavily against 'tampering'.

lightsleeper23

I had the same problems downloading things on my optimus q. Weird. Any song or anything I wanted to download I had to use my GFs phone and bluetooth it back to mine. The bluetooth seemed to work fine though, my phone just wouldn't let me download anything other than images, or from google play, just like yours. I don't know what the deal is with those cheap LG sliders.

chanchan05

On my phone, new user input is NOT highlighted. As for downloading, I've had not much trouble. As far as I can see, your problems don't occur on higher end devices, and may just be an issue of a skimped upon device.

SulkyAndroid17

It's really not that weird you had the same problems. When you compare the two phones you'll find they're essentially the same.

lightsleeper23

Yeah that's why I keep bringing it up. I haven't had that phone for a long time. But it being almost the same, I thought I'd share my very similar troubles with it, highlighting the fact that it's just that phone, not Android.

dylane

I have a Galaxy Note 2, running 4.1.1 and have pretty much all of the problems that the OP has. Copy/paste is incredibly finicky and seems to be somewhat app dependent rather than supported in the same way across the system. Using the handles to select an exact word or phrase so that you can copy into another app generally takes longer than just retyping the word. And trying to precisely copy over more than a screenful of text...just forget it, I'll wait until I'm on my laptop.

And typing into this forum is next to impossible, the cursor jumps around in the middle of typing and suddenly starts putting the letters at the beginning of the text box and at the end at the same time. I've experienced this with multiple keyboards and using Firefox and either Dolphin or Opera. Again, I just prefer to wait and use my laptop.

There are a ton of other small items where Android is missing basic functionality that has been in desktop OSes for as long as I can remember. Stuff like being able to choose where a file is saved, or which program you want to open an attachment with. And that's before you get into the utter mess that "multitasking" is.

I've had my phone for a little over 2 months, and I'm starting to get slightly more used to it and I don't want to throw it out the window quite as often as I used to (the fact that the email program forgot my Exchange password at 7am this morning and rang constantly until I managed to add it back was a notable exception). But mostly this is due to vastly lowered expectations on my part. I had bee looking for a mobile device that could take the place of a laptop on trips (I know this is possible since I'd been using a 4" Nokia tablet for just this purpose for the last 5 years). The Note 2 is not that device. There are a lot of neat things you can do with it using apps, and a lot of the deficiencies in the OS can also be semi-fixed with 3rd party apps, but the underlying OS has left me deeply unimpressed.

chanchan05

This website was never optimized for mobile use. It has an Android app, or you can access it via Tapatalk.

dylane

But a website doesn't need to be "optimized" for mobile use to work well on a mobile. I used plenty of vbulletin sites on a tablet with a 4" screen using the full desktop site, and it worked fine. And I shouldn't have to use a separate app for every type of website I want to visit.

zuben el genub

Same here. Some sites leave stuff out on the mobile version. I use the desktop version even on the Nexus S.

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Liamo_210

This I understand but all well made sites work fine on my phones. Also talpatalk can be used for a lot of different forums. I feel that the bottom line is if you want flawless performance cash out on a flawless device like the nexus 4 s3 note 2 HTC one optimus g or droid DNA.

dylane

I have the Note 2, and performance is far from flawless. The hardware generally seems fine, but the software problems can't be fixed by stellar hardware alone. I'm not talking about "buttery smoothness" which is something I really don't care much about. I'm talking about general functionality that is either missing or implemented so badly as to be mostly useless.

heviarti

Hah! Yes! Someone else has noticed that copy and paste is a little hinky. And yes, more than a page and less than the whole document is pretty much impossible. How about the goofy upward pointing blue arrow that periodically appears while trying to work with text or copy and paste?

I see you've also noticed the cursor bounce and the field jump. Tell me, dylane, have you been fouled up by the discard button in the email app yet? No confirmation, and no way to pull a discarded message out of the trash; the moment you select the message, it deletes itself.


I too avoid downloading an app for every forum I'm on. That would really suck, and waste huge quantities of space.

dylane

I haven't seen this issue, but the email app is done by the mfg I believe, so this is one area where our experiences are likely pretty different. I've had a few issues with the email client on my GN2 (like the issue I'm having right now where it forgets my Exchange password every couple of hours) but overall it has probably been one of the better experiences on the phone (as long as I don't need to do any copy and paste or attach a document that is!)

chanchan05

Have you tried different browsers? It may simply be a browser issue.

dylane

I have Firefox, Opera, and Dolphin installed. For the issue with the forum I've had issues on this site with Firefox for sure and I know I briefly tried one of the other browsers and also had problems with text entry...but I can't recall which one I tried.

All the browsers I have work pretty OK for just browsing, and I don't think I've really tried doing much text entry on any other site using my GN2. I did use other vbulletin sites with a Droid 4 for a bit without too much issue, and used my N800 for years on various forums, so this might just be an issue with this site, or an issue with my particular phone.

Frisco

Perfect speed and rendering in desktop version on my Note 2 (and of course the Galaxy Tab 2 7" ).

Tapatalk: <-------------- fbbblttphttt! (raspberry )

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