Root RIP bubbly-keyboard Droid

[shadowdude777]

My Droid kicked the bucket today. It just refuses to turn on. Luckily, my warranty expires in 4 days, but this means I have to give up my beautiful bubbly keyboard.

Do they even have refurb Droids available anymore? The lady on the phoen was surprisingly concise. Took me 10 minutes in total to get transferred over to tech support and for them to realize I knew what I was doing and send out a new device? But still, didn't one of our regulars in this subforum leave because he ended up with a D2 after his D1 died? I wouldn't complain about that... (but I would miss you guys! )

Oh, and the worst part: Being back on my WinMo phone until Friday!

 

[AndroidsOfTara]

My Droid kicked the bucket today. It just refuses to turn on. Luckily, my warranty expires in 4 days, but this means I have to give up my beautiful bubbly keyboard.

I have a bubbly keyboard and am considering having the phone replaced because about 80% of the keys have completely separated from the buttons below. They'll stick for a second or two if I press down on them, but quickly lift back up.

The keyboard still works, but I'm starting to hear the keys scrape against the slider when I open or close the phone.

My wife's Droid's keyboard is perfectly flat and I think I actually prefer that to my bubbly keyboard.

I also have a headphone jack that's slowly getting worse.

I've been hesatant about getting it replaced because I have it exactly the way I like it with CyanogedMod 6 and the worry I'll go through an endless round of defective replacements.

 

[obutto]

You will receive a Droid 1. I think the general consensus is that if you receive three refurbished Droids and send them all back due to problems, you will will get a Droid 2. That's what happened in my case. I like my Droid 2 better, but it has a few quirks (random reboots) but I'm too scared to send it back because they will keep sending me terrible Droid 1's afterwards .

 

[k00ey]

Yeah, you'll probably get another D1 unless they are completely out or something. Theres still a chance that you could get a refurb with the bubble keys though. Couple of my friends have before

 

[shadowdude777]

@AndroidsofTara: My D1 was in the same boat as yours. The bubbly keys were beginning to come up, and if you even slightly wiggled the headphone jack, it would cut out. But I still miss it!

Yeah, I realize I'm probably getting a refurbed D1. I remember a few months ago when the DX/D2 first came out though, they were definitely out of D1s for a bit. I'd rather have a D2 than a D1, but I'd rather have another bubbly-keyboard D1 than anything else. Well, besides a DX of course, but I'm not even gonna hold my breath!

 

[shadowdude777]

My new Droid came in today. Gosh, living without this thing for two days was hell, how did I do it before?

Anyway, it's not a bubbly keyboard but I'm quickly growing acclimated to this thing. I may even be able to type faster with it flat cause the keys require such little pressure (though I am making a few more typos as a result of that)! Other than that, this guy is rock solid. It doesn't even have the headphone jack cutting out issue that my first Droid had.

 

[AndroidsOfTara]

Other than that, this guy is rock solid. It doesn't even have the headphone jack cutting out issue that my first Droid had.

I'm glad to hear you got a solid replacement.

Since you posted in the root sub forum, I'm assuming you returned your phone to VZW still rooted? Did you have a custom ROM on it?

Also, had the phone not died on you, would you have returned it for the keyboard issue?

 

[shadowdude777]

Thanks, yep. The replacement is solid! Almost too solid, in fact. The only issue I have is the slider is really tight, but that's better than a loose slider for sure.

Yep, the phone's going back with UD 1.0 still on it. I'm hoping they won't realize until it's too late to bother. Considering it won't even power on, I couldn't do anything else to it.

Nah, I wouldn't have returned it for the keyboard issue, I probably would have held onto it. But I'm actually liking the flat keyboard! If you have thin fingers (I do), you can get a lot more speed with this thing because of the little pressure you have to put on the keys compared to bubbly keyboards. The only caveat is that if your fingers aren't so thin, you'll probably push down a few keys in the process. And it's nice not to have to worry about how I'm holding my phone when I listen to music.

 

[AndroidsOfTara]

Nah, I wouldn't have returned it for the keyboard issue, I probably would have held onto it. But I'm actually liking the flat keyboard!

I did a bunch of reading regarding the Droid's headphone jack issues yesterday and found two solutions. The one that eliminated about 98% of the annoying crackling for me was to strip the fibers from a Q-Tip, dip the stick into some isopropyl alcohol and insert it into the headphone jack and clean the contacts. I used my Droid last night with headphones without any crackling for a couple of hours.

Another solution is to cut and trim a small piece of plastic from a drinking straw and insert it between the headphone jack and case (the keyboard side of the case). This is supposed to minimize movement of the jack and force it to make better connection with the contacts to the board. Haven't tried this yet.

Now that I seem to have (maybe) fixed the headphone jack issue, I'll probably not have my phone replaced. The keyboard membrane raising up triggers my phone OCD, but it works fine and I can live with it. My phone is running great and I dread having to deal with VZW's seemingly endless supply of defective refurbs.

 

[shadowdude777]

Well hey, if you get enough defective refurbs and express your dissatisfaction they'll probably offer you a D2.

 

[MaxPacker]

I would argue that they receive plenty of rooted phones back.

People do these "one-click" root methods, or get friends to do it for them (I'm guilty of rooting a few) and then don't ever know what to do if something does go wrong. So they probably receive enough rooted phones for it not to be that big of an issue.

But if they say anything, please, let me know!

 

[shadowdude777]

I would argue that they receive plenty of rooted phones back.

People do these "one-click" root methods, or get friends to do it for them (I'm guilty of rooting a few) and then don't ever know what to do if something does go wrong. So they probably receive enough rooted phones for it not to be that big of an issue.

But if they say anything, please, let me know!

Yeah, that's what I'm thinking. Especially with the D1, everyone and their grandma has root. My Droid also has a few scuff marks. I dropped it on asphalt once, but that was several months ago. It was summertime, I believe. Hopefully they won't complain about either of these things. I'm shipping out the broken one tomorrow, most likely. I'll update this thread if they come after me.