My htc eris gripes

[micronut]

Before I proceed, I would like to say that despite the complaints that follow, I absolutely love my Droid Eris.

1) First and foremost, the four front screen "buttons". These are a major source of aggravation for me. I would estimate that they only work about 25% of the time. The only way to get them to register my commands is to swipe them up or down which usually results in unwanted "taps" on other on screen functios.

2) The pinch zoom function worked great for the first week. Now I can very rarely get it to work.

3) Major lag when flipping through pictures in albums. Major! It's absolutely ridiculous. They're only thumbnails!

4) HTC flash only seems to work for about ten videos. After that, it just won't open when I try to play a video. They only way to get it back is to kill browser with task killer.

5) Not really a complaint, but it would be nice if the browser had options for on screen navigation buttons like back, home, bookmarks, Windows(tabs), etc.

6) The weather and clock widget displays the wrong weather,city,and time at least 95% of the time. The clock is the worst. Not even the same time zone which is extremely uncool. I very rarely look at the small system clock so it has caused me problems on more than a few occasions.

All of this I can live with...except for the four front screen buttons. They aggravate me to the point that I've wanted to throw the phone accross the room on more than one occasion.

 

[erisuser1]

1) First and foremost, the four front screen "buttons". These are a major source of aggravation for me. I would estimate that they only work about 25% of the time. The only way to get them to register my commands is to swipe them up or down which usually results in unwanted "taps" on other on screen functios.

All of this I can live with...except for the four front screen buttons. They aggravate me to the point that I've wanted to throw the phone accross the room on more than one occasion.

I was quite disconcerted with the behavior of those buttons when I first started using the Eris - and then I noticed that all the icons on the bezel are all shifted well below the "active" location on the screen corresponding to those button functions. As an experiment, try tapping very precisely around each icon to see if there is a similar offset in your unit. Initially I had trouble with this, but I just got familiar with it, and now it is rare that I need to jab at them more than once - my finger lands where it is supposed to.

3) Major lag when flipping through pictures in albums. Major! It's absolutely ridiculous. They're only thumbnails!

As compared to what, I'm wondering? There don't seem to be any explicit thumbnails stored alongside camera images on the SD Card - and flash memory is pretty slow. Quite a bit slower than a modern PC hard drive, for instance. Transfer of the full images alone could easily account for some of the "lag" you refer to.

eu1

 

[Tuxas]

Before I proceed, I would like to say that despite the complaints that follow, I absolutely love my Droid Eris.

1) First and foremost, the four front screen "buttons". These are a major source of aggravation for me. I would estimate that they only work about 25% of the time. The only way to get them to register my commands is to swipe them up or down which usually results in unwanted "taps" on other on screen functios.

They take getting used to, but I never had the problems you are having. Heck I nick the things sometimes and they change screens.

2) The pinch zoom function worked great for the first week. Now I can very rarely get it to work.

Haven't had this issue.

3) Major lag when flipping through pictures in albums. Major! It's absolutely ridiculous. They're only thumbnails!

Keep in mind if you have the stock microSD card it is only a class 2 (2 MByte/s) I repleaced mine with a class 6 (6 MByte/s) and music/pictures/and browsing (maybe because cache storage) all sped up quite a bit.

4) HTC flash only seems to work for about ten videos. After that, it just won't open when I try to play a video. They only way to get it back is to kill browser with task killer.

Haven't had this issue.

5) Not really a complaint, but it would be nice if the browser had options for on screen navigation buttons like back, home, bookmarks, Windows(tabs), etc.

6) The weather and clock widget displays the wrong weather,city,and time at least 95% of the time. The clock is the worst. Not even the same time zone which is extremely uncool. I very rarely look at the small system clock so it has caused me problems on more than a few occasions.

This does happen there DB is very limited, I heard the leaked Jan 22nd update fixes some of this.

All of this I can live with...except for the four front screen buttons. They aggravate me to the point that I've wanted to throw the phone accross the room on more than one occasion.

This is filler text to get the message accepted, see blue for content.

 

[smittythepig]

i've had the issue with those four buttons as well. i'v had to adjust and they seem to work much better now. for me, i make sure to use the full flat part of my fingertip (more surface area) instead of just poking them. seems to work. i also think it's because the active part of those buttons is definitely not right in the center of the icons, which is the cause of the frustration.

 

[micronut]

As far as memory goes, mine came with an 8gb card. I read the thread about clearing the cache and thought that might help the lag in albums. When I checked that cache, it said 0 and the clear cache button was dark, so no help there.

One thing that I thought might be causing that button/pinch zoom problem is that screen protector. It seems that the problems started shortly after putting it on.

All in all, though, I do love the phone. By far the best value for $100.

 

[Tuxas]

The class of the card plays a big role into how fast videos/music/pics open, if you have a spare microSD at a higher class you should try it. Like I mentioned the stock one is painfully slow, for ~15 dollars you can replace it with a 8gb class 6. I do have the youtube app problem so I started using the browser and it tends to work fine, hopefully this gets fixed soon.

 

[ErisDroid?]

What are you running for apps? Do you have Advanced App Killer? Try that and kill some apps your not using all the time. You can see how much memory is free when you launch the program. It's free and in the market.

 

[bmknapp]

Dolphin browser has tabs and back/home options plus bookmarks.

 

[micronut]

Been lookin at Dolphin... I'll give it a try.

I use advanced task killer to manage running apps. I never have more than a few apps running at one time. The only program that lags on me is albums. I have 84 pics and it takes almost 2 full minutes to load. If I don't wait for them all to load, the phone locks up and will not respond to any commands.

Back to the four front buttons... I tried carefully touching all around them to see if I could find a sweet spot. No luck.
They are slightly more responsive without the screen protector on, but not much.

No matter what I do, I just cant figure out the whole pinch zoom thing. Sometimes it will work, but mostly not.
BTW, the pinch zoom problem only happens in albums. Works fine for web pages and when viewing pics online.
Maybe related to the lag?

Anyhow, I'm going to try a higher class card and see if that helps.

Thanks for the tips!

 

[hrbib21]

Honestly, it sounds to me like it might be a hardware problem. Take it in to your nearest Verizon store.

The only issue you mentioned that I even remotely have is the lag when loading the album. It's minor in my case, takes just a few seconds. I, too, am upgrading to a Class 6 card.

 

[jreed2560]

I thought the class 6 cards only had a faster write speed. They read at the same speed, so I don't see how they would help with any lag issues.

 

[Peaser]

I don't have any of these issues, except I would also like on screen back and forward buttons when browsing. I tried Dolphin and didn't like it.

Can someone recommend best place to get a bigger/faster card?