• After 15+ years, we've made a big change: Android Forums is now Early Bird Club. Learn more here.

Help Droid X keeps dropping to "no signal", vzw blames an app

icyfire

Newbie
Apr 8, 2010
44
1
My Droid X has been sporadically dropping signal over the past month. Every now and then it goes to "No Signal" and stays stuck there until the phone is restarted (toggling airplane mode on and off doesn't do anything). Finally this morning, the phone showed No Signal again so I took it to the VZW store and showed it to them. They took a look at it, removed and battery and replaced it and it still showed No Signal! I asked them for a replacement but they said it would take 3 weeks. Then I said I wanted to return it without the restocking fee but they refused stating that they would have to do a hard reset first. So I let them and of course, it started working again (for now). Their excuse was that "an app was causing the issue". While that might be the case, I was not satisfied with the explanation since they never pinpointed which app was causing the issue. Finally the manager said that if I didn't install any apps and the issue arose again, they would waive the restocking fee since no replacements will be available for a while.

My main point of concern is that Verizon seems to be taking the stance that any technical issue with the phone can immediately be blamed on an app. Clearly there is a radio issue with the phone that could be caused by any number of issues, not just an app malfunctioning. Even if it is an app, how am I supposed to know which app is causing the problem? Verizon told me to just "read the comments" to see whether anyone is having issues but it just doesn't sit right with me that a customer has to be so vigilant over an app marketplace that Verizon advertises heavily.
 
Remove all your apps, get the problem to happen again, and take it back to them.


Why, so they can repeat the same process again? It could be worse, you could have an iPhone and have AT&T send you to the Apple store where they in turn would blame it on a network problem, sending you back to AT&T who would again blame it on the phone, sending you back to the Apple store, ..... repeat process until you make a big enough scene at the Apple store that they finally get a Senior Tech to look at it and actually fix the problem.

In all fairness, it is no different with a computer. Go to Best Buy, purchase a computer and after setting everything up, have a problem. Best Buy (not picking on Best Buy in particular, same with any electronics store) will tell you to contact the manufacturer, manufacturer will tell you it's a Microsoft Problem, Microsoft will blame the hardware or some 3rd party application ...... The difference though is that you're not paying Best Buy a monthly fee for their service.

To be even fairer though, it is the price you pay for all the computing power and low priced (and free) apps. Verizon and Google, I guess, could attempt to regulate applications which would require tons of testing and evaluation. End result, it would take forever for applications to make it to the market, the small Developers wouldn't have the time or resources to see it through and you'd end up with a meager number of applications to choose from and they'd be 20 times the price, or more. Pick your poison but it truly is a situation where you just can't have your cake and eat it too.
 
Upvote 0
Remove all your apps, get the problem to happen again, and take it back to them.
That's exactly what I'm doing. I just hope that the problem will happen again before my 30 day return policy is up (which will be in a few days).

To be even fairer though, it is the price you pay for all the computing power and low priced (and free) apps. Verizon and Google, I guess, could attempt to regulate applications which would require tons of testing and evaluation. End result, it would take forever for applications to make it to the market, the small Developers wouldn't have the time or resources to see it through and you'd end up with a meager number of applications to choose from and they'd be 20 times the price, or more. Pick your poison but it truly is a situation where you just can't have your cake and eat it too.
My main issue is that Verizon heavily advertises the Android Marketplace. Then when something goes wrong, they wash their hands of it and claim that they have no control over apps you download. Now of course, apps can be buggy, it happens on all platforms including the iPhone. But you'd think that Google would have sufficiently sandboxed important parts of the phone like the radio from being brought down by some stupid app. Plus, which apps should I not download? Verizon told me to "read the comments". Hardly a satisfactory answer from a large corporation like Verizon. All of the apps that I have downloaded are well known. Of course, all of this is assuming that an app is causing the issue which I'm convinced is not the case and simply a cop out by Verizon at this point to see whether they can stall on actually doing something about the problem.

Did you call *611 from your phone and talk to customer service about it? This happened to my X and it turned out the tower that I would be using 99% of the time near my home was down. Verizon had it fixed in less than a day though.
This issue happened in multiple places. In fact, one of the locations had an indoor repeater (I saw a plaque on the wall advertising it by Verizon).
 
Upvote 0

BEST TECH IN 2023

We've been tracking upcoming products and ranking the best tech since 2007. Thanks for trusting our opinion: we get rewarded through affiliate links that earn us a commission and we invite you to learn more about us.

Smartphones