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ICS General Impressions/Tips & Tricks

Ok, a few more issues here...getting pretty frustrated! I broke down and did a factory reset to hopefully take care of the other little issues I had. Now, when powered up, it says "a sim card is needed to operate this phone" on the lock screen. After about 10-15 seconds it goes away and my data finally connects. It seems pretty slow and has poor signal. I went to Verizon, got a replacement sim, still same issue. Also, when trying to log into my email using the mail app that came installed on the phone, after a few seconds I get, "Warning gateway error 504". So confused....Help?
 
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I'm noticing a problem where I'll be listening to a song with the stock music app, then a notification will go off (new mail, new SMS, etc), and immediately afterwards - when the song comes back on -the music player jumps up in volume about 20%. Anyone else?

I have noticed that too but it was the same before the update. I don't notice it when I have the Beats enhancement turned off or when I am listening through the speaker.
 
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This update is a complete circle jerk. I have also done the factory reset and what a pain in the a**. Also some issues keep surfacing. They are smaller but still there. Here is the real frustration, my wife and I have identical phones, she has different issues. What the f***?

Sorry about the language but I am really frustrated. I wish I had never upgraded. The enhancements are bullshit and the loss in efficiency and control are major.

IMHO, YMMV
 
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Here's another interesting one... I have a yahoo imap account set up in the stock mail app. I like it a bit better than using the yahoo mail app. Since the update, I don't seem to be able to set it up to push... only poll every 15 minutes. The upshot of this is when I delete a new email in the inbox... it appears as a new email in the trash folder on the next 15 minute polling. So I have to deal with each email twice, essentially. If I set up an email account using the yahoo automatic setup option, it will set up a push account, but it doesn't see all my folders (I think they're called "smart folders" on the yahoo mail app). Thoughts or suggestions? (besides "just use the yahoo email app) Thanks.


The stock email app was never push so that is why you can't set it like that. The only reason I can think that it notifies you for a new deleted email is that you have more than one folder set to sync. Check the settings in mail app to just sync inbox




Never did a factory reset before. If I follow your advice and make sure all my contacts are synced, the only other thing I have to do is go to Menu>settings>privacy>back up and that should take care of everything else?

Thank you


That's what it says but it doesn't seem to actually back app data up correctly. It's a shame, that would be an awesome feature




You're right, it doesn't help me now :)

I don't know why, but I'm pretty sure that before the ICS update, the "sdcard" folder actually pointed to the SD card, and the "ext_sd" folder pointed to the interal storage. I'm pretty sure I did a bunch of experiments to verify this at one point, like the fact that "sdcard" had a capacity of 16GB and "ext_sd" had only 10GB.

Anyway, this seems to be reversed and that's why I was confused. Either that, or I somehow confused the two mightily. Anyway, I'm kind of paying for it now.

The ex sd was always the actual sd card, :p
 
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Sorry about the language but I am really frustrated. I wish I had never upgraded. The enhancements are bullshit and the loss in efficiency and control are major.

Sadly I agree. I do like ICS, but the loss in efficiency and control really are big drawbacks. I'm hoping my (battery) efficiency issue can be resolved, worst case scenario with a warranty replacement. The control, I'm not so sure about.
 
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My wife has the same phone too. We both upgraded same night and now we both have horrible battery life. Everything else works great. Everyone says do factory reset. Did not help at all. I even did Factory Data reset, pulled the battery. Ran it down and then charged a couple of cycles to "train" the battery like some suggested, but to no avail. Battery empties in 6 hours with almost no use. . Low to moderate use it's emptied in 3-4 hours. It's ridiculous. My phone is bone stock unrooted locked bootloader etc. I've done custom ROMS on other phones and rooted, etc... and have done them for friends but figured I'd just wait for the ICS OTA and be patient for once. Wishing I didn't wait on Verizon because now my phone sucks. Someone suggested flashing the .12 RUU because its the same as the OTA update, but it's the complete update not just the Verizon switch from Gingerbread to ICS. I'm comfortable flashing so it's not a problem but I'm waiting to see if someone else does it first to make sure it helps the battery. We'll see. Can't believe how much I hate a phone that I used to love! My wife is pretty pissed too.
This update is a complete circle jerk. I have also done the factory reset and what a pain in the a**. Also some issues keep surfacing. They are smaller but still there. Here is the real frustration, my wife and I have identical phones, she has different issues. What the f***?

Sorry about the language but I am really frustrated. I wish I had never upgraded. The enhancements are bullshit and the loss in efficiency and control are major.

IMHO, YMMV
 
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Hey guys, I noticed an odd thing today that was causing battery drain on the wife's phone. There was not one but TWO applications installed for the vzw backup assistant and it was trying to run persistently. I ended up disabling virtually all vzw apps along with some others that she never uses like Facebook. Since then, things have been much better for her. Anybody else noticing a similar thing?
 
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I am on my second reset to try to fix battery use issues. Stock battery runs down in about five hours on 3G.

Yeah, that's B.S., that battery life stinks.Someone just told me wait a few days after reset to give battery a chance to figure out the system. Says it worked for them. Mmmm? I'll try it, but getting frustrated. Will probably just flash the .12 RUU leak as last resort before going back to Verizon and throwing it at them. Everyone says good things about the leak. Verizon probably screwed something up with adding all they're crap to the OTA.
 
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Hey guys, I noticed an odd thing today that was causing battery drain on the wife's phone. There was not one but TWO applications installed for the vzw backup assistant and it was trying to run persistently. I ended up disabling virtually all vzw apps along with some others that she never uses like Facebook. Since then, things have been much better for her. Anybody else noticing a similar thing?

Yeah, my phone had some Vzw apps that were always running. I was constantly getting prompts to set up backup assistant. I disabled all Vzw apps and did see a small improvement in battery. Still having issues though. But vzw apps are always a problem. They should just stick to overcharging us and running the network and leave the phones and apps to people that know what they're doing.
 
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Yeah I've never seen that happen where there's 2 versions of the same app. I was almost wondering if the older one got left behind and a new version was added with the ota? Very strange, perhaps mine was an isolated incident but it was straight up backing stuff up (and constantly erroring out) with no request on our part to do so. Little on the rogue side.
 
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Holding off on the update, as I'm not sure I want it. Not good about reduced battery life, or less control. IMO, current OS is fine, so I don't see the need. Is there a concise list somewhere of what is different? (List of what's new, what's been removed, etc.) Does the upgrade wipe the SD card, or do we need to back it up?

Additional question about e-mail... Is it still there after the upgrade, or is it gone? I assume if one needs to do a factory reset, it will definitely be gone.
 
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Newbie here. I don't have the option to send a text when I choose not to accept a call. Is this not an option in Sense 3.6? That's a nice feature and I'd like to use it, but I don't have the third option at the lock screen. I do have the option in settings but it looks like the old one since their is no custom option. No biggie, but am curious.
 
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Actually, to me, ICS didn't live up to expectations. My first phone was the Eris and the update going from 1.6 to 2.1 improved my phone more than going from 2.2 to 4.0 on the Rezound.

Changes that ICS had as it affected me thus far.

Home screen is different. The bottom bar changed and you can add up to four applications to in addition to eight on the home screen.

Notification bar can be accessed without unlocking the phone.

Notifications can be dismissed or cleared individually with a swipe instead of selecting clear.

Settings menu changed. Added toggles for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and Mobile Network. Addition of usage item to monitor and control data usage. Overall, the Settings menu improved by grouping them into Wireless and Networks, Device, Personal and System.

I have had no issues with the upgrade other than my ASTRO file manager is force closing when viewing photos sent via MMS. I am sure that an uninstall and re-install of ASTRO will fix that.

Be sure that when you do accept the upgrade that you have a full battery and a good data connection.

Leah
 
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Battery life was worse after upgrade. Went with factory reset, and battery not better. Turned off 4g and got 17 hours on extended battery today.

That's with Bluetooth on all day, and streaming music occasionally. Quite a few voice calls too. Seems to be getting better.

I have to attribute some of battery life issues to me playing with phone more to check out ICS.

Can't lie, that S3 is looking pretty nice now a days.
 
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I haven't noticed any negligible difference yet. I'm playing with it more, but it isn't dying any quicker. So perhaps it is better after all. But I don't use the streaming music or Bluetooth much... yet. I still want a good Plantronics stereo Bluetooth headset. That will probably kill my battery, unless I get a desk docking station for work.
 
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Hey guys, I noticed an odd thing today that was causing battery drain on the wife's phone. There was not one but TWO applications installed for the vzw backup assistant and it was trying to run persistently. I ended up disabling virtually all vzw apps along with some others that she never uses like Facebook. Since then, things have been much better for her. Anybody else noticing a similar thing?

Just gave this a shot. Did you disable both VZW backup assistant apps? I figured I'd disable both and see if I get better battery. I'll let you know.
 
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Holding off on the update, as I'm not sure I want it. Not good about reduced battery life, or less control. IMO, current OS is fine, so I don't see the need. Is there a concise list somewhere of what is different? (List of what's new, what's been removed, etc.) Does the upgrade wipe the SD card, or do we need to back it up?

Additional question about e-mail... Is it still there after the upgrade, or is it gone? I assume if one needs to do a factory reset, it will definitely be gone.

If you factory reset yes. If you just accept the OTA you won't loss anything

Newbie here. I don't have the option to send a text when I choose not to accept a call. Is this not an option in Sense 3.6? That's a nice feature and I'd like to use it, but I don't have the third option at the lock screen. I do have the option in settings but it looks like the old one since their is no custom option. No biggie, but am curious.

Yea, dont think that got upgraded with our version of sense

I disabled ALL of my VZW apps except My Verizon Mobile. Perhaps that is one thing keeping my battery use at an acceptable rate.

Same here.

My battery life is getting better. I am averaging slightly longer battery life now then I was before the OTA
 
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one thing that i have found is to not update facebook. the update sucks for every rezound user that i know so far. my battery would drain so fast using it and get so hot. i unistalled the updates for it, and from 9 last night to 8 this morning, my battery dropped 3%. thats pretty solid in my opinion. in process of flashing the ruu .12 to c how it works tho. side note, i kno no1 plays temple run anymore lol but that seems to kill me as well, but mostly think a huge problem is facebook. everyone i kno sayin they dont have problems with battery after ota either doesnt have facebook, or rarely uses it. gonna try runnin it without the updates to it untill the fix it, and c how that goes
 
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one thing that i have found is to not update facebook. the update sucks for every rezound user that i know so far. my battery would drain so fast using it and get so hot. i unistalled the updates for it, and from 9 last night to 8 this morning, my battery dropped 3%. thats pretty solid in my opinion. in process of flashing the ruu .12 to c how it works tho. side note, i kno no1 plays temple run anymore lol but that seems to kill me as well, but mostly think a huge problem is facebook. everyone i kno sayin they dont have problems with battery after ota either doesnt have facebook, or rarely uses it. gonna try runnin it without the updates to it untill the fix it, and c how that goes

Disabling Facebook might
 
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You go to Settings > Apps> All. Each application has various settings. Most have a Disable button (followed by a warning that it may cause.problems, blah blah blah). Disabling an app puts it to the bottom of the list of All Applications. You will not receive update notifications for those apps, either. If you find an app in the Play Store that is installed but disabled, it will say Disabled, rather than Free, Purchased, or $xx.xx. Disabled apps do not show up anywhere else, except in Applications > All or Play Store.
 
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