The proximity sensor is supposed to turn the screen off when it's brought close to your ear/cheek.

 

You all people need to learn how to use touchscreen devices for calls.

Make sure that when you hold the phone, you do not press the whole device to your ear like you used to do with non-touchscreen devices. Keep the earpiece next to your ear while tilting the rest a bit away from the ear and will never have problems again.

 

I'm with Szadzik. I've never had any problems with putting calls on hold by accident or even muting them and this touchscreen phone holding seams logical and natural to me.

The only problem I've had is touching the secondary ambient mic which is on the back side of the phone right next to the earphones jack (on the rubberized top part of the phone there is a small hole). That seamed to cancel my voice for a short while and people on the other side were complaining about not hearing me. I've gotten used to not holding my index finger there and now everything is great.

 

hello,have you noticed that there are two consealed and small hole at the left side on the top of your milestone ? Those are sensory lights .When you picked up your phone ,make sure that your ear is pressing against these lights lightly ,then the screen will be disabled .I hope this tip will help you out .

 

Proximity sensor does not work right when held to your left ear as sensor is below your ear and wont trigger you need to answer on your right ear otherwise you some times hit the hold button

 

BS. I am left-handed and thus ALWAYS hold the phone to my LEFT ear and it always works.

 

remove this one

 

well you must be one of them lucky ones who don't have ears that stick out. And im right handed and always use left ear to answer as i use right hand to type and use the phone thats how i found this out, think about how the sensors on right ear are at top of ear touching ear and switch screen off when on left ear they are not near the skin so dont always turn screen off maybe you have big ear lobes

And this is already talked about here http://androidforums.com/motorola-milestone/45149-phone-putting-me-hold-calls.html

 

I explained already that you need to learn how to hold a touchscren phone to your ear to stop these problems. This is ot related to the device in any way.

 

It has nothing to do with learning how to use a touchscreen device. I've never had any such problem on a Hero or iPhone with putting people on Hold or Mute or any other thing.

With the milestone it seems you have to hold it in a very precise position. Not angled correctly and the screen won't dim, too close and not angled correctly you put people on hold, slightly too far away and noise cancelling kicks in making your voice muffled to the other caller (i get that a lot). I've never had that with other touchscreen devices, i hold them wherever is comfortable and they just work.

Loads and loads of people have commented on the Milestones screen not switching off properly. It shouldn't be that much work to make a simple phone call.

 

Question is, how come there are people who never encounter the problem. If the Milestone is built in the wrong way how come I never put anyone on hold or mute or anything? How come there are lots of users with no problems?

 

Like I said people who don't have problems must have really big ears or are just them people who have to be different to what the original poster has a problem with

 

Former 3GS user and Milestone user here. It happens more often on the Milestone I guarantee you that. If you hand hold it on the left or right you almost NEVER get buttons pressed. If you start slacking and you're busy twiddling with your other hand and your hand holding the phone starts falling (not at the rigid initial position) you could get a mute press on the left side VERY easily.

The fact is the proximity sensor isn't built well. Also, by squeezing the phone with your shoulder and head the left side is VERY prone to button presses. You might be able to get away with it most times, but it'll be more likely to happen.

This rarely happened on my iPhone.

For the people who never had this happen or isnt thinking this is an issue you're just not observant enough or its not bothering you enough. It's just like the people who go "Whoah Helix is the fastest thing ever. This is what the stock launcher should be like. Every other thing is left in the dust"

Then when LauncherPro comes out everyone goes WHOAH WOAH WHOAH SO FASTTTTT Helix is SLOWWWWW....


but when you put it in perspective with an iphone home drawer or what a home screen SHOULD be like yeah.... Helix needs to speed up and so does every other mod because all of them (minus /launcherpro) are quite a bit slower...

 

Well, if it is not built well, how come every time I take the phone away from my ear to punch some prompts on the phone the screen is dark and it takes it 0.5s to come on?

Go back to iphone, it is a much superior device, haha.

It may seem like that to folks coming from iPhone, folks who have never had a real smartphone.

I had Symbian, UIQ, WinMo and now Android, and 90% of problems people always reported in regards to smartphones are caused by their lack of experience and knowledge. So please do not tell me that someone is not an experienced smartphone user if you have just used iPhone, as to me it is not even close to a smartphone, just a phone with the ability to run applications, same as any other phone with Java support and a lot of those applications. The limitations put on it by Crapple exclude it from the smartphone world.

 

A smartphone is a phone that can do more than just make phone calls so what's a real smartphone?

 

One that can multitask and is not limited by a capricious individual like Jobs.

 

LOL another Apple hater. Making a phone call on an iPhone and not putting people on hold has nothing to do with been a real smartphone. It just shows it works how it should and not seen a complaint about putting people on hold unlike this problem on milestone and nexus one I've seen people complain about the hold button

 

I have no problems with my Milestone and thus assume that whoever has is using it the wrong way.

 

This was about the proximity sensor, but you turned it into an iPhone debate... Thanks.

You're just full of fanboiism. If we wanted to talk about multitasking, Symbian is the way to go.

Android and Apple are limited in many ways. You talk about Apple not being able to multitask, but the new OS 4.0 covers almost everything. Yes it's a pseudo multitask, but still. Android is not full blown multitasking either. We all know this already.

Symbian is the one where you can just start opening apps like mad. Android will unload apps as the memory manager sees fit and sometimes you're loading it from a full start. Symbian is the one where you can open and close. I actually prefer a multitasking solution closer to a blend of Symbian Android an iPhone. I like the push notifications from iPhone and it seems Google is taking that route with Froyo. You can laugh at how that's pseudo multitasking, but it clearly has benefits. At the same time users should be given full privileges like in Symbian to open 200 apps at a time if they want. Multitasking on WebOS is probably the best although we can probably all admit Palm devices are built like cheap plastic toys.

Look, this wasn't even the issue. You turned it into an iPhone and Android debate. I pointed out that the Milestone isn't perfect in the proximity sensor. I rarely had this problem with an iPhone, nor did I have this problem with a Nexus One.

Your failure to recognize that this device HAS issues is your weakness. I recognize the iPhone problems. Do I still have a 3GS? Nope. Why did I switch to a Milestone then? Why did I also buy a Nexus One and in the end return it? I would love an unlocked bootloader and custom ROMs that the MIlestone today still cannot handle. But why?

I recognized the MIlestone's superior build, superior RF over the N1, and even though it's slow as hell (somewhat mitigated by the new Milestone overclock module), it's a good all around phone.

I also recognize that the Android App store is absolute trash. 2 years later we're still getting apps that look like ASS. Sure they can run well at times, but the quality control seems to be lacking.

when I had an iPod Touch and 3GS I used to surf TouchArcade everyday. Those games made me drool. Yes I understand the idiotic 320x480 resolution of the iPhone, but are you serious we can't get some better games? Tap Tap revenge debuted within a month of the App Store. What do we ahve on Android? Guitar Hero 5 which is pales in comparison. Or even our unit converter. ConvertBot for the iPhone was amazing and that came out over a year ago....

You obviously have some issues taking some flak about the Milestone. It's my main device today and I like it, but to ignore the downsides of it would mean you're a pure fanboy.

 

@dmo580 - a very good post, I really like the way you put it all.

I am far from fanboism, what drives me to say these things is the wave of new smartphone users who moan and groan about stuff that in the smartphone world is something normal. They complain about one app or anther being not suited to their needs, one functionality or another being badly implemented. I can only one say one thing.

I have been using smartphones for ages now and I have been using them for one particular reason: being able to change what you don't like. If you get a smartphone you can change a lot of things, you can install replacement apps like Dialer One that is better than the built-in app, you can install apps to turn off leds when you do not need them and lots of other stuff.

My reply to those complaining ones always is: you have a smartphone and thus, instead of moaning and groaning just go and find a solution. Look for an app that will rectify the issue, ask a developer to build something new if there is not an app for that yet. I just hate people constantly complaining, without actually doing anything about the problem itself.

I do not care about people saying there are better apps for iPhone, because I do not need games or stuff like that. I have already said I use my phone as a workhorse and treat it as such. It is a tool and not a toy - that is the main reason I am not fond of SenseUI. I just read the Galaxy S review on GSMArena and looks like it is a great device, the best on the market (without a physical keyboard), but I will not buy it, because it has TouchWiz and unless I can remove it complete from the phone, I will consider the phone crippled.

To sum up, I can only say that everyone has their own reasons to use one phone or another and there is no consensus here.

 

Just have to hold the phone right. If you still have issues try hitting the power button to turn off the screen before you put it to your ear, or at least do it on a long call.

 

Szadzik,

Your posts read exactly like a fanboi's. No, there couldn't be anything wrong with the phone because it works for "YOU". It clearly doesn't work for everyone, despite your protestations that they just learn how to use a smartphone. I've been using smartphones before they even called them that and sorry, but this "feature" is broken for females who wear shiny earrings. Reference the following:

http://androidforums.com/motorola-milestone/45149-phone-putting-me-hold-calls.html#post1023935

And people are posting here looking for a solution. Heck, I'd even pay for an app to fix this, despite already having the feature built-in to my Palm 755p, which is 6 years old and still works properly. The truth is this was a "fix" that was completely unnecessary. Sure, it's a cool concept to put a sensor on it so it "knows" when you have the phone up to your ear. The problem is, it doesn't work often enough for the majority of the population. For something like this to work right, it has to work properly, all the time, for every user. This clearly doesn't. So, if you can't offer anything of value in the way of a fix instead of berating people about not knowing how to use a smartphone and tearing up the iPhone population, how about you just give it a rest? kthxbai

Does anyone else have or know of an app to simply disable the screen by default when you are on a call?

 

Ummm, pick up the call then press the power button shortly. The screen will lock.