Help with the TB?

[yabasta11]

So I've had the TB for a few weeks now and really am not that thrilled. I am asking for help from anyone who is willing to give it. Here are my main complaints:

1. I hate HTC Sense. It looks stupid, the buttons at the bottom are horrible, I can't get a keyboard up to search my contacts when I am looking through... ugh. Is there anyway to override it with the Google Sense UI that came on the Motorola Droid series or something similar?

2. The auto-correct when I am typing doesn't make sense. I will have simple errors, like spelling "crash" without the s "crah" and my phone will suggest random four letter words that aren't close to what I have spelled. Also when I use the "..." in a sentence, it reads this as a new sentence and capitalizes the next word. As in "I went to the store... And I bought some fish." Instead of "I went to the store... and I bought some fish." That is a minor problem but every phone I've had before this recognized the "..." as a break in thought, not sentence.

3. I hate that the home screen doesn't rotate. I know launcherpro solves this but the way my battery dies I don't think I need to be installing an additional UI. And when I install LP I have other issues, like multiple txt sends.

4. The way my battery dies. It seems almost random. Some days it will last until late afternoon, some days it is dead by the time I get to work. And I use it pretty consistently. I use watchdog because I am convinced ATK and ATM do nothing and that helps but certainly.

5. I can't root because if I root I can't get my company email... FYI.

6. Navigation and finding my location takes forever. Sometimes it takes up to 20 minutes, it rarely takes less than five. I have all of the Location Settings checked, VZW, Standalone GPS, and Google. Also when I am driving I get the blue circle around my location all the time, on open highways, with clear blue skies.

7. When I use the browser, say I am on looking at a website and want to do a direct Google search, when I click on the address on the top it highlights everything but the "http://" so if you try typing "NBA Finals" it leaves you with "http://NBA Finals" and doesn't actually perform a Google search. This is the main reason I use Chrome on my computer, so I can either search or type in a url in the same line. Again, I know its not the biggest deal in the world to delete the "http://" but it is an annoyance that is very unnecessary.

My main frustrations is that I had none of these problems with my Original Motorola Droid when I was running Android 2.0, then they upgraded the software over and over and the phone got worse and worse. Now I have 4G, a GB of RAM, this that and the other, and somehow my phone is less functional, less reliable, and way more frustrating. Please... help?!?!?!?

Thanks,
Kevin

 

[CyberPitz]

1.) You're closest bet without rooting would be to install another launcher. ADW or Launcher Pro. You can't get rid of Sense without rooting.

2.) Install another keyboard. Swiftkey has always treated me right with autocorrect.

3.) Rooting is the only way to get the stock RosieLauncher to rotate. As a side note, I am not sure Launcher Pro would be the reason your text messages send multiple times (At least, I never had that problem). You could try uninstalling / reinstalling your SMS app.

4.) Do you check your battery stats and see what's using the most battery?

5.) Why can't you get company email while rooted? :O

6.) Not sure on that one...try a factory reset / call VZW?

7.) Off topic, you can do the same thing with FireFox on the PC by installing an addon for it. Easy. As for the browser, just hit the 'search' button on the phone while in the browser. That will bring up a search box. Or you could try installing another browser, like Dolphin HD.

 

[GrandMasterB]

2) Make sure you have checked all the boxes in

settings/launguage&keyboard/touchinput/textinput/

This will make a huge difference in the quality of stock typing.

7) Hit the "search" capacitive button while the browser is open

GMB

 

[ahoogst]

1/3) First, I would try Go Launcher Ex out if you despise Sense and want Homescreen landscape rotation. I was a pretty big fan of Sense until I tried out Go. I don't have landscape enabled anymore because it seemed to not play nicely with some of my widgets though.

2) Definitely try SwiftKey out, it's amazing. Look for Swift Key X in the market, it's free right now as a beta.

4) The screen kills battery more than anything, with 4G next. Download https://market.android.com/details?id=myc.phone.PhoneInfo . Go Battery history and look through all the usage statistics to see if you can diagnose the problem. Especially check CPU and network usages.

 

[jplus]

2) Make sure you have checked all the boxes in

settings/launguage&keyboard/touchinput/textinput/

This will make a huge difference in the quality of stock typing.

7) Hit the "search" capacitive button while the browser is open

GMB

I never tried hitting the search button in a function before. This brings up a keyboard to help search contacts. Thanks GrandMaster. That always kinda bugged me.

This is one of the things the OP was asking about.