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The Verizon Wireless HTC Eris 'Silent Call Bug'
Hall writes "In the last few months some users of Verizon Wireless HTC Eris phone models have encountered what's being called the 'silent call bug' with their phones. What has happened since the update to Android 2.1 is that some phones get dead silence (can't hear the person they call nor can the other end hear you). The only solution is to reboot the phone, though the problem will re-appear after some time. VZW tech support for a while was simply swapping out Eris phones in hopes that the replacement didn't have the same issue. Too many were, though, and now some users have been told they're not swapping anymore. A couple of days ago, a user witnessed a car accident and was unable to call 911. Well, at least not until after rebooting the phone."
What good is a phonecall if you cannot speak?
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Calling a phone Eris is sort of asking for it..
Steve Jobs is a moron for making such a shitty phone! Oh wait...
A reboot indicates something like a memory leak. Hardware problems would not be reliably fixed. This is certainly some brain dead software error, a case of development focusing on the bells and whistle, and not core functionality. Everyone is so wrapped up in the tethering and Apps, that they forgot they were building a phone.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Even crappy phones still have an OS. I've had call issues with many different phones, not just smart phones. And many times the issues were solved with... you guessed it, rebooting the phone. Sometimes I even had to remove the battery.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
You're dialing it wrong.
Trolling is a art,
Better to have something that works 99.999% of the time pretty much everywhere, than 99.999999% of the time in only one scenario.
Heck, I have been rebooting my Windows Mobile phones for years to make calls. The competitors are only now catching up?
Flawless, no. But it's a reasonable expectation that your phone should have a failure rate comparable to other phones on the market. It's also reasonable that if a problem exists that puts the failure rate of your device well outside industry norms (think xbox360) the device will be repaired or fixed both for free and in a reasonable timeframe.
In canada for example we have laws that require cell phones, even ones not attached to a plan, and with no carrier, can connect to 911. It's a nightmare for 911 if they call and cannot give a location, but if I buy a cellphone in canada I can expect that it will connect to 911. I don't know if we have rules about downtime, dropped calls or silent calls, but I'm sure there are large tomes of requirements that all the companies have to comply to for all sorts of stuff. I can expect that those will be followed, or the CRTC/FCC will send in the lawyers.
Cars get recalled for defects/repairs, so do drinking glasses from MacDonalds and children's toys, my cell phone falls somewhere between those points on a spectrum of cost and utility, and yes, your life can depend on it, just because we 'got by' with landline phones doesn't mean they didn't cost lives, there just wasn't anything you could do about it.
I took my battle.net authenticator off my iPhone and got a physical one precisely because as you say, smartphones fail a lot, I've had to reinstall the OS 3 or 4 times so far (iPhone 3g) and it spent 14 hours updating to iOS4. Not exactly my idea of a reliable device. But my GF has a nokia dumbphone, which has never had an OS update, and never needed a reboot, so maybe since my phone cost 10x as much as hers, (+ data plan) I can expect better reliability, and won't be looking to apple to replace my smartphone. People don't buy a Lexus rather than a regular old toyota for the fun of it, premium markets (which I count smart phones as part of) do still have problems, but you're paying for more functionality, not less, and a phone that can't make calls is by definition less functional.
...what about an Eris owner trying to call a left-handed iPhone 4 owning friend who just happens to be holding his iPhone 4 by the wrong corner at that particular moment - they have *NO* hope of talking to each other.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Remember back when you had to find a land line to call for help?
Now we're up in arms because a wireless device is not 100% reliable and it became very clear in an emergency situation.
Does the public really expect their cell phones to flawlessly or have I been using smartphones so long that I just accept wireless devices suck still?
We expect phones to work for their intended purpose.
Being able to make a call and then not hear anything isn't acceptable. Occasionally you can't call due to reception problems, everybody understands that. But being able to complete a call and not hear is clearly a warranty issue.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Well, yeah. If you pay for a cell phone, you have a reasonable expectation that it's going to work. Your argument is like saying we shouldn't care about leaks in the roofs of our houses because our ancestors used to live outside.
I had this very same problem with my Nexus One. Even worse rebooting did not always solve the issue.
I bought my Nexus at launch and while I was happy with it at first, the past few months it just started acting crazy. Icons on the desktop would open a different application, the issue from the article, the keyboard opening when a phone call was coming in "you couldnt slide to answer because it was ontop".
After all that and more, once the lock button on my Nexus started to give out I just went back to my iPhone.
Not really because when was the last time you upgraded your firmware on it? In general "dumb" phones are pretty disposable, if there is a bug like this on a "dumb" phone (and, there are) the chances of getting it fixed are zero. With a smartphone, chances are there will be an update within the next month that corrects the issue.
Any issue in a "dumb" phone never gets fixed, issues in smartphones might though.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Can you hear me now?
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*bzzzzzzzz*
I think part of the problem is too many people view phones as toys first and phones second. People get extremely bitchy if they can't have games and cameras and all that other shit on their phones. The market for "Just a phone" phones has nearly completely disappeared, nobody wants to buy them even if they cost less.
Way too many people I encounter buy phones based on their shiny features, and never consider call quality. Ex-roommate of mine was completely unintelligible on his phone. The thing had a totally crap microphone and looking online, that was a common problem with the phone. He just texted all the time. My though it "Why the fuck would you get it?"
Personally I've become a real fan of my Curve 8330 because of this. It is a smart phone, but the phone features seem to work no matter what and are not interfered with by anything else. Had good call quality and a decent antenna too (as well as being nice and cheap). Not the shiniest toy around, I don't have an ultra high rez touch screen, but I can pick up the phone and make a damn call when I want to.
I'm certainly not opposed to smart phones, obviously I have one, but I think consumers need to spend a little more time looking at the phone side of things and less time worrying about the shiny. If consumers start caring more about the phone, so will the manufacturers.
At the ripe old age of 24, even I find this ridiculous. If cell phone programmers designed commercial autopilots, no one in their right mind would fly. If they designed ECU software for Toyotas, oh wait.
I would expect my cell phone to work flawless for it's main function, making phone calls, provided there's no hardware defect, it has power, a working tower is in reach, and the network is not overloaded. I accept that non-core functionality may fail. I won't accept if the one defining functionality, which is making phone calls, doesn't work due to design or implementation defects. That's a proven technology, it's no rocket science, and it should be tested like hell.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
I know what you mean. When I was a kid my family relocated several times... but I always found them...
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