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[Q] G2X: First Day Issues

Just got my new G2X this morning. I came from a N1.
I generally like the phone and got it to address a couple of problems I had with the N1 (handset speaker went out and I only could talk via speaker or BT, sticky buttons, and continuous switching between EDGE/3G).
I can overlook the display bleed, the fact that I HATE where the power button is located, trackball, LED notifications (boy, will I miss those) and can (I think) tolerate the lack of early android updates.
There are couple of other things that REALLY bug me, though, and was wondering if anyone else was experiencing it and if there were any solutions. (Yeah, I searched the 'net today but haven't come up with any thing elegant). I don't have these problems on the N1 so could probably tolerate it and return the G2X until more appropriate hardware was out. (Maybe sensation? Although I don't like large screens on my phone)
1. Bluetooth lag. There is a significant (sometimes 1-2 seconds) lag between the time my phone generates sounds and when my BT headset picks them up (Jawbone Icon).
2. BT/Handset simultaneous sounds. I liked the fact that when my BT headset was connected, the handset speaker would mute and all sounds would only come through the headset. This does not happen that way with the G2X - is there a way to change it?
3. So I have two places for storage and by default, most of the apps point to the internal one and can't be changed to point to the external (I was able to point the camera storage to external at least, whew!). Any known workaround?
4. Task killer can't kill certain apps. I get a message saying that 2.2 didn't allow 3rd party apps to cancel processes. Never noticed this on the N1.
5. Car Home - I'm sure a lot of people find this useful, but I don't. Is there any way to supress this from coming up? Sometimes I get it when I connect my BT headset. At other times it doesn't show up until I get a call.
I really want to like this phone, but aside from 4G, it seems like it isn't much more than a minor improvement over my N1...

I can't help you on 1-3, but...
4) Task killers on android do more harm than good.*
5) Root the phone. It's REALLY simple. Download some drivers for your PC, download the program, connect your phone, run it, boom, rooted. Download Titanium Backup, find Car Home, freeze it.
more info on rooting

I myself coming from a N1 I keep looking at the N1 wanting to reach for it and throw my SIM back in and cry holding it. Wish I could put new guts in it and make it more update.
1. the track ball my thumb keeps reaching for and its not there
2. Two storage places I dont like either
3. The bleed isn't bad on mine but Im going to wait a week and take it back and try another g2x out before my buyer's remorse period is up.
4. I'm very surprised at you coming from a N1 that you use task killers very surprised and I'm gonna keep my eye on your.

cliffy15 said:
1. Bluetooth lag. There is a significant (sometimes 1-2 seconds) lag between the time my phone generates sounds and when my BT headset picks them up (Jawbone Icon).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have a BlueAnt Q2 and have no issues with Bluetooth. Phone to headset and headset to phone are almost instantaneous.
2. BT/Handset simultaneous sounds. I liked the fact that when my BT headset was connected, the handset speaker would mute and all sounds would only come through the headset. This does not happen that way with the G2X - is there a way to change it?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
My G2 used to work that way too. The G2X and my headset work like yours. It drives me crazy but I don't think there's a fix. Oddly, in my car, it play signals through the car's speakers when I wish it wouldn't. So that seems to indicate the connected device has something to do with it.
5. Car Home - I'm sure a lot of people find this useful, but I don't. Is there any way to supress this from coming up? Sometimes I get it when I connect my BT headset. At other times it doesn't show up until I get a call.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You could disable it under settings with HTC phones. Settings on the G2X take you to Android settings. I kill the process when I reboot the phone.

Thanks for the info!
lance713: yeah, assuming this phone makes it past the return date, I'm going to have to root it. I was never really was into custom roms, but I think I may start soon.
lance713/wondercoolguy: btw, I don't use task killers for much ... but coverage is spotty here (Hawaii) and I kill things when they get interrupted mid-task because they wait and "search" for awhile, killing my battery. I also kill gallery and messages when they have the occasional hang.
Guess I'll have to get used to no trackball/pad. My only other consideration was the Sensation (I really don't want most of the Sense UI) and that doesn't have one, either.

Rooting and flashing with different rom, will not fixed the screen bleeding problem or charging problem, that causes the phone to reboot. Those are hardware flaws

I can help with one of your issues the LED Notifications. Check out NoLED Settings in the Android Market by a fellow XDA developer member. It works great and highly customizable.

Came from an N1 myself.
Solution: Flash CM7
You'll feel right at home!

led notification
try lg2/black notifications from the market place.

[Q] Change tracks with volume buttons - kernel specific?

So I'm getting back into the smartphone game again after being away awhile and I got a Nexus S today basically free of cost, practically brand new without a mark on it. Previous owner had it as a temporary phone during a warranty repair job of his primary phone and when he picked up the repaired one they said he could keep the Nexus S (wish I could get that lucky).
Anyway, while I know there are a ton of different ROMs available for this fantastic (albeit older) device, here's what I really want and I'm not sure it's possible. I've used CM in the past on several devices and one of the things that I always loved first and foremost was the ability to change tracks during music playback by holding the volume up/down button(s) (long press as a short press adjusts the volume). Now, I'm not a coder, not a developer, not a ROM builder, etc - I basically enjoy the work of others provided by their ROMs and so on.
This time out I've decided to try and stick with a pure stock ROM (which I'm not sure of at the moment, the NS has 4.1.2 on it but I plan to do testing with the factory 4.0.4 and 4.1.1 images as well just to see what's going on). Since those are factory images they're obviously not rooted so I can use WugFresh's Nexus Toolkit to handle the rooting for me.
So here's my question: is the ability to use the volume controls for changing tracks during music playback (with the screen off) a ROM-specific thing or is it kernel-specific - I've never been able to find an accurate answer to this question and I've asked it several times on different forums over the past 4+ years and still nothing of substance has ever been given as a response.
I know that some music players advertise they can do it (I've seen PowerAMP mentioned a few times but it just doesn't appear to work for me, ever, on any device). Again, I'd prefer to stay stock as much as possible, save for rooting the device, and then hopefully find out either a) I have to use a custom ROM with this feature enabled in it, or b) it's kernel related and I can just install a custom kernel which I can tolerate since it'll help on several aspects.
Sorry to make this so wordy but that's just how I am.
tl;dr version: I want to remain as stock as possible, with root only, and be able to change tracks during audio/music playback with the screen off by using the volume control buttons. Is it possible with just installing a custom kernel (given this Nexus S is bootloader unlocked) or not?
Hopefully someone can offer an answer that'll put a smile on my face but, if not that's fine too I suppose, I can just drop back to CM10 (4.1.1) stable and stick with it, not sure 4.1.2 really does all that much to improve things and 4.2.2 apparently is just too big for the limited 512MB of RAM in this NS to be smooth sailing.
Thanks...

This feature is build in with the app "Uber Music" its a setting called "Use volume buttons to control media"
It works great and its awesome if you don't mind putting in a few dollars to get the app
Cheers,
Luke

UberMusic looks nice, sure, but it doesn't do what I was hoping it would (and was suggested in the post above). The setting preference says "Enable headset controls" and I already have that ability: I have a cord from Apple earbuds where I removed/desoldered the original factory earbuds (because they're crap) and then replaced them with a pair of Koss IEMs that I like. So even though the cord looks like I'm using Apple earbuds I'm not.
Having said that, I can already control the Play (single click), Pause (single click), and Next track (double click) functionality, but obviously the dedicated volume buttons on the remote don't work for whatever reason. The Nexus S has a proper TRRS jack but it seems like no Android phone makers care enough to actually allow for such volume control through that jack. And the typical triple click Previous track functionality doesn't work either, sadly (and that's with any remote I've ever tried, even earbuds/IEMs that claim to work or are "designed for Android."
So again, I'm trying to control changing tracks (Next and Previous) with the volume rocker on the phone itself and when the screen is off, that's it. Since the phone is in my hand 99% of the time and my thumb is on the volume rocker, it's infinitely more efficient to change tracks with a slight movement of the thumb than trying to grasp the inline remote and double click or whatever.
Sure is odd why this question is so difficult to get an answer to over the years...

Most custom roms support this. It's not a kernel thing afaik. You may be able to find a mod to get it working on stock. It seems like I've seen it before in the ns4g themes & mods but I could be wrong.
As for triple press on the headphones, it's always worked for me with poweramp on multiple headphones.
Sent from my Nexus S 4G using Tapatalk 2

Random Notification Sounds?

Maybe someone else can help me with this.
Every so often during the day I keep getting a random notification sound with no visual as to what it is. The sound is 5 tones going in a descending pattern and sounds metallic. I do not have NFC turned on nor the facebook app. I checked all my apps and sounds. I even read a lot of threads else where and tried everyone's suggestion. Still does it. I searched my phone for *.ogg and *.wav files. Nothing.
I do have a wallet case but since NFC is off its not that. I've never heard this sound before. It only started a few days ago and I've have this phone for over a month. FYI I'm running the Hola launcher and omni swipe if that helps. Any suggestions?
I am thinking to uninstall ALL my apps and see if it still does it, but I really dont want to have to do that if I can avoid it.:silly:

Bump
Anyone?

Maybe it's the louncher. .. trai with the touchwiz
Sent from my SM-N915F using XDA Free mobile app

It's not the launcher. It doesn't matter.
This is why I hardly ask anything here. No one cares.
If your not a popular member you never get a reply.
I'll just ask my questions elsewhere where people actually care about you.

Are you using googles smartlock feature? When I first started using it I was receiving this weird notification which sounds like what you're talking about. It don't do it no more for some reason but man was it so annoying not knowing what the heck your phone is trying to tell you.
Sent from my SM-N915P using XDA Free mobile app

Hey there.
I have been checking back on this topic for a while because my wife's Note Edge is having the same exact problem. I even reached out to Samsung Mobile Support and they can't even figure out what it is. All they did was tinker with the sound settings and asked me if it was fixed. I have tried disabling all possible notifications from all possible apps. The only thing left is to do a factory reset it seems. Any luck on your end?

VGMStudios said:
It's not the launcher. It doesn't matter.
This is why I hardly ask anything here. No one cares.
If your not a popular member you never get a reply.
I'll just ask my questions elsewhere where people actually care about you.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well that's not a pessimistic attitude or anything whatsoever! lol. Here's the thing... It might help to try and remember that nobody is on here getting paid to spend their time answering your questions all day long, so unfortunately it's inevitable that there will be times when people might just have to figure their problems out on their own or just be forced to wait until someone responds.. no matter how "popular" they might be.
This entire community wouldn't exist if weren't for all of the people on here who have been and are willing to spend their own free time sharing their knowledge with and helping others, so it's pretty ridiculous to sit there and act like it's a personal assault whenever nobody answers your question right away! From my experience on here people (including myself) are always more than willing to help out whenever they can (as long as the people are willing to help themselves too), but since nobody is getting paid people need to realize that it's more of a "self help" type of community than anything.
There are literally mountains of freely available information for people to search through to try to find their answers with, and with enough determination and persistence 99% of the time people could answer their own questions without ever even having to ask. So I'm definitely not trying to be rude or anything but it's just all in how you look at it.. because when people come here expecting to be handed all of the answers then they're most likely going to be disappointed and upset, but when you come here looking to help yourself instead you'd be surprised how much of a difference it makes and how rarely you'll have to ask any questions.
Anyway I'll try helping with some suggestions below since they're having the same problem too..
Mercodious said:
Hey there.
I have been checking back on this topic for a while because my wife's Note Edge is having the same exact problem. I even reached out to Samsung Mobile Support and they can't even figure out what it is. All they did was tinker with the sound settings and asked me if it was fixed. I have tried disabling all possible notifications from all possible apps. The only thing left is to do a factory reset it seems. Any luck on your end?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ok I've actually had a similar problem in the past and I can't guarantee anything but hopefully this might help..
In my situation it turned out being "profiles" that I didn't realize were turned on, and they were causing rogue and unknown sounds to happen because they were overriding my ringer and media volume settings based on the time of day it was. So all I had to do was turn off the profiles and it solved the problem, but it depends on the rom that you're on as to whether or not profiles like that are even an option.
If not another thing I'd recommend doing (and I'm obviously not sure what all you've tried so I'm just trying to cover the bases just in case) is to get a root explorer (as long as you're rooted.. if not I'm honestly not sure what to tell ya) and navigate to the root folder .. then go to "system/media", and inside there should be a folders called ui, notification, and ringtones.. and this where all of the default notification sounds are located. I would go through and listen to each one of them (they should be .ogg files) and see if you can find a match to the one you're hearing, and if you do then you can just rename that file .bak instead of .ogg and that should stop it from playing randomly (basically a bandaid type fix).
If it's not any of the system sounds then you've basically narrowed it down to where it's most likely an app that's making the sound. If that's the case then what I'd do is go into Titanium Backup and filter it to only show "user apps" and then have it sort them by the date which they were installed, and then I'd just start going down the list looking for apps I've installed that could possibly be making the sound.. that way even if you have a general idea around when the problem started happening you can match that time frame up with apps that were installed around that time to narrow down your search (if that makes sense anyway).
Anyway that's what I would do to start at least and hopefully it helps!
Sent from a ridiculously modified ColecoVision

heh. I have an idea. You know those crappy applications on the edge? Some of them are games. I remember i used to have this issue with the memory one. Remove them from the edge. No root required. Just remove the panels from the panel configurator.

VGMStudios said:
Maybe someone else can help me with this.
Every so often during the day I keep getting a random notification sound with no visual as to what it is. The sound is 5 tones going in a descending pattern and sounds metallic. I do not have NFC turned on nor the facebook app. I checked all my apps and sounds. I even read a lot of threads else where and tried everyone's suggestion. Still does it. I searched my phone for *.ogg and *.wav files. Nothing.
I do have a wallet case but since NFC is off its not that. I've never heard this sound before. It only started a few days ago and I've have this phone for over a month. FYI I'm running the Hola launcher and omni swipe if that helps. Any suggestions?
I am thinking to uninstall ALL my apps and see if it still does it, but I really dont want to have to do that if I can avoid it.:silly:
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Not sure if this is gonna help you or not. But yesterday I started to getbthe same metallic noises, I only recall 1 change to my settings and that was installing the live wallpaper on the lock screen to show me pictures based in weather and such. And since then every hour or so it makes the sound. Try to find out if you did the same thing.

Random notification sound
I am having a similar problem which has been widely reported but none of the suggested fixes are working for me. The notification tone keeps sounding in a seemingly random way. There is no notification to match the tone. This is not just a beep or random noise. It is the default notification tone. (Skyline for completeness). This happens maybe 5 or 6 times in 24 hours. It has been happening for about 10 days.
I am running Android 8.0.0 (Samsung Experience version 9) on a Galaxy S8. The phone is not rooted.
I have turned off all notifications individually.
I have turned off notifications for the phone.
I have turned off notification reminders (it was never on).
I have turned off NFC and bluetooth.
I have checked under Accessibility settings.
I have uninstalled every app installed in the last 3 weeks.
I can reproduce the NFC and credit card issue but that is a single beep and not what I am talking about.
I have installed 3 different notification log readers (NS Notification, Notif log notification history and Notification Log). None of them show any activity at the times when I am getting the spurious tone.
When I re-enable notifications for Texts, Messenger and WhatsApp, I still receive these as normal.
I recently got a new dual band router and thought maybe the tone was the phone jumping from 2.4 to the 5 Ghz band or vice-versa. It wasn't. I thought it might be the phone jumping from telecoms provider to WiFi. Tested that too and that's not it.
Next step is a factory reset which I am trying to avoid.
I know this is bringing problems to the table, not solutions but this is really bugging me. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Issue with lock screen functionality

am having an issue with the apps lock screen. I either can not find, or the functionality to manipulate the playback controls does not exist without taking it completely out of lock mode.
I think the app is wonderful but I think this is a major oversight. I saw posts about this same issue in 2014 and I guess you decided not to do it. The controls you have are so unique and helpful that if you could make it easier to manipulate for the those who are on the go most of the time listening to music etc. I do not want to get hit by a bus trying to mess around with the volume\shuffle options\dealing with other app windows on my phone. I hope there is something planned as far as a change may go.
One quick issue. The player pauses for a second every time I turn off the screen. I saw this prob in another thread that was not answered.
I think it would really put your player cleatly ahesf of the competition! Plus I would be eternally grateful
I have a Pixel XL by the way...
Hope to hear back soon,
Andrew

andykc12 said:
am having an issue with the apps lock screen. I either can not find, or the functionality to manipulate the playback controls does not exist without taking it completely out of lock mode.
I think the app is wonderful but I think this is a major oversight. I saw posts about this same issue in 2014 and I guess you decided not to do it. The controls you have are so unique and helpful that if you could make it easier to manipulate for the those who are on the go most of the time listening to music etc. I do not want to get hit by a bus trying to mess around with the volume\shuffle options\dealing with other app windows on my phone. I hope there is something planned as far as a change may go.
One quick issue. The player pauses for a second every time I turn off the screen. I saw this prob in another thread that was not answered.
I think it would really put your player cleatly ahesf of the competition! Plus I would be eternally grateful
I have a Pixel XL by the way...
Hope to hear back soon,
Andrew
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Probably you might have disabled lock screen notification in device's settings.
Regarding pause while switching between background and foreground, it was intentionally introduced to avoid issues. Development team is already working on it. It's already planned to make it optional. Kindly be patient till they implement it.

A few observations on the google pixel 4a

I've had the Pixel 4a since tuesday and I like it. I've a few observations I thought I'd put here in case anyone else agrees; there's a fix/workaround etc:
1) The speaker isn't too loud and it's only in the last 20% or so of the volume bar that you can hear the difference. They should change the linearity such that there's more control over the sound difference of the last 20% of the range, if that makes sense. Not a big deal.
2) It's annoying that I can't swipe back (ie swipe left from the right edge of the screen) to get rid of the keyboard. Instead a large percentage (10?) of the bottom of the screen is black except for the arrow which closes the keyboard. Waste of space.
3) On a similar note, there's a white line near the bottom of the screen. I guess it's to show that you can swipe up, but I'm not sure. Why would anyone who wasn't sure if they could swipe up see a white line and go "ah - I bet I could swipe up here"? But that's my best guess. And this is on most screens. It's the worst, and the most noticeable, on chrome. You have a full screen site, curving nicely at the top of the screen, and at the bottom the screen starts to curve but then there's the black rectangle, which exists purely to highlight the mystery-white-line-which-might-mean-you-can-swipe-up-here, cuts in, ending the curve and wasting around 5% of the height of the screen. This line doesn't appear in 3 button mode. But isn't the point of gestures that you don't need to waste space on buttons. So...don't waste the space showing me you can swipe up then. There's no swipe down hint, or swiping left/right hint. I don't get it at all. It knows I know you can swipe up, because I've swiped up.
4) Nova launcher problem. It just doesn't stick. Every once in a while it stops being the default launcher and you have to run it again. This has happened on other phones and eventually they fix it. I guess I have to try nova launcher again every month or so. The stock launcher isn't too bad, but:
5) Stock launcher is quite unconfigurable. The 5 icons at the bottom of the screen are sort of like the nova launcher dock (which i always turn off) and are there on every screen.
6) There's a notification history, which is a great idea. If you swiped away a message but then forgot if it was an email, or which whatsapp contact it was, you can see quickly what the most recent message was. You access it via a button under the notification shade which you can press to get at it. But...get this: That button only exists if you currently have unread notifications. If you swiped the last one away, the history button vanishes. You now have to go into settings to read it (why settings? my photos aren't in settings). Why? Who thought that was a good idea? That's when you're most likely to want the history! Doh!
7) Aggressive app killer. This will never change - no matter what google says about ai and machine learning, there's something too complicated about "ok, there's a music player running, playing music, and there are headphones attached, and the headphones are playing music...but...oh, the screen is turned off, which apps can I kill to save battery...well, there's this music player nobody's looking at, that'll do" to ever fix. Really? You're not checking if an app gets reloaded immediately after it gets killed every time it's killed and learning "hmm... it's as if.....he was listening to music and didn't want the app killed?" I guess it's true what they say - most machine learning is just a regex, and this isn't something which can be solved with a regex, so... I've disabled the battery optimisation for this app; time will tell whether that does the trick.
8) Can't disable the sound it makes when taking a screenshot.
9) Google photos can't keep up with quickly deleting a number of photos. To be fair, this happens on the website too. It's odd - you'd think it would be easy. You're not actually doing anything other than marking the fact that a photo is deleted. You're just moving it to the bin; it still exists locally. It's an offline-operation. Why doesn't it just defer until later, or do asynchronously - whatever it's doing. On both web and phone it's so laggy and disorienting that it's easy to end up deleting the wrong photo, the only workaround being to delete literally one picture every 5 seconds. Annoying if you're been taking pics of kids and took a bunch so as to ensure you have at least one without a blur or closed eyes etc.
Well, sounds quite ranty I guess. It's a great phone though - highly recommended. I really bought it for the camera and the fact it's quite a small phone. I recommend the spigen tough armor (sic) case; nice and grippy and feels like it's going to keep it pretty safe.

Maybe these things will be fixed in future updates. I reverted back to 10 and flashed Dirty Unicorns, just a better overall user experience compared to stock at the moment.

I would like to add something: do you also the "bubbles" always appear on the left of the screen even if you have moved them to the right before closing them?

_a! said:
...Well, sounds quite ranty I guess. It's a great phone though - highly recommended. I really bought it for the camera and the fact it's quite a small phone. I recommend the spigen tough armor (sic) case; nice and grippy and feels like it's going to keep it pretty safe.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Most observations in original post pertain to Android 11 (AOSP) and have little to do with the device itself. My experience on a couple items:
- Nova has yet to crash since updating to Android 11 (stable on A10 too). That said, you likely interact with the launcher in different ways not to mention app portfolio interactions. Should submit a bug report to developer via contact link in Nova settings.
- Not experiencing the same nonlinearity in volume adjustment. Max volume is fine for my tastes but probably would work well as the sole audio source at an Italian wedding

DB126 said:
Most observations in original post pertain to Android 11 (AOSP) and have little to do with the device itself. My experience on a couple items:
- Nova has yet to crash since updating to Android 11 (stable on A10 too). That said, you likely interact with the launcher in different ways not to mention app portfolio interactions. Should submit a bug report to developer via contact link in Nova settings.
- Not experiencing the same nonlinearity in volume adjustment. Max volume is fine for my tastes but probably would work well as the sole audio source at an Italian wedding
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The device runs Android 11, so that's all I can talk about, not what might happen if it ran a different operating system.
I never said nova launcher crashed; just that it stopped being a default launcher by itself a few times.

The white line at the bottom of the screen is annoying! I liked having the option in Oxygen OS to hide it, hopefully that becomes an option on future updates.
Overall I'm really enjoying the phone after coming from the Nord.

_a! said:
The device runs Android 11, so that's all I can talk about, not what might happen if it ran a different operating system.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Not what I said; no reference to an alternate OS
_a! said:
I never said nova launcher crashed; just that it stopped being a default launcher by itself a few times.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Almost always the result of excessive memory pressure (also has nothing to do with the device assuming memory is adequate...which it is on the 4a)

For your issue 4 I guess there's bug in Nova launcher. I had similar issue with Nova, but after switching to Lawnchair it sticks permanently.
Default gesture navigation is surely ****ty. I prefer using old 3-buttons navigation.