G1 user losing faith in Android - Please tell me these are fixed!

B

BusyGranny

New member
Hey all. I've owned a G1 for coming up on 2 years now. I generally like and support Android a lot, both in it's details & usability and on a philosophical level. However, the time has finally come where I'm starting to doubt it. The minor annoyances with my G1 over the years have now been 'daily frustrations' for a while, enough to get me to shout "I hate this stupid thing!" at my beloved phone.

I'm looking to get either an Incredible for an EVO 4G. My question to you folks is: Are these issues fixed yet?

1) The browser refresh problem. This annoys me daily.
Use case: I'm using the browser happily, poking around whatever website.
Somebody IMs me - I'm on IM because it's a multitasking OS, yay! - so I switch to Talk and reply to the IM.
When I switch back to the browser, it will almost always force a reload of the page - while giving you a blank screen - even though the page hasn't necessarily changed.

This extra force reload of the browser when you switch back to it is infuriating, slows down the whole process, and really makes you wonder what the point of multitasking is if it will spend a minute figuring out where it was when you 'switch' back. And the insulting part? Somehow It doesn't even actually do a refresh of the content - it spends the time to go out and get the whole page again, but doesn't actually do it.

2) General sluggishness.
Maybe this is an outdated hardware thing, maybe it's being stuck on Android 1.6, but WOW have things gotten slow. Yes, I use the Advanced Task Killer, that doesn't fix things entirely. Sometimes hitting the Home button is just a big FAIL for 4-8 seconds, leaving me staring at my background with no icons.

2a) When I'm getting called, it often it takes ~2 rings for the dailer to even SHOW UP! I'm not one of those people who screens my calls, but I dont like having to stare at a ringing phone that is struggling to show me the dailer screen.

3) Google Talk loses itself. This one drives me crazy.
Use case: I have a notification from Google Talk in my notification bar, somebody messaged me. When I pull down the notification, the entry displays the name and some of the message, as it should.
However, when I push on the notification, it switches to Google talk with the user's Chat window open, but NO CHAT TEXT. Just blank. Sometimes it says "The user is not offline" - even though I clearly have unread messages from them.

What I *think* is happening is that I'm getting the Instant Message in a 3G area, then when I move to an EDGE area, or switch connectivity somehow, it disconnects and reconnects IM. However, it also clears out the chat history! So now I have to go to the chat history and see what somebody said to me, just so I can pick up the conversation.

Just because I've switched connectivity doesn't mean that the messages I received previously never actually happened.

4) I have an e-mail that has been "sending" for 5 months now.

This one is pretty simple. It's not a draft, it hasn't been sent, but Gmail is still trying to send it. I re-sync and refresh but it stays there. I finally hit "delete" on the whole thread and it went away... has this happened to anybody else?

5) Battery life.
During the day, my poor G1 sits with me in my office in San Diego in an apparent black hole of service. This is either a weird deadspot, or my office gets a ton of interference from somewhere.

It constantly switches back and forth between spotty EDGE and spotty 3G service. I assume this is what causes the battery to go down so much, but the phone barely lasts half a day with minimal usage.

I realize this is partly T-Mobile's fault, and I can live with that. T-Mobile's service where I am sucks, I will be leaving their network.

6) The Market's App Update count is just wrong.
I can't be the only one this happens to. The notification says ~8 or so apps, but when I go to the Downloads section, only ~4 or so are listed as "Update Available." What the hell is it counting?


The above is a list of the annoyances that are pretty frustrating. I'm hoping that most of these can be solved by the following:
a) Better hardware, the G1 is slow
b) Better software, 1.6 is ooold
c) Better network, T-Mobile isn't great even where it's supposed to be good.

I'm hoping that buying the Incredible or EVO 4G (even though SD isn't a 4G area) will address all three of those points, and subsequently address the issues I've been having. Thoughts from the Android Community? Has upgrading fixed these issues for other users?

-Bradicus
 
1. not a problem anymore.
2/2a. dont ever call my nexus one slow. i dont think its even possible for that 1ghz snapdragon processor, overclocked to 1.117ghz, to ever be called slow. seriously. especially running android 2.2. download an app called linpack from the market,free, then run it. compare your g1 benchmarked score to this, you will see what i mean


3. the gtalk app in for 2.1+ is much better. plus some of that is due to your data signal.
4. i havent had that happen on my nexus, but on the g1 it did. you have to clear your gtalk data/cache in your settings to fix it.
5. yea, going back and forth drains the battery. im lucky enough to live in an area that has wonderful coverage and lightning fast data speeds.
6. in android 2.2, you have this wonderful option to update your apps all at the same time.


the hardware coming out today is not the same or even close to the same as the g1. while the g1 was an awesome phone for its time, it lacked in certain areas. my advice to you if you plan on keeping the g1 for a bit longer, root it. root it and install cyanogenmod 5. cm5 is based on android 2.1. oh, and youll see a performance boost in your g1. not drastic but noticeble enough to feel like a new phone
 
I have ZERO of those problems on my N1.

To be honest, that was a lot of reading. but I read mostly all of it. I must say my mom has my old G1, and when I use it. Sad to say but it honestly feels like a BETA device, and it's very slow. (it was a beta device, first android ever)

The Browser has went through huge improvements to 2.0 and 2.1 and even more on 2.2 (we can even upload things, photo's n such) and I will have 2-5 pages of different sites open all day long and switch from one to another, and back to messaging n such and never loose a page as you've mentioned. Just like tabbed browsing on my PC.

As far as General sluggishness. that is partly the old OS, and very largely the hardware. Once again here, G1 feels very old and outdated. Things like the app tray, or waiting for the email client to not only load, but to open a email, and go back to open the next.. all dead slow on the G1 compared to my Nexus One. The EVO would be a HUGE upgrade. the 1 Ghz processor makes a big difference, but all the tweaking to the OS is huge also. Waiting for the screen on a phone call. I've had to wait maybe 3-4 seconds once or so while IN a big game like Asphalt or Replica island. other than that it's very responsive.

I must say going from 1.5/1.6 on my G1 to my Nexus one was a HUGE leap and gave new life to Android. the os and the phone. I've been extremely pleased with it and cannot imagine going back to the G1.

At work I'd set your phone to EDGE only to save battery, and use 3G when needed. or WIFI. (should be easy to use wifi, or add) I think if you like android, and did when you got your G1. the EVO you will absolutely LOVE, other than it's got sense.
 
Thanks for the replies guys - I realize my post was a bit of a rant, that was a long time coming. Thanks for being patient enough to read it and give an serious response. I'm obviously happy to hear that most if not all of these issues aren't really present with 2.1 (and soon, 2.2).

I'm particularly glad that the "Browser losing my page when I switch back" issue is gone. That sure is annoying. I kinda figured that the better processor would address the sluggishness, glad to hear that it has.

I'm considering rooting and installing Cyanogen, definitely. I've read great things about it and at this point have very little to lose.

Simms22 - HA! My stock G1 records 1.727 MFLOPS / 3.13 seconds. ;-)
 
i played with my friends INcredible today. (i have a g1). i was very impressed at the speed of everything. Speed of the phone made web pages appear SOOO much quicker. it was a delight. esp with pinch & zoom.
 
1, 2, and 2a, are all caused by the G1 having a pitiful amount of memory. Once you get below 30MB of internal storage, and especially lower than 20MB, things start to slow down lots. The Browser will lose its page and have to reload it if you don't have a decent amount of RAM left, as a rendered webpage takes a lot of memory. Similarly, with the phone ringing, it has to unload your current app, then free up enough memory to load the dialer app, then load it. If you had more free memory the dialer app would already be loaded and it would instantly swap to it.

I've never had issues 3 and 4.

5) My G1 is at around 60% battery by the end of each day with light usage.

6) That used to happen to me too. My only theory is that it's when an app is updated, but the author quickly realises there's a big problem with their update due to the 100s of emails they're getting about it, quickly fix the problem, and send out an update again. That would count as 2 updates, but only for one app. You could also try clearing the Market cache. On that note, have you gone through Menu -> Settings -> Applications -> Manage applications... and looked at some of the apps that are taking up more space like the Browser and Market and hitting the Clear cache button on them? You can free up a ton of memory doing this.

a) Yes - the G1 is slow. Try the Linpack test described in a previous post. I get something like 1.6 on my G2, where the Nexus shown above is 44, implying that the Nexus One running Android 2.2. is nearly 30x faster. A good improvement in only 20 months wouldn't you say? The iPhone, for example, can't come anywhere remotely close to that comparing the iPhone 4 to the first gen iPhone.

b) Yep. 1.6 is around a year old now. Android 2 is a different generation, and there have also been to major releases (2.1 and 2.2) since then.

c) Can't answer that one.
 
go into settings > applications > manage applications

and clear the gmail caches, that will get rid of it.

you'll be fine with any of the 1ghz htc phones, they are all based on the nexus 1 as far as i can see, I'm tempted by the desire but the hassle to get root on it is giving me second thoughts.
 
Extorian - Thanks for the clarification of the some of the problems being due to internal memory, and also for the speculation about the market update count being wrong. It's not really a troubling issue, but just something that i've noticed. Cheers.

I'm happy with the G1 for what it's been to be so far. It's obviously been a great proof-of-concept for Android and as a personal phone for me it's been reat. It's just clearly obsolete hardware at this point.

Thanks for the Gmail cache clearing suggestion, Paul Roberts. I'll definitely try that if it comes up again.

Again, appreciate all the comments. I'll reply to this whenever I get an Incredible or EVO 4G!

-Bradicus
 
finally a search that yielded similar results! I'm still on my G1 (2yrs in nov) and have similar issues. I've been rooted since JF and am currently on the latest Cyanogenrom that's stable. The sluggishness has gotten worse and is by far the most annoying issue.

When I'm in an app and press the home button I sometimes have to wait 10-12 sec before the icons even appear. Then another 5-6 sec for them to even respond to touch.
I'm thinking it may be apps2sd killing my card but it is a class 6.
I use Taskiller Full with the "auto kill" feature on all the time and it helps a little

2a. same for me
5. yup i get a full 3g signal all day & can rarely get a full day's use (i now own 5 G1 batteries)

tl;dr
I'm getting similar symptoms yet i'm rooted with Cyan's version of 2.1.
What gives?
 
Android 2.1 (CM 5 + Compress Cache setting) absolutely transformed my G1. Even coming from 1.6/CM 4. EVERYTHING is snappier.

Root your G1 to CM5, you'll be amazed.
 
The title just did not make me happy.. android was never the problem.. its always been up to the hardware to match our O.S.
I didn't even read anything else but the title. So maybe this has been cleared up for you. But the os has always been ahead of the hardware in my opinion.. but without reading anything. Id say that if u try a different phone with a 1ghz Processor other then the g1. Ull believe again..

Sent from my Nexus One using Android Community App
 
Sort of true. But from what I've read on forums (on the Nex 1) the onboard pop email app still has problems handling attachments so you must run a "helper" app or another email app. And, though I hear you no longer have to root to use bluetooth to transfer files, you still need to pile on another app to make it work. If these were hardware issues even the after market apps wouldn't work. Or, to put it another way, since these issues can be resolved with apps, why doesn't Android get a grip and deal with them from the get-go?
 
But these "helper apps" that you talk about is one of the things that makes Android so great. It's not a bad thing because it you're not stuck with one email client or one browser or one file manager, like on just about all other phones. YOU can choose exactly what your phone does, with what apps, and how.

OK, so you need an additional app to handle certain types of email attachments... Try Astro, Linda, or OI File Manager, or all three, and see which one you like best. There's probably 20 others out there too.
 
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