Will rooting the Epic get rid of most of its problems? - Epic 4G Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

Hey, I've been thinking of switching from the Evo to the Epic. I've been researching alot on the phone and it's problems. Will rooting the phone and removing Touchwiz get rid of the gps problems, the lack of email notifications, and the unresponsive back button? Or will I have to flash a new rom to get rid of that? And can anyone with an Otterbox post pics and how they like the case? Thanks for the help.

Rooting the phone won't add any capabilities other than increased permissions (namely root). You'll need to flash a new rom to really change anything.
I don't believe that any of the replacement roms make the gps location more accurate.
What lack of email notification are you having?

i saw on a couple video reviews that any email account other than gmail doesnt refresh itself or doesnt notify you when it does. that could very well be a settings thing, but the guy doing to review isnt dumb so i figured that it wasnt a settings thing.

jeffy2walgreens said:
i saw on a couple video reviews that any email account other than gmail doesnt refresh itself or doesnt notify you when it does. that could very well be a settings thing, but the guy doing to review isnt dumb so i figured that it wasnt a settings thing.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
yeah, the email app is not super reliable.... it will usually check and retrieve your emails, but not all the time. but there are 2 good email apps you can download from the market, K9 mail and Maildroid.... those are said to work much better than the stock email app. and yeah, the native Gmail app works perfectly.

i guess i could learn to get used that. but if im getting the phone, i need the front buttons to work and the gps too. the gps on the evo is great, always locks on and it doesnt take too much time

Related

FIXED: SMS Timestamp Issue

UPDATE: I've found a fix for this issue - AWESOME!
Just go to the Android Market and install the SMS Time Fix app by Matt Precious.
http://www.androlib.com/android.application.com-mattprecious-smsfix-pAFq.aspx
It works perfectly, and updates the time stamp on all messages to relfect PHONE time and not network time. HINT: Make sure the "Last Resort" option is checked in the settings and offset is set to zero. This little app now makes the Evo Messages app usable. Finally...
Hope this is helpful info
So, I've been reading and experiencing several issues with SMS timestamps on the Evo 4G.
It seems there are three distinct issues with SMS timestamps on the the Evo and I believe they all have the same root cause.
Issue 1: When roaming texts are received with the wrong time stamp, offset by several hours (typically 4 or 5 hours off). This causes them to not be threaded in the conversation correctly. Very annoying.
Issue 2: When receiving SMS messages on any network (Sprint or Roaming), the time stamp is off by an hour. The result is the same as Issue 1, but a less extreme example.
Issue 3: When texting back and forth in quick succession, SMS messages are not logged in the order in which they are received, and received text messages ALWAYS appear before sent text messages if they are sent during the same minute, regardless of which one was actually sent first. This is also very annoying.
I believe the root cause is that the native Sense UI messaging app is using the timestamp of the tower of each SMS rather than using the time stored on the phone. To prove this, if you use Handcent and set it to use "phone time" and ignore the tower time, it works perfectly. The thing is that I don't want to use Handcent and I want to use the native app. Is there a setting that can be tweaked to fix this? Has anyone talked to HTC or Sprint about the issue and is a fix in the works?
For such a major problem, I am surprised more people haven't come forward. It's a pretty significant bug...
Thanks,
Matt_TX.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I agree and its getting really annoying since it causes me to miss texts.
NM, too easy
Has anyone talked to Sprint or HTC about it? I am sure there HAS to be a fix in the works. The good news is that the native Froyo messaging app does not do this (as far as I can tell). I used a Nexus One on T-mobile and it doesn't occur. It appears to be using the phone's timestamp, as it should...
As long as HTC don't apply their "logic" (or lack thereof) over Froyo, it should be fixed soon.
I also can't believe that Sense UI stops the user from having more than one Exchange account. Android 2.1 (Eclair) does this by default. Why on earth would they remove it?
Anyway, back on topic... Please please post with your thoughts and discoveries around the SMS timestamp issue.
Thanks!
How is this related to development?
tkrechel said:
NM, too easy
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm not sure what you mean by "NM, too easy". Can you explain or provide any insight. Please help if you can. For those of us with this issue, it's REALLY annoying. I apologize if the question is dumb and there is an easy fix.
I realize that some of you may not feel that it is related to development, but I disagree. For those geniuses out there that make ROM's, maybe there is some way to fix this with a setting or minor change in the Sense UI messaging app...
Additionally, there is no need to berate someone that's genuinely asking for help. It's obvious that this forum gets the most traffic, and it's obvious that the smartest "Evo User" minds are located here. I don't think there is any harm in reaching out for help, isn't that the purpose behind these forums
The samething was happening to me last night.
Sent From My HTC EVO 4G
nebenezer said:
How is this related to development?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Agreed. If its not happening with Handcent nor the AOSP apk, then its a direct HTC issue.
General Discussion. Also, probably not really that urgent.
./agree on all poins with OP.
I posted in Q&A about this same issues, with no replies 8(.
Anyway, I thought it was related to the modified prl that I installed. However it would do it even when I was on the stock prl.
Long story short, I called sprint and said I was having the issue. They said they were going to refresh something on their side, to wait 20 mins then power cycle the phone.
Did that and to my surprise it worked! Then yesterday I re-flashed a custom rom and the sms timestaps went all wonky. /sigh
suck it up and use handcent or chomp, they are overall better apps, just not as nice of a UI.
this has been a problem for quite some time. I've looked everywhere for a solution. This was a problem on winmo phones as well.
I switched to handcent and never looked back. Once you get it all customized, it's awesome.
davebu said:
suck it up and use handcent or chomp, they are overall better apps, just not as nice of a UI.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
look at this guy.
handcent didn't work on my froyo rom, not sure about chomp, didn't try it.
at work i always have this problem, texts are recieved 5 hours into the future, whereas the ones i send are the correct time. occasionally ones they send are the correct time so i have to scroll up and down and it is very annoying.
not a fan of handcents pop up notifications, i guess i could turn em off.
guess i'll just 'suck it up'
regulator207 said:
this has been a problem for quite some time. I've looked everywhere for a solution. This was a problem on winmo phones as well.
I switched to handcent and never looked back. Once you get it all customized, it's awesome.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
yup, had the same problem on my old HTC Diamond with Sense/TF3d on it.
Updated First Post...

Facebook doesnt stay logged in?

Forgive me in advance, I am asking this question on behalf of my gf that has an Epic.
Every couple hours she gets a prompt to login to facebook which is becomming very annoying. I have an Evo and have never had this issue but I also use the official facebook app, it appears that the epic has its own facebook app which appears to be the one causing us troubles. Does anyone else have this issue with facebook or am I doing something wrong? It would seem there is a way to stay logged in because if you are constantly signing in it kinda defeats the purpose of widgets.
brandenk said:
Forgive me in advance, I am asking this question on behalf of my gf that has an Epic.
Every couple hours she gets a prompt to login to facebook which is becomming very annoying. I have an Evo and have never had this issue but I also use the official facebook app, it appears that the epic has its own facebook app which appears to be the one causing us troubles. Does anyone else have this issue with facebook or am I doing something wrong? It would seem there is a way to stay logged in because if you are constantly signing in it kinda defeats the purpose of widgets.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This isn't going to answer your question but I'm just letting you know I get the same issue. I just either leave it or clear the notification up. Wouldn't mind finding a solution to this as well. Good luck!
I was afraid of that, so its either deal with the constant logins to get everything synced properly in your contacts, messages, etc., or go with something like Pure Messanger Widget and stock facebook app?
yep same issue here, ive learned though it does it only when i check my facebook on the epic
if I leave it alone it doesnt log out
There is a similar post in the General forum, but I had the same issues.
When I experienced the same issues, I was still on the stock version of Facebook.apk. The SNS account kept prompting for me to log in again, with each sync interval.
I tried removing and adding the account again and rebooting in between, yet still the same problem. I finally had upgrade Facebook to the latest update that was the cause of all these login issues for older versions.
The upgrade fixed the problem, but I did find an issue when you use the built-in Facebook contact sync alone it may not carry profile pictures over to SMS. I had to manually add the account, this ended up putting two Facebook sync processes on my phone. The first is for Facebook to actually let you login to the app (just has sync contacts), and the second is the process that will sync both contacts and calendar events again. (the original sync we're used to)
Reference thread
EDIT: I just got the same SNS login prompt again.
I've never had any login problems on the facebook app, but I also don't use the feeds and updates widget.
Sent from The Chaotic Void
This only seems to be happening to me more often recently. I swear it's asking me to log in to Facebook & Twitter every hour or so now. When I go to Accounts & Sync I see that there are two accounts (even though I only have one account for each). One Twitter & one Facebook account say there was an error with the syncing process.
I unchecked the sync processes that were having errors. I'll let you know if I keep being asked to log in.
I have this problem too. It says my sync is experiencing errors and its cause it logged me out of Facebook. Once I log back in its fine.
Sent from my Evo Killer!!!
Also i don't have auto sync enabled. I manually refresh them.
Sent from The Chaotic Void
zanderman112 said:
Also i don't have auto sync enabled. I manually refresh them.
Sent from The Chaotic Void
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
whats the setup on that phone atm? I had these same issues(as stated above) and now I'm Flashed to nebula 1.0.7 with froyo and its beast without any problems. Facebook hasn't bugged me once lol
brandenk said:
Forgive me in advance, I am asking this question on behalf of my gf that has an Epic.
Every couple hours she gets a prompt to login to facebook which is becomming very annoying. I have an Evo and have never had this issue but I also use the official facebook app, it appears that the epic has its own facebook app which appears to be the one causing us troubles. Does anyone else have this issue with facebook or am I doing something wrong? It would seem there is a way to stay logged in because if you are constantly signing in it kinda defeats the purpose of widgets.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I used to have this issue, but I figured out a simple workaround.
I use the FACEBOOK APP to sync and not the adding a Facebook account under the account section in settings. After I deleted the Facebook account there and made a sync with the Facebook App, the annoying prompt went away and hasn't come back since.
Hasseo said:
I used to have this issue, but I figured out a simple workaround.
I use the FACEBOOK APP to sync and not the adding a Facebook account under the account section in settings. After I deleted the Facebook account there and made a sync with the Facebook App, the annoying prompt went away and hasn't come back since.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
After doing this, I bet you don't have your friends profile pictures in the stock SMS application anymore. You also wouldn't have Facebook events in your stock Calendar application.
I have the same problem. Funny thing is my widget works fine gets updates and I can upload a picture from within the widget. If I take a picture, or select one from the gallery, then click Share facebook, it will not upload. started one day last week.
On stock rooted and don't get it hourly or even 2x/day that I can remember, just every morning...sometimes it doesn't make it the first time, usually it re-connects, good til the next morning....
I had the same problem. I had to delete the stock sync and use the FB app's sync option but like mentioned above you lose the profile pics on the stock sms so I downloaded "go sms" and the pictures are back...it beats having to log in every hour for sure.
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA App
Same issue here. Facebook app from market works fine but the integrated samsung facebook sync and widget have problems. Ridiculous, samsung needs to fix their software.
treeserton said:
Ridiculous, samsung needs to fix their software.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I would say it's a Facebook issue. It stopped working properly after the recent Facebook update. It affected all versions of the application, including the Epic's stock version of Facebook.
I do actually. But, no calendar sync.
Sent from the Epic that bites.
I can say that my gf and my brother both have the same issue, only reason i can think Samsung isn't attempting a quick fix is the rumored 2.2 update for the 21st of this month, which will probably have an updated app that fixes the problem. Although as important as facebook is to people I am surprised there is no maintenance release that fixes this,
Same issues here. I was thinking it might have had something to do with networking issues - I usually leave wifi and 4g on all the time. I noticed that I usually get the prompts when I leave home in the morning (go out of range of my house's wifi) and when 4g disconnects and reconnects in spotty 4g areas. I was wondering if maybe the session expires when you switch networks. Same thing would happen on my laptop when I would bring it from home to work or a coffee shop. FB might recognize that the connection is different. Meh, just a theory I thought I'd throw out there.

Email Problem, Quits Working Without Warning

Email has always worked perfect up until the last few days. It will randomly stop syncing and I have to power it off and back on for it to fix the problem. Everything looks normal. It will not send or receive though.
Everything else seems to work except the email. It's already caused me quite a few problems with not getting messages in a timely manner.
Any thoughts.
I have experienced the same problem also... i kept wondering for few days why i am not getting any emails and than one day my battery died so when i rebooted i the phone my inbox got tons of emails from few days back... i wish to know the answer too
What email are you trying to sync? Hotmail?
princessakiki said:
What email are you trying to sync? Hotmail?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
hotmail and yahoo... both got backed up for few days... any ideas?
I'm experiencing the same for Gmail. Anybody know of a fix?
Sent from my SPH-D710 using Tapatalk
I'm having the same, or a similar, issue with Exchange mail. Randomly it won't bother to sync it on push until I open up the mail app. All my Gmail works fine, just this.
I may have found the problem. I took off my live wallpaper yesterday and put a standard one back on and my email hasnt quit working since.
I had the 3D Hyperspace Live Wallpaper, which I really like and hate to lose. I'm still monitoring it but I lost email pretty frequently until I went back to the standard wallpaper so there's a good chance thats the problem.
I'll update with results.
Some more info on my problem and my phone:
I have four yahoo email accounts and one gmail account. My yahoo accounts would stop syncing and nothing you could do would refresh them. Nothing would make them sync other than turning the phone off and back on.
My phone is rooted with sfhubs root which has worked flawlessly so far. Not sure if that has anything to do with it or not.
Well I noticed my Hotmail stopped syncing around the time they made the official Hotmail app. I thought it maybe something on Hotmail side of things not allowing it to work but I guess not. I am not rooted and am all stock but the official Hotmail app works great so I just said forget the other one. Let me know if anyone finds a fix.
Sent from my hand crippling Epic 4g Touch
princessakiki said:
Well I noticed my Hotmail stopped syncing around the time they made the official Hotmail app. I thought it maybe something on Hotmail side of things not allowing it to work but I guess not. I am not rooted and am all stock but the official Hotmail app works great so I just said forget the other one. Let me know if anyone finds a fix.
Sent from my hand crippling Epic 4g Touch
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
My gut feeling is that it stopped syncing because i was " clearing memory" from that inbuilt Samsung task manger... since i stopped using "clear memory" the email seems to sync properly ... maybe i am wrong ... i don't know...
Update:
It's been three days since I took the live wallpaper off. I had no problems for three days...
Until this morning. Email hadnt synced since last night. I had to reboot the phone and the emails came rolling in.
I'm going to put the live wallpaper back on and see how it reacts.

Facebook keeping tabs on calls and sms via FB app? (Creepy!)

For a while now I've been weirded out with some of Facebook's friend suggestions that pop up on the right (desktop), because it's putting customers of mine up there that I have never corresponded with via FB or email, basically only by phone or text. And the timing was always crazy because I would work at their house or talk to them on the phone and the next day they would come up as a suggestion. Well last night I spoke with an old colleague of mine on the phone that I haven't spoken to in about a year and today I go to my profile and sure enough, he's at the very top of my friends list. I have come to the conclusion that the FB app on our phones MUST be keeping tabs of who we are talking to and making the suggestions based on that information, and god knows what else they are doing with that info. How else can this be explained? It is the only explanation that I can think of. Checking the permissions of the app, it DOES have the ability to check pretty much everything we do on our phones.
Has anybody else noticed anything like this going on?
I'm only surprised that you're surprised. I assumed this was true without even using the app.
I guess I'm not surprised but I didn't think they dug that deep into our privacy. Nowhere is it disclosed that they use that information for anything, and when I google it I find people posting about similar findings as me but never anything official from Facebook.
Permissions Denied can block most of those! It still bugs me that GPS can't be blocked without crashing the app, though (even if you've turned off posting with location).
PDroid seems to be a good option for those with Cyanogen, but it's not available for my E4GT. Anybody have a moment to put together a PDroid patch for Calkulin's ROM?
Thank you for that, pinandstutter! I use AdBlock, NoScript and Peerblock on my PC for these exact reasons. I didn't know something like this was available for my phone.
Quite frankly FB is a sack of scuzzbags.

[Q] Google Voice Notification Not Going Away

Howdy,
Before I upgraded to CyanogenMod 9.0, I would get a Google Voice message notification for a text message. I'd go into the web version of Google Voice, answer the text and then after a bit, the notification would go away on my phone.
Now switched to CM9 and the notification doesn't go away unless I answer the text on my phone or clear it out on the phone.
I've tried GummyNex and CM9 and they both do it.
Has anyone else seen this? I've done the thing where I've uninstalled GV, did the *73, deleted all the Verizon VMs and the reinstalled GV but it still does it.
Don't think its related to your ROM as I'm having the exact same issue on stock 4.0.4 and have always been on stock. Seems to have started a couple weeks ago....
Been pulling my hair out trying to figure out what's going on and was about to start a thread myself asking if anyone else had the issue. Thought I was just crazy at first, but I know for a fact this is not how the app acted before. I've tried changing all kinds of things for my browser use of voice.google.com, deleted/re-installed the app, and nothing works.
I'll be texting using just the browser for a bit and look at my phone and I'll have a notification for "25 Google Voice Messages" or whatever. They never clear. I notice that when opening the GV app to the thread I'm texting in, it hasn't synced in the background, and takes a few seconds for the messages I had sent to show up in the thread. It seems as though Google Voice isn't getting background sync anymore.
Aww man So it was just highly coincidental that it happened around the same time I switched over to a different rom.
It's surprisingly frustrating for such a little thing. I just use it so much that it forces me to check the phone and clear it manually to make sure I don't *actually* have a new message when I'm using both my phone and the web app.
Argh.
Yeah - nothing I've found has fixed the issue.
Seijin said:
Aww man So it was just highly coincidental that it happened around the same time I switched over to a different rom.
It's surprisingly frustrating for such a little thing. I just use it so much that it forces me to check the phone and clear it manually to make sure I don't *actually* have a new message when I'm using both my phone and the web app.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes I think it's actually a coincidence as I said I've been on stock and it all of a sudden stopped working as it was. This is just really weird because there's been no update to the app or anything.
It's extra frustrating because Google Voice is my primary #, so I'm doing about 99.9% of my texting with it, and really enjoy being able to use voice.google.com. Dealing with clearing GV notifications every time I pick my phone up is very lame.
I don't believe I'm experiencing this, gv on GSM nexus, stock 4.0.4 rooted. Straight talk tmo mvno
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2
I don't currently have this with my yakju 4.0.4 OTA stock ROM, but I have seen it before on this phone and every other phone I've owned across stock & custom ROMs. Fairly confident it's a problem with the app itself
@crachel - are you on cdma or gsm?
crachel said:
Fairly confident it's a problem with the app itself
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What could it be though? I've done everything short of a factory reset. Nothing about the app itself or the settings I used changed and it started happening out of nowhere.
Seijin said:
@crachel - are you on cdma or gsm?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
GSM
martonikaj said:
What could it be though? I've done everything short of a factory reset. Nothing about the app itself or the settings I used changed and it started happening out of nowhere.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't know.. I agree though that the problem just comes and goes, which is odd. Just a couple weeks ago they weren't clearing for me, but right now it's working fine. I remember thinking that's it's ridiculous this happens on stock firmware
crachel said:
I don't know.. I agree though that the problem just comes and goes, which is odd. Just a couple weeks ago they weren't clearing for me, but right now it's working fine. I remember thinking that's it's ridiculous this happens on stock firmware
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Even moreso ridiculous if this is a known issue and they haven't addressed it even with these several early 2012 updates to the GV app, which made it a lot better overall in UI and UX. I just don't see how it can come and go with no changes whatsoever to your settings.
Mine definitely does the same thing... I thought it used to clear them for me, but I wasn't sure, and figured I was just thinking of how Google Talk clears the messages.
Not a huge deal to me, but it would definitely be nice if they would fix this. Our best bet is to make a post on the help forums with a bunch of posts in it.
xur17 said:
Mine definitely does the same thing... I thought it used to clear them for me, but I wasn't sure, and figured I was just thinking of how Google Talk clears the messages.
Not a huge deal to me, but it would definitely be nice if they would fix this. Our best bet is to make a post on the help forums with a bunch of posts in it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If I get some time I'll put up a bug report on Google Groups/Google Code.
Edit: Nevermind! Someone's on it already from February: https://code.google.com/p/android/i...on&colspec=ID Type Status Owner Summary Stars
I'd appreciate if you're having this issue to star and comment there (as well as here).
martonikaj said:
If I get some time I'll put up a bug report on Google Groups/Google Code.
Edit: Nevermind! Someone's on it already from February: https://code.google.com/p/android/i...on&colspec=ID Type Status Owner Summary Stars
I'd appreciate if you're having this issue to star and comment there (as well as here).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the link!
If anyone has a chance, they should make a post in the Google Voice forums here (I'll try to do it later when I have a chance if no-one else gets to it): http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!categories/voice/using-google-voice-on-a-mobile-device. I heard that Google Engineers do monitor / read these sometimes, so if we all post in a thread there is a chance it will get read / fixed.
I really wish there was a better way to get stuff like this fixed.
Bit late to the party. Just wanted to chime in that in my experience I don't think I've ever seen the GV notification clear itself after checking the web interface on my computer.
I've been using android for a year now and have gone through 3 phones and the asus transformer tablet. My current phone is running a CM9 based rom, but still it doesn't clear these notifications.
Man, I'd love it if it did.
Note: I think that if you use the GV widget, you will see that the notification on the widget DOES clear after checking the web interface (or at least it did in GB because I just tested this on my current phone and widget doesn't clear it either). I suppose this means that GV is pushing the "read" status of an sms to our phones. The notification on the notification bar, however, still persists despite this.
EDIT: Given my last test on my current phone, it looks like the widget doesn't clear the notification like it used to on GB. It looks like it is, in fact, a syncing issue.
LeoBloom. said:
Bit late to the party. Just wanted to chime in that in my experience I don't think I've ever seen the GV notification clear itself after checking the web interface on my computer.
I've been using android for a year now and have gone through 3 phones and the asus transformer tablet. My current phone is running a CM9 based rom, but still it doesn't clear these notifications.
Man, I'd love it if it did.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I can confirm that it actually did used to clear when viewed on another device, and this is the intended action. It should work exactly like an IMAP e-mail account (say, the GMail app). If you view a message on the device or in a web browser, it is cleared as read on the other. Google Voice used to do the same, and stopped doing so randomly. It's completely a backend problem.
Really wish they would fix this. Still happening on JB. Very annoying for those of us who text from the web all day.
xdp said:
Really wish they would fix this. Still happening on JB. Very annoying for those of us who text from the web all day.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Still a problem, go over to the google group link posted above and star the issue to (hopefully) increase it's priority and visibility:
https://code.google.com/p/android/i...s Owner Summary Stars&groupby=&sort=&id=25301

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