Mostly I am trying to see if this is an isolated issue with mine that might be fixed by rolling the dice again and re-flashing 2.1, but I'm sure people have interesting anecdotes to share as well.
For me, the ROM gave me severe overheating issues. Like, I would be in a heavily air conditioned room playing a video file, and after 20 minutes even though the outside doesn't feel exceptionally warm, running the internal temp monitor would show 98-100 degrees! This heated area was highly localized in the lower left corner, where according to ifixit the processor rests. Without air conditioning, even simply browsing the internet would cause it to eventually overheat.
To add to that, comparing 1.6 to 2.1 charging speed and general battery life seems to be much better after going back to 1.6. Whereas in 2.1 watching a 20-minute video could cut down my battery by 30 percent even in airplane mode, in 1.6 I lose maybe 5 percent in the same situation.
Of course even in 1.6 I am still having troubles with heat when I am in a hot environment, though I don't know if this is just the nature of running a modern smartphone in 29 degree C (84 F) weather. As an aside, has anybody had overheating issues in hot environments?
Several reasons include:
1 - Utterly crap, slow, useless & innaccurate keyboard
2 - Less icons fit on screen
3 - Only 5 home screen in which you cannot remove/add
4 - Wallpaper does not work properly, instead of filling one screen
it distorts and stretches onto all the other screens...
That's all I can think of now...
100*F after 20 minutes of video playback? That's absolutely normal. In fact it's kinda cool.
I'm back on 1.6 because:
No WMA support in stock or aftermarket players (RockPlayer did work, but that's no good for music)
I prefer the 1.6 keyboard
I like Dell's FB, Twitter and RSS widgets
I want my restricted market apps to be available
I do miss (from 2.1)
The eye-candy
Being able to charge in aeroplane mode (what is UP with that anyway?)
The dialer/contact app is great
Did I mention the eye-candy?
2.1 was very pretty and I am very much looking forward to it in an official ROM. IMHO though, it doesn't provide the functionality I need.
MSigler said:
100*F after 20 minutes of video playback? That's absolutely normal. In fact it's kinda cool.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Seriously? I mean, what's the point in having a media tablet if it can't even finish a TV episode without an emergency shutdown? Is this normal for android smartphones in general, or is the streak just badly designed?
gilrad said:
Seriously? I mean, what's the point in having a media tablet if it can't even finish a TV episode without an emergency shutdown? Is this normal for android smartphones in general, or is the streak just badly designed?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
my guess is that the cpu throttling isnt fully implemented or that it doesnt support hardware decoding.
either way, i feel the 2.1 is pretty buggy, the facebook sync goes funny, the dell rss widget crashes every few hours, and a few more that i cant recall off the top of my head.
waiting eagerly for 2.2 to release.
I have to agree with the other posters...
- New icon spacing is terrible (what a waste of a big screen)
- Old keyboard was better
- Old recent programs menu was better
- Old camera UI was better
- Old desktop (with seperate rooms/wallpapers) was better
If the final OTA update is this bad I'm going to be sticking with 1.6 - and I'll be happy with it.
Updates are supposed to make things better, not worse.
kanej2006 said:
Several reasons include:
1 - Utterly crap, slow, useless & innaccurate keyboard
2 - Less icons fit on screen
3 - Only 5 home screen in which you cannot remove/add
4 - Wallpaper does not work properly, instead of filling one screen
it distorts and stretches onto all the other screens...
That's all I can think of now...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ok all of that is fixed by third party solutions. ADWlauncher rocks
Did anybody ever have trouble with videos in 2.1? I fixed my overheating issue, got it so that I could watch videos as much as I wanted in 1.6. So I went back to 2.1 thinking my biggest gripe was solved, but now, even at 30 degrees C (86 F), the thing restarts maybe ten minutes into a video.
Not sure whats behind this overheating, but i am running 2.1 since it was leaked without any issues, to be fair I have only watched about 30 mins of District 9 but ran fine.
I was really glad to see the back of 1.6, so many awesome apps were unavailable. As the other post mentioned most of the failures of the current 2.1 can be remedied with other istalls. ADW lets you set the ammount of columns and rows of icons, and up to 7 home pages, plus loads of other tweaks, themes and portrait mode.
I was super dissapointed with the new keyboard too, but the HTC multitouch keyboard is awesome and super fast with really good correction too, only thing that doesnt work yet is auto capitolisation as far as I know, and theres various skins to chose from.
For me there was also a noticable speed increase, this with proper multitouch meets my gaming needs with psx4droid. The dialer and contacts is a huge improvement, as is the stock gallery. Only thing with that is the proximity hangs sometimes and takes a while for the sceen to light up but thats pretty rare and I think that could be some app interfering...
I for one cant wait for the official 2.1 hopefully sligly ironed out release, this will nicely hold me over till froyo, which better be soon Dell!! Though I understand some people cant be bothered to tweak and play with it, just want it working out of the box. I guess coming from WM im used to that LOL..
Apologies ahead of time for the wall of text...
I got my wife the Prime for Christmas. It took her a couple of days to finally open it, as I gave her the choice of going with it or the iPad2. After a couple of days, she seems to like it and is slowly getting the hang of the OS.
I've played with it some. For the most part, it seems smooth. I've managed to make it glitch (lag) a time or two by going in and out of apps and even had the launcher itself FC on me forcing me to reboot.
That was while checking out Alice in Wonderland in MyBooks, which by the way, is not exactly usable. The page animations worked at first, then stopped, then the pages stopped turning altogether and the app FC'd. Not that I care or am surprised. I'm used to included software being half-baked.
Browser experience has been fine using stock and Opera. Dolphin doesn't seem to work as well on the TF201 as it does on my Atrix. Perfect experience? No. I have a $4,500 i7 2920-XM workstation with an SSD and 16gigs of RAM at work and even with it, the browsing experience (or OS experience in general) can lag/glitch from time to time. Nature of the beast.
I can't really comment on battery life. She took it off the charger Monday night at 100%. It hasn't been used steadily for more than 1-2 hours at a time. It's down to about 15% this morning. I can't really say how many hours of use she's gotten out of it but it doesn't seem to drain much overnight, even with Facebook, email and other notifactions. It felt like it was draining pretty quick when in use but I'll have to pay closer attention.
There's minor light bleed around the edges but I had to turn the lights off during boot up to notice. I haven't attempted to watch an entire movie in the dark with it to tell if it's something that will be bothersome. I'll tell you, I went through THREE Sony XBR2 LCDs a few years ago. They suffered from horrible "clouding" (blotchy white areas all over the panel) and light bleed in the corners. That was noticeable under normal use and since I primarily watched movies in pure darkness, it was bothersome. I don't think it's going to be an issue w/ the TF201 unless I'm being nitpicky.
WiFi seems OK. I have yet to compare it to the laptop, but compared to my Atrix (CM7) it's getting the same signal. It fluctuates some, even staying in the same spot, but it's never caused a problem.
I haven't tested GPS. Something tells me it's not going to operate properly though It's low on my list of concerns and I'll use it as an excuse to return the thing to Gamestop in the next 15 days (for exchange only, which is irksome), but otherwise, I'm not too concerned. If it turns out to be hardware, I imagine an RMA will correct it. It would be cool to use the thing for GPS but I own an actual GPS and rarely use it. I would still prefer the device have its features work, of course.
Aside from the launcher FC and subsequent reboot and the occasional glitchiness/lag using the stock launcher and jumping through apps, the only other issue I've noticed happened this AM. I woke up to the room filled with light. The TF201 was on. I didn't wait long to see if it would go back to sleep so maybe it would have. However, when I got up to see what it was doing, I noticed it had rebooted. Hopefully that doesn't happen often and hopefully not while in use!
I'm confident that a lot of these issues can be fixed with firmware updates and hopefully those are pretty quick to release. Overall, I'm pretty happy with the device. Hopefully ICS will only make the experience better. And hopefully it will come soon so all of the speculation, etc can end! I know my Atrix went from all right to pretty frickin' awesome when I put CM7 on it.
Just chime in and tell me how your WiFi/GPS is, and how your prime is operating.
If you don't have anything positive towards this thread GET OUT. I'm trying to get a better understanding of how everyone with a BCOKAS model is doing.
My wifi is decent/crap, I have to be within 10 feet of any router for a good connection. GPS is worthless
I'm waiting on "Gary Key" to come out with his amazing solution of fixing this. That's why I haven't RMAed or Unlocked yet.
Besides the WiFi, I LOVE THIS DEVICE. I could use the GPS on my phone.
Sooo hows your BCOKAS Prime ???
WIFI: Range is horrible
WIFI + BT: Recently tested this feature.... performs extremely poorly. Will do more test.
GPS: I can get few birds (including inside of the house) & few will lock with pathetic signal. However, everything disappears once it starts to move...
That's including aGPS... horrible.
Browser: Adequate once Chrome browser was deleted. However, still getting the "wait" pop-up window or force close on occasion.
Games: Don't really game on my Prime but it works well when I do (games look good as well).
Streaming Media from Network(movies): Due to poor WIFI range, it doesn't work well once I am 15+ ft away from the router.. however, if I am within 10ft range.. it works well. Also, if my Prime is idle for few mins. (5+).. & if I wake up my Prime... screen flickers & I see screen tear... & when I unlock it.. it'll freeze/lag & Prime will reboot. (This continues even after soft reset.. haven't done factory reset yet)
eReader: Probably the main reason why I continue to use Prime. MyLibrary from Asus is my fav. eReader app. Yes, I mainly use Prime for reading eBooks... (not exactly the reason why I purchased but it works well).
WIFI:
My wifi range is very similar to my GNex so it's not terrible. I just ran a Speed Test and was getting around 4-5D and 4-5U on the wireless here at my work which the signal strength is around -70dB.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
GPS:
2-3 birds outside, nothing inside and I never get a lock.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
BT:
I have a lot of trouble getting things to connect to it but it can be done. Performance with wifi on is poor.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
OS:
Been getting launcher crashes of late so I installed GO HD and that seems to have helped, but I will say that apps in general are not very stable.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Other than that, I'm in the same boat David. Waiting to unlock based on what I hear from RMA's. I started a thread a couple weeks ago to try and gather info from those who RMA'd for BT/WIFI issues but at that point no one really had. Maybe we can get some results now...
My bcokas
I have had this one since late Feb or early March (my 2nd one).
Only one or two uncommanded reboots--I am not a heavy user--I do not know enough about it to be a serious user, YET.
I am pretty computer knowledgeable, though.
I just took my prime outside (Anchorage, Alaska at the International Airport)
I have a wireless G network at our office. It is on the second floor inside a wooden frame building-close to, but not visible through a window. I connected with the WiFi Analyzer using the speedometer style gauge and received -73 to -75 DB at approximately 300 feet away on our ramp (aircraft parking area). I did not attempt any downloads--pretty chilly outside today.
Next, I loaded the GPS test app from Chartcross, and while outside (completely wide open), got no birds. This did not surprise me. I have found that if no birds are visible, a complete shutdown & restart will usually bring the GPS back to life. IT DID!!
Within 30 seconds of starting the app (after the complete restart), I had 12-14 birds visible and 10-11 in use. Signal strength never exceeded 31 on the graph. The usability remains poor, even though numerous birds in view. The coverage drops off to none frequently but reconnects quickly. As a commercial pilot, I am very familiar with GPS usage. This one cannot be classified greater than "Very Poor". I have the Dual xgps150a that I use via Bluetooth and it works flawlessly.
I have not attempted to use Bluetooth & WiFi at the same time, and therefore cannot comment on that aspect.
Overall, I am not dissatisfied with the Prime. I had no expectations of using the built-in GPS when I purchased it. The WiFi could be a bit better; but I consider it to be usable.
My biggest complaint with the Prime is not the hardware, it is the software. Specifically, the crappy browsers that I have tried (5 or 6). I absolutely hate "TABS" I refuse to use them on my PCs. I am not saying that they are bad, I just don't like them. The only browser that I even remotely can tolerate (thus far) is Dolphin. It still uses TABS, but at least it has a home button. Doing anything on a tablet browser (to me--so far) is like flying from Anchorage to Seattle via Tokyo, Manilla, and Santiago. I guess I am saying that I find all of them to be very user-unfriendly.
I guess I have whined enough.
Jerry In Anchorage, Alaska
Wifi is perfectly fine, no problems with it.
I've only gotten a lock with GPS once, and that was while I was sitting outside.
Haven't tried bt+wifi.
Have been getting some not responding messages with the browser occasionally when opening it.
I don't really game on it, but from the small amount of time I've used N64oid it certainly wasn't unacceptable.
Sent from my ADR6425LVW using XDA Premium.
I have had mine since mid January. No obvious issues with wi-fi and I'm able to stream music from my NAS drive to my bluetooth headphones while using the internet. I don't know if it's relevant but my broadband speed isn't exactly stellar (8mb max) whereas I notice that many of those with drop out issues when using bluetooth seem to to have a much higher speed normally.
GPS works in that satellites show indoors and out but the strength doesn't appear to be that great (I get locks but the values in GPS Test have never got near 30). Having said that, I probably would never use a tablet for satnav because of the size - it's far too big for my car whereas my Galaxy S2 phone is much more suitable and less distracting!
I've used most browsers but now mainly use either ICS+ Browser. I've (very) occasionally seen the 'wait' message but other than that everything is good and overall I'm (touch wood!) happy with my Prime.
Bcokas here. Wifi is fine and same as my old Droid charge and now my gnex. GPS got locks the one time I tried it months ago, been off since and never tried navigation with it so can't help with that. I've only tested bt with wifi using a sixaxis controller, seemed fine about 30 ft from router but didn't do a speed test to see if and how much it affected signal strength and speed.
I just got a BC0KAS TF201 back from RMA in Texas. My original complaint was black screen (nothing shows up on LCD), GPS nonexistent (ordered 12/28), and weak wifi. After all the parts replaced (GPS foil, conductive sponges, etc..), screen finally works but thats about it. No satellite locks still indoors or outdoors and still weak wifi.
junrider said:
I just got a BC0KAS TF201 back from RMA in Texas. My original complaint was black screen (nothing shows up on LCD), GPS nonexistent (ordered 12/18), and weak wifi. After all the parts replaced (GPS foil, conductive sponges, etc..), screen finally works but thats about it. No satellite locks still indoors or outdoors and still weak wifi.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's a lame story bro.
I'd RMA until they got it right. It sucks that you have to sit there and just take it, while Asus adds you to the satisfied Prime owner statistic.
Overall I have been happy with mine and would compare to some of the more favorable responses here.
Wifi: I initially thought that the .21 made a difference but have re-evaluated. At the furthest point in my house from the router (several walls, 1 floor, 40 ft) I get about 3-4 times slower speeds than other devices. It is still fast enough to surf, stream videos etc.
BT: don't use it much. Wifi speeds are the same whether it is on or off.
GPS: The patches in the dev section actually made some difference. I get a few sats inside with no lock. Outside, I get 11-12 with a lock. GPS test says the accuracy is 30 ft which I doubt would be enough to navigate, but who cares??
Regarding crashes when browsing and so on, I was getting a lot before I unlocked. In the end I just figured screw it, unlocked and installed a rom. I did that about 6 weeks ago and I could count the number of crashes on one hand. Maybe a factory reset would have had the same effect but where's the fun in that
skygunner27 said:
That's a lame story bro.
I'd RMA until they got it right. It sucks that you have to sit there and just take it, while Asus adds you to the satisfied Prime owner statistic.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Its not really mine. Its my friend's prime, but i used my creditcard to pay for it. Its his first tablet so hes pretty new to the game. As long as the prime works he can deal until there is a real fix for it, then Ill tell him. I have the receipt (ordered well before the GPS announcement) and all the paper work for the RMA (so there is history that I have complained about the GPS and weak wifi), so they cant deny me the GPS. Couldnt tell if the bluetooth+wifi works since I dont have any bluetooth headphones to test it. I wanna give it a few more months to see if there is any development in the prime.
Thats why I refunded my money, I had few B0CKS and where all the same GPS and weak wifi. Im holding out for something that I can be happy with.
wifi works great. better than my Ipad & atrix phone as far as download speeds, reception strength, and signal stability goes.
wifi/BT works fine. I'm able to transfer big movie files from my phone to prime while prime is hooked up to wifi internet and streaming movie at same time. no slowdown of speeds and movie plays just fine streaming while BT in the background transferring big file.
Gps- never tested outdoors yet. plus I hook up my phone to prime through BT GPS. works great.
overall my early BC model from 12/22 has been performing great for me. no real issues what so ever to complain about really. I'd easily purchase this again if i had to do it over again. my Ipad has nothing on my prime. No comparison to Prime & Android experience. Very pleased with device and its performance. IMO, Asus did a great job on it as mines works as expected and more.
Thanks for the responding!
My wi-fi performance isn't stellar, but it isn't horrible either. I can get better signal than my, older, hp laptop in some areas of my house. I'm happy enough with it to not want to RMA.
I rely on my phone any time I need GPS so I have never actually tested it on my Prime. Seems like redundant use of technology for me. For the same reason, I haven't loaded any music onto my Prime--I have it all on my, more portable, phone.
I love ICS. Sure, I have some difficulty with the browser some times, but I expect Google will be continually making this better. I usually just check in with FB with it anyway. For any serious browsing I use a computer.
One of the things I love the best about my Prime is the dock. I've had zero issues with it and love the short-cut buttons. I'm currently writing a book, completely on my Prime, and it and Polaris Office have been wonderful.
I've been using my BC0KAS TF201 from Best Buy since mid January, and I'm pleased with it overall.
Wifi is nothing to be proud of, but acceptable. Downstairs is not a problem, but upstairs I get slower speeds, which is to be expected.
GPS is absent. I'm lucky to get a lock anywhere, and I've never seen more than 3 sats while driving.
I haven't used bluetooth much.
I use chrome browser and it works fine.
Battery life is somewhat of an issue for me; I keep it on about 50% brightness most of the time, and the battery goes down quite fast at times. Fast charging makes up for it though.
My wifi is usable. I even connected once to free mcdonalds wifi from the parking lot (slow, but checked my email which is what i needed to do). I will have a weak signal upstairs, but netflix worked fine.
Wifi + bt. Again, usable, but signal drops when i feed my stereo bt music and try to watch netflix (really real world?)
No reboots till two updates ago. Way better with .21
Gps is completely useless. I was one of the few who wanted this to replace my aging gps as a nice bonus. Tried all the gps patches from the thread, 1.0rc seems to make things more stable in gps test, but i no longer get locks whatsoever. Also, no skymap fun as its twitchy.
Screen goes through fits with tearing along the left side. Sometimes need to reboot to fix it. Minimal backlight bleeding, didnt even notice till the 3rd time i turned it on, and i was looking for it at that point.
I love this thing enough to have kept it since early jan (bb.com fiasco unit). Not unlocked. Still scared even though i reallllly want to...
Sent from my Transformer Prime TF201 using Tapatalk
My WiFi slightly beats out the Galaxy Ace and Wildfire in terms of range and the DL/UL speeds are still pretty good at the furthest away point in my house.
GPS is non existant as far as I can tell, not really got the patience to test it properly though.
Never really use BT+WiFi together so can't comment on that.
My Rear camera doesn't work, just a green glitchy mess. Not sure if it's hardware or software though.
Gaming is good on it, got plenty of emulators working very well and games like Shadowgun run and look great.
Wifi-up to par with my Droid x
Wifi+Bluetooth- no issues
Gps - not so great, its picky about location and view of the sky
Sent from my DROIDX using xda premium
Wifi matches Droid X in speed and signal strength.
I don't use BT on my tablet.
GPS - outside, 10/10 lock/view, vs. droid x 10/16. Inside, maybe 1 in view, no lock. Droid X will get 6/8.
OS, no issues. I did have to wipe going from HC-->ICS, but I wasn't expecting apps to survive anyway,
*edit*
I had issues with triangles appearing on overlays and random bars on the edge of the screen, but those have gone away with the .21 update. The triangle tearing thing was always fixable by just swiping apps off the recent apps list.
Wifi is fine my E4200 version 1 is in the center of the house and I get a decent connection both on the front and back steps and I use the prime to watch network streamed tv show replays with no problems or stuttering in the house. Gps is good in the house at times and non working at other times same outside. Location and weather effect this I believe. My browser hasnt given me any problems to speak of, overall I'm pleased.
N9 seems to go through regular periods of app switching lag. It comes and goes regularly, sometimes a demanding app closes quickly then 15 mins later I'm waiting 5 to 10 seconds to get back to home for a screen or for the keyboard to pop open or close. But not just apps, widgets load slowly too coming out of apps.
That combined with chrome loading slowly or not displaying pages well and the scroll stutter are the main deal breakers. Opera, dolphin and chrome beta aren't good enough either.
Although I won't switch to an ipad I see none of this on ipad air 2 with safari browsing the same sites.
Lots of great stuff and i love lollipop here and on my N5 but the little experiential issues on this tablet in common tasks just ruin it. Have til end of January thanks to amazon but I don't imagine there will be an improvement on the necessary scale.
Finally, I'm at 3hrs 20 mins screen on and have 25% battery left. That's fine but not impressive.
FWIW this is a pre order white unit,bad volume up button, minimal light bleed.
Anyone else returning?
Do not have any issues with Chrome or switching apps?
AstroDigital said:
Do not have any issues with Chrome or switching apps?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
so your whole interface is smooth?
pootown said:
so your whole interface is smooth?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes
Same here. I had two new 9's wifi, no issues with this. I now have the lte model and no such issues. Stock non rooted.
Hmm. I have all the GUI issues they talk about in the negative reviews on tech sites. Maybe I will return on account the buttons and try a newer one.
So I've had this update for almost more or less than 2 months now, and the speed has improved just a little bit. As we all know, typical samsung software, has some glitches and stutter and all that still occurs, for some reason that I and every users don't know why this still exist. Sometimes I'm watching on Youtube, and the damn video just freezes but you can still hear the audio. But I thought maybe it's just the app so i reset the app by force stopping and clearing the data but the thing still occurs. Camera overtime, has slowed down. I don't know why but this specially occurs on lowlight situations that whenever but not always, i launched my camera, it just lags and stops and gos and it's so annoyingly slow. But most of the time, it is snappy. On the other good side of this story, i like the minimalistic Camera app. It's really just their software. Overall it is indeed snappy, but the consistency is their problem. My storage isn't even full yet, for all we know storages slow down as you're taking it all up. I've scheduled automatic restarts, i think it helped. The fingerprint, ugh i don't even wanna talk about it. I don't know how a oneplus 3 has better fingerprint than samsung's flagship. I mean it's just unreliable, i don't know maybe it's just mine??? I literally had 3 fingers assigned on my one and only right thumb just so that the phone won't have excuses lol. But no, im disappointed. It always has to be two damn tries, thats the least. Bluelight filter is now baked in, which is a very nice feature, atleast for me. Battery, i personally didn't notice any change, but thumbs up to that cos im more than satisfied with it. And as we all know, snapchat camera still sucks not only on this phone but with every android phone. The modes, man are they helpful for those times we really need to save battery. You can customize the resolution of you're desire., well not really but three choices is a lot. 720p,1080p,1440p. Now on the update, I don''t know if you noticed, my resolution is set to 1080p because the mode that is chosen after the update will automatically choose the "optimized" mode which adjusts the resolution and cpu speeds and all that according to the activity you're currenty doing. Which is another good thing. Also, google assistant arrived as well, which great! Interface has some major color and look and design changes. The status bar along with the pull down menu in my opinion has become cleaner and better looking than the previous version. The settings has been better, way way better organized than before. Samsung Pay hasn't yet to come in Canada for some goddamn reason (i know it's not suppose to be here but maybe just maybe someone from samsung reads this ****). I'll leave it here, overall, again, it's faster and snappier, app switches are better almost perfect. But you know, stutters and lags will be there. This is my review for the nougat update on my Sprint Samsung Galaxy S7. Thanks for reading!