Archive for: failure
Xbox 360 slim owners listen up: Forget about the RRoD. It is effectively dead and buried. In its place is the RDoD (Red Dot of Death). The new 360 slim units won’t make use of the colored ring of death any longer, as Microsoft has opted for a more straightforward and less cryptic hardware failure indicator — a simple red dot.
Yes, instead of one, two, three, or four red slivers, now all we’ve got to go on is a single LED. It’s easy for Microsoft from a manufacturer’s standpoint as they can simply label hardware problems as general as possible, leaving the worrying, guessing, and home-made repairs out of the loop and picking up the slack with pay-for warranty repairs.
Regardless, Microsoft made a lot of improvements in heat output, cooling efficiency, and sound isolation turning the once butt of many jokes Xbox 360 into a more serious and *hopefully* durable console. As is customary with this sort of thing, time will be the ultimate revealer of truth…
…and for pre-orders! Of course, the record number of pre-orders could be from people tired of waiting in line. Though I’d be willing to say a few more stragglers who’ve been putting off jumping over to team Apple were finally wooed by the iPhone 4.
Either way, for AT&T to not expect massive customer upgrades and subsequently prepare for the onslaught on a day such as today is downright ridiculous. While true, that Apple has been having issues all day as well, make note that Apple has to check back to AT&T servers for upgrades — precisely what the majority of people are likely doing today. (Tons of iPhone 3G users and even some 3GS users are primed and eligible for upgrade.)
So in the end, AT&T has somehow managed to fail for a 4th time. Could this be a foreshadowing to the type of delays, headaches, and overall service we can come to expect when iPhone 4 officially launches and starts showing up in end users’ hands? It’s only the same thing we’ve been dealing with for the last three years…
Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse, more bad news concerning the HTC Evo’s build quality surfaces. Today, it has to do yet again with the screen. If you’re lucky enough to have weathered the storm of separating front glass issues, settle down and hold on tight, because there’s more to be thrown your away.
Apparently, the HTC Evo has a problem with touchscreen consistency when it isn’t being grounded (read: held in your hand). Placing your beloved Evo 4G on a table and poking at it with a finger has been giving a fair amount of users some grief with shaky, inconstant tracking — not good for sure. Looks like those who held out on the Evo in the first round may made the right choice.
But don’t take my word for it. Step inside for a duo of videos that show all the dream crushing sadness…
You know a phone isn’t that great when it’s released with old, outdated software. Unfortunately, in the Android world the practice is all too common. What’s worse however is buying a phone with the aforementioned outdated software and promises of near future upgrades only to find out the opposite is true, that the company who swooned you with flashy advertising was lying and is unwilling to right their wrong.
Samsung has a problem…
I’ll straight up front, The Microsoft Kin isn’t exactly my cup of tea, but for feature phone hopefuls, it packs quite the punch. It has that social/communication base that the tweeners and non-smartphone users prefer — that’s why they pick them instead of smartphones. Those types of people don’t need all the extra bells and whistles of your modern smartphone nor do they want to stomach the extra dough that data plans require. Apparently someone needs to inform Verizon exactly who the demographic is that would even buy the Kin and friends as they’ve elected to make a $30+ data plan mandatory…
Your Berry not going off every 30 seconds bugging the hell out of you? Can’t figure out where Twitter or Google is soooooo slow today? Then take a second to stop by Netdowntime, the new one stop shop for all gadget/network related issues. Created by good friend Eric Calouro from Erictic, NetDowntime has the ability to help everyone, not just geeks. Really, I’m surprised no one has brought something like this to market yet. The concept is simple but incredibly useful.
So the next time your updates stop, that web page crawls, or your text message fails to send, stop by NetDowntime first to see if anything is up.
And of course, end users are the only way bloggers such as us know about network related problems like the ones NetDowntime caters to. Whenever an issue arises, don’t hesitate to shoot Eric an email. Help yourself out. Help us all out.
Press Release:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Erictric Media Group Launches Online Services Outage Blog
Boston, Massachusetts – April 2, 2010 – Erictric Media Group (EMG), the company behind popular technology-based blog Erictric, has launched a new website today named NetDowntime – a service aimed at providing breaking news updates on internet-related outages with the assistance of end users everywhere, who are able to report outages of various online services as they see them through various means.
“We’re really quite excited about launching NetDowntime simply for the reason that many around the world will really find it useful,” said Eric, founder of EMG.
“There really isn’t a centralized hub on the Internet that is primarily dedicated to informing users as to what popular services are down and why. This makes NetDowntime incredibly useful,” he continued.
NetDowntime (much like Erictric.com) is set up in a blog format, consisting of an incredible simply user interface, and straight-to-the-point visuals. The website allows users to subscribe to updates via RSS, E-Mail, and by Twitter. The service eventually plans to include more means of subscription in the near future.
Media Contact:
James McCarthy
[email protected]
Ph: 1-508-318-8742
###
See the related post here: http://erictric.com/2010/04/02/erictric-proudly-presents-netdowntime-the-outage-blog/
Is it just me or is the Nexus One becoming more problem prone? The latest issue surrounding the uber Android device has to do with multi-touch, more specifically when two screen inputs are extremely close together the points are flipped. Such occurrences obviously happen quite frequently as the only way to type on the N1 is via the on-screen keyboard. So how do we fix it? Well, we may not be able to outside of a large scale recall.
According to Google engineer Diane Hackborn, it’s not the OS any individual software on the device meaning she’s pegging the problem on the sensor. Mind you, this same sensor is also in a slew of other Android handsets such as the G1 and MyTouch 3G just to name a couple. The DROID looks to be exempt (if it is in fact a hardware issue) because it uses a multi-touch sensor from a different manufacturer and supposedly, a “better quality touchscreen” than the affected units previously mentioned. Good for me, bad for N1/G1/MyTouch owners.
Let’s hope that whatever the real problem is — of course if it’s more than just a simple matter of screen quality — Google can fix it relatively quickly and painlessly. Having to issue a recall spanning multiple countries, carriers, and handsets would be a nightmare of epic proportions.
Anyone with a Nexus One, G1, MyTouch can check for any multi-touch issues themselves by downloading “Multitouch Visible Test” from the Android Market and giving it a shot. Leave your results below.
PhoneArena > AndroidandMe
Update 2: By now, everyone should be back up. If not, well, hit up VZW customer service. Apparently the issue was relegated to the east coast, not national. Are you back up?
Update: Is “the network” back up? I have some emails flowing in again and a 3G icon has reappeared on my DROID. Anyone else? As far as I’ve seen, no official reason for the outage has been given yet.
Wondering why you can’t access those early morning articles, Twitter updates, and other data related tasks on your VZW phone? Looks like we have a network failure here folks. While we often joke about AT&T’s network reliability, this is the second time (at least for me in northern Indiana) that Verizon has had data issues in the last few months. A sign of impending problems? The things I’m seeing on Twitter seem to indicate this is a national outage. **Just kidding, VZW has piped in and said it was only the east coast that was affected. (Anyone care to chime in with location and network condition to confirm that?) Wow, I guess if you’re going to fail, might as well go big, huh? Go big or go home…not exactly the instance in which I’d want to abide by such a phrase.
Anywho, I’m in northern Indiana and now have a beautiful paper weight DROID edition. Let us know where you’re at and how your connection is fairing this fine hump day morning…
We’ll keep you updated.
**Update: According to Sony’s blog DON’T use your PS3 until Sony says otherwise. Quite a bug we have here, isn’t it?
**Update #2: It seems Sony has fixed the bug, it seems that users might have lost their trophies, but our friends over at Joystick have a Q&A on what to do.
Anyone here happen to be playing some marginally popular PS3 game yesterday just to have the Playstation Network up and die on you? After the rage subsided, did you happen to notice even offline play not working? If so, buy an xBox360 and mod your PS3 into a really nifty grill, so we can post about it 
Anyways, it seems a crazy little error popped up for some that were trying to connect to the Playstation Network. Once disconnected, some tried playing offline and still had an error, the console was left not functioning. Playstation has released a statement on their twitter, stating…”We’re aware that many of you are having problems connecting to PSN, and yes, we’re looking into it. Stay tuned for updates,” which followed a couple hours later by…”PSN status update: We’re narrowing down the issue and continue to work to restore service to all. Updates as soon as we have them.”
From what I’ve been reading, it looks as if only the older models are experiencing this. I haven’t seen any of the ‘slim’ models showing up experiencing these problems. Sony tweetted the same thing, “PSN status update (part 2): Readers/followers are confirming that “slim” units (120/250 GB models) are connecting normally.”
So for those of you with the older models, hopefully Sony gets this problem rectified and you can get back on and do whatever it is you do on the Sony Network.
ars technica
