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Post by DAmaNIac
Hi,

I figured a possible reason for the crash, every time the software crashed or the process was killed seconds before the phone froze completely there was no access to the SD card afterwards, the phone wouldn't even shut down properly. Only removing the battery did help in this case. May it be that the routines for reading and/or writing data from and to the database on the sd card are a little too stressful for the system? Maybe one should try to increase the cache a little bit or rewrite the routines.

Best regards
damaniac
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Area Manager Hamburg/Germany
Samsung Galaxy S2

Post by DAmaNIac
Sad to see users quitting this app, however it's quite understandable. I haven't touched Cartouche for a few weeks because it became annoyingly unusable and there surely was no way of communicating the issues from Waze.
As for the Android app, it just seems like the dirty little stepchild of the iPhone app... No beta version coming soon, no real issues fixed like the always annoying phone freeze. Who cares about e.g. FB integration if the application freezes
a) just from running
b) when connected to the power plug in the car
c) when put into the car mount
d) just by starting it
Especially with the free Android environment where you can install freely without the market and have total access to the data on the sd card, I'm sure a lot of users are willing to try a new beta or alpha to help improve the software. So far I only remember one beta version and one survey. That was a good sign but nothing came after this... :(

I don't mind when an alpha version crashes, but come one, it's version 1.9 from the market and even this has issues. Have you ever tried to user your finger and scroll the map? No? Better not do so as the app will freeze the phone. If you use the few seconds you have to kill the app with a task manager you will still have to reboot your phone, as at least on my MS the sd card became unreadable (and yes, I've tried a few)

Why not offer nightly builds, at least then you get some log files with progress and not the same errors over and over again.

If you want this to be a community based service, just let the community help you.
DAmaNIac
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Area Manager Hamburg/Germany
Samsung Galaxy S2

Post by DAmaNIac
I have two phones, one is the Samsung Galaxy with Android 1.6 and the second is the Motorola Milestone with Android 2.1 (v.36). Both show an very unstable behaviour, so I won't blame it on the phone(s) itself.
I've been using Waze for several month now and I was hoping to get a working version until Friday because I have another trip to an region which is not good covered yet. Unfortunately I already consider this a lost opportunity because I know that the app will crash and I will loose a lot of data and edit rights along the road because it's quite difficult to remove the battery while driving, reboot the phone and start the software...

But as they said today in their blog... they are big Apple lovers, so what do you expect :|
DAmaNIac
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Samsung Galaxy S2

Post by DAmaNIac
Hi,

as predicted Waze crashed several times over the weekend when in front just running or when you tried to touch a button. But it's definitely no heat problem, because several times I use various navigation software parallel like Waze, Google Navigation and Navigon. Only Waze will crash or reboot the phone even when you don't touch it. The worst part is, that it crashed as soon as soon as it had to load a new map tile. When you restart it, it tries to load this tiles again and crashed instantly. This goes on for at least 10 times, which becomes quite annoying. Now I just let in run in the background and don't touch it at all. If it crashes in the background I don't care anymore, because even for the parts I drove I still have no edit permissions after 4 days.
As for the heat problem, I just placed my phones so that a constant flow of cool air from the air conditioning will keep the phone at a cool temperature.

So, now I have 500 kms of streets I can't edit perfectly because of the lack of constant permission. I wonder how many points one must have to be allowed a little more permissions?!
It's just frustrating!!! If Waze pays my gas bill I will gladly just drive around all day, but I don't drive around just so maybe Waze will give me edit permissions on the 4th or 5th run... no way.

damaniac
Ex-Waze-User?!?
DAmaNIac
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Samsung Galaxy S2

Post by DAmaNIac
I am an area manager currently and I also used to edit the streets I drive in other areas, although it's kind of difficult if you don't have all the rights. However now I don't have the right to edit the streets from last weekend, although cartouche can show me that I drove there a few days ago.
So it may be just another problems somewhere in the waze universe, however it adds up the annoyance factor of this...
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Samsung Galaxy S2

Post by DAmaNIac
Concerning your suggestions that it may have something to do with the battery level I can say for sure that it does have nothing to do with crashes on my phone. It crashes with full, half level and nearly empty battery. It crashes when very hot, when cooled down, when charged, when not charged, when you touch it and scroll through the map, when you don't touch it and it simply displays the map, when it loads new street tiles, when it displays already loaded screen tiles, when running with multiple programs on the phone, when being the only program installed on a fresh updated phone, with auto background light on, with auto light off, while navigation, without navigation... did I forget any possible state this software can be in?

I wonder if they do invest half the time and effort into the Android version compared to the iPhone version. Where is the feedback from the developers?
Honestly speaking, each time I read about the incredible new features on Facebook for the new iPhone version and how they pamper that community I get a little angry and disappointed.
DAmaNIac
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Samsung Galaxy S2

Post by DAmaNIac
Hi,

first of all thanks for the reply. However I was wondering if the thread is being followed closely. If so, one would have learned that Waze also crashes on Android 1.6 and 2.1, so I don't understand the blame on Froyo. As for root and/or customs roms, I've tried nearly everything, and it still doesn't matter.
But as long as such features like "automatic movement recognition" or so are being pushed into the software, just so a few people won't have to push the exit button, I think with my experience in software development, that there might be some wrong priorities.

I enjoy using and testing nightly builds of Firefox and Chrome and I try to test new beta versions of other programs when they come along. It has been asked before, but why do you not release nightly builds?
Waze is aimed at commuting and so a lot of people will use it for non-critical traveling at least twice a day. So you can enable a debug mode for those testers and request the logfiles to see the improvement for each change on very different platforms, different countries etc.

Just my 2 cents.

damaniac
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Samsung Galaxy S2

Post by darkfires
Its still in beta, however they did mention in the official post that they still had a bug with the fonts. Hence no street names yet, but I'm personally glad its stable.. street names next ;).
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Post by Darthreflon
I have the Samsung Moment from Sprint and I too have had many issues. I was running the stock 2.1 on it but recently rooted my phone. I still have an issue where my phone reboots but don't think it's due to Waze. Only sometimes. I still have some issues with navigation. Since I rooted my phone, Waze is a lot quicker. It used to take forever for the menu to come up or to zoom in or out. Now it's almost instantaneous. In my opinion, it's the stock android OS.

The only thing I was always curious about is why when I'm driving and my phone loses data connection due to an issue with the phone, not cuz I lost signal, is why does Waze stop tracking me with GPS? I'll get a target symbol around where my car on screen was and the car turns to an arrow. It's almost like it loses GPS signal also but I still have a good signal lock. Has anyone else had this happen to them?
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Post by eshabtai
We are working hard on our next Android version which is currently in internal beta. We are closing all the gaps so this version will have all the new features as in the iPhone one.

In addition we have improved the integration with the Android OS, so expect native input entry (full compatibility with swype, speech to text, etc) and some more.

As for stability, please understand that there are many different devices with many different OS versions some official some custom and so it's hard to get it right for everyone. We are testing with various devices internally to make sure it works perfectly and stable but need your help to figure out the remaining issues.

No final ETA yet for public beta but should be pretty soon.

Ehud
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