I’ve had the Froyo update for my Motorola Droid for a few days now, and overall I’m impressed. There have been some minor UI tweaks, and the speed seems slightly improved, though I think some of this might be in my head. Still, I think it brings the Android experience up to a slightly more refined level, and that’s definitely a good thing.
However, there are a few bugs and oddities I’m noticing as I use it. I’m not sure if this is Droid-specific, general Froyo bugs, or some combination of weirdness from my phone and the various apps. None of them are showstoppers, but they are quite annoying.
- The proximity sensor seems to be a bit off. It has always been sensitive (ask the Gear Diary Editors how many times my cheek hung up on them during a conference call once), but now it’s getting extra bad. I was on a call the other day and my ear managed to call my voicemail and conference it into my current call. After hanging up and calling back, my ear then decided the call would go better with some Rage Against the Machine, and it opened and started Pandora. It was always flakey, but this is just ridiculous!
- I’m getting quite a few force closes on core apps like GMail, Messaging and even Contacts. It seems like every third or fourth time I enter one of these apps the whole phone just freezes, I get a force close, and then everything runs smoothly again.
- In a similar vein to the force closes, I’ve found the homescreen sometimes takes a while to redraw. I get a lovely shot of my wallpaper, but no widgets or apps, and the app drawer won’t appear. It happens under Launcher Pro sometimes, but almost every time under the stock launcher. This is actually a holdover from Android 2.1, but I had high hopes 2.2 would fix it.
- Something seriously funky is going on with Google Maps Navigation. The GPS works well, and it’s very accurate…but the voiceover now sounds like she mainlined 15 Red Bulls before rushing the entire directions out in one breath. What was “Right to Exit 40” is now “RighttoExit40”. She sounds like a robot and the Micro Machines spokesman had a baby.
Fyi, for anyone who doesn’t remember Micro Machines:
If you’ve encountered or determined any solutions to these quirks, please share your experiences in the comments!