When T809 gets impish

If there's one thing I'd like to get across in the messages in this blog, it's that the T809 (yes, in other words, the D820) is the one of the very best damn cell phones out there. It blows the mind long after purchase with its insane crisp screen, sharp features, design, etc., and when you start doing cool stuff with ringtones, movies or tv episodes, etc., it goes beyond cool.

However, this post will be about when the thing misbehaves. Leaving aside the initial large disappointment that Samsung's packaged Windows software does not supply Outlook syncing for the T809 (while it does for the other phones that the software works with-- this problem I addressed, less-than-ideally, by buying Data Pilot, described in an earlier post), I can point to two damn annoying bugs that the thing has been zapping me with recently. Both I have mentioned obliquely in previous posts below, but neither one have I really crabbed about.

First bad behavior: [NOTE: This problem was solved in the January 21 blog entry.] We have always known that when you insert a microSD card, it accepts it nicely but then if you try to navigate to the files on the chip (for instance by using one of my more common key shortcuts, Menu-6-1-6) then it yells out a "Not Allowed" error message. To get it to be actually accessible, you need to turn the phone off and then on again. OK, that's not a big deal at all. BUT, recently, I've been just getting the Not Allowed EVERY time I navigate to the files on the SD card. Say What??? I can't watch any movies etc. that I have on the chip until I fix this. I've turned it off, on again, removed and reinserted -- no luck. Maybe this weekend I will sit down with it. HOWEVER, I have found that the files and file structure are still there on the memory card -- I put the card in my computer's card reader, loaded it up, and there they all are. I even took some movies off of the chip to see if it was just too close to totally full. No luck.
If I have no more luck in getting it to open up through the phone, I will (1) copy all of its contents to my computer, and then (2) re-initialize the chip, I recall there's a command for that somewhere on the phone. Then copy back. My guess is that that relatively dire step may do the trick. Hmmm. [See January 21 Blog Entry for the problem's solution.]

Second bad behavior -- The occasional error that happens when you try to turn on bluetooth. What is that error message that comes on again? something ungrammatical like "Bluetooth Activate Error." As I've said earlier, this one is simply erratic, but it does SOMEHOW seem to rear its head when the phone has dipped into a relatively l0w-battery period. However, unlike what I've read elsewhere on the net, the problem isn't solved by just totally charging the phone and then turning it off and on. It just has to arrive back at its sanity on its own, perhaps when you have waited 2 days and then decide to try to start up bluetooth again. ERGH. Annoying.