Fixing the prob of text's & etc. deleting by themselves

[Emlaha]

Hello and greetings everyone. After doing a Google search about this nasty problem of the phone deleting things by itself without any warning or anything, and trying to find something like a developer forum that the Google people themselves are on for ideas of improving the operating system and operation of the phone, well I did find a couple, or think I did anyway. But because I wasn't sure I then tried going right to the main Google company or what I think would be anyway, and left a message there. I don't know...seems kind of lame that there isn't an outrightly-obvious place to report problems and things that need to be fixed (not just a place to report them, but an unmistakeable outrightly-obvious place).

Seems way messed up really bad that this problem is still even in the list of bugs/issues at this site just under this sentence, and people are still writing comments even though this bug/issue was first written here a long long time ago....

_http_://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=5669

Here's the corporate address for anyone who would want to go that route since I'd say they need to be swamped with letters.

Google

1600 Amphitheatre Parkway

Mountain View, CA 94043

I know this info is in just that tucked-away place of the Google website but it's a task to get there if you're not sure what things to click on (took me a while to find it too), so I'm putting it here to make it easy for anyone who'd want to.....really, they just need to be swamped with letters, and one of them will be from me since that's on paper and has a more significant meaning than just an e-mail or message on a computer screen....

Here's the Google website path I followed to get to a place where I sent a message about this....

Google home page

"More" down-arrow at the top

Link "Even More" at the bottom of the list

Link "Contact Us" at the bottom of the page

Link "Browse our help centers" in the short paragraph in the upper-left

Link "Browse More Help Centers" at the bottom of the list

Section "Go Mobile"

Link "Android Market Help"

Section "Contact Us With Questions Or Issues"

Link "Android Apps"

Link "Report an Inappropriate App"

.....I wrote a message here because I believe it's just plain a joke and very inappropriate that this problem exists at all, but especially that it has existed for so long.

What I wrote for the app & stuff is just that it's the Android Operating System and the app owner is the Android Operating System Creators, stuff like that.

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And for anyone who would maybe be amused or even inspired by my including this for a message they'd want to write, here is the message I wrote to them......
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Hi. Isn't it amazing how far telephones have come in the past couple decades? The past three decades? From corded phones that are still wonderful when there's no electricity & don't have reception problems that are dependent upon airwaves, to corded phones with built-in answering machines and an array of buttons, to cordless phones, to cordless phones with built-in answering machines and multiple satellite phones that feed off the one base, and on to large cell phones and continuing on to cell phones that have everything except a kitchen sink with voice-control and motion-control for when a person walks up to it and tells it, "hot," "semi-hot," "warm," "luke-warm," or "cold," as well as, "light flow," "medium flow," or "fast flow," as well as be able to be programmed for other words to expand on its abilities from just those commands.

Wouldn't it be a real bummer though, for hot water to come out when it's told to deliver cold water, or for it to come out real fast and spray all over when hands or a bowl or plate are held underneath it when it's told to give the water at a light or medium flow? AND...wouldn't it be a bummer, if, under certain circumstances, it couldn't tell that the wrong-temp water was about to come out in comparison to what it was told? Say, for instance, for a child expecting cool water or lukewarm, or someone with a bad bleeding cut or scrape? Or hey, how about a faucet that just starts spraying out water in the middle of the night when everyone's asleep, and you're awakened by this noise of running water...and then to make it still worse, when you get to your sink, it refuses to listen to you and just keeps on spraying?

Have you ever done a Google search on how much of a plague of a problem it is, that peoples' text messages and other things are being deleted all by themselves on phones with the Android operating system? You could do a Google search on the same problem with Blackberry's too. Do a Google search for the same problem on an I-Phone...and, well, just hey, go see for yourself.

My girlfriend's Android-based phone shows three different memory statistics for the different memory areas/purposes the phone has: 1) 6.5 GB are free, 2) 700-plus MB are free, and 3) 600-plus MB are free. Do you know how little space a text message requires?...less than one kilobyte (or maybe 1 or 1.5 for a big long one), and there are a whopping 1,024 kilobytes in a mere one megabyte, and then 1,024 megabytes in one gigabyte. Or a picture message of just a normal regular picture? Or just a simple regular video that's sent from one friend to another? Or I guess what might be called an average length for an e-mail message?...lots lots less than even 100 kilobytes for that e-mail. All of these are way way less than any of those three memory statistics of gigabytes and megabytes in the hundreds. And then there is the Contact List or Address Book that some people find mysteriously vanished.

And to be sure, you'd find plenty of similar memory statistics of most if not all of the people whose messages you would get to by that Google search for forum posts about this problem. You should take some time to read them, and to read them on all the different forums websites that would come up in your Google search. In a couple of the Google searches I've done, very important messages were deleted, like a woman who was being stalked or harassed and needed to keep them...that's merely one example, and you sure can't discard the very special and high value and worth that's personal and sentimental of people who want to keep messages as special memories and things like that. And my whole reason for doing such Google searches was to see how common of a problem it is because surely there would be a simple solution of settings being overlooked or an operating system update, or just *something*, to keep this from happening.

Why does this problem exist at all in the sense of it not having been fixed immediately, but more importantly why does it still exist when it was first reported here even a very long time ago. And that's just here at this particular site given in this address, nevermind however long the problem has been talked about in discussion forums.

http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=5669

So here's what a whole bunch of people would like to have happen... Fix your Android operating system. Fix it. Or, at least modify it to allow a Hook or some kind of system call to be written and programmed by any third-party programmer in all these development forums out here, or by the companies that make the phones that use your Android operating system, or by the carriers whose cell service is accessed by the phones that use your Android operating system. Fix it. There shouldn't be a complicated array of settings in multiple settings screens for memory management and message/e-mail deletion management, and your Android operating system shouldn't be robotically deleting stuff by itself like some malfunctioning bug-ridden android believing it has the right to or needs to much to the later surprise and disappointment of the phone's owner.

Here's how you handle the fixing process or this is just one idea for it (and I know of what I speak with software architecture and development being in my background, which, as any programmer with common sense would know in his/her sleep, also includes testing and debugging).....

1. Get with the various carriers and arrange for a mass text message to be sent on some certain day, on the hour for a few hours or six or so, asking for a few hundred or so guinea pig test customers from each carrier with each type of phone that uses your Android Operating System. Or just look around these discussion forum websites and ask the site operators or moderators to post a topic thread asking for this. Most of these test customers would need to be technologically adept with skill and understanding (because of numbers 2-4 next)...since many upon many people aren't technological guru's, you should also want some "average regular people" do this but which would mean numbers 2-4 would have to be reasonably automated and simplified. Or, since this whole process is to fix technological problems, perhaps only technologically adept people should be included, but it would depend on how automated and simplified numbers 2-4 could be made to be. To me, the most important thing to remember is that the phone is supposed to work good for anyone who has one regardless of how much or little technological skill or understanding they have, and this auto-deleting trash is a joke and nightmare. And most importantly, these test customers would need to have been recently experiencing this auto-deleting mayhem of text messages and whatever else.

2. Create a "Debug Version" of your operating system for these test customers, just like the compilers of Turbo Pascal and Turbo C and C++ of the 90's and late 80's, & more recently since their days, Borland C++, and other compilers like them, were able to create a Debug Version by the mere turning on of a setting. Or if not the whole operating system, then at least the portions that pertain to memory management and housekeeping with relation to the keeping and deleting of text messages, e-mail's, and whatever else is being affected by this malfunctioning android running around inside all these phones.

3. This Debug Version would need to create logs -- programmatically step-by-step logs of every line of source code as well as the pointer variables and the data variables in use by each of those lines of source code -- in all tasks that have anything to do with data/memory housekeeping pertaining to text messages and e-mail's and anything else being affected. If it is found that items are being deleted and there's no log record of it, then you're already getting part of your answer by unexpected parts of the programming source code doing nasty things, and so therefore include more of the source code into the "Debugging" status when making the Debug Version.

4. Create special-purpose e-mail addresses in your system, perhaps one for each group of test customers from each carrier, or one for each group of 50 or 100 test customers...or some other idea, those are merely possible examples. The logs would need to be uploaded from these test customers' phones to that address every ....... every how often? Whenever an action is done of either keeping or deleting text messages or e-mail's or whatever else? Or every few hours or 12 hours? Or every 24 hours? Perhaps whenever an action is done that pertains to these items that have been getting auto-deleted, in conjunction with keeping a watch on available memory and just uploading the logs when the phone is down to a few megabytes or 10 MB or something.

5. Accompanying each uploaded log from each test customer, would have to be a report from the test customer of what items were deleted, if anything, or nothing deleted, or just whatever information is helpful and pertinent (even such as settings or preferences being changed unexpectedly, or POP/SMTP behavior, or just anything and whatever, for the purpose of looking for side effects).

6. Don't have a pre-determined time of when this testing and uploading of logs will stop. Keep it going until the problems are fixed. Simply keep your eyes on the uploaded logs and do your analysis and further testing and whatever else is necessary as you are receiving the logs. Re-write the programming source code as you find the problem spots and re-compile a new Debug Version as each mid-point or breaking point is come to for these test customers to download to their phones.

7. Be on the lookout for individualized "special behavior" that could be because of side effects caused by an app or two running on just certain peoples' phones. Individualized attention should be given to these test customers to isolate and solve yet other problems, if this is feasible or appropriate anyway. Although this might be a less necessary consideration, it still seemed worthwhile to bring up here. Or, depending upon how much of a potential problem it would be for other apps to get in the way, perhaps it would be a baseline requirement for this testing period, to not have any other apps installed that have anything to do with the management and manipulation of text messages, e-mail's, and whatever else is being tested.

8. Watch the number of complaints decrease....until there are no more. And when they stop, you keep the uploading of logs going for a couple weeks or month or so, until it really is ascertained that they have, in fact, stopped. No hanky-panky laziness and blow-offishness of being satisfied after just a couple or few days of no complaints.

[Jhenna]

This happened to me yesterday. As with all others here, my phone was sitting unused, in a quiet state, on the dining room table. I picked it up to just check for any new texts, emails, etc, and when I opened the Droid text screen, there were no messages. None. ALL Personal and ALL BUSINESS texts were gone. Every text that I had chosen to save from over the past two years.

This is one more reason why APPLE iPHONE will win, and Droid will continue to be the choice of only kids and other people who don't really care about reliability and security of their data.

It is also why I am tossing the piece of crap Google Droid when my 2 year contract is up next month. It is time to grow up and get an Apple.