Friday, January 02, 2009

How I Fixed Problems With My Epix By Changing One Setting

Thanks to Google Analytics, I'm able to see what content on my blog is read and if readers are sticking around or not. So far, my biggest referrers are Vox Day, Thomas Nelson, Patrick Mead, and Andrea. Thanks all for the traffic.

Seeing such an increase in traffic is inspiring, but also challenging. I'm seeing the searches that are landing people on my blog through Google, but I have no idea if I've been able to help those visitors or not. I'm not getting many comments yet and few are sticking around.

Yesterday, I noticed that somebody visited my blog by searching Google for terms related to the Samsung Epix turning itself on. I had the same problem with my first Epix. It kept coming on randomly for no apparent good reason. This caused quite a few problems, such as a serious decrease in battery life. Also, since the Epix would come on while in my pocket, programs would close, other programs would open, occasionally an appointment or other record would disappear, and I was going nuts. I tried to search for a fix to the problem. Because I bought the Epix the day it was released, there really wasn't any information available. Have you ever searched for the answer to a problem and the only available content consists of the posts on your own blog complaining about the problem?




I searched for general BlackJack problems, since the Epix is supposedly the BlackJack III. One bit I found is that when a BlackJack turns itself on constantly for no good reason, it has to be returned. I didn't want to admit that, so I suffered with the problem for a few weeks.

I finally broke down and called Samsung. Samsung knew nothing about it and told me to call AT&T. AT&T told me to go to the store I bought it at. The store told me to call warranty. I called warranty from the store, and they told me the store could handle the replacement. I asked them if they could explain it to the store, since the store didn't think they could. I walked out with a warranty replacement.

The warranty replacement doesn't turn itself on randomly. Apparently it was a problem with that one unit.

Of course, some of the other problems I had remained. I can't send more than 2 or 3 emails from Pocket Outlook without deleting and recreating my gmail account because of the Windows Mobile 6.1 smtp error, which is supposedly fixed, but still exists on my device. One of my more infuriating problems was with FlexMail.

I've been using WebIS FlexMail for years, but I had a lot of trouble with it on the Epix. I kept running into a problem where I could not input text in the message field. I would uninstall and reinstall and repeat the process. I finally broke down and contacted WebIS for tech support.

WebIS said that they hadn't heard of the problem I described but "it sounds similar to a ClearType issue in landscape mode on the Tilt." With that bit of information, I disabled ClearType and that cleared up the email problem.

Disabling ClearType seems to have fixed a few stability problems I've had as well. I've only rebooted my Epix once since Tuesday night. I was rebooting twice a day, or 6 to 8 times if I actually wanted to use the phone for anything. I'm glad that's gone.

If you're having problems with the Epix, check to see if ClearType is enabled. You can find it at Start -> Settings -> System -> Screen -> ClearType. My fonts don't look as good anymore, but my problems are fixed.

Also, if you use the Celio Redfly, I've had a few operational problems with the driver. When I first got the Epix, no drivers existed for it yet so I was using another Samsung driver that worked. There is now an Epix driver in beta. I still have a few problems, so I will sometimes uninstall the Redfly driver over the weekend if I want to use the camera. For some reason, when the Redfly driver is installed, I can bring up the camera, but I can't shut the camera off without pulling the battery.

No comments: