Twice now my ZTE Open has accepted an SD card, let me transfer music on to it, only recognised a fraction of that music, and then refused to recognise the card.
Two separate cards, so it's unlikely that the card is the problem. Both 32 GB. It was admittedly a huge amount of music (approx 29GB of MP3s at 320kbps), so I could understand it struggling to access them all (with the last card the music app displayed and recognised artists up to the letter D and then seemed to give up) and was preparing to delete them and recode at a lower rate, but yesterday it simply told me there was no memory card, which is exactly what happened with the first one. Leaving aside my problems getting Windows to recognise the device, it too tells me there's no storage on the handset when it recognises it's connected.
In other news, there have been two or three updates (Marketplace, Accuweather (problems with which are mentioned elsewhere on here, but the fix relies on thje update still being shown as available) and Here Maps, I think) that it's told me about but been unable to install, and it now doesn't even show them when I check for updates. I'd expected teething problems, but this is just silly...
All Replies (13)
Hi Joshua,
Thanks for using Firefox OS and posting about these problems. For the issue with the updates, it is possible that the updates were removed from the server and that is the reason they no longer appear when you check. But, for app updates that don't require reboot, it could be that they were installed just fine and you have the latest (there isn't feedback in the UI about successful updates to apps that is obvious currently).
For the issue with your SD card, is it also the case that the camera or gallery doesn't see the card? What does it say in Settings > Media Storage? When you are connected, have you enabled the USB mass storage on the Media storage screen?
Thanks, Michelle Luna
Known issue with ZTE Open phone. You're the 15th person or so just on these boards to state similar SD-card issues. Most of the robots here responding just poke you with 'reset your phone'. Up to you if you wanna risk it. I wouldn't bother as it is a manufacturer defect issue.
Hi Michelle,
The updates may have disappered from the server, but they haven't been installed - the 'Device Information' section of Settings tells me it was last updated on 23/09/13.
For the SD card: no, no other app recognises that there's a card in there - photo, gallery, video etc all tell me "No memory card found - insert a memory card to [whatever]". In Settings>Media Storage it says "no storage found" and yes, I have enabled USB storage. As I said, both cards were working fine, and now aren't working at all.
Joshua
Modified by joshua.pond
Hi Endafresh,
I know SD cards are a known issue (I poked around a bit on here before asking) but I hadn't seen anyone talking about a previously working card that no longer worked and couldn't be read by a computer (someone had a non-working card that they found with their mac if I recall correctly). You're probably right that there's nothing to be done (except make a note never to buy from ZTE again, and not buy another Firefox OS phone unless and until they're consumer ready and properly supported and updated by the manufacturer), but it seemed worth asking, if only to add my voice to the chorus singing 'the ZTE Open is extremely disappointing and is giving Firefox and Mozilla a bad name'...
Modified by joshua.pond
Apologies for my frustration leaking into the tone of my replies last night - there's a lot to like about Firefox OS, and it's just a damn shame that the hardware isn't as good as the software. So, if SD cards are a known issue, does anyone know what the specific problem is - would it have played more nicely with less music or music at a lower rate, or is the size of the card (I know 32 GB cards are theoretically supported by the OS, but are they too big for the Open or whatever)? I really don't want to give up and send the handset back, and I can make my peace with the update problems, but knowing the SD card could die at any time is a step too far.
From endafresh:
Known issue with ZTE Open phone. You're the 15th person or so just on these boards to state similar SD-card issues. Most of the robots here responding just poke you with 'reset your phone'. Up to you if you wanna risk it. I wouldn't bother as it is a manufacturer defect issue
We are not robots, we are actual human beings. I personally apologize if you feel that we are automated but we are not. We read your issue and suggest fixes, if we had to write each and every response up asking you to reset , that would take a tremendous amount of time.
joshua.pond: Have you tried the usb mass storage function as suggested by Michelle to see if that helps with the issue you are having? I apologize that you are unable to use the phone as expected due the microSD card. It shouldn't be an issue with the size of the card but could you double check the format of the music to see if there may be any issues because of formatting? Also, it may just take some time to recognize all that music you have. You may also want to try rebooting the device to see if it helps.
Thank you!
Andrew
Andrew: as I said in my reply to Michelle last night the USB mass storage function is already turned on. The format both times was MP3, I made clear that it hadn't simply failed to recognise all the music it had killed the cards, and (strangely enough since it's happened with two cards now) the phone has been rebooted several times. Sorry to be so terse, but you don't actually seem to have read the original question or the two expansions upon it.
Joshua,
I apologize that you think that I didn't read but I did and it a little hard to follow what had happened. At this point, I'm not sure what to recommend so I will leave it to Michelle to get back to you on Monday. Thanks and sorry for any inconvenience.
Ok Andrew, thanks for trying at least, and I'm sorry if it wasn't clear what had happened. For anyone else curious to help I'll try a quick breakdown of events with some added detail:
1. Insert cheap generic SD card. Everything seems fine, I take a photo and so on, and all is well.
2. I copy a huge chunk of MP3s to it - approx 29GB at 320kbps - as well as a few videos in MP4 format, and a couple of e-books in epub format because I'm trying the epub reader app from the marketplace.
3. The phone recognises perhaps a quarter of the music, but is happy to play what it recognises. Videos cofuse it slightly - some it recognises and is happy to play, others seem to register as music. The e-books seems fine. This isn't ideal, but it's entirely acceptable and gets mentally filed under 'teething troubles of a brand new OS' and all is essentially well.
4. A few days later (somewhere between two and four I'd guess) the phone tells me there's no SD card - both in the apps that need one (music, video, camera etc.) and in Settings>Media Storage. I reboot the phone a few times, remove and reinsert the card a few times, and am generally baffled. I'm away from home at this point so can't connect it to a computer.
5. I try a friend's SD card in the phone, and she tries my card in hers - hers seems fine in mine, her phone claims there's either no card or that the card's incorrectly formatted. I assume the cheap card is the problem, so insert a spare I have when I get home.
6. I get home and insert the spare, equally generic and also 32GB card. Once again all seems well, so I copy the same MP3s over, though I don't think I copied the videos or books this time.
7. Once again the phone only recognises about a quarter of the music, so I make a mental note to convert the original FLACs to something like 192 kbps rather than the 320 I'd previously converted them to, and see if that heps the phone recognise all of them - failing that I decide to just stick fewer albums on there. Anyway, as far as I'm concerned I got a bad SD card first time around, though by this point I've also been on here and seen that some people are having problems with their SD cards, and all is again essentially well.
8. Another couple of days later the second SD card dies in exactly the same way as the first. Apps tell me there's no card, settings tell me there's no card, and since I'm at home and can connect it to a computer, both Windows 7 and Ubuntu 13.10 tell me there's no storage on the device when they actually recognise there's a device connected at all. Again, phone is restarted a few times and the card is removed and replaced a few times.
9. At this point the problem is clearly with the phone rather than the card, and I'm extremely annoyed since at best I've wasted a lot of time and have to reformat two cards, and since I haven't tried reformatting them yet it's entirely possible that they can't be saved and are utterly dead (and whilst they were cheap they weren't free, and I don't have a huge amount of spare cash).
10. I come on here and post my question.
Disclaimer: Don't blame me or Mozilla or anyone if you can't solve your issue or something breaks. Cheap crap cards are crap, get something better.
The other thread about this issue: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/971076?esab=a&s=&r=1&as=s
That user used a workaround by plugging in the SD card into a Mac (not stated what Mac OS version nor if they used a built-in card reader).
My suggestion is to use this method and backup/format your card using the official SD card formatting tools found here:
https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter_4/
READ AND FOLLOW THE DIRECTIONS AND USER GUIDE ON THAT PAGE! No seriously READ IT.
If I were you, I'd treat both those cheap/generic cards as 'these can die anytime so don't use them for storing anything important'. Honestly you can just Craigslist them and someone will buy em on the cheap for the holidays. Get rid of them one way or another.
I personally use SanDisk cards as they have a fairly good reputation for good quality. You can also try other brands but the generic/crap cards are the worst thing to buy. You can check out NewEgg, although your local retail outlet (Walmart/Target) usually has some in stock for cameras. Those will usually work in phones as well, just get a MicroSD card and make sure it comes with the larger SD adapters at no extra cost. :)
With electronics, anything made by Taiwanese or Chinese companies is terrible and will fail/break on you 99% of the time. Chinese companies make good cheap products but in electronics they totally fail. Best electronics are ALWAYS the Japanese ones. :)
Endafresh: Thank you, I'll try that (and I'm extremely sorry if my general frustration has come across as blaming Mozilla or anyone except possibly ZTE). There wasn't anything important on the cheap crap cards, and I wasn't planning for there to be, but I'll scrape together the cash to get a SanDisk or something similar. I had seen the Mac thread, but I'm not sure it'll work for me - I don't have a Mac, and as I mentioned neither Windows nor Ubuntu seem able to find the card - but since there's nothing on them that isn't on my hard drive anyway it's not the end of the world. That said, the cheapness and crapness of the cards was clearly not the issue here.
Modified by joshua.pond
Joshua. Just format the SD cards using the tool I linked on a Windows computer. Make sure you are using a supported SD card reader (that can read that specific type/size of card) and have the proper drivers installed.
If I ever needed to read cards I have a built-in card reader in my laptop, heh :)
Endafresh: I will indeed reformat them (and fortunately my laptop has a built-in reader too) and I'm extremely grateful for a way to save them, but I don't see what's to stop the Open frying them or whatever other card I put in there in future...