my Calendar app is really slow and other problems

[borgs]

I had a problem with my a780's calendar some of which I found a solution already.
The problem is that the contact's birthday doesn't show up in the calendar.

This is how I created the entries in my phone's contacts:
I copied all my contacts from my old phone which is a nokia 6610 so I used nokia's suite to synchronise with microsoft outlook. And then I looked at MPT's contact manager and tried to edit the contacts from outlook but I had a problem that it always returned to its original unedited state after saving the contacts. So I ended up editing the contacts in microsoft outlook I just limited myself to encoding just the data that could be used by my phone (a780). After finishing editing less than 200 contacts I sychronised it with my phone. I was really mad when I found out that the birthday's in my contacts did not appear in my phone. When I added a new contact using the phone I was surprised that their birthday's appeared in the calendar. So what I did was painstakingly edit the contacts in my phone one by one making sure that I create a new contact for each one of them, that way their birthday's appeared in my calendar.

Now my problem that I have is that the calendar is really slow maybe because of the volume of my contacts it is really weird because when I use my calendar in my nokia 6610 (wherein it marks every birthday of an individual including their age) it was never as slow as my a780. In my a780 I would have to wait around 15-30 seconds flipping through months as if I was using a windows xp machine running on 128mb ram with little swap space. In my nokia 6610 I never had to wait for more than 10 seconds when browsing the calendar. I really liked that the contact's birthday is connected with the calendar but I am really bummed out by its incredibly slow response. Anyone has any suggestions to make it faster?

[f0x0r]

How many contacts do you currently have in the a780?

[borgs]

245 contacts, only more than 150 and less than 200 has the birthday field occupied, and 4 contacts have anniversary date.

[f0x0r]

It sounds like Outlook may have added some extra "junk" to your contacts. I don't have but maybe half of your contacts with the birthday and anniversary dates filled on some. I would find a different way of exporting your contacts from your Nokia to your A780.

P.S. Nice avatar!

[borgs]

maybe outlook did slow down my calendar. I borrowed my avatar from lindows.

Thanks

I'd post again if I find a solution or have any progress at all.

[weekendworker]

Hi Borgs, any news on the speed of calendar? I think, to use the calendar for serious business this a780 application has to improve significantly. I have measured the time with my a780: It takes 24 - 25 secs to open the calendar, 20 secs to change view from week to a specific day, 15 secs to switch the days. This is completely unacceptable in daily business. My old Palm V is (much) faster. I am considering to switch to an other phone ... because one reason to buy a smart phone was to have a fast access to a copy of my business calendar. (Not to talk about the synch problems ...). Any idea, if the Motorola developers are aware of this .. and deliver an update? (I bought my device in Feb 2006 in Germany).

[borgs]

none yet I was trying to backup my phone before I master clear it but something is wrong with my mpt because there is always an error when I backup my contacts... my guess is that I have entries in contacts in which the only information are the name, last name, and the birthday.

I'm guessing I need another reset because my phone sometimes freeze or hang and I have to remove the battery to make it work and when it starts it is a pain to change the date and time. It froze once when I was copying an mp3 from the computer to its transflash it said that the path is too deep. my guess is that there was a message received at the same time when I was copying the file. I'll post again after I reset my cellphone. Now if I could just back it up without installing the backup and restore program on my phone.

[borgs]

I was able to find out why mpt's backup was not working. It was because I was using an older driver for the phone's modem. When I updated the driver to its newer version it worked perfectly so I was able to backup my contacts and my calendar and task (although I have no data in task). It was because I used telnet and to use the operator assisted calls option I had to use an older driver.

I did a master clear and tried the phone it is as responsive as ever and the calendar immediately flips through months without any wait maybe a fraction of a second so I consider it a breeze to flip through months. But this is the situation when there are nothing at all in the phone no messages, no contacts and no entries in the calendar.

After restoring the contact and calendar data from MPT, the calendar's nimbleness has deteriorated from a fraction of a second it displayed a month it increased the loading time to 8-10 seconds. Another observation is that when I inserted the transflash, which I removed before master clearing the phone, the calendar's less than 10 seconds loading between month's has increased to 10-12 seconds, and it varies on how much entries are in the months. More wait for more entries.

---objective observation ends here---

It seems that the database used by the calendar is very inefficient or it may have not been designed for the phone, it seems that the phone struggles when there is a lot of data in the calendar, it seems that the phone is using a database meant for a faster system, or it is so inefficient that it crawls when displaying lots of entries in a month. I feel that when you create an entry in the calendar for e.g. a birthday which is January 1, 1970 - the earliest date the calendar registers - the calendar sorts of considers the each and every entry as a data e.g. the second birthday of that person is January 1, 1971 it counts it as a separate entry and not just a single entry that occurs every year. I don't really know how this works but I feel this is why it is slow... And I don't know how nokia does it but even a really measly 6610 handled the same calendar data with ease. It doesn't take more than 3 seconds to flip through months. I really hate the calendar. I was able to make it display a day in 25-30 seconds when I made an entry for my antibiotic intake (twice a day) and my cough medicine (also twice) and the medicine for my fever (5 times a day) (setted to repeat every day) [and setted the entry to end after 1 week or I may be very sick that I do not know what I was doing and did not set it because the event in which I entered as my medicine intake repeated itself until the last date that the calendar has] when I had a flu. It really gave me a head ache, it was really slow.

Anybody tried opie's calendar? Is it significantly faster that it is a lot more pleasing to use? And if only openezx has made the phone working and the calendar is also connected to the contact entries...

[Mailman42]

Borgs,

Did you back up the phone with Linux or with windo$?

If you used Linux, please tell how.

Thanks

[borgs]

I'm sorry I was using windows using this guide. http://www.motorolafans.com/index.ph...ight=sms+reset
It has some link about using the backup and restore script but you would have to install a terminal to the phone.