Motorola Milestone skipping on music playback, perfect for Billy Joel's 'Movin' Out'
By Chris Ziegler 
posted February 26th 2010 4:11PM
posted February 26th 2010 4:11PM
For a device with as much superphone street cred as the Milestone, you'd think a basic task like listening to music through the headphone jack would be a cakewalk. No problems, right? So straightforward, really, that it's not even worth testing thoroughly -- and therein lies the problem, it seems. Milestone owners on both sides of the pond are reporting en masse that music playback occasionally skips over the jack -- though stereo Bluetooth, ironically a more CPU-taxing operation, seems to be fine. For many owners, particularly those who don't carry a separate PMP, that can totally be a deal-breaker. It's said you can work around the issue by putting the phone into airplane mode, which effectively makes it a dedicated PMP anyhow -- not an optimal solution, right? Yeah, Moto, this seriously isn't shaping up to be your week, so let's just make sure you earn some brownie points with awesome customer service through this rough patch.[Thanks, Vlad G.]
whats up with all the issues with android phones???
nexus one: signal problems
moto cliqs: firmware problem
the droid: alarm problem, battery problems, screen problems, and now the headphone jack issue?
great os but oem's need to start stepping there game up seriously it's time to buckle down and test out these devices before delivering them.
I'd wather have a late perfect product than a rushed broken one, espescially at verizons prices.
@wtgig
I get the feeling that this is what happens when you have 1/2 a dozen phone makers using a variety of specs and running multiple versions of the same OS. Sure, EVERY platform has it's problems, but it becomes a hell of a lot tougher to pinpoint and troubleshoot problems because there are so many varieties.
You want variety, well deal with the consequences, I guess.
@wtgig, this is nonsens. Almost every phone has "issues". Remember the iPhone's exploding batteries, haircracks, yellow screens, broken silent switches, sharp bezels, etc. The more popular a phone is, the more issues will be reported.
On a related note, does anyone else have problems playing DRM free MP3s on their DROID? I usually have to restart my phone in order to get them to play. Its a pain.
@gmack523
Nope, all I play are DRM free MP3s and it works fine on my droid. I have had issues where trying to advance to the next track using my BT headset's controls causes the music to go silent (the UI shows it's still playing but there is no sound). I have to fix that by power cycling the headset, also very annoying.
@junktrunk
Thank you for responding with a real response, unlike the down voted comment above you. I haven't used my Bluetooth headset with my DROID, so I can't say as though I've had that problem. There is definitely something odd going on though for both of us, I just hope that it gets fixed (even if its fixed by accident during another OTA update).
I've had the Droid from launch (and don't know if it is supposed to effect it or only the Milestone), but I have not had any problems with playback at all. I know it isn't the most user friendly setup, but oh well.
I've used several different headphones and an auxilary hookup to my car stereo as well.
The one and only gripe I really have with this phone is the way to access video files that I have loaded on to the phone.
@cobjones
Does not affect the Droid.
This phone's b een out for almost 4 months, if this was a serious issue surely we would have heard of it by now? I don't listen to headphones often but when I hvae with my Droid, that I've had since launch day, I've never noticed any skipping at all.
@schammy
milestone, not the droid
@schammy
You need to read the heading. It says Milestone. It's different from the Droid. The Milestone is HSPA. Any data traffic will cause the Milestone to skip MP3, sounds worse than a record player.
@schammy Sorry gents. The story says "both sides of the pond" which to me means "both sides of the ocean" so I thought it applied to the Droid as well.
@schammy
They mean North American Milestones and European Milestones. Any Milestone with HSPA radios which DOES NOT include the droid which uses CDMA. Now no more 'but my droid works fine' comments PLEASE.
It's got to do with switching between cell towers and switching between 3G and HSPA (or whatever it is). One can turn off 2G/3G data (e.g. by using the Quicksettings app) and the skipping is gone. Or use Juicedefender, which turns off data conn's while the screen is off, only turning them on periodically, thus saving energy while maintaining connectivity and preventing much of the skipping.
But yes, it's an annoyance. Just like the imperfect AAC support (AAC works, HE-AAC somewhat, HE-AAC V2 barely). Still I can life with it as the rest of the phone and OS just rock.
@d0d0
Apart from the occassional reboots and other hiccups.
Fortunately I'm selling mine on Monday.
To everyone else: check out the whole list of known bugs here: http://bit.ly/9vgvYh
@vzsg Well if one's Milestone has got all those issues, that's pretty bad. Seems I'm lucky as my phone hasn't ever shown most of what's listed there. And allthough I'm tweaking it a lot (moving caches, switching system files, adding unsuported features ....), I can't remember it ever rebooting on its own.
My APPLE IPHONE 3GS *never skips a
beat.
Neither did my 3G, or my first gen iPhone. I sense a theme...
Yay. Downranking!!
@BergerFan
I'm not downranking you for one - I have a Milestone, but I'm using a second generation iPod Touch to listen to music, watch videos, pretty much everything else that doesn't need mobile networks.
Hmm I haven't experienced this problem on my Droid which I've had for a while now, it even seamlessly pauses the audio during incoming calls.
@wl80
Again, this does not affect the Droid.
As many have already said: this skipping problem only affects Milestones, not Droids.
I own a Milestone and I too am experiencing this issue which makes listening to music practically unbearable... it occurs in every app that produces an audio output (lastfm, google listen, even games!) and causes clicking and skipping every 10-20 seconds. I still cannot understand how such a show stopper managed to slip though testing. I remember noticing the problem on the first or second day of owning the telephone, so it's not something that's too hard to notice.
To make things worse: absolutely no official word from Motorola that they are indeed aware of the problem and that a software fix is coming. People contacting customer support are instructed to reset their phones (with no improvement, of course) because customer support is unaware of the problem. This is just terrible customer service, come on Moto, you can do better than that!
Thanks to Engadget to bringing this problem to people's attention! Hopefully Motorola will be paying attention and a fix will be issued in a timely fashion!
Same issue happens with mine.
I've only had my milestone for maybe a week and I was hoping of ditching my iPod to only carry 1 device. I noticed right away that it was a bad idea.
Erick Tseng will need to come up with another explanation for this like he explained the early Nexus not having multitouch - well, it has stereo headphone listening, it's just not implemented the way most people would expect....