News - Have a Birthday in December? Not according to Android 4.2

[HEXUS]

A few little bugs discovered in what should have been an incremental update.

Read more.

[Biscuit]

Yayyyyyy i get to stay 25 for another year!

[Smudger]

I can get round this by breaking off friendships with people born in December. Simple.

[James@OVIC]

I can get round this by breaking off friendships with people born in December. Simple.

I like your thinking, much easier than an update!!

[kingpotnoodle]

Christmas is deleted? Hurrah!

[Blastuk]

And no one is angry or grabbing the pitchforks? Interesting.

[shaithis]

I suppose it isn't quite as bad as the last calendar bug they had which bricked the device if you set the date past a certain day!

[Biscuit]

And no one is angry or grabbing the pitchforks? Interesting.

I think a lot of people are pretty peed off. I certainly am!

What can you do about it other than wait for the update though?

[Smudger]

What happens if you've already got a contact in there that's got a December birthday, does that still work?

[crossy]

Yayyyyyy i get to stay 25 for another year!

And I get to stay forty-ish

And no one is angry or grabbing the pitchforks? Interesting.

That really depends how quickly Google deal with this. At the moment we all get to laugh at their stupidity (quality assurance - what's that?) - exactly the same as if Apple had done this. On the other hand if this is still a problem in two or three weeks time then there's going to be harsh criticism of Google. Sure this isn't necessarily a "deal breaker" the same way a bricking bug would, even so Google need to show that they're taking it seriously, and sort it with utmost speed.

Oh, and in the circumstances I think withholding any Christmas bonus from the developers would be appropriate!

[Smudger]

Not being able to add a contact is not really a showstopper. It shows a lack of QC, as previously mentioned.

If you don't need to add a contact's birthday, you won't notice. I don't have 4.2 but if I did I would be mildly trifled, on the international scale of anger...

[Agent]

And no one is angry or grabbing the pitchforks? Interesting.

Well it only happens in one app, in one specific situation - when you add a birthday.

When is the last time you added someone's birthday to their contact information in your phone? That's why there are no pitchforks.

[crossy]

Well it only happens in one app, in one specific situation - when you add a birthday. When is the last time you added someone's birthday to their contact information in your phone? That's why there are no pitchforks.

I just did a quick straw poll and no one I asked added birthdays to their contacts - heck most folks (me included!) didn't even know you could do that. A couple of folks said that they didn't want to go giving Google (along with any other app that could read contacts - Facebook?) access to that kind of information. Plus - and this is the major one for me - it makes more sense to put folks' birthdays in the calendar rather than contacts.

Getting back to Agent's comment above - does this mean that if the Nexus users (temporarily) switched from the normal dialler/contacts to a 3rd party one, then all would be well? If so, then this seems like less of a "big deal" since there's a lot of alternative contact apps on Google Play - and the top rated one (Go Contacts EX) appears to be free anyway.

[Agent]

Getting back to Agent's comment above - does this mean that if the Nexus users (temporarily) switched from the normal dialler/contacts to a 3rd party one, then all would be well?

Yup, it's an app problem, not an OS one. Even the default calendar doesn't have the issue. It's only when you try to access months through very particular methods that you have an issue.

The headlines around this have been off as normal. Several places are saying it's an Android 4.2 issue. It's not. It's an app update issue, although granted those apps come as default with 4.2. Anyone who updates to the same version on other versions of Android will have the same issue.

It's because the API is confusing on how you call dates: https://code.google.com/p/android/is...l?id=39692#c46

Someone just made a coding error. Easy to do, although should have been caught

[TheAnimus]

When is the last time you added someone's birthday to their contact information in your phone? That's why there are no pitchforks.

In fairness if you head over to the comment page of The Reg on the issue with the new windows 8 phones resetting (based on my sample size of 2, I can say the problem only exists in 0% of all devices) the flaming and hate outpooring is huge.

[The Hand]

In fairness if you head over to the comment page of The Reg on the issue with the new windows 8 phones resetting (based on my sample size of 2, I can say the problem only exists in 0% of all devices) the flaming and hate outpooring is huge.

It's pretty stunning that one guy on there, just got "voted down" 12 times for saying his Lumia 920 has been working fine since friday .. though he did call them a bunch of android fanbois which probably didn't help, lol! But some other comment simply get rated down for admitting to owning a 920??