Buggish: Motorola Droid RAZR Google Maps not switching to Landscape Mode

Solution

Updated to latest version, forced stop the application, restarted phone. Forced stop may or may not be required but it was a step that I did before restarting. Since I cannot reproduce the issue, I cannot confirm any or all steps.

Story

For the last month, I have not been able to get Google Maps on my Droid RAZR (the first version) to switch to landscape mode. Other applications are able to switch between portrait and landscape normally. I've restarted my phone and forced stopped the application.

Nothing seems to fix this problem. This is quite a problem for me because I'm able to squeeze the phone in landscape position into the dashboard of my car only thus not requiring any type of docking station.

On the bright side, I've gotten better at judging turns even with my phone appearing sideways. I have my map on a locked north position.

So while writing this post, I restarted my phone just to verify my tests and, behold, Google Maps can now switch to landscape mode. I had restarted my phone a couple times before. The only thing I can think of was that I did just download an update. Then, I forced stop the application. At this point, the problem still exists. After I restarted, the problem has gone away.

This makes me question how applications are executed after an update. Why did the update not autocorrect the problem? Even if the update did not trigger the change, the forced stop should have ended the process. This seems to indicate to me that there is some cached memory, probably on the OS level. That hypothesis does not explain why my other applications do not have the same problem.

Life: Still frustrated with Google Hangout

Over four months, Hangout (in gmail) still unable to see if a user is online although I can now through the Hangout application (desktop and mobile). Unfortunately, I use the service in gmail more often because I use it for Google Voice. Also, the apps do not provide the status so I cannot tell if they are available or not.

I primarily use IM to send actual "instant" messaging. I do not care for the idea that it is more conversation related. My typical situation is that I have an urgent personal matter where I need to find someone at that moment. I used to just scan through my list and see who are most available and best at answering my questions.

With the new hangout, I am forced to message a group of people that may or may not be online (or available) then wait for a response. Depending on the group because some are not always online, I may not get a response which then I have just wasted 5-10 minutes that I could have used searching for other resources.

I have recently been quite disappointed in Google's rollout of new features where I am forced to use certain solutions that overrides other features that I used to be able to use (i.e. Hangout replacing Chat, Google Maps) when it does not have the same features. At least allow me to use both Hangout and Chat. Or perhaps this is just a sign of my age.

Reference

I did come across the blog below which has some interesting info and updates quite frequently for the last few years.

http://googlesystem.blogspot.com