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Ambient Recordings Only Capturing About 10 Min. or Less


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Since sometime December 8th, 2016, I have been unable to capture any more than about 10 minutes of Ambient Recording from the target device (a rooted Samsung Galaxy S5) no matter what I try. For the 4-5 weeks prior to that date that I have had this Extreme subscription, I have had no problem capturing up to about an hour of Ambient Recording. My correspondence with Flexispy's help tickets has repeatedly told me that any interruption by the user of the target device will stop a recording in progress, or cause it to miss entirely, and I understand that (I've received shortened Ambient Recordings that were obviously cut short due to a phone call, or for other reasons). I'm told that the target device must be in complete idle mode, that even a single tap on the screen could shorten the file duration. In the past, I had no problems 'stacking' commands for Ambient Recordings, and they seemed to oftentimes hold their place, executing either after interruptions, or shortly after one had completed approximately 59 minutes worth of recording. I have recordings where the target device was even sending/receiving SMS messages, or looking through settings without interrupting the Ambient Recording. It was great! Now, however, something that changed is causing me to no longer be able to experience the same great service.

I have experimented with Ambient Recording at night when I can physically see that the target device is idle. Even then, I am unable to capture more than about 10 minutes. I have manually restarted the target device multiple times. I have limited all app permissions on the target device that I thought might be unnecessary, or possibly be a contributor to the problem. I have gone through the target device settings looking for anything that might cause processes to sleep after about 10 minutes, and have not found anything in this regard (Power Saving options are turned off).

Has anyone experienced a similar situation, resolved a similar situation, or have suggestions that might help resolve? Perhaps I am just having trouble finding the culprit of my new found problem within the target device. I would love to be able to regain the level of service I once had with the Ambient Recording feature, and would be extremely grateful for a resolution.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I am running in full mode and have found ambient recording to be hit and miss. I try to time it to pick up certain conversations but it will look like it hasn't captured anything and then all of a sudden the next day, a recording shows up under my data. This software has been installed since December 2016 but I am still struggling with ambient recordings. Then I try to get 60 mins and it comes back with only 18 minutes of recording time and other times it doesn't send me anything at all. I think it's just one of those things, honestly. It's hit or miss on that unfortunately. Even when the phone is idle I have this issue and I can't figure it out either. Talking with others I have come tot he conclusion that ambient recording is not 100 percent reliable. 

  • Like 3
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On ٢٦‏/١٢‏/٢٠١٦ at 10:02 AM, greensquare4 said:

منذ وقت 8 ديسمبر 2016، لقد كنت غير قادر على التقاط أي أكثر من حوالي 10 دقيقة من المحيط تسجيل من الجهاز الهدف (الجذور سامسونج غالاكسي S5) بغض النظر عن ما أحاول. ل4-5 أسابيع قبل ذلك التاريخ التي كان لي هذا الاشتراك المدقع، لم أجد أية مشكلة التقاط ما يصل الى نحو ساعة من المحيط تسجيل. مراسلاتي مع تذاكر مساعدة Flexispy قد قال لي مرارا وتكرارا أن أي انقطاع من قبل مستخدم الجهاز الهدف سيتم إيقاف تسجيل في التقدم، أو يؤدي إلى تفويت تماما، وأنا أفهم أن (لقد وردت تقصير تسجيلات المحيطة التي قطعت الواضح باختصار بسبب مكالمة هاتفية، أو لأسباب أخرى). قيل لي أن يجب أن يكون الجهاز المستهدف في وضع الخمول التام، أنه حتى نقرة واحدة على الشاشة يمكن تقصير مدة الملف. في الماضي، لم يكن لدي أي مشاكل "التراص" أوامر لالمحيطة تسجيلات، ويبدو أنها تعقد في كثير من الأحيان مكانها، وتنفيذ إما بعد انقطاع، أو بعد وقت قصير من واحد قد أكمل ما يقرب من 59 دقيقة قيمتها تسجيل. لدي التسجيلات حيث الجهاز الهدف وحتى إرسال / استقبال الرسائل النصية القصيرة، أو تبحث من خلال إعدادات دون مقاطعة تسجيل المحيطة. وكان كبير! الآن، ومع ذلك، وهو الأمر الذي تغير هو الذي يسبب لي أن لم يعد قادرا على تجربة نفس خدمة كبيرة.

لقد جربت مع تسجيل المحيط في الليل عندما أستطيع أن أرى جسديا أن الجهاز الهدف خاملا. حتى ذلك الحين، وأنا غير قادر على التقاط أكثر من حوالي 10 دقيقة. لقد إعادة تشغيل الجهاز الهدف عدة مرات يدويا. لقد تقتصر فقط أذونات التطبيق على الجهاز الهدف الذي اعتقدت قد يكون لا لزوم لها، أو ربما يكون مساهما في هذه المشكلة. لقد ذهبت من خلال إعدادات الجهاز الهدف تبحث عن أي شيء قد يسبب العمليات للنوم بعد حوالي 10 دقائق، ولم يتم العثور على أي شيء في هذا الصدد (يتم تشغيل خيارات توفير الطاقة إيقاف).

هل قام أي شخص من ذوي الخبرة وضعا مماثلا، قرر وضع مماثل، أو أن الاقتراحات التي قد تساعد في حل؟ ربما أنا مجرد وجود صعوبة في العثور على الجاني من مشكلتي الجديدة التي عثر عليها داخل الجهاز الهدف. أنا أحب أن تكون قادرة على استعادة مستوى الخدمة كان لي مرة واحدة مع ميزة المحيطة تسجيل، وسيكون في غاية الامتنان لهذا القرار.

community.flexispy.com

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  • 3 weeks later...

I have also been experiencing problems with the ambient recording feature. Since the Droid Razr phone installed an update a couple of weeks ago, the recordings being uploaded to the dashboard are sporadic, sometimes taking as long as 12 hours. The worse part is asking support for help, but they tell me the feature is working fine. Being a customer for more than 2 years....I can assure them there is a problem with the feature, it had worked wonderfully until this update. 

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Ksander9228 - I am right with you on that point! It's great to hear from someone who has been a customer longer than the almost 3 months that I have, also having similar issues (again, I am not alone!). In just my short time I had noticed the change, going from thinking this was maybe the best tool I have ever come across, to being frustrated that I am missing so much of what I had been accustomed to being able to capture just over a month and a half ago. I would encourage anyone else experiencing the same with the ambient recording feature to provide their 2 cents, as well, even if you don't have the time to work through support. Even if it's just a quick note here saying "I have noticed and am experiencing issues with the ambient recording feature as well".

I have been told more than once by support that it appears to be functioning fine, or that the cause could be due to other things, but have done my best to prove that it is not. I believe I am at the point where I have proven my case, but it has taken a lot of my time and dedication to keep pursuing. With hope, the software engineers will take notice and be able to resolve so that we may again enjoy full functionality as was intended. Resolving the ambient recording issues (in my opinion, the absolute best feature of Flexispy) for me means the difference between being a lifetime customer and trying hard to justify renewals.

Likewise, if there are some out there that have no problems with the ambient recording feature, and are able to still capture about an hour at times, I would also be glad to hear from you. I am interested in knowing what software version of Flexispy is working for you, and what the target device is. It may help to pinpoint compatibility issues with either specific software versions or specific target devices.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Good news! With help from support and a lot of dedication and patience on my part, it seems we have resolved the short Ambient Recordings I was experiencing! What the fix amounted to for me was uninstalling Flexispy software from the target device, then reinstalling an older version. It's possible that simply uninstalling and reinstalling the current version may have fixed things, but I'm not interested in experimenting further at this point, since I have regained the ability to again capture up to about an hour. I suggest that if you are experiencing similar issues, and are able, to try uninstalling then reinstalling Flexispy software to see if that resolves any problems you may be experiencing. So far so good for me. Good luck to you!

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Update: While the uninstall/reinstall restored my ability to again capture about an hour of Ambient Recordings (lost since December 8th), something had since changed that. After 5-6 days of those operations, on Feb. 9th midday, I encountered a really long recording (1hr, 6min, 58sec. - by label only, was somehow shortened in actual duration), then after that, back to 10 minutes or less. No change after a few days. I decided to proceed with uninstalling again (took 2 tries like last time), then once removal was confirmed, reinstalled the most current version of Flexispy software onto the target device. Currently, I am back to being able to capture about an hour, but fear it won't last forever. Time will tell.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Thank you very much for your valuable contribution, Nelly11! Ireally appreciate it - and am sure others do, too!

While trying to navigate through issues and problems I’ve had, it was good to have a support team and a community forum to turn to. While not all of the support was useful or helpful, I really appreciated the help especially from Pimnara (support), whose persistence, understanding and follow-through eventually got me to the point of understanding how best to resolve my issues.

I believe my issue of shortened duration of ambient recordings to ten minutes or less may be due to built in internal checks within phone software (Samsung account, or perhaps power optimizations). I find that so long as I restart the target device within a 3-day period, I’ve been able to maintain the ability to record up to an hour of ambient recording. If I let it go much longer than 3 days, the ability to capture more than 10 minutes is no longer an option. The only way I’ve found to regain this ability is to completely remove Flexispy software from the target device and conduct a fresh install. I am fortunate that I am able to manually restart the target device most every night, and so this has not been too much of an issue for me – just a little maintenance to keep up with. I realize not everyone has this luxury.

Truly, the ambient recording feature is the most valuable feature of Flexispy, in my opinion. I have other means to be able to review call logs and texts sent, current location and the like. The ambient recording feature is, hands down, the reason why I am a Flexispy customer. Since our technology is CDMA, I can only hear the target phone side of any recorded phone conversation, but that hasn’t been a deal-breaker in my situation. Live listening is also not an option with CDMA technology. I find that this is really okay, though, because when you have a recording to listen to, you can rewind as many times as may be necessary to understand quiet speech, or words otherwise harder to catch. Had I been listening live, I would just never know what may have been said, and could easily jump to wrong conclusions.

The software for me is not perfect, but I have found ways to navigate its use to a worthwhile degree.

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  • 2 months later...

How were you able to reinstall the older version. Ive had the older version since 2014. Worked seamlessly for over 2 years. I finalyldecide to upgrade BIG MISTAKE.

 

Ambient records even scheduled never record anything more than 15 min if they record anything at all

Phone calls - Nothing over 10 minutes is recorded

 

Ive discussed at length this issue and all they can tell me is "hey it happens" It didnt happen for nearly 3 years, so no its not supposed to happen. I imagine having as much memory of ambient recordings and hone calls on their server probably can cause some issues regarding space , but thats what we pay for every year as extreme users, but if they intended on completely changing what they advertise not telling us  and not reducing the price then that would have been helpful and decent.

 

Someone please advise me on how to reinstall the older version. 

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I STILL have not been able to get the ambient recording feature to work. Support has not been very helpful...also telling me the internet connection is bad or thses things happen.... Pretty much insulting my intelligence. I have used Flexispy for 2 and a half years and NEVER had trouble with the recordings as I have in the past 3 months. I have given up & for me Flexispy has become useless.

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log74log,

 

Back at the end of January, I was working with Pimnara from technical support to do this very thing. At that time the oldest version we could go back to was 2.22 5 (not sure if that is still current information). I was provided an obscure link to gain access to it, but had to first uninstall Flexispy software from the Target phone. The result was that it worked - for a little while. I've played around uninstalling and reinstalling in the past, and each time a fresh reinstall was completed, I regained the full abilities of Ambient Recording as Flexispy intended. What I've come to find is that after approximately 3 days from the fresh install, something from the Target Android phone causes the Ambient Recording feature to error out. I would get either a longer-than 1-hour recording by description, or a shorter one, but the actual recording was always way shorter than its labeled/described title, ending the recording somewhere within while listening to it. Thereafter, all Ambient Recordings limited themselves to 10 minutes or less (usually less, initially, then a day or two later it is maxed out to about 10 minutes). I've found that it did not matter if I used the older version of Flexispy, or the most current - the behavior was always the same.

I've come to believe that this is not an issue with the Flexispy software, per se, like I had originally assumed, but something to do with Samsung, Android, or Google security features. My thought is that somehow things have changed with one of those, since in the past, I was able to use this feature over a month without issue. I've tried shutting off power saving and Smart Manager options and any security-type things I had control to change. I wish I could pinpoint exactly what is causing this so as to attempt circumvention, but I am no programmer. What I do instead is every third day, I make sure to restart the Target Android phone, which seems to keep things running as intended, for the most part. If I forget to restart on the third day, I'll have to simply uninstall/reinstall to regain full Ambient Recording abilities. Not a great solution, I agree, but is a way to keep using the full features. I also realize that not everyone has the free access to restart a Target device as I do, but I hope that this knowledge can help find a solution to this problem.

I'm hoping that Flexispy developers can figure out how to keep this feature running without user interaction.

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