Some New Stuff
Gadget freak, iPhone / Android fanatic, SharePoint Admin, father of 2
Searching gadget
Unhappy with the battery life on your smartphone? Check your applications.
I currently carry a Droid Eris from Verizon and have to say, I'm
pretty happy with it. Have heard a lot of complaints about the
battery life for that phone and the similar models (Sprint Hero etc),
but I have been pretty immune to any problems. That was until the
last system update was pushed out. Since that update, my battery life
has been noticeably lower. To the point where I couldn't make it
through until lunch without dropping below 60%. Obviously, I was
blaming the system update...but as I discovered, it was something much
simpler, but more insidious... To make a long story boring, I ultimately did a full factory reset,
and over the course of a couple of hours, slowly reinstalled the
applications that I had loaded on my phone. Everything seemed to be
going okay - until I installed Remember the Milk. If you don't know,
Remember the Milk (RTM) is a pretty good task list which is web based,
but includes native applications for the iPhone and Android phones.
The phone app syncs with the web site giving you full functionality of
RTM on your phone. Here is where the problem comes in. As I was digging deeper, I kept seeing the RTM cow icon appear in the
notification bar. Finally checked it when I saw the icon appear - and
discovered that RTM was syncing automatically to the website. No
biggie. Until I checked the settings in the phone app, and discover
that the sync interval that is the default for the app (at least for
the Android version) is EVERY FIVE MINUTES! Now I'm a busy guy, but
in no way, shape or form do I need to resync my todo list every five
minutes. Imagine the traffic and drain on my battery, doing a network
sync to RTM 12 times an hour every hour. Moral of the story? Don't forget to check the settings in your
applications - there might be a black hole hiding in your apps drawer.
pretty happy with it. Have heard a lot of complaints about the
battery life for that phone and the similar models (Sprint Hero etc),
but I have been pretty immune to any problems. That was until the
last system update was pushed out. Since that update, my battery life
has been noticeably lower. To the point where I couldn't make it
through until lunch without dropping below 60%. Obviously, I was
blaming the system update...but as I discovered, it was something much
simpler, but more insidious... To make a long story boring, I ultimately did a full factory reset,
and over the course of a couple of hours, slowly reinstalled the
applications that I had loaded on my phone. Everything seemed to be
going okay - until I installed Remember the Milk. If you don't know,
Remember the Milk (RTM) is a pretty good task list which is web based,
but includes native applications for the iPhone and Android phones.
The phone app syncs with the web site giving you full functionality of
RTM on your phone. Here is where the problem comes in. As I was digging deeper, I kept seeing the RTM cow icon appear in the
notification bar. Finally checked it when I saw the icon appear - and
discovered that RTM was syncing automatically to the website. No
biggie. Until I checked the settings in the phone app, and discover
that the sync interval that is the default for the app (at least for
the Android version) is EVERY FIVE MINUTES! Now I'm a busy guy, but
in no way, shape or form do I need to resync my todo list every five
minutes. Imagine the traffic and drain on my battery, doing a network
sync to RTM 12 times an hour every hour. Moral of the story? Don't forget to check the settings in your
applications - there might be a black hole hiding in your apps drawer.
Follow-up on my iPhone battery fix - IT WORKS!!
It's been 4 days since I did a full restore of my iPhone 3GS - and I have to say, the difference in battery life has been remarkable.
I can easily go a full day without a recharge, I have kept push turned on for Exchange email, which I NEVER had enabled because of the hit to the battery. No more - I have it on and working like a charm.
Now - a couple of details - before the restore I had push notifications enabled and probably had 12 - 14 apps where it was turned on. Since the restore I keep push notifications (other than exchange) turned completely off.
Also, prior to the restore, I had 4 mail accounts set up. All 4 of them were set up to manually retrieve email. One was an exchange account. Two were google accounts, and I had my MobileMe set up as well.
Since the restore, I have only set up the Exchange account. I've read some forum postings suggesting some suspicion that MobileMe services were causing some battery drain. I can't verify that was the case, but can say that my battery life has never been better on this phone.
Can't recommend the full restore enough as a possible solution to your battery woes...
A fix for poor iPhone battery life? Might actually work...
So like many of you, I've been less than pleased with my battery life
since installing the 3.1 update. Getting through half a day on a
charge was not what I was used to. Saw some suggestions about deleting and reconfiguring any push email
accounts that had been set up (Exchange or MobileMe). The most extreme idea was to restore the phone in iTunes as a new
phone. And DO NOT restore your backup file. Since my thought was to do whatever works and be done with it, I opted
for a restore as a new phone. Couple of things to note. Took about 20 min, and my apps all remained
in iTunes, so a sync brought them all back over. This includes a
couple apps no longer available in iTunes; specifically Google Voice
and the accidentally approved then yanked SquareSpace. Both resync'd
to my phone no problem. Did it work? So far yes! I had 100% around noon. I didn't drop to 99
until 12 min of use, it's now 11pm and with push on all day (probably
30 messages) a couple phone calls etc I'm at 72%! I'd have been dead
by now before the restore. So...if your phone's sucking juice, a new restore is not fun, but does
seem to make a difference.
since installing the 3.1 update. Getting through half a day on a
charge was not what I was used to. Saw some suggestions about deleting and reconfiguring any push email
accounts that had been set up (Exchange or MobileMe). The most extreme idea was to restore the phone in iTunes as a new
phone. And DO NOT restore your backup file. Since my thought was to do whatever works and be done with it, I opted
for a restore as a new phone. Couple of things to note. Took about 20 min, and my apps all remained
in iTunes, so a sync brought them all back over. This includes a
couple apps no longer available in iTunes; specifically Google Voice
and the accidentally approved then yanked SquareSpace. Both resync'd
to my phone no problem. Did it work? So far yes! I had 100% around noon. I didn't drop to 99
until 12 min of use, it's now 11pm and with push on all day (probably
30 messages) a couple phone calls etc I'm at 72%! I'd have been dead
by now before the restore. So...if your phone's sucking juice, a new restore is not fun, but does
seem to make a difference.
The iPhone's achilles heel
While the mobile industry and related press searches for the next handset they can proclaim to be the "iPhone killer", most manufacturers have been focusing on the UI, a related app store, or some innovative feature to set it apart from the iPhone.
Maybe the right combination of those things are what's needed to de-throne the "King" but I suggest that most consumers want just a couple of key things - one of which the iPhone hasn't been able to do since it's launch. Give me a 3G / WiFi enabled handset, with a web kit browser and LONG battery life - (2 full days of good use w/ 30% left long) and I think you would see more than just a few users jump ship from the iPhone.
Battery life on the iPhone has always been a complaint, and while Apple has taken some steps to address it - it doesn't seem to be making much difference - and in the last of the 3GS and firmware 3.1 - they might have even taken a huge step backwards. Quite a few users who updated their ohm
Sent from my iPhone
HP Mini 1030NR
Well, I tried my hand with the netbook format. Got an HP mini - 10" screen version. After upgrading the ram to 2GB - and reformatting to Windows 7 RC - I have to say there were some good points and bad points to the machine.
On the plus side, I liked the form factor - overall the size of the machine was nice. The keyboard was good sized and natural to type on. I didn't notice that it got particularly hot with use, and I found the battery life to be within expectations.
One thing that is rarely mentioned on netbook reviews that I read are any steps that the user should take to improve performance. One important option is to turn the graphics settings down in Windows so that you have tuned the OS for performance over appearance. Doing this on the Mini made a big difference in responsiveness of the unit.
If your netbook has an SD card reader, I highly recommend dropping a 4 or 8 GB SD card in the machine, and formatting it for ReadyBoost. This puts the swap file on the SD card as opposed to on the hard drive. That will accomplish 2 things. First - since the access time for the SD is quicker, your machine should perform slightly better. More importantly, since access to the SD card is electronic as opposed to mechanical, you should eek out a little better battery life over time, since the hard drive isn't having to spin as much. Of course, if you have a netbook with a flash drive, this is irrelevant.
Probably my biggest complaint w/ the mini was with the screen - both the size of the screen overall, and it's resolution. The 10" screen was okay - but 1024x768 is just too small to work on for an extended period of time. No matter what I was doing, I felt like it was just too cramped. Dialog boxes, pop-ups etc just seemed scrunched.
My final conclusion - if it's all you have available - it works well - but if you have a choice - for something slightly bigger - I would choose it every time.
