Database Users

What I've learned after owning the HTC Magic for 3 months

Well im new to this forum, more a user of "howardforums" but since ive been using android i have found this the proper place to be. Before i begin id just like to say thank you all for the great information posted here, been a great help so far and has made my experience using android all that much better.
I've gone through loads of information regarding the battery life and the overall speed of the HTC magic and have come up with a few opinions of my own. Mind you these are just my opinions or findings rather from owning the device and using it. Nothing here is a scientific fact.
Some things you should know before hand.
1. Im currently running the latest version of the MYHero rom for my 32A
2. I have tested all the soon to mentioned things on "Cyanogens" latest rom as well.
I read so many times before hand that having a Task killer on the phone was essential to the experience and all that. Now no disrespect to anyone using one or that thinks its important but i wish i would have never even downloaded one. I read a post online saying that everything would run much faster and battery life would be better if we didnt use one so i gave it a go.
And what do you know.. so far its been 2 weeks and i have no task killers installed and the performance has been GREAT! I really couldn't believe it and felt really stupid for a moment Trust me, if your phone is slow or laggy or the battery is depleting faster than normal i believe that that is mostly related to a bad application that you downloaded. As some apps poll data for no reason in the background. I only have the essentials installed that i use on a daily basis.
Battery : I now am getting pretty reasonable battery life out of the HTC Magic. Maybe 22 hours running with some heavy use.
I have the brightness at 50 %. Network on 2g and i turn off the mobile data when i dont need my emails pushed to me through Gmail. I also make about 2 hours worth of phone calls and send off 30-40 texts. As well as Gtalking for about an hour. Light web surfing depending on what i need to know.
My advice after trying everything would be to keep email on push if thats what you want ofcourse and just set everything else like facebook etc to poll less frequently. I dont know about you but 22 hours of battery life on a smart phone is pretty reasonable in my book. At least with whats out there. The only phone i know of that has a better battery is the Blackberry which i own for work but i hate it
Well that is the end of my first post here and i hope that it helps anyone out there.
Cheers.. Feel free to leave comments or ask anything.

no battery life with the 2.2 update

My battery made it to 1:00 o'clock today with the new 2.2 update that i did last night. It normally lasts till 11 - 12 at night. Whats up with that?
FYI - All the same apps,widgets, and settings
**UPDATE**
Doing a factory reset fixed the problem for me!!

opie2l said:
My battery made it to 1:00 o'clock today with the new 2.2 update that i did last night. It normally lasts till 11 - 12 at night. Whats up with that?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Strange, I'm sitting at 75% after 5 hours off the charger and using it for moderate text usage (probably less than 80 messages today). Usually around this time it's sitting closer to 60%.

i have the .3 update and went from about 24 hours to about 8-10 hours. Battery life cut in half. My friend who has .3 is having same issue too. So much for increasing battery life.

formulabird said:
i have the .3 update and went from about 24 hours to about 8-10 hours. Battery life cut in half. My friend who has .3 is having same issue too. So much for increasing battery life.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Wow. Have you searched the forum to see if anyone else has the same issue? If not I hope it's not an isolated incident. Then again if it's isolated maybe you can get support on it better...? Good luck finding a solution.

You gave us zero information to help you. So thus, you will not get any help.
There are about a billion threads on here about battery life and how to tweak it. When you flashed 2.2 you will need to do those steps again.

yeah some people are reporting bad battery life after update. most people i know are on .3. don't know if .6 fixes this hopefully we get update soon

I did a test last night. Dropped 13% between 1130 and 3:30am With wifi on (got up cause of baby), then only 10% between 330 and 8am with wifi off. So a drop of only 23% overnight.
That's with one exchange account, one gmail account (both syncing as items arrive), htc news set to not sync, but newsdesk and feedr both syncing. Facebook for htc set to sync contacts only.
Sent from my PC36100 using Tapatalk

I had the same issue on all 2.2 ROMs I tried.. i am now going through the apps one at a time to see which one is the issue.
right now I am 7 hours in and sitting at 75% very light use ( read about 7 emails, 5 new articles and little to no Web surfing). installed 10s so far other than the standard with Fresh latest ROM that is.

I've actually had very good battery life, I'm running the .3 release. Battery life for me has been very comparable to running Baked Snack 9.6, with its underclocking/undervolting power save features. Moderate use of the phone for 8 hours (wifi, browsing websites here and there, one navigation route, texting, bunch of short phone calls, playing some games), my battery was around 65 or so, same as I had before for similar usage.
I did do a full wipe though, and haven't calibrated my battery since updating.

Aridon said:
You gave us zero information to help you. So thus, you will not get any help.
There are about a billion threads on here about battery life and how to tweak it. When you flashed 2.2 you will need to do those steps again.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I am just stating a observation on my part. And i know all the little tricks of how to get better battery life. But like i said, before the update i was getting a full day of battery and now after the update i am getting half. With the same settings and the usage on my part.

opie2l said:
I am just stating a observation on my part. And i know all the little tricks of how to get better battery life. But like i said, before the update i was getting a full day of battery and now after the update i am getting half. With the same settings and the usage on my part.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
maybe because some of the htc sync stuff that you might have disabled before re-enabled.
Check that.
-mark

diomark said:
maybe because some of the htc sync stuff that you might have disabled before re-enabled.
Check that.
-mark
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, i already went through all the settings last night.

Aridon said:
You gave us zero information to help you. So thus, you will not get any help.
There are about a billion threads on here about battery life and how to tweak it. When you flashed 2.2 you will need to do those steps again.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is not directed at you personally, but at the words you chose to use:
I am sick and tired of "tweaks and settings and cutting things off." I used them and got over 30 hours on both DamageControl and Fresh.
I paid Sprint/HTC good money for this awesome phone (and am committed to pay them a whole lot more over the course of the next 22 months).
While I can understand the 4G thing, why should I have to cut off Data-WiFi-Bluetooth, power down the CPU, not use it a lot in order to get... in short, drive it like a Toyota Prius when then phone is billed as a Maserati? Why should I have to try out this app and that app(Overclock widget, SetCPU, System Manager, Task Killer, Autostarts etc which all use battery too) in order to get the phone to do what it should have done on June 4, 2010?
Most of the battery draining apps and widgets come pre-loaded with sense (i.e. the Favorite widget, Friendstream etc). Why should I have to resort to rooting my phone or not using it in order to get the thing to last all day?
I'm keeping my EVO cause I love the device, but maybe Sprint/HTC need a little of the medicine that Jobs/Apple is getting in the form of lawsuits due to over-promising/under-delivering.
/off_my_soap_box

You should send that rant to HTC and Sprint... I think we all stand behind you on that one.

there are lots of reasons a battery might not last. there are way to many tweaks out there which is why you have to do it yourself.
First set the phone up like you normally have it and test the battery life. if you can live with it your good. if not start looking at the settings. Read the tweaks but don't just take them as golden as everyone is different and uses their phone different. Ask yourself if you real need that setting. (I like my screen time out at 2 min. do I need it NO 1 min is fine). When done with the settings move to the apps. load the flat ROM no apps and run for a hour and track your battery life. then add the apps 1 at a time or in small groups and let run an hour and track. there are was if find what apps are using the CPU or Battery but many do this normally and yet don't effect the battery much. Only way i have found is old school add them one at a time. When you find a bad one decide if you need it or can find a replacement.
I am done with Sense as Launcher Pro Plus is awesome and now with the only Widget I was missing (Calendar). Once I done going through my app list I will create a new thread in General to list the bad application I found unless someone else has or does before I done that is.

From what I have gathered from using .3 that apps auto sync/update on their own now with "always on mobile data" turned off. if you use advanced task killer, do a kill of all apps then turn the screen off. If you wait for a few minutes and turn the screen back on you will notice that apps like news, messages, Twitter, Facebook clock, weather and others will be active. From what I gather the decrease in battery life is from apps like those will send/receive data on 2.2 while on 2.1 apps would not update/sync until you manually refreshed or opened the app, as long as you didn't have "always on mobile data" enabled.
Edit: this reason is why I uninstalled fring. Just too bad I cannot uninstalled qik.

trojandnc said:
This is not directed at you personally, but at the words you chose to use:
I am sick and tired of "tweaks and settings and cutting things off." I used them and got over 30 hours on both DamageControl and Fresh.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It is a mini-computer. You don't use it like a "phone" anymore. You shouldn't expect more than 15-20 hours on it. Do you get angry when your laptop runs out of life after 5-6 hours? If you don't want to do tweaks, then don't. Keep a micro-USB at your desk at work and charge it there. I, myself, enjoy rooting so I don't mind tweaking it. I also get 30 hours of life on it due to this. If you don't like to do that, you get what you put into it.
trojandnc said:
I paid Sprint/HTC good money for this awesome phone (and am committed to pay them a whole lot more over the course of the next 22 months).
While I can understand the 4G thing, why should I have to cut off Data-WiFi-Bluetooth, power down the CPU, not use it a lot in order to get... in short, drive it like a Toyota Prius when then phone is billed as a Maserati? Why should I have to try out this app and that app(Overclock widget, SetCPU, System Manager, Task Killer, Autostarts etc which all use battery too) in order to get the phone to do what it should have done on June 4, 2010?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Again, you have unrealistic expectations for a smart phone it seems. All I have is Set CPU running on my phone with Fresh 3.0.1 and works just fine. I still use my phone like a "Maserati", it just lowers the CPU when the screen is powered off. That is like saying you want your car to idle when you get home at night until the next morning. It doesn't change how you drive it, just how you store it in the garage.
trojandnc said:
Most of the battery draining apps and widgets come pre-loaded with sense (i.e. the Favorite widget, Friendstream etc). Why should I have to resort to rooting my phone or not using it in order to get the thing to last all day?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You don't have to use them though. You can remove friendstream and go with either the twitter or FB update app or go without either and just check facebook like anyone else. As far as favorites go, you don't have to use that either. You can just make shortcuts to each person's phone number on that same screen if you think that is sucking all your battery life. There are always other options or fixes, but again you expect the phone to come out of the box perfect without any customization. You are getting away from what Android really is. Something tells me the Iphone would have been more your liking since it is built around lack of true customization. This isn't a rip, but just saying if you want cookie cutter phone reliability, it is hard to beat Apple. If you want the ability to tinker with the phone, the power to change things, and the power to make your phone yours, then that is more Android.
trojandnc said:
I'm keeping my EVO cause I love the device, but maybe Sprint/HTC need a little of the medicine that Jobs/Apple is getting in the form of lawsuits due to over-promising/under-delivering.
/off_my_soap_box
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I can understand your frustration, but nothing was ever promised to us on purchase. I don't remember anywhere seeing something saying the battery would last 30+ hours out of the box. Apple had an actual structural issue with their phone, that is why they had the lawsuits and PR nightmare. This is just the phone doing what most would probably expect(at least anyone who had a G1 or Hero or any of the earlier Android phones). You love the device enough to keep it even with your frustration, something tells me it works quite well for you. But I have yet to see any over-promising/under-delivering on the Evo myself.
And no, I don't work for Sprint or HTC. And no offense meant to you as a person, just I didn't understand your motives on your frustration. Guess we will have different opinions on the Evo so far.

diomark said:
maybe because some of the htc sync stuff that you might have disabled before re-enabled.
Check that.
-mark
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I had the same battery problem after updating to 2.2. After 3 hours my battery was at 50%. Normally it'd be at 50% after 9 to 10 hours of usage.
I did find that some settings had been reset. Once I turned off all the crap syncing, gtalk logging in, Sprint Zone, etc my battery usage has seemed to flatten out.
I made it an hour and only dropped 2% which is much more like it. This is all with very little usage going on.

Buy a new battery! Best solution!
No joda!
Sent from my EVO!

very funny just pluged my phone in using flipz newest after 19 hours
make sure you are signed out of googletalk !!

[Q] So how is the device by default?

I really wanted to get a Droid Pro, the device to me seemed perfect the way it was out of the box.
I currently have an Xperia X1, nice device but I had to run a custom ROM to get the experience I wanted. And I didnt find the right one until a few months ago (2 years searching...). And even the ROM I'm using isnt 100% reliable.
Now I'm looking around these boards and I see people looking for upgrades. Is the original experience that bad? is it slow? Does it crash? Etc. I'd like to know because if I get this device then I'll want to use the official upgrade but nothing else.

I guess it depends on what you are used to.
For me it seems that overall the use is fine. Especially since I froze a few unneeded apps.
But the battery life is horrendous. Ill eventually buy an extended battery because I hear good things about it but stock is horrible.
As for the pro itself, I can't complain really. But this is my first droid so I have nothing to compare to.
I had simply hoped I could customize a bit more.
In general I am not noticing any unresponsiveness since I froze some apps, added apps to the auto end list and started using a cache cleaner.
My only complaint is the battery, but that complaint is a big one.
In battery saver mode, using hardly any apps and making 15 minutes worth of calls lasts me 10 hours max.
Standby time of 13 days my @$$...
Sent from my DROID PRO using XDA App

dutchbastard said:
I guess it depends on what you are used to.
For me it seems that overall the use is fine. Especially since I froze a few unneeded apps.
But the battery life is horrendous. Ill eventually buy an extended battery because I hear good things about it but stock is horrible.
As for the pro itself, I can't complain really. But this is my first droid so I have nothing to compare to.
I had simply hoped I could customize a bit more.
In general I am not noticing any unresponsiveness since I froze some apps, added apps to the auto end list and started using a cache cleaner.
My only complaint is the battery, but that complaint is a big one.
In battery saver mode, using hardly any apps and making 15 minutes worth of calls lasts me 10 hours max.
Standby time of 13 days my @$$...
Sent from my DROID PRO using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What about your data connection, is it on all the time? I can't imagine a new device having a worse battery then my 2 year old Xperia (which doesn't even have the greatest battery in the world, and it has a higher res screen as well).
But apart from the battery life your happy with the default device? Calling, text messaging, browsing, it's all snappy?

Battery life would be my only complaint as well, too. Other than that, I love the thing. Even without any customization, it was fast.
I do wish developers would pay more attention to it, but everybody wants the teeny bopper phones these days, so I can't blame them for favoring that crowd.

Ronnet said:
What about your data connection, is it on all the time? I can't imagine a new device having a worse battery then my 2 year old Xperia (which doesn't even have the greatest battery in the world, and it has a higher res screen as well).
But apart from the battery life your happy with the default device? Calling, text messaging, browsing, it's all snappy?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah 3G is always running, though in maximum battery saver mode it should shut down any data reception 15 minutes after the screen blacks out.
Come to think of it, perhaps it doesn't and this is my issue...hmm...
I have to hand it to Motorola though, 2 weeks after I got the Pro I chatted with their support to check for a solution, and they were kind enough to send me a battery free of charge. Stock battery, but still, I now have an extra battery in case I need it.
Anyway, yeah everything is snappy. I am not dropping calls, browsing is excellent (I use Dolphin HD for the tabs and addons) and text-ing works great.
I use Handcent for txt so I could set a different tone for some of my contacts.
I did have an issue with losing phone numbers, but I'm not sure what the cause is of that. Perhaps it's something I did myself.
But When I got the phone I connected to my old phone through bluetooth to get all my contacts, I then connected and synced to facebook so all contacts were linked to FB as well.
Somewhere along the line after wards I lost all my phone numbers and all I had left was the info from my FB friends.
Like I said I don't know what caused it and so I'm not sure if I can prevent it from happening again.
This may be something for you to look out for.
You know, it would seem I'm not that happy with my Pro, but that couldn't be further from the truth.
For one, I love Droid and everything that comes with it. Apps, widgets, games, browsing, everything.
Two, I got my pro for free since I went through Target.
Three, every phone has it's flaws. I can not imagine anyone not having at least 1 rather big complaint about their phone.
They simply take it as it is because they know it is not really a big deal in the long run.
I really wanted the Droid 2, but it was expensive for me. But I have no doubt that I would have a complaint about that phone as well.
So yeah, I am happy with my Pro.

I know every phone has its issues. But freezes and lots of slow downs are issues too great to have, in those cases I rather have another, more reliable, phone (I know they are out there, like my old Motorola KRZR).
Naturally smartphones are more complex then regular phones so more issues are to be expected but the problems I've had with the Xperia are some I don't want to repeat. Important phone calls that were cut when the phone freezed and text messages that took forever to sent because the phone had another slow down.
Seems the Droid pro is better then that, otherwise you couldn't be THAT happy with it. I'll have to look for a good importer though, I live in Europe. Netherlands to be precise, so being helped by a dutchbastard is always nice

Oh but I live in new York so I am of little help to you.
But yeah you are right. Problems like freezes are not the type of issue one can live with.
At first when I got my pro I got app after app and about a week in I had issues with slow desktop scrolling.
Then as I said I froze some apps and added all the non important ones to the auto end list and haven't had a problem since.
Do keep in mind that I've only had my phone for about 6 weeks now.
But I like it a lot. Initially I wanted the droid 2, but couldn't afford it.
At this point I think the only thing the druid 2 can offer me is a better keyboard layout wise.
But this thing does everything I wanted and more.
Sent from my DROID PRO using XDA App

I have a Droid Pro and I LOVE it. It's completely turned me on to the Android world.

I'll second the extended battery. I had trouble making it through a day on the stock battery, with extended I'm usually at about 30-40% by the end of the day.

I actually prefer to use the Droid Pro stock. Obviously there are advantages to to rooting. My main reason for rooting my inc, fascinate, D2, any phone I had really were the roms, wifi tether, etc. The advantages obviously outweigh the disadvantages but developers obviously aren't working with the Pro a ton so I havent needed the wifi tether, you can delete the bloatware and I did with my X and my D2 but I like using the Pro stock. It runs fine, Really, just my opinion.

justin344 said:
I'll second the extended battery. I had trouble making it through a day on the stock battery, with extended I'm usually at about 30-40% by the end of the day.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
hi mate,
Hope you are right ... with stock battery cant last more than 6/7 hrs...with screen to autobr., killing all apps after screen out, nothing running appart from sync services for my mails,weather,facebook and twiter....nothing else, no calls, no msgs,no inet, no music , ...nothing and with that last only6/7 hrs......
so I really hope that extended battery that I ordered will fix my problem,,, I am happy to charge the device every night as long as it last trough the day and days are long- 15/16 hrs...
if leave this aside I love the device even the stock software is not to bad...
just really hope that the extended battery will make it happen ....if not ... I will sell it...((

One week: Nice phone

Had my Atrix a little over a week and like it a lot.
Not rooted.
I get 2 days on the battery -- about 25% at the end of the second evening. I leave WiFi on and GPS mostly off (turning it on only when I need it). I have set the task manager to shut things down but, of course, various Moto-stuff continues to run. Display on auto brightness. I use it quite a bit for email and web browsing but, I'm sure, much less than others.
A couple of days after I got it, I was driving over the mountains, going in and out of any coverage, and it went black and unresponsive. Seemed like it would vibrate occasionally but I needed to pull the battery to bring it back. No problem like that since, even driving the same road the other direction. That was soon after the upgrade, so maybe it needed to be rebooted again.
Occasionally it becomes unresponsive in the middle of doing something complex in a new app -- like freezing in a context menu. Putting it to sleep with the sleep key and then bringing it back makes it responsive again. Not a real problem but certainly a symptom of immature software -- as expected.
I find the screen to be excellent.
Most recently I was using a BB Bold 9000. This phone, with an Otterbox Commuter, is considerably thinner than the 9000 with an Otterbox on it. I like that. I miss the real BB keyboard but the future is clearly non-physical keyboards (not necessarily screens).
Best: It can be turned up to be the loudest phone I have ever owned. More distortion at top volume (as expected) but having the ability to turn up the ring volume and the phone volume / speakerphone volume is excellent.
Next best: Easily replaceable battery, including excellent approach to the back cover. I wouldn't own a phone that needed to be sent back to the factory when the battery gets tired. My experience on batteries is that they start noticeably downhill as soon as one year. When that happens with this one, I will buy a second battery and have one new battery and one tired battery. I know some people like the iPhone case design but I believe the Atrix case / back cover is a first-class design as well -- just a totally different set of design goals.

The atrix is a really good phone I don't understand why people hate on it so much.
It could be even better with an unlocked bootloader but I mean its still crazy good.

I am wrapping my 4rth complete day. My experiences are pretty darn similar to your own.
So far I get two days per full charge. This is with lots of playing around and downloading of apps and files.
I have had it sort of freeze a couple of times when playing with many newly downloaded apps one after another. But nothing a quick lok and unlock didnt fix.
This phone is unreal fast!
The minute I got my phone dropped of by fed ex, I plugged it in to the wall outlet. When it was 100% charged, I downloaded and intstalled the update. Other than that, I havent installed anything else but apps and widgets.

kdspiv said:
...
So far I get two days per full charge. This is with lots of playing around and downloading of apps and files.
...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Do you guys have push mail set up, or are you polling? I'm at ~35% after being unplugged for 9 hours with pretty heavy use. lots of screen on time, live wallpapers, wifi on/off, lots of apps/data downloading, mp3s, etc.
Awesome phone, no complaints at all though!

stewartsoda said:
Do you guys have push mail set up, or are you polling? I'm at ~35% after being unplugged for 9 hours with pretty heavy use. lots of screen on time, live wallpapers, wifi on/off, lots of apps/data downloading, mp3s, etc.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Email=gmail is essentially default except ringtone=silent. I have always assumed that it is polled but googling it I see that some people say it is push -- surprise to me.
I remember reducing the frequency of data requests but can't find that menu right now...
I often use the phone several times an hour for email, FB, calendar, web. Never used it for mp3 and only once for some YouTube.

RacecarBMW said:
The atrix is a really good phone I don't understand why people hate on it so much.
It could be even better with an unlocked bootloader but I mean its still crazy good.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm not sure either. I ***** and moan about damn near everything and I have no complaints about this device, other than the bootloader. That'd bring a ton of dev interest to the Atrix community but oh well, it does everything else flawlessly. And there isn't even really much I'd use if the devs unlocked the bootloader to be honest.
I'm someone who *****es about everything and if I'm content, I can't see how others can possibly make any complaints.

airprakken said:
Email=gmail is essentially default except ringtone=silent. I have always assumed that it is polled but googling it I see that some people say it is push -- surprise to me.
...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Gmail is set up as push by default, but Android calls it "sync" instead of push. The setting is pretty hidden in Blur, I can't figure out where to get to it except for the Power Widget I have on my homescreen.

I get a full day, no problem, and end up at about %40+ when I charge it for a few hours in the morning before going to work. I have 3 push e-mail accounts, use WiFi most of the day, and browse the web once in a while. Use Google Reader to get time to pass during those painfully long meetings.
But I've been hard pressed to wear the battery out in a day with my "typical" use. Battery lasts much longer than my Nexus One and leaps longer then the old G1.
Just my $0.02 worth, YMMV.

jmastrol said:
Battery lasts much longer than my Nexus One and leaps longer then the old G1.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, indeed. I had a G1 to experiment with some Android development. It's battery depletion rate, even when dark, made it almost useless.
The new Atrix battery is better than my Blackberry Bold 9000 with a one year old battery -- much better than I expected.

airprakken said:
Yes, indeed. I had a G1 to experiment with some Android development. It's battery depletion rate, even when dark, made it almost useless.
The new Atrix battery is better than my Blackberry Bold 9000 with a one year old battery -- much better than I expected.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I agree, I don't know how well Moto was able to optimize the Tegra 2 chip and various electronics but the 1930 mAh battery surely helped.

Please delete.

Deleted......

"8. Frequently use the native task manager to free memory.. Long press on the big button to access task manager."
This is wrong advice. This actually increases battery use. The frequently used applications stay in memory so that they will not be loaded again when needed. If you purge the memory like you recommend, these apps will have to be reloaded every time, which significantly increases battery usage.

Deleted......

jangomango said:
No doing this once in a while will kill off any apps you thought were closed.. Quite often I exit a game to find its still there hogging memory.
But thanks for the criticism.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's not wasting memory, it's just sitting there doing nothing in case you launch it soon again. If that memory is needed by another program, Android releases it immediately.
Try this yourself. Launch a game, then exit. You'll see the game still in memory. Then launch other apps and games. You'll see that the first game is no longer in memory, because Android saw that that part of the memory is needed elsewhere. It's all automatic and it works well. There's no need to fiddle with it. As I said, fiddling with it actually increases battery usage, because frequently used apps have to be reloaded every single time, instead of being called back from memory.

Deleted......

aydc said:
It's not wasting memory, it's just sitting there doing nothing in case you launch it soon again. If that memory is needed by another program, Android releases it immediately.
Try this yourself. Launch a game, then exit. You'll see the game still in memory. Then launch other apps and games. You'll see that the first game is no longer in memory, because Android saw that that part of the memory is needed elsewhere. It's all automatic and it works well. There's no need to fiddle with it. As I said, fiddling with it actually increases battery usage, because frequently used apps have to be reloaded every single time, instead of being called back from memory.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have to disagree with this. Quite often I have noticed that after playing some game my battery still keeps draining like hell.
I know that Android is SUPPOSED to work as you said it would, but there are quite a lot of rogue apps which don't behave like that.
So unless you are 100% sure that your apps are not rogue apps in any possible situation I also have to suggest to use the "kill all" once in a while.
I don't do it often, maybe twice a day but it helps.

Deleted.....

I have done most of the things you mentioned, but my battery is still appalling. I am using VillainROM 1.4, KF2. I really want to fix this, I heard some people are struggling to get 12 hours from their phone, I am one of those.

twitceh said:
I have done most of the things you mentioned, but my battery is still appalling. I am using VillainROM 1.4, KF2. I really want to fix this, I heard some people are struggling to get 12 hours from their phone, I am one of those.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I agree, yesterday I barely used my phone. 1 hour and 40 minutes of screen on time, 3G, Sync, Whatsapping most of the time that I used it, wifi, too. Downloaded a few apps maybe 10 minutes of games. It was at 40% when I went to bed 15 hours later. I barely touched it! LOL.
I don't mind though, this is a FANTASTIC phone. I wouldn't change it for any other phone at the moment. I will probably get an extended battery case from Samsung in the near future. It's a case AND a battery ALL IN ONE! Woopie! lol.

twitceh said:
I have done most of the things you mentioned, but my battery is still appalling. I am using VillainROM 1.4, KF2. I really want to fix this, I heard some people are struggling to get 12 hours from their phone, I am one of those.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I am starting to believe that it is a hardware fault..If lucky it could be because of the battery. You could try to order another battery and see how it goes.
If not so lucky then its something else in the phone which is almost impossible to fix at home.

jangomango said:
I appreciate you clogging my new thread up with your opinion.. Nice one..
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Click to collapse
I have no personal problem with you, but if you open up a thread for newcomers, you shouldn't give misleading information. Thinking task killers improve battery is a telltale sign of noobness.
For newcomers who really want to learn about memory management in Android and the truth about task killers, I recommend these two articles:
http://geekfor.me/faq/you-shouldnt-be-using-a-task-killer-with-android/
http://www.droid-den.com/android-guides/android-guide-should-i-use-a-task-killer

jangomango said:
FFS.. my point is.. Some apps you only use once in a blue moon like Games. You dont need these still sitting there..
I appreciate you clogging my new thread up with your opinion.. Nice one..
Plus I find it makes my phone snappier after a good purge.. And FYI I still get over 1 and a half days from the battery..
Is there any chance you can get off my **** now?
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Click to collapse
Pretty sure with an attitude like that you'd be lucky to have someone on your ****.

My simple solution. Buy juice defender ultimate. Its cheap only less than 9 dollars. Set it to extreme and configure each app. Then go to market and search 'gothic'. Select the darkest and most plain black wallpaper. You are done! I am getting 2 days on stock rom with this setup. With about 20% of the time surfing the net via HSDPA or 3g.
Sent from my GT-I9100 using XDA Premium App

aydc said:
I have no personal problem with you, but if you open up a thread for newcomers, you shouldn't give misleading information. Thinking task killers improve battery is a telltale sign of noobness.
For newcomers who really want to learn about memory management in Android and the truth about task killers, I recommend these two articles:
http://geekfor.me/faq/you-shouldnt-be-using-a-task-killer-with-android/
http://www.droid-den.com/android-guides/android-guide-should-i-use-a-task-killer
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'd have to agree. Task killers are generally a bad idea.
Sure, there are poorly coded apps that stay in memory and use up CPU cycles. Those are apps that needs to be closed via task killers. But is that really the solution?
What you should do is NOT use such apps. If you do continue to use those apps, you're just supporting the developer for his poor coding. In that case, you're on your own.
OP: Try not to get too antagonistic. This is after all, a discussion forum.
Here's an analogy just for fun....
General consensus: You don't need a case for your phone.
Argument: You do need a case for your phone because SOME phones have antennae issues and a case will alleviate those issues.
Weird solution: Buy those phones wtih antennae issues and then also buy a case.
Real solution: Don't buy those phones with antennae issues! (wink wink)

ohyeahar said:
I'd have to agree. Task killers are generally a bad idea.
Sure, there are poorly coded apps that stay in memory and use up CPU cycles. Those are apps that needs to be closed via task killers. But is that really the solution?
What you should do is NOT use such apps. If you do continue to use those apps, you're just supporting the developer for his poor coding. In that case, you're on your own.
OP: Try not to get too antagonistic. This is after all, a discussion forum.
Here's an analogy just for fun....
General consensus: You don't need a case for your phone.
Argument: You do need a case for your phone because SOME phones have antennae issues and a case will alleviate those issues.
Weird solution: Buy those phones wtih antennae issues and then also buy a case.
Real solution: Don't buy those phones with antennae issues! (wink wink)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
+1 to this, task manager was a good idea in the old days (eclair & froyo), but gingerbread does a great job in memory management, there is no need for "task management kill" everytime you exit. Although I am a bit conservative on "frequently killing apps in gingerbread will actually decrease your battery life", but certainly, doing so will not improve it.

Using the 'Clear Memory' feature in Task Manager will stop and kill everything. Some widgets, apps will stop work. So that feature is extremely kiddish imo.
But using ATK won't do it as it has an Ignore list, if its set up properly then its the best.
Regards.
Sent from GT-I9100

jangomango said:
With all gripes over battery life, I thought it would be a good idea to create a list of steps for newcomers that will help make battery life better.
With these steps I am getting well over 24 hours.
Feel free to add some and I will update the OP.
1. Flash a rom.. I'm using Lightening Rom 2.0 with KG1
2. Flash a kernel.. I use Chainfires KG1
3. Use Titanium backup to freeze any crap you dont need. There is a guide on here already about this.
4. Disable fast dormancy.. *#*#9900#*#*
5. Wifi Sleep Policy set this to Screen Off.. Settings>Wireless & Networks>WiFi Networks>Menu>Advanced>WiFi Sleep Policy
6. Manage your radios.. Use the power widget to turn off BlueTooth,WiFi, GPS, even 3G when not needed.
7. Screen brightness.. Set this as low as you can whilst still being readable.
8. Frequently use the native task manager to free memory.. Long press on the big button to access task manager.
9. Monitor what apps are using battery.. Menu>Settings>About Phone>Battery Usage
10. Use a static wallpaper.. Live wallpapers are nice but draw more power than a still image. Dark backgrounds are best.
11. Full overnight charge with phone off.. I found this makes a difference.
12. Change the frequency at which your mail and widgets update. Instead of 30 minutes or whatever try 1 hour.
13. Turn off AutoSync when not needed. Menu>Settings>Accounts &Sync. Note.. This will do what it says and stop any app or widget syncing though..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'll only comment on the points I can share my opinion with:
4. didn't change a damn thing for me regarding the battery, it just made switching betweens 3g and H slower.
5. will try that, but won't it turn wifi off when the screen is off thus disabling any sync via wifi when screen is off?
6. common sense not to leave everything on all the time
7. auto brightness does a good job for me, a mate uses lowest brightness and has no advantages besides having problems reading from the screen sometimes
8. just use it to end apps/games that won't stop after using them like KiesAir
10. true
11. doesn't make a difference
12. sure but whoever needs (e.g. for work) push (like me) will have to skip that
13. see 12.
fenguinpower said:
My simple solution. Buy juice defender ultimate. Its cheap only less than 9 dollars. Set it to extreme and configure each app. Then go to market and search 'gothic'. Select the darkest and most plain black wallpaper. You are done! I am getting 2 days on stock rom with this setup. With about 20% of the time surfing the net via HSDPA or 3g.
Sent from my GT-I9100 using XDA Premium App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
juice defender is my last option to squeeze more time out of my phone. still with my general usage I get around 36h our of one charge, mostly between 24h and 48h depending on how much I use it AND how good the reception is (better reception -> more battery life)

OP deleted.. This was supposed to be a usefull guide for newcomers but soon descended into a viscious disection of all my points. **** you all. Twats.

jangomango said:
OP deleted.. This was supposed to be a usefull guide for newcomers but soon descended into a viscious disection of all my points. **** you all. Twats.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You don't like healthy debate? These guys were quite polite, you were the one who spat his dummy out.

**** you aswell you **** jockey.