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Help new to droid, have a couple questions

O

offbyone

Lurker
I just retired my iphone and got the Incredible 2. Honestly, so far I am not impressed. When I got the iphone, I was able to just pick it up and go. The droid is not nearly as intuitive. I was told the battery was much better, but so far I am half way down with 4 hours of use. I just ordered the more expensive battery, so hopefully that makes a difference. One really annoying thing is the screen locks and goes blank constantly, maybe I am hitting the lock button accidentally, I can't figure out why. I increased the lock time but it still does it so there must be another issue.

A couple topics I could use some insight on:

Location Services: I was trying to use the google maps app to get driving directions. It seems like I need to turn on some type of location services to do so. There are 3 different types of location services. Which one should I be using? Keep in mind I am not keen about anyone tracking my location.

App Overload: My new phone came with more apps than I even had on my old phone. There is so much crap on here I don't want, but I can't seem to uninstall it. Stuff like nfl, blockbuster, V Cast..., etc. Am I stuck with all these apps that are loaded upon purchase?

Music: I like having music on my phone. I of course liked itunes very much on the iphone. What do you recommend for the droid?

thanks gang
 
I can only answer a couple of these. As far as location, I turn on the location for both Google services. I have not idea about which one gives more tracking information since I don't really care. But having those on will definitely allow driving directions. Not sure what the verizon checkbox does.

As far as bloatware. Root the phone and delete it, or (as I choose to do), ignore it. Verizon is notorious for putting crap on phones NOBODY wants.

My personal iTunes alternative: amazon music w/ the new cloud service.

I know that isn't much help but since there are no responses, it's a start.
 
to your location question:
verizon gives location by using cell towers to approximate
google services uses wifi (i guess hotspots?) to approximate location
and gps uses the built-in gps of your phone to give you location.

as far as nav apps go, i think you would want to use gps standalone.
 
ckelly33 said:
I can only answer a couple of these. As far as location, I turn on the location for both Google services. I have not idea about which one gives more tracking information since I don't really care. But having those on will definitely allow driving directions. Not sure what the verizon checkbox does.

As far as bloatware. Root the phone and delete it, or (as I choose to do), ignore it. Verizon is notorious for putting crap on phones NOBODY wants.

My personal iTunes alternative: amazon music w/ the new cloud service.

I know that isn't much help but since there are no responses, it's a start.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the response.
I guess I will have to study up on this rooting thing. Does it void your warranty?

I guess I will just give in and turn on location services.

I am not really thrilled about amazon. I have multiple ipods so I am somewhat tied to itunes or at least having a local library so I need to look at some other alternatives. Is there even a default music player with droid?

bik2101 said:
to your location question:
verizon gives location by using cell towers to approximate
google services uses wifi (i guess hotspots?) to approximate location
and gps uses the built-in gps of your phone to give you location.

as far as nav apps go, i think you would want to use gps standalone.
Click to expand...

thanks.
 
If you have a home computer with music on it... Audio Galaxy is the greatest thing ever! It has to be in mp3 format but its not too hard to convert if its not. It streams your music so your dont have to use up storage on your phone.
 
Keep in mind, keeping the GPS antenna on all the time will greatly consume your battery. I would put a toggle on one of your screens so you can quickly flip it on and off when needing to use Nav.

Concerning the screen locking so quickly if you go to Settings > Display > Screen Timeout you can adjust there. I like to keep mine at 1 minute.

There are other things you can do to get more battery life like only using wifi or mobile but not both atthe same time, really no need to keep both antennas going at same time. You can make sure your screen brightness is on auto, full bright all the time kills the battery.
 
Just got my new DINC 2 last Friday. I am very happy with it except for the Speaker Phone, it's not loud enough and the sound quality is poor! As far as Battery Life, I have been getting 14 - 16 hours between charges which is Great for Smart Phones and I have GPS running 24/7. And for the GPS Issue, Verizon told me last week that they knew of this problem and has contacted Google and Google told them it would be fixed within two weeks. If everyone would call Verizon and complain I believe it would help to get them off their butts and getting this fixed. App Overload, Verizon really went a little wild on all the apps that cannot be deleted unless you root. Music, I have an app that allows me to download free music and I use the Music app that came with the phone.

Hope this helps!
 
bekind said:
Keep in mind, keeping the GPS antenna on all the time will greatly consume your battery. I would put a toggle on one of your screens so you can quickly flip it on and off when needing to use Nav.

Concerning the screen locking so quickly if you go to Settings > Display > Screen Timeout you can adjust there. I like to keep mine at 1 minute.

There are other things you can do to get more battery life like only using wifi or mobile but not both atthe same time, really no need to keep both antennas going at same time. You can make sure your screen brightness is on auto, full bright all the time kills the battery.
Click to expand...

Are you telling me the GPS is constantly sucking juice even when the apps that use it aren't being used? That is hard to believe, unless I am missing something, it would represent a very poor design.

What is a toggle?
 
You can find a toggle under Widgets when you customize the screen. If you haven't customized your 'look' yet, it is put on the 1st ot second screen to the left of home by default.

GPS does drain battery but I leave it on 100% of the time and still get the quoted 14-16 hours of heavy to moderate use....or more.

As far as iTunes, check out the app DoubleTwist. I haven't used it but it supposedly bridges the gap between itunes and android. For me, I run iTunes for my iPods still but I took about 12-13GB of my FAVORITES and uploaded them to amazon cloud. It really doesn't interfere with my iPod life.
 
Yes, if the GPS antenna is on it will consume battery power. I only use mine when recording a track or using navigation or the occasional picture geocoding. Other than that I hardly every use it.
 
Leaving the gps on does not consume battery power. Only when an app runs that needs gps does it use the battery. I always leave mine on so its available quickly. There lots of threads in the forum discussing this.
 
bekind said:
Keep in mind, keeping the GPS antenna on all the time will greatly consume your battery. I would put a toggle on one of your screens so you can quickly flip it on and off when needing to use Nav.

Concerning the screen locking so quickly if you go to Settings > Display > Screen Timeout you can adjust there. I like to keep mine at 1 minute.

There are other things you can do to get more battery life like only using wifi or mobile but not both atthe same time, really no need to keep both antennas going at same time. You can make sure your screen brightness is on auto, full bright all the time kills the battery.
Click to expand...

1). Leaving GPS on does not consume the battery unless an application is using GPS, eg. navigation. Other applications will call in to GPS periodically, such as a weather widget that is set to use the current location - in that case, using GPS every few hours for a few seconds is not going to make a difference in your battery life.

2). If wifi is active and you are connected, 3G is off. They are mutually exclusive. So no need to turn off 3G when you are connected to wifi. However if you have left your wifi area and are using 3G, you can save some battery life by turning off the wifi (so that it isn't hunting for a connection).
 
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