Here's the long form of my problem:
Perhaps foolishly, in early July I recommended the Moment to a friend who needed a new cell phone. Shortly after the 30-day exchange period expired, he asked me about exchanging his phone because the battery life was
atrocious--his phone would only last about 8 hours with light use.
I immediately ordered for him an extra battery and stand-alone battery charger on eBay, but also began to research the issue. Part of my difficulty is that he works a lot of overtime, so I have no opportunity to perform one-by-one experiments with his phone. Instead, I have to compose in advance a list of everything I want to check and do. Moreover, I do not ordinarily load nonstandard firmware into cell phones, especially someone else's, so rooting is only a last resort, not an easy option.
The
akmd2 is a shocking bug that I am dismayed to find. I don't know whether that's his problem, but I will need to determine whether it is, and if so, whether I can fix it without rooting.
Another difficult issue is the need for automatic underclocking. PocketPCs have had this capability for many years, so I am very disappointed that the Moment apparently has no automatic underclocking algorithm or only an ineffective one. As far as I can tell, fixing this issue definitely requires rooting--a last resort.
I can try to tweak settings, but much of the advice on this issue is either contradictory or unacceptable. For example, it's absurd to turn off location capability on a phone that needs to be ready to double as a GPS at any moment. I've never turned off location on any of my phones (including my current Touch Pro 2) and I certainly shouldn't have to do so on his either. On the other hand, he never needs or uses WiFi, so that's not an issue.
I must again stress that his phone usage is rather light, so I have to believe that something major is
wrong. I should point out that his phone originally came with 1.5, and we upgraded it to 2.1 ourselves. Unfortunately, I did not think to clear its storage
after the upgrade. Doing so now is a possibility, but would cause him some disruption.
I ordered him
an 1800mah battery for the SGH-I900, but it's unclear whether it will work in the Moment or not. This was in addition to
a lesser battery specifically promised to work in the Moment.