Decisions, Decisions

[WozzaTT]

Well I'm coming up to 14 days with my Desire so need to decide whether to keep it or not.

I had almost decided that I would keep it until today - it charged overnight and I got to work and put it on my desk as usual. It was only an hour or so later that I glanced at it and noticed that it wasn't picking up wifi as usual. It detects about 6 signals where I work in the centre of Brum and it has always connected to BT Openzone since I've had it. BT Openzone was there but it wouldn't connect for some reason. What would be the reason for this?

Anyway, I didn't think much of it until I noticed I'd lost half of the battery charge by late morning. I had literally sent one text message, that was it. By 4pm it had closed down as the battery was flat. I had still only sent the one text.

I assume the juice had all gone because of it synchronising and pushing emails (I got 7 gmails during the day). Even though I've spent the better part of 2 weeks setting it up and going through all the menu options I've still managed to miss exactly where I set it to sync manually or just check for emails when I want it to. Would someone let me know please??!!

That aside, I'm really not sure I can live with a phone where you have to switch everything off to get through the day.One text message and flat by 4pm????

Can anyone persuade me to keep it, especially now the iphone 4 is out?!!

 

[grainysand]

Easily: the iPhone 4 will drop your calls if you hold its bottom-left corner in your hand. No really, look up Gizmodo/Engadget/et al. Not making this shit up.

That aside: when the phone is trying to get a signal and scanning repeatedly for network, either cell data or wifi, it'll lose battery more quickly. Try these--

1) Go into your network -> wifi settings. Press menu to bring up "Advanced." Go in there, select Wifi sleep policy. Choose "Never." This way it'll stop trying to drop the network and scan and etc over and over.
2) If you're not using wifi, turn it off.

For sync settings, Menu -> Settings -> Account and Sync should do it. On the Power Control widget, unpress the sync icon.

The Desire should be able to last about 16 hours with moderate-to-heavy use on stock voltage.

 

[WozzaTT]

Easily: the iPhone 4 will drop your calls if you hold its bottom-left corner in your hand. No really, look up Gizmodo/Engadget/et al. Not making this shit up.

That aside: when the phone is trying to get a signal and scanning repeatedly for network, either cell data or wifi, it'll lose battery more quickly. Try these--

1) Go into your network -> wifi settings. Press menu to bring up "Advanced." Go in there, select Wifi sleep policy. Choose "Never." This way it'll stop trying to drop the network and scan and etc over and over.
2) If you're not using wifi, turn it off.

For sync settings, Menu -> Settings -> Account and Sync should do it. On the Power Control widget, unpress the sync icon.

The Desire should be able to last about 16 hours with moderate-to-heavy use on stock voltage.

Quality reply - thank you!

Never in wifi settings was already selected.

I've now switched off Auto sync. Is that correct? Background data is still selected. Should I leave it as it is?

With it now set as it is does that mean I can now manually get it to sync via the power control widget with one press, then switch it off again? That's what I want really.

Thanks for your help - appreciated.

 

[grainysand]

Yup, leave background data on, or you'll have to switch it on every time you want to browse the market.

And yeah, after switching off auto-sync from now on you can just tap the power control widget to sync. Do you use task killers and/or press the "kill all" button often? If so, avoid doing so: killing all processes will cause several to auto-restart, thus consuming more power and if anything slowing down your phone.

 

[WozzaTT]

Yup, leave background data on, or you'll have to switch it on every time you want to browse the market.

And yeah, after switching off auto-sync from now on you can just tap the power control widget to sync. Do you use task killers and/or press the "kill all" button often? If so, avoid doing so: killing all processes will cause several to auto-restart, thus consuming more power and if anything slowing down your phone.

No - after reading the advice on here I've never used any task killers or used the kill button so that's fine.

One final question - when I press to sync on the power control widget how long would I need to keep it on for? Do things like gmail and news reader apps (for example) do their stuff quite quickly, or do I need to go into them and press refresh? Sorry - it's not very clear to someone not particularly technically minded like me!

Still puzzles me as to why it didn't connect to wifi at work today and left me on 3G.

Thanks again for your excellent advice.

 

[grainysand]

Maybe the router at your workplace was being wonky? It happens.

Auto-sync button will sync your google apps, so that's contacts, calendar, gmail, picasa, and possibly Exchange, Facebook and Flickr depending on whether you've set those up. Everything else I'm afraid you will have to refresh manually, though some widgets/apps will refresh automatically as soon as there's a connection if they're written to behave that way.

 

[nx1977]

Did you have excellent 3G signal, or is it patchy in the building?

Poor 3G or switching between 2g/3g kills battery

 

[hippy247]

Easily: the iPhone 4 will drop your calls if you hold its bottom-left corner in your hand. No really, look up Gizmodo/Engadget/et al. Not making this shit up.

That aside: when the phone is trying to get a signal and scanning repeatedly for network, either cell data or wifi, it'll lose battery more quickly. Try these--

1) Go into your network -> wifi settings. Press menu to bring up "Advanced." Go in there, select Wifi sleep policy. Choose "Never." This way it'll stop trying to drop the network and scan and etc over and over.
2) If you're not using wifi, turn it off.

For sync settings, Menu -> Settings -> Account and Sync should do it. On the Power Control widget, unpress the sync icon.

The Desire should be able to last about 16 hours with moderate-to-heavy use on stock voltage.

Dont forget lag is also being reported with the new iphone along with yellow patches and or white dots on the screen ( at least you cant see the pixels ) and glass that seems to crack easily

 

[nx1977]

And discolouring plastic parts as well.

 

[WozzaTT]

Did you have excellent 3G signal, or is it patchy in the building?

Poor 3G or switching between 2g/3g kills battery

Not sure to be honest as it had always picked up a strong wifi signal before today.

I'll give it a go with auto sync off. If it's still no good I guess the next step is to switch wifi and 3g off at work as I only really need it for calls and texts while I'm there. Just seems a shame to have to have lots of stuff switched off just to get through the day on a single charge. God help me if I need to make a long phone call. Something certainly hammered the battery today.

 

[nx1977]

Could have been trying to connect to the openzone network and being refused, and trying again, and again....