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Help Purchased New LG Spectrum. Battery life concerns. Need your help.

"Try not to let your battery go below the half way point... " yea, don't agree with that. It serves no purpose to constantly charge the phone or try to keep it full. A prime example is leaving it on the charger all night... That will actually harm the battery. My droids are proof of as much.
 
MrB206 said:
"Try not to let your battery go below the half way point... " yea, don't agree with that. It serves no purpose to constantly charge the phone or try to keep it full. A prime example is leaving it on the charger all night... That will actually harm the battery. My droids are proof of as much.
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Like I said, about 85% of it... :-) I agree with you completely
 
I kind of wonder how much validity there is to those claims, btw. Batteries never work as good as they do as when they're new and the depletion rate grows as the battery is used and drained. Someone sent me a link once about how calibration of batteries isn't necessary anymore, but anyone that's had a Droid knows that's bollocks... my D2G battery has HUGE drops after a rom install if I don't do a stat wipe.

Basically, I let it die and then fully charge when I get the phone. I try not to leave on the charger @ night and instead wait til it's at 20-30% and charge fully. My batteries last 1-2 years with about the same performance. *shrug*
 
I just got an LG Spectrum and think that the battery life is pretty good - at least for an android smartphone! It is better than the battery life of my previous HTC Incredible.

I have only had the Spectrum for 2 days, so have only done one total charge - discharge (to 10%) and recharge (to 100%) cycle. Leaving the phone alone overnight and then some (~15 hours), it went down from 100% to 85%. Of course it was not used during this time and the WiFi was shut off. This is with the stock battery and is much better than my previous smartphone. If yours went down to 15%, something is wrong. If I use it a lot (web surfing, reading, videos - which it is very good at) it goes down a lot quicker, but on standby it should be a lot better than what you are getting.
 
I recommend that everybody with an Android smartphone install Data Enabler Widget. It was recommended to me as a battery/life saver. That, combined with Advanced Task Killer will make your battery go twice as long. I promise! Just think of the Data Enabler Widget as Airplane mode but with phone capabilities only! Boom.

It also sounds like you want to have your cake and eat it too. Might I recommend getting a Nexus or RAZR MAXX if you want more battery life with an Android phone? They generally hover around $200 to $300. In all reality, reading the MANUAL and finding out all of the capabilities of the phone is your best bet if you want to find ways to prolong battery life! Remember -- the more that's happening in the background, the faster your battery will drain.

Hope that helped a bit!

Edit: Also keep in mind that Android 4.0 is coming to the Spectrum in June-ish. I'm sure we'll have greatly improved battery life with that update! Cheers.

Edit 2: Next time you want to upgrade your phone, or even if you want to swap out the Spectrum for something else, do your research to find a phone that's right for you! PhoneScoop.com Phone Compare Tool -- do the Side-by-Side Comparison of the 5 phones which individually look/sound the best to you. The more information you have, the more informed you are.
 
Hey guys, first an update than a question.

1. I turned off Wifi and 4G. The phone did decently over night losing only 6% if I recall correctly. My service must of been switching from 4G-3G for some reason which hurt the battery. Still I'm not totally happy with the phone but I no longer despise it completely. Dunno if I'll trade it in anymore. A day ago I was nearly certain I would.

2. I put the photos and videos from my old LG flip phone on my new Lg Spectrum with the SD card. The videos play on my computer in both windows media player and VLC media player but the sound is NOT working. The file types are .3g2 for the videos. What's wrong? Getting these videos working is really important to me because that phone had 4.5 years of memories on it and I want to preserve them. Thank you.
 
1. That's an issue with the towers where you are. Regardless of the phone you get, if you're in and out of 4g, the battery will drain more than a solid signal. But again, that's an issue with ALL cell phones: looking for towers sucks more power than being on wifi, so stay on wifi when at home.

2. Is it really that important that the videos play on the phone, if they play on your PC? (honest question) It seems like an odd dealbreaker when it's likely a video codec that's missing on the phone. If they work on your PC, use them there. You shouldn't use your phone as an archive, anyway, since VERY few people have their phones set to archive data, which is easier to do on a PC.
 
Good point. mpeg layers are more common file types than the manufacturer-proprietary ones like '3g2', especially as 3g phones start to fade in use for LTE and wimax systems.
 
Well you can't get exact location from cell towers. I live between two towers and it always shows my location as one of the towers, which are about a half mile from me. I've always been creeped out by Google knowing my exact location from wifi. The mac location address database is one I hope is never hacked.
 
Hey guys this might be leaving the scope of this forum a little bit now, but the problem for the videos isn't on the android. The android reads the .3g2 files perfectly. On my computer however, they don't play the audio of the videos. I've tried Any Video Converter (AVC) and while it converted the file, the audio became out of sync. I've got something like 20 videos from this old cell phone and need a way to convert them to a video format that works on PC (and one Youtube could read as well)
 
Try dumping them into an editor like Audacity (it's freeware) or Soundforge. You can usually convert to other formats in those programs. I've done it with small mp7s before.
 
Hey guys, how do I add new ring tones and alarm sounds? I can hardly here my ringtone from the other room (my old phone I could without even max volume). And I'm personally not a fan of the alarms (still haven't brought my flip phone in yet). So yeah, I'm hoping it's as easy as dragging and dropping an mp3 into a folder, but in case it isn't I'm asking here first. By the time I'm ready to do it I figure someone will of seen this.

Thanks guys.

EDIT: PS: Say I wanted to make one of my music tracks a ringtone. Can you decide how long your phone rings or is it a set amount?
 
First things first, dump all those files in a folder that's named something you'll remember. When you try to change the tones, it's a lot easier to do it if you use an aftermarket txt app like go SMS. If you do, it will ask which app to use.... Choose the aftermarket app, then 'music'; all the tones you've added will show up. But yes, plug your phone into your pi and drag and drop. You'll need to rescan media, but rebooting does that for you.

Now it plays the entire file, so I make ringtones 30 sec, since that how long 5 rings takes. For txt notification, I use short tones, like Peter Griffin from family guy saying "who is this?" that's actually my most used one.
 
MrB206 said:
First things first, dump all those files in a folder that's named something you'll remember. When you try to change the tones, it's a lot easier to do it if you use an aftermarket txt app like go SMS. If you do, it will ask which app to use.... Choose the aftermarket app, then 'music'; all the tones you've added will show up. But yes, plug your phone into your pi and drag and drop. You'll need to rescan media, but rebooting does that for you.

Now it plays the entire file, so I make ringtones 30 sec, since that how long 5 rings takes. For txt notification, I use short tones, like Peter Griffin from family guy saying "who is this?" that's actually my most used one.
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Hmm,well I'm really inexperienced with apps and don't really understand the benefits of using them yet (keep in mind the only phone I've ever had was a flip phone.) However, I have put music on my PSP before. I simply usb connected and there was a folder called "music," that I dragged and dropped into. Is there a ringtone and alarms folder I'll just drag and drop into? I'm gonna eat dinner now, when I come back I'm doing this.

By the way, so if your ringtones are longer than 30sec does your phone do more than 5 rings before going to voicemail?:confused: That probably sounds like a stupid question but I have to ask.

EDIT: Wow the VZW airways tone I been using is only like 22 seconds.

Oh and for texting I'll probably be putting the GDI Commando from C&C saying "I got a present for ya!"

Double Edit: All ringtone files should be .mp3 format right? I ask because I might customize one :O
 
I'll do a long reply to all tomorrow but they can be mp3, wav or ogg. I think it can handle flac, but mp3 is sufficient for a ringtone.
 
Hey, wait! Where do I drag them? I don't see a specified folder containing the alarms and ringtones!


edit: ugh youtubin tutorials in vain. Gonna try just creating an alarms and ringtones folder.

Edit 2: hey guys, it worked.
 
When you choose a ring tone, you can either choose system ringtones or you should also have the option for "music". If you choose that option, you should be able to pick any mp3 from your memory card. Now on my phone, I have the option of either "android system" or "handsent" and handsent allows me to choose any music that is currently on my phone. I'm not sure why that is my second choice, but if you have it installed, you will probably see the same thing.
 
there is a folder called 'Notifcations' on the SD card somewhere where you can " drag and drop" files for notifcation tones. Also any music on your phone your can set as a ringotne in the Music app, just long hold the track and it will ive you the option. Only bad thing is it always start from the begining of the song. You can also get apps to create ringtones from the existing music files on your phone.

side note .. offical timer is at 1d 1h 4m 56s and im at 53% battery left .. light use day though. ill post screen shots later.
 
Interesting tidbit, the system sounds are all in .ogg format on the LG Spectrum. Also I do 12-18 second ringtones, because I don't wait for the last second to answer my phone, and 5-8 second for notifications, again, I don't want to listen to 40 second of something every time my wife sends me a text! not sure if it does it on longer tones, but mine repeats notification sounds. Smaller files also load faster and use less memory (both storage and ram). Giving better performance, it might nut really be noticeable, but makes me feel better about myself. :-)
 
OGG (Ogg-Vorbis) is the standard for most Android phones, because it's open source and a VERY small file size. Not much use in everyday life, but you can play them on most media players like Winamp, provided you have the right codecs (which should come with it).
 
Hey, how big should the file size be? My new ringtone I made is 31 seconds and 501kb.

My two new alarms are probably a minute or longer and 1.4 MB
 
MrB206 said:
OGG (Ogg-Vorbis) is the standard for most Android phones, because it's open source and a VERY small file size. Not much use in everyday life, but you can play them on most media players like Winamp, provided you have the right codecs (which should come with it).
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Interesting, never saw an .ogg on my HTC Evo, HTC Evo shift, Samsung moment, or the three tablets i've used (all Froyo devices). I understand and have some things stored in .ogg on my desktop, but it shocked me when I saw them on my LG.
 
finndo77 said:
Interesting, never saw an .ogg on my HTC Evo, HTC Evo shift, Samsung moment, or the three tablets i've used (all Froyo devices). I understand and have some things stored in .ogg on my desktop, but it shocked me when I saw them on my LG.
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Ogg has been a standard on Android since 1.5. Look in /system/media. :)
 
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