yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[General Topics] DangerPanda:
Hi,

I am new to this forum.

I have joined because I have many questions to ask haha.

I'm currently looking to buy a new cellphone.

Right now I am looking at the HTC Hero or the Moto Backflip, but I am also open to suggestions.

What I'm looking for is a solid phone that would last me a good 2-3 years, with a touchscreen and wifi are musts.

I have heard that Android is probably the best OS out there, so i would highly prefer it.

A qwerty keyboard would be nice since i like to use MSN on it. However, it's not a must have.

What i usually do on the phone is just browsing some web pages, youtube, msn, and facebook using wifi.

I do not want a data plan that is why I am looking to buy the phone unlocked on ebay.

My maximum budget is 400 dollars.

Now my question is,

I heard that the hero is a great cellphone, and I am willing to pay an extra 100$ over the backflip's price to get it if it is indeed a great phone.

Would you guys suggest me get the hero? or to get the backflip that has a qwerty keyboard? I have heard that the backflip will have android 2.1 on it, is the update out already??

Or if you guys can suggest another good phone that would be great too!

The price on ebay:

$400 for hero

$300 for Backflip
[General Topics] DangerPanda:
Please give me some suggestions!

I have read in another thread someone said the Hero is outdated already???

Hasn't it only been out for about half a year only?

If it is outdated, what phone should I go for that is within my price range??

thanks
[General Topics] Purple Drama Llama:
Hero 100%. Better design, HTC, support, not crippled, gorgeous looking, the list goes on. The backflip has no support from here, and personally I think it's basically the GSM version of the devour. Ugly, boring, no support, and you never see em' :D
[General Topics] greengoldmello:
Please get neither if you are willing to spend 400. Both phones are a bit outdated and will have a hard time holding up 2-3 years. Get a nexus one or a Droid (milestone ) for that price
[General Topics] DangerPanda:
Thanks for your opinion!

I found that the milestone might be a good option since it's within my price range and has a physicial keyboard.

The $600 nexus ones on ebay are a bit beyond what I am willing to spend haha.

So will the Motorola Milestone be the best choice if I have $400?

How's the processor??
[General Topics] galaxys:
Motorola Milestone is an ok choice, but you should try it out first. I would rather stay with HTC devices.
[General Topics] DangerPanda:
What HTC device would you recommend me to get then :D?
[General Topics] Japcy07:
Hey, so I'm looking into buying a new phone and the now I'm down to the hero and the backflip. I have never had an android phone before so the phone I decide on can't be too complicated. I'm 14 and I text a lot so the phone has to be able to type easily and fast. Please give me advice if you have experience with one or both of these phones.
[General Topics] DangerPanda:
Is there any other advices?

I am buying my new handset soon!
[General Topics] hadi8125:
+1 for the n1 as already suggested above. You can also look at the HTC Aria or Samsung Captivate.
[General Topics] DangerPanda:
Unfortunately the Nexus one and the other ones you suggested are somewhat beyond my price range :( $400 is really my maximum. Unless I can get a used one somewhere ...
[General Topics] captainstu72:
As it is one of your original options, I will give my opinion on it : The hTC Hero :)

Had one of these for a while (by my standards) for now, and its a pretty solid device. Okay, it isn't the fastest processor, and it has likely recieved its last official rom, but i love it :)

Have just got Éclair running on it, and there are noticeable differences since android 1.5, although no live wallpapers (not that i see this as much of a loss, as I don't tend to just sit and stare at my home screen, i try to use the phone)

There are plenty of apps for it, plenty of custom roms, and a sizeable (albeit not the biggest) user base on xda.

The build quality is pretty decent - it has withstanded my daughter standing, jumping, chewing, and dribbling all over it, so it has passed that test for me.

In my opinion, the downside is the camera - there is no flash. But even then, it is not the worst camera I have had on a phone.

Hope that helps :)
[General Topics] jprewitt:
If you are on ATT and you have $400 you should go with the HTC Aria you can get it off contract for $350. Even though its only a mid level phone it is a much better and newer phone then the Hero and the Backflip.
[General Topics] hadi8125:
you can find a nexus one around here for around $400..and you can buy the unlocked/off-contract HTC Aria and Samsung Captivate for $350 each.
[Touch CDMA Android Development] incubus26jc:
Found This App on XDA Portal today. Havent tested yet but im about to.

EDIT: I tested with google skymap, I set the app to install to internal storage and it stil installed to sd. Although the option to move to phone was now open and worked! I dont think that option worked before. I could be wrong

Original Thread http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=720739
[Touch CDMA Android Development] *M*:
Does this still keep the dalvik files on the faster internal storage?, i've been looking for such a solution.
[Touch CDMA Android Development] incubus26jc:
not certain, give feedback.

I tested with google skymaps because i know it likes to install to sd with froyo. So I set it to install to internal memory before installing skymaps and it still installed to sd. Although it did open up the option to move to phone in application settings and that worked!!

I dont think that option worked before installing this app. Could be wrong
[Touch CDMA Android Development] pastaeter:
I tried the tool also.

After setting the option to install to SD I installed the IMDB tool and PicSay.

Both gave the error 'Application was not installed'. When I switched it to internal memory, they installed just fine.

However I don't see the option to move a program. I'm looking in Settings>Application settings>Manage applications and then selecting a tool. The 'Move to SD card' is not available, not for the old tools I installed as for the both tools I did after installing this setinstalllocation tool.

Any bright ideas? :)

The SD card is formatted with several partitions to make it all run so I don't know why it won't work.
[Touch CDMA Android Development] piperthedj:
by default isnt the .apk designed to install in certain locations either NAND or SD. depending on where the programmer desires to have it put?
[Touch CDMA Android Development] xmfreak:
I've been using this for some weeks and it's just great.
[Touch CDMA Android Development] pastaeter:
Can you give any examples of programs you used it for and to which location you moved it?
[Captivate General] Pmac25:
Let me start off by saying that this is my first Android phone and I love it. The sucker is so fast and just a joy to play with.

Being the type of person that I am (loves to play around with things) i have a question.

I am going to root my Captivate and I understand the process to do that but I would also like to remove a bunch of the AT&T stuff that they have loaded the phone up with I am just not sure what I can remove or how to do it.

Is there a walk thru on what you can remove and how to remove it?

ok never mind I found my own answer.

xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=728989
[Captivate General] canister214:
this might be a big time noob question but that's the 2 dots near the earpiece? looks like a camera or led?

can't find anything on the web about it.
[Captivate General] PhonePhun:
One is possibly the light sensor and I don't know what the other one is. A blinking LED would be nice to have though.
[Captivate General] abezapata:
the are probably the proximity sensor and light sensor. Well that would make the most sense to me at least.
[Captivate General] canister214:
I keep staring at the two dots and I'm convinced big brother is watching me. Lol
[Captivate General] Fallon:
He is, and every time he gets a really close look at your ear, he turns off the display so your ear doesn't start randomly pressing "buttons".
[Captivate General] Bjd223:
The one on the Right is the Proximity Sensor and the one on the Left is probably the Ambient Light Sensor.

If you start a call (to say voicemail) and touch just the right side it will turn off the screen. If you just touch the left the screen stays on.
[Captivate General] systoxity:
i lol'd, nice one.

Umm to add value to my post.. how come when i cover the sensors with my thumb, my screen doesnt get darker? I have auto brightness on.
[Captivate General] magicdanw:
I'd love to hear how people are finding the battery life on the Captivate, and what their usage patterns are. I don't have many apps on the phone to begin with, but on the train to work I can easily knock out a third of the battery just listening to music. While using the phone for five or ten minutes, I'll sometimes see the battery dop 2-3 percent!

For tomorrow, I'm going to try using the stock launcher instead of LauncherPro, no widgets. I got rid of the Android Central app just in case it was fetching data in the background. But my hopes aren't terribly high, I'm afraid.

I have rooted the phone, but the battery life was bad before rooting. Once rooted, I tried some apps like JuiceDefender, and there seemed to be no change.

If I continue having these problems, I may unroot and bring the phone to an AT&T store to see what they say. I've heard it mentioned that Samsung is sending out new batteries that are better than some current ones, but I don't know if that's true.

I'd love to hear any suggestions. I want to use my new phone, not worry about it all day!
[Captivate General] Intervenient:
I too have been getting very poor results. I have talked on the phone for less than 3 minutes, went to maybe 15 different website pages, one 3:00 youtube video, 10 minutes of GBC emulation gaming, and regular texting, and I'm at 10% with 8 hours. I've probably only used the phone for 30 minutes total today.
[Captivate General] pongothemagnificent:
Smartphones always drain battery, if you want a phone that can be heavily used for like 4 or more days on one charge cycle, get a feature phone....the samsung captivate has given me the best battery time overall, against all my past smartphones.
[Captivate General] magicdanw:
I don't think it makes sense, though, that it should run out halfway through the day like mine is. My former devices were a feature phone and an iPod Touch. The feature phone lasted a week or so, and the iPod Touch with heavy heavy use lasted three days at least. So even if I had both pulling from the same battery source, and with light usage, shouldn't it last at least a full day? :confused:
[Captivate General] fatalsync:
Weird, I had wireless on almost all day, with push mail and doing tons of market downloading and I was only down to about 50% by early afternoon.

Seems about the same as my two year old HTC Touch Pro to me.
[Captivate General] kaluman:
My battery is running fine too, even after streaming music from my house with subsonic, testing out a couple videos, messing with the gps, push email a bunch of app downloading, and a live wallpaper and i was still at 33% by the time I got home, even seems to be getting better.
[Captivate General] Croak:
"On the train to work..."

There's a bit of your problem, methinks. The 3G radio is burning a lot of power trying to connect to towers inside a metal box that moves to a new tower on a regular basis. Unless you need to get calls on the train, put it in Airplane mode during your commute.

Have you actually let the battery die completely yet?

My first battery burn-down, (starting with the charge on the battery as it was unboxed) I was showing zero percent battery for almost two hours before it actually shut itself off, moderate usage with WiFi on.

The next charge-up burn-down, it was showing zero percent about fifteen minutes before the end.

And the charge-up burn-down after that, it showed 0% about twenty seconds before it died.

See where I'm going here? The software needs to be calibrated at zero and 100, and it can't do that if you don't let it reach zero a few times. Once you're sure the meter is accurate, then you can start making informed conclusions about battery life.

And like I've posted elsewhere, you've got 'Newshiny-itus', which is proven to suck extra life out of a smartphone battery. And it's hard forcing your new toy to die...for one thing, if it's dead, you can't play with it. Tough it out, kill it. At least twice.
[Captivate General] smitty1:
Well if you want to find truly terrible battery life try the EVO.

I had one for a month and that thing really ate the battery fast. The capti is stellar in comparison.
[Captivate General] robstunner:
Yea I had one for two weeks and it was horrid. I would lose 6% just in standby time in between waking up and getting out the door to work in the morning!
[Captivate General] Ryukeima:
I've had great results with the battery and I find it to be much better than my HD2. I watch quite a bit of youtube, text message a lot, and browse the web and the market on and off, not to mention all the time my wife plays solitaire, and I still have 30% battery at an uptime of 41:46. I don't use gps or live wallpapers, and I keep my display as low as possible, since it is still bright.
[Captivate General] Intervenient:
Bit better by the end of the day. 13 hours and 15 minutes
[Captivate General] Fortune090:
+1

Definitely agree with the last part. I've been doing my best to kill it, but I don't want it to be dead. Been noticing the inaccuracy of the meter quite a bit, especially when it's charging, but I'm sure it'll get better over time.
[Captivate General] magicdanw:
Thanks for the informative replies! It hadn't occurred to me that the battery meter might be uncalibrated - I've been charging once it reached 10% or so. I'll try letting it die fully today.

One thing that seems to have helped, too, is the brightness settings. Turning OFF the "power saving" auto adjust ing brightness option allows the brightness to stay low, and a brightness control widget lets me set it lower than stock controls allow. I've seen some definite improbement from this alone!
[Captivate General] tysj:
These are Li-ion batteries, DO NOT let them die completely before charging.
[Captivate General] magicdanw:
Ok, so...is there a safer way to make sure the battery gets calibrated? I'm reading in a lot of places that Android phones fairly often misreport battery info unless calibrated.
[Captivate General] cooley_l:
The lowest I can get on battery status is 60% after a full days use. Admittedly I'm not a power user but I had my phone unplugged for 16 hrs and still had 95% I'd like to know what you have to do to get such low battery levels , start your car:D
[Captivate General] magicdanw:
All I've done today is listen to music for an hour (used 25%) and texted/browsed the web for perhaps two hours (another 5/% down.)

I read that LIons can be occasiomally discharged, since they have undercurrent protection circuits. One guide for Android phones suggested leaving the phone on until it shuts itself down, turning it on again, and then letting it shut itself down again. Then, with the phone off, charge fully. The guide said once a month or do is safe and beneficial. How does it sound?
[Captivate General] Intervenient:
Battery is good today. Been sending a few texts, checked email, facebook, and surfed these forums a bit. I'm at 2 hours with 98% battery left.
[Captivate General] SiL3nTKiLL:
i hope the battery doesnt suck, i plan on getting this phone soon and want good batt life!!!
[Captivate General] mymansionisabox:
I agree with you, however, the phone's hardware will NOT let the battery completely die.

So I wouldn't worry about that all to much.

Basically though, Li-ion batteries are 'memory' free so they can be recharged on a whim partially.

They also prefer partial charges vs deep charges.

There are questions about this that I don't have answers for such as: When the phone displays 0% or shuts off due to low battery, how LOW is the battery?

Obviously the phone battery can't be dead dead, but it is low enough for the hardware to take precautions.

Anyway Li-ions will at max last 500 charges.. If you want it more than that, You're going to have to buy a new battery anyway. =)
[Captivate General] mymansionisabox:
I personally run all my Li-ion devices until they shut off roughly every 1-3 months. More like 2 months because I forget. I haven't had any noticeable improvements or problems. Like I said in my previous post, the phone prevents damage unless you are purposely abusing it.

Although I have never owned a smartphone of these capabilities and power, I'd say the battery life is more than acceptable with certain precautions taken. I.e. turning off GPS when not using it.

I also made my background on the phone a completely black image. Since this is Amoled black pixels are literally off, not consuming any battery. (Granted, now there is some speculation that they are on a tiny but, but not nearly that of LED based phones)
[Captivate General] magicdanw:
I'll try letting the battery die tonight and recharge with thee phone off. I'll let you know if it affects the reported battery life at all.

(Sisdenote - I've been typing the word battery a lot today, and Swype simply refuses to believe its name isn't Barry :P)
[Captivate General] dalingrin:
I find the automatic brightness to be too biased towards bright. The screen is the most power hungry component and the auto brightness keeps it much brighter than my Nexus one.
[Captivate General] KryptosXLayer2:
On normal, LCD screens, I would tend to agree with you, but this screen doesn't seem to be sucking down too much power.... having push email, doing location-based weather updates every hour, twitter updates with the occasional tweet, and other background stuff running all day long will take a toll on the battery, but similarly compared to most every other smartphone I've owned or seen.... so I don't think this is worse by any means, just needs a high-capacity, OEM sized battery to boost it up a bit!

BTW original poster - the title of this thread is a little misleading if you're going to start it off by saying "I'd love to hear how people are finding the battery life...." Just thought I'd say that without having potential buyers come on here and report back to their friends as to why they didn't go with the phone - "people all over the forums are saying how bad the battery life is...."
[Captivate General] magicdanw:
Ah, my bad, I meant it as I currently find my battery to be dismal. I'll see if I can change the title to something a little more upbeat!
[Captivate General] KryptosXLayer2:
well DAMN, now it sounds like something out of Monty Python! hahaha, thanks, I love it, too funny
[Captivate General] Croak:
You know that if you have auto-brightness turned off, you can just swipe left and right across the notification bar to adjust it on the fly, right?
[Captivate General] magicdanw:
Right, but even the lowest setting is still pretty bright. A widget I got saw the "lowest" setting as 8%, and let me make it even lower.

Also, I'm not sure if this is true, but I read that some people found the "battery saving" feature to actually raise their brightness at times, based on ambient light. Disabling it seemed to help battery life a bit as well.

Right now, the battery is charging from empty to full, and I'll see if any change is noticeable :)
[Captivate General] alphadog00:
Apple has some very comprehensive support pages on Lithium batteries that include things like"

1. Take the phone out of the case when charging to keep heat low

2. Don't leave plugged in all the time

3. Occassionally run down to empty to calibrate battery meter

4. Definition and scenarios on what constitutes a charge cycle

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1490

I have practiced all of these with my last few phones (only one was an iPhone) - I only use this refernce as Apple seems to be the only ones to have lots of published info on the subject. Check out the link above, and all the other links on the page to other topics - good battery reading.
[Captivate General] magicdanw:
Thanks for the advice, everyone! Things are looking pretty good! I just finished the charge cycle, and have used the phone for about an hour, cleaning up some system apps with Titanium Backup, downloading/updating some others, rearranging home screens, and I've only gone down to 93%! Hopefully this'll keep up! :D

Thanks again!!!
[Captivate General] AJerman:
I wouldn't be so sure about that. Check out your battery usage in Settings -> About -> Battery Use. The display takes a massive amount of battery for me.
[Captivate General] Simba501:
My settings-

No window animations

Brightness as low as it will go (auto brightness off)

screen timeout 15 secs

power saving mode off (I don't want the lcd brightness to adjust....rather, just stay on my setting)

No widgets updating in the background (all my pages are app shortcuts, except calendar clock)

Hourly checking 2 email accounts

I also use advanced task killer on my first homescreen to kill everything (except email & market) whenever I put down the phone....

At the end of the first full day with my Captivate, my battery was at 20%. I think that's pretty good, with my moderate-heavy usage. At the end of the next full day, I was at about 50%, with very similar usage. I'm ecstatic. I had heard that the battery becomes "broken in" with usage, but with this screen and my usage, I'm very pleased.
[Captivate General] Intervenient:
After having 3 very bad days of battery, today I've managed to get 16 hours and 15 minutes, with 5% of battery still left. Regular usage. I switched to ADW launcher. I don't know if that's what's changed it but I got 4 more hours than I did yesterday.
[Captivate General] decepticon:
I've used my phone off and on all day, about 45 minutes of calls, sending about 15 texts an hour, some browsing and market shopping, and an hour and a half watching video from my media server over wifi and it finally died on me.

Screen was on highest brightness setting most of the time as well.
[Captivate General] smeltn:
Well my battery life has been pretty much the same as you guys. I unplug it from the charger at around 7AM and by 12PM-1PM it is dead. Now granted, that was with IM's going, and browsing the android market pretty much, but nothing stellar other than that.

I will have to see today how it does. I am down to 3 pages on the homescreen, with no widgets other than Fancy Widget running on my main page. I even turned ebuddy off so it wouldnt run in the background.

Will see what happens.
[Captivate General] V DidDy 210:
This phone has much better batery life than my pervious smartphones...I listen to music all day on it and talk and browse and only by night time do I get a 15% warning and by nighttime i'm talking 11pmish.

If it's a weekend, I tend to go easy on the usage the hours leading up to me going out or I'll give my phone a quick charge, but I can easily get all day and then some from this phone
[Captivate General] systoxity:
man you need to get it returned and pick up a new one.

that sucks hard core sorry to hear that : /
[Captivate General] MikeyMike01:
My first day I got about 8-10 hours of life with about 8 hours of only occasionally texting, and an hour or so of playing a game (lunch break :cool:).

Last night I burnt it all the way down, until it turned off, and then turned it on again and it shut off and refused to turn on anymore. Then I charged up until it said 100% (about 2 or 3 hours). Battery lasted about 6 hours of non-stop music, web (on wifi), games, etc. Although it lasted less time, the usage was way higher.

I read somewhere that after burning it down to leave it charging for 8 hours. I'm currently in hour 6 of charging (and the screen has said 100% for a good long time)... I'll see how that goes.

Otherwise a wonderful phone, but I can't have it dying on me at 4 PM.
[Captivate General] ewingr:
What widget is that?