Smartphones

The Dauntless One

The Dauntless One

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Wolfen_sl said:
This is why I bang on Android all the time. It is not a mature OS if I have to keep all its features turned off. If I have to turn off push mail, location services, maps, Google Now, and god knows what else, I may as well use a flip phone from 7 years ago.

On my iPhone, I can keep everything turned on all day long and still have battery left when I go to bed. I'm trying to like Android because I like the bigger screen, but damn, this ain't good. Even new android phones have this issue, as evidenced buy others in this thread.
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Um... Even with LTE turned on, my HTC One XL was idling maybe 2-3% an hour (with stock kernel no uv or uc) and it literally has the same internals as the Evo LTE. With my personal experience, I can only say there is something wrong with your phone or user error. I never turned off a single feature on my HOXL and I have auto sync with all my apps.

With the 4.2.2 update, my Nexus 4 is literally idling at 1% an hour.
 
Alkorin

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I can make my iPhone lose its entire charge in a small number of hours, but I have to do some very stupid shit to make that happen (like running the CPU at a constant 100%). Under normal use, I've never seen an iPhone need a charge over one day -- except the one day that I took my 4S to Epcot and took pictures for 12-13h, including ~1h of video. For that, I needed the battery pack.

I've never heard good things about Android device battery life unless you have a custom kernel, etc. I don't understand why anyone would want to have to do that much to a phone to make it last long enough to use reliably.
 
Big Phoenix

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The Ancient_sl said:
I don't know if it's the OS when I don't have the problem on my S3. My battery outlasts the iPhone I owned previously. My wife broke her windows phone and I still had my old iPhone so I set her up on it. Suddenly it can't hold a charge for 6 hours, there is clearly something wrong with it.

Anecdotal evidence, right?
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Couldnt possibly be that the battery is at the end of it's life, right?
 
Mageling

Mageling

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Wolfen_sl said:
This is why I bang on Android all the time. It is not a mature OS if I have to keep all its features turned off. If I have to turn off push mail, location services, maps, Google Now, and god knows what else, I may as well use a flip phone from 7 years ago.

On my iPhone, I can keep everything turned on all day long and still have battery left when I go to bed. I'm trying to like Android because I like the bigger screen, but damn, this ain't good. Even new android phones have this issue, as evidenced buy others in this thread.
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Wha? I go 40+ hours with these settings. I was easily getting a full 24 hour period just on the stock settings leaving everything turned on, I just like seeing what I can get out of the device while giving me the same UX as if I were to leave everything on full time.
 
The Dauntless One

The Dauntless One

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Alkorin_sl said:
I can make my iPhone lose its entire charge in a small number of hours, but I have to do some very stupid shit to make that happen (like running the CPU at a constant 100%). Under normal use, I've never seen an iPhone need a charge over one day -- except the one day that I took my 4S to Epcot and took pictures for 12-13h, including ~1h of video. For that, I needed the battery pack.

I've never heard good things about Android device battery life unless you have a custom kernel, etc. I don't understand why anyone would want to have to do that much to a phone to make it last long enough to use reliably.
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I agree iPhones has better battery life than OEM Android phones. However, I have a few problems with that statement. The only time a custom kernel can drastically increase battery life of a phone is underclocking. Installing a custom kernel doesn't magically defy physics. I would go further and say custom roms affect the speed and battery life of a phone more than anything. The bloat that carrier put on their phones can seriously affect performance (think Norton). Fortunately, Canadian carriers are nowhere near as notorious as US carriers. And contrary to what the general XDA member thinks, OEMs are actually good at what they do. Stock roms and kernels are pretty good. If your phone runs like dogshit, go blame your carrier.

Second problem I have is, unlocking bootloader to install a kernel takes just about the same effort as jailbreaking. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to do it.

My bloatless N4 on 4.2.2 has comparable battery life to my mom's iPhone 5. Certain versions have bugs, like the 4.2.0-4.2.1, but to call Android an immature OS is pretty far-fetched.
 
Alkorin

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The Dauntless One_sl said:
My bloatless N4 on 4.2.2 has comparable battery life to my mom's iPhone 5. Certain versions have bugs, like the 4.2.0-4.2.1, but to call Android an immature OS is pretty far-fetched.
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Fair enough. I don't own an Android phone (though I do own an Android tablet) so my experience with the OS is admittedly limited. Friends who are running 4.x have reported various battery issues, but I don't know enough about their circumstances to judge one way or the other.

It's certain that I've heard more about battery woes with Android devices, particularly HTCs, than iPhones, though.
 
W

Wolfen_sl

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There are three others at my office that has this EVO. I asked them about battery life and they all told me that they are constantly needing to charge it.

/shrug I would expect this if LTE was turned on but it is not. It just makes me wary about buying the upcoming HTC One.
 
opiate82

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I don't think it is any big secret that Apple designed their stuff specifically with battery performance in mind. It also isn't a big secret that HTC isn't exactly stellar when it comes to building phones with great battery performance. Their phones do many other things well. Can't tell you about the One and frankly we won't know till some objective reviewers get some hands-on time.

If battery life is a make-or-brake feature for you, you can look at something like the Razr Maxx for Android or frankly maybe you just stick with Apple and accept that you'll have to use whatever hardware they allow you to.
 
W

Wolfen_sl

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I have to stay with Sprint, so my options are limited to what they carry. I guess I'm just bummed that Android battery life seems to be no better than it was a couple years ago.
 
Joeboo

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In my experience, the battery issue isn't an Android thing across the board, it's more of a hardware design issue than Android software issue. Ive owned several Android phones and in general HTC had horrid battery life, and Samsung has very good battery life.

My htc evo and evo 3d both had shit battery life, but my Samsung S2 and S3 were both great. The Samsungs always lasted at least twice as long with similar basic usage, if not more like 3-4x longer
 
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Cor_sl

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Ameraves_sl said:
So how reliable is this info from Forbes?

http://www.forbes.com/sites/haydnsha...or-prime-time/

They are saying the Galaxy S4 is suffering some problems and has had to change the processor as well as the screen because of it. Actually there is another article that says some of the same things

http://www.ibtimes.com/samsung-galax...event-new-york

I was holding out for the S4, but I hope they didn't have to cut back on too many features if that is true. Maybe I will check out the HTC One of that is the case. Dunno!
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This could be a good thing.

Well calibrated LCD screen > oversaturated AMOLED screen.
 
BrutulTM

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I take no precautions with my Galaxy Nexus and almost never have trouble getting through the day unless I do a whole bunch of downloading on 4G. I live in an area with no cell coverage and the thing is searching all day. I leave LTE, WiFi, and Bluetooth on all the time and today I probably listened to 8+ hours of podcasts. It's 8:30 PM now and the battery is down to 11% but considering that I make no effort to conserve the battery and didn't bother putting in the extended battery this doesn't seem like a problem to me.
 
Denamian

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Wolfen_sl said:
Unplugged it this morning at 7am. By 9am the battery had lost a whopping 14%! I had not touched the phone at all. It was idle the entire time. Battery usage says Maps used 40% of that. What is Maps doing when the phone is idle?

I can't swap the battery. The redesigned LTE model has it sealed in.
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It's not android that's the problem, it's the various handset manufacturers with their skins bogging android down and shitty apps preinstalled by the carriers. First thing I would do is go buy BetterBatteryStats and see if your phone is going in to deep sleep, and what is keeping it awake if it's not sleeping. Since ICS (4.0) android has had a feature to alow you to disable apps that you can't uninstall, like carrier and manufacturer preinstalled apps. I would go through all your apps and disable all the preinstalled ones that you don't use but can't uninstall. Since 40% of your usage while idle was maps, you've definitely got at least 1 app accessing location services way too often, probably several apps. Google now can do that from time to time, but not to the extent you're seeing.

What version of android does your EVO run? Battery life in 4.1 took a bit of a hit but 4.2 started correcting that, with the newly released 4.2.2 killing the last few wakelocks and bluetooth problems. Most battery problems in android come down to bad apps, especially ones preinstalled by the carrier. Unfortunately none of handset manufacturers have the pull Apple does to keep those apps to a minimum except for maybe Samsung. Hell, just look what Verizon did with the Galaxy Nexus. Google couldn't stop them from shitting all over it, blocking wallet and stopping users from getting the newest version of android, one of the main selling points of a Nexus device.
 
opiate82

opiate82

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So apparently Samsung's not to subtle attack on Apple has been working. So well that even Google is nervous Samsung is becoming to big.

Samsung has the largest market share in the smartphone scene, with 32 percent in the third quarter of 2012 to Apple's 15.5 percent. Samsung's shipments dwarf all others', with 55.5 million phones shipped in the same quarter to Apple's 26.9 million.
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http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/...er-in-samsung/
 
BrutulTM

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Samsung is also toying with their own operating system, although personally I can't really see that taking off at this stage of the game.
 
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Sean_sl

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My mom just picked up an LG Venice. There any must have apps she should get? I'm not familiar with smartphones at all, never had one. Also she need an audio book app.
 
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Wolfen_sl

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Well, after checking a few forums, several people suggested that doing a master reset on the phone might help, so I did it. Since the phone was going to be wiped, I went ahead and unlocked the bootloader and rooted the phone. I then installed the basics that I can get by with. Things like one Exchange account and one imap account, Twitter, Facebook, Nova Launcher, Executive Assistant, Audible, etc. I did not enable Google Now. After doing all that, it seems as though God himself came down and kissed my phone's rustled jimmies. I unplugged it at 7am and I have 40 percent battery at 9:30pm. LTE was turned off (not in my area yet anyway). Needless to say, huge improvement.

Tomorrow I am going to enable Google Now and a couple more things and see how it does with that.
 
Denamian

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Am I correct in assuming you rooted the phone but did not flash a custom rom? If that's the case I would highly suggest trying a 4.2.2 based rom, as 4.2.2 fixed several nagging issues and improved battery life for most phones. I don't know what good roms are out there for the EVO LTE, but CyanogenMod and AOKP should be available for it, I'd recommend Paranoid Android, but that's just on Nexus devices right now.
 
Mageling

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Doing a rundown currently on my N4. 22+ hours and just over 30% battery used on a stock 4.2.2 kernel, PAOSP ROM, and apps only closing down GPS when Maps closes. I'm currently at about 1hr of screen-on time as well.

cwMbtM2.png
 
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