some things never change

I emailed Daring Fireball's John Gruber for the first time (about some vids I found). I wondered what he'd find if he searched for me using my gmail account name: mjbiren. I came across this from 3 phones ago:

Back to the battery: I don't like having to worry about the batter life day to day. I think if I charge it over night I should be able to just use the phone for the whole next day. By "just use it" I don't mean all day 100s of minutes of in-call use. I just mean use it however I want all day - a few calls, some messages, some music, maybe look at the weather or get a stock quote a couple times. With the original battery this was barely possible. When I got BT headphones and an SD card it was impossible. The phone would die by 1 or 2pm. I bought the 1200 Mah extended battery. Now the phone looks like crap, but lasts two days worry free, even if I listen to music over BT headphones 2-3 hours each day.

Same with my Incredible. It looks like crap but the battery lasts all day. Some things never change.

Get the most from your HTC Sense enabled phone

So you have a shiny new HTC Sense enabled phone (or any other recent Android phone)? Now what? Out of the box, after setting up exchange etc you'll see that the battery life is pretty poor. 

What to do? The #1 thing to do is change the update frequency of your apps. The default for exchange is to update in real time - this absolutely kills the battery. Changing that to 10 or 15 minutes fixes this. Same for twitter, facebook, weather apps etc. Extending the time between updates is the best way to get more up time from your device.

Essential apps? I'm repeating myself somewhat here, but I recommend you get :

• audio manager 
• way better than going into settings->Sound & Display
• Bonus: it is the only way to turn down the phone dialer volume (at least on the Incredible)
• battery snap
• great historical graphs of battery usage (how much did watching that video kill it?)
• realcalc - a sci/eng calculator, even has RPN mode!
• Listen - for podcasts etc
• Pandora, or whatever you use for streaming music
• y5 Battery Saver – remembers wifi spots you connect to, manages waking up wifi, looking for those spots and keeping wifi off when those hotspots aren’t available. 
• Weather Channel. Disable the HTC sense weather widget (by removing it from your home screen) and get the weather channel's app - it uses less battery, and can monitor more places more intuitively. It also has many more choices for home screen widgets. 
• Bonus: it has weather maps in motion and you can set alert levels (and the method that alert is signaled) for severe weather.
• Skyfire - an alternative browser with a neat trick for streaming Flash that the phone doesn't yet support (like comedycentral.com).
• Traffic! - I know google maps supports traffic, but last I checked it doesn't give very good details on why a place is congested and how long the travel time is through the congestion. This app does that.
• If you listen to music on the phone - get the Cubed Music Player - visually the best one I've seen. Functionally good too.
• For the best outlook experience, if you don't mind spending the money, get TouchDown.

Got one to add to this list - put it in the comments!


Update: I just got a travel app called Kayak. This app (and web site) make all the other travel sites I've used (orbitz, travel.yahoo.com etc) look like junk.

Testing HTC Incredible Recharge Cycling Rumors

Rumors in forums state that when the phone is charged just one time, it reaches a full charge that is less than the battery's true potential full charge.

Using Battery Snap I measured battery voltage between charges. I did find that second and third charges increased the apparent charge level in the phone. To do this I followed the procedure:

1. Charge with phone on until the indicator LED turns green.
2. Turn the phone off, charge again until the indicator LED turns green again.
3. Repeat #2.

The only thing I did different was to turn the phone on between each step and look at Battery Snap readings. When I was done, I had Battery Snap export its data (in CSV format) and I created the following graph:

From the data it does appear that the mV level of the battery can reach new highs with this procedure. Even as an electrical engineer, an employee of Qualcomm, and a member of the Snapdragon design team, I don't have a ready explanation for this. Not surprise there, I don't do batteries!

Must have Android Apps

Two weeks with Verizon's HTC Incredible.... here are some must have apps:

• audio manager 
• way better than going into settings->Sound & Display
• Bonus: it is the only way to turn down the phone dialer volume
• battery snap
• great historical graphs of battery usage (how much did watching that video kill it?)
• weather channel widget
• realcalc (sci/eng calculator)
• Listen
• Pandora

What are your must have apps? I have urban spoon, but it isn’t must have.... So, what are your top 3 or 4 must have apps?

What apps are so good you paid for?

Maximize your Verizon HTC Incredible's Battery Life

Want your Android phone, such as the HTC Droid Incredible, to be usable all day? Too much to ask? Seems like it might be - what with reports that a hardly used Verizon HTC Droid Incredible is at 50% battery capacity after just 4 hours off the charger. This contrasts sharply with Laptop Magazine's assertion that they ran the phone from 9am to 11pm with no trouble.

From the Android Forums thread on the topic, here are some things you can do (that aren't the bunk about battery charging/cycling etc):

1. Slow down widget update frequency. Stock widgets, weather widgets, twitter, facebook, email are doing what they do, keeping you informed. But you can save juice by making them update less often.
2. Lower the screen brightness manually. Auto is nice, but it is very bright most of the time.
3. Disable bluetooth and GPS.
4. Try out battery optimizing software like Power Manager. Also try WISync, Locale or Toggle Settings.  These can turn off your network radios, saving power. Some can do things like turn them off for 14 minutes then on for one minute, or according to location, time of day etc.
5. Read this guy's post on doubling his battery life.

Best post in the thread:

What is the point of having the device if everything needs to be turned off? 

Here are Most Wanted killers for battery life:

1. Sense 2.1
2. Widgets
3. 3G
4. Flash media -watch a few videos and check your battery status. No point in mentioning Flash games, since not many work correctly with touch-only anyways (no harm no foul). Should be much better with 10.1 and gpu support.
5. Pushing mail
6. Social apps running in background are killer- especially if they use GPS 

The main issue is manufacturers keep making thin devices that have to ship with wimpy batteries. I seem to also notice the main people that complain about battery life are some of the same ones that LOVE thin & light devices. Ironic.

The extended battery will be a must for anyone expecting to use many of the features.

If all else fails, get a bigger battery. Here is one that fits inside the existing battery door, adding 450 mAH over the stock battery  -  a 35% increase. (Note some say 1750 mAH is not what you get).

If you don't mind making the phone thicker, a I have seen mention of a 2150 mAh battery. I could not find a solid link to it though. Reports say is will be made available by VZW soon. These reports also claim that this battery will add about 1mm to the phone's thickness. Not bad.