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.

HTC Incredible arrives at my office

Brad got his Incredible today. We took a photo of the guys:

The camera is very good.

The phone feels great in the hand, not as wide as an iPhone, less heavy than a Nexus One. The screen looks amazing - bright and crisp.

Setup was a breeze. I look forward to owning one of these.

HTC Incredible Simulator

Gotta try it before you pre-order it, but can't touch one yet? Try the simulator! 


Not really a simulator, but still fun to look at.

Engadget Droid Incredible review, plus it does tethering

Engadget gives the Incredible a generally very positive review. Particularly the Sense UI. They did not review:

• Tethering
• Friend view
• Footprints
• FM Radio

Here are some notable comments:

HTC has included a handful of its own widgets alongside some of the familiar stock ones which Google offers. Of course, the widgets (and their corresponding apps) which HTC offers generally offer far more functionality than Google's options, and they're also tied together with Sense in way that makes the experience of using them within the OS feel complete -- something notably missing from the Google-only experience. To say that this UI is competitive with something like iPhone OS 3.1 (or 4 for that matter), or Palm's webOS is an understatement; in many ways it's superior to what Apple and Palm are offering.

Besides just the cosmetic stuff, HTC has also done seriously heavy lifting in the details department, continuing to improve the music, video, and photo browsing options on their devices, as well as making their fantastic on-screen keyboard even better in this higher resolution version. We found finger tracking and typing speed to be considerably improved, as well as word prediction and correction. Apple, watch your back... HTC has done a damn good job of sneaking up on your tech, and maybe improving on it. We can't stress this enough: HTC has made a really good OS (Android) into a truly amazing and competitive OS.

Overall the experience with 2.1 and Sense was a complete pleasure -- using the phone felt fast and efficient. We'd like to point out that we've been running the Incredible without any third party task managers, and without manually killing any applications. Android is designed to multitask without the need for utilities of the sort, and based on Steve Jobs' words from the recent iPhone OS 4 event, we were extra curious to see how this brand new build of the software would fare. We can tell you this -- it hasn't let us down yet, and we're not seeing any sluggish behavior or force closes on apps. If this OS has a need for management of its processes, we haven't experienced it yet.

Still no official word on cost (or lack of cost) for tethering, but it is something the phone can do and Verizon is saying so publicly.

Tidbits from HTC Incredible User Guide

There are many sites listing the Incredible's most important specs. However, it seems there are some tidbits in the 206 page manual that I haven't seen reported. For one, the phone supports pinch to zoom. But there is more, much more.

Tethering:

Mobile Broadband Connect: When you do not have Internet connection on your computer, you can select this mode to share your phone’s mobile data connection with your computer. For more information, see “Using Your Phone as a Modem” in the Internet chapter.

VPN support:

Depending on the type of VPN you are using at work, you may be required to enter your login credentials and/or install security certificates before you can connect to your company’s local network. You can get this information from your network administrator.  Also, your phone must first establish a Wi-Fi or data connection before you can initiate a VPN connection. For information about setting up and using these connections on your phone, see “Data connection” and “Wi-Fi” in this chapter.

FM radio:

FM Radio lets you listen to FM radio stations on your phone.  You need to connect a headset first to the audio jack of your phone to use FM Radio. FM Radio uses  the stereo headset as the FM radio antenna.

In addition to PDF support, there is support for Office (just not the new 2007 formats):

Quickoffice lets you view Microsoft Office Word, Microsoft Office Excel, and Microsoft PowerPoint files on your phone. Quickoffice supports viewing of Microsoft Office 2003 and 2007 Word (.doc), Excel (.xls), PowerPoint (.ppt) and text (.txt) files.

HTC Footprints:

HTC Footprints™ provides an easy way to record favorite places and revisit those places. A footprint consists of a photo you take of a location such as a restaurant, a sightseeing destination, etc., stored together with a precise GPS position and other information about that location such as the street address and phone number. The next time you want to visit the same place, simply access the footprint. You can then dial the phone number or view the location in Google Maps

Any song can be a ring-tone:

You can select a song from the Music application’s Library and set it as your phone’s ringtone or a ringtone for a certain contact.

Flicker reduction (I've never heard of this, it's under the Video section):

When taking indoor shots under fluorescent lighting, keep this setting on Auto or change
it to the proper frequency (50Hz or 60Hz) of the power in your country to reduce flicker

Well that is enough for now. I think this phone is a winner, even without a front facing camera.

Verizon store very excited about Android

A colleague of mine posted to our shared internal blog his experience at a Verizon store:

I visited a local Verizon store last night to look at phones for one of my kids. People were coming in with hopes of seeing a demo of the Droid and Android. The sales rep was very excited about Android products. He said he had six hours of training on the Droid and Android. He loves the new Android OS, “Its really fun to use!  I prefer it to WinMobile.  I believe its going to take over the market.”

Verizon will also be offering the new HTC Eris Android (MSM7600) phone for sale tomorrow. For $99 I just read!

Verizon will launch to Android phones tomorrow.  The HTC Droid Eris and the Motorla Droid. Turns out Droid on Verizon is a series of phones - not just a phone from Motorola.

Both phones feature a 528 MHz processor. The Eris’ CPU is reported to be from Qualcomm. Both will have a 5 M camera, Eris does not have a flash. Also missing from the Eris is a physical keyboard. Finally since Eris will run Andriod 1.5 it will not have 2.0’s Navigation features. What Eris does bring to the table is the HTC’s own sense UI.

Engadget has posted an un-boxing of DROID ERIS.

I gotta say, I'm excited too.

Storm 2 vs iPhone spelling suggestions

I was just in the Verizon store to try out the Storm 2. As I said before, Verizon has suggested to me that the storm is just like the iPhone. I don't agree but I wanted to see Storm 2 for myself.

I played with the phone for 10 minutes and found it to be a good unit. Seems solid. Its touch screen functions well - it selects what I think my finger is on very well. I'm not a fan of the "screen is a button" touch screen model. I suppose some will like having to push the screen in each time an on-screen item is clicked - but I'm not one of them.

However, in playing with sending a sample SMS I found that the spelling suggestions were very weak. Typing therr, the Storm suggested therr and thert. The iPhone however made one seggestion: there. Neither phone suggested their.

For the record, Merriam-Webster does the not think thert is a word. Why in the world would the phone suggest that?

Which suggestion software do you think is better?

Android is coming everywhere - Verizon, T-Mobile, Sprint, everywhere!

Perhaps the most plausible contenders against iPhone are Google’s Android and Palm’s webOS.

Pause for a minute here - the top most talked about smart phone operating systems did not exist (as something I could buy) 3 years ago. Amazing.

What are people using these for? Take the top of the three, the iPhone. People use that for many many things - but it can be boiled down (excluding the phone feature) to, in no particular order: web, apps, music, and email/sms.

As a new contender, PC World’s David Worthington says that Droid Faces Uphill Battle Against iPhone. They don’t talk much about the phone’s hardware. They talk about the software. Telling is the discussion of iTunes:

“However, that would involve switching carriers, and would leave much of my iTunes music library orphaned. My music, video and phone are all-in-one now, and I do not want to have to carry around a separate iPod.”

Verizon’s ad campaign for Droid says “Driod does“. This means that Android does - since the HW does nothing without the SW stack on top of it.  Android does offer features in web, apps, music and email/sms. PC world is correct however, the biggest electronic seller of music is Apples iTunes and there are 30 million iPhones (or so) out there. Perhaps Qualcomm or some other group should make a seamless way to get iTunes data on their phone.

One could go the route that palm took and spoof the iPhone. Or you could champion any of the many open source projects aiming to unlock iTunes data for other devices.  Without a path from iTunes to your music playing smartphone it will be difficult to convince people to switch from iPhone.

But does any of that matter? David Worthington says:

The question is, does the average user care about things such as open development? I’m an iPhone owner, and Apple’s draconian policies don’t really affect my overall experience. There are still plenty of apps to choose from. I haven’t met too many disaffected iPhone users, probably because the user experience-while imperfect-is pretty great.

Maybe, maybe not.

Regardless of the outcome here, Android phones are exploding onto the market place. Sprint launched the Samsung Momenttoday. Also today, T-mobile brings out the Motorola CLIQ. Rachael may be officially revealed this week.

One thing is for sure, these are exciting times to be working on smartphones.

Update: HTC’s Eris will also come out this week.

Verizon Android Devices Look Good

A while ago I said that Verizon did not have the iPhone but I'd be tempted by an Andriod phone. I'm also most interested if the phone has a chip in it that I worked on.

Recently news broke that I'm likely to get my hands on just such a phone. The HTC Passion. Looking at video of the HTC Hero vs. the iPhone 3Gs (for the OS review), I'm getting very excited about seeing the Passion in person. I really like the contact centric and back-ground app capable Android OS vs the iPhone's app centric approach.

Seeing this mini intro to Android 2.0, which the Passion will have, really gets me excited. It looks fantastic.

Judging by Apple's market share, it seems these Andriod phones can't come a soon enough. I don't mind Apple cleaning everyone else's clocks - but choice is good too. Better is a choice between two good phones - rather than settling for a bad phone because you want the good network (Verizon).

Looks like HTC also gets it.

I'm looking forward to giving up my Chocolate, finally. What about you?

Verizon Android

As I said a couple days ago, Verizon called to remind me about my new every two promotion. I told them I wanted an iPhone.

But that's not 100% true. I'd also be temped by an Android phone.

I didn't need Verizon's There's a Map for That ads to know that ATT might not work for me. My friends iPhone gets no service in my home.

So I wait - stuck on the "best network" - without a smart phone that I actually want.

That might change with Verizon announcing support for Android phones. I'm pretty excited that they might come this year!

But what are the phones? All this year there have been rumors that one will be the Motorola Sholes. At a recent press conference it seemed the two phones were revealed. Today I see that an update to customer support software at Verizon stores has been updated - it shows two Android phones. The phones are the Motorola Sholes and Calgary. The HTC phone shown at the press conference is not there. That's a shame.

In any case, whatever the phones are, I can't wait to read reviews and see these for myself. Who knows, maybe I'll get one. Here's to choices!