Comments on: New Phone

By: Matt Zimmerman

Matt Zimmerman — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 22:27:00 +0000

Menu, Settings, Wireless controls, Mobile networks, Use only 2G networks.

This makes my battery last several times longer.

By: Nick

Nick — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 07:20:00 +0000

Yeah, with rooted phones you get a decent process manager and you can actually kill apps you don’t want running and remove the preinstalled apps (gmail, IM etc) which helps a lot.

By: admin

admin — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 04:22:55 +0000

Nick — Running the terminal was very eye opening. “ps” showed a number of applications running which shouldn’t have been. For the most part, I uninstalled those applications. Some apps, like locale, are using a lot more memory than seems needed.

I can easily see why installing lots of applications can slow the whole phone down. I’ll check out Memory for Lemmings though I heard it didn’t do much.

By: Nick

Nick — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 02:57:47 +0000

You might want to check out Memory for Lemmings, it can _sometimes_ speed my phone up after it starts getting sluggish. I’ve also found the more apps you have installed the slower it gets all round.

By: admin

admin — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 01:49:05 +0000

BTW — check out the HandyCalc application. Simply the most interesting calculator I’ve seen in a long time. I’d like a history system added to it, but otherwise, it’s VERY good.

By: admin

admin — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 01:47:53 +0000

Ryan: I just downloaded an app called “Terminal Emulator” from HelloAndroid.com on the Android Market. I typed “ps” and got a full listing of processes and intents running. Very interesting, it certainly looks like a standard Linux system running.

nube: Peibol: MattW: It would be interesting to find out that some batteries are defective and don’t hold as much charge. OTOH, PowerManager indicates that my battery is fine. It could be the wi-fi which I leave on most of the day.

I notice that a lot of apps I downloaded seem to stay running all the time. I bet that is where my CPU is going when the home screen tries to display. That’s the problem with a multi-process phone OS.

By: Peibol

Peibol — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 18:15:35 +0000

I’ve got the developer version of this phone, with cupcake (in development) firmware.
With wifi & bluetooth turned off (this is what kills your batt) i’ve got the phone running without charging it for 2 days and still got around 42% of battery left (with little use).
I’ve got developer tools wich includes a pretty raw bash terminal which can run ps but not ifconfig.

By: MattW

MattW — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 13:04:43 +0000

Ten seconds to pull up the home screen? Mine’s never taken anywhere near that long.

I can live with the battery life, but then I’m not an enormously heavy data user, and that seems to be what kills it the fastest.

By: nube

nube — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 03:48:52 +0000

Was a sidekick user since the first one (black and white). Upgraded to the G1 this last week. Makes my Sidekick 3 feel, look, and run like brick. No comparison. In fact, the ONLY thing I think may be better on the Sidekick is the keyboard. Other then that, G1 is better. I don’t have the battery problem everyone else complains. In face, I only have to charge it once every 2 days?!?! I use the GPS, etc, not sure what others are doing to theirs to kill their batteries. Granted, the lady at the store dropped mine when she sold it to me, so maybe throw yours on the floor once, see if that improves the battery life.

By: Ryan Thiessen

Ryan Thiessen — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 00:06:41 +0000

My biggest frustration is the lack of a local shell. It’s linux dammit, I want to run ps! I’m not sure exactly why, but I do!