Battery on milestone

[AlanN]

I know about the 'methods' to improve battery life... I just find that using most of them totally crushes the pleasure of using the phone. The main assets of android are multitasking and background data. To have your battery last a day you have to kill all tasks every 1/2h (what if you were actualy using something and it gets killed?), you can't use 3G (what's the purpose of a full browser nowadays if you are stuck with 2g?), you have to dim your display (milestone's display is gourgeous, that's such a shame), you can't use sync or push (one of the most importat features in android ;//) and you have to turn off your anthenas (that's doable but still annoying).

Sorry for trying to help.
You obviously crave a Nokia 6310.
Good luck...or get yourself a Blackberry (but not a Storm2 because it's the same story plus it drops calls after 30secs).
Stick with your gayiPhone if it does all you want.

[sloopjohnb]

I appreciated your help alan, you don't have to be so touchy, ok? And no phone in the world will make you more or less of a man. I was justexpressing my disappointment. You may like the phone but the battery life is kinda of a problem, that's just a fact, I'm not saying its not o good device, it is good.
I wouldn't buy a nokia now and I don't like blackberries. The iphone 3gs is the best smartphone right now (every tech site/blog will tell you that) but I got a milestone cause I wanted something differemt and it's a very cool gadget, I'm just having trouble with the battery

[big_adventure]

The iphone 3gs is the best smartphone right now (every tech site/blog will tell you that) but I got a milestone cause I wanted something differemt and it's a very cool gadget, I'm just having trouble with the battery

There are thousands of "tech sites/blogs" that do not agree with you. If you want the battery to last as long as an iPhone, use the phone like an iPhone! Don't multitask, make sure everything in the background is dead, reduce screen brightness, text and email less and cut all of your calls short (which the iphone does for you in th US!).

The iPhone is a great product. But the joy of gadgets is that there is no "best". I used an iPhone (a 1st gen, then a 3g) for 2 years. I really enjoyed it, and it changed the way I used my phone. But then my poor 3g fell into a hole (not a joke), and I decided to switch to a BlackBerry Bold. The iPhone was better for games, music, web browsing and video (and it isn't close), but the BlackBerry was better, MUCH better, for for mail, chat, phone calls, speed of operation, multitasking, notifications, RSS reader (Viigo is better than anything on iPhone) and, oh yes, bettery life.

Is there a "best" between those two? Not really. "Best" is totally subjective. CrackBerry is Best for some things, iPhone is Best for some things.

How about my Milestone? Well, it multitasks as well as or better than a BlackBerry. It does Gmail (I have 4 accounts configured) better than a BlackBerry and one million times better than an iPhone. It doesn't text or chat as well as a Bold, but, thanks to the options of Swype and the hard keyboard, it does them at least as well as or better than the iPhone. Web browsing is mixed - I love the hires screen, but the iPhone browser is definitely easier to use, as the tap-to-zoom works and I find it always misses on my 'stone. It does Google sync and Google everything (I use calendar, finance, docs, talk, Wave, etc.) as well as or better than anything else. It does Voice Search (once I installed the APK) very well. Twidroid is better than any BlackBerry Twitter app. Android's Facebook app (even the Droid, contact syncing edition) is lame, and nowhere nearly as good as BlackBerry or iPhone. Navigation and Maps are MUCH better on the Milestone, once you install the US edition of Maps to get turn-by-turn. The interface is nice, but less smooth than the iPhone 3GS by far (all that multitasking and those pretty backgrounds have a price).

Oh, and the battery? Given how much I use a phone, I charge every night in any case. And that applies to every phone except the BlackBerry, which would always make it two days.

Which one is "best"?

[greg_p]

The reality is that all the task you are demanding to your (iphone or milestone) ask for computing and emitting, and all these are power-greedy. This is a reality. And I don[t think it will drastically change in the 2/3 year... And i'm working in energy management at TI soc..
A cortex a8 standalone consume 300ma at 600mhz, minimum for memory is 150ma, + all the radio interface (not far from 100ma, more in 3g)... you are at 500+. your battery is 1.4 ah, means that your phone will suck the battery in 3 hours.
We are doing optimizations you can't imagine, but think that you can't do all of that facebook/gtalk/3g games with a 10 years old nokia 6110 ... This has a power cost.

[AlanN]

The iphone 3gs is the best smartphone right now (every tech site/blog will tell you that) but I got a milestone cause I wanted something differemt and it's a very cool gadget, I'm just having trouble with the battery

There are thousands of "tech sites/blogs" that do not agree with you. If you want the battery to last as long as an iPhone, use the phone like an iPhone! Don't multitask, make sure everything in the background is dead, reduce screen brightness, text and email less and cut all of your calls short (which the iphone does for you in th US!).

The iPhone is a great product. But the joy of gadgets is that there is no "best". I used an iPhone (a 1st gen, then a 3g) for 2 years. I really enjoyed it, and it changed the way I used my phone. But then my poor 3g fell into a hole (not a joke), and I decided to switch to a BlackBerry Bold. The iPhone was better for games, music, web browsing and video (and it isn't close), but the BlackBerry was better, MUCH better, for for mail, chat, phone calls, speed of operation, multitasking, notifications, RSS reader (Viigo is better than anything on iPhone) and, oh yes, bettery life.

Is there a "best" between those two? Not really. "Best" is totally subjective. CrackBerry is Best for some things, iPhone is Best for some things.

How about my Milestone? Well, it multitasks as well as or better than a BlackBerry. It does Gmail (I have 4 accounts configured) better than a BlackBerry and one million times better than an iPhone. It doesn't text or chat as well as a Bold, but, thanks to the options of Swype and the hard keyboard, it does them at least as well as or better than the iPhone. Web browsing is mixed - I love the hires screen, but the iPhone browser is definitely easier to use, as the tap-to-zoom works and I find it always misses on my 'stone. It does Google sync and Google everything (I use calendar, finance, docs, talk, Wave, etc.) as well as or better than anything else. It does Voice Search (once I installed the APK) very well. Twidroid is better than any BlackBerry Twitter app. Android's Facebook app (even the Droid, contact syncing edition) is lame, and nowhere nearly as good as BlackBerry or iPhone. Navigation and Maps are MUCH better on the Milestone, once you install the US edition of Maps to get turn-by-turn. The interface is nice, but less smooth than the iPhone 3GS by far (all that multitasking and those pretty backgrounds have a price).

Oh, and the battery? Given how much I use a phone, I charge every night in any case. And that applies to every phone except the BlackBerry, which would always make it two days.

Which one is "best"?

Absolutely spot on with all points.

[sloopjohnb]

When I said the iphone 3gs was the best I meant 'best overall'. If you add up all the things it does well, it's better then the rest right now. Most journalists, bloggers and even tech enthusiasts agree on that. It doesn't do everything but its features are very well executed.
People are saying I should use my milestone as an 'iphone' to save battery life but you know what? I only get 12-14h out of my milestone if I do lest than half the stuff I did on my iphone and that includes push and also multitasking (the iphone does multitask with email, ipod, safari and phone and even more if you use backgrounder which was my case).
I also prefer gmail on my iphone. On the milestone you have to keep scrolling sideways to read your mail and there's no zoom option like on the iphone. Blackberries are great at doing push and have good battery life but I hate the trackball cause it gets dirty and non responsive over time, not to mention the software that renders html email and websites (it looks like something from 4 years ago).
All the cool google apps/services that made the droid so famous are not available on the milestone. I didn't know that until I got it. You can get a few of them 'unofficialy' but there's no guarantee they'll work forever.
Multitasking is very cool on android, it just disturbs me the fact that the os almost never offers me the option to close an app. I can see the battery draining and it keeps leaving things open and opening apps without my request. I don't like how it manages apps. Having to get a task killer and doing the work myself all the time is really irritating.
I thing I'm gonna return my milestone and get a 3GS. The milestone may work for a lot of people but it's not working for me.

[big_adventure]

Really?

OK, then, it seems that, for YOU, the iPhone is the "best". You are absolutely entitled to your opinion. Me, I have 3 reasons for not using an iPhone right now:

1. I don't want Apple to have total control over what I do with my telephoning life. (which is ironic, as I'm writing this message on a MacBook Air and who plays videos and games on an iPod Touch in the Metro - but I've at the very least disguised both of those devices with non-Apple stickers)

2. Related to 1, I HATE Apple's machevelian business practices, and I don't want to "me-too" market for them. If Micro$oft tried the stuff Apple does, they would be CRUCIFIED in the media. Not patching reported bugs for 7 months? That was MS back in 2000. STILL not patching said bug, even when an exploit is out and in the wild? Blocking apps from their store for no good reason? Not even giving you the option to do what you want, when you want, with the phone you bought? Ugh.

3. I use lots of Google stuff, and MY Milestone is fantastic with it. Gmail is, for me, incomparable to the iPhone. It's not apples and oranges, it's apples and battleships. The overwhelming majority of the emails I receive are text, and those render perfectly. HTML mails tend to render great, if you just turn the phone on its side. But the fact that you have effectively the same interface as the web client is what makes it so awesome. And compatibility with everything else Google (except for Docs, of course) really pushes it over the top.

But this is what makes gadgets fun - we get to have what we want in our own devices. I don't see why you would need or want to convince yourself that something is "best" for some nameless, faceless, amorphous blob of people whose opinion, frankly, should matter much less to you than your own, and which is certainly no more qualified. If you want an iPhone 3GS, just go get one!

[AlanN]

The iPhone doesn't "multi-task" I think you'll find.

As has been said, treat your Milestone like an iPhone and it'll give you better battery life.

The BB Storm2 doesn't have a trackball?
Nor does the Bold?


As for your argument about apps being open...there are apps you can install to solve that easily.


Just go and get an iPhone!


Simples.