looking for opinions

[Phin]

I really want to run some other Rom. I would like to have the battery stay useful from 7am to 7pm. I'm OK with charging the battery every night.I would like some thing cool and clean thats runs well. Flash is a must.

Anyone have any fav's?

 

[EbE404]

I really want to run some other Rom. I would like to have the battery stay useful from 7am to 7pm. I'm OK with charging the battery every night.I would like some thing cool and clean thats runs well. Flash is a must.

Anyone have any fav's?

While ROMs will have some effect on battery life, the largest impact is going to come from how you actually use your phone. After that, the biggest impact will likely come from the kernel you use and settings and profiles that you create with SetCPU (even if you don't actually overclock the device).

12 hours of useful battery life is hardly unreasonable or unattainable. If you aren't getting that now, I have to wonder what is killing it so quickly. Are you an extremely heavy user, or are there some settings or apps you have that are causing the drain?

 

[Phin]

I would love to be a power user For the most part I use my Droid for text,phone and email. I look at Facebook once or twice a day to keep up with my family. I'm using launcher pro and a Google voice widget I love Google voice for voice mail. I do spend about a half an hour on fox news at lunch time.

On top of all that I have dozens of aps I don't use that I downloaded just to look at. Is there a way to wipe the whole system and start without all the junk I have added. I don't run an appkiller because I was reading somewhere that they where not very good for android.

Oh yes I am running an antivirus not sure if that is something I really need.

I'm a junky for "pretty" stuff and that is the reason I was considering a custom rom. So basically any advice to make me feel like a power user would be great. LOL

 

[xkape]

goto the market and install juice defender. then hit the menu button (inside the market) and select downloads. Uninstall the apps you don't use.

Get rid of the antivirus. At this point in time, there is no gain to a hacker to hack it so, there really isn't much of a threat. The biggest threay tou have is the apps you install. YOU give them permission to look at certain things by installing it at your own free will.

 

[EbE404]

goto the market and install juice defender. then hit the menu button (inside the market) and select downloads. Uninstall the apps you don't use.

Get rid of the antivirus. At this point in time, there is no gain to a hacker to hack it so, there really isn't much of a threat. The biggest threay tou have is the apps you install. YOU give them permission to look at certain things by installing it at your own free will.

Regarding Juice Defender, I think that's a good suggestion, although I had heard that it was having issues with Froyo (I don't know if it has been updated, I don't use it). Xkape-have you tried it with Froyo?

Regarding hacking threats, I disagree that there is nothing on your phone a hacker would want-from stored passwords to contacts to potentially sensitive files or e-mails, there could be a treasure trove there, and I personally think mobile phones are going to be the "next big thing" when it comes to hackers and theft. However I do agree with xkape that the antivirus is unnecessary and the biggest threat is going to come from your own behavior and apps you download (can't read those permission warnings too carefully). Removing that alone could get you a noticeable increase in battery life.

To the OP's last comments, good call on the Task Killer. I keep one installed to nuke misbehaving apps in an emergency, but it is not doing any automated actions and I almost never touch it.

There are a lot of threads here on extending battery life, but here are some general points:

• Reduce screen brightness when it's not needed
• Shut off radios when they are not needed, particularly WiFi and GPS
• Reduce the frequency of syncing for Facebook and e-mail
• When finished with an app, fully exit the app by using an exit button or using the back button to back out of it instead of pressing the home button. Pressing Home will quit some apps fully, but others, such as Maps, may continue to run.
• If using Flash, use the "On Demand" setting in the browser. This will let pages load faster, filter out extra Flash garbage like ads and save resources used to render what you don't care about.

 

[Dark Lazer]

I personally think being rooted without using ROMs has given me the best battery life. This is my second Droid 1. Before this one, I was rooted and changing ROMs every week or two. And I found my battery life was never the same. Now with this second Droid 1, I rooted it but haven't used any ROMs. Still use it the same amoutn of time. I think I unplugged it from my charger at around noon today. Set it to charge during the day for maybe an hour or less, and its at about 80% right now after almost 16 hours. It's pretty amazing.

 

[xkape]

I personally think being rooted without using ROMs has given me the best battery life. This is my second Droid 1. Before this one, I was rooted and changing ROMs every week or two. And I found my battery life was never the same. Now with this second Droid 1, I rooted it but haven't used any ROMs. Still use it the same amoutn of time. I think I unplugged it from my charger at around noon today. Set it to charge during the day for maybe an hour or less, and its at about 80% right now after almost 16 hours. It's pretty amazing.

? My phone will fully charge in an hour. So setting it on a charger midday for an hour IMO means, you got the phone off the charger at noon yesterday. You then charged it again (for me, fully charged) around 5 or 6 o clock and used it until bedtime. You then let it sit overnight uncharged and now this morning you have 80% left. I will also assume you have bluetooth and wifi turned off.

I'm not saying it's bad battery life. I am just saying that's pretty much normal battery life.

 

[xkape]

EbE404...

Yes, I use Juice Defender (the free one. I did not upgrade to Ultimate Juice) I am running UD 8.0 as my ROM. FRG22D. Froyo. Perhaps on a stock phone things would be different but I have no experience there.

I agree that one day hacking will come to Android. Right now though, I just can't see where a hacker would benefit. Modestly yes, but who's to say they don't end up hacking someone like me. Then they go to the grocery only to find out I got about $20 to my name. Seems like it would just be easier to go to the bar, wait for someone to get drunk and then steal their phone. Not saying I would do that but, if I were so inclined to choose from the hacking path or the stealing path, I'd steal it cause it's easier and I'm lazy.

As far as a task killer is concerned, if you use one to shut something down, it's just going to start back up again if it wants to. It can be used for those great apps that don't have an "exit" button like the stock music player but, I can go into settings>applications>running services and kill it in there. I'm just big on keeping my memory as free as I can so I don't use one. That's just me though.

 

[xkape]

The battery issue itself is a hard one to gauge because everyone uses their phones in different ways. There are ways to improve battery life and I think Ebe404 gave a good rundown of those options. I will add though that, in his line of thought on the Facebook syncing, same applies to any app that synchs or polls or checks. (However your app wants to word it.) Like email, mine checks every half hour. You can have it set to check anywhere from every minute to never.

For me, my only goal is to wake up, take phone off charger, use it and make it home at night without it dying. I can accomplish this very easily with my use so I am a happy camper.

For those that don't care... My daily usuals are.. talk time about 2 hours. 20-30 text messages, bluetooth for 2 hours (1 hour to and from work) and then about an hour of randomness (market browsing, internet, installing something, etc..)

 

[xkape]

A good marker to use is to hit your menu button and select settings>about phone>battery use

Look and see what's eating all your batteries juice and then decide how to minimize that.

 

[EbE404]

EbE404...

Yes, I use Juice Defender (the free one. I did not upgrade to Ultimate Juice) I am running UD 8.0 as my ROM. FRG22D. Froyo. Perhaps on a stock phone things would be different but I have no experience there.

I agree that one day hacking will come to Android. Right now though, I just can't see where a hacker would benefit. Modestly yes, but who's to say they don't end up hacking someone like me. Then they go to the grocery only to find out I got about $20 to my name. Seems like it would just be easier to go to the bar, wait for someone to get drunk and then steal their phone. Not saying I would do that but, if I were so inclined to choose from the hacking path or the stealing path, I'd steal it cause it's easier and I'm lazy.

As far as a task killer is concerned, if you use one to shut something down, it's just going to start back up again if it wants to. It can be used for those great apps that don't have an "exit" button like the stock music player but, I can go into settings>applications>running services and kill it in there. I'm just big on keeping my memory as free as I can so I don't use one. That's just me though.

Thanks for the info on Juice Defender. My standard ROM these days is Lithium mod, although i've been playing with CM6 to check it out and make some comparisons.

Regarding hacking, yes, I certainly see where you are coming from. My only point is that mobile phones in general are becoming more attractive targets simple because people are putting more information on there and generally, are more lax about their data security. Eventually, I see that as an attractive target, although we have not seen any truly serious threats yet. Still, vigilance is key, particularly when installing apps one is not familiar with.

Regarding task killers, yes, you are completely correct that in normal circumstances, it will start back up again depending on what it is and does. I simply keep one around for when i am working with beta apps if something gets "hung". That's really the only circumstance I would ever suggest using one.

 

[takeshi]

While ROMs will have some effect on battery life, the largest impact is going to come from how you actually use your phone.

^This can't be emphasized enough, judging by all the threads/posts with people looking for easy fixes (apps, ROM's, whatever).

 

[Dark Lazer]

I personally think being rooted without using ROMs has given me the best battery life. This is my second Droid 1. Before this one, I was rooted and changing ROMs every week or two. And I found my battery life was never the same. Now with this second Droid 1, I rooted it but haven't used any ROMs. Still use it the same amoutn of time. I think I unplugged it from my charger at around noon today. Set it to charge during the day for maybe an hour or less, and its at about 80% right now after almost 16 hours. It's pretty amazing.

? My phone will fully charge in an hour. So setting it on a charger midday for an hour IMO means, you got the phone off the charger at noon yesterday. You then charged it again (for me, fully charged) around 5 or 6 o clock and used it until bedtime. You then let it sit overnight uncharged and now this morning you have 80% left. I will also assume you have bluetooth and wifi turned off.

I'm not saying it's bad battery life. I am just saying that's pretty much normal battery life.

Not exactly. I forgot to mention this was while I was in the car. The car charger isnt nearly as strong. It probably went up 10% while using it in the car and streaming pandora.

 

[Dark Lazer]

And I just set it on my dock to charge in my room. Since my first post in this topic, it's gone down from 80% to 70%. I remember going to sleep and waking up without charging it and being down to almost 60%.

 

[Phin]

Very impressed by juice Defender. Thanks for the tip