No... I switch the mobile internet or wifi on when I want to use them.


It's a great phone, but why do I need it to be constantly updated all the time? Why do I need to be able to look at the screen to see what the weather is like when I can look out of the window? As for constantly synchronized email I'm not that important that I need to be contactable by email 24/7, and to be honest I doubt you are too, so if I want to check my messages I'll go online, check my inbox, and take it from there, than when I've finished I go offline. Simple.


Ultimately it boils down to this: If you feel you need to have the phone constantly updating then you pay the price of reduced battery life and you'll have to charge it more frequently. If, however, you are prepared to do as I do and stop things running when you don't need them, you'll be able to go a lot longer between charges, and still go online to check for messages should you feel the need.

I do find it strange though when people say they "need" to be able to receive emails wherever they are and as soon as they are sent. How on earth did you manage a few years ago? I personally don't even take my phone on holiday with me. Why? Because I'm on holiday!

You confusing that with mobile network.
Always on Mobile is in Mobile network settings and helps the battery a bit if its disabled.

Nasalhair, I agree with you on all of those points apart from email.

Unfortunately even I, who have kept away from Blackberries all this time, have found that in order to beat the next guy and get that days work, I need to be contactable 24/7.

I even have people that only book crew on FaceBook, crazy I know and to think I used to survive with just a Binatone answer machine back in the early 90s.

You are right, I don't need to be able to constantly see the weather but immediate email alerts are a must, for some of us.

Being able to respond to a request within the blink of an eye means I can make the mortgage for another month, my business is that cut throat, sadly

Anyhow my old Nokia was set to check emails every 15 mins and it did not impact on battery life but it appears that in the case of the Desire there is either on of off. Of course I could check every 15 mins but that would be a pain.

Is there a setting for timed syncs?

I've charged mine every day since monday as i've managed to run it out completely inside a day.

I think i will go through all the 'always on' stuff and switch it off for a week to see if it really affects me in any way. I can't see it will - it's not as if i've got hundreds of people trying to get hold of me via email.

I do go online on the phone, but i've coped up until now having an "as and when" type connection, so i guess i'll have to have the same here.

Might investigate and see if I could invest in a higher capacity battery though as I do plan on keeping this phone for some time so it would be nice to use it to it's full potential and not have to charge it every day.

That discharge/recharge trick is an old Ni-Cad thing and doesn't actually do anything positive for a lithium ion battery. Running them down completely is such a bad idea they have regulators built in to prevent the battery from ever being fully discharged, or bad things would happen.

Worth reading:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li-ion#Safety_requirements

Cheers,. Ill let it drain to 1% and then full charge

Yes there is. You can choose Peak times on certain days, and choose a sync interval for peak times, and also a sync time for non peak times.

Eg, i can have my phone check for emails every 15 mins between 9am and 5pm, monday to friday, and every hour outside of these times and at weekends.

Go to Mail - Press menu - More - Settings - Send & Receive - Set Download Frequency.

Hope this helps.

I guess you better write to Google then and let them know, because they seem to think GMail is push. And considering every test email I send to my own account arrives within 15 seconds or so, either this thing is checking every 5 seconds for GMail, or it is - in fact - push.

:lol:

I set up a google checkout account and got the email through instantly. It's definately push.

I use the Amazon MP3 app for purchasing (DRM-free) music. Because it's not restricted like an iPhone, when you plug it in to the computer there is an option to mount as a disk drive, therefore any music app can manage things for you. (Personally I use Banshee on Linux)

I'm thiking of getting a desire even though by many I would be considered to be only a light user of a mobile. I just like the idea of all that is able to do.

I have read so much on these forums about 'always on' etc and wondered if the desire was designed to be swithced on and off at regular intervals. You can tell that I'm not an expert!!!
I always turn my phone completely off at night from about 10pm until 7am. When I am at work I very rarely have my phone switched on. When you are teaching a class of 6 year olds it is not pratical to make or receive phone calls or messages during the day.

How would find the battery the charging situation if my phone was only on for about 6 hours each day and at weekends. I do understand that how it was being used during those hours would make significant differences.

Switch it on and off as much as you like. You can also disable the internet connection when you don't need to use it, turn off wifi and bluetooth as well and this will help. You can also set the weather, facebook, email etc to manual sync so it will not sync without you asking it to. By doing all the above it should help with the battery life,

Hope this helps

Like you I turn my phone (a Desire) off when I go to bed at about 11ish, and switch it on when I'm getting ready to leave for work (7.30ish). I have Bluetooth, wifi, GPS, mobile internet and auto sync turned off unless I want to use them. Also like you I'm a teacher - well, a training instructor - but when I'm in class I put my phone on silent (vibrate switched off) and then turn the ringer back on when I'm out of class.

This week was a typical week: a few calls, lots of texts, maybe a few minutes on the internet a couple of times through the week. I charged the phone on Monday night and today it is about 1/3 of its charge still remaining, so I'll probably plug it back in tonight or whenever it prompts me. For the record, I spent about an hour on the internet last night via wifi, downloading a few bits from the Android Market and then messing with them. If I hadn't done that the charge would still have been over 50%. Obviously the more you use it and the more stuff you have enabled, the more the battery will run down - it's like the more stuff you have switched on at home the higher your electricity bill will be.

I've also downloaded the 2G/3G widget that lets you have instant access to the 'Network' menu to disable the 3G connection.

I have a very poor 3G connection in the area I live anyway, so I'm really not missing out by disabling it.

I've also switched off the 'always on' data connection and i've resolved to try not to use it as heavily this week - although i did use the music player for about 30 minutes on the bus today

I'm open to all possibilities to find the right balance i guess - i'll even buy a higher capacity battery if need be.

gmail is most deffinatelly push on the desire...

I agree. My fiance has a Magic and whenever a new email comes through it is instant, same with contacts and calendars.

I am tempted by the Desire. It looks like a nice phone. However, while HTC Sense looks nice I think it will be a while (if ever) before we see Froyo on the Desire. I am tempted to just go with the Nexus One instead, at least with plain vanilla Android I can easily update to Froyo and any other future release. The only thing with the Nexus One is that it only available on Vodafone (unless you can buy unlocked) plus the touchscreen buttons at the bottom and scroll ball aren't as good as the Desire. I do like HTC's take on Android but it is troubling that I buy a phone the firmware is likely to remain the same for 24 months while other handsets are enjoying the latest Android every few months. I currently have an iPhone 3G, and even with the 3GS I still get regular updates some of which have made the phone a lot different and better than when I first got it back in 2008. The hardware is only a small part, the main important part is the software, i.e. Android or iPhone OS... that is where the big improvements are. Unless Google and HTC sort this out I can see myself getting an iPhone 4G next month. If Google hired some people to design a decent interface then maybe HTC wouldn't have to create its own.

HTC have said it will definitely be in the second half of 2010, and there are rumours it could even happen on 23rd June.

i would have probably chosen the desire even if i'd been offered an iphone - the open source software would always win out for me.

Is anyone suffering from the Desire not Powering Off? Mine will just hang for at least 10 minutes before I get fed-up and pull out the battery.

I've seen lots of different people claiming solutions: uninstall everything, factory reset, get a new SD card, turn off the backup to SD Card...

... none of which I really want to do.

I have installed: Amazon MP3, ConnectBot, Engadget, Facebook, Goggles, Google Sky Map, gString, LastFM, Layar, Navigation, Network Speed, Shazam, TripIt, Voice Search, XKCDViewer

Never heard of that one. My desire used to suffer with the preinstalled Youtube app and would often freeze for a few seconds. I debranded my Desire* and it hasn't had a problem since.

*debranding invalidates the warranty, you have been warned.

I posted the fix for this earlier...

Look in your settings, under Privacy (I think) and there's a setting to back your settings etc. up to the SD card on shutdown. Disable this. Problem solved. Apparently it's a known issue.

Just out of interest, is the de-branding really worth doing ?

I've flashed many a phone over the years with no real problems, so just wondering if i would really gain anything by de-branding my desire ?

Depends on your preference i guess. I don't know which network you're on but i am on Orange.

For a full list of what is wrong with the Orange desire see here http://www.talk3g.co.uk/showthread.p...range-Branding

The Orange Desire comes with Orange apps installed instead of the standard ones, for example Orange Maps, and Orange messenger (which you have to pay for) instead of Google Talk. There's also loads of game demos on the Orange version taking up loads of memory which you cannot delete as well as links in the menus to take you to the Orange homepage to buy paid apps. There's an Orange logo on the back of the phone but i can live with that

Ouch! It must be a bit inconvenient to have the mobile attached to the charger for a couple of hours every day. The most energy intensive, battery draining thing I've found is using the internet and a mobile and there have been times when I've put the charger on and started net surfing.


Although I've had mobiles unlocked before to change networks, I've never bothered with the debranding bit s there's generally only one or two brand-specific logos on the screen and things like the wallpapers, etc. can be changed anyway.

Just tried that and it made nodifference. Still Hung on shutdown. It unmounts the card, turns off radio then hangs.