Viewing 29 posts - 1 through 29 (of 29 total)
  • Should I keep my iPhone 4s? Alternative?
  • huggis
    Free Member

    Having 2nd thoughts (gasp). After spending so much time saving and building brownie points with Mrs Huggis I’m disappointed by the battery life on this phone. anyone else got one? Use it quite heavily for business during the week and for OS maps at weekend. Maybe expecting a days use is too much? Anyone got one of the new windows phones and running OS maps? ( I use memory map)

    Mostly everything else is great on the phone.

    molgrips
    Free Member

    What battery life are you getting? My new Droid lasts about 36 hours, maybe a little more now it’s bedded in – which was a shock at first but then I realised it just needs nightly charging so I bought the little bedside dock (since that’s where it lives anyway) and problem solved. Except I HAVE to remember it when I travel…

    zippykona
    Full Member

    When my iphone died i made sure my next phone could have the battery swapped. Normally i get a day out of my samsung but if i need to i have a spare battery in my wallet and seconds later i am good to go.
    Why all phones aren’t like that i don’t know.
    ps spare battery about 2 quid.

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    spw3
    Full Member

    Go to settingss\location services\system services and switch off “setting time zone”.

    huggis
    Free Member

    Good tip spw3

    bigG
    Free Member

    My Mrs was really disappointed in the battery life of her 4s. We did the following and it’s much improved, she now gets 36 /48 hours of pretty heavy usage between full charge and phone dying.

    Leave your phone on, with as many apps etc as you can to kill the battery until the phone switches itself off, give it a full charge, repeat. The phone should (in our experience) have a much better battery life.

    No guarantee but it’s worth a shot.

    CountZero
    Full Member

    I really fail to understand why people buy a sophisticated computer with phone function, use it to its full capability, then express surprise because the battery runs down. Would you expect to use a laptop for twelve hours straight and have the battery last? I bough a Nokia N95, which struggled to get two hours out of its battery, in fact I ran it flat in two hours listening to music one afternoon. Any smartphone will give great battery life if you don’t use most of the things you bought the damn thing for. Battery life tends to improve after a while through use anyway. Last February I went up to London on the train, leaving at 10.30am. I was reading an ebook all the way up, then using the camera, GPS with various map functions, searching Google for things, then read the book in the station bar for a couple of hours as I had booked my ticket for later than I needed to, and carried on with the ebook on the train for another hour or so. The battery went to 10% just before I arrived at my home station at 10pm. If you want long battery life, either don’t use the phone for anything other than phone calls, or just buy a crap feature phone. You can buy little booster batteries from Amazon for around £22 which use the phone cable to connect, and one of those give one or two full charges. There are also battery cases but they make the phone bulkier. I can pretty much guarantee that any replacement will give about the same life if you use it to its full capabilies; that phone has practically the same processing power and close to the same memory as my 2003 PowerBook, and that would barely give five or six hours, usually less. Also it’s the backlight that uses a fair bit of power too. Suck it up, it’s the price you pay for sophisticated high performance tech in a highly portable format.

    CountZero
    Full Member

    Here you go, just had a quick look on t’net, and someone on avforums highly recommended this:
    http://www.simenibiz.com/shop/direct-wholesale-power-station-for-digital-player/911-5000mah-portable-power-for-mobile-phone-mp3-gps-game-device.html
    $35, going to order one myself tomorrow.

    rs
    Free Member

    Another one is to turn the brightness down, makes a huge diff on my iPad.

    Cougar
    Full Member

    Turn off stuff you’re not using too. There’s no point sitting there with GPS, Bluetooth, Wifi, 3G etc all burning electrons if you’re not using them.

    (Old Android tip, can’t see why it wouldn’t work on iPhone.)

    Ewan
    Free Member

    Turn off the GPS time setting, turn off blue tooth, turn on auto brightness. Also don’t leave apps running in the background if they’re actually doing something (e.g. don’t leave a GPS tracking app running in the background, but facebook is fine).

    To kill a background app, double click the home button, you’ll then get a list of apps appear from the bottom. Then hold your finger on the apps which will make a little red cross appear on them, then hit the cross.

    I get about 48 hours with my 1.5 year old Iphone 4. But as pointed out, if you’re on the web all day you’ll get less. When I just use it as a phone and turn data off (when on holiday) I can get a week.

    I’d keep the 4S as in my experience android phones are just as bad if you use their features as much – that’s the problem with having easy to use features – you use them!

    cranberry
    Free Member
    donsimon
    Free Member

    Get rid and jump on the new band wagon.
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-15489523

    titusrider
    Free Member

    Windows phone 7 really is very good, has the iphone thing of just working and doing everything u need.
    Its a bit less cluttered on the front screen too. ilike 🙂

    molgrips
    Free Member

    I bough a Nokia N95, which struggled to get two hours out of its battery

    I used to get three or four days from mine.

    theflatboy
    Free Member

    molgrips – Member

    I bough a Nokia N95, which struggled to get two hours out of its battery

    I used to get three or four days from mine.

    me too. although it was shit.

    AdamW
    Free Member

    Windows phone 7 really is very good, has the iphone thing of just working and doing everything u need.
    Its a bit less cluttered on the front screen too. ilike

    Yeah, but it’s really fugly!

    whatnobeer
    Free Member

    Love my Windows Phone. Its one of the more basic HTC models, but its great. The OS is really nice and smooth, very quick and everything is linked together is its really easy to do what you want to do. Haven’t used OS Maps on it, so cant comment on that, buts its grand. The new Nokia models (new Lumia range) means there’s plenty of choice handset wise. I’d go find someone with one and have a play with it.

    njee20
    Free Member

    me too. although it was shit.

    +1

    radtothepowerofsik
    Free Member

    I quite fancy one of these

    donsimon
    Free Member

    Will you get the blue for boys or pink for girls one?

    spacemonkey
    Full Member

    Check out the Battery Doctor app. It’s “supposed” to maximise/improve battery performance. Have used it on my 4 for nearly a year and I have to say the battery is admirable. Can’t tell if that’s due in any way to the app. But even playing with settings, e.g. reducing brightness, switching off wi-fi when away from wi-fi points etc can make a difference.

    radtothepowerofsik
    Free Member

    Pink, natch. It’s the colour of rad

    ooOOoo
    Free Member

    Xperia active? Out soon

    molgrips
    Free Member

    The battery consumption breakdown on my droid is interesting. Wifi accounts for 3-4% of the total usage and I leave it on all the time. It almost all goes on display, calls and idle time. Mobile standby (ie talking to the network) is the next biggest thing, that is more if I’ve been in a low signal area of course.

    convert
    Full Member

    I have the new 4s and I use Memory Map.

    Firstly, the battery is lasting much better now it has had a couple of charge cycles. I think the recommendation with all phones is to allow them to totally discharge at least once a week to improve battery performance.

    Secondly, manage consumption better. Do you really need push email? turn off wifi when away from home, turn off gps use for clock setting and apps that don’t really need it, turn off bluetooth if you are not using it, check what screen brightness you really need – a small drop makes a big difference.

    Lastly memory map – so much better than on my old iphone 3g. Yesterday I had my phone in my back pocket for the whole 3hr ride and just got it out half a dozen times to check location & the phone lost 5% of charge during the period. Today I turned on the logging location in the background option for a 40min run & it used 15% of battery power over the 40mins. I think I’ll not bother logging routes unless I really need to (like out riding on unfamiliar routes others are showing me so I can work out where we went later). On the upside this phone finds its location so fast when you use an app that turns on the GPS – so much faster than any GPS I’ve used before.

    ooOOoo
    Free Member

    I think, like the new samsung note, the 4s uses the russion GLONASS system as well as GPS. It’s meant to mean quicker and more accurate fixes.

    CountZero
    Full Member

    I think, like the new samsung note, the 4s uses the russion GLONASS system as well as GPS. It’s meant to mean quicker and more accurate fixes.

    That’s correct, especially in northern latitudes, apparently.

    huggis
    Free Member

    Yes CountZero 4s locks on to gps very quickly

Viewing 29 posts - 1 through 29 (of 29 total)

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