Desire undesirable, recommend alternative?

fade2che

I have had the HTC Desire on meteor billpay for 3 months and i'm now fed up with the problems. The biggest two being, poor battery life and missed calls.
I got over the initial problem of calls going to voicemail before i got the thing out of its pouch. But a number of times recently I go to make a call and after 8pm the phone is dead. It gets charged every night. Also a number of people have said that they rang me and my phone rang out to them while on my side nothing, not even a missed call notification.

So im out of contact and Im wondering what phone/network to go for. I was looking at the iphone4 on 3 but I use the phone for business and cant have signal problems or missed calls. I need a data plan and emails too. Maybe a blackberry? Anybody with one of these phones tell me what the battery life is like? A full day would be nice (9 till midnight)

cnocbui

Samsung Wave S8500 is good with battery life if you get one sim free as some branded firmwares have apparently provided poor battery life.

This reviewer had some good things to say about call quality and signal reception:

http://www.pda-247.com/wordpress/2010/06/samsung-wave-review/

blaz

All the issues the op has sound like stuff that can be fixed.

1. Call going to voicemail before you can get to the phone: This has nothing to do with the phone, it is a function of the network. The time it takes before the phone goes to voicemail can easily be increased up to 30 seconds.

2. Phone ringing out without you hearing anything, again sounds like a network issue, possibly bad coverage.

3. Bad battery life: I have a Nexus One (very similar hardware to Desire) and I can get 36 hours of life with it. That is with Gmail Sync and WiFi turned on all the time and with about 1 hour of streaming radio, 1 hour of surfing the net and 2 phone calls in those 36 hours. There can be three issues that would cause bad battery life: bad signal area, rogue application installed on phone or firmware bug.

- bad signal area - Meteor is known to have suboptimal coverage. Switch to either O2 or Vodafone and you should be much better off.
- rogue application - temporary uninstall all non-default applications and see if your battery life improves
- firmware bug - Are you running the latest 2.2 Froyo?

evolutionqy7

fade2che wrote: »

I got over the initial problem of calls going to voicemail before i got the thing out of its pouch. But a number of times recently I go to make a call and after 8pm the phone is dead. It gets charged every night. Also a number of people have said that they rang me and my phone rang out to them while on my side nothing, not even a missed call notification.

first go to your setting and stop throwing you calls to voicemall so quick...thats why you dont have any notifications...then for battery life go to app store and buy advance task killer so you would close all the apps/programs after you use them...

tbh iphone wont solve your problem...it doesnt have a great battery life...

if you want something with good battery life for business i suggest look at blackberry bold or some of nokia E Series

Abelloid

Voicemail divert -

How do I increase the number of rings on the phone before it goes to voicemail?
Key in **61*xxxxxxxxxxx*11*nn# followed by the call/send button and it should update the delay. xxxxxxxxxxx is voice mail number (e.g. 08*5*******). nn is time and can be up to 30. So if your phone number is 087 3333333 and you want a 30 second delay, then the code you enter is **61*08753333333*11*30#. When you enter this code, you'll get a message on screen saying "MMI Code Started", followed by a message that says "Call forwarding - Registration was successful".

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055837311

Battery life -

http://www.techcredo.com/android/how-to-improve-battery-life-on-your-android-phone-19-tips-for-htc-desire

@evolutionqy7: App store? Buy? :pac:

drunkmonkey

Got for a Galaxy S on 3, few posts going around about the iPhone and signal problems that's a problem with the iPhone not the network.
I've an iPhone and 3 and i really don't like it, it's the worst phone I've ever had for reception while I've been with them, my phone is essential for my business and after been with every other network at some point i wouldn't change, the 2 main reasons I wouldn't change are reception everywhere and unbeatable price plan, and they have never ripped me off.

evolutionqy7

galaxy s suffers from serious lag and gps issues...

===============================================================

Advance Task Killer Free...Free from the app market...you can search it...

you get a widget to manually kill apps and you can set auto kill intervals


i cant explain this enough that smartphones today are limited to its battery...

no decent smartphone will last you more than 2 days with average use
(people who do probably dont even reach the min usage mark)


theres plenty of apps out there to conserve your battery life...just have a decent look around!

also decreasing the amount of screens/widgets/shortcuts you have in your menu...leaving your wifi/data off...using a static wallpaper...
use a black wallpaper to save battery life...turn down the screen brightness or keep it on auto...all these things help to improve your battery life...

====================================================================================================

and lot to that post about the N97 lasting a couple of days...i had the N97 and it never dragged out more than a day with moderate use...use a bit of gps and listen to music and it will start asking for a plug in

====================================================================================================

i did the easy thing and bought a 2nd higher capacity batt on hd2 also as doing all power-saving things still a pain in the hole charging everyday

best batt life phone i had was the 5800 could last me 2 days using a bit of wifi and listening about 5 hours of music a day

fade2che

Thanks for the responses, I'm running Froyo and I changed the metoer setting to max time allowed before call answering a while ago. Sounds like I might need a change in network.
I had advanced task killer running, but removed it due some details online reporting it being the cause of battery drain.

Sounds like the ipnone4 wont solve any problems anyways. I have wifi turned off now to see if things improve.
thanks,

evolutionqy7

did you put power control widget on the homescreen? gives you quick access to turn of wifi/data/gps/active sync and toggle brightness and loads of other things at your choice in one click

artielange

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055982954


In case you haven't already. Getting out of your meteor contract. very easy and painless. But time is running out. Good luck.

blaz

fade2che wrote: »

Sounds like the ipnone4 wont solve any problems anyways. I have wifi turned off now to see if things improve.
thanks,

Don't turn wifi off. Try this:

Settings -> Wireless & networks -> Wi-Fi Settings

Press the menu button and select Advanced. Then select Wi-Fi sleep policy and set it to "Never". By default Android automatically turns off Wi-Fi after some time and switches back to 3G. This makes no sense, as all this switching is actually wasting battery. By selecting Never it will stay on Wi-Fi for as long as it can find a Wi-Fi signal and only switch back to 3G once that is gone.

evolutionqy7

well i never have 3G in the country side so turning it off is better

drunkmonkey

evolutionqy7 wrote: »

well i never have 3G in the country side so turning it off is better [/]

3 have the biggest 3G network outside of Dublin by miles. You must be with meteor.

Having used the galaxy for a few days
I managed to fix the gps problem and the battery life was better than the iPhone, not a whole lot but slightly better, the 3G reception was miles ahead on the galaxy, I
Was getting fast speeds where the iPhone was showing no service.

rexton270

fade2che wrote: »

I have had the HTC Desire on meteor billpay for 3 months and i'm now fed up with the problems. The biggest two being, poor battery life and missed calls.
I got over the initial problem of calls going to voicemail before i got the thing out of its pouch. But a number of times recently I go to make a call and after 8pm the phone is dead. It gets charged every night. Also a number of people have said that they rang me and my phone rang out to them while on my side nothing, not even a missed call notification.

So im out of contact and Im wondering what phone/network to go for. I was looking at the iphone4 on 3 but I use the phone for business and cant have signal problems or missed calls. I need a data plan and emails too. Maybe a blackberry? Anybody with one of these phones tell me what the battery life is like? A full day would be nice (9 till midnight)

Hi may not be a problem with phone itself but with Meteor SIM. I am on O2 with Desire and no problems so far. 3 has cheap iPhone 4 and tbh they network has improved a bit. I would go with O2 for reliability and so far best CS...

evolutionqy7

drunkmonkey wrote: »

3 have the biggest 3G network outside of Dublin by miles. You must be with meteor.

Having used the galaxy for a few days
I managed to fix the gps problem and the battery life was better than the iPhone, not a whole lot but slightly better, the 3G reception was miles ahead on the galaxy, I
Was getting fast speeds where the iPhone was showing no service.

i am with meteor but what do i need 3G around the house if i got wifi

wifi actually doesn't use as much battery life as 3G data (as i read anyway) ;D

partyatmygaff

Almost every single proper smartphone (Excluding certain Nokia phones like the N97 and N900) hardly can last a day on a full charge if you're going to use the phone a lot.

An iPhone 4 won't help and to be quite honest if you have a Desire going to a Galaxy S would be a poor trade as it suffers from worse battery life if you ask me.


I'd recommend running a custom ROM with a HAVS-UVOC Kernel and then underclock your CPU a bit. That improves battery life immensely.

fade2che

So far so good, the battery has lasted the night and is on 43% so wifi must of been killing it. Normally if i didn't charge it over night it would be dead or in the red by now.
I still think I might change networks, but that's for another day.

Abelloid

fade2che wrote: »

So far so good, the battery has lasted the night and is on 43% so wifi must of been killing it. Normally if i didn't charge it over night it would be dead or in the red by now.
I still think I might change networks, but that's for another day.

It seems you have an extra week now to cancel your Meteor contract -

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=67590322#post67590322