HTC Desire - questions n stuff..

Zascar

I have a few on the desire - would appreciate your 2 cents..

1. I love the desire but the battery is shockingly bad, I sometimes go through two batteries in once day. My battery was 100% at 9.30 this morning and its now at 52% at 1.30pm - maybe 1.5 hours of calls and and 30 mins of data over wifi. I've watched all the tutorils on youtube and adjusted all the settings, using Juice Defender etc. The thing about Juice defender is if I need to go online to check email or view facebook, it won't let me on. I have to disable it and ten go into the settings and mess about to get it back on. Is there an easier way? i.e. Turn data off unless I open a program that needs it? I'd still like syncing every 15 mins or so though.

2. I want to buy a bunch of accessories for my desire - Anyone know a good ebay shop etc that does everything? One of the things I want to buy is another battery or two. Some batteries are really cheap and some are expensive. I'm guessing the cheap ones are going to be rubbish, is there a difference? I think I bought a cheap one last time, but not sure I notice a difference between it and the orginal tbh. Are the batteries in this for example any good?

3. I also want a new charger. I currently use a small retractable usb one and it takes ages to charge. Last night I charged using my mates Blackberry charger, plug to phone, and it charged the phone many times faster. Is this just what happens?


BTW just got LeeDroid rom on my phone and love it. Using ADW Launcher - fantastic once I got it set up. Loving Extended Controls, Handcent SMS, TV Guide (Ireland), LogMeIn (very impressive). Got Google Voice Actions which is surprisingly good. Very impressed with the stock navigation, eat battery though. Can't wait to start using "Car Home" - but need to get a windscreen holder first, maybe this one?

Thanks

ongarite

I have my Desire about 3 weeks now and will answer the best I can.

1. My battery performance isn't as bad as yours but one thing that can eat battery on the Desire is a poor signal. In my work place I struggle for decent EDGE signal along with it switching between 2G/3G often. This will kill the battery life considerably as the phone will boost power to try and get better signal for the background syncs you may have set up.

You can do a full battery calibration which has worked great for some people.
AFAIK, you leave your phone on and charge overnight for 8 hours until green full charge LED comes on. Then disconnect phone & power off and reconnect to charger for one more hour. Lastly turn phone on until it fully boots, syncs (2 minutes), then turn it off and connect to charger for one more hour.

2. I bought a Mugen 1600mAh battery online in the last few days. Haven't got it yet but all the reviews of their batteries are excellent. Not some cheap Chinese knock-offs. Bought it here for around €35 delivered.

3. I got an official HTC charger (CC C200) for €15 delivered on eBay. The difference in the chargers is the power output, the amps output specifically.
The official HTC charger is 5V/1A which is a decent fast charger. Cheaper eBay micro-USB chargers might only be 500mA output, giving a very slow charge and not enough to use the phone GPS navigation and charge at same time.

I stayed away from cheap windscreen holders too and got a Herbert Richter Banana mount from eBay shop, pdahut_marketplace

Zascar

Thanks that's really helpful!! Ah ok, I have heard about this signal thing before but was not sure. The signal in my apartment is not great. If I'm at home and on wifi, can I turn of 3G and just let it sit on Edge until I turn it back on, is there any point? I've heard a program called Locale can automate a lot of this for me, is it worth trying?

I'll deffo give that Battery Calibration a go! Let us know how that Mugan battery goes - some of the the reviews only say 8% extra, not sure if its worth it for that. I'd almost be more inclined to get the bigger one with the cover - yes the phone would be thicker but if it gave a big boost it might be worth it.

Yeah the little retractable usb chargers I use are probably crap. Would this or this be better do you think - or do you really need a genuine one?

Re the Data and Autosync thing, how do most people manage this? In Settings > Accounts & Sync - what should the settings be? If I have them all on autosync will that drain the battery? I'd be happy if it just updated when I went into the app..

d_regal_jester

Hi Guys,

Thanks for the great info here.

Could you provide a link that will give me a step by step guide to update to LeeDroid?

I have a HTC desire also.

Many thanks

Zascar

Here is a very quick few pointers: First, You need to "Root" your phone to get custom rom's on it - see thread: http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055969546

When you have done that, install "Rom Manager" from the Android Market. First, make an entire backup of your phone - so you can restore to exactly that state if needed. I would also recommend buying "MyBackup Pro" - which backs up all your data & settings individually. It will back them up to your sd card, or to their servers online, so you don't even need to worry about it, really handy.

Transfer the downloaded LeeDroid rom .zip file to your sd card. Go into Rom Manager - and do a "Flash ClockworkMod Recovery". Then click "Install ROM from SD Card. When you flash a rom, its better to do a clean install - ticking the "clear data and cache" box. If you leave it unticked I think your settings etc remain, but it can be problematic sometimes I think.

Rom Manager should restart - load the new rom, install it and do everything for you. Be patient, sometimes it seems like it hangs at a screen for several minutes, just leave it go.

Give that a try. For some reason I had huge problems and errors, but then when it did work it was fine and pretty easy.