The Android thread

That's strange, on a full signal I get about 2 Mbps. And that's just 3G. I've never really measured on the phone itself though, only bothered when tethering.

This is what I get with one 3G bar in my metal/brick framed apartment:

19061474.png
 
Seems plausible, I suppose. How good of coverage are you supposed to have in your area?

I don't know, trouble is I'm new to the city and to Sprint. I did some Googling and although some have complained about shitty 3G on Sprint in LA, nobody's seems quite as bad as mine. I wish the piece of junk was rooted so I could show you guys a screenshot of my Speedtest results.

I called Sprint just now to see if they think it might be defective and man, what a bunch of rude assholes. The CSR didn't even have any clue what I meant by speed test or kilobits per second, and somehow the tech support girl she connected me to was even more confused by what I was telling her.

Is the 30 day trial period totally no catch? I suppose they prorate the monthly cost for the few days I've had it?

Ugh, I guess I'm supposed to cycle through the remaining three providers to see which one sucks less. Or I might just go with AT&T, despite what everyone says the prepaid SIM I have in my HD2 gets decent signal at my place and the more I think about it, the more I like GSM. If or when I go back to Canada I'm gonna be stuck with a Sprint-branded phone that won't be of any use to me.
 
Ask your neighbors what they use.
 
Ask your neighbors what they use.

Gee, I would except my antisocial tendencies make it a bit difficult. :p

Honestly though, it's between AT&T and Verizon. I know for a fact AT&T is decent there, and Verizon is supposedly the bee's knees so that too would probably be a lot better that Sprint.
 
Hmm, bit of a rollercoaster here.

I went to return the Epic and cancel everything with Sprint but they were already closed. I came back home and since I've no other options did some browsing on the phone. It seemed a lot better than before, maybe even enough to make me hold out for WiMAX.

Then just now I flipped the 4G switch for shits and giggles and what do you know, it connected. I ran a quick Speedtest and with the shit signal I get here I got 900kbps, though upload was still below 100 which is woefully slow.

Not enough to sell me on this yet, but at least things are looking up a bit.


By the way, I realize carrier discussion isn't really the topic of this thread so my apologies. On the hardware front, there is much to like about the Epic. It's a bit thick but the slideout keyboard makes it much more of a mini computer and it has a satisfying click to the buttons. As much as I love Swype, I could never type something as long as this post on it.

Still getting used to the high contrast of the AMOLED screen, things still look radioactive to me on it. Took some HD video and it's a lot better than I ever expected, but I must say TouchWiz and the Sprint bloatware/lockdowns are annoying. If I keep this I will definitely have to look into a vanilla Froyo ROM for it.
 
I'm a bit miffed with the BBC at the moment. Last week I started using one of their streams for internet radio, and now they've removed it. I found the replacement stream but it's in a different format, so does anyone know of any free apps that will play local .sdp files? I've tried a few and they didn't work, I don't like the idea of going through every single one
 
I wish the piece of junk was rooted so I could show you guys a screenshot of my Speedtest results.

No need for root. Go to the results tab, open the result, menu>Email Result, then just select any program there and use the .png url in an
 
Good tip, but I wouldn't know which of my abysmal results to post. It only does CSV if you want to export your entire results history.

On a different note, is it a quirk of Sprint or the Galaxy phones that I get no location detection without WiFi and GPS? The HD2 definitely detected my location without those, even if inaccurate.
 
There's also an option to turn that no or off. If you go into settings and location, you'll have 2 checkmarks, one for wireless networks, one for gps.
 
Good tip, but I wouldn't know which of my abysmal results to post. It only does CSV if you want to export your entire results history.

On a different note, is it a quirk of Sprint or the Galaxy phones that I get no location detection without WiFi and GPS? The HD2 definitely detected my location without those, even if inaccurate.

It's not Sprint, my phone attempts (badly) to detect my location without those :lol:

Strangely its actually not too far off with Google Maps, draws a circle in about the right place, but the weather app usually shows the wrong town, and for no apparent reason, was Spanish for a while yesterday.
 
Showed me in Bucarest 2 days ago. :D
You can get to Bucharest a lot more quickly that I can get to a Spanish-speaking country :p

I'm still not sure what was up with that, there are no language settings in the app and the location showed a random district in a nearby city.
 
Just went through about an hour or so workin on the ol' Vibrant.

First, flashed Bionix Obsidian V3 w/ voodoo over my V1.

Realized there was Onyx V3R1 out, which is Obsidian without TouchWiz (which I despise)

Disabled voodoo

Read some threads about how you can get much better battery life by using Odin to flash to stock (JFD) then flashing over stock with whatever custom ROM.

Downloaded Odin.

Read tutorials about Odin.

Found the required files.

Wiped and flashed my phone back to stock

Re-rooted

Re-installed Clockwork Recovery

Just now I finished flashing Bionix Onyx V3R1 with a stock JK2 (T-mo Froyo) kernel.

Now.

Finally.
I'm going to start my main project: extracting more battery life. Using a combination of Titanium Backup Pro to freeze/uninstall problematic apps, and SystemPanel Pro to determine the problematic apps/processes, I hope to achieve at least 24 hours of usage on one charge, as well as an overnight (8hr sleep period, no phone use, sync off, polling off, still connected to data/cell network) drain of <5%, including all of the following:
1hr talk time
2hr screen-on time
1hr 3G Usage
1hr Wifi enabled
3hr Music playing

I'll post results here.
 
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There's also an option to turn that no or off. If you go into settings and location, you'll have 2 checkmarks, one for wireless networks, one for gps.

Yup, that did the trick. I thought wireless referred to WiFi only but apparently not.

Thanks.
 
I went to Sprint today and the network outages apparently going on here was the only thing anyone was talking about. Ironically though, I got the best speeds at the Sprint store than anywhere else so far, so I dunno what outages they are talking about.

But after waiting 45 minutes to talk to a salesperson, the guy convinced me that the network is really flaky right now because they are prepping to flip the WiMAX switch soon. It seemed a logical enough excuse and he assured me the 30 day return policy is totally no catch, you don't even have to cover your usage during that period, so I decided to hold off a few more days and see what happens.

He said he got an 8Mbps on 4G somewhere around here yesterday, confirmed by the Speedtest results on his Evo. While that was probably on full signal, it's still really something. I'll honestly be happy if I can get a consistent 1Mbps at my place with the low amount of bars.


But carriers aside, the Epic 4G isn't entirely unproblematic. Battery life is absolutely horrible, with Bluetooth on and a little 3G browsing I drained the whole damned thing in less than 5 hours. I thought AMOLED screens were supposed to give a nice battery life boost... guess I'll have to try and see if SetCPU is any help.

Also, TouchWiz is the work of the devil. I hate it. Why must it put boxes around all the app icons in the app drawer?


Edit: Oh, I forgot to mention I got to play with a few Galaxy Tabs, one at Verizon last week and one at Sprint today. The iPad is definitely much nicer hardware, I'd rather have a 10" tablet that is thin than a 7" that is rather bulky and thick. Swype is really weird on a big screen, but typing in portrait mode is definitely much, much better than the iPad since you have less distance to cover.

https://pic.armedcats.net/s/sh/shawn/2010/11/15/IMG_20101113_184136_001.jpg

Not sure what the deal was with the childish font...
 
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Depending on usage, AMOLED can be worse for battery drain than LCD. I see similar battery life when listening to music over bluetooth with occasional internet/texting, and it's really annoying. My phone goes through two battery cycles on a normal day, with a full charge when I unplug at ~5:30, then recharging to full again mid-day.
 
Do you also have a Galaxy S phone?

I'm really wondering what battery life will be like with WiMAX turned on... you probably have to keep the phone plugged in all the time. :p
 
5144905780_a72ae2e60a_t.jpg
Nexus One w/ CM nightly, AT&T
 
What do you guys recommend for USB tethering?

PdaNet keeps cutting out for me, requiring me to unplug the phone every minute or so.
 
What do you guys recommend for USB tethering?

PdaNet keeps cutting out for me, requiring me to unplug the phone every minute or so.

Never had any trouble with EasyTether.

It does require software on the PC side, not sure if PDANet is the same. It's lightweight and unobtrusive.
 
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