How many of you own a droid?

[knives of ice]

from what i've seen be it the Evo, X, Thunderbolt, etc any 4.3 inch screened phone with Android unless you are tech saavy and are willing to root the phone, install a custom rom or kernal, etc you are not going to get great battery life with moderate use.

that being said if you read, do your research, etc the battery life on any android device can be excellent. what comes stock setting wise, etc on the phone will usually be a huge battery hog though.

[Ben Klingston]

Any experience playing the X's video into an HDTV? Do you just need the mini-HDMI to regular HDMI cable? Haven't tried it yet, but is it as simple as whatever is playing on your phone's gallery (videos and pictures taken with the phone) shows on the TV?

mini HDMI I believe

Just got the cable. It's actually the micro HDMI, not mini (mini is for most camcorders).

Talk about battery-sucking. Playing a few vids through HDMI sucks the battery down to 50%. Gotta keep it plugged in, I guess.

[ulf]

I might be insane. Im heading out in 30 minutes to check out the 2. If I can get the X for $50 or Thunderbolt for $200, would I still be insane getting the X? Also if my 2 year contract expires next month, can I renew now and get some extra perks towards new phone?

girl at my work has thunderbolt and has to recharge every 6 hours, I don't like that

yeah that's the downside. they are coming out with an extended battery which I will get (could even be out already?) for 50 bucks. I mean, I don't even know when it comes out, so obviously the battery hasn't been too terrible.

[eddysnake]

I ended up getting the X. I liked the look of the TB better, but liked the X features and screen. The HDMI out seems like it will be pretty cool, they have a nice dock for it..

Since I'm new to this type of phone, here comes my first dumb question. If i'm in my house using it, does it make more sense using wifi compared to the 3G network? does it save battery usage or anything like that?

Ordered a car dock to use as gps and listen to sirius while driving, pretty cool stuff

[count2infinity]

just telling you from my personal experience eddy, i think when you're actually connected to the wifi it saves on battery and it's much quicker, but often times i forget to turn it off, so when it's not connect it's constantly looking for a wifi network and wasting battery life.

[Loaf31]

I ended up getting the X. I liked the look of the TB better, but liked the X features and screen. The HDMI out seems like it will be pretty cool, they have a nice dock for it..

Since I'm new to this type of phone, here comes my first dumb question. If i'm in my house using it, does it make more sense using wifi compared to the 3G network? does it save battery usage or anything like that?

Ordered a car dock to use as gps and listen to sirius while driving, pretty cool stuff

I use Wifi any chance that I get with my X.

[canaan]

just telling you from my personal experience eddy, i think when you're actually connected to the wifi it saves on battery and it's much quicker, but often times i forget to turn it off, so when it's not connect it's constantly looking for a wifi network and wasting battery life.

can you adjust the settings so its not constantly looking for wifi? my phone has that option.

[eddysnake]

ok thanks. Also are there any essential apps out there that I should be looking for that work better than others? GPS or NHL stuff? I have no idea what I'm doing. Thanks

[Loaf31]

ok thanks. Also are there any essential apps out there that I should be looking for that work better than others? GPS or NHL stuff? I have no idea what I'm doing. Thanks

The stock Google Maps GPS is pretty good. NHL Gamecenter is a great app

[Digitalgypsy66]

With maximum power saving mode "on" for my X, and moderate use, my phone goes down to 50% by the time I go to bed. Moderate use is browsing, checking e-mail, Tweetdeck, and so on, throughout the day. I don't watch many videos or play many games on it. The battery life with the X is much better than earlier Android devices, although I can't personally can't say - I've only owned the X.

Also (and I think it's earlier in this thread), don't bother with any type of task killer app. My battery life has improved a lot after I stopped using Advanced Task Killer. It takes more juice to reload the app processes than keeping them running in the background.

Also, I turn off Wifi when I'm on the road to save battery power. It constantly searches for Wifi otherwise.

A co-worker got a Nexus S, and it looks great. I think my next phone will have a physical keyboard. Does anyone use Swype or whatever it's called?

[Ben Klingston]

I ended up getting the X. I liked the look of the TB better, but liked the X features and screen. The HDMI out seems like it will be pretty cool, they have a nice dock for it..

That dock is kind of cool. Doesn't have much of a description, though. Does it use a normal HDMI cable to hook up to the TV and charge at the same time?

A few annoying thing I've found with the HDMI output - when viewing items in the phone's Gallery (pics and vids), I need to have the phone oriented in the 'landscape' position and then touch the HDMI icon for it to find the HDMI output. If it is in the 'portrait' position, it scans for the HDMI connection but doesn't find.

Also, once it finds the HDMI output and brings up the 'control screen' on the phone screen, if you use the arrow buttons to go to the next gallery file, it's OK if you just have pics, but if you arrow forward to a video, it just shows the video starting screen on the TV, with the 'play arrow' over it - but I can't figure out how to actually play the video from that point..... I have to go back to the main gallery view, select the video and hit play on the phone screen, then touch the HDMI output icon.

[eddysnake]

one thing i don't really care for is the text messaging setup. Is there anyway to change the views or are there better texting apps out there?

[skullman80]

one thing i don't really care for is the text messaging setup. Is there anyway to change the views or are there better texting apps out there?

I use handcent for text messages works very well.

[Loaf31]

one thing i don't really care for is the text messaging setup. Is there anyway to change the views or are there better texting apps out there?

I use handcent for text messages works very well.

I love handcent. Since I've had my X I cannot text normally again thanks to Swype

[count2infinity]

i'm going to have to look into this handcent thing... one thing i did was get launcher pro. i like it a lot better than the stock motoblur launcher. the only thing i don't like about it is you have to pay and upgrade to launcher pro plus to resize widgets while in motoblur you can resize pretty much any widget you want.

[eddysnake]

thanks for handcent, its much better. now how about a nice keyboard app? what else you using?

[Kovy27]

If you download the Amazon Apps store, you get one app (that usually costs money) free everyday. It switches daily.

[Loaf31]

thanks for handcent, its much better. now how about a nice keyboard app? what else you using?

Just downloaded "Swiftkey" from the Amazon App store. Not too bad, but I am so used to swype, i don't know if i was to change

[knives of ice]

Swype is far and away the best keyboard.

I used to use hand cent but check out go SMS it's even better

First thing to do is useca different launcher adw ex is amazing much better than any stock launcher imo be it sense motoblur etc

[Malkamaniac]

words with friends name- Morkle lets play

[count2infinity]

anyone know how to turn off the notifications from the original text program and just use the handcent one?

[Malkamaniac]

anyone know how to turn off the notifications from the original text program and just use the handcent one?

Chomp sms> all

[eddysnake]

2 questions.

1. every time I get a call or make a call a voice says "verizon wireless", how do i make that stop?

2. I got handcent text and like it. When I try to throw my old "text messaging" file into the trash to delete it it still pops up? I've noticed a lot of apps I try to get rid of don't go away. I don't mind if its there, but for whatever reason I turned the phone on today and it said I had texts for "text messaging" and "handcent"...

[Loaf31]

anyone know how to turn off the notifications from the original text program and just use the handcent one?

you need to go into the Text Msg program>settings>notifications (make sure box is unchecked)

[eddysnake]

2 questions.

1. every time I get a call or make a call a voice says "verizon wireless", how do i make that stop?

2. I got handcent text and like it. When I try to throw my old "text messaging" file into the trash to delete it it still pops up? I've noticed a lot of apps I try to get rid of don't go away. I don't mind if its there, but for whatever reason I turned the phone on today and it said I had texts for "text messaging" and "handcent"...

first you are going to want to go into settings and uncheck roaming notification.

second, I don't think you do delete the original text app because the later still uses the original for some things.