Archive for the ‘T-Mobile/HTC G1’ Category:
T-Mobile G1 Battery Life Accessories
I purchased a T-Mobile G1 w/ Google Bronze phone (that’s the G1 in white shown at left) back in February of this year, and I’ve been pretty happy with it. For 2 decades I’ve had run-of-the-mill cellphones. (Have we had cellphones in the mainstream for two decades now?) I like it because the data plan is cheaper than that of the iPhone. (Economy and efficiency all the way). The only disappointment has been the battery life. Some times, when I have a not-so-great Internet connection I can actually watch the battery level decline while phone tries to access the page.
So I’ve been looking for ways to improve my battery life without erasing all my apps and shutting down features I’m not using at the moment to only have to turn them back on again less than 30 minutes later.
I searched here and there online until I turned to Buy.com to make my purchases. Here’s a list of the items I picked up and why.
I decided to get an extra battery: the SEIDIO Innocell 1400 Extended Battery for T-Mobile G1 (shown at left). It’s supposed to provide 15% more power than the stock 1150mAh battery. It’s not a big increase, but I figure carrying an extra battery will help out. I can just swap batteries when one dies.
Of course, there is the massive SEIDIO Innocell 2600 Extended Life Battery for HTC T-Mobile G1 (with Battery Door) (shown at right) which provides 125% more power than the stock battery. The drawback, in my opinion, is the added thickness the battery gives to the phone. Some people have said the speakers sounds a bit muffled because the larger battery casing places the speaker opening further away from the speaker. Additionally, I like carrying the phone in its stock sleeve in my pocket, and I don’t need a bulkier phone in my pocket.
I also purchased a T-Mobile HTC G1 by Google Desktop USB Battery Cradle (shown at left) so I can charge both the phone and the spare battery in the evening. There’ s a bit of a compromise here since the cradle charges the phone via a USB connection to a computer — the purpose here is to allow you to synch your phone’s data files etc while it charges — while an AC adapter is used to charge the spare battery. I would have liked to charge both phone and spare from the AC adapter, but I guess I’ll have to get a USB power adapter for charging the phone on my night table. Or have both charge in my home office by the computer. Hmm, I’m still mulling this part over.
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Subscribe to the comments for this postAndroid 1.5 Update (Cupcake) Delayed
Image from zenthought.org
Bonnie Cha at cnet news reports:
T-Mobile USA announced on Monday that it’s still finalizing the build to “ensure optimal functionality and smooth delivery” so it has delayed pushing out the over-the-air update by one week. The carrier said it expects all G1 owners to have the Cupcake update by early June.
Well, I will have to start anxiously waiting again next week.
More news stories regarding the Android 1.5 update delay can be found here.
The image above can be added to your G1 boot screen by following instructions at zenthought.org. I haven’t tried it myself, so be careful if you decide to try it yourself.
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Google Android Will Update This Week
It’s been a while since I discussed Google Android on this site, Sept. 16, 2008 to be exact, but I have been keeping an eye on it. (I bought one in February).
Currently, the only phone using the Android operating system is the T-Mobile G1 manufactured by HTC.
Last week T-Mobile announced they would start distributing the long awaited “Cupcake” or v1.5 update. (An update was previously released in February 2009). Here’s an excerpt from their announcement:
T-Mobile is delighted to announce the upcoming release of Android 1.5 with ‘Cupcake’ coming soon to the T-Mobile G1,” T-Mobile wrote in a statement late last week. “We plan to begin sending out the update starting the end of next week. As with previous software maintenance releases, the update will be randomly sent ‘over the air’ to T-Mobile G1 customers. We expect everyone will have their update by the end of May.
The earlier update many fixed some problems, but added few new features. The new “Cupcake” update will have several new features — some of which, like a virtual keyboard, are highly anticipated by owners of the device. Here is a list of new features to be found in the update:
- On-screen soft keyboard
- Works in both portrait and landscape orientation
- Support for user installation of 3rd party keyboards
- User dictionary for custom words
- Home screen
- Widgets: Bundled home screen widgets include: analog clock, calendar, music player, picture frame, and search
- Live folders: Allows viewing of SD card contents without opening an application.
- Camera & Gallery
- Video recording
- Video playback (MPEG-4 & 3GP formats): Previously only possible via a free Android Market download
- Bluetooth
- Stereo Bluetooth support (A2DP and AVCRP profiles)
- Auto-pairing
- Improved hands free experience
- Browser
- Updated with latest Webkit browser & Squirrelfish Javascript engines
- Copy ‘n paste in browser
- Search within a page
- User-selectable text-encoding
- UI changes include:
- Unified Go and Search box
- Tabbed bookmarks/history/most-visited screen
- Contacts
- Shows user picture for Favorites
- Specific date/time stamp for events in call log
- One-touch access to a contact card from call log event
- System
- New Linux kernel (version 2.6.27)
- SD card filesystem auto-checking and repair
- SIM Application Toolkit 1.0
- Google applications
- View Google Talk friends’ status in Contacts, SMS, MMS, GMail, and Email applications
- Batch actions such as archive, delete, and label on Gmail messages
- Upload videos to Youtube
- Upload photos on Picasa
Additional features include a more refined user interface, animated window transitions, keyboard clicks or vibrates if desired, and an accelerometer for rotating applications onscreen. The camera will have a faster startup time, and faster shutter speed (image capture), while the GPS features are supposed to have faster response times. (GPS navigation wasn’t suitable for driving, and the route didn’t recalculate if you changed your course. Improved GPS functionality was available from third parties such as Telenav.)
Google has released a video highlighting the improvements and enhancements (shown at top) found in the Cupcake update. T-Mobile has released an Android 1.5 with Cupcake video as well. Many G1 user videos can be found on YouTube.
And in case you were wondering, Cupcake is a codename for the update, and the codenames are alphabetical. The next update will start with the letter “D” and some, like Rob Jackson at Phandroid, are speculating it will be called “Donut” to be followed by “Eclair” in keeping with the dessert theme.
