HTC Desire S Owner'S Manual Download Page 8

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HTC Desire S Owner’s Guide – V1.02 | wnp_79 

 

To get the most from your battery..... 

 

These things are like pocket-sized laptops with a ‘Phone’ app installed. Gone 
are the days of a week or two between charges. Expect to charge it up each 
night. The odd setting change here or there wont make much difference on it’s 
own, but combined it all adds up to getting you through a day even with heavy 
use. Light/moderate users can expect two days. Here are my 
recommendations;

 

  

1. Have screen brightness set to about 20% when indoors. The ‘auto’ screen 
brightness setting is pony and never gets it quite right. It also means the light sensor 
is then shut down, saving more power. Have a brightness widget somewhere to 
manually crank it up if you need. (Use Tasker to adjust screen brightness for 
different scenarios; on charge, in car, at home, battery running low etc...) 

 

2. Don’t have GPS, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth etc on unless you need to use them. Keeping 
wi-fi on actually uses less battery than 3G so use that when in a hot-
spot/home/office, and use the handy ‘Quick Settings’ tab in your notification area to 
easily toggle the others on and off as necessary. (Use Tasker to automatically switch 
Wi-Fi on when you get home, and turn it off when you leave?) 

 

3. Use Tasker! Instead of spending £30 on a spare battery, spend £4 on Tasker. I 
know I bang on about this app, but I currently think it’s the best thing since sliced 
bread. I have got my battery time from 24 hours to 38 hours simply by setting Tasker 
to shut all radios off (i.e. Airplane Mode) between midnight and 6am! It even texts my 
missus when I’m half way home so my dinner is ready when I get in. £4!!! 

 

4. Don’t leave the phone on full charge for excessive amounts of time. Lithium 
Polymer battery performance will suffer if the battery is kept too hot for too long. 
Unplug when at 100% for over an hour. (Tasker can set a warning alert for this!) I 
use one of those cheap electronic timer plugs next to my bed that turns my charger 
on between 1am and 4am. So if I plug it in before going to bed, it’s fully charged 
when I wake up and has not been on charge the 

entire

 night and over-heating the 

battery.  

 

5. Careful what web page you are on if you drop out of the browser. Web pages with 
fancy flash adverts running on them may keep the Browser app running in the 
background, force partial wake lock, soak up data usage, and drain battery. Best to 
keep hitting ‘back’ to back out of the browser instead of simply pressing the ‘home’ 
key. 

Don’t set i-Google as your home page. 

Normal Google is fine. 

 

6. Check your sync settings. These phones can do an alarming amount of stuff in the 
background without you knowing about it. Having the frequency high for checking 
weather, updates etc can use up power. Make sure you turn this down to a sensible 
frequency that best suits your requirements. Everyone is different so it will take some 
time for you to find the best personal balance. Lots of widgets updating will also eat 
into battery life. Avoid ones you don’t really use much, even if they look nice. Make 
sure you don’t have “Always On Mobile Data’ ticked in the settings. 

 

Summary of Contents for Desire S

Page 1: ...ot work like Microsoft s Windows or Nokia s Symbian Apps that are not running in the foreground are not using any processing power and should Android need the RAM it will automatically close any backg...

Page 2: ...o there s not much they could do HTC also have extra security on their system partition S On to prevent it from being changed in any way It s a pain in the ass for people wanting S Off and custom ROMS...

Page 3: ...ve browser the stock one is very good though for when you have a weak signal and hence poor bandwidth Opera compresses filters web pages by 90 so your phone is downloading much less data and pages wil...

Page 4: ...t most androids is vague at best This small and basic app adds a simple battery percentage to your notification bar Beware of the many alternatives that look very fancy but ironically cause more batte...

Page 5: ...is for my morning runs no that s not a bowel problem Tracks your route set alarms for your routine mine is at 6am so handy set yourself targets calorie count uploads all your stats to your google acco...

Page 6: ...iser Make all sorts of switching widgets and clock widgets Free 36 Added 08 03 11 Timeriffic If you don t want to use Tasker this is a much much simpler automation app Sets various phone features wifi...

Page 7: ...WP requires access to your SMS Why Nothing dodgy here The LWP has the ability to behave differently if you have an unread SMS The Blue Skies LWP sends a floating balloon up for each unread SMS if you...

Page 8: ...ours simply by setting Tasker to shut all radios off i e Airplane Mode between midnight and 6am It even texts my missus when I m half way home so my dinner is ready when I get in 4 4 Don t leave the p...

Page 9: ...ays on mobile data Now when not on wifi your phone will only use 3G when it needs to Much better 12 Another new idea from HTC is called Pocket Mode Turn this off All it offers is the phone will ring s...

Page 10: ...tab Find your culprit in this list select it then press the Stop button Then either uninstall it if you don t trust it or wait to see if it tries to re start itself to confirm its status as a Pain In...

Page 11: ...s also a setting called Wi Fi sleep policy This determines how your Wi Fi connection behaves when your screen is off Again against what you d guess it uses much less power if you set the sleep policy...

Page 12: ...ouse is When I get close to home it automatically turns Wi Fi on turns my ring volume up to max changes my ringtone back to something childish and backs my screen brightness off When I leave the house...

Page 13: ...hat I use and how to set them up are as follows Profile 1 Night Mode 1 Press New to create a new Profile 2 Name it Night Mode or whatever you want and press OK 3 It will ask you for a Profile context...

Page 14: ...ure to tell when I am home To explain Tasker has several ways of determining where you are Obviously GPS is the most accurate but any profile with GPS context in it will mean Tasker periodically turns...

Page 15: ...ghtness don t require an exit task and will automatically revert to their previous setting If you ever find something not reverting after a profile has stopped simply add an exit task for it Now the r...

Page 16: ...th a clean cloth When the cover now flexes when gripped the friction between the case and the body of the phone has been reduced and there is no creaking noise Silicone Grease is even water repellent...

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