Thursday, April 12, 2007

Battery Life

I use my Shadow mostly for going online when I'm in places that its either impractical or impossible to use anything but a smartphone to connect to the web. When I first got the Shadow I was very pleased with the phone itself, but very disappointed with its battery life.

After a few days of using the Shadow to its fullest capabilities, I was hooked. Even if it meant carrying around a power cord and plugging my Shadow in constantly.

So I've started looking for ways to make my Shadow's Battery last longer.

After I installed the upgrade provided by T-mobile, I noticed a pretty significant improvement, I can now expect about half a day's usage out of my Shadow before it starts beeping and groaning to be charged.

Right now, my Shadow is useless as a wifi device. Wifi drains the battery far too quickly for this feature to be anything more than a convenient novelty.

I want to be able to throw my Shadow in a bag and use the thing all day long.

What can I do to improve battery life?

Should I remove preinstalled programs?

Is there a replacement battery with longer life available?

Lastly, if no other option is forthcoming, I will have to replace my shadow with something else; is there a comparable smartphone with better battery life that anyone here can recommend?

Do all smartphone users go through this? My friends all have Blackberrys and Ive never seen them plug them in once.


Update; I called T-mobile and complained about the battery and they are sending me a new Shadow and a new battery.

This is great news. Ill post more later.

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