14
Oct
2012-10-14_10h45_19

[Weekend Poll] Are You Content With Your Phone's Stock Battery Life?

Posted by in Polls

This is the latest in our Weekend Poll series. For last week's, see If The Major Manufacturers All Made Similar Nexus Phones, Whose Would You Buy?

LG was hard at work this week pimping the new Lithium Polymer battery technology used in the Optimus G. Promising higher battery density in a smaller, lighter package, word's still out on how much of an improvement it is in the real world. Obviously, though, any advances in battery tech are welcome - more battery life is never a bad thing.

It got me thinking: are people happy with their phone's stock battery life? Sure, your phone probably can't go 3 days between charges like the dumbphones of yore could, but these days, most do make it through a full day of use.

06
Aug
opengles2

Khronos Announces OpenGL ES 3.0 Spec - Get Ready For Faster, Better-Looking, More Desktop-Like Games

Posted by in Apps/Games, News

Speaking at SIGGRAPH 2012, a yearly computer graphics convention featuring some of the most prominent names in the business, Khronos unveiled updates for several key OpenGL properties including the specs for Open GL ES 3.0. OpenGL ES is the primary graphics API for mobile device platforms, including Android and iOS. As you would expect, the updates are rather technical, but here's an overview of what we can expect in the future.

Much Better Texture Compression

texturecompressionkhronos

Perhaps the biggest noticeable change in this iteration is that texture compression has been improved, and the spec now has required support for the ETC texture compression format.

03
Aug
monsterlife1

Gameloft Releases Monster Life: Raise Cute Paper Monsters, Build A Kingdom, Defeat Evil

Posted by in Games, News

Gamefactory Gameloft is back with another new game, and this time it's a papercraft game in which you nurture, build, and develop a kingdom of adorable little monsters. It's a game that falls solidly within the genre of casual, and with variations of the word "cute" twice in the first two sentences of the description, it's probably not a game for everyone.

monsterlife2 monsterlife3 monsterlife4

Despite the light-hearted nature of the game, it certainly looks like it offers a surprising amount of depth and impressive amount of fun. The premise is simple: you collect and nurture monsters, train them to boost their powers and abilities, and then pit them against some baddies.

25
Feb
image

USA Today Joins The Slate Club, Releases Tablet-Optimized Android App

Posted by in Applications, News

CNN is not the only news organization with a tablet-optimized Honeycomb app - USA Today today (ooh, 2x "today"s in a row, it must be your lucky day) jumped on the same bandwagon with their own take on what a tablet news app should be like. News, Money, Sports, Life, Tech, Travel, Photos, and Weather sections are available, and... well, there is not much else to say about this - it's a news app on a larger screen. You can find the download links towards the bottom of the page.

image image image

Press Release

MCLEAN, Va., Feb. 25, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- USA TODAY, the nation's top-selling print newspaper, today announced the USA TODAY Android 3.0 App for Motorola Xoom is now available.

10
Sep
IMG_7693 wm

[Review] Battery Life Still Crappy? Try Doubling Your Juice With An Extended Battery. We Review A $12 3000mAh And A $63 3500mAh For EVO 4G

Posted by in Development, EVO 4G (Supersonic), Other Reviews, Reviews, Tips & Tutorials
Last Updated: July 26th, 2011

Welcome to part 2 of my article series centered around getting that precious time between charges of your Android devices to be as long as possible. I'm reviewing EVO 4G products because that's the handset I personally own, but there is nothing stopping you from extrapolating my findings and exploring similar products made for your own devices.

The EVO comes with a battery containing a similar or maybe slightly larger amount of juice than most phones - 1500mAh. A portable powerhouse, my EVO can eat through its full charge long before the day ends, especially if I'm using my favorite WiFi tethering app for a few hours.

21
Jul
HTC EVO 4G Owners, Here's A Battery Tip For You: 2 Extra 1500mAh Batteries + Battery Charger For $10, AndroidPolice Tested And Approved

Updated: HTC EVO 4G, Hero, Incredible Owners, Here's A Battery Tip For You: 2 Extra 1500mAh Batteries + Battery Charger For $10, AndroidPolice Tested And Approved

Posted by in EVO 4G (Supersonic), HTC, Sprint, Tips & Tutorials
Last Updated: July 23rd, 2010

EVO 4G is notorious for its battery problems - they've been plaguing the phone since before it even came out. I personally don't think the battery life is too drastically different from the Hero, for instance, but it's still pretty bad. Chances are that if you want to last through the day, you won't.

Update #1: These fit the HTC Hero too! (Thanks to @xMPoly for the tip)

Update #2: Fit the Droid Incredible perfectly as well! I wonder if it's good for all HTC phones.

There are countless battery tips out there, most of which either don't do anything or force you to turn off so much of your phone's functionality that you might as well buy an iPhone (ziiiiing?).

26
Nov
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How I Doubled My Android Phone's (HTC Hero) Battery Life or Just How Much Email Polling Affects Your Battery

Posted by in Hero, Hero (Sprint, HeroC), HTC, Tips & Tutorials
Last Updated: March 21st, 2010

This post and all its comments were migrated from Artem's personal blog beerpla.net when Android Police launched. If you would like to visit the original post there, please click here.

It's not a secret that my Sprint HTC Hero has been having trouble keeping battery charge - by the time I came home from work, the battery level would oftentimes be at 10% or the phone would be simply dead.

One would give up and accept this futility but I had 2 reasons to keep trying to figure out why:

  • my co-worker's battery would consistently hold twice as much charge as mine - by the time I was at 50%, he was at 75%
  • a wide range of responses on Internet forums and blog posts suggested some people experienced excellent battery life, while others, like me, did not have as much luck

I received feedback from many people that the solution outlined here has helped them double their battery lives not just on their Android phones but also their Pres, Windows Mobile, and others.

16
Nov
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The Not So Good, The Bad, And The Ugly: My List Of 20+ Problems With HTC Hero

Posted by in Hero (Sprint, HeroC), HTC, Sprint
Last Updated: April 16th, 2010
This post and all its comments were migrated from Artem's personal blog beerpla.net when Android Police launched. If you would like to visit the original post there, please click here.

Alright, I was really excited to get the HTC Hero. REALLY. I had extremely high hopes for the Hero (those are long gone) and Android (which I still do - I even began developing for it) but the Hero has so many ridiculous bugs that I am *this* close to bringing it down to the Pre level (I'm not going to dare though - Pre still leads in the "I Want To Smash This Phone Into A Wall" category).