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Help What Not To Run

Throwaway

Lurker
Jun 23, 2010
8
0
I'm getting my phone in the mail today and have read a little bit about how certain stock apps (city id?) can be a huge battery drain, not to mention annoying. Would it help to never run them in the first place? If so, which ones are the worst offenders that you wish you never opened?
 
I haven't noticed City ID being any sort of drain on my battery at all. It starts up when you power the phone up but I've been on since 7:30 or so and it has used 0 seconds of CPU time.

I also wouldn't worry about the GPS. It's only active when you're using an app that requires the GPS. If you don't see the icon at the top of the screen, the GPS isn't on and you're ok.

I would suggest using the widget to quickly turn on and off the Wifi and Bluetooth. If you're in an area where you don't have Wifi, it's going to keep searching for a signal and that will drain the battery. Same goes for Bluetooth.
 
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Syncing the flickr app consistently prevented my phone from sleeping, so I would advise against setting that up. I don't really have any problems with any of the other stock apps, most of them are great. Wish I could turn CityID off (not a big surprise there), but it hasn't been a noticeable battery drain. You may want to replace Sense, but that's a whole other discussion.

-HD
 
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I agree with upther, City ID doesn't seem to drain battery but it can drain your wallet if you buy it. Just let it run until the trial expires then opt out. It won't run after that. You can dig around and find similar apps, but all of the one's in the market will not work because verizon's current CDMA technology doesn't allow concurrent data and voice so no caller id or city id on a voice call. City ID just cross references a database which get's updated (for the fee) and they have a patent which blocks other app from doing the same thing.

I also leave GPS on all the time and can confirm it only turns on when you are running an app that needs GPS and is off all other times. As for Wifi I mostly only go back and forth from work and home and have wifi at both places so I just leave wifi on as well and works fine for me. I don't use bluetooth so I leave it off.

When you're setting up for the first time verizon's backup assistant is already loaded on the device and asks to set it up. It is unnecessary as it's just redundant if you are syncing with your google account anyway. I wouldn't activate it. I also don't use any of HTC's social networking apps: flickr, twitter, facebook, friendstream (which uses htc's twitter and facebook app). I find the apps made by the services work better. That goes for Gmail as well, I use the android gmail client instead of HTC. Though the android gmail probably drains the battery more as you can set sync intervals with the HTC app, but I like the instant notifications of android gmail.

As far as the weather app, HTC's looks nice but it's actually kind of limited so I don't use it. I prefer weather channel's app and don't use a widget. If I want to see the weather I just click on it so it only updates when I need it.
 
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