When i got home i let my phone charge from about 3pm till 3 am. i took it off the charger and let it sit on my desk and at 9am when i got up it went from 100 to 85. i read the battery guide today an made some more changes, is this kinda normal at first? what should i let the battery drop down to before i re charge it agian like 30%?
You're saying from 3 to 9 it went from 100% to 85%? 15% in that time period is great, but also take into consideration that there's some sort of bug in which the first ~10% of the battery drains extremely quickly (some people have found that shutting down and charging, charging several times in succession, etc help, but I don't think there's a proven way of getting rid of it). Therefore, if you think about it, you technically only lost 5% of the battery (+ however long it took for the first 10% to drain, not more than probably half an hour) in 6 hours.
As for apps, I recommend you buy a profiles manager. They range from $5-10, and the possibilities of what you can do with them are many. Have them change volumes when you're at certain places as dictated by your GPS, or base it on the time of day, or the day itself. Have it do things like automatically turn on your GPS when you load a certain app (Maps), and so on -- the possibilities are practically endless. The best ones, to my knowledge, are Tasker, Locale, and PhoneWeaver. I use Tasker, fairly satisfied with it, but sometimes wish I had gone for a trial of the other two first. (tip: if you buy Tasker direct from the developer, there's extra features and it's a dollar cheaper)
- If you have a laptop, get PdaNet, a tethering app. You get a trial of the pro version and then it becomes limited to only http sites (no https). To me, that doesn't matter since I spend 90% of my time on http sites, don't know about you. EDIT: Silly me, until today I never noticed the included Tethering option that comes with the Evo. When you plug it into USB, four options will come up, the last of which is tethering.
- QuickDesk and Smart Taskbar are two apps to look into so that you can have quick and easy access to your favorite apps.
- Application Protection is a good app to set a password on some of your sensitive apps, this way you won't be as wary when letting others play with your amazing new phone.
- Go!Chat is the best Facebook chat application I've found, if you need it.
- The Justin.tv app seems very useful as well (I only downloaded it yesterday). After you make an account, you get a link (i.e. Justin.tv/Caperi) which you can tell friends. Once they're on the site, you can hit record and it'll stream live video to that page (or practically live, there's a 5-10 second delay that I've noticed)
- Download NoBars if you're ever in areas with low signal strength. The app turns on Airplane Mode if you ever hit zero bars, and searches for a signal every X minutes for Y minutes. Just downloaded this recently too, so I don't know if it works well, but it's a must if you don't feel like being stranded with an unexpected dead battery.
- QuickSettings is very useful for changing settings with ease (Volume, GPS, Bluetooth, Wifi, etc). Set up the settings that are most important to you, order them whatever way you like, then long press the search button and set QuickSettings as the default -- not sure how I could get by without this.
- RealCalc is a good calculator if you ever need more than the barebones stock calculator.
- WidgetLocker ($1.99) is nice if you'd like to be able to put widgets and apps on your lockscreen. Then you can change the slider too (the default one includes a nice Ringer Volume handler which you can quickly slide to mute or vibrate only).
- Swype, maybe you've heard of it, is great. I don't think there's a version on the market for it yet (it's still in beta?). I forget where I got mine, search around for the .apk (To open it, you'll need the Astro File Manager app)
That's all I have to suggest, enjoy.
Now my battery lasts anywhere from 12 hours with fairly heavy use, to 18 hours with moderate use.
