Help I really am trying to like Android

[jbanger]

Hey all. New Android Forums user, and fairly new to Android phones.

I'm an ex-iPhone user that made the switch to Android because I'm on T-Mobile and hated the jailbreak experience of a slow 3G iPhone and 2G data speeds. I purchased an HTC Sensation 4G about 3 months ago and was pleasantly surprised at how quick this new phone was -- both in device functionality as well as data speed.

Lately, my experience with this phone has changed from initial bliss to frustration. I don't know if it is because I'm adding more apps and data, but I'm finding that apps and services on my device will not start, and I have to either disable / enable the respective service or completely reboot the system. It's like I'm experiencing the slowness / non-responsiveness of my predecessor phone -- but on a brand new state-of-the-art phone.

I'm to the point where my level of frustration is high enough that I'm starting to wonder if I made the right choice to move to Android. And it doesn't help that my wife just purchased a flashy new iPhone 4S that doesn't seem to have any of the issues I'm experiencing.

Should I have the expectation to have to reboot my phone every other day for it to work correctly?

Is there anything I'm missing or not doing to make my Android experience more positive? I've run the latest updates for everything, but that doesn't seem to fix the issue.

Any thoughts or feedback would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

 

[momist]

I'm new to any type of smartphone, but my sons all have them and insist that the main problems arise from lack of storage. Have you got a large SD card in use, and do you move apps onto it. I'm using App2SD to manage mine.

 

[jbanger]

@momist, thanks for the thoughts / tip. I also noticed that a lot of the problems I was experiencing was when the batter was low / charging. Perhaps having the charger on takes CPU processing...?

 

[SensationalRob]

Make sure you are using the right charger, I have several with similar ends on them and I can tell you for certain that some of them totally make my phone do weird stuff...also get a good task manager and use it regularly....additionally it seems my phone is more problem free since I installed go launcher....the sense ui is beautiful and works great but it did cause my phone to appear to restart multiple times a day....and once you start tinkering with the go launcher I'm sure u will be impressed with the level of customization that can be had.

 

[BlueBiker]

Sorry you're having these problems, and no they're definitely not normal Android behavior! My original Droid ran just as well after 18mo as it did new.

I've seen bizarre behavior from chargers with mismatched amperage charging rates. My Droid would go crazy with phantom touchscreen presses when connected to a no-name charging cradle I bought online. With the stock charger there shouldn't be any issue.

If a battery's going flaky from old age, you can also get unreliable operation. Usually that's easily solved with a cheap replacement battery off eBay.

 

[jbanger]

Thanks all for the great comments and suggestions. I gave my HTC a full charge and it seems to be working a lot better. I'm even getting better results after switching to a new launcher (LauncherPro). From these responses it sounds like my performance woes were the result of trying to work with a dead battery and a cheap charger I got off eBay. Thanks again.

 

[BlueBiker]

Excellent, glad to hear! You'll like Launcher Pro -- fast and very configurable w/excellent widgets (though not in the free version anymore).

 

[DVNO]

Make sure you are using the right charger, I have several with similar ends on them and I can tell you for certain that some of them totally make my phone do weird stuff...also get a good task manager and use it regularly....additionally it seems my phone is more problem free since I installed go launcher....the sense ui is beautiful and works great but it did cause my phone to appear to restart multiple times a day....and once you start tinkering with the go launcher I'm sure u will be impressed with the level of customization that can be had.

Wrong. DO NOT INSTALL A TASK MANAGER. That is one of the biggest myths with android. The android os has its own built in task manager that does perfectly fine. All of these 3rd party task managers are memory hogs and do nothing to help "speed" up your phone.