Help Issues with my phone - Should I return it?

[lufia22]

Hi, this is my first smartphone to actually own. I am upgrading from a flip phone. I just got this phone yesterday.

I talked for about 2-3 hours last night and the phone ate up about 46% battery life. Does this sound about right? I don't have anything to compare it to other than something like the Apple site claiming the iPhone 4 had something like 7 hours of talk time. That seems to make this phone worse to comparable.

EDIT: The Samsung site claims 8 hours of talk time, which they define as, "Amount of time available in Talk mode in which a phone's display are active." I assume that means with the display running. Last night, I did not use the display much while talking and let it cut itself off. I don't think I even talked for 3 hours, it was probably more like 2.5.

I am just on the edge with this phone. I'm not sure if I like it or not. I'm not getting good reception on the phone at my house. I never have really, but my flip phone got at least 3 bars. This one is giving me 1-2 bars constantly, maybe 3 if I'm super lucky.

On top of that, while I was talking last night, the person on the other end was having difficulty hearing me. I thought this might be a reception issue, but when I moved my mouth closer to the mic, they could hear me better. This required me to move my ear away from the speaker, though. I ended up switching to the supplied headset to see if that made it any better and it did. This seems to indicate that the microphone or something on the phone isn't very good.

Other than some nitpicky things, I like the phone overall, but these seem like really breaking issues for me and I'm curious to see opinions on them before I make a decision to return it or not.

 

[jsward12]

Hi, this is my first smartphone to actually own. I am upgrading from a flip phone. I just got this phone yesterday.

I talked for about 2-3 hours last night and the phone ate up about 46% battery life. Does this sound about right? I don't have anything to compare it to other than something like the Apple site claiming the iPhone 4 had something like 7 hours of talk time. That seems to make this phone worse to comparable.

EDIT: The Samsung site claims 8 hours of talk time, which they define as, "Amount of time available in Talk mode in which a phone's display are active." I assume that means with the display running. Last night, I did not use the display much while talking and let it cut itself off. I don't think I even talked for 3 hours, it was probably more like 2.5.

I am just on the edge with this phone. I'm not sure if I like it or not. I'm not getting good reception on the phone at my house. I never have really, but my flip phone got at least 3 bars. This one is giving me 1-2 bars constantly, maybe 3 if I'm super lucky.

On top of that, while I was talking last night, the person on the other end was having difficulty hearing me. I thought this might be a reception issue, but when I moved my mouth closer to the mic, they could hear me better. This required me to move my ear away from the speaker, though. I ended up switching to the supplied headset to see if that made it any better and it did. This seems to indicate that the microphone or something on the phone isn't very good.

Other than some nitpicky things, I like the phone overall, but these seem like really breaking issues for me and I'm curious to see opinions on them before I make a decision to return it or not.

I have owned MANY android phones, this is buggiest one I have ever owned. A close second was the Droid X running 2.2, the 2.2.1 update was killer and made that phone rock solid. The Infuse must be rebooted every two days, as streaming pandora or listening to MP3's failes. There are a lot of little annoying things as well, however for some reason I am willing to put up with it and hope the next update will make things better.

 

[chinefoo]

First time with a smart phone. hmmm, well 1, smart phone eat juice its just a way of life with them.

now as far as your issue, must go thru phone and turn off a few things gps, wifi, and so on there is a thread in this forum that will show you these.

use that task manager also, stop anything your not useing.

there is a update for the phone also not sure if you did this "not sure if it will help you either".

ive had phone for 30 days now and its a learning curve, came from a tilt2 "it has a spot in my garage floor now ".

you come from a flip so ill assume you work for a living GET a ballistic case!

also remember with any smart phone just because it says you can run all those nifty things does not mean you should all at once!

i get a avg, of o say 5 hrs talk. car charger a must! overnight charge a must!
if you dont use many of the features of the phone and or only use for talking / texting and a few picture taking then, take phone back as you will find one more suitable and durable.

overall i think its a great all around useage phone web radio email text stupid games, weather map blah blah i could go on for a while.

however get to know the phone and root around in these forums for id say a week ask questions, then if not happy go exchange it!

have fun good luck hope you fully use the phone and enjoy if not plenty android bassed phones for you to chose from find one you like and enjoy!!!

 

[somanyapps]

Like you, I came from a flip phone to the Infuse. Never owned a smartphone of any kind. Not sure what I was expecting, but other than an annoying issue with not having received a recent software update (really not sure what's going on), and just becoming familiar with what these things can do, I'm not aware of any problems. It looks good, and everything seems to work. I was a little concerned about the size, but that has never been an issue. As far as calls go, I'm not really sure whether it is better, worse, or about the same as far as making connections and dropping calls. There are times I suspect it is not as good as the old flip phone, but I did have trouble with that on occasssion as well. Call clarity has been good for me.

I'm not a heavy user, so battery life has not been an issue. I generally get a day or more on a charge, but there are days when I don't make or receive any calls. I do some web surfing and run a few apps, but again, not really beating on it much. I don't text, and have done only a few emails.

I don't have any experience with smartphones to compare to, so take my experience for what it's worth.

 

[lufia22]

I don't have many issues with the phone itself yet.

But like I said, my complaint has been the battery life, signal, and microphone quality.

The battery certainly doesn't seem to be the 8 hours talk time it claims. I have wifi and GPS both turned off and I already checked running applications before even posting. I haven't even loaded the thing up with apps yet. It's still basically running what comes out of the box. Just using it today starting at around 10:00 am (it's 1:18pm now) for some texting, doing some microphone tests, and a few brief 2-5 minute calls, it has dropped from 64% to 23%, granted, I'm probably more heavily using it as I'm trying to test it out. I have dropped the screen brightness to around 20-30% instead of using auto-brightness.

Signal could be a regional issue, though other phones in my house get 3 bars. I have tried turning off my wireless router on the off chance it would improve anything, but it didn't.

The microphone I am unsure on. Testing it myself by calling the house, I don't have any issues. I've called someone else that was somewhat long distance and he didn't have much of an issue hearing me. It was only one person that did and that could be their end, although they never had issues hearing me before. The mic doesn't seem spectacular and isn't very sensitive, but it seems to work okay as far as I can tell. I don't see any way to increase the mic volume. I've tried unchecking noise cancellation to see if that did much of anything while talking with a fan pointed towards the mic, but that didn't do much of anything.

 

[chinefoo]

go to settings, that gear looking thing hit applications, click running services,\

shut down things you know you not using not everything maps and tele nav love to run in back ground!~
then go to manage applications hit running, that shows you whats currenty running click on the ones you know you dont need running like say media hub market "firefox" if you have it,

some of att stuff is CRAPOLA and runs any way unless you root phone it will stay !

this i mentioned above will extend your batt a bit! once you get to know what the phone can do you will be better able to make a decision on what you really need!

 

[lufia22]

I mainly made this thread to see if my issues were abnormal or defective, particularly the battery.

Does losing 40-50% charge after 2-3 hours of talking sound normal?

This seems to be the go-to Android phone if I'm with AT&T and Android is the biggest reason I chose it.

 

[Vatar]

I mainly made this thread to see if my issues were abnormal or defective, particularly the battery.

Does losing 40-50% charge after 2-3 hours of talking sound normal?

This seems to be the go-to Android phone if I'm with AT&T and Android is the biggest reason I chose it.

Yes this is very normal my Iphone 3G had ~5.5hrs of talk time and that OS can't even multitask. I rooted my phone and installed cpu tuner to clock my phone down to 800MHz. This helps a lot and if you need the Horsepower you can clock it back up to 1200MHz with a simple swipe.

To get back to your original concern. Yes it is very normal Telephony is a very resource intensive

The Stock battery is a 6.8 Watt/Hour battery so the battery can source 6.8 watts for one hour. Now the radio is going to use approximately 100-500mW
depending on signal strength. There is going to be a little electric to RF power conversion loss and loss due to heat so I would guess total power used to be around 650mW which is one tenth the batteries source capabilities. Now you have to factor in the power used by the hummingbird processor clocked at 1200Mhz (which it will be when your in a call). So the phone is going to probably draw about 1.1~3Watts per hour while engaged in telephony.

So in a nutshell if you want better battery life underclock the CPU I have mine set to 800MHz while in a call and my voice quality does not suffer. One last tip, I would also limit the clock speed of the phone while it is asleep to around 250~300MHz this seems to substantially improve my battery life.

 

[Mr. Ed]

I have to disagree with many....

We have 5 android devices...most have a similar battery capacity and all get the same moderate to heavy usage....the infuse is the worst out of all of them...I have tried tweaking, turning off this and that etc and it just blows no matter what I do.

Between the battery life and the random screen off death I seriously think it will go back for an inspire or the atrix which sucks...I love the sound and screen.

 

[Vatar]

Between the battery life and the random screen off death I seriously think it will go back for an inspire or the atrix which sucks...I love the sound and screen.

I agree that bone stock this phone is a battery hog but, after a root custom ROM and some tweaking this phone lasts longer than my cousins incredible. Obviously I get less active use time because of the ginormus screen and more processing power.

I think that you should hang on to your device. Samsung rushed this thing to market in the US. It is obvious by the slapjob froyo the devices were loaded with. I think as early adopters we will be rewarded when our gingerbread comes out of the oven we will see a much more polished/power optimized device.

 

[Mr. Ed]

I agree that bone stock this phone is a battery hog but, after a root custom ROM and some tweaking this phone lasts longer than my cousins incredible. Obviously I get less active use time because of the ginormus screen and more processing power.

I think that you should hang on to your device. Samsung rushed this thing to market in the US. It is obvious by the slapjob froyo the devices were loaded with. I think as early adopters we will be rewarded when our gingerbread comes out of the oven we will see a much more polished/power optimized device.

pm me details on your set up....i rooted...tried the limited roms out and tweaked everything (totally not a noob at this)

ill put it this way

evo...127 hours uptime 12 hrs awake 33% battery
infuse.....16 hours uptime 4 hours awake 9% battery

i am findin that my screen is the only thing listed that seems abnormal. 90% battery usage..kept on auto or low.

i always had thr impression that these amoled screens used less battery but my evo was constantly 100% brightness and always at the bottom of the list

i am off all week so i am going to keep playing and see what i can figure out. in the end i really hope the attain comes out before my 30 days are up. otherwise i will most likely get another inspire.