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ICS discussion thread

it is under security.... you have to go into it a little further though. it should say something about choosing your lock screen feature its in there.

The only lock screen option I see under security is the one that has the 9 dots and you create your own lock pattern. If you know the path to take from the security menu please pass it on. Thanks.
 
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So, do you remember all the discussion last year about ics taking advantage of our duel cores better than gingerbread? So I don't notice any speed enhancements.......do you?
Android uses the Linux kernel, which is the thing that works the CPU. The Linux kernel already has superb SMP support, so I don't think you'll see any really radical performance improvements from newer Android releases that have newer Linux kernel releases. I do know that a long awaited giant spinlock code change was made in one of the 3.x.x kernels. However this change was more to make kernel development easier, and not to address any performance issues.

I hope that helps.
 
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I am on the on the phone with sprint...clueless. She was trying to fix the problem using the Gingerbread manual. Geeze.
Remember that many of us are forcing our upgrades, before Sprint planned on having to support us. It's not exactly fair for an early adopter to expect 1st level techs to be up to speed with them. On that note, you're probably better off asking for the 1st level tech to escalate your call right away to a higher level tech. That'll save both of you unnecessary friction.

EDIT: Oops, should have read ahead.
 
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Can you please tell me if there is a longer lasting battery in the market or tell me about those two batteries you go? Please explain about the low/high cycle as I am a battery dummy. Thank you...
My phone came with a 1800mAh Samsung brand battery out of the box. Based on ads I've read for "high capacity" batteries with only 1650 and 1700mAh ratings, I'm guessing that the first SII batteries were less than 1650mAh.

My Sprint brand second battery is rated nominally at 1750mAh, and mentions 1800mAh in a way that suggests that Sprint doesn't want to call theirs a true 1800mAh battery, which is telling. That's usually an indicator that some capacity claims are being fudged a bit. IME my LONG experience with lithium battery chemistries, you can't squeeze more mAh into a package of the same size. If you want more real battery capacity, you're going to have to obey the laws of nature and buy a physically larger battery. Those batteries made by the Communists that claim to have radically more mAh in the same size package are almost certainly false advertising.

There are legitimate higher capacity batteries for SII phones that came with 1750/1800mAh batteries. You can tell they're legit because they come with a replacement back to make room for the larger size of the battery. That's the only way you're going to get more real capacity IME, by making room for it. All of my higher capacity video camera (and previous cellphone) batteries have a unique form factor that fits their storage capacity. Same thing for car batteries etc.

Read carefully when ordering the big batteries with replacement camera backs. Some say they don't work with the Sprint version. If the one you see doesn't specifically say that it's for a Sprint SII "Epic" phone, I'd call and ask before ordering. I'd make a note of the call and who I spoke to, in case they weren't being honest. Caveat emptor.
 
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Ever since the ICS update, the internet browsers (whether it's the stock browser, Dolphin, or Google Chrome) do not reformat text information to fit onto the screen display when the page is resized. I have looked to no avail in the phone settings and within each browsers' app settings to see if this feature can be reconfigured. Any help would be much appreciated.
 
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OK, it's been 3 days, 18 hours and change, or 90 continuous hours. 90 hours! That's outstanding! Even more so because it's on my slightly less capacious Sprint battery, not the Japan-made (high quality) Samsung brand battery that came with the phone. My backup battery that I use for the frequent battery-killing charge/discharge cycles and keep my Samsung battery at full force for times when I need every last minute. I'm not going to discharge even that one past 20%, although I have no doubt that it could get into its fifth day if I pushed it. (Lithium secondary chemistry doesn't do well with deep discharge, so draining it to zero as a quick way to turn a 90 hour+ battery into a 9 hour battery.)

Here are some things to ponder:

1. The phone and battery are only a couple months old.

2. I've kept the phone dead stock, installing only applications (not utilities or replacement OS components other than a user mode antivirus program).

3. I used the stock Samsung-made ICS zip file to do the upgrade.

4. After the upgrade, I found a lot of settings that affect battery life altered, and some new features like "Power saving mode". I reset all of them to more or less the way I had it set up before. I set the new Power saving mode to kick in at the most aggressive 50%, assuming that the last 50% would be a lot shorter than the first. (Turns out it wasn't.)

5. I installed the test battery after a full charge, using the included Sprint charger.

6. Swapping batteries caused a temporary power outage in the phone, causing it to reboot. I'm told this is called a hard reset. Although I gave ICS 12+ hours to finish any background processes before the reboot, I did notice a lot fewer system processes after the hard reset. I didn't kill any of them so as not to bias the test.

7. I spent an hour or two going through the phone and verifying that it was still set up the same as it was before the reboot, and took one unexpected phone call, but didn't make any calls or use the phone to do more than check the battery state, so as not to bias the test results. No software updates were done during that time. I did clear messages, not knowing whether it cost more power to keep the reminder active. I did keep the Wi-Fi radio on during the test. The 4G (WiMAX), Bluetooth and GPS radios were kept off.

Why did I not use the phone? Isn't that abnormal? The obvious answer in this case is that the problems being reported from those fresh off their ICE upgrades was that ICS (and only ICS) was sucking up battery power at an unacceptable rate. Since PCS phones vary their output power automatically, there's no simple way to calculate how much energy a call would consume. Likewise, since the display was set to auto mode, which varied the brightness in response to the ambient light levels, I kept it off most of the time so as not to bias test results. Using the phone has no bearing on whether or not ICS by itself was draining the battery.

My conclusion is that those who experienced what they believed to be a battery-hungry ICS distro is more likely to be a battery-hungry ICS new user. Other possible factors include:

1.) Failure to reset the user settings. I noticed from the comments than many users assumed that ICS was the problem, and tried rash remedies like clearing all personal information off the phone. But I didn't read a thing (that I didn't write myself) about the easy to access (and I thought obvious) "Settings" menu. This may be a case of "new toy syndrome" and a rush to judgment by users who hadn't considered every possibility.

2.) New User Syndrome. We all want to check out the new install, so it only follows that we'd be using prodigious amounts of power in doing so. And those who are immersed in discovering all they can about the new attraction are less likely to pay attention to the difference between the way they're using the phone at the time and how they normally use it. It could be that simple.

3.) Background install processes. IME with embedded operating systems, it's not uncommon for the embedded hardware to be "just enough" to do its designed task, with little headroom. That makes it necessary for the OS to cope with CPU and RAM-intensive tasks like decompressing, organizing, configuring and installing new files by using every available shred of system resources that aren't needed for normal operation to perform these tasks in the background.

For example, the TiVo daily Program guide update takes anywhere from a few minutes to an hour to finish as seen through the graphical user interface (GUI) on the TV screen. However because the TiVo runs the Linux kernel and filesystem for the system, it's possible to use another user interface that's created by a well-known TiVo hack: the BASH shell and the GNU utilities. I've used these tools to monitor the runnung processes and CPU / RAM usage and can say with certainty that the daily update doesn't end when the GUI update display ends. It can take hours for the rest of the process to complete. GUI-only users can see this too if they watch the To Do List. They'll see new scheduled programs appear from time to time as they're added to the database. Other DVRs act this way too.

Another thing that could be happening is an exhaustive recalibration of the hardware by the new OS software. There have been quite a few reports of poor radio performance right after the ICS upgrade. For me these have settled down in a reasonable amount of time. If anyone is still having radio problems, please speak up.

4.) Unfamiliarity with the new user interface. Those who are experienced with the old version of Android might be misinterpreting what the new version is telling them. For example, the "(time) on battery" counter might be seen as a "battery time remaining" display. That's what I thought at first!

5.) The hardware. The new install and the reduced battery life could be a coincidence. Rechargeable batteries don't last forever, and it's possible that the big install was the last straw for an already exhausted battery.

DISCLAMER: This is only my best guess, and should be considered an opinion. The testing that I did wasn't rigorous or scientific, and all of the data at this time should be considered preliminary. Time will tell how things work out. If Samsung releases a new version of ICE, that would indicate that there are problems with this first release. Likewise, if the complaints stop coming, that will be telling too. My only interest is to figure this out, and have no intention to impugn the experiences of others, their good word or to insult anyone for any reason. Please accept this report for what it is and no more. Thanks!

Speed, I understand your post, but after spending way too much time last night trying to figure this out, I did run across multiple people talking about the wifi issue. The continuous search is the big issue, at least for me as it is totally draining the battery. The fix was to turn off the Sprint optimizer, but there is no way to do that with the iteration of ICS for the Galaxy SII...at least not yet. That is the culprit for me. I know that as I turn on wifi, it locks on my home signal, and still continues to search, like others a few months ago pointed out. I think it is just some sort of issue that will get resolved once Sprint hears from people like me in order to make them aware. I do agree with you that there are other issues that you so rightly point out with a new system that people forget about, but in this case, at lease for me, I know it's the wifi search. BTW...you are awesome writing all of that! ;)
 
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Speed, I understand your post, but after spending way too much time last night trying to figure this out, I did run across multiple people talking about the wifi issue...
There's no doubt that it's an issue; I'm not trying to say it's all better now. I thought that my problem had settled down, but it turns out that my Wi-Fi got turned off, which is why I stopped seeing the constant connect messages.

My battery test was intended to isolate that one issue: the one with poor battery life.

I don't know what can be done to live with the Wi-Fi problem until someone issues a patch or work-around. But I have a strong motivator to keep looking for a solution! ;)

Thanks for the thanks, BTW. Thank YOU for your own hard work!
 
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the first few days on ICS my battery life was horrible. i lost 10% in an hour sending 4 very brief texts. an hour and a half later i was down to 74% and just used my ATT maps/gps twice for maybe 4 minutes. since that time my battery life has been outstanding. i did one factory reset and one evening allowed my battery to go down to 6% before recharging. i'm losing 1% of battery on standby.

i should mention i discontinued using noLED and starting using that new tesla notification app on my widget locker. and i also uninstalled smart screen on pro. smart screen was a major drain on the battery.

my biggest issue is that i can not do the new screenshot method with the volume/power keys. anyone else having this issue?
 
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the first few days on ICS my battery life was horrible. i lost 10% in an hour sending 4 very brief texts. an hour and a half later i was down to 74% and just used my ATT maps/gps twice for maybe 4 minutes. since that time my battery life has been outstanding. i did one factory reset and one evening allowed my battery to go down to 6% before recharging. i'm losing 1% of battery on standby.

i should mention i discontinued using noLED and starting using that new tesla notification app on my widget locker. and i also uninstalled smart screen on pro. smart screen was a major drain on the battery.

my biggest issue is that i can not do the new screenshot method with the volume/power keys. anyone else having this issue?

Have you tried power + home? Hold them down for a couple seconds. I don't know if the ATT version of the Galaxy S II is different than the Sprint version...
 
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Well don't you suck :D

Do you have wifi turned on? If so, are you connected to a wifi access point or just leave wifi turned on but connected to 3g?

My 3G connectivity is pretty damn good between work and home, especially at home - WAY BETTER than AT&T (who I ditched for Sprint).
As such, I get responsive functionality to app-data updates on 3G; only when I need to download Play updates, do interwebs hot & heavy or download other large-ish files do I turn on WiFi - so to answer your question - WiFi is only on manually, during peak demand.

When I manually turn on WiFi, my 3G connection goes away...either or Brochacho. Both "on" would be a total waster! :smokingsomb:
 
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My 3G connectivity is pretty damn good between work and home, especially at home - WAY BETTER than AT&T (who I ditched for Sprint).
As such, I get responsive functionality to app-data updates on 3G; only when I need to download Play updates, do interwebs hot & heavy or download other large-ish files do I turn on WiFi - so to answer your question - WiFi is only on manually, during peak demand.

When I manually turn on WiFi, my 3G connection goes away...either or Brochacho. Both "on" would be a total waster! :smokingsomb:

OK, so that probably explains why you are getting good battery life. With wifi on (and connected to a access point), that is where the battery drain comes into play.
 
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Like an idiot, I updated my phone today when prompted. Nothing is working correctly. I cannot text by swipe (when I tap on the blinking cursor in the text box, nothing happens.) I get the message "Swype - Open of EnglishUS failed! What does that mean? I have had to charge the battery twice today, my e-mail is completely reformatted, a voice tells me who is calling everytime my phone rings......HELP!!! Can I uninstall this update? Can anyone help me???
 
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Like an idiot, I updated my phone today when prompted. Nothing is working correctly. I cannot text by swipe (when I tap on the blinking cursor in the text box, nothing happens.) I get the message "Swype - Open of EnglishUS failed! What does that mean? I have had to charge the battery twice today, my e-mail is completely reformatted, a voice tells me who is calling everytime my phone rings......HELP!!! Can I uninstall this update? Can anyone help me???

For Swype, from the home screen, go to menu --> settings --> applications and find Swype. Clear the data for Swype. For the battery, that is an issue, most people report it sucks with ICS. Not sure about the voice telling you about calls, but sounds like you have "drive mode" on or something like that.... As far as I know no easy way to uninstall the update. I guess you could flash back to GB, but that would wipe your phone clean.
 
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OK, so that probably explains why you are getting good battery life. With wifi on (and connected to a access point), that is where the battery drain comes into play.

No argument here.

WiFi, Bluetooth and GPS are all power hogs.
If I am serving music or using navigation, I always try to stay plugged in.
Also worth mentioning is that using "good" headphones with 40mm or 50mm drivers will also deplete a battery pretty quickly. It's hard to stay plugged in when doing the music on the go thing, but it is what it is and I live with it...that's why I have a pair of power efficient buds for extended travel gigs.
 
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Toddville is listed as the location for my weather info on the Lockscreen and I can't figure out how to change it. When I go into display and choose I want the weather on the lockscreen there isn't an option for location. Thanks :)

In order to change the lockscreen weather info, go to menu>settings>display>weather settings. :)
 
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