Liar liar pants on fire – T-Mobile G1 battery life = horrible

neptune1978 said,

This battery life sucks. Fully charged in morning when I wake up and about 6 hours later needs charging. G1 sucks returning for full refund, going back to my blackberry curve.

Rowan said,

Sigh….I have struggled on with my G1 for ten days, and hope I will be allowed to return it for another model. Got it on contract with T-Mo UK. Two texts and two emails, and I’m down half the battery charge. It makes my beloved, trusty and ancient MDA Vario look like a marathon runner, in the battery stakes. Wish I’d upgraded to the Vario 111. Or tried a Blackberry. (Great gnashing of teeth.)

Now to work out how to do a hard reset, to delete my data….

SirJames said,

Battery life? Not hardly. But with enough cables you can charge in the car off your laptop at your friends house off the USB ports. convenient? I think not. So don;t use it much and it might last till late afternoon. But here’s the worst:

The G1 is awful. Compared to an ancient Nokia flip-phone I’ve carried for years, it is neanderthal. 1. It cannot access Tmobile “My Albums” photobank. 2. It cannot access Family Allowance sliders for managing minutes. 3. It cannot download an sms photo to the phone. If you can get it to work at all,(Photos with embedded messages from very basic T Mobile photo phones totally baffle the phone and the Android experts) You must forward the phone to your Gmail account. And 4. OMG when you sync up with Gmail if you had an account for a while all your lame email contacts will push all your phone contacts off into the ether somewhere. 5. But the absolutely worst design feature by far is mounting the tiny delete button on the keyboard adjacent to the SEND button. Try to correct a typo or rethink a bit of poorly chosen words and a fat or misguided finger SENDS the mistake quicker then you can say G1! My old Nokia allowed me to set a timed “silence” or Meeting” ring tone for a predetermined time 2 hours for a movie, 8 hours for work. what have you… With G1, it is silent or Not. period No timers no choices. and the volume..there is none. you lay the phone on it’s back to protect the prcious touch screen and you are laying it on the speaker! If you have a hearing problem or need more volume in a noisy environment, a mall sports event or outdoors… forget about it.

It can tell you the air quality in your neghborhood but it dials your least favorite person at just the wrong time all by itself. It sets errant alarms for no reason and dies at the worst times. This thing had to have been rushed to market with no prior end user testing.

Simply put, a thousand software androids working with unlimited time could not fix the hardware and T-Mobile interface problems this thing carries. T-Mobile’s response “Yeah we forgot to tell ya that, but we know about the problems…and it is okay because some of our other phones don’t work with T mobile web features either. Oh… but next month it comes out in a white cased version. so look cool and explain why it is the next great thing.

Remember you only have 14 days to discover what this thing won’t do. And don’t expect a user manual. T-Mobile and Android refuse to include a manual beyond “Getting started” which just hypes features with no real instructions. The full 141 page tome is not supplied with the unit still lacks clear directions for some features and pitfalls and it is buried online. I’m a fairly bright guy and I like technology more than most but this thing will make you feel dumb and have you scratching you head in an instant at every turn.

My old Nokia is getting it’s SIM card back next week.

Sir James
Houston Texas

Rowan said,

I am posting again, because I’m happy with my G1 now, although I wish I’d got a black one. They only had white, the day I went for mine. It can be hard to see the keys when the backlight comes on in poorish light. Anyway, such peripheries aside, I found a very helpful comment on the T-Mo forum battery thread, which seems to have revolutionised the battery-life of my phone. The person posting was very knowledgeable about li-ion batteries, and suggested calibrating the empty cycle of the battery by letting the phone die completely, or waiting till it dropped to a 1% charge, then recharging with the gps ad 3g off. He also suggested a lower voltage charger, such as a Blackberry one, which i happened to have. He had run this cycle three times on his phone, and solved his battery problems.

I didn’t believe it would work, but after one cycle, my phone is great. it is now 30 hours since the last charge, and I’ve been pottering around on the internet for ages. The battery is still at 51%! i am really pleased, as otherwise, it hasn’t revealed any other faults. I’m happy to have it foranother 18 months, if things stay like this. I really do need louder ringtones and alerts, though. I’m not techy enough to go and find them myself. Hopefully those will come in time in a market download, or something.

I do miss my Windows notebook and full-screen appointments alerts, nevertheless. A little icon at the top of the screen isn’t enough for a myopic and disorganised person like me. My beloved old Vario would yell persistently at me in the middle of the night, that I’d an important appointment the following day!

Raw12 said,

You guys need to stop complaining. All 3G phones pushing WIFI and 3G connectivity have short lifespans. You can’t expect any phone with these type of hi-speed internet and gps capabilities to last all day with heavy usage….Its just like a laptop doing the same….3G and Wifi will suck the life from a laptop doing the same thing as well.

The Iphone and the G1 both do very well with 3G/Wifi/and GPS turned off. Learn how to customize your phones, and use hi-speed only when necessary. You dont need it on all day.

Richard Wills said,

i have had the g1 for 3 days now. the battery life is very poor so im going to try and drain it right down so it wont turn on then charge it up in airplane mode so the is no connectivity at all. this is meant to help and solve the problem. also just having your phone in airplane mode will make the battery last days and then turn it on to receive your messages but then again this is not what a phone is for.
any solutions or tips please email richardpwills@googlemail.com

Malcolm said,

I’ve had my G1 for 4 days now and it does seem to be more of a calibration issue with charging than anything else…I have let my phone drop down to atleast 20% before charging and it has come back stronger each time. T-mobile doesn’t have 3G in my area so I’ve got that turned off, but the wifi I turn on when I’m at home and I turn on the GPS when I’m out traveling that way people can look me up on latitude to see where I am. This seems to be a good phone and i am enjoying it…the only time I have real battery issues is grabbing apps and files from the net..other than that it lasted several hours on the initial charge.

caleb said,

So I just read through all your comments and I’m typing this from my g1 right now. I don’t kno about the blackberry trick but I had gotten a replacement battery from htc free of charge ( the better ones end with 04) and the calibration trick works if only slightly. If you have not done it, the “breaking in” period is very important. Give it a shot, I also use my phone with 3g off bc tmobile 3 g sucks and I don’t notice a difference anyways . Plus, why drain my battery more by having it scan btwn edge and 3g aas I’m moving btwn areas. I also only leave calendar and gmail sync on. The other are left off. Good luck.

Sean said,

It is htcs fault, they are the ones who kind of designed and created the phone you know…. Tmobile provides the service not making the phones dumbass.

ChloeQI said,

I’ve just found this site http://www.get-an-iphone.com, can I really get an apple iphone for free?.

Chloe

ErrolA said,

Thanks!…to incl. “Sir James” — observations useful in researching phone options. My case is a SUDDENLY DEAD G1; left it to charge, later it was UNRESPONSIVE. At T-M store, battery removed; I got obligatory “new phone” sales pitch (& T-M does NOT carry/sell battery.) My account is pre-paid (no emailing etc.) so phone usage minimal, although, phone is/was an 18-month-old loss/replacement, very likely a REFURB. So UNLESS solution is via NEW BATTERY – so I could salvage my “contacts” (via sim card) – I WILL need new T-M phone/activation. Any ‘experience’ advice or pointers will be appreciated. Peace!…