Converted to Android

[dekanfrus]

I just gave up my Tour for Sprint and went with the Hero. I've had it about 24 hours thus far, and here are my thoughts & questions. Feedback is appreciated.

1. First, what's with the facebook app? Is it possible to receive a notification that someone commented on something and have it take you directly to that status, message, thread, etc? I found it difficult to have a conversation with someone via a status comment while on my phone. Suggestions?

2. Can I not assign a different ringtone for my work email, my personal email, text messages, gtalk messages, etc? Not only that, but can I only use the pre-loaded ones? I'm a fan of the office, and I like my text ringtone to be the office theme song.

3. Battery life, what a joke. I took it off the charger this morning around 8am, and it was dead by 3pm. I was on it quite a bit changing settings and what not, but that's a rather poor performance if you ask me. I did read a thread on how to increase battery life (by getting taskiller x and setting it to kill tasks every 30 mins).

4. The alarm, didn't go off this morning (I set a back up just in case), was that because I had it set to silent? I don't like being interrupted in the middle of the night, but I expected the alarm to still go off. My tour did this without a problem, which was incredible. I could turn the phone off and it would come on when the alarm needed to go off.

5. Is it just me, or is it a bit slow? Switching between apps, opening new ones, or rotating the screen seem to slow it down a bit. Is this typical, is there a work around? Any suggestions/feedback on this?

And lastly, I have one more request. I was reading through some of the threads and saw a few "must have apps", but they weren't really useful. They didn't say why the app was a "must have". So, list some of the apps that you use, and why you use them.

Overall the phone is a lot of fun, but it doesn't seem very smooth or fluid like my Tour did. But, I'm going to give it a shot and see what I think of it before I give up.

Thanks for the input!

 

[ERDude]

The search feature is your friend.

1. The web version of FB works better.

2. Answered in this thread - http://forum.androidcentral.com/htc-hero/733-change-sms-ringtone.html#post2210

3. Answered in this thread - http://forum.androidcentral.com/htc-hero/782-improving-battery-life-your-android-device.html

4. If you silence the phone you silence everything

5. Answered here - http://forum.androidcentral.com/htc-hero/808-newbtorial-how-keep-zip-your-android.html

 

[doublebullout]

1. The web version of FB works better.

I prefer the FB app because it displays updates in the correct order. Strangely, the mobile web versions of FB seem to display updates in a haphazard manner, and not always the most recent ones.

I did read a thread on how to increase battery life (by getting taskiller x and setting it to kill tasks every 30 mins).

This is, pardon the pun, overkill. You do not have to do this to get good battery life, and killing tasks indiscriminately could make the OS unstable. My battery life is great. The messaging app does have a bug that prevents the phone from going to sleep properly, so you'll want to read the threads about that. I also turn off the other radios (bluetooth, GPS, wifi) when I'm not using them. There are some good widgets available that let you easily toggle these on and off. I've also set my Exchange sync to occur every 15 minutes instead of as items arrive. Otherwise, you shouldn't have to use extreme measures to make the battery last all day. I'm at 31% left after starting the day at 8am at 100% with no charging top-off during the day.