Couple of questions

[inkdrink]

Firstly, I purchased a Droid yesterday, and I'm absolutely in love, but I've got a couple small qualms.

First, I can't get my phone to go into landscape mode unless I slide the phone out. I've already made sure that the option for automatically changing the orientation was checked, and I know my phone was doing it when I first bought it yesterday, but now it stays on portrait until I slide. I've tried doing everything I can think of including restarting the phone, but it hasn't fixed the problem. Any ideas?

Secondly, and maybe I'm just expecting too much from such a powerful phone, but my battery life seems to be extraordinarily short. My phone was fully charged before I left for work today and it barely lasted me 7 hours. Now, to be fair, I was using it on and off throughout those 7 hours to surf the web and text, but I didn't think I was doing it with the frequency that could drain it so quickly. What's more, I dimmed my screen to the second lowest option in display settings and turned my dim timer to 15 seconds, and that hasn't seemed to really extend the life. So is this what I should expect, or is my battery funky? 7 hours is just way too short a time.

 

[DROIDFREAK]

Is your phone stuck in landscape mode all together? Or it just wont change when you are looking at the home screen?

 

[inkdrink]

It just won't change when I'm looking at the 3 home screens unless I slide out the screen. Every other app on the phone aside from the home screens flips as soon as I turn the phone. And like I said, the option in display settings is checked, so I'm kinda bewildered.

 

[dcx3]

It just won't change when I'm looking at the 3 home screens unless I slide out the screen. Every other app on the phone aside from the home screens flips as soon as I turn the phone. And like I said, the option in display settings is checked, so I'm kinda bewildered.

I think this might be normal. Mine only goes to landscape mode when I slide keyboard out. It rotates fine for all other tasks.

 

[jjenson]

As for the abttery life there is built in tools so you can see where all your power is going to at any given time to see what is eating the battery up if you go to:

settings --> About --> Battery Use

Make sure that you are not running something active all day long. Also make sure you download Advanced App Killer the free version. I did this cause a couple of the apps drained my batter and I just used that to kill those specific apps and my batter lasted me today about 8 hours while I spend about 2 hours playing old school super nintendo games.

Hope this helps

JJenson

 

[DougFNJ]

Definitely normal as far as the orientation. Curious why, but normal.

As far as battery, my first question is is your unit running unusually warm? I had a very fast quick initial drain, plus the unit was running very hot. I pulled the battery (I am coming from a blackberry) a power down and power up should work just as well.....but I get the feeling it had somethiing to do with the setup. Try that and see how it works then and please report back.

 

[inkdrink]

Thanks for the replies guys. I could have sworn the home screens were orienting themselves without my sliding the screen out, but I also had to wake up at 4AM to be there in line to get my Droid, so I might have just been overly tired and not entirely coherent haha.

It was only about halfway through today that I noticed the battery was draining quickly, and when I checked the battery use, it said almost 3/4 of it was going to the display, which is why i turned down the brightness and dim timer settings. Afterwards, I also downloaded that Advanced App Killer, and I've been using it ever since. I don't really know how much of my battery had already drained before I adjusted my settings, so maybe I'll notice a longer battery life tomorrow off a full charge with all of the optimal settings already in place.

And Doug, while my Droid has not been warm in the least, I did have similar issues with my Blackberry Curve before I switched, so I do know where you're coming from. In actuality, while I know the Droid is a lot more hardware intensive than the Curve, my Blackberry could go for a day and a half on a single charge, even if I spent the entire time surfing the net and chatting on AIM, which is partially what led me to make this thread.

I'll let you know what sort of lifespan I get tomorrow evening.