Phone lag, battery; return it? Help!

[quickV]

Guys, I recently discovered this site after checking out the EVO 4g / palm Pre comparison post. Needless to say, the site is awesome, and I own an Evo 4G. I need some help and I hope you guys can answer this question. Please let me know what you think (I'll keep it brief).

I bought it on the 11th of June, one week after it came out, from RadioShack.

I feel like the battery dies fast, and I since disabled GPS, moving wallpaper, and Gmail auto update, and I seem to be fine for now. Before this I used everything heavy and couldn't get past 5 or 6 hours.

When I downloaded the recent OTA patch, my phone shut off. Maybe battery died? This happened once before the prior week, and it took a while to turn it back on. The battery wasn't dead the first time, but I was actually charging it during this second occurrence, so I'm not sure if it in fact did die. The phone also gets very hot.

The phone lags a bit, ie, when I'm checking the time after unlocking the phone. I will see it change from, say, 3:45 to the new updated accurate time of 5:00. The music app does this too, especially when I am on the home screen and scroll over: I'll see a song I played 2 songs ago, and it will then update to what I'm on now.

I downloaded a few free apps, deleted some. Nothing crazy: Qik, twitter, 2 tic tack toes (uninstalled), fx camera, checkers (uninstalled), frozen bubble, poke a mole (uninstalled), backgrounds, ak notepad, pandora, sirius xm, shazam, jewels, step brothers soundboard, & calvin and hobbes. No root. Pretty standard stuff.

With these things, what gives? I mean, I just want to know if this is how it is supposed to be or not. I love the phone and I've heard all kinds of things online, such as problems people have. I've always heard stories about 24 hours of great battery life and no lag.

I called HTC and Sprint but a lot of their knowledge is limited. I actually forgot to mention the phone shutting off to one Sprint guy I got who knew quite a bit. Can you please put my fears to rest? What should I do? Anything you can tell me is greatly appreciated.

 

[Jerzyiroc]

Change it. There should be ZERO lag. I've had as much as 30 apps opened along with all my widgets AND Pandora playing in the background and there wasn't anything remotely close to lag. The fact that there is lag and obvious severe battery drain I can only assume that there is something serious going on in the background. Before you return it though try a factory reset. For some reason a factory reset can solve problems big and small. Good luck man!

 

[quickV]

Hey, wow. Thanks alot Jerzyiroc. You seem to have a different situation than I. While I don't mind this kind of lag as opposed to other problems, it is a bit annoying.

You make a good point. The factory reset sounds like a smart idea. I have about 5 days to return the phone for the Sprint return program, other than that I can buy a warranty with RadioShack and do something there.. maybe get the phone replaced some other way.

Should I do anything before resetting? Do I back up to the PC or does the SD Card save stuff? I'm assuming I'll have to redownload apps but since they are free ones I don't mind.

 

[Jerzyiroc]

Ya Evo's should NOT have an lag. It's a very powerful phone with more than enough processor speed and memory to be able to process things without any lag. Android is based off Linux and Linux is very very good at giving you the memory that you need, which is why those ATK's aren't as useful as people think. As far as the battery let me tell you how I use my Evo. I have a live wallpaper on, I have about 10 or so widgets, tweets from Peep update every 5 minutes and let me tell you I get tweets at least every 10 minutes, I tweet myself at least 15-20 times per battery charge, I'm on facebook quite often, I'm online probably a total of 1-2 hours on a charge, I check the Engadget app numerous times a day, I play my poker game usually for about 1-2 hours per charge, take about an hour of phone calls per charge and I'll stop right there. I get at least 12 hours on a charge. I would say that I'm a pretty heavy user. Granted, I'm on WIFI so that does help my battery a little but my point is I use the phone the way I want to. I don't do any crazy tricks like dimming the display all the way down, turn GPS off, turn 3G off, not have a live wallpaper or any of that stuff. I bought my Evo to enjoy it. With that said there is no reason you should be getting only 6 hours of use. I would try to bring it to a Sprint tech store, BUT the only problem is there is a huge wait for Evos. As far as the factory reboot you can just sync your accounts and you should be fine. Btw, when I say reboot I don't mean the way you do it from the Privacy section, I'm tlaking about holding the power button and the down volume button while the phone is off. The few times I've done it to my phone it just reboots it and nothing gets lost. But for some reason that seems to fix a lot of various bugs that people have especially the random rebooting. If that doesn't work and you still see lag ****ty battery and the other issues you mentioned and may not have mentioned then try and exchange it. I would say bring it to Sprint and not Radio Shack. I've heard WAY more horror stories from Radio Shack than Sprint.

 

[quickV]

I have to say that you really helped me out. I'm going to try that specific reset. I always assume you just stick a pin in that little hole near the USB slot. It seems like you are using the phone as it should be used.

I thought that the phone shouldn't lag, but then I accepted it. I was using SIRIUS XM, Pandora, playing my own music, using Google Maps, YouTube.. everything. Since I found out I can't shut off apps w/o a task killer, I just left it alone but noticed the battery dying. I always had GPS on, used Peep as well + Facebook in the friend stream. Checked out different websites, sent texts and made calls. It was frustrating until I turned stuff off, but like you said, this shouldn't be the case. I want to enjoy it too. Today I got about 10 hours of not really heavy use at all. Just idle most of the time and some phone calls + internet surfing. But it got down to 10% sure enough.

Seriously, thank you very much for this info. I was about to buy the RadioShack warranty and go there. I will try this reboot tomorrow as now I need to sleep. I will update this with results. I really appreciate you taking the time out to share your knowledge and experience. It means a lot.

 

[Jerzyiroc]

DONT PUT ANYTHING IN THAT HOLE BY THE USB SLOT!! LOL That's the MIC!!

No problem man. That's what the forums are here for. I'm always willing to help with anything as much as I can as long as I kno what I'm talking about lol. I will say this about the ATK though. While I don't use it often, I still do use it once in a while. If I notice that I have 20+ apps open, I'll just kill the apps. While the apps not being used will eventually close I just dont like having that many open, peace of mind I guess. Just make sure you don't close something you still want open. As I said if the reboot doesn't work then try and exchange it. There are a decent amount of people that have bad battery problems but the fact that there are SO many more people that have good battery life I think it's safe to assume that the Evo is at least capable of getting good battery life. Now one thing to keep in mind is the fact that you do have a very advanced phone. The Evo is capable of so many things it's sometimes hard to really wrap your head around it. I'm really not trying to flame on the iPhone but while it is a great phone it's not capable of what the Evo and Android in general is capable of. The iPhone 4 has a bunch of folders and icons. I mean how much is really going on there you kno? There is a reason why that phone and lets say Blackberry's get better batter life. It's not doing as much. It's really that simple. So again keep in mind, with the type of use that me and you put the phone through, you'll never see a 20 hour charge on it. But even if you get what I get, a solid 12-16 hours depending on how hard you really use it, given what you're doing with the phone I say that's pretty good. Just get a car charger that uses a USB port instead of the traditional charger. One it's cheaper, and two you can use the USB cord that's supplied with the phone already and use that. And if you're by a computer at all during the day use the USB supplied cord and give it a quick charge if you can. There are definitely ways to get a full days worth of use from the phone. Good luck man. Definitely post tomorrow and let us kno how it went with the rebooting.

OO and one more piece of advice on the battery. When you wake up in the mornings, take the phone off the charger. After about 10-15 minutes put it back on the charger until it goes green and then take it out again. It seems that on some Evos, like mine, even if its on green and still plugged into the charger, it uses pwer from the battery instead of the charger. This explains why after a few minutes and doing nothing the battery % will go from 100 to as low as 90. So again just pop it out, give it about 10-15 minutes and let it charge back to 100% and take it out. You'll see a significant difference there too. Especially if you do that technique more than once.

 

[Kedar]

Uhh. There might be some jidders when you're scrolling through apps, or some touch input lag...
And that's from the 30 frames per second cap that HTC has on this device. I think they're looking into it more for a solution (that's what many people said and that's what their customer support e-mailed me back on).
Besides that, opening and closing apps should be less than a second.

So the lag should only be when your phone is supposed to go over 30fps... And that's when scrolling through apps and with games' cut scenes... seems like you don't play games so just when scrolling. Let's hope that gets fixed.

Battery life... here's what I get:
Light usage : more than a day...
Moderate usage: 9-13'ish hours.
Heavy usage: 6-8 hours.

Let's put it this way... I played a GameBoy Advance emulator for 5 hrs, 40 min before I got the 5% battery remaining sign.
That was constant gameplay while texting here and there as well.

So see if your battery life matches mine with your replacement.

 

[capnhowdy18]

What do you mean by lag? I noticed also when I unlock the phone, certain things update very quickly when the screen comes up. For instance as you said the time, or the weather. I assumed this is because I have the phone set up to only sync every couple hours and it doesn't update all that stuff(visually at least) till I unlock the phone. This only takes a split second for the clock to jump to the right time and such. Does this not happen for everyone?

 

[Gekko]

IMO - try a hard reset factory wipe and see if the lag persists. my guess is you have a rogue app or setting causing the problem. make sure you back up your data first.

99% of all problems are due to user error. unnecessary returns increase costs for all of us.

 

[palanilopez12]

What do you mean by lag? I noticed also when I unlock the phone, certain things update very quickly when the screen comes up. For instance as you said the time, or the weather. I assumed this is because I have the phone set up to only sync every couple hours and it doesn't update all that stuff(visually at least) till I unlock the phone. This only takes a split second for the clock to jump to the right time and such. Does this not happen for everyone?

mine does that for time but I don't know if it did that before because i never really noticed it...does this happen for anyone else as well...when you unlock the phone it will then go and set the correct time instead of it already being at the current time when it's unlocked...the lock screen time is already correct though

 

[rem_kujawa]

Mine only lags when I first turn the phone on and while it has the sync icon in the top bar but after that it cruises.

 

[quickV]

- capnhowdy18 and plopez12: my phone does the same thing. that's the type of lag i'm talking about, but mine doesn't always have the correct time when i press unlock. i see the time change to the correct time, then i slide down the bar to be at the home screen, and it updates again with weather effects or so.

BUT it also occurs with music, whereas the phone could be locked, but when I unlock it, the time 'catches up' and so does the song display when i scroll over the my music tab on the home interface, MEANWHILE, the phone displays the CORRECT song when unlocked before i slide down the thing to unlock it. (this occurs whether the phone is locked or not: once i tab over, it updates to the 'correct' song.)

the song time also lags; i could be on 1:22 but it shows :59 and then displays 1:22 after i can see it skip ahead.. shouldn't it be accurate all the time?

this happens with the calendar/agenda and bookmarks too. i see them load only when i scroll over, and it doesn't happen right away.

i wonder, like you guys, if this should be happening all the time, and if others have this problem; i'm guessing this isn't how it's supposed to be.

- jerzyiroc: i did the reboot. same problemos. when the phone started up, it displayed the live default bubble wallpaper, but then went into my saved settings, ie, my wallpaper. anyway, i tested this, and the same things occur: displaying current song lags in widget of music app, the song time also lags, time lags, calendar/bookmarks/agenda take an extra second/s to load. the battery is actually fine but i haven't been using the phone so much today. i can take a video of what i'm talking about if that helps at all. i appreciate all the info you gave me about battery life and everything else. thank you very much.

- Kedar: i don't really have anything like that when scrolling through apps. everything there is mostly seamless. opening and closing is fast too. you're battery life seems to be the older brother of mine because that's pretty amazing.

- gekko: man i would love to avoid returning it. i mean, who really wants to do that if they don't have to? it could be an app, but like i said, i didn't download much. i'm semi-sure i noticed this a bit back, but i don't remember if it was the first time i used it because i used it alot. i started noticing this slowness, and i just assumed that's how it was. anyway, how do i do the factory reset? i would be surprised if i messed up the phone by downloading one of the apps i listed above, although i think i was pretty careful.

- rem_kujawa: i don't have those problems, but i can say that i wish i did compared to these annoyances lol.

to all: thanks for helping me with this. while this isn't resolved, i must take a new step to figure it out. like i said, the phone also shut off twice out of nowhere, hard to get it back on too. let me know what you think. because of all the help, i will be on this forum regularly now helping others too. thanks guys. i can make a youtube vid if helpful. let me know

 

[lucky4meman]

The time thing happens to me also. It's happened to me since I've been on android. It takes a split second to display the right time. The animations stop when the screen is off. It's not that your phone stops keeping track of the time, but if it actually updated the animation while the screen was off it would be a waste of the battery. It's not your phone lagging. The processor is more than fast enough to not have lag on things like that.


I don't know about the phone shutting off thing though. My phone has never done that. You'll want to bring it in and get that checked out.

 

[rem_kujawa]

I would bring it to a good sprint repair store and see what they say.

 

[capnhowdy18]

- capnhowdy18 and plopez12: my phone does the same thing. that's the type of lag i'm talking about, but mine doesn't always have the correct time when i press unlock. i see the time change to the correct time, then i slide down the bar to be at the home screen, and it updates again with weather effects or so.

Mine always has the correct time when I look at the unlock screen, its just the animation of the clock widget that updates very quickly. If the time is wrong on the unlock screen you can try a hard reset. You can also make sure your time settings are correct. That wouldn't help with other lag though.

If the hard reset doesn't work, I'd take it back to a sprint store and see what they say. Also if you have an app killer, try turning that off.

 

[quickV]

Thanks for the help guys!

- lucky4meman: Hmm, makes sense. But what about the music or the calendars/bookmarks?? Does it "lag" on those for you as well? And it seems like some people may not even have this problem. I just don't understand the inconsistency.

- rem_kujawa: I will probably do this. Is any Sprint store good? I could always go to that one in NYC on the Sprint commercials if necessary.

- capnhowdy18: I've never used an app killer. But yeah, same thing as you only it updates on unlock (then again on the home screen) and with the music too. Hmm.. How do I do a hard reset?

 

[lucky4meman]

quickv: yes. All of those do the same catching up for me too. It did that on my hero too. It's the same story with those. I can't get to technical in explaining it because I'm not that knowledgeable, but the lag is something that will always be there. This is the first I've heard of it being a problem for someone though. I guess I haven't really paid much attention to it until I saw this thread, but it still doesn't bother me.

Anyway... good luck with everything and enjoy your Evo

 

[rem_kujawa]

Just make sure its a Sprint corporate store that does repair work. Maybe it some setting or just a bum device.

Good luck and keeps us informed.

 

[Gekko]

the last thing i would want is some dumb GED Sprint Store drone manhandling and pawing my EVO. most are clueless anyway.

 

[rem_kujawa]

the last thing i would want is some dumb GED Sprint Store drone manhandling and pawing my EVO. most are clueless anyway.

It's true, just make sure its a good store. I found one that I really like right now. I even talked the manager into taking care of my device for me because it again came with preinstalled dust under the screen. They are just waiting on a new shipment. The last store I caught the sales rep spinning my pre on the counter like top. I didn't saying anything because it was getting replaced.