Noob questions

[breadbaker2009]

I think I answered some questions by reading through the threads, especially concerning the infamous factory reset, but i have a few more. I'm sure a few are very general but I'm hoping since this is a Rezound forum, the answers will be specific to my phone.
1. Does anyone know if the OtterBox Defender will still fit with the extended battery? Battery life is sucking right now. I can't get through more than 3-4 hours of Geocaching before needing to turn the phone off to conserve what power is left.
2. For apps like GMail, Facebook, etc, I cannot find the log out button. I really don't want to walk around with all this stuff logged on and using the battery. I'm going through the browser now but I could have kept my old phone and done that. I noticed a lack of a log out feature even for the generic email app, or any app for that matter.
3. What is the HTC Sense and what is it used for? Do I really need it for anything?
4. Any tips to remember for doing a factory reset? I need to find a place to save all my stuff before I pull the plug.
5. Can I connect my phone to my PC and treat it like a thumb drive, moving books and such back and forth?
6. Where can I find free video conversion software to put movies on my phone?

Thanks for listening and teaching. I there is any thing you think I should read to get better use of my phone, please let me know.

 

[ThePurpleAndroid]

I think I answered some questions by reading through the threads, especially concerning the infamous factory reset, but i have a few more. I'm sure a few are very general but I'm hoping since this is a Rezound forum, the answers will be specific to my phone.
1. Does anyone know if the OtterBox Defender will still fit with the extended battery? Battery life is sucking right now. I can't get through more than 3-4 hours of Geocaching before needing to turn the phone off to conserve what power is left.
2. For apps like GMail, Facebook, etc, I cannot find the log out button. I really don't want to walk around with all this stuff logged on and using the battery. I'm going through the browser now but I could have kept my old phone and done that. I noticed a lack of a log out feature even for the generic email app, or any app for that matter.
3. What is the HTC Sense and what is it used for? Do I really need it for anything?
4. Any tips to remember for doing a factory reset? I need to find a place to save all my stuff before I pull the plug.
5. Can I connect my phone to my PC and treat it like a thumb drive, moving books and such back and forth?
6. Where can I find free video conversion software to put movies on my phone?

Thanks for listening and teaching. I there is any thing you think I should read to get better use of my phone, please let me know.

I can answer a few of your questions...

2. Your email and Facebook usually stay logged in to give you notifications. You can set a time interval to how often you get notifications, or just turn notifications off all together. Staying logged in doesn't effect your battery, just the notifications.

3. HTC Sense is a User Interface, or UI for short. It allows some customization with different themes (mine's purple), I also use GO Launcher EX for even more customization to change icons and fonts.

4. Always back up your contacts, photos and important files. Syncing contacts to your Gmail account, Dropbox or Photobucket are good for photos. Save other files to sd card


5. Using your USB cord allows you to connect to your computer or, if you have home wifi, there are apps you can get to connect wirelessly, I use Wifi File Explorer.




?~?~?HTC Evo Design?~?~?

 

[jdfrye]

I think I answered some questions by reading through the threads, especially concerning the infamous factory reset, but i have a few more. I'm sure a few are very general but I'm hoping since this is a Rezound forum, the answers will be specific to my phone.
1. Does anyone know if the OtterBox Defender will still fit with the extended battery? Battery life is sucking right now. I can't get through more than 3-4 hours of Geocaching before needing to turn the phone off to conserve what power is left.
2. For apps like GMail, Facebook, etc, I cannot find the log out button. I really don't want to walk around with all this stuff logged on and using the battery. I'm going through the browser now but I could have kept my old phone and done that. I noticed a lack of a log out feature even for the generic email app, or any app for that matter.
3. What is the HTC Sense and what is it used for? Do I really need it for anything?
4. Any tips to remember for doing a factory reset? I need to find a place to save all my stuff before I pull the plug.
5. Can I connect my phone to my PC and treat it like a thumb drive, moving books and such back and forth?
6. Where can I find free video conversion software to put movies on my phone?

Thanks for listening and teaching. I there is any thing you think I should read to get better use of my phone, please let me know.

I also can answer a few of your questions:
#1: Otterbox Defender and Extended Battery Mod, (cutting required) - xda-developers
#2 Like Purple said above the apps can stay logged in and to help conserve battery just find in setting in that app to check less frequently
#3 Sence is what you see on your screen, it is the ring as you unlock the phone its the carosel that you see when you swipe really fast on the screen, its the its the layout of the icons at the bottom..its the user inteface (UI)
#4 I take out my SD card before I do a Facotry reset just in case and also when I make new contacts I ALWAYS make sure that the contact is a "Google contact" which you can select in the first box when creating a contact. maybe also do a verizon back up using the backup assistant (never used this). When backing up make sure you go through your phone very slowly and make sure you figure out how to back up the things you want to come back by doing research. backiung up can be all over the map so not sure anyone can help you unless they are actually sitting down with you physically and helping.
#5 YES, you can. while computer and phone is unlocked and both on connect the usb to computer and phone and wait a bit and the phone screen will change and ask if you want to "charge only" or "disk drive"..select Disk drive/done . On the computer click the windows orb and click "computer" and you will see "removable disk "
#6 This I have no clue..but I can say from past phones I watched movies on that "handbreak" worked at graphically and sizing down files

 

[TheAutoMomma]

I think I answered some questions by reading through the threads, especially concerning the infamous factory reset, but i have a few more. I'm sure a few are very general but I'm hoping since this is a Rezound forum, the answers will be specific to my phone.
1. Does anyone know if the OtterBox Defender will still fit with the extended battery? Battery life is sucking right now. I can't get through more than 3-4 hours of Geocaching before needing to turn the phone off to conserve what power is left.
2. For apps like GMail, Facebook, etc, I cannot find the log out button. I really don't want to walk around with all this stuff logged on and using the battery. I'm going through the browser now but I could have kept my old phone and done that. I noticed a lack of a log out feature even for the generic email app, or any app for that matter.
3. What is the HTC Sense and what is it used for? Do I really need it for anything?
4. Any tips to remember for doing a factory reset? I need to find a place to save all my stuff before I pull the plug.
5. Can I connect my phone to my PC and treat it like a thumb drive, moving books and such back and forth?
6. Where can I find free video conversion software to put movies on my phone?

Thanks for listening and teaching. I there is any thing you think I should read to get better use of my phone, please let me know.

1. Yes and no. You can use the Defender with extended, but I believe you have to cut a hole in the back in order for it to fit flush. You can Google Otterbox defender Rezound extended battery and you'll find more info. Lots have done it.

2. There is no log out button on most apps. The point of an app is not logging off and back in. You can leave the accounts disabled and use the browser, but you mentioned not wanting to do that. If you disable or turn way down the notifications, the apps being logged in won't affect your battery.

3. As previously stated, Sense is a UI. So yeah, you need to use it, unless you root and use a rom like CM9 that offers a vanilla Android experience. When stock, you will always be using Sense when you do anything.

4. You can use mybackup or a similar app, but there will always be some things that have to be set back up after a factory reset if you are stock.

5. In short, yes. You can use a usb cable and enable data connection to use your device as storage.

6. I got nothin' on this one. I imagine you can, but I'm not sure how. Oh, wait... You said free. I'm really not sure you'll find a free one-but I imagine someone will step in with more knowledge and better answer on this one.

Enjoy your Rez! They're great phones.

Sent from my ADR6425LVW using Android Central Forums

 

[TheAutoMomma]

I also can answer a few of your questions:

Guess I was typing while you were answering too haha. Your answers were better anyway, providing links and whatnot.

Sent from my ADR6425LVW using Android Central Forums

 

[TBolt]

In case no one mentioned it yet, it is best to factory reset via the HBOOT screen rather than via the settings menu.

Instructions later. Anyone copy & paste 'em please?

Sent from my ADR6425LVW using Tapatalk 2

 

[acejavelin]

I think I answered some questions by reading through the threads, especially concerning the infamous factory reset, but i have a few more. I'm sure a few are very general but I'm hoping since this is a Rezound forum, the answers will be specific to my phone.
1. Does anyone know if the OtterBox Defender will still fit with the extended battery? Battery life is sucking right now. I can't get through more than 3-4 hours of Geocaching before needing to turn the phone off to conserve what power is left.
2. For apps like GMail, Facebook, etc, I cannot find the log out button. I really don't want to walk around with all this stuff logged on and using the battery. I'm going through the browser now but I could have kept my old phone and done that. I noticed a lack of a log out feature even for the generic email app, or any app for that matter.
3. What is the HTC Sense and what is it used for? Do I really need it for anything?
4. Any tips to remember for doing a factory reset? I need to find a place to save all my stuff before I pull the plug.
5. Can I connect my phone to my PC and treat it like a thumb drive, moving books and such back and forth?
6. Where can I find free video conversion software to put movies on my phone?

Thanks for listening and teaching. I there is any thing you think I should read to get better use of my phone, please let me know.

Welcome fellow Geocacher!!! Think I can answer most of these questions for you...

1. The Otterbox Defender will fit an extended battery of you either A) leave the back half of the plastic frame out, or B) cut the back of the standard battery cover to allow the extended battery to poke through. This is a simple procedure with a dremell-type tool but you should get an extra back just to be safe, there are YouTube videos and probably several people here who have done it, its a pretty common Rez mod. As far as battery life goes, 3-4 hours on a standard battery is better than I get, 2.5 is about the max, my solution was Amazon.com: Laza Zcell 1750mah HTC Rezound 2x Battery + Charger + Travel Case Combo: Cell Phones & Accessories and just swap batteries periodically, but the OB Case isn't really meant for that (frequent changes will likely break the tabs that hold the two pieces together), I switched to a Seidio Active/Trident Aegis type case for ease of removal and installation.

2. You don't really want to "log out" of these services, they should be running all the time. The battery they take is minimal most of the time, but you can just toggle off background sync and then none of your accounts will periodically update. The only time I have seen this make a significant difference in battery life is with an Exchange account, not really with Gmail/FB unless your feeds are pretty crazy (100's of emails/1000's of timeline posts)

3. HTC Sense is the launcher/skin and associated applications used by HTC, unless you install a custom ROM that is "Sense-less" or an AOSP ROM you need Sense. All the components of Sense are tied together very tightly, and on a stock phone without it you could not have a desktop, lockscreen, app tray, launcher, etc... So yes, in most cases you don't just need it, it is essential

4. I did a short tutorial on this, look here: http://www.droidforums.net/forum/htc-rezound-help/223603-alarm-clock-woes-2.html#post2299264 (lost original post on this, but you will get the picture)

5. Absolutely, it is called Disk Drive mode, when you connect your phone just unblank the screen and select it, then you will get two volumes added to Windows, one is called "HTC STORAGE" that is the internal SD Card, and one has no name, this is the external SD Card that you can remove above the battery. Once it is connected you can treat them like any other thumb drive.

6. Although I haven't done it with this phone, SUPER &copy - Media File Converter, Media File Encoder, Video Player, Audio Player, Media Player can convert almost anything to anything and is completely free, I have used it for years and it just works, although it's not the speediest converter. Pure guess here, but format would probably be MP4 or 3GP (think AVI, WMV and few others are supported natively too) and a size of 1280x720 natively... note that a two hour video at this resolutions is going to be HUGE (like gigabytes of data), so you might want to just stream it or trim the size and quality down significantly.

Battery life is the big drawback to this phone, on a standard battery 2-2.5 hours of screen time with good signal is very good, and on and extended battery it is 3-4 hours, poor signal like in remote caching areas will cause this drain even faster. I get how you are trying to squeeze out a little bit more battery life, but to be honest the main power draws on the Rezound are the screen and radios, the rest is just minor stuff and almost inconsequential if working properly, and you can't really control those other than turn down the brightness and disable un-needed radios, but even that requires some experimenting... most people say 3G or WiFi uses less battery then 4G, my tests went significantly the other way and I got almost a 20% increase in battery life keeping 4G on and not using 3G and WiFi, as long as I am in town. My point is that the major power users of the device are outside of your control for the most part. The Rezound is a powerhouse with a luxury, high-end display and there had to be a trade-off, in this case it was battery life.

 

[acejavelin]

In case no one mentioned it yet, it is best to factory reset via the HBOOT screen rather than via the settings menu.

Instructions later. Anyone copy & paste 'em please?

Sent from my ADR6425LVW using Tapatalk 2

Yeah, I know we had said this before, but I tried it both ways when I got a replacement a week or two ago before I started loading it up with stuff, and saw no difference in doing it via the menus or hboot, so I am not really sure that is the case anymore to be honest, maybe it is the newer hboot or whatever, but it seems the same. Of course, if you having issues that require a factory default, I always recommend doing it twice, once via the menus, and once via hboot... As a fellow user once said: "I treat it like going to the toilet, wipe it until it's clean, then once more just to be sure..."

 

[MichaelBR]

I think I answered some questions by reading through the threads, especially concerning the infamous factory reset, but i have a few more. I'm sure a few are very general but I'm hoping since this is a Rezound forum, the answers will be specific to my phone.
1. Does anyone know if the OtterBox Defender will still fit with the extended battery? Battery life is sucking right now. I can't get through more than 3-4 hours of Geocaching before needing to turn the phone off to conserve what power is left.
2. For apps like GMail, Facebook, etc, I cannot find the log out button. I really don't want to walk around with all this stuff logged on and using the battery. I'm going through the browser now but I could have kept my old phone and done that. I noticed a lack of a log out feature even for the generic email app, or any app for that matter.
3. What is the HTC Sense and what is it used for? Do I really need it for anything?
4. Any tips to remember for doing a factory reset? I need to find a place to save all my stuff before I pull the plug.
5. Can I connect my phone to my PC and treat it like a thumb drive, moving books and such back and forth?
6. Where can I find free video conversion software to put movies on my phone?

Thanks for listening and teaching. I there is any thing you think I should read to get better use of my phone, please let me know.

5. Yes you can: plug the phone in to the computer and the SD card should be available as a removable Mass Storage Device . But be warned that while it's being accessed by the computer, it won't be available by the phone. So if you have any apps installed on the SD card, they won't work while the card is being used by the computer. This is one reason why I use Link2SD instead of the normal App2SD.

6. There are many. I use FormatFactory and XMediaRecode. Both free, for Windows.

 

[breadbaker2009]

Thank you all for the terrific replies! A little background. My last phone was a LG EnV Touch. I'd still be using it if I hadn't ruined it working at the Super Bowl.

The app log off question isn't so much about battery life but safety. I suppose I don't know enough to know if Facebook etc is keeping tabs on me, but I'm none of their business. I turn the mobile data off to conserve the battery so, perhaps leaving apps on wouldn't be so bad.

The first time I connected my phone to the pc, it asked me to install HTC Sense on the pc. We have 2 Rezounds in the house and this program would only work on the initial phone that was connected, so I uninstalled it. I never did figure out what it was supposed to do for me. Hints?

Is there an easy way to tell if an app can be saved to the sd card? I read the descriptions and reviews of what I install, but it doesn't always say.

I want to play and root and customize but this phone is the primary number for the household so I must be careful, but I will get it!

I can't get my GPS to find a satellite. Clear sky in a parking lot. I'm pretty sure I did something to save the battery and now I can't find what I did. Had to take a Did Not Find on a puzzle cache today. Hints?

I love my phone and enjoy letting the Apple iFanclub know android did it first!

Thanks again everyone! I'm sure I'll have more questions later.

 

[TBolt]

maybe it is the newer hboot or whatever, but it seems the same.

First I've heard of this. Leave it to HTC to muck things up some more, I guess. :-/


Sent from my ADR6425LVW using Tapatalk 2

 

[acejavelin]

Thank you all for the terrific replies! A little background. My last phone was a LG EnV Touch. I'd still be using it if I hadn't ruined it working at the Super Bowl.

The app log off question isn't so much about battery life but safety. I suppose I don't know enough to know if Facebook etc is keeping tabs on me, but I'm none of their business. I turn the mobile data off to conserve the battery so, perhaps leaving apps on wouldn't be so bad.

The first time I connected my phone to the pc, it asked me to install HTC Sense on the pc. We have 2 Rezounds in the house and this program would only work on the initial phone that was connected, so I uninstalled it. I never did figure out what it was supposed to do for me. Hints?

Is there an easy way to tell if an app can be saved to the sd card? I read the descriptions and reviews of what I install, but it doesn't always say.

I want to play and root and customize but this phone is the primary number for the household so I must be careful, but I will get it!

I can't get my GPS to find a satellite. Clear sky in a parking lot. I'm pretty sure I did something to save the battery and now I can't find what I did. Had to take a Did Not Find on a puzzle cache today. Hints?

I love my phone and enjoy letting the Apple iFanclub know android did it first!

Thanks again everyone! I'm sure I'll have more questions later.

Although it is possible Facebook (or whoever) could track you, if they did it would cause a rebellion in the Android community, plus apps have a thing called permissions when you install them, if you don't like them find a different app. Always read the reviews of an app too, it can give you insight into the apps quality.

The first time you connect your phone it will always pop up the Install thing, just ignore it and change the phone to Disk Drive mode (or change it in settings to default to DD mode) and it should go away automatically.

You have to be really careful when you talk "sd card" in the Rezound, there are two, sort of... The phone has an internal 16GB chip that is considered an SD card, about 6 GB are for the phone itself, and about 10GB are called Phone Storage but if you browser to it with ES File Explorer (or another file manager) it is called SDCARD, the actual 16GB sdcard that you can remove is called "ext_sd". Apps can reside on Phone Storage, but not the external sd card, just go to Settings-Apps-On Phone Storage, checked ones are in Phone Storage, unchecked ones are in the ~2GB Internal Storage memory area you can't normally get to. (Confusing, but you will get it). Unless you get app crazy, you likely won't need to move anything, with over 120 apps installed I still have over 1.1GB available in Internal Storage.

GPS is pretty simple, make sure the back cover is on (that is where the antennas are), and in Settings-Location make sure "Stand-alone GPS Services" is ticked. If you think there is problem check out the app GPS Status in the Play Store.

Funny, I too has an LG enV Touch, somewhere between a BB and my first Android, one of my favorite phones, although the original enV was tough to beat.

 

[breadbaker2009]

Thank you all for the replies! I printed off the thread and will be trying a factory reset to help clear up several issues.

I do have another question though. Is there a way to set the volumes separately for notifications and calls? I have aging parents so I need to be able to hear the incoming call ring but i don't want to hear the Twitter stuff beeping through all night. I turned the volume down, chose an obnoxious ringtone and use a single beep for notifications. I still am not comfortable doing it that way since I can sleep through an earthquake.

 

[TBolt]

ICS Enhanced Ringer Control is what I use to separate the ringer from the notifications. There may be a cheaper alternative on the Play store, though.


Sent from my ADR6425LVW using Tapatalk 2