Does the gps/compass/googlemaps work with streetview? As in, can you punch in your current location to compare streetview and your current position, then turn your body 180 degrees and watch the streetview image match your new vantage point? Just curious.
It's good enough to look around and see if there's a longer life battery for it. But off the shelf - yeah - battery life blows pretty bad we're seeing so far. Crazy data & internet usage isn't helping. The other day my GF left Google maps with GPS on while driving to work and that basically took the battery from full to like 20% in 1/2 hour.
the hoboman, get the new samsung behold from tmobile. i just got that for my wife for a week ago and she loves it... battery life is good. it all depends on what you use it for.
yeah - we both (GF & I) require our phones to have QWERTY for texting, so that Samsung - for example - wouldn't work for us. I'm personally never far from an Internet connected PC, so good data & web isn't that important on a phone, whereas my GF was more intereted in that feature of the G1. My dinky little LG rumor works fine for me (sprint)
Just picked one up Friday. Lots of free and fun apps like shopsavvy. I haven't had a problem with the battery life tho. I keep wireless and gps off so maybe that's part of it. Also, I found that the battery life meter isn't exactly accurate out of the box. Spent an hour trying to get it to die with 15% life left (turned gps, wireless, and bluetooth on and played with the maps, internet, and shopsavvy). Also, isn't it easier on the battery if you charge it in short bursts throughout the day rather than leaving it on the charger overnight? Luckily I have a spare 1amp usb charger I can bring to work. Haven't found many business apps or reliable synch apps yet, but I like the phone enough to not wanna return it for another blackberry.
^^ We also found that data & gps are the big battery killers. When not using those constantly it actually is okay (my GF was leaving Google Maps+GPS on while driving to work and wondering why it was nearly dead when she got there lol) The only thing you don't want to do with the battery is drain it below about 10%, especially draining it very low then charging it for a short time before draining it hard again. That's what kills Lithium Ion batteries fast. Short bursts is fine as long as it's not when the battery is nearly depleted. We were trying to find a way to record spots we visit for future referrence - like when we were hunting out good driving spots, but we haven't found anything yet.
That would be a very nice feature! I'm finding the gps and maps are a bit shaky, but I'm sure that'll be solved with time (paid applications). On the battery, I thought temperature and state of charge were the biggest factors in prolonging life. Anywho, I typically pick up a back-up battery for things like this anyway.
Prolonging life, idk. Draining LiIon's will kill them, though, so definitely the opposite of prolonging. We had some good laughs at how it reported speed while driving (really, 140mph? wow. feels like 30) and direction while spinning in circles. We tried looking for batteries with higher amp-hour ratings, but weren't able to find anything significantly better yet. I'm sure with time there will be more.
GPS is fun that way. There are ways to filter the data that get rid of the rediculous results, but often they aren't applied. My Garmin in car said the other day that I had hit 364mph at some point. Not bad for a 140hp car.
lol at freaking the compass/gps out! Yeah, for sure draining them isn't a bright idea. I just wanted to see how accurate the meter was... not very. I did find some inconsistencies between it's gps and the gps on my d3 (well, maps really) when driving out to Dave's place (middle of nowhere) tho. I suppose I should just stick to following good old fashioned directions and signs.
I'll let my GF know about your experience with the meter. She was probably pronouncing it dead prematurely (I know she wasn't going to the point of like no longer enough juice to even turn on). I personally hate 3 bar meters for anything (IIRC, the battery meter for the G1 is a 3 bar). Not enough resolution. 5 is minimum IMO. Google Maps is responsible for my sense of direction, lol. Seriously, ever since it came out I think much more in terms of N/S/E/W than rights & lefts and I'm much better at finding my way as a result. For some reason, tangible maps just didn't do it for me.
