3 weeks in, I'm not sure Touch Pro is for me

[bobby yarrow]

I'm sorry this is my first post, and I realize it's not really getting things off on the right foot, but I've been closely reading this forum for the time I've had my Touch Pro and I'm hoping someone can make me see sense and that I can keep this phone.

This is my 3rd WM phone, and my favorite in many ways. I'm running the stock ROM (of course), with the only substantial hacks being the GPS unlock (VZW here) and the two battery-life .cabs floating around. I've been using mobile shell in lieu of TF3D, and I like the phone.

The two big problems I have are really big problems tho.

1. Receiving calls. I fail to connect about half the time when receiving a call. I'm using S2U2, but that doesn't seem to be the problem (or at least uninstalling it doesn't seem to fix the problem). I've got the phone set to poll the towers more frequently to minimize VZW's ring delay, I can live with that, but when I press to answer I have dead air. Half the time I get the caller about a second later, and half the time the call is just lost. I've wiped back to clean, and, I don't know . . . maybe it's my particular phone, don't see a lot of complaints about this, but my phone doesn't work very well as a phone.

2. Battery life. At first I thought it was just impossibly bad, then after a few days of burning the battery all the way and recharging I thought it was almost ok, but I find myself afraid to make calls (let alone do something like GPS) if I'm away from a charger and want to keep battery life. Part of the problem may be where I live . . . my poor reception at home means I get a much longer battery run at work than I do at home. But say 90 minutes of talk time and 20 minutes of internet over a 6 hour period and I'm dead. This isn't enough to get me through the work day, let alone through the day (which for me is typically about 19 hours).

I have another week to return the phone. Seems like my options are:

- Keep it and try another ROM or something
- Get another one because there's something wrong with mine
- Get a Diamond because I guess the battery life is better
- Go to something like the Storm because blackberry, for all its shortcomings, has decent battery life

Very much appreciate your thoughts.

[Laos101]

You need to get the telus radio, I the same battery issues as you. If you install the Telus radio, you will see a dramatic improvement in battery performance,

Blackberry storm is a PoS, don't say something like that!

[razorloves]

Along with changing the radio, i would definitely try a custom rom.

[gator352]

Dump VZW and goto Sprint......

[Matt]

I had your exact same ring problem w/VZW when I had my 6700 with them. My phone would light up (assuming display was off and it was in standby) and I knew that meant a call or text would be coming in. Then nothing would happen. no missed call, etc.

2 hours later, "Why didn't you answer when I called earlier?" I got to the point where when I was expecting a call and I'd see it light up (it was often on the desk next to me), I'd just call them right back and they always would say that they had just tried to call. (Note I do not have this issue with Sprint [6800, 6850])

Battery life is somewhat poor, but I have a couple suggestions:
1) Change your tower polling back to how it was. I know it "helps" the issue mentioned above, I think it to be more of a placebo and not worth the battery life you will lose keeping it like this.
2) check out this post about using Diamond Tweak/Advanced Config to change the amount of time your data connection stays on. I noticed a very huge battery life increase changing this setting alone.

http://forum.ppcgeeks.com/showthread...358#post860358

[GoodGets]

Originally Posted by bobby yarrow

2. Battery life. At first I thought it was just impossibly bad, then after a few days of burning the battery all the way and recharging I thought it was almost ok, but I find myself afraid to make calls (let alone do something like GPS) if I'm away from a charger and want to keep battery life. Part of the problem may be where I live . . . my poor reception at home means I get a much longer battery run at work than I do at home. But say 90 minutes of talk time and 20 minutes of internet over a 6 hour period and I'm dead. This isn't enough to get me through the work day, let alone through the day (which for me is typically about 19 hours).

Man I feel ya on this. I run custom roms with the sh't tweaked out of em, and I've even tried changing my radio a couple times. My service in the city where I live is great, but not actually in my house. I can't even use my phone while sitting at my desk. I have to leave it in the living room. It does make me "nervous" to use it, but it pisses me off when I see it drop 10% just to do a little internet surfing.

One option may be to get a Sprint Airave. There's a thread about em here. It's like having a mini little cell tower in your house. There are some drawbacks, but something you may want to look into.

Also, you should buy a car charger. I got mine from wal-mart for like 6 bucks, works great. (it's a blackberry one) Also, you may be able to get a sprint service center to give you a spare battery. There was a thread on this a while back. Other than that, good luck.

[bobby yarrow]

Thanks folks. Maybe with some modest tweaks I could get the battery life up to 'adequate.' I don't see it getting up to the level of the MotoQ9 that this phone is replacing, and THAT phone rarely made it thru the whole 19 hours of my day.

laos101: "Blackberry storm is a PoS, don't say something like that!"
I reckon I will try that radio, why not? And if I'm going to do the radio, may as well do the ROM (I think . . . haven't looked into how you do the radio yet, but I'm guessing it involves a wipe).

gator, Matt: I'm stuck with VZW . . . details are boring, but it wouldn't make sense to switch.

I will change my tower polling back, and try the data-sleep option again . . . my recollection is that it messed with my exchange connection, but that might be wrong.

Thanks all for the support. And NOBODY'S gone the easy way, told me to dump it and given me their address for the phone case!

[ihateu]

most everyone had the same complaints.... u need to flash a new rom and telus radio. u will LOVE your vzw TP my battery would go dead over night, now i wake up and its at 90 % !

[muyoso]

As for the battery issues, those issues are pretty much solved with 2 tweaks.

-Download Diamond Tweak, and go to Data and set it to disable data connection after 1 minute.

-Download No2chems NueDynamicClock v1.0 (the most stable version) and set it to underclock the CPU while the phone is on standby.

That should get you minimum 36 hours of use with normal to moderate use. When the phone is underclocked and is on standby, not being used, it loses about 1% of battery life an hour, which is nothing.

As for your other issue, did you approach Verizon with the problem? If your phone is not answering calls, take it back and tell them to fix it or give you a new one.

[bobby yarrow]

Hmm. I wonder if I'm being too timid about flashing the ROM on my phone.

Again, thanks all for the help & support. The case, if I do ditch the phone and go to something else, is now spoken for.