My complaints of the Shift after a week (any input is appreciated!)

[wavezero]

So after 7+ years on WM platforms, the 7 phone is a sorry piece of garbage, so after 3 days with it (coming from a touch pro 2) I switched to the Shift. Of course the first thing I did was root it.
Complaints:
1) Battery is horrendous- I can barely get through half a day before a charge. I know I need to more actively manage my open apps, but I love how responsive it is.
2) Seriously? No separate lock screen wall paper?- I love the grass live wallpaper, but I want a photo for the lock screen wall paper. Looking everywhere it doesn't seem like that can be done. I don't like any of the 3rd party apps, they're buggy and they don't properly show updates (meetings, missed calls, texts). There has GOT to be a way to point it to a different pic.
3) Keyboard backlight doesn't work- The light turns on ONLY when it's VERY dark. Pain in the butt

4) Facebook stuff still sucks- HTC for Sense will not sync all of my contacts, a few don't show up and therefore I can't link them. I've uninstalled, cleared cache, unfriended and refriended, nothing seems to work. I like the standard FB app better anyway, but the Widget blows (one post at a time). Why don't they have a full page widget?
5) Words with Friend is buggy as hell- Ok so this has nothing to do with the device, but it's an awesome program. However it never works. It has to restart all of the time. the rest of the time it looses my games and I have to start a fresh game (then resign) to get my previous one to work, what the hell is up with that?

That being said, this is probably the best device I've owned. It's solid and have not had a single freeze up or other problem. Over all I'm very pleased with it, I would just like to get these issues solved

[haus]

Battery life is very affected by the stuff that syncs automatically. Turn off stocks, weather, and news and see if that helps. I also turned off GPS via network location and only let the device get a fix when a mapping/nav program is open. This also prevents your device from sending your location to Google all the time. I can get a full day now.

My KB light comes on unless I'm in the brightest light. Maybe your unit is defective? Take it to a sprint store and show them.

Yes, FB doesn't always sync. I have a few contacts that just won't work. My belief is that it has something to do with privacy settings on FB for those contacts, but I don't really use it enough to worry about it. Others have complained about this, though.

[HTCotta]

Even before I optimized, I was getting great battery life. Well over 1 day's use, it may get better after a few more charge cycles but if it doesn't I would definitely have sprint swap your battery.

For separate lockscreen wallpaper, try the program Widgetlocker. It's paid in the market but you can find an APK on the internet with a simple search (I'd post but I can't) I use this as my full time lockscreen and I am *VERY* picky about lock screen response speed, etc. It allows a separate wallpaper and nearly unlimited customization of your lockscreen.

My keyboard backlight has never failed me, you might want to see if sprint will swap your phone, the sensor might be a dud?

Facebook for HTC Sense is slightly frustrating but I was eventually able to get it to work. The Facebook for Android app works well for me, especially after the most recent update. You can use that app to sync to your contacts as well, might solve some problems. Otherwise, touch.facebook.com never fails!

Words with Friends is a horrendously buggy program, it's slowly getting better but still by far the worst app I have ever used for Android. My advice, use Wordfeud. You can't play your friends on iPhones or iPads, but you can play anyone on any Android device and it has worked without fail for me.

Hope this helps!

[wavezero]

Maybe i'll try the turning the gps off. I don't have stock on, but I LOVE having everything else up to date. I think that's one of the coolest things about a smartphone, but then I'm giving up battery life.

I had bought widget locker a couple of days after I got my phone and hated it. Buggy (would often show both lock screens) and the notification never worked. I love how the stock lock screen shows appointments above the slider and missed calls/texts below the slider. I just wish there was some way to point the stock app to a different pic.

I think I’ll just live with the keyboard, I don’t want to go through the whole root process again and buy a new invisible shield. I just wish there was a tweak/setting like on the TP2 to have the backlight on whenever it was slid out.

The FB android app works fine and I can see all my contacts, I like the way the app works better than friend stream too. Problem is I can’t link my exchange contacts to 3 FB contacts cause they won’t show up in FB for HTC. Looks like it’s a known bug, but no fix yet.

1+ for Wordfeud WAY better than WWF. The notifications actually work, and they also show the word played, points, and time. No crashes or anything. The free version has less adds than. WWF and they offer a paid one too.


Thanks!

[HTCotta]

Did you turn on "root helper" in Widgetlocker? That really sped up response for me, I only see the stock lock screen on a fresh boot. I like being able to theme the lock screen and in addition to my slider for unlock and sound on/off I have invisible ones for turning on TeslaLED and unlocking straight to my SMS inbox. Easy access to TeslaLED = Less injury when drunkenly wandering home from the bars on a "shortcut"

[lgmayka]

1) Turn off the phone while charging. If you have to leave the phone on most of the night while charging, still turn it off for 2 hours to finish charging before leaving the house.

2) Buy a 2000mAh Galilio battery off eBay.

[dkd711]

Wavezero, you must have your settings all crazy becuz I can go 24+ hrs and still have around 15% battery left. And that's overclocked at 1.55ghz! Although, I only make a dozen calls, alot of texts, and moderate web use, with some auto syncs.


Set you screen brightness to auto, set Gtalk to NOT auto sign in then logout, disable uneeded autosyncs, use setcpu and a better kernel/rom combo.

[wavezero]

Originally Posted by HTCotta

Did you turn on "root helper" in Widgetlocker? That really sped up response for me, I only see the stock lock screen on a fresh boot. I like being able to theme the lock screen and in addition to my slider for unlock and sound on/off I have invisible ones for turning on TeslaLED and unlocking straight to my SMS inbox. Easy access to TeslaLED = Less injury when drunkenly wandering home from the bars on a "shortcut"

So I turned "root helper" on an played around with it a little more. With WL enabled i got a text and it didn't display on the screen (nor did my message shortcut show a text). I really like how the stock lockscreen displays this info below the slider.

Same with a meeting reminder, the stock lockscreen shows a large icon above the slider, no luck in WL.

Am I missing a setting?

Originally Posted by lgmayka

1) Turn off the phone while charging. If you have to leave the phone on most of the night while charging, still turn it off for 2 hours to finish charging before leaving the house.

2) Buy a 2000mAh Galilio battery off eBay.

I REALLY like the idea of a stronger battery. I think I may check it out. Any idea the percent increase? Any drawbacks? Does it get very hot?

Originally Posted by dkd711

Wavezero, you must have your settings all crazy becuz I can go 24+ hrs and still have around 15% battery left. And that's overclocked at 1.55ghz! Although, I only make a dozen calls, alot of texts, and moderate web use, with some auto syncs.


Set you screen brightness to auto, set Gtalk to NOT auto sign in then logout, disable uneeded autosyncs, use setcpu and a better kernel/rom combo.

Yeah I know it's dumb, but I love having push everything- and I want the best of both worlds! Think I may buy that extra battery ^ and keep the stock one on me...

I haven't really seen too much about overclocking the shift (haven't really looked that much either). What program are you using, and what cons have you noticed?

[HTCotta]

That's strange, the only notification issue I have ever had is if I leave the thread of messages open and shut the screen off, when I unlock to read a new text in that thread, it doesn't always clear the notification in the status bar. Never had any problems with notifications not happening. I have several appointment reminders set each day as well and have never missed one. Could be because I'm running the RC2 version (free) instead of final market version? That's all I can think of but hardly makes sense the final would be buggier!

With large capacity batteries (especially on eBay) you have to be careful, just make sure you've read up on it. A battery may be labeled with more mAh, but be made of lower quality components than your stock battery and actually perform worse especially over time. I'm not saying there aren't good extended batteries out there, just make sure to purchase from a trusted company.

Overclocking is easy, you've already done the hardest part which is rooting. Now all you need to do is find your preferred kernel (my recent favorite is the x99 1.8 Sense kernel) on XDA and boot into recovery to flash it. Just be sure to make a nandroid backup before you do, just in case. Once you have an overclock compatible kernel flashed, just download SetCPU for Root Users (google search) and install the .apk. From SetCPU you can set top and bottom speeds and the governor that bounces between them. Fun to play with kernels and see what gets you the highest benchmark scores.

[dkd711]

The 2000mAh Galilio battery is not more capacity. It's less than stock. The sticker is just labeled more. I know this becuz I have one a few.

Check out batteryboss.com