A Techtard needs help with new Droid

[Hyway]

Ok, so I bought the droid. I am still like the guy who uses a modern high tech assault rifle as a club, but I am sure I will be sniping with it before too long. I did the fix suggested above and found the phone was set to EVRC and reset it to EVRC-B. That did make my sound quality much better, but only marginally made my voice on other phones sound less muddled. I need to take off the cover the store sold me to see if that is covering the mike.

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Ok, so I bought the droid. I am still like the guy who uses a modern high tech assault rifle as a club, but I am sure I will be sniping with it before too long. I did the fix suggested above and found the phone was set to EVRC and reset it to EVRC-B. That did make my sound quality much better, but only marginally made my voice on other phones sound less muddled. I need to take off the cover the store sold me to see if that is covering the mike.

I will be interested to find out what you find.

I am on the edge of bying one of these too.

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Of course I menat buying, not bying.

Wonder why we can't edit our posts on here?

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^ oh man... another typo. Looks like I picked the wrong day to wake up.

[DrRichardCranium]

Of course I menat buying, not bying.

Wonder why we can't edit our posts on here?

Because you haven't donated. If you donate money to the website, you get to edit your posts, among other things.

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Because you haven't donated. If you donate money to the website, you get to edit your posts, among other things.

Thanks.

I took care of that little issue of me not donating.

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Ok, so I bought the droid. I am still like the guy who uses a modern high tech assault rifle as a club, but I am sure I will be sniping with it before too long. I did the fix suggested above and found the phone was set to EVRC and reset it to EVRC-B. That did make my sound quality much better, but only marginally made my voice on other phones sound less muddled. I need to take off the cover the store sold me to see if that is covering the mike.

I bought the Droid a couple of days ago too. I just did the change to EVRC-B as well. I haven't talked on it enough to know if there is s difference.

For anyone considering a Droid right now, Verizon has a buy one get one free offer that started a couple days ago. (a change from the buy one and get a free Eris droid... this is buy the Motorola and get a Motorola)

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I just d/l the Google Skymaps... pretty cool.

[malowitz]

Google Earth for the Droid! Here are directions:
http://www.droid-life.com/search?q=google+earth

I found it through phandroid.com. Looks like a lot of good information on the droid life site. I've got some reviewing/learning to do still.

[Hokie]

Update

Tried Radio Shack's I-Go Power Charger with good results as follows:

I-Go with micro USB adapter - 43 grams
2 Lithium AA Energizer batteries - 14 grams each - 28 total
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Weight: 67 grams for one recharge cycle

Recharge results:
1. One set of 2 AA lithium batteries fully recharged Droid where battery was allowed to drain to the point it would not turn back on (5% battery showed when it did come back on when recharger plugged in) within 2 1/2 hours. The rate was approximately another 10% every 12-15 minutes. The phone was usable within 5 minutes.
2. Repeating the above steps, the original set of batteries were used again to see how much charge they would provide. They died before 1 hr 10minutes and resulted in an additional 40% charge. I do not yet know if they have any residual power remaining for potential other uses.

Conclusion:
41 gram Radio Shack I-Go system can recharge 1.4X per set of Lithium Energizer batteries.

Comment:
Since the original phone charger and a short 6" charge cord weigh 54 grams and extra Droid batteries weigh 25 grams each, the I-Go system is better weight management and more convenient with not having to wait for charging in towns. Only downside I see is the expense of AA batteries. I now plan to leave all AC power charger options behind.

[Blue Jay]

Surfernerd being a jerk will get you nowhere on this trail. Just sayin.

Being a Jerk might just be superior than being a Droid. At least you're still human.

[rangergirl]

Sorry about my hostility earlier in the discussion. Sometimes as a geek I take it personal when the advice I know is important to someone isn't heeded. I'd like to apologize for my actions.

I've been fiddling with my Droid over the past few days to try and prove YES or NO on the task killer. I've killed the phone dead 3 times and my results are actually pretty interesting. The first kill, without task killer it lasted about 12hrs with common daily usage. The second kill, with the task killer, about 14hrs with same average usage. The third, I underclocked the CPU so that when the screen is off, its only 125mhz and not 550mhz. This got me 26hrs of common use.

If you can root your phone, and underclock the CPU, you can make it run slower when not used therefore causing it to consume a SIGNIFICANTLY less amount of battery life.

I am learning about my Droid, plan to take in on the PCT. What do you mean by 'root your phone' and 'underclock the CPU'. what does that do, how would i do it, how would i reverse it (would i want to reverse it in town?)... and and and...
Thinking of battery life: AA recharger vs solar? solar seems 'green', but the AA sounds good and more reliable. thoughts?
thanks for all your info.

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I think SurferNerd has started his thru and won't be able to answer your questions rangergirl.

rooting the phone means going into the phone and changing the way it works through the Operating System. (changing code) Unless you are comfortable with doing that sort of thing I would steer clear.

I think the best thing for folks like us to do is turn off the phone when we aren't using it.

[malowitz]

I leave tomorrow for the approach trail and hopefully 2,178 miles more. I'm using postholer for my journal so I can do the updates via e-mail. They have a nice interactive map feature but to auto-update you need to send a signal from a Spot. Otherwise you can type out the lat and long (rather cumbersome) on the website or in your e-mail.

Instead, I'm planning to use My Maps Editor. You can update your map and with your location, notes, and photos too and it syncs to the My Map that others can see through the web. I hope to keep going with the updates but I really just learned how to use it today. I added a link to My Map on my journal. Also since I've been unsuccesful in getting my photos into the journal via e-mail, the My Maps will let me put some up there for folks to see -they'll just come from the Droid instead of real camera.

FWIW, I tried to upload the data that the ATC has for the centerline. However, the file was too large to upload. I did upload the shelter list, but it seemed to really slow down the loading of the map.