What Cell Phone Do You Carry?

That's terrible. If I had to disable 4G every time I put the phone in my pocket, I would never re-enable it. Mobile phone usage is too quick and sporadic to bothering jumping into and out of the menu to toggle a switch every time. Sounds to me that 4G is only good for mobile hotspot, when the phone can be left plugged into a wall.

You don't need 4g for quick sporadic stuff. It's good if you want to use netflix or youtube, or do large downloads like apps and music.

I can only assume by his posts that MarkRyan isn't using an Android phone and doesn't understand widgets. Someone can have a widget (small icon about the size of a typical app) on their home page that acts like a toggle. When you tap it the item (4G in this case) becomes active, tap it a second time it toggles it back to the off position with no need to ever go into options for activities of that nature. Widgets are easily the best thing Android has over iOS. Not sure about other OSs like Windows phone 7 and BlackBerry phones. If he is aware of widgets and that is still too much for him to toggle a widget, I don't know what else to say.

Didn't know you could set a toggle as a widget. That certainly helps. How long does it take for the phone to switch to 4G? A couple of seconds?

(By the way, feel free to address me personally.)

I just timed it at 40 seconds on my Evo for the 4G to come up and lock on to a 4G signal after turning it on with the widget. Not fast, but I don't do things where I need the 4G speed that often. I only use it a couple times a week I'd say. It comes in handy at the gym where I don't get 3G but the 4G signal is really strong.

I don't know why I pay the extra for 4G when I can't get it even in midtown manhattan.

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Originally Posted by stormy

I just timed it at 40 seconds on my Evo for the 4G to come up and lock on to a 4G signal after turning it on with the widget.

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*Face palm*

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Originally Posted by MarkRyan

WTF, is this typical of Android phones or unique to Thunderbolt? I'd heard the Thunderbolt had poor battery life, but with your described usage my phone would be 70-80% at the end of the day. It takes me serious mobile usage to get it anywhere near 0% in a single day. Dipping below 50% in a day is a rarity.

To wit: I unplugged my phone this morning, about seven hours ago, took a handful of pictures including a panorama, uploaded said pictures to Twitter and Instagram, tweeted, checked and responded to e-mail and did some light Facebook and web browsing while new tires were put on my bike. I'm at 89% battery life right now.

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FWIW, I have a (3G, not 4G) Android and I use it pretty heavily and it'll usually be at about 20% after a 14 hour day. It's just a 4G problem not an Android problem.

When I had Android 1.5 (I'm on 2.3 now) I had less than half that battery life though.

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Originally Posted by Frogacuda

FWIW, I have a (3G, not 4G) Android and I use it pretty heavily and it'll usually be at about 20% after a 14 hour day. It's just a 4G problem not an Android problem.

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Good to know. I'm interested in getting a Galaxy Player if they ever come out, which won't have to worry about 4G (or any G).

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Originally Posted by MarkRyan

WTF, is this typical of Android phones or unique to Thunderbolt? I'd heard the Thunderbolt had poor battery life, but with your described usage my phone would be 70-80% at the end of the day. It takes me serious mobile usage to get it anywhere near 0% in a single day. Dipping below 50% in a day is a rarity.

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True 4G phones are on their 1st generation chipset, while pure CDMA and GSM have had over a decade of development.

Since Wimax is a lame duck, I don't see Sprints 4G getting better until they start shipping LTE stuff, and by then they will be 3rd or 4th gen chipset stuff.

It will be interesting when the Bionic finally ships, as Motorola decided to ditch the Qualcomm LTE chipset for one designed in house from the ground up, so it will be essentially a 2nd generation LTE chipset.