I’m happy I didn’t replace my phone!

Since I’ve been to the US, I’ve been thinking of replacing my cellphone, which right now still is my HTC Desire HD (which I was supposed not to pay, as I got it with an operator contract, but which I ended up paying dearly to avoid having to pay a contract that wouldn’t do me any good outside of Italy). The reasons were many, including the fact that it doesn’t get to HSDPA speed here in the US, but the most worrisome was definitely the fact that I had to charge it at least twice a day, and it was completely unreasonable for me to expect it to work for a full day out of the office.

After Google’s failure to provide a half-decent experience with the Nexus 4 orders (I did try to get one, the price was just too sweet, but for me it went straight from “Coming Soon” to “Out of stock”), I was considering going for a Sony (Xperia S), or even (if it wasn’t for the pricetag), a Galaxy Note II with a bluetooth headset. Neither option was a favourite of mine, but beggars can’t be choosers, can they?

The other day, as most of my Twitter/Facebook/Google+ followers would have noticed, my phone also decided to give up: it crashed completely while at lunch, and after removing the battery it lost all settings, due to a corruption of the ext4 filesystem on the SD card (the phone’s memory is just too limited for installing a decent amount of apps). After a complete re-set and reinstall, during which I also updated from the latest CyanogenMod version that would work on it to the latest nightly (still CM7, no CM10 for me yet, although the same chipset is present on modern, ICS-era phones from HTC), I had a very nice surprise. The battery has been now running for 29 hours, I spoke for two and something hours on the phone, used it for email, Facebook messages, and Foursquare check-ins, and it’s still running (although it is telling me to connect my charger).

So what could have triggered this wide difference in battery life? Well there are a number of things that changed, and a number that were kept the same:

• I did reset the battery statistics, but unlike most of the guides I did so when the phone was 100% charged instead of completely discharged — simply because I had it connected to the computer and charged when I was in the Clockwork Recovery, so I just took a chance to it.
• I didn’t install many of the apps I had before, including a few that are basically TSRs – and if you’re old enough you know what I mean! – including Advanced Call Manager (no more customers, no more calls to filter!), and, the most likely culprit, an auto-login app for Starbucks wifi.
• While I kept Volume Ace installed, as it’s extremely handy with its scheduler (think of it like a “quiet hours” on steroids, as it can be programmed with many different profiles, depending on the day of the week as well), I decided to disable the “lock volume” feature (as it says it can be a battery drain) and replaced it with simply disabling the volume buttons when the screen is locked (which is why I enabled the lock volume feature to begin with).
• I also replaced Zeam Launcher, although I doubt that might be the issue, with the new ADW Launcher (the free version — which unfortunately is not replacing the one in CyanogenMod as far as I can tell) — on the other hand I have to say that the new version is very nice, it has a configurable application drawer which is exactly what I wanted, and it’s quite faster than anything else I tried in a long time.
• Since I recently ended up replacing my iPod Classic with an iPod Touch (the harddrive in the former clicked and neither Windows nor Linux could access it), I didn’t need to re-install DoggCatcher either, and that one might have been among the power drains, since it also schedules operation in the background and, again as far as I can tell, it does not uses the “sync” options that Android provides.

In all of this, I fell pretty much in love again with my phone. Having put in a 16GB microSD card a few months ago means I have quite a bit of space for all kind of stuff (applications as well as data), and thanks to the new battery life I can’t really complain about it that much. Okay so the lack of 3G while in the US is a bit of a pain, but I’m moving to London soon anyway so that won’t be a problem (I know it works in HSDPA there just fine). And I certainly can’t lament myself about the physical strength of the device… the chassis is made of metal, I’d venture to say it’s aluminum, but I wouldn’t be sure, which makes it strong enough to resist falling into a stone pavement (twice) and on concrete (only once) — yes I mistreat my gadgets, either they cope with me or they can get the heck out of my life.