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Battery life tweak

I was lurking over at the sprint hero board and came across an interesting thread. People are noticing an increase in battery life when the set the wifi settings for sleep to Never.
Seems like what is happening, as soon as the phone blanks out, WIFI is turned of and the phone is switched to EVDO mode. which drains battery. If your in a bad coverage area your battery drains even faster.
Some people are talking about a performance increase as well, but I think what they are seeing is the phone not having to cycle back to wifi everytime they touch the phone.

Treefallingquietly said:
I was lurking over at the sprint hero board and came across an interesting thread. People are noticing an increase in battery life when the set the wifi settings for sleep to Never.
Seems like what is happening, as soon as the phone blanks out, WIFI is turned of and the phone is switched to EVDO mode. which drains battery. If your in a bad coverage area your battery drains even faster.
Some people are talking about a performance increase as well, but I think what they are seeing is the phone not having to cycle back to wifi everytime they touch the phone.
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Interesting, but is this for those who always have wifi enabled (I never use it)? I'll try anything to get more from my battery since I can barely squeeze out about a day (18 hours) from my phone even with the sms workaround implemented.
I'm looking in the wifi settings and don't see any options for "wifi sleep".

katmandu421 said:
Interesting, but is this for those who always have wifi enabled (I never use it)? I'll try anything to get more from my battery since I can barely squeeze out about a day (18 hours) from my phone even with the sms workaround implemented.
I'm looking in the wifi settings and don't see any options for "wifi sleep".
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Here is the link: http://community.sprint.com/baw/thread/24324?tstart=0
Basically, when you are in an area that has spotty coverage, your battery will drain quicker because its always roaming and trying for service. I get this in the Texas Hill country. So if you have wifi and are in a bad location, whenever your wifi sleeps, it goes back to EV. I think just the nature of this connection is hard on the battery. hence using Wifi as much as possible.

Another option is to use APNdroid or something like it to disable the EVDO when you're not using it. Push notifications don't always come through that way or can be slow coming, but if you know your phone is just going to sit there you can conserve a lot of power this way. Turning off GPS, WiFi and EVDO I was able to squeeze out almost 3 days of usage when I was using the phone sparingly. If you're enabling those connections only when you need them, making it through the day should be no problem if you're not constantly using the device.

Wifi time-out OFF by default?

So, it seems the default policy for wifi on this device is never to disconnect itself to save power. The Vibrant defaulted to whenever the screen was off. That makes the default wifi policy between these two devices vastly different. In fact, there isn't even an option on this phone to disconnect from wifi when the screen is shut down. I wonder how this will affect battery life. I may think twice about enabling wifi.

The first thing I did after connecting it to my wifi was go to the wifi advanced settings and set the sleep policy to never. I'm glad it was already off by default. It shows that someone at HTC paid attention to that small detail and how it affected battery life. It greatly helps your battery life in my experience (with the Vibrant), since it's not constantly connecting and disconnecting from wifi which apparently uses more power.

Aspeds2989 said:
The first thing I did after connecting it to my wifi was go to the wifi advanced settings and set the sleep policy to never. I'm glad it was already off by default. It shows that someone at HTC paid attention to that small detail and how it affected battery life. It greatly helps your battery life in my experience (with the Vibrant), since it's not constantly connecting and disconnecting from wifi which apparently uses more power.
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Agree 100%.
Sent from my HTC Glacier using XDA App

Aspeds2989 said:
The first thing I did after connecting it to my wifi was go to the wifi advanced settings and set the sleep policy to never. I'm glad it was already off by default. It shows that someone at HTC paid attention to that small detail and how it affected battery life. It greatly helps your battery life in my experience (with the Vibrant), since it's not constantly connecting and disconnecting from wifi which apparently uses more power.
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Click to collapse
Really? How would that *improve* battery life? I would have it to *detract* from battery life. If I'm at home basking in my wireless network, why would I rather have the connection permanent than to have it disconnected when the screen shuts off as it does by default with the Vibrant? If what you say is true, then setting the timeout from the 15 minutes timeout, as I have it now, to full time connection (never timeouts), will actually save on battery? To me, that flies in the face of reason, but then again, stranger things I've come across.

Just hoping for a reply to the above, and perhaps someone can explain why having wifi never time-out even when the screen is off can lead to better battery life?

think about it. having to connect and reconnect everytime you turn on your screen is bound to eat up. if your screen is off its not sucking in massive amounts of data so the battery drain is at a min

Lockeskidney said:
think about it. having to connect and reconnect everytime you turn on your screen is bound to eat up. if your screen is off its not sucking in massive amounts of data so the battery drain is at a min
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Click to collapse
Well, it's certainly not intuitive, and I am thinking about it, hence the post. In order to maintain an active wifi connection, there has to be continual pinging back and forth even with no active data connections from the device. Now, we all know that there *is* a lot of data being exchanged when the screen is off - whether it be syncing accounts, retrieving news items, emails, etc. This would all be taking place over a wifi connection by default. It is also my understanding that using your wifi radio consumes more power than your UMTS radio does. However, I'm not entirely sure of that last point.
Isn't it far more intuitive to believe (whether factual or not) that having the wifi radio powered on unnecessarily while in your pocket would consume more power than having it turn off? Even the seasoned users over in the Vibrant forums all recommend setting the wifi to turn off when the screen shuts off, which is a setting not available on the MT4G.
I'd like to believe that how HTC sets the default wifi behavior conserves power, but it sort of flies in the face of reason. I'm also of the belief that the device is set by default the way it is so that callers who use Wifi Calling can always be reached while at home on their wifi network. But, having such a wifi connection setting is actually eating up your battery life if you don't need wifi calling.

Wifi used less power that edge/g3/4g. Having it constantly on wifi with improve your battery life just because when wifi is enabled it shuts off cellular data.

option94 said:
Wifi used less power that edge/g3/4g. Having it constantly on wifi with improve your battery life just because when wifi is enabled it shuts off cellular data.
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Ah, OK, well there you have it. Someone ought to tell those folks over the in the Vibrant forums then. Thanks...

floepie said:
Ah, OK, well there you have it. Someone ought to tell those folks over the in the Vibrant forums then. Thanks...
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Click to collapse
I have. I have a vibrant. Ordered the mytouch last night.

Also, can't have WiFi sleeping... otherwise WiFi calling won't work...
Sent from my HTC Glacier using XDA App

use wifi or not?

From a battery perspective, should I use wifi? Most of the time i'm at home or at work where I have wifi. I also have good lte coverage at both. Speed aside, will I save battery by not using wifi or not?

You'll definitely save battery by using wifi when you can connect. I love the speeds over lte, but it is definitely a hog...

i also had boost of battery using WIFI
Using unlimited data plan makes me to consider using 4g, but I found that Wifi consumes much less battery.

Use wifi. The battery savings are huge.

yes i cant stress enough, wifi saves enormous amounts of battery so use it when ever possible. the difference is like night and day.

Compared to 3G
I've been leaving my wifi off since I have unlimited data and the 3G is pretty fast in my area, no 4G yet.
I've had pretty good battery life lately using only 3G, I'll have to do a few tests and see which one and I'm a fairly heavy user I'm approaching 4GB this month and none of that is tethering

3G or Wifi
Tested watching a streaming video of 22 mins
on 3G I lost 13%
on wifi I lost 8%
Wifi wins, of course standby is probably different, if 3G vs wifi loses this badly I'd have to imagine LTE vs Wifi is a slaughter battery wise

Actually I found something interesting...
For some reason, even when I am home using Wifi, the battery drains faster than I thought. Where I live is like a strange signal spot. If I turn off my WiFi I can see my TBolt constantly switching between LTE and 3G, sometimes it stucks on 1xRTT for a while then goes right back to switching between connections. If I am at work (downtown LA) where the LTE is pretty well covered, I still use WiFi at the office, the battery BARELY drain at ALL.
My theory is that even when WiFi is active, the phone somehow STILL does the LTE/EvDO switching on the background does draining the battery.
If somehow the devs or VZW can tell the phone to STICK to EvDO/1xRTT instead of going back and forth with the LTE while WiFi data is on, it'll solve the problem.
Also just FYI, I have the latest radio and BMAF 1.5 remixed.

SteveDusa said:
Actually I found something interesting...
For some reason, even when I am home using Wifi, the battery drains faster than I thought. Where I live is like a strange signal spot. If I turn off my WiFi I can see my TBolt constantly switching between LTE and 3G, sometimes it stucks on 1xRTT for a while then goes right back to switching between connections. If I am at work (downtown LA) where the LTE is pretty well covered, I still use WiFi at the office, the battery BARELY drain at ALL.
My theory is that even when WiFi is active, the phone somehow STILL does the LTE/EvDO switching on the background does draining the battery.
If somehow the devs or VZW can tell the phone to STICK to EvDO/1xRTT instead of going back and forth with the LTE while WiFi data is on, it'll solve the problem.
Also just FYI, I have the latest radio and BMAF 1.5 remixed.
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Click to collapse
pretty much correct. at least on the gsm side, when i connect to wifi at home, i can no longer see if the phone is on 3G or EDGE. but it definitely switches back and forth to those networks, while staying on wifi, you just dont see the icon switching, but its definitely happening. i dont see why cdma and 1x would be any different.

if this is the case then why don't you just turn data off when you are on wifi.
^_^_^'s tbolt

EEdaesung said:
if this is the case then why don't you just turn data off when you are on wifi.
^_^_^'s tbolt
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You are absolutly right! How come I never thought of that. Will do that when I get home tonight.
Thanks for the tip!
Sent from my ADR6400L using XDA App

Better yet get juice defender and automate it . Its very good app. Right now it says I'm almost adding fifty percent on to my battery.

I seem to be bucking the trend here, but LTE is working better for me than wifi. I usually have a good signal, so that's part of it.
The other part is that my wifi may be eating more juice than normal because the TB and my router may not be playing nice together. Ever since I added the TB to the network, I've had to reboot the router every coupla days. Before the TB, it was solid weeks on end.

Has anyone who is still having trouble on with batter on wifi set their wifi sleep policy to "Never" sleep? Mine is set to this and if I am home most of the day I will lose very little battery through out the day.
I believe by default the wifi is set to turn off after a period of time or when the screen is off so during this time I believe you are actually reverting back to using the vzw network. To turn wifi to always on go to settings>wireless>wifi settings>hit menu>advanced. The sleep policy is at the top, change sleep policy to never. This my reduce battery while not connected to wifi so I always use the power control widget to turn my wifi off completely while I am away from the house.

shovelheadhd said:
Has anyone who is still having trouble on with batter on wifi set their wifi sleep policy to "Never" sleep? Mine is set to this and if I am home most of the day I will lose very little battery through out the day.
I believe by default the wifi is set to turn off after a period of time or when the screen is off so during this time I believe you are actually reverting back to using the vzw network. To turn wifi to always on go to settings>wireless>wifi settings>hit menu>advanced. The sleep policy is at the top, change sleep policy to never. This my reduce battery while not connected to wifi so I always use the power control widget to turn my wifi off completely while I am away from the house.
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Click to collapse
Oh yeah this is very important, set wifi sleep policy to never greatly increases battery life. Otherwise it switches back to 3g when screen goes off and drains way more battery. This is very important to set this otherwise you wont see the increase.

Is strongly recommend switching to cdma only if yore gonna use WiFi and plan on saving your battery. Otherwise what's the point. I personally don't even bother using WiFi just use LTE only mode. I'm getting better speeds than most WiFi connections using my LTE.
Sent from my ADR6400L using Tapatalk

Wifi drains more battery than mobile network?

Title says it all.
Sent from my HTC Inspire 4G using XDA Premium App

Sure does not.
Sent from my ADR6400L using XDA App

Not even comparable... data takes up tons of battery
Sent from my Inspire 4G using XDA Premium App

If it's constantly in a loop of trying, unsuccessfully, to connect to a wireless network, I could see it increasing obviously, but in a normal connected state, as the others say, no way as much as mobile.

alright awesome ill keep using wifi

Scott_S said:
If it's constantly in a loop of trying, unsuccessfully, to connect to a wireless network, I could see it increasing obviously, but in a normal connected state, as the others say, no way as much as mobile.
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Click to collapse
Scott is right. If you don't have wifi connected it will constantly search for it causing battery drain. If you leave and don't plan on being on wifi I would shut it off so that your phone isn't constantly searching for a network. There are some battery settings in the wifi menu that can help with that though just not very much.
P.S. oops edited sorry Scott lol

Carlrobling said:
...Mud is right...
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I'll take that as a complement.

I disagree, every phone i have seen uses significantly more battery having wifi turned on, I definately notice it on mine, and im talking about being connected to a wifi the entire time. My battery life with wifi on has always been **** compared to it being turned off, Iphone's all of them including 4, droid x, vibrant, captivate, inspire all the same result with wifi enabled.
Do a expierment charge phone to 100% before going to bed, lets say 10 pm to 6 am check battery power lvl, next night enable wifi, I am absolutely certain that u will have a much larger drain.
as for does it drain more while in use than 3g or 4g is another issue, some say it uses less than mobile network to transfer data because a mobile tower can be a few miles away while the router is no more than 200 feet. I personally think wifi still uses more battery, however i do use wifi when available to keep my data usage down. if u disabled 3g altogether then maybe. but with both on u are powering another radio.

jc2470 said:
I disagree, every phone i have seen uses significantly more battery having wifi turned on, I definately notice it on mine, and im talking about being connected to a wifi the entire time. My battery life with wifi on has always been **** compared to it being turned off, Iphone's all of them including 4, droid x, vibrant, captivate, inspire all the same result with wifi enabled.
Do a expierment charge phone to 100% before going to bed, lets say 10 pm to 6 am check battery power lvl, next night enable wifi, I am absolutely certain that u will have a much larger drain.
as for does it drain more while in use than 3g or 4g is another issue, some say it uses less than mobile network to transfer data because a mobile tower can be a few miles away while the router is no more than 200 feet. I personally think wifi still uses more battery, however i do use wifi when available to keep my data usage down. if u disabled 3g altogether then maybe. but with both on u are powering another radio.
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If you're saying that having WiFi on uses more battery than having WiFi off, which is how I read the first part of your post, I'd have to say you absolutely correct.
I think the question was whether WiFi used more battery than mobile data.

Mobile data uses more battery because its constantly trying to look for a better connection. E/3G/4G/ETC...
Sent from my T-Mobile G2 using XDA App

according to alot of other post about this same issue say wifi uses more battery either way because your 3g /4g radio is still on when using wifi

Both right
If you have WiFi always on, constantly polling for it, when not connected, you will use >battery. If you are connected to WiFi, and thus not polling all the time, <battery usage.
I use Llama to disable my WiFi when I am out not using GPS. It knows I leave home or work based on location as tringulated by the cell towers, thus GPS doesn't have to be on. Your phone is always polling for towers anyway, even with data shut off, so this does not use any battery to speak of. There are a lot of towers here in my basic hood, so Llama seems to identified that I leave home from 100-1000 meters, depending which direction I go.
You will use less battery if you shut off WiFi polling while you have no chance to connect to Wifi, that is for sure!
I use Llama to shut off and on all sorts of stuff based on location or a set of conditions. It is all logic based: If condition A exists, perform B toggle. Works great for me in an area with lots of towers so location at home vs. work vs. out is determined rather easily and accurately in my experience.
Edit: other conditions available include days of the week, time of day, headset or bluetooth enabled, etc.

Wifi definitively uses less battery than 3g from all the tests I've done and common experiences around the forum. Its not even close.

Can you change the wifi interval in the build.prop file to have it search after a longer delay? I know on mine it is set for 15 (seconds)?
Sent from my Desire HD using XDA Premium App

What do you do to extend battery life?

I've had the HOX for about a week now and I love it but I wish battery life was a bit better. I've gotten to about 50% with only a little over an hour of on screen time.
Here's what my settings are:
Auto-sync off, wifi off, gps off, brightness about 15%, and I'm running CleanROM SE. I do live in a LTE however, possibly that's what's killing my battery? I also have a CPU editor running on battery saver mode.
Any help?

Winters37 said:
I've had the HOX for about a week now and I love it but I wish battery life was a bit better. I've gotten to about 50% with only a little over an hour of on screen time.
Here's what my settings are:
Auto-sync off, wifi off, gps off, brightness about 15%, and I'm running CleanROM SE. I do live in a LTE however, possibly that's what's killing my battery? I also have a CPU editor running on battery saver mode.
Any help?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Try keeping WiFi on when your in range. It seems to be better than the cell data for battery life.
Sent from my HTC One X using XDA

In my own experience LTE will chew you battery like nothing. Running apps like battery savers etc... actually doesn't save your battery it kills them faster... as they require process to run in the background... just my own tick on the subject.
Switch LTE off and I'm running on 4G I get around 1mb rate up and down for transfer so that's just as good as high speed internet. I'm not going to complain.
Screen brightness is at 35%
Screen timeout 1min
Wifi on
Data on
All others off
I'll average about 19hrs of battery life. Less if I'm going nuts on it like during weekdays at work.
On the weekend I can get 1day 7hours... ishh.
Winters37 said:
I've had the HOX for about a week now and I love it but I wish battery life was a bit better. I've gotten to about 50% with only a little over an hour of on screen time.
Here's what my settings are:
Auto-sync off, wifi off, gps off, brightness about 15%, and I'm running CleanROM SE. I do live in a LTE however, possibly that's what's killing my battery? I also have a CPU editor running on battery saver mode.
Any help?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

Winters37 said:
I've had the HOX for about a week now and I love it but I wish battery life was a bit better. I've gotten to about 50% with only a little over an hour of on screen time.
Here's what my settings are:
Auto-sync off, wifi off, gps off, brightness about 15%, and I'm running CleanROM SE. I do live in a LTE however, possibly that's what's killing my battery? I also have a CPU editor running on battery saver mode.
Any help?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Remove sense
Auto sync on
Wifi on (if within range)
Force 2g network
Auto brightness
LTE/3G only when absoultey necessary
Bluetooth off unless using
Leave GPS enabled
Download timelines free from the play store and periodically look at it to see if apps are continuously using CPU. Some do and need to be closed constantly. Facebook is an example of that.

I would force 2G also unfortunately that's not an option here in town. It's now either 3G, 4G or LTE 2G networks aren't available anymore... sigh.
seh6183 said:
Remove sense
Auto sync on
Wifi on (if within range)
Force 2g network
Auto brightness
LTE/3G only when absoultey necessary
Bluetooth off unless using
Leave GPS enabled
Download timelines free from the play store and periodically look at it to see if apps are continuously using CPU. Some do and need to be closed constantly. Facebook is an example of that.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

fluxgfx said:
I would force 2G also unfortunately that's not an option here in town. It's now either 3G, 4G or LTE 2G networks aren't available anymore... sigh.
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Click to collapse
Thats too bad because calls and texts sent over 3g consume almost twice as much battery. Time to start using google voice!

Your telling. I tried to get 2G on using the GSM only. I can make calls but there's no more data stream on 2G anymore. GSM band once it seems your attempting to make a data connection switches automaticly to WCDMA Preferred.
I wouldn't expect anything less in a Metro area lol... I guess if I was at the cottage I could bounce off the GSM towers to get my service a 2G lol.
seh6183 said:
Thats too bad because calls and texts sent over 3g consume almost twice as much battery. Time to start using google voice!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

fluxgfx said:
Your telling. I tried to get 2G on using the GSM only. I can make calls but there's no more data stream on 2G anymore. GSM band once it seems your attempting to make a data connection switches automaticly to WCDMA Preferred.
I wouldn't expect anything less in a Metro area lol... I guess if I was at the cottage I could bounce off the GSM towers to get my service a 2G lol.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hey well you know what thats not that bad. Use the 2G to make calls and text and just enable the better radios when you need them for data. This would be the best for battery. Just put the toggles all on switches so you have quick access.

Yes, LTE really destroys the battery. If you are using the phone (i.e. the screen is on), and you are using LTE (e-mail/web/etc.), you won't get more than 2-3 hrs of screentime. Without LTE - or in standby mode (i.e. screen not on) - the phone lasts for a long time, unless you are experience battery drain issues, which some of the LTE users are reporting when signal is lost and regained again.

Easy Answer:
D: None of the above! Enjoy your phone with everything on and buy one of these nice little babies and take it with ya for only $13.00.
http://www.monoprice.com/products/p...=10833&cs_id=1083311&p_id=7664&seq=1&format=2

thcue said:
Easy Answer:
D: None of the above! Enjoy your phone with everything on and buy one of these nice little babies and take it with ya for only $13.00.
http://www.monoprice.com/products/p...=10833&cs_id=1083311&p_id=7664&seq=1&format=2
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hes right! Leave every radio enabled cause you never know when you may need to use them. Also turn brightness up to 100% because the screen looks awesome like that. Then all you have to do is have a giant battery hanging off the phone almost constantly. Perfect trade off if you ask me.

LTE is the biggest killer. With LTE on all the time, I get about 3 hours screen on time (which still blows all other phones that I've had out of the water). If I'm on wifi, I can get around 5 with the same type of use.
Sent from my HTC One X using xda premium

How do you turn LTE off? I always have 3 or more bars around my area, so bad reception isn't a problem. I just think the big killer is LTE.

Try the CPU Editor, the link is in my sig. It will definetly help on your battery with the right settings eg., battery saver profile. Read the thread and try it out, let me know what you think.

smokin1337 said:
Try the CPU Editor, the link is in my sig. It will definetly help on your battery with the right settings eg., battery saver profile. Read the thread and try it out, let me know what you think.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yea, I saw it on the news page and decided to try it out. It definitely helps, but it still doesn't last as long as I want/need it to.

Winters37 said:
How do you turn LTE off? I always have 3 or more bars around my area, so bad reception isn't a problem. I just think the big killer is LTE.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Check here, in the middle of the page - there is a way to disable LTE, worked for me:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1719227&page=6

LTE might be the culprit. I get GREAT battery life on CleanROM, but I'm in an only-HSPA+ area.
Some other basic things you might want to try:
1. Confirm that you aren't in a poor reception area. Your standby times will drop dramatically if your reception is poor for an extended period. If you DO have poor reception, consider flashing a new radio.
2. Look for any wakelocks (times your phone is awake while your screen is off). A few every now and then are good, but if there are a lot, or they are lasting for a long time, it'll also kill your standby time.
3. If you notice unusual wakelocks, use something like BetteryBatteryStats to track down what processe(s) in particular are causing them.

neocryte said:
Check here, in the middle of the page - there is a way to disable LTE, worked for me:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1719227&page=6
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Just disabled LTE. Let's see if my battery can improve now. I'm mostly on Wi-Fi when I'm home anyway.

Keep us posted Winters - I have heard some people have issues with this method - that the 3G connectivity drops a lot. I haven't seen this yet, but haven't tested too much...

_MetalHead_ said:
LTE is the biggest killer. With LTE on all the time, I get about 3 hours screen on time (which still blows all other phones that I've had out of the water). If I'm on wifi, I can get around 5 with the same type of use.
Sent from my HTC One X using xda premium
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Click to collapse
I take it your new One X is doing well lol?
Sent from my HTC One X using XDA