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[Q] Experts, what's the phone for me?

Hello everyone,
I would like some advice from you guys as I think you know what you're talking about (and I don't in this area )
Situation:
* not an IT'er, hence not informed about these things
* Current phone = Nokia E51
* Has a long battery life and hence very reliable
* I have a long commute to work every day
Lots of time (waiting) on the train
Would like a phone to mitigate the boredom
Expectations for a new cell phone:
* Battery life of minimally 24 hours
I want to be able to take it off the power grid at 7am on a friday only to have to plug it back in again around 7am on saturday with quite some power (20-25%-ish) to spare
* After having done the following:
some texting and a few minutes of calls throughout the day and evening
browsing/using youtube/watching some movies or listening to music for +-2hours
being able to go out with it at night and google some random stuff (i.e. checking which movies they're playing etc.)
without having to worry in any degree whatsoever that I'll be left with a dead phone in case something unexpected happens during the night (car breakdowns or other accidents, hospital visits, friends or family who urgently need to contact me, etc.)
* Other points of interest:
Budget doesn't matter too much, can be cheap and can be expensive
Screen needs to be fit for reading on the internet/some pdf's etc
No physical keyboard
I do not care about the camera functions
Already took a look at:
* Windowsphone / blackberry (Not my cup of tea)
* HTC (Have only heard bad things about this, and all the people I know who had one got rid of it)
* Iphone (Itunes annoys me, and so do the apple people who freak out about their cell phones)
* Samsung Galaxy S2
Was blown away when I saw this phone
Went to order it yesterday after having read unanimously positive reviews (techradar and such)
Then read about the battery life span which renders it useless to me (had no idea that people can live with that kind of thing in this day and age)
Cancelled it about 2 hours ago and got my money back, thankfully.
* Nokia 5800
link to phone
My brother has this and is happy about it
I can't imagine there's nothing better on the market than a 3 year old phone
So long story short:
I would greatly appreciate any suggestions you guys might have for a phone that would suit me. Perhaps I'm too demanding for current technology?
Thanks guys.

When I got the Galaxy S the Battery life was maybe 8 hours. After rooting the phone deleting all the bloatware and installing a custom rom, Well.......... 30 hours +/-.
The point is battery life is soley contingent on how you set up the phone and what you do with it. Frankly, out of the box, Samsung sets the phone up poorly. That is how forums like these got started, They saw great hardware and sucky software.
Now, The S2 is awesome hardware, and the development on it is just beginning. I would recommend you read the S2 forum general and development sections. You are going to find that people have addressed the battery problem.
My Galaxy-S Phone I bought 2 batteries so I would never have to worry about battery...... now, I do not know where the spares are it has been so long since I have needed them.
I would be using the S2 if it was available here in the USA NOW. But we still have to wait 45 days more.
Read up on that forum here is the link:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/forumdisplay.php?f=1055
Right Now the best phone out there is the S2
Stick with the Android Format it is way more flexible Win-7 is decent but not enough support, and win7 and Iphone do not make it easy to modify the phone.
Other than the email syncing advantage on the Blackberry it offers nothing else. Android long term is the way to go.
Hope that helps

Yes I followed that forum for a while, which is what made me cancel my order for the S2.
People are getting horrible battery life out of it that is nowhere near the 24hour minimum range I'm requiring, and I doubt they'll be adding 50% to the battery life it currently has.
On a different forum where I posted the same question, one advice that has come in by now is this:
Motorola Defy with Cyanogenmod that puts the latest android OS on it.
I'd like to have a few options though so suggestions are still more than welcome.

I would still go for the GS2 despite the battery issues it will be a great phone

schmeather said:
I would still go for the GS2 despite the battery issues it will be a great phone
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There is no "despite" the battery issue I'm not buying a phone to babysit it.

How would one go about disabling/enabling when a phone can and cannot be charged?

I have a very unique situation.
I dropped my phone in the trash at work(IT Company), accidentally one day, and a small amount of disturbingly gross liquid managed to make it's way into my phone.
I wiped it down, made sure it didn't smell like crap - etc.
Everything worked FINE at first, I said ah, good. Apparently it was not not good.
Now, the phone gets stuck in a loop where it thinks to itself it's charging for a second, then it's not, keeping the screen on and flashing the charging notification repetitively until it decides to stop for an hour, then come back.
Radioshack screwed me over BIG TIME on my phone insurance, I filed a ripoff report etc, and given I need my phone for work related issues I really cannot afford to have any downtime having it be sent in and repaired. NO, I cannot receive an immediate replacement, and NO, I cannot afford another phone.
So, therefore I come to you, my great friends at XDA.
I've a fairly decent background in programming, I understand the just of it. I've taken classes in ASM(Microcomputer Architecture and Programming), C/Java and Python.
And no, I'm not a college-fed programmer, I've been programming in VB, C/C++, PERL etc. since I was 13(22 now.)
So, to the specifics:
My phone is a Samsung Transform Ultra, Android 2.3, rooted and running a "ROM" if you could call it that, but it shouldn't make that much of a difference(just installed it to get rid of CIQ)
Now, I've never wrote a mobile app before but I have the android SDK (1.6-4.0), and I'm fairly certain I could get a hello world going in a matter of minutes.
I'm willing to do the research myself, I just need some good pointers and some people who might be able to answer a few questions along my journey, and when the app is done I will be releasing it in full, yes, to you XDA.
Programming costs time, replacing the phone costs money. I have more time than money.
Best regards!

Bump.
Any help on this issue would be GREATLY, GREATLY appreciated as this is quite possibly the most angering issue imaginable.

I don't know if this will help, but I had a similar problem with my galaxy S. It turned out to be a tiny piece of silver paper that had managed to get into the micro usb slot. A quick shake later and problem solved.
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App

thebotnet said:
I have a very unique situation.
I dropped my phone in the trash at work(IT Company), accidentally one day, and a small amount of disturbingly gross liquid managed to make it's way into my phone.
I wiped it down, made sure it didn't smell like crap - etc.
Everything worked FINE at first, I said ah, good. Apparently it was not not good.
Now, the phone gets stuck in a loop where it thinks to itself it's charging for a second, then it's not, keeping the screen on and flashing the charging notification repetitively until it decides to stop for an hour, then come back.
Radioshack screwed me over BIG TIME on my phone insurance, I filed a ripoff report etc, and given I need my phone for work related issues I really cannot afford to have any downtime having it be sent in and repaired. NO, I cannot receive an immediate replacement, and NO, I cannot afford another phone.
So, therefore I come to you, my great friends at XDA.
I've a fairly decent background in programming, I understand the just of it. I've taken classes in ASM(Microcomputer Architecture and Programming), C/Java and Python.
And no, I'm not a college-fed programmer, I've been programming in VB, C/C++, PERL etc. since I was 13(22 now.)
So, to the specifics:
My phone is a Samsung Transform Ultra, Android 2.3, rooted and running a "ROM" if you could call it that, but it shouldn't make that much of a difference(just installed it to get rid of CIQ)
Now, I've never wrote a mobile app before but I have the android SDK (1.6-4.0), and I'm fairly certain I could get a hello world going in a matter of minutes.
I'm willing to do the research myself, I just need some good pointers and some people who might be able to answer a few questions along my journey, and when the app is done I will be releasing it in full, yes, to you XDA.
Programming costs time, replacing the phone costs money. I have more time than money.
Best regards!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
One maybe possible solution maybe... (free app) (need root)
Hardware Disabler
The though is, in order to stop that you are going to have to disable the actual USB port. You are going to have to play around and find out what driver corresponds to that USB port ... good luck, let me know if it helped.
(Yes I made that app)

[Q] Best 3G solutions?

Hey guys
After a notable absence of Android in my life I'm heading back over with a TF300T. Now, as you may guess from the title I want to talk about my various connection options and draw from your experiences with the device to help me make the right choice in terms of getting my new baby online outside my house.
Obviously I could have gotten a device with built in modem but nothing really turned my head in terms of price and stuff, and as I recall just buying a device that just does what you want it to do already isn't really the Android spirit; half the fun is getting there.
Anyway, this leaves me with a number of imperfect options for data connections:
My phone will happily tether up to the tablet and because my network are cool dudes I can do that for free. Problem is that doing so means I can't make/recieve calls and texts while I'm tethered up and since I want mobile data love when I'm out of the house working that would seem to not be a great idea.
Secondly I could jump in with a mobile wifi thing, but I'm really not keen to get a another contract to make that happen and the amounts of data I'm likely to use (literally just web browsing for now and forever) are somewhat low and somewhat infrequent, making this seem to be a pretty bad useage of money. Also with devices offering 'Up to 5 hours of battery life'; well lets just that's not going to last me long enough to be useful.
Finally, I can grab a 3G USB stick and duck tape it to the device. It's the right stuff for my requirements, but it seems kinda non-trivial to hook up a USB device to the undocked tablet and certainly it seems totally unrealistic to wander around holding the tablet with usb adapter, then modem dongle sticking six inches out of the bottom. At worst it'll fall out, at best I'll break it. In the dock this looks great, assuming it'll work in the standard USB port, but outside it just seems silly.
My hope really was that I'd be able to find a cable that'd go from the propitiatory connector (Bad Asus!) to female usb so I could potentially stick the dongle flat against the back of the tablet without noticeably increasing it's footprint, but that seems unlikely. I've seen a guy on youtube who can make such a cable, but it takes soldering and that's somewhat outside my abilities.
So what kind of approach had you guys taken and what experiences have you had using this kind of ghetto-interweb solution? The key is to find the right add on that will let me still use my phone properly, that will give me long endurance but also minimal hassle... A bit of a reach really, but maybe I'm not thinking of all the options.
Apologies if anyone thinks this is in the wrong place, my XDA-fu is a little rusty but I'm pretty sure I'm in the right place. I've googled around and while I can find plenty of stuff telling me all the ways to hook the internet up, no-one seems to be answering what way I should approach making it all happen.

Best choice for me has been a mifi. Look up a Huawei 585 or 589 and plug in a sim and away you go. You can get some very cheap rolling monthly contracts these days for data only plans.

How have you found the battery life to be in practice? Can I leave the thing switched on and get some reasonable proportion of a day out of it? My hope really is that the battery estimates they give are 'x hours of actual internetting' instead of 'x hours of being switched on'. If it'll just quietly sit and stay connected for most of a day then that'll probably be fine, but if I have to finesse the thing on and off all day long just to get past lunch time that sounds pretty bad for my situation.

[Q] "Retroactive Bricking" or "spontaneous" hardware fault?

PSA: *This will be crossposted in xda HTC One X and HTC One X+ forums, I hope cross posting is allowed, haven't seen it mentioned in rules.*
Hi all,
Quick disclaimer: I've been lurking parts of xda now and again for a couple years now, have flashed a couple of phones and tablets now and again for mainly practical reasons, recently getting more interested in it as a ""fun" interest or "hobby".
SO: I am very aware that this is my first post, the rules, search function, etc. ..
BUT: After extensively searching both google and specifically xda to help me resolve this issue *myself*, I decided to create an account and post. I'm sorry if this Q should have been put in the newbie thread, my assessment was that it probably has no place there.
ALSO PLZ NOTE: What was meant to be a succinct summary and question somehow turned into a condensed but complete rundown of events, so here is a...
TL;DR:
- Replaced HTC One X+ display/digitizer unit myself, ran fine for 5 weeks.
- Then: flashed twrp 2.7x or 2.8, not sure anymore, before installing Android HD Revolution 33.1 by mike1986, and following the official instructions, which ran great for about week until my phone spontaneously BRICKED THE F*CK OUT COMPLETELY.
(yes, true brick, paperweight, robot-corpse, whatever)
=> Question: IS "RETROACTIVE/RETROGRADE BRICKING POSSIBLE/A "THING"??
If so, what could I have done wrong? (POSSIBLY something to do with a bootimage of firmware that I was sure I had the up to date version of... dunno though).
=========================================================================
About 6 weeks ago:
- Cracked the display of my HTC One X+ badly by dropping it onto concrete-type floor at a rave/party
=> Decided to try and replace it myself, researched for a good while (talking several days here, 90s/00s kids),
=> Decided to replace the display/digitizer unit myself to save money and gain knowledge.
Repair process was challenging and nearly as nerve wracking as playing the WSOP (not kidding, have played it three times), had an issue immediately after putting it back together where it suddenly wouldn't charge AT ALL anymore (NO LED), and overheated, and had unusually fast battery drain of its remaining charge (which never ran out completely before resolving that issue, since I kept turning it off whenever possible).
=> Took it apart and put it together again XX times until realizing the power switch flex cable kept slipping out of its two (jawbone?) connectors during putting it back together (I was doing something wrong with the flex positioning).
=> This resolved the issue.
=> Felt like a hero and that I win at life (since this phone has a rep as being hard to meddle with, and this was my first time even opening, let alone taking apart a smartphone).
=> Continued joyful phone shenanigans for over one month.
=> THEN: Decided to root it, mainly because there was a particular app I wanted that required root ("Quick reply for Whatsapp/Pushbullet", for the curious).
My previous, very limited rooting/flashing experiences =
- Google Nexus One (CWM/Cyanogen) a few times, years ago
- Galaxy Tab 10.1 (CWM/Cyanogen 10.1 ages ago, TWRP/Omnirom Kitkat 4.4.4 recently) a couple times.
So, did my research (or so I thought..?) for this particular custom ROM, decided to go for Android Revolution HD for HTC One X/+ 33.1 by mike 1986 (because it looked fckin awesome, and it was, while it ran) and loved the sh*t out of my "new" phone for about a week. Especially the vastly improved battery life seemed almost surreal, a big deal for a fixed-battery phone.
Then, ONE FATFUL EVENING in a bar, I remember looking at my phone and seeing 35% left, (days before it would've been an amazing 70-80% on an avg. day), which may not be relevant as it was my birthday, so had been using it a lot that day => may be a moot point
- Next time I looked at the phone ( < 1 hour without active use for sure) it was dead.
"Hmmmm," thought slightly drunk me. Whatever, charge it later, weird sh*t happens.
- Got home later, charged it over night after booting it with usb cord attached (mains).
Seemed normal, I even set an alarm.
=> Alarm never rang because it was in a powered-off state again come morning, despite all-night charging.
=> It booted to HTC logo. Seconds later, it turned off again. Held down power again, all I saw was the soft touch buttons flashing red a few times. After this it unexpectedly became (or was secretly crowned):
!! COMPLETE AND UTTER FCKNG KING BRICK OF BRICK COUNTRY AND ATTACHED TERRITORIES !!
No power on with or without volume up/down held for whatever amount of time;
No charging, no heating up when "charging";
No LED in any colour or flashing frequency, ever;
No response after hours and days of charging on different USB cables on PC/wall socket;
PCs and laptops don't register a sign of anything when it penetrates their port parts, etc etc...
...
.Even that semi-mystical bright-light-exposure-while-charging "light sensor manipulation" thing (which apparently worked for a lo of people with similar issues) did nothing for the cause.
Promotion: *Paperweight status successfully acquired.* Yay.
=====================================================
Now, obviously my first thought was that the power flex that gave me trouble during display replacement probably slipped again., somehow (I had taped it down solidly I thought).
=> SO I opened it once again, flex position seemed ok, but I wasn't sure of its functionality as it did look kind of battered from the somewhat unprofessional repair I had conducted on it (which I openly admit to, though I really did try my absolute best).
- Spontaneously took mainboard/battery combo to a local independent phone/accessory shop after being told they'd take a look for free
(I was in there was in there buying a microsim adapter so I could use my ancient Nexus One, since my GF has my old S2 now, which she kindly offered back, but its hers now, so nah. Great phone though.)
=>Shop's advice echoed my thoughts: Flex cable may be screwed, I may have damaged it by bending in the wrong direction/too often, and that damage somehow didn't manifest until much later. I didn't mention the recent rooting + flashing as I deemed it irrelevant at the time.
Their secondary thoughts: Battery or mini-usb port fukt, (which would require soldering, which they don't even offer).
=> SO, feeling confirmed in my layman's assessment, I cheaply got a pristine new replacement flex on ebay, double checked all videos/tutorials, implemented the damn thing with considerably more skill/experience and even higher anticipation. What happened next was shocking:
Absolutely nothing, obv.
=> Did an additional epic f*ckton of internet/forum research, found similar problems and some resolutions, but no real answers, probably because my main problem translates to a kind of hybrid question.
So here I am now am with my core question:
Is it possible to FULLY brick an HTC/any smartphone but not become aware of this until one week later, when the device dies OVER ONE WEEK of reliable and amazing performance?
(and if yes, what aspect/stage of the flashing process is this likely related to?)
If the answer is NO, it must be a hardware fault with probability rank (I think)
:
1.) Battery dead for whatever reason
2.) Mini USB OR mainboard/integral component (equal rank as not sure), possibly caused by incompetent repair, but why or how would this express itself over a month later??
3.) Other, which I'm not aware of.
While researching new ROMS for the N1, I realized that I may have messed up on the "bootimg part" of the flashing process of the Revolution ROM, a part I found v. confusing in the instructions, even after rereading them many, many times. It was about the most recent firmware, which I was pretty sure I had anyway, since it was unrooted before and I do remember installing some firmware updates over the air.
I still did my best to follow the instructions though.
=> Maybe this has something to do with it, i.e. the hardware can't accept a charge because the software allowed it to become too uncharged (a fairly paradox concept to me, but apparently it can happen. Guess it's like a BIOS-type thing).
Thank you for anyone who read this far!
As it stands, I refuse to give up hope so soon after experiencing that rush of having fixed it myself.
Any specific or general help, tips, hints, pointers, replacement phones (One M8 or S5 plz., Iphones will go straight on ebay) would and will be greatly appreciated!!
The obvious choice is to get a new battery and see what happens, but I'm not sure if I wanna sink any more money into this phone, only to later find out the mainboard is at fault (not worth the money replacing), AKA "get a new phone without a contract", which would more than suck for me financially atm (Im ignoring my N1 here, which I love, but don't wanna be stuck with, esp. as it has the standard-issue broken power button (which I actually had repaired once under warranty, back in the ol' days of yore some prefer to refer to as 2009.
So guys: What's my move, if there is one, besides going to a local/online service centre (I live in Germany btw.) and probably paying unproportionate cash money to even have it looked at?
Cheers, thanks, merci, danke
PS: Just saw the polling function, so I attached one just for the hell of it, to see what happens (never used one before).
If you feel both qualified AND so inclined as to pass judgement on this here serious business, please indicate what you think may be the cause of my issue.

*BUMP 1*
Come on guys, I know it's a wall of text, but can't someone at least answer the TL;DR?
=> Is is possible to flash a custom rom which then (possibly because of improper installation) causes the phone to brick about a week later?
Simple question surely!

In us but allways got exnos version cause I require root but hated the lack of carrier aggravation. Now seems snapdragon is root able. Whitch to get

Just wanted to find some opinions on what to get basically it's been awhile since I was on her and my note ten is having the cold battery can't charge issue so Im looking what to replace it with and need root and loved the functionality of a fully unlocked bootloader but I missed the great speeds of a US phone since I'm in the US so wonder what I shoud do?

Too cold, won't charge?
You think it's a mobo failure on the 10+?
I've never seen that warning. Use something like DevChek to view all the sensor temperatures.
May just be a battery failure. They're good for about 2 years on a heavily used phone, my lasted 1.5 years and failed.
I'm looking at getting a second Note. My choices are another 10+ or a new 20U. It will likely be another 10+; it a solid, stable, fast phone with no glaring issues. If still running on Pie, that's a huge plus, Android 10 and especially 11 just suck. I don't have high hopes for 12.
So if it's the battery or C port PCB*, just replace and wait for the 2022 Note release.
From what I've read the Snapdragon has a better chipset architecture and instruction set.
They seem to be notoriously hard to root. Probably not a good choice for rooting.
I know you can optimize a stock 10+/Pie, not sure how well that will go with Android 10 and above. Some of the functionality isn't there for valuable 3rd party apps like Karma Firewall's logging feature. You can still use Package Disabler or ADB edits to kill the bloatware though.
On newer high dollar phones is many ways rooting is a liability especially with warranty/insurance and you lose Knox, Samsung Pass etc if you use that junk. There are those especially on this forum that swear by it but won't acknowledge their cost in time (which can be and typically is huge) and inconvenience.
Stock Androids/roms are easier to troubleshoot and more secure. If there are issues with a stock setup there will be thousands or more with the same issue making solutions more likely and easier to find. With a custom setup you are on your own which can quickly implode into a time sucking blackhole in more ways than there are stars.
If I was going to root it be an older Note... not a brand new one... risk/time vs reward.
*the C port PCB may have a temperature sensor, not sure. It can cause a lot of bizarre issues in seemingly unrelated systems like internet connection, I know that for a fact. Make sure if you do replace it you get the exact PN that on that PCB or it will not function properly! Both the battery and C port PCB are relatively easy to replace with the proper tools and skillset. Both are cheap, under $50. Make sure you replace the back cover OEM seal with the same or equivalent if you open it up. Do not use generic double sided adhesive tape!

And the award for Longest Post Title and Longest Run On Sentence In A XDA Post goes to...
*Nervously opens envelope*
@ressegger !!!
*Raucous applause*

ressegger said:
Just wanted to find some opinions on what to get basically it's been awhile since I was on her and my note ten is having the cold battery can't charge issue so Im looking what to replace it with and need root and loved the functionality of a fully unlocked bootloader but I missed the great speeds of a US phone since I'm in the US so wonder what I shoud do?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes ,
i had this same issue of yours ,
"to cold to charge" can't charge ,
notice/issue .....many years back .
Can't remember which device of mine it was , think it was a Samsung Tablet A 2016 .
Anyway ,
Took devices to Samsung Service Centre.
It was the USB charging port .
They did not charge me much for the repairs .
Got it fixed and device charging normally / working fine afterwards.
My point is whatever you do or decide do not "throw/give "device away .
It's a small fix.....!
good luck

I am running the US snapdragon spammy 20 - ultra rooted up with boot loader unlocked thanks to afane and his advanced bros, although due to the lock down on many features such as scoped (controlled) storage preventing apps from being installed outside of the control room (googel store), did I mention notification sound got locked down too?