People ask me how I like the new Sidekick. And I always end up giving them more of a response than they bargained for.
The shortest answer goes something like this: I love it, but the batterylife is awful and the camera is worse than the SK II! Because the battery life is so poor it's hard to recommend the phone to anyone.
As the attached screenshot shows - it's 6pm and after fairly light usage today, I've got two bars of battery left. On a really busy phone day I could be already out of juice.
But there's hope!
The hiptop.com formus are reporting the fact that Danger has released a patch for the SK III which appears to help with the battery life.
I haven't gotten the patch yet, so all I can do is blog about its existance.
Is it logical to assume a change in software could affect batter life so greatly? Sure, if the software triggers battery-intensive operations too frequently. Or it could be my wishful thinking.
If Danger does pull this off and fix a major issue with their phone via a push-over-the-air update it'll be another example of how the Sidekick is such a remarkable concept. You don't just get a phone, but a server-side presence that's always in communication and quite helpful.
I don't recall other phone vendors doing OTA's of firmware, but who knows, maybe they do.
Anyway, my plan is to hope for the update, and then post again after a typical light usage day.
Oh, and one more tip: to take a screenshot of the SK III's current screen hold down Menu-Shift-Camera_Button (the top right shoulder button).
--Ben
Can you turn off the bluetooth on the SKIII? that may help with the battery life. I know that some of the treos reported issues with battery life and the bluetooth feature. The funnier part is that as far as I know there wasn't a built-in way to turn off the bluetooth, so of course someone wrote an app.
ReplyDeleteThat's a good suggestion.
ReplyDeleteYou can indeed turn off Bluetooth. They even provide an Airplane Mode where you can turn off all wireless parts of the phone.
The problem is, I like having my Bluetooth on so I can use the phone with my car's built in hands free.
It's magic when you sit in your car, hit a button and say: "Call Shira", and it actually calls :-).
Still, good suggestion.