G1 News

As much as I love my G1, I spent an awful lot of time sucking juice by surfing the Intertubes and downloading every single thing I can get my mitts on in the Marketplace (perhaps the paid content will put the brakes on that!).

Well, it’s no surprise that my T-Mobile G1’s battery life suffers terribly as a consequence, so I did some homework to find out whether there were some ways to improve my situation. Aside from easing up on the old downloading, I found quite a few ideas…some more practical than others!

1. Turn off 3G whenever possible.

Wait, what? I got my G1 because it has awesome 3G and lets me surf all over the place in public, without waiting 6 years for the smallest of images to load up. No dice for me, but I guess it is a good idea.

2. Turn off automatic syncing, or just for Calendar or Contacts.

Yeah…see 1.

3. Use power saving/monitoring apps.

Download Toggle Settings from the Market.
Download Power Manager from the Market. Make sure you turn on the monitor.
Download Watts. This will let you monitor the battery life and see how these steps improve G1 life.

More like it! These applications give you a much better idea of how much juice is actually left in your G1, meaning you can save your battery for an emergency phonecall instead of just one more game (which becomes six) of PacMan.

4. Make sure you “drain” the battery 2 to 4 times completely. The battery does not have a memory, but it does need to be drained every few months.
Then recharge it until a few hours after it says that it is full then it will recalibrate itself and the battery will now “know” how much power it can really hold.

True with all mobile devices which need charging, you are supposed to kill off the battery entirely and charge from there, or it begins to falsify how much charge it really has. Anyone who has an iPhone knows what I’m talking about…
5. Switch off Bluetooth
6. Switch off GPS
7. Switch off WiFi
8. Switch off Location
9. Leave Screen Brightness set at between 0% and 25%
10. Set Screen Timeout at 1 or 2 minutes.

Okay okay, I get it! Turn off the extremities and it lasts longer. Just I like the all singing and dancing G1 instead of the hobbled version with the stuff turned off…

11. Some apps kill the battery life. Facebook, MySpace and other applications keep checking parent sites on the internet for data synchronization.

Data syncing is Battery Sucker No.1 as far as the G1 is concerned, so keep your Twitter breakfast choice updates to yourself until you get to work, perhaps?

All in all, some good ideas to get an extra spark out of the G1’s battery!

Sources: A Little More Fun / Locker Gnome

If you were one of those ‘odd’ kids in the playground that was into pulling the wings of flies and dissecting frogs, you are in for a technological treat!

The original HTC Dream Service Manual is available to download here, and is filled with gems like:

1. Remove the tape and disconnect Qwerty key
FPC
2. Disconnect the daughter board FPC connector
3. Unlock the camera connector

Stop. You are breaking your phone. Do not do this. Unless you want to weep openly at the loss of a beautful Android machine.

PDA Street has compiled an awesome guide for how to get a little more out of your T-Mobile G1 beyond making calls and clicking out that clicky slide-out keyboard noise every three seconds!

If is brief, but makes up for that by not being lame.

Fast Apps
Tired of scrolling around to find your favorite applications? Simply tap and hold the Home key to see a pop-up window of your six most recently used apps.

Just Type
When you’re ready to call someone from your Contacts directory, you don’t need to open Contacts first. Just slide open the keyboard and start typing the person’s name. You’ll see matching contacts displayed on the screen.

Be a Smart Shopper
Your G1 could save you lots of money this holiday season. Download the free ShopSavvy app, which lets you scan barcodes with the G1’s camera. The app will then tell you where to find the lowest online price for that item.

Clean Slate
If you want to sell or return your G1, you’ll want to erase all personal data first. Here’s how you do it: With the phone off, hold down the Home button and the power button until you see an exclamation mark on the screen. Open the keyboard and then hit Alt-W.

Keep Your Focus
The G1’s camera has something you rarely see on a cell phone: an autofocus that works like a digital camera’s does. Eliminate blurry shots by holding the camera button halfway down before taking a shot. The camera will focus the image and display a green dot in the upper right corner to let you know it’s ready.

Know the Code
Type *#06# into your phone to view your G1’s unique 13-digit number. Write it down and keep it in a safe place. If your phone is ever lost or stolen, T-Mobile can use that code to track it.

Calling All Contacts
When you want to use voice dialing, simply click and hold the Call button to enter voice dialing mode.

Tiny Text
Do you find Web pages hard to read? Tap the trackball twice to call up a magnifying glass. Select the area you want magnified and then click again to bring it up.

Forward a Text
You can forward an SMS or MMS message simply by tapping and holding on the message while you’re in the conversation screen. A contextual menu will pop up with Forward as one of the options.

Rock to Your Ringer
You can use any stored song as a ringtone with the G1. Open Music, then Songs, and tap and hold your song of choice. A contextual menu will appear; select the Use as Phone Ringtone option.

Save Your Battery
Are you tired of your G1’s battery running out too soon? There are a few things you can do to save energy. First, lower the screen brightness; the screen is the biggest power draw. Next, turn GPS off when you’re not using it, and turn off the synchronization options in the Data Synchronization setting.

Save Your Breath
Is there anyone in your circle that you just don’t want to talk to? Then send that person’s calls directly to voice mail. Select their contact, tap Menu, choose to edit the contact, then choose the option to send calls directly to voice mail.

All very useful tips for use on a daily basis, rather than those ‘if you are at a barbecue and lose one shoe, you could use your G1 to find the other using GPS’-type nonsense.

Thanks to Google’s Android platform for providing this much needed piece of functionality really easily, unlike some (looking at you, iPhone)!

The T-Mobile G1 phone allows you to use any song in your music player as a ringtone.

- Go to the song in your library, hold your finger down on the song you wish to annoy others with in public! After a few seconds a menu will pop up.

- Select the “Use as phone ringtone” option from the menu and this song will be set as your ringtone.

I know, easy as pie!

May I suggest a few gems as ringtones?

The theme from the awesome video game Mirror’s Edge – Still Alive.

‘Videophone‘ from Beyonce’s new album…fierce!

I know, right? It’s the kind of thing that you would expect to know within five minutes of getting a T-Mobile G1, but this is a relatively recent discovery for me!

Think it’s because I’m used to the ‘big button = Home’ iPhone functionality of the iPhone, so I forget that little ‘Menu’ button on the G1 hides so many exciting features!

So using this button, you can set up any image to be behind your home screen, complete with that sexy parallax scrolling that makes things look cool!

Here goes…

- From the Home screen, press the Menu button and select Wallpaper from the menu. You can then select either Pictures or Wallpaper gallery.
- If you select Pictures, it’ll open your picture album. You can then select the picture you want to use as your wallpaper. Once a picture is selected, the cropper will appear. You can use the cropper to select the portion of the picture you want to use. Once you are done cropping, or if you don’t want to crop at all, select Save to set the picture as your wallpaper.

- Wallpaper gallery is a great selection of inbuilt wallpapers for the G1, all as equally appealing as the default watery one! If you select from the menu you’ll get a gallery of picture thumbnails. If you want to see a bigger picture of the thumbnail, highlight the picture. Once you figure out the picture you want, touch it to highlight it and then select Set wallpaper to set this picture as your Home screen wallpaper.

You’re welcome!