October 17, 2014

Phone Phollies

The main function of my phone (HTC Droid DNA) is to solve the "I've fallen and I can't get up!" problem. (And the "I've had another stroke" problem.) I'm proud to say that since my stroke I haven't lost my balance enough to fall, not even once. But I've come close a couple of times, and it's a genuine fear, especially as I'm gradually losing control over my left leg. So I keep my phone with me as I move around the apartment, to make sure that when something bad happens, then if I'm seriously hurt I can call for help. It's always within arm's reach. (Even in bed -- my stroke happened while I was asleep and another one could do the same.)

The only apps on the phone I use are the timer app (when I'm cooking) and Accuweather, neither of which are particularly power hungry. Accuweather is only supposed to phone home when I invoke it, for instance, and when it does it doesn't actually say much. The phone has a healthy battery, and I'm used to having it go from 100% charged to about 90% in one day.

Starting a couple of weeks ago, it began to drop a lot more than that. The phone is nearly two years old and maybe the battery is losing the ability to hold a charge? Well, that wouldn't change so radically so fast. So I looked at the power consumption tracking info frames, and it showed my wifi being a big power consumer, and wifi running when the phone was off. Oh, dear; have I become infected with an Android virus? Am I now part of a botnet?

Yesterday I found out the real answer: the phone popped up and said, "I've downloaded a patch; wanna install it?" I let it, so now I'm up to date, and now the power consumption is back to what I'm used to.

This is the fourth patch since I got the phone, and the other three times it asked permission before downloading, which happened immediately and only took about 20 minutes. (Then it asked permission to install, which took maybe ten more minutes.) I'm not sure why it did the download surreptitiously this time.

So now I'm running Android 4.4.2 and the latest HTC stuff, maybe. I'm grateful that Verizon is still putting out patches for my phone because I read somewhere that Verizon doesn't sell HTC phones any more. Kind of a shame.

UPDATE: I just looked at Verizon's web page, and I'm wrong. They are still selling HTC phones. What I read was that all "Droid" phones are now Motorola, and I overinterpreted that. (And anyway, Motorola Mobility, the phone group, now belongs to Google.)

So what distinguishes a "Droid" from any other kind of phone?

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Daily Life at 07:19 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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1 As best I can tell, "Droid" is Verizon's marketing.
HTC had a couple of bad years, with a couple of notorious flops, like their Facebook phone, and I guess they didn't have many phones that were available in the US.  Last year they came out with the One, which was supposed to be pretty good, and this year, they have a new version, the One M8 (the original One was renamed the One M7) which is also supposed to be quite good.

Posted by: RickC at October 17, 2014 09:54 PM (0a7VZ)

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