I have a DumbPhone... I'm jealous of your SmartPhones!

My "smart" phone (Sprint PPC-6700) was fully charged at 6:02, when I left my truck in the Downtown Disney lot last night. At 8:18, when I took it out of my pocket to check the time, the battery was completely discharged. This is a 2 month old battery, I took no pictures, received no calls, I have roaming and beaming turned off, and all applications were turned off. W. T. F!!!

Sounds like a faulty battery. Try fully charging it again and if it happens again I'd see if there is a known issue with the battery...

Phones that ride the short bus?

The Sprint store people told me the Q battery was operating properly when it only lasted a day. But for me it was only lasting a day when it was just on standby, heaven forbid I actually used it. Instead of the extended battery (no fat phones for me!) I just bought a spare battery here. That's where I got some tips about maximizing battery life and now I can actually use the phone and the battery lasts for two or three days unless I'm doing a lot of web browsing.

But it sounds like you're doing the right stuff. Do you also go to Task Manager and close the functions you already thought you closed? That helps. The only weird thing with my phone is that when I'm at home it keeps trying to search for e-mail or text messages (whichever I've done most recently). The phone lights up for no reason and when I check it's been trying to call the mother ship or something. A few days ago it was trying to find Outlook e-mail and I've never even set that up. It only does that at home. Maybe it wants to be friends with the laptop.

Just to be clear in such an informative thread - Octrotalk handles chat, not gmail.

Bummer - it's been working pretty well for me. It may be a tad more laggy than using my laptop, but still perfectly usable.

Same here! In my neck of the woods, when it starts to get foggy, it's really really bad. I have this fear of breaking down and not being able to call for help. Also, while I'm working, the phone is charging. Everyone wins!

I'm big into the smartphone thing now. I piloted every major provider and nearly every smartphone made at the time. For my purposes, the Palm Treo 755p on sprint worked best. There is no perfect phone yet though. They all have fatal flaws. It's just a matter of running the numbers, being honest about how you really use a phone, and deciding what works best for you based on that.

Even the iPhone, as swanky cool as it is, has some serious flaws that for me would not allow me to consider it. I don't use my phone often as a phone (I hate talking on a phone) so txt messaging, IM support, Slingbox support and high-speed web access were my top priorities.

In order of preference, here were my top 3 fave smartphones:

1. Palm Treo 755p (Sprint)

Plusses:

• Palm OS ease of use, multitude of software and relative stability (compared with Windows)
• Comfortable to hold in the hand
• Solid durable feel
• High-speed internet access anywhere I have a Sprint signal
• Built in IM client
• Slingbox support and software
• Touchscreen
• Screen resolution
• Rubberized coating

Negatives:

• Bulky and heavy-ish
• Palm OS is now ancient (but still works well)
• Crashes on occasion

2. Blackberry 8830 (Cingular)

Positives:

• Sleek, thin design
• Great display
• VoX dialing built in
• Thumbwheel "nipple" close second to touch screen for ease of navigation

Negatives:

• Cingular high-speed data network sucks. No availability at all in South OC and many other locations
• Couldn't get a good signal at my office
• Lack of a touch screen
• Slingbox not available on Blackberry
• No cameraphone

3. T-Mobile Dash

Positives:

• Loved loved loved this phone!
• Relatively stable even though it was windows-based (contrary to all other windows phones I tried)
• Thin pocketable design
• rubberized coating
• good keyboard
• great screen

Negatives

• T-mobile doesn't have any high-speed internet capability NONE and doesn't plan on adding it in the future (deal breaker there)
• lack of a touch screen.

Do you recall the mAh rating of the extended battery you ordered?

I honestly don't know. I went with the cheap-o generic battery off e-bay which doesn't have it listed. I know that the branded one that's available is 1640mAh (the OEM slim battery is 1100mAh), so I'm guessing it's the same or similar.

With the extended battery I'm getting close to 2 full days' worth of battery life. Not stellar, but much much better. If you're willing to pay more I know there are larger ones available (there's a 2100 and a 3200 mAh, maybe even bigger).