Improving battery life of the Galaxy S is also something we as the users and Samsung as the manufacturer have to deal with. A major booboo on Samsungs part is the connectivity issue to Kies and MTP errors. Hopefully the Android 2.2 Froyo update will solve a good many issues but we’ll have to wait and see since Samsung is holding out on us.
Some of the below is worth thinking about regardless of the phone or the OS, and none of it is vastly expensive even when you do have to pay to get something. I personally use opera mini for most of my on line activity on this phone. Opera has one advantage over the other browsers available.
When you make a page request, you do it through a special opera server which compresses your data before sending it on to you. In this way you get a sight speed improvement, because there is less data to download and you also get the benefit of less data, saving you your data limit and maybe money.
Other than this, it functions as well as chrome lite which comes as the native browser on the phone. Having said this, neither chrome lite nor opera run pages fully. Links are sometimes shaky, especially on complex sites such as games on Facebook. Videos are not there at all. There are few mobile browsers that support video playing and full web loading for Android but Skyfire does.
When I want a page to load fully with all links (e.g. Stats internal to a hub) and all videos (i.e. Youtube) I use Skyfire. There are a lot of things wrong with Skyfire, its buggy as hell, sometimes loading slowly, sometimes not at all. I find it clunky and nowhere near as smooth as opera but it does close when it's told to and it does show video, albeit in a pop out window. It also optimizes your video for the phone.
It's not a perfect solution but until Froyo comes out with Flash (reputed to be slow and a battery eater!), if you want video it may be one of your only options. At first I wasn't too bothered about this. I thought I'd just be careful new phone and all, no throwing it on the table, only to watch it skitter off the other side and drop onto the floor. No casually shoving it into a pocket with keys and change.
Then I dropped it the first time. Then a second time. The third time the back came off and the battery fell out. Then a friend dropped his and the screen smashed. At that point I started to look for a protective case. After some debate and on recommendation, I went for an igloo rubber gel case.
I bought mine off Amazon for a couple of quid. Not a lot for what it protects! When I got it I found a very good product, close fitting, easy to apply rubberized case about half a mm thick, that covers the back and sides and doesn't add much bulk. It doesn't cover the screen but a pack of screen protectors ordered at the same time (or even as a package on some Amazon sellers) solved the issue. Key points are that it covers the power key and volume rocker but with a raised bump so you can locate them.
Everything else is open. Screen protectors are a little difficult to apply but using a credit card (not the supplied card) and a soft cloth it was no problem. 3000mAh Battery with extended thickness cover from Amazon UK! Everybody who owns a smartphone with a big capacitive touchscreen knows the pain of short battery life. There are a few things you can do to preserve it.
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