Hello all,
Finally, at the second attempt, my membership is approved at this site! This is THE thread I had my eyes on, since I have bought a Micromax A70 a few days back, and I wanted to share a few points regarding this phone with you all. This is my first Android, so I'm not a power user yet -- I haven't rooted it as well.
I'll try to sum up the good and bad of this phone, although most have covered this already:
Pros
+ I bought this at Rs 6.4k (with a 5% ebay DC) - at this price, it's value is simply unbeatable - no other Android comes even close IMHO
+ There is absolutely ZERO lag while using normal apps on this phone. Only places where you would find lags are heavy duty games (and I mean really heavy duty ones such as 3D racing games and so on - even games like Fruit Slice work fine for me)
+ The screen is an absolute gem, so is the capacitive touch
+ Call quality is as good as (or even better than?) my previous phone - Nokia 5130 ExpressMusic
+ 5MP cam is decent
Cons
- Wifi signal is a bit weak, however, both at office and at home, the phone always gets the signal (hence I've had no issues with it)
- Comes with a really ugly screenguard which hides how good the screen is. Make sure you rip that off!
- Doubtful about Gingerbread update (although igyaan's video review definitively says it is possible)
- I find it hard to grip the phone, seems very slippery to me. Has almost fallen out of my hand once. Wish it had a rubberized back.
Overall, I'm very happy with the purchase. Now, on to the real reason for my update:
Battery life issues
Now, I know many folks here have seen disastrous battery life for this phone recently on this thread. Very recently, I have seen the same, and I want to know if you guys are facing the same issue: when I go to "Battery Usage", there is this "Dialer" app that consumes a LOT of cpu unnecessarily. This happens after every call, or anything that uses phone/contacts/dialer screens.
This thread
Issue 17383 - android - Dialer stuck in partial wakelock - Android - An Open Handset Alliance Project - Google Project Hosting contains the bug and discussions related to it. It's there on Froyo AND GB, but Google's not fixed it yet.
I'm certain this has been the reason for my poor battery life recently (max 1 day with very moderate use). I downloaded this app called "Fast Reboot" and am manually restarting all processes after every call (to kill Dialer as well).
Let me know if you guys have some info regarding this issue.
~Raj