DNBT (Do Not Buy This) Series Introduction

I like the Amazon system of buyer feedback. It focuses on the product rather than the seller. Buyer's connection with the seller is a short lived one starting at the order and ending at the receipt. Knowing the quality of the seller beforehand is great but not at the cost of knowing about the product.

In sites like ebay we leave a 80 character feedback for the seller which are usually at one end of a happiness spectrum. Most of the comments are like "You are too good" "Pleasant transaction" "Good Product" blah blah blah. On the other end negative comments are more informative. Usually negative ones specifically says the problem the buyer had with the overall transaction like product not according to description, poor choice of shipping or damaged product.

Why this kind of feedback is inefficient and insufficient?

Because its the product we have a long relation with. Most of the sites has a huge overlap of products. Same product is sold by lots of sellers. But there is no common board to place reviews, whether they are seller reviews on specific products or product reviews. So we are left with no choice but to trust the seller and hope for a quality product.

I will try to explain this further.If a seller has 10 electronic products and you are buying a memory card from him. Before buying you will want to know experience of people buying that specific memory card from him along with the performance and usability of the product. Why? because descriptions cannot match real life performance. 

Ebay sellers are giving loads of info on most of their products which are usually copied from other websites or product pages. Often there are clues of the origins in the text itself. For Eg. Certain mobile seller copies all his description from GSMArena site leaving a trace of copy in all pages in the Memory field. They memory field always has a buy memory link in his descriptions. I am not saying this is wrong as every seller making his own descriptions will be ridiculous. But there will be certain amount of partiality because seller will always be a SELLer.it

How do you get the info you want from the above scenario of seller reviews?. Like finding a needle in a haystack, its difficult to locate a seller review on a specific product. And one thing I forgot to emphasize. A feedback once left is final. You, seller or ebay can't change it. Even deletion can be done only by ebay.

reviews

Why Amazon system is good?

Amazon system allows user to give a rating and review specific products they purchase. The reviews can be updated further with additional info they obtained during continued use of the product. Its good because we would have a clear picture of the product its performance and problems to be expected.

So why this series?

This series is dedicated to those products which floods the markets with cheap price and a pathetic performance even their cheap prices can't stand. I had a fair share of these useless products. So I am dedicating some space to give info to people before they make a purchase. If even one person restrain from purchasing a product, I am satisfied.

Comments will be allowed to these reviews but they will be moderated. Anonymous commenting will not be allowed. Please use the comments to express your views on the product.

Charging Samsung Galaxy Ace

Default charge indicator in samsung galaxy ace can be used as an example for words like inaccurate and unhelpful. Its highly inaccurate in showing both the current charging status and the progress.

Charging the phone

First time charging - In previous generation batteries, a first time continuous charging of 6-8 hours were needed to attain full battery capacity. But in new generation batteries such as the one used in Samsung Galaxy Ace, you need to charge only up to the full charge point. No need to keep it in supply for longer time.
This is a screenshot from the galaxy ace phone manual that clearly states that there is no need to keep it for a longer period

There are two methods for charging samsung galaxy ace. One is via the AC adapter and other is via USB cable. Charging via AC adapter is faster of the two methods. for details check out my review of samsung galaxy ace.

Native battery indicator dose not show actual battery level in numbers it just show a graphic indicator. This indicator is difficult to interpret so I installed battery widget from geekygouup which is just a 55kb download (Read Review of Battery widget)

Suppose you are charging from 10%, the charging indicator will rise quickly to 53 or 54 within 5 minutes ie, 10%per minute. If you think you have half the capacity by this time you are wrong. The battery will quickly go back to 10% if you start using the phone at that point. The first time I stumbled on this, the battery went back to 15% with 10 minutes of voice call.

From 54% the ascend is slow until it reaches 88% which is a unique level for this phone as the indicator will directly jump to 100% from there.

Indicator in samsung galaxy ace stays at '100% and charging' for a very long time and then only shows up the little blue notification of charging full. There is a long 30+minutes wait for this to happen.

This is the usual charging graph of samsung galaxy ace. The image is basically a stitch of output from a battery graph app. You can see the quick rise to 60 % and the quick jump from 88 to 100%. The phone showed fully charged status about 40 minutes later which I couldn't include in the graph due to space constraints. 

Descend in the battery level is much more decent. The charge decreased almost according to the usage. But the descent below 20% was a little bit slower. This might be because of the aggressive power management kicking in.

At 15% charge, the battery low warning will be shown. When the charge is below 10% the screen become very dim to push the death of the battery as far as possible.


If you know 2 things you wont have much problems with battery level indicator of samsung galaxy ace.

1. Indicator at the half line does not always indicate a half filled battery.
2. Battery isn't full until a full charge indicator appears in the notification.

Also install battery widget to know the actual battery level values.

Update : The power management improved a little bit with the 2.3.4 update giving longer period with full charge but the charging graph still follows its previous path.

Battery widget for android user review

A perfect definition for battery widget for android would be "A simple battery indicator applet with additional power control options".

The battery widget for android is created by 'geekyouup' and is available for free in the android market. As of writing this, the app is just 55.94kb in size.

Functions

Besides being a good battery level indicator on the home screen occupying only a 1 x 1 space, the app provide additional buttons to control wifi, bluetooth and GPS. The picture below shows the options available for the app shown when you tap on the battery widget on home screen.

Of the above buttons only wifi is a toggle button(wifi on/off button) others are links to their settings menu. Battery button provides link to see which all app used the battery from the point of disconnection from the power source. GPS button opens the location and security settings and BlueTooth button named as BT open up the wireless and network settings.

Battery Use

This app uses negligible battery. There was no apparent difference in battery life with and without battery widget.

Popularity

This is one of the most popular apps in Android market. By the time I am writing this the app has received 99,820 ratings and is at more than 4.5 stars rating.

Compatibility

This app is compatible with almost all android phones including Samsung Galaxy S, galaxy S II, HTC incredible, EVO 3D, galaxy ace etc.