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+100 to that.

I did a factory reset on my phone (GNex). No apps except Whatsapp installed. All other previously installed apps were junked. Battery performance was better or thats what i felt but at the same time my whatsapp chatting was lower. Yesterday i was constantly on whatsapp and the battery came crashing down.

Remove whatsapp and you can be assured of a better battery life. Reason being that continuous usage of whatsapp keeps the screen alive which consumes the most battery.

I think it may not be whatsapp but the fact that its using 3G which may be the culprit. If you are not using whatsapp, may be then 3G has some way of curtailing on power. But when whatsapp is on, you are continually transacting. And that may be the reason.

i use to get SOT for around 4 hours easily on 4.3. But since updating to 4.4 i dont get more than 3 hours.
Whatsapp isn't the culprit. Its the use of 3g. Also make sure location is on off as it consumes a lot of battery.

Post the reset, i have kept Location Settings as Off. I had even tried with and without 3G for nearly 2 weeks. The drain with 3G as compared to 2G is marginally. Its more due to Whatsapp but given that almost everyone is on Whatsapp you cant get rid of it.:D

I totally agree. I was just thinking aloud. I too run whatsapp. But I toggle 3G periodically. So the over all battery life is pretty much in sync with what we see with others apps. (24 hours approx). Though I run whatsapp but I am not that regular on it. But the app runs in the background all the time.

My Samsung Galaxy Grand Duos of 9 months was stolen last week from my jeans pocket in a crowded bus in Bangalore.

Modus Operandi - The person standing in front of you acts as if he will get down. But he doesn't. So you panic and try to push your way through the door. That's the moment when your phone is flicked.
2 seconds of negligence and I realised that I lost it. :confused:

Steps Taken:

1. Called Vodafone. Blocked all Outgoing facilities (including 2G).
2. Went to Police Station and was presented with two options:

a) Lodge FIR - If phone is found in whatever state, it will sent to police custody and a case would be lodged in the court of that state/city. You need to appoint a lawyer to fight your case and get your phone back, after providing all legal documents. Expected expense - 10k.

b) Lodge a Missing Complaint - You need to submit an application to the SI of the Police Station that your phone was in the pocket when you boarded the bus. After getting down from the bus, you realised that the phone was not in the pocket and it was missing. You cannot use the word "Stolen" here. Along with this application, you need to provide a photocopy of the bill and the IMEI number. The IMEI number would be shared with all the mobile operators of the state (not other states). If the phone is found to be used with some operator, it can be traced and found. Chances / History states as 50-50% chances of recovery.

I decided to go with Option B. Since I purchased the Grand at 18k, about 9 months back, spending 10k + Misc expenses would fetch me another new Grand. The condition of the recovered mobile would be unknown too.

3. Sent an email to WhatsApp, to De-activate my account. Default deactivation is for 45 days, within which if account is not re-activated, it would be deleted.

4. Changed the password for GMail, Facebook and Team-BHP. Set up 2 step authentication for GMail (Google products). It would send a verification code to your registered number each time you login to Google. Set the number to my wife's phone number.

5. Went to Vodafone store on the next working day, with a photocopy of my id proof (PAN Card). Got a duplicate SIM free of cost. Services activated after 3 hours.

6. Sent another email to WhatsApp to re-activate account. Done immediately.

My phone was neither pattern locked or numeric locked. It was a simple swipe.:Frustrati

What I lost in my old phone ?

1. 16GB Class 10 Micro SD Card (approx 1000INR).
2. Contacts (I had not saved on SIM, but on Phone) - Partially retrieved by a public post on Facebook.
3. My kid's memories of 1st walking. Pics and Videos of him walking for the first time, with support. I had the data backed up last on 25th Jan. I lost the phone on 8th Feb. So all the pictures and videos taken during this period were lost. A few of them recovered since I had sent them to my wife via WhatsApp. So it was found on her phone, but low resolution.

What Next ?

- I am back to my 3 year old and humble Nokia C7-00 running on Symbian Series 60 OS.
- Thankfully Nokia now supports WhatsApp, atleast I am feeling somewhat okayish. Rest of the apps are all junk, when compared to Android.
- I was planning to upgrade my wife's mobile from Samsung Galaxy Ace to Note 3. Now, that is on hold too.
- I am not immediately looking at buying another phone, atleast for 6 months.
- My next phone would be a Samsung Grand or a Sony Xperia C. My budget is 15k +/- 1k.
- No Grand 2 or Nexus or anything. Unwantedly expensive and out of my budget. I am a standard user of FB, GMail, WhatsApp and Team-BHP apps. I don't play games. But yes, I like clicking pictures with the mobile cam. So Grand fits all the checks.
- Install Android Device Manager and other tracking apps on my next device. If there is a repeat I'll make no stones unturned to track the phone and thrash the culprit.

This post is just for reading and helping others incase of lost/stolen scenario. And I am writing it with much pain and despair. :(

How/where can I source the OEM back plate (battery cover) for an S3? I'm not fond of cases, and this thing is flimsy and prone to scratching. I'd love to get a couple of spares, if easily available. Online options for OEM ones are few, and very expensive (a couple of sites listed it at 2499/- per piece).

Where can I get these, if possible at all?

Soumyajit
Why did you not just wipe/block the phone through your Samsung account? Had you not activated your Samsung account? With this, the phone would get bricked and would be of no use to the thief!

Good point ..

Not necessaily in this case but many times people are so much absorbed by the "bloatware" jibes on tech propaganda sites that they don't activate and use the useful features for which they have paid the money.

I think you should always keep the contacts on the cloud and ikeep it in sync with the phone. That way changing phones is quite easy.

And if you are running office mail on your phone, then even better. Because many office mail apps enforce encryption of your phone and on top have a PIN requirement too.

Apart from all this you should also use the Google remote wipe.

Google also provide "Android Device Administrator" facility to remotely reset/wipe your phone from your Google Accounts. It has to be activated on your phone. First thing I did on my Grand :). Optionally, it also syncs your phone book, calendar, app settings, photos etc. You can restore these data back when you sign in to Google accounts from new android phone.

-BJ

You can easily export all your android phone contacts to your gmail account. It is very useful in a scenario like yours. I suggest henceforth please export your phone contacts regularly to your gmail account.

If in case you need to know the steps, pls PM.

Cheers

Why not consider the MotoG? Great specs in all of 14k. Plus given the current rush, you would obviously not get it immediately.

EDIT:

If the thief throws away the SIM as soon as he gets the phone and puts in a one without an active data connection, will these programs still work? Also I guess to be really effective (tracing etc) these would need the location services to be always ON?

Agree fully.

MotoG chomps all the Mediatek chipset based phones in benchmarks as well as fairly decent real life usage.

Its awesomeunles you like holding a phone you cannot hold on to (<5" is my golden rule where it becomes uncomfortable!)

Soumyajit, my BIL went through a similar situation with his Galaxy Y duos, he had locked the phone using Samsung. The phone was sold by a drunkard to another for 500 at a wineshop and when he started using it, the phone froze and we got a message with from his number. We contacted the guy and got the phone back without any damage. It did take about 3 weeks between the phone being lost and us getting it back.
In the meanwhile he got a Lenovo A850 and is very satisfied.