It is really irritating when a problem goes unresolved for years and it involves an expensive Smartphone used daily. That’s the story with The Galaxy Nexus Android phone and Exchange Services. Do a Google search of  ‘android exchange services draining battery’ and you will see complaints going back years on the subject. My personal experience is as follows;

• I have two mobile devices that both use ActiveSync to connect to corporate mail on an Exchange 2010 server. One is an iPad and the other is the Galaxy Nexus.
• The iPad operates flawlessly, no issues whatsoever. My corporate mail syncs perfectly whether on wi-fi or cellular.
• The Galaxy Nexus operated fairly well until the OTA update to 4.2.2. Prior to the update I had several instances where I had to do the “delete the corporate account and recreate it routine” to get the mail to sync, it just stops syncing. Since the update only the first sync works, after that the Exchange Services basically goes into “let’s eat the battery mode” and runs constantly draining the battery to zero in several hours, all while NOT delivering any mail.

I am comfortable with technology, so I’m not afraid of doing the research and working on fixes to solve the problem. I’ve googled the issue extensively and have tried all of the obvious suggestions, up to and including a full factory reset (which is not fun and is particularly not fun when it was for nothing since it does not solve the problem).

I am now to the point where I will not purchase another Android device and I will recommend to anyone asking to avoid Android like the plague.  Google has known about this issue for years, they obviously made it much worse with the 4.2.2 update, and there is no progress at all in any of the forums about a solution, just more and more customer complaints. They don’t deserve my business when they put out a crap product like that.

UPDATE: Check out the Touchdown Mail Client for Android to solve this problem permanently. It’s not free, but it works flawlessly and the battery drain issue goes away.

While trying to get a Android Backup using the the adb tool in the Android SDK on my Samsung Galaxy Nexus I ran into issues so I figured I would document what worked for me so the next person doesn’t have to suffer.

First, you need to install the Android SDK. That part is pretty straight forward, just use the bundle download at the link here http://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html. The only issue I found with this step is that the system tool ‘monitor’ doesn’t actually run on a Windows 7 installation that has a user name with spaces in it (1). That one messed me up big time. The simple workaround is to use the ddms tool in the tools folder. It will warn you that it is deprecated, but just ignore the warning.

Next big obstacle that was not at all obvious to me was that I had to install Samsung USB drivers to get the debug mode working. I found the drivers at the link here Samsung USB Drivers Note that the drivers at this link must be a bit outdated since first time I connected my phone Windows 7 spent 15 minutes going out to the windows update site and downloading updates and applying them.

Final obstacle was to understand how to make it all come together. Here’s the steps I had to take;

1. Start ddms so it is running.
2. Connect your phone via USB. If the device drivers need updating, let them update before going to the next step.
3. Open a command prompt and switch to your sdk folder then the platform-tools folder and test adb to make sure it sees your device. The command below should display your device, if it doesn’t, recheck all your work.

   adb devices

4. Once you know adb sees your device, issue the backup command line as follows:

   adb backup -f Backupfilename.ab -all -share -apk

5. You will see a prompt on the phone to permit the backup. If you enter a password, the backup will be encrytped, if not it will not. Either way, you need to approve the backup on the phone by selecting backup my data.

For a loaded phone, the backup will take some time so be patient and let it run.

(1) Note that Rev 22 of Android SDK Tools fixes this problem with monitor, so go ahead and use monitor instead of the deprecated ddms. May 23, 2013

The Wunderlist Task Manager is available for Windows, Mac, iPad, iPhone and Android devices and they are all synced together via the cloud.

★★ Key Features

● Free ☆ Wunderlist is completely free for every device
● Cloud sync ☆ Your tasks are synced with your free Wunderlist account
● Email reminders ☆ Ensure your tasks never slip your mind
● Mail2Task ☆ Send tasks to Wunderlist from your email inbox
● Organize ☆ Sort your tasks into lists
● Due Dates ☆ Assign deadlines to your tasks
● Focus ☆ View a breakdown of your tasks with our filter views
● Notes ☆ Give your tasks further detail
● Prioritize ☆ Star important tasks
● Personalize ☆ Make Wunderlist your own with our included background wallpapers

It’s a great tool that does exactly what one wants for tasks. Recommended.