Bluetooth sucks battery juice...

[dutchman71]

I've owned just about evey top of the line smart phone over the last 6 or 7 years. 5 Windows mobile phones, the Palm Pre etc. While I realize bluetooth requires a bit of power I have never seen anything like I saw on my Evo. I love this phone! I'm used to less then stellar battery performance on smart phones.

But when I saw at the end of the day that 33% of my Evo battery use at the end of the day came from having Bluetooth turned on I almost fell off of the couch. I use my bluetooth primarily with the built in system in my Nissan. Works great, but to use 33% for two 20 minute rides daily... I guess I will try to remember to manually turn it on while I'm in the car.

Maybe they can come up with an app that turns on Bluetooth when I start moving at a fast rate of pace... GPS is just as bad to have on so that wouldn't work. Maybe the Accelerometer?

Anyway, not a battery complaint thread, just surprised how much power the bluetooth uses on this phone compared to my previous smart phones.

 

[f1nzup]

Savvy Shopper was sucking 10% of my battery, even though I never use the application, so I uninstalled it. Android Systems is using 40% of my battery. Can I assume that is because of my websurfing? That seems kind of high. Lol. I have been running XM lately.

 

[meyerweb#CB]

Not exactly what you're looking for, but this looks interesting:

BTCall - Bluetooth auto on/off - Android app on AppBrain

The drawback appears that you'd have to initiate all calls from the phone, not the car. And probably answer calls on the phone, too, but that's not clear to me.

This might be useful if you always plug your phone into a car charger when you're in the car:

http://www.appbrain.com/app/com.perdeas.bluetoothpowerprofile

 

[djtarique]

Everything sucks the battery power down to make this device non useable. I love the evo but hate the battery.there lucky they got me on this two year contract cause this iphone 4 is looking tempting.

 

[toiz]

I leave Bluetooth on all the time and I get excellent battery life. I do not believe the "Battery Use" percentages are correct. Mine says Bluetooth is about 30% of my battery use, but I've run 4 hour control tests and my battery drain is virtually the same regardless of whether Bluetooth is on or off.

 

[dutchman71]

That might be true but the last 2 days with Bluetooth off have been much better battery wise. I will keep testing.

 

[bigvic13]

toiz: for your control tests did you have the bluetooth actually connected to a device or just turned on? I think BT sucks a good amount of power when its actually paired with something, whereas when idly sitting there its not actively used.

 

[dutchman71]

bigvic: In my case it is only connected for 2 20 minute periods. It is idle the other 12 hours. That would defeat your theory I think.

 

[toiz]

My tests were conducted when Bluetooth was NOT paired to another device. I wanted to know if it was necessary to turn it off when not in use. I have concluded that I do not need to turn it off and have had both Bluetooth and GPS always enabled. When either of these are actually used, however, they do have a noticeable impact on battery life.