Unsually Short Battery Life - I think I am doing something wrong...

Bmilano3161

Well-known member
Aug 8, 2010
124
1
0
Visit site
I own a new HTC Evo and battery has never lasted longer than maybe 3-4 hours before it is totally dead

WiFi is not turned on and I have the display screen turning off automatically after 2 minutes

I also have the screen brightness on auto

Any idea why this is and what I can do to increase battery life past 3 hours?

One last item..

I plug it into my laptop to charge it but it doesn't charge - why?
 

Robbie317

Well-known member
Jun 7, 2010
2,752
12
0
Visit site
I own a new HTC Evo and battery has never lasted longer than maybe 3-4 hours before it is totally dead

WiFi is not turned on and I have the display screen turning off automatically after 2 minutes

I also have the screen brightness on auto

Any idea why this is and what I can do to increase battery life past 3 hours?

One last item..

I plug it into my laptop to charge it but it doesn't charge - why?

I would go to the App Market and download spare parts... Once installed check your "Partial Wake" usage... My EVO ran like a champ out the box and then all of a sudden I couldn't go 6 hours.. Even if I didn't touch or use it after 4 - 6 hours it was dead.... Spare Parts will give you a better idea of exactly what is eating up your battery....

Another option is to do a factory reset... Spare parts identified a rouge program in Android that was keeping my phone awake but I couldn't do a thing to stop it .. No task killer nothing helped so I ended up doing a factory reset and it fixed it...

Good luck.....
 

bjordan

Well-known member
Jul 21, 2010
211
9
0
Visit site
I agree with Robbie. I'll also post what I posted in another forum regarding battery life and tracking down issues (very similar to what Robbie wrote)

-------------------

You may want to turn your screen brightness down. I keep my Evo at 50% screen brightness and it looks fine to me.

One thing to check is to make sure your phone is sleeping. Go to "Settings > About Phone > Battery". You'll see "Up Time" and "Awake Time" at the bottom of the screen. If your Up Time = Awake Time your phone is not sleeping.

My current Up Time is "312 hours and 33 minutes". My Awake Time is "86 hours". So my phone is asleep around 73% of the time.

Some apps will cause 100% awake time and that can be part of your battery problems.

To track down what apps are causing your phone to stay awake (if any are) download Battery History (BatteryHistory - Android app on AppBrain)

It displays information your phone is already tracking. It's basically just the battery part of Spare Parts. Using Battery History you can view "Partial wake usage" and it'll display which applications are causing your phone to stay awake.

That's a good place to start.
 

PedroTheGoat

Well-known member
Jun 11, 2010
237
8
0
Visit site
Also make sure that your Evo isn't constantly searching fir 4g. I've had my phone drain quick because of that.

And like others have said, if all else fails then just do a hard reset.
 

Robbie317

Well-known member
Jun 7, 2010
2,752
12
0
Visit site
turn off s h i t

Only thing I have turned off is 4G, screen brightness is at the middle setting. Email and facebook set to hourly update, weather two hour update and I average 16 hours a day. Battery life was worse when I kept checking it. Once I left it alone and just went on with my day it got better. Only when I went from 16 hours to 6 did I start watching it again.
 

Gekko

Banned
May 15, 2010
5,263
123
0
Visit site
i get 11+ hours with no hardship -

1. 4G, WIFI, GPS, BT, Hotspot all set at OFF with widgets. turn ON only as needed.
2. Brightness set to very low (underneath checkmark - extreme left). this is plenty bright for me.
3. No Live Wallpaper. not sure of this makes a difference but i have my own graphic anyway.
4. No Data intensive constant data hungry widgets/apps constantly running. i wiped News and Stocks and Sprint Zone. uncheck them for sync. i will get my data from the browser fresh as needed. i have no updating widgets other than 2 weather cities with the nice big beautiful HTC Clock/Weather default widget i keep with auto refresh at 1 hour. i have 2 GMail PUSH accounts that i set up and are always on.
5. Sign out of everything when done - GTalk, Qik, FB, etc. Everything! i don' use this stuff anyway. as noted before - let GTalk run in the background for PUSH Gmail but always sign out and uncheck auto sign you in.
6. Vibrate is ON for Calls and Texts. Vibrate is OFF for emails. all Haptic Feedback - Keyboard, Screen, etc. is OFF.
7. i DO NOT use a task killer or kill tasks with the Manage Applications Panel.
 

roothog

Well-known member
Jul 16, 2010
123
2
0
Visit site
Repeating my posts from the sticky thread:

Turn 4g off.
Turn wifi on (if you have an access point available).
Set wifi sleep mode to never.
Turn gtalk auto-signin off.
Turn data roaming off.
Turn always-on mobile data off.
Set network mode to CDMA.
Turn off stock sync.
Turn off news sync.
Don't use facebook/friendstream/etc widgets.

I get 2-3 days on battery.
 

project.in.process

Well-known member
May 18, 2010
1,210
155
0
Visit site
power cycle your phone.

based on your subject---safe to assume it's new to you?

completely charge it--completely drain it
repeat at least 4 times.

this is the same for most any new phones.
the phone has to become accustomed to what the charge level of the battery actually indicates in terms of how long it can stay powered/left on.
 

AnnDroid

Well-known member
May 19, 2010
879
11
18
Visit site
I got my best day of battery using these suggestions. 12 hours+ and I ran podcasts via bluetooth for 4 hours!