[here4kids]

i came over from a blackberry and can't believe this phone (htc vivid) has such poor battery power. i have the screen at the very very lowest setting and everything else set to be efficient. i get 10 hours. i am forever finding my battery out of power in the middle of the day.

so... normal for smartphones? do i just need to get used to this (as my daughter says?)

[PAC757]

Just my own experience, my phone came new with 4.0 ICS already loaded on it. Battery life isn't that good, right now I just looked, 4 Hrs 46 min. With one 43 minute phone call, checked 2 email accounts a few times, about 15 minutes online here, that's all, and I'm at 41%.

[PAC757]

Here is a screen shot of my battery life, I don't think this would be considered good battery life.
I don't know if the Picture file uploaded or not

[KurtTX]

Try turning WiFi off. I decided to just not use WiFi. For now, I'll never hit my data limit with the 3Gb plan, so I don't need to worry about saving data by using WiFi.

Kurt

[KurtTX]

PAC757 -

What do the blue lines indicate under your battery levels? I can't figure that out.

Thanks...Kurt

[holz75]

i came from blackberry too, and it took me a while to improve my battery life. i'm usually around 20-25% after 15 hours.... moderate use: texts, few emails, facebook, twitter, instagram, maps.
i'm only using 3 widgets, cut back on my data sync, and not using programs that run in the background besides the necessary ones. one thing you can try is to uncheck "sync internet" under google. that was killing my battery.

[here4kids]

that is the % that item was used to that point. I must admit mine is better, yet I am still disappointed. bb is a smartphone and it's battery lasted two days...and with plenty of internet, calls, texts and wifi. I will upload my battery chart next.

Sent from my HTC PH39100 using Android Central Forums

[here4kids]

i have my screen set to 10% and it is DIM (this is the setting the phone dims to before it goes to sleep). outside i can't see to hit my widget to get it brighter... i have to hit by guess. i need to be on wifi since i have the $15 200 mb data plan. i can only manage that with wifi. my son has the atrix 2 and his lasts much longer. his friend has the droid razr and he says he gets 7 hours but does not have it fine tuned to get better battery life.

Sent from my HTC PH39100 using Android Central Forums

[KirbyKat]

I just got the HTC Vivid (about 1 week ago) and I am new to Android. I came from the BB world where I could go for a couple of days on a charge. I love the Vivid and Android. I have been getting about 6 -7 hours before I hit the 40% mark on the battery with moderate usage - emails, FB, light texting. I have the weather widget running as well.

I recently downloaded an app called Juice Defender. I tried out the free version and seemed to give me a longer run on the battery. Nothing scientific other than it felt like my urge to plug in the charger was less frequent. I went ahead and bought it, the paid version (Ultimate), gives you a lot of customization features. One that I like is that the app will turn off Wifi when I am not connected. It also knows (via Location) whenI am in range to a "trained" Wifi AP and then the app will turn the Wifi back on and connect to it - such as when I come back home. I have not done an analysis to how much battery I am saving, because I just bought the app. There are a lot of features to the app so I have been playing around with it to get set for my "habits".

Finally, given the newness of the device for me, I have been playing around with it quite a bit. I suspect that is also draining the battery faster. My assumption is that as the newness wears off, I will start to see better battery life as well....

[holz75]

also in regards to battery life, i've disabled a bunch of programs that i don't use. some of these just run in the background and kill the battery, especially the stupid stocks app:

att hot spots
att navigator
city id
com.htc.footprints.widget3d
footprints
friend stream
friend stream widget
google+
movie editor
news
news & weather
news widget
stocks
stocks widget
talk
task widget
tasks
uninstall_linkedin_fsplugin
videos
watch
watch widget
wi-fi hotspot

i've also just gone through and uninstalled apps too:

att code scanner
att family map
att live tv
kindle
mog mobile music
myatt
yp local search

[n8ter#AC]

Usually 12+ hours, but I have chargers everywhere and I am in the habit of charging my phone everywhere I can whenever I can (from actually having phones with absolutely terrible battery life, like my windows phone which would go from 100% to 30% in 3 hours at the rink, so I always had to keep it plugged in there). This phone is much better than that, as well as my Vibrant which was good for 10 hours on heavy use, easily.

If I'm in the car, on the couch, on the ice at the rink (there are plugs at the boards), on the Amtrak (ditto), or at my computer it just seems irresponsible not to have my phone plugged in. The only time it isn't plugged in is when I'm on the move and I'm using it. There are also those things you can buy to plug into your phone to bump charge them - I might try one of those, but like I said I tend to manage my battery well and it never really inconveniences me because those are all common sense choices IMO.

2 Caveats, though:

1. I barely talk on the phone, like... really barely. Some months I'm under 50 minutes used, and I'm almost always below 100 (that's adding anytime with Nighttime/weekend).

2. I'm not in an LTE, area, but LTE is a perk (and good for future proofing for when it comes) for me since I consistently get fantastic speeds on AT&T's HSPA+ network (up to 10-30x faster than T-Mobile here depending on time of day - TMo's speeds on a full 3G signal range from 150kbps to just over 1mbps, AT&T pulls 10mpbs HSPA+ with 3/5 bars).

The Stocks app doesn't kill battery, unless you tell it to. It's in Sync. You set the Sync Frequency. Tell it to Manually Sync only. A lot of those apps you disabled aren't killing battery because:

1. Just cause something runs doesnt mean it is using CPU,
2. Most of those Stock Apps have settings that allow you to stop them from synching in the background
3. Some of them are PUSH updated (like Talk) and don't pole, anyways. PUSH uses negligible battery.

In some cases you're trading one app for something that is no different. For example if you have the Google Reader app installed, you're better off just using News (which Syncs with Reader) and uninstalling Google Reader. Same for stuff like EverNote. You can just use the Notes app unless you have some specific requirements specific to the 1st party app. I do agree with *most* of the bloatware, though (esp crap like AT&T Navigator and City ID). I have installed or Disabled most of it. Most stock apps I have kept, since they have almost no impact on the performance of the device or the battery life, anyways, and offer some value. If I disable FriendStream then it means I have to install another app like TweetDeck or Seesmic to post to both Twitter and Facebook at the same time (don't like connecting them since some stuff I post to Twitter, I don't want on Facebook :P). So in that case I'm disabling a stock app simply to install a third party app that is barely superior - or even inferior - in user experience.

[holz75]

take it for what you want... i offered my opinion. for ME, my battery life and disk space is drastically better now. i'm not uninstalling or disabling and then downloading another 3rd party app to do the same thing. i'm simply minimizing processes and apps, period. every user experience is different.

[here4kids]

update... wifi was my biggest problem. I found I had "best performance" checked for wifi. took that off and my battery life doubled. also got a widget to turn the wifi off at night. while sleeping I only need my phone for the kids' emergency texts out calls. btw, wifi performance identical with that best box unchecked.

Sent from my HTC PH39100 using Android Central Forums

[n8ter#AC]

take it for what you want... i offered my opinion. for ME, my battery life and disk space is drastically better now. i'm not uninstalling or disabling and then downloading another 3rd party app to do the same thing. i'm simply minimizing processes and apps, period. every user experience is different.

Of course, and that's the beauty of it.

The only thing I took issue with was your assumption that you save disk space or RAM from disabling even half of those built in apps:

com.htc.footprints.widget3d
footprints
friend stream
friend stream widget
movie editor
news
news & weather
news widget
stocks
stocks widget
task widget
tasks
uninstall_linkedin_fsplugin
videos
watch
watch widget
wi-fi hotspot

All of those I listed (again) above pretty much never take up resources or battery unless you tell them to (I checked last night, restarted my phone and then checked again), and disabling them doesn't save app storage space since they are still there (that's why even after you "Uninstall them" they still show up as Updates in Play Store - pretty annoying if you ask me). You can simply turn off the Auto-Sync for most of them (or simply don't set up accounts in them) and move on - that and don't put the Widgets on your home screen.

Nothing to do with user experiences, they simply have no impact on your phone whatsoever outside of making your app/widget list bigger unless you want them to.

That being said, anyone is free to disable or uninstall anything they want, even if just to clean up their app/widget list which can get quite long with those on the phone. I didn't even know a phone would function properly with Google Talk disabled O.o

[holz75]

mine's still chugging along today... 62% after almost 8 and a half hours.

[here4kids]

here is mine...

Sent from my HTC PH39100 using Android Central Forums

[KurtTX]

Why not...here's mine!

Kurt

[Minga19]

7 to 8 hours on average I guess. Got the phone a little more than two weeks ago so it might change.
Sent from my HTC PH39100 using Android Central Forums

[apoc53]

Those peaks look suspiciously like recharges

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[KurtTX]

Those peaks look suspiciously like recharges

If that was directed at me, yes those are recharges. It shows that I have not reset the power panel in over 16 days and had 3 charges during that time...a couple of them didn't go down to near 20% left, but I just felt might as well charge. My phone is not on all the time, only evenings and weekends. I would guess the way I use the phone, I get 4-5 days on a charge.

Kurt

[KurtTX]

Anyone heard of "wakelock", a situation where an app doesn't actually let the phone go to sleep even though you've put the phone into sleep or standby mode? I've asked before, but have been wondering about the special screen you can get to when you tap on the graph of your battery levels. At the bottom of that screen are several traces, two of them are "Awake" and "Screen on". I've been wondering what that is telling me.

I was recently reading about a situation where if the Awake and Screen On traces aren't very similar, such as the Awake screen shows much more time "on" than the Screen On trace shows, that's a situation called "wakelock". That's happening to me it seems. So, my battery is being used more heavily even though I have the phone on standby.

I went to Settings > Apps and checked a few of them. Some have a setting which indicates that it has permission to use the battery even while in sleep mode. I can't seem to find anything to turn off that permission. I can "force stop" the app, but then it indicates it might "misbehave". There is another button that says clear the cache...this might let me push out the app after I've used it.

Or better, maybe I can just reboot the phone a little more often.

Anybody have some ideas on this?

Kurt

[here4kids]

Kurt, do u mean the background data usage?

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[KurtTX]

H4K -

"Background data usage"? Not really sure about that...I guess I'm not as concerned about data use against my limit as I am about things running the background that are draining my battery. I thought that putting the phone into standby mode, that apps wouldn't run. I realize that the phone has to be ready to alert when there's a call or message. But why do other apps have to run? For example, one of the apps I downloaded is Shazam that listens to music and figures out who it is. I've had fun with it, but it's not something I run very often. I checked and a System Tools permission setting is "Allows an application to prevent the phone from going to sleep." That's what it says. Now is that for the period in which I'm using the app, like trying to figure out what music is playing or is that all the time, even when I've moved to another location and it's been several hours later?

Kurt

[apoc53]

I've got an app to track my mobile data, and it has two operating modes: one is more passive, but less accurate; the other is more accurate, but drains the battery much faster. The two settings dictate how often the app is watching for data usage; the more accurate MUST be active while the phone stands by, since other apps may be using background data.

I've seen many apps that have similar setting options, and they often warn of the impact to your battery life to use those settings.

Also, ya gotta figure: if something is using data while the phone is on standby, then SOMETHING isn't standing by...

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[bzmotoninja83]

I use my phone pretty frequently at home on WiFi and at work to search for whatever or to look up a part a custome may need that I can't get. After my full day at work I still have around 50%. Unplugged at 6am good to go still at 5pm or so. The bb gets better battery life because of less intrusive apps keeping the phone active, and the much smaller screen.

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