[eddieras]

i know there are a few threads on battery life- seems some people are getting phenomenal life (10-12 hours -- one post i read said 25 hours!). still others are having problems - as i am.

i'd really like to figure this out with the help of those getting over 8 hours of normal use.

for example - took my phone off charger at 550am. my son played a game for about 15 minutes. i made two calls - 4 minutes total. i downloaded one app. phone sat unused for just over 2 hours. battery now is at 67% (930am).

MY SETTINGS:
i have screen at 15s time out - auto brightness
wifi on at home (about 40 minutes of the above was at home).
3g only
bluetooth off

i have the following widgets installed - is this too many?
switchpro
fancy widget (set to update on wifi only- every 6 hours)
forecast (set to update every 6 hours)
digital clock
juice defender
smooth calendar
google voice
WHERE voice search
two email accounts - one set to 30 minute check, the other to one hour.
Google Reader - i don't have synchronize checked

do all widgets draw juice? is there something else i can do? i had noled running but uninstalled that this AM. i had sensorly installed - removed that too.

Dropping nearly 30% in less than 4 hours, with two hours of complete inactivity and the rest of the time only minimal activity seems bad to me.

i would appreciate any help/advice / direction. i'm a first time android user (Pre original convert) and i'm loving it - i'd love it more if i can get better battery life.

thank you all once again - i've learned a ton on this forum and appreciate it!
ed

[vertigosrs]

Im using juice defender as well, one thing I set up on it is to turn off 3g/mobile data when connected to wifi. I was afraid I might not get text messages or be able to send them with this set up, but I tested and everything works fine. That might help improve your batt life a little.

[eddieras]

thanks vertigosrs - i do have it set up that way as well

[AndroidOne]

Have you checked your battery useage stats? If not, go to Settings > About phone > Battery use. It will give you a rought idea how the power is being used on your device, and can give you a clue where to look for solutions.

I have a very nice battery life. One thing I did (for many reasons) is to turn off the option to backup the phone to Google servers (Settings > Privacy > Back-up my data). For one, I don't know or have any control about the items syncing or the sync schedule here. For second, I don't feel comfortable providing Google with a copy of all my phone's data not knowing where will it be stored nor having any idea or control on how or who will use/have access to and for what purpose.

[skinneejay]

Not sure what is going on with your phone. It has to be something that's draining the battery. Do you have AIM or facebook to sync more then every 10 mins? Do you have a twitter account? On Friday I unplugged fully charged at 730am and My phone finally died on Saturday morning at 10am. I had placed several phone calls, text messages. downloaded apps. Tweeddeck checks every 15mins facebook checks every 30mins. noLed running, beautiful widge updating every hour.

Hopefully it something your are just missing and gets better.

[eddieras]

thanks guys- i really appreciate your input.

re google sync - i assume if i disable that disables calendar and contacts? i'd prefer not to go that route.

i don't have facebook, AIM or twitter.

present battery status shows the following
Maps 30%
Display 15
cell standby 13
wi-fi 13
android system 13
phone idle 6
juice defender 6
android os 4

not sure why maps us pulling that.

phone's been in my pocket for nearly 90 minutes. i recharged to full (95%) and stuck in pocket - it's now 91% - i haven't used it at all - other than to get the above readings- but 91% is where i'd expect it to be so i'm not concerned about that specific number. - i am curious about that maps number tho.
any idea what may be using mapst?

[KoukiFC3S]

Are you using Google latitude?

[KSmithInNY]

Your browser. If you open the browser, it uses GPS to locate you so your Google searches can be location based. When it grabs your location, it shows as maps under battery usage.

You can disable it through the settings menu in the browser although, its battery usage is negligible and does come in handy when searching on the go.

[eddieras]

Are you using Google latitude?

funny you mention that - i don't use google latitude but it had me signed in - i just signed out and disabled all notifications. i actually went thru every app (nearly 100) and checked all their settings. some didn't have settings but i know query the net - like shopping and coupon ones. they had current coupons so they must be doing some updating! i changed a bunch of settings and actully deleted a few apps. also i changed google voice to NOT sync the inbox- what exactly does that do anyway?

[AndroidOne]

re google sync - i assume if i disable that disables calendar and contacts? i'd prefer not to go that route.

Don't know if you are referring to what I posted or not but if you do... Google sync as it applies to your GMail contacts and calendar is different to Google data back-up, these are two different setting and one has no effect on the other.

Just wanted to clarify that.

[KoukiFC3S]

Inbox sync from Google Voice will give you notifications for new text messages and voicemails from Google voice.

I personally don't use the Google voice app. I set up my Google voice from the website since sprint has the GV integration.

That way I get my texts in the SMS app, and it doesn't use any data.
I believe that less battery is used like that. Another plus is that I can text when my signal is low.

This requires an unlimited SMS plan.

[eddieras]

thanks -- so i can disable google back up and it won't affect my contacts and calendar? what's it back up?

[oxeneers]

I'm getting decent battery life on the device. I use it quite a bit throughout the day, on and off. When the screen is off, I'm working - but use it on my breaks and here and there. Kind of disappointing to only get 12 hours before getting to 30%-ish, which is what I consider "low battery".

[AndroidOne]

thanks -- so i can disable google back up and it won't affect my contacts and calendar? what's it back up?

Back-up is a new function/service introduced with Gingerbread and therefore available on the Nexus. As I understand from my research, it will backup all your program/data/settings to a Google server so if you need to do a reset or move to another Android phone in the future, you can restore all of this on your phone automatically by checking the appropriate setting.

Though the idea is great and the service very helpful (if it works), I have some issues with it in terms of control (when and how often the phone backup) and ownership of the data (where is stored and who may have access to it and for what purposes). AFAIK - and I may be wrong - we as users have no direct access to this data storage or options over what gets back-ed up to Google which by the way, includes passwords and any sensitive data you may have stored on your device.

I have personally decided to turn this off, not to save battery, but rather because I have serious missgivings regarding data security, access and privacy with this service. Until this gets clarified I will continue to opt out of it and do local data backups to my home computer.

[eddieras]

thanks for the info on the back up = appreciate it!

[Richard1864]

Back-up is a new function/service introduced with Gingerbread and therefore available on the Nexus. As I understand from my research, it will backup all your program/data/settings to a Google server so if you need to do a reset or move to another Android phone in the future, you can restore all of this on your phone automatically by checking the appropriate setting.

Though the idea is great and the service very helpful (if it works), I have some issues with it in terms of control (when and how often the phone backup) and ownership of the data (where is stored and who may have access to it and for what purposes). AFAIK - and I may be wrong - we as users have no direct access to this data storage or options over what gets back-ed up to Google which by the way, includes passwords and any sensitive data you may have stored on your device.

I have personally decided to turn this off, not to save battery, but rather because I have serious missgivings regarding data security, access and privacy with this service. Until this gets clarified I will continue to opt out of it and do local data backups to my home computer.

I actually use the backup, and after doing a couple resets to clean up some messy apps I installed, I can verify that it does indeed work. All my apps and settings were restored perfectly each time when I told the phone to do an auto restore after signing back into my Gmail account when the phone restarted after the reset.

As for when the backup is done and how frequently I don't know, but thought you guys would like to know that it does indeed work as advertised.

[AndroidOne]

I actually use the backup, and after doing a couple resets to clean up some messy apps I installed, I can verify that it does indeed work. All my apps and settings were restored perfectly each time when I told the phone to do an auto restore after signing back into my Gmail account when the phone restarted after the reset.

As for when the backup is done and how frequently I don't know, but thought you guys would like to know that it does indeed work as advertised.

Very good to know it works, guess this is similar to the back-up/restore service for WebOS.

Have you gone to your gmail account and see if there is any tab or setting that would allow you access to your backed-up stuff... just curious,

[Richard1864]

Very good to know it works, guess this is similar to the back-up/restore service for WebOS.

Have you gone to your gmail account and see if there is any tab or setting that would allow you access to your backed-up stuff... just curious,

I looked but didn't see anything.

[AndroidOne]

I looked but didn't see anything.

Did some snooping of my own on the Google site and found the developer's page where there is more information regarding the Android cloud backup functionality. It backs up program and data, systems settings, wifi passwords among others. Has no info regarding the backup schedule but I found information where it states if you (the user) op-out from your phone privacy menu, all backup data is erased from the Google server and can no longer be restored.

At least this provides some degree of control about the data, I may give it a try.

For those interested, you can read some more and .

[eddieras]

well, after some good advice here and some additional tweaking i am happy to report i got about 13 hours out of my phone today! thank you to everyone who helped with this- was very frustrating getting 7-8 hours when i was reading about others getting at least 12.

thanks again!

[m3grady2]

well, after some good advice here and some additional tweaking i am happy to report i got about 13 hours out of my phone today! thank you to everyone who helped with this- was very frustrating getting 7-8 hours when i was reading about others getting at least 12.

thanks again!

what changes did you make, and what settings are you using now?

[Richard1864]

My phone took about 10 1/4 hours to drain completely flat where the phone shut itself off.

Just an FYI, was talking with a tech at a Sprint store today about the EVO 3D, comparing it with NS4G. He said biggest differences were battery life as bad or worse than the HTC Thunderbolt, more bloatware than original EVO had on it, only about 1 gig out of 4 gig internal memory left for users to store apps on, comes with Android 2.3.3, will not get 2.3.4 till sometime 2012, still has Qik for video conferencing, Blockbuster, and lots of other crap. I never planned on getting it, but since we are talking about battery life, thought I would mention it here. Also, it has same signal problems as NS4G, but worse, antenna is poorer quality than NS4G - NS4G signal problems due to software bug, same as volume issue. Both due to be fixed with OTA update sometime soon (hinted at couple weeks or so). Tech not sure if HTC will fix the antenna issue before release.

[Deacon#AC]

Hello,

I am a brand new Nexus user. (Just got it yesterday).
And this thread caught my attention. Great information for a new user by the way.
I was wondering about the battery usage.
Mine says that 46% is for Cell Standby. Is this normal.

I'm wanting to make sure that I get the battery "broken in" properly, so to speak.

[eddieras]

what changes did you make, and what settings are you using now?

i uninstalled the following:
noled
sensorly
il meteo
shopper

made the following app changes:
i shut down latitude
fancy widget weather - i unchecked 'use my location'
GO SMS - changed to lite and disconnected FB (don't use it but just in case)
news/weather - auto reset off
smooth calendar - changed to update every hour

screen is at 15s and auto - but it was this setting before too
email - 1 account at 30 minute and one at 1 hour.
BT - i toggle when i need it.
4g haven't used much
wifi at home

i realize the way i did it above i can't pin down the problem but i was so anxious to get a good day out of it i took the shot gun approach. now i'll start tweaking and adding things back to see if i maintain about 12 hours.

hope that helps

[nicolemazz7]

how do i merge multiple contacts in my lg optimus