Traveling With EVO (Bad Battery Life out of Home Market)

[Epsom_D2]

So after having my Evo since launch day I can say I'm extremely pleased with it as a phone, when in my home market. When I travel out of my home area and go somewhere else where the Sprint coverage is equal to if not better than at home I find myself with a dead battery after about 6 hours. I'm accustomed to 15+ hours of battery life with heavy use in my home market (wifi, 6 email accounts checking every 5 minutes, Google chat on, 2hrs+ talk/day, 40+ emails sent/day, many texts, web browsing, etc.).

I'm not sure where the problem could be here, but it is quite annoying and makes the phone all but unusable when traveling. Anyone have any ideas on how I can fix this problem or has anyone else seen a similar problem.

Thanks
S-P

 

[Kedar]

Hmm, maybe where you're going has subpar Sprint coverage? You say it's equal, but... it seems otherwise.
Do you stay on 3g?? 1x? Roaming?

But yeah, heavy usage like that... I'm not surprised you last about 6 hours.
You might want to pick up that $10 (2 batteries + battery charger) thing on e-bay.



Edit: Also, did you charge overnight?
Cause if you tested this just once, it could be the tricle effect.

 

[duke duke]

Not sure how to fix this one other than adjusting various battery saving settings when you travel (GPS, bluetooth, brightness, etc.) . Seems it's not specific to the EVO. I experienced the exact same when I had a Palm Pre on Sprint.

 

[jmyadagod]

Yea i am having the same issues. I am in orlando florida now but I am from Pennslyvania (a 4g city) and i am struggling to get signal and my battery is dieing so fast i am used to 4g and now im doing speed test and only getting 10 Kb/s really blows.

 

[daving313]

Are PRL updates nationwide or just for your current area when updating?

 

[Epsom_D2]

As I stated before the coverage where I've been traveling is as good 4 bars or better 5 bars than at my home office and the typical use really doesn't change. The whole thing is just strange as this never used to be a problem with my Blackberry, but I guess I would also get two days of life with it so I never noticed the problem.

This is with a full overnight charge off of the wall charger, the same as I do when at home. Note this has happened in multiple cities I have traveled to recently, Salt Lake and Charlotte. I have seen battery life of 28 hours once under normal use at home so I'm not complaining just trying to figure out what changes when I travel.

jmyadagod that's strange as I am in FL and I've never had a poor signal when traveling in the Orlando area. You must have found one of the only holes in Sprint's service there.

 

[Gelst]

So after having my Evo since launch day I can say I'm extremely pleased with it as a phone, when in my home market. When I travel out of my home area and go somewhere else where the Sprint coverage is equal to if not better than at home I find myself with a dead battery after about 6 hours. I'm accustomed to 15+ hours of battery life with heavy use in my home market (wifi, 6 email accounts checking every 5 minutes, Google chat on, 2hrs+ talk/day, 40+ emails sent/day, many texts, web browsing, etc.).

I'm not sure where the problem could be here, but it is quite annoying and makes the phone all but unusable when traveling. Anyone have any ideas on how I can fix this problem or has anyone else seen a similar problem.

Thanks
S-P

The solution is to charge your phone while on the road. It's really that simple. Traveling on the road the phone is constanly searching for a signal and of course it's going to drain your battery. Either keep the phone charged or bring a spare battery with you on your trips. The beauty of the EVO is that you can swap out batterys unlike other phones.



EDIT: Also your BB does not have all the bells and whistles the EVO does. The BB is designed specifically for business applications and yes it does have amazing battery life. The EVO's battery is definately not as great as BB due to it being a smartphone God !

 

[oasis9389]

15+ hours with that type of use is really good. if i have on a chat GPS and use the web/email a lot i get 6-8 hours..
when traveling (aka away from a charger for some time) i shut off most features. all chats, gps, wifi, 4g, turn off updating.. and i get 12-15.

 

[Kedar]

Okay that also could be some trouble.
Charging full overnight = bad for the Evo.

This is because once the Evo hits 100%, it starts dropping, even while plugged in. It's a known battery bug and the main reason people have battery problems on the forums.

There's a chance that your battery could have been at 90% when you started off the day, which... isn't that much but every little bit counts.

It is odd though... There shouldn't be THAT much difference in just using wifi instead of 3g.
I guess the best you can do is shut off 4g/gps when not using it.


And never compare other smartphones to blackberries in terms of battery, lol.
A blackberry is what it is because it can do heavy networking and push emails and texts and lots of other crap while still keeping battery life at like a couple days for many people.

 

[its_miller_time]

This still doesn't explain why, like the OP, when I had my BB, my battery life remained the same when travelling and got to my destination with native Sprint service.

 

[Kedar]

This still doesn't explain why, like the OP, when I had my BB, my battery life remained the same when travelling and got to my destination with native Sprint service.

Cause the blackberry, most likely, handles network/data much better than the Evo.

Though I really don't know. Your best bet is to make sure you don't charge overnight as I explained above... and check your sync settings... pulling data a lot from 3g can be a battery hog.

 

[its_miller_time]

I guess really, waht it comes down to, after reading the OP's post is this.

If I live in Charlotte, NC with great Sprint Service, turn phone off, hope on plane to say, Orlando, FL with great Sprint service, and then turn phone on. My phone should not die quicker in Orlando jsut because I am out of my "home" market...

 

[daving313]

Okay that also could be some trouble.
Charging full overnight = bad for the Evo.

This is because once the Evo hits 100%, it starts dropping, even while plugged in. It's a known battery bug and the main reason people have battery problems on the forums.

Doesn't this maintain proper battery health? I didn't think it was necessarily good for a cell phone battery to be stuck at 100%? Don't they like to be the in the 70-80's?

 

[Epsom_D2]

The solution is to charge your phone while on the road. It's really that simple. Traveling on the road the phone is constanly for a signal and of course it's going to drain your battery.



EDIT: Also your BB is not touchscreen and probably did not have all the bells and whistles the EVO does. The BB is designed specifiaclly for business applications and yes it does have amazing battery life. The EVO's is definately not as great as BB due to it being a smartphone God !

I completely understand that while on the road it would be searching for signal or hopping from tower to tower and therefore draining the battery. I guess I used the term, "on the road" incorrectly. I should have said while sitting in an office out of my home market where the signal was stable.

 

[Epsom_D2]

I guess really, waht it comes down to, after reading the OP's post is this.

If I live in Charlotte, NC with great Sprint Service, turn phone off, hope on plane to say, Orlando, FL with great Sprint service, and then turn phone on. My phone should not die quicker in Orlando jsut because I am out of my "home" market...

Thank you for putting it very neatly!

S-P

 

[meyerweb#CB]

I agree, this makes little sense. Are you sure your strong signal is Sprint, and not roaming?

 

[Robbie317]

So after having my Evo since launch day I can say I'm extremely pleased with it as a phone, when in my home market. When I travel out of my home area and go somewhere else where the Sprint coverage is equal to if not better than at home I find myself with a dead battery after about 6 hours. I'm accustomed to 15+ hours of battery life with heavy use in my home market (wifi, 6 email accounts checking every 5 minutes, Google chat on, 2hrs+ talk/day, 40+ emails sent/day, many texts, web browsing, etc.).

I'm not sure where the problem could be here, but it is quite annoying and makes the phone all but unusable when traveling. Anyone have any ideas on how I can fix this problem or has anyone else seen a similar problem.

Thanks
S-P

It has to be the area your traveling in and going in and out of roaming.. I have had my EVO since launch day and I travel for a living... I travel all over the states of Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama, Parts of Northern Mississippi, western Virginia and western North and South Carolina all the way to Atlanta Georgia, plus parts of southern Ohio and Indiana..... I average about 16 hours a day EASY on a single charge... I use the phone as my primary internet, e-mail and phone/texting source during the day and use my laptop at night when in the hotel.

Just very odd that once you get out of your local home area battery drains like that.... Heck even if you look at their coverage map most of Kentucky is a roaming area and I still have not had a problem up there... Searching for a new tower or being on "ROAM" can really eat up battery as the phone is looking for a signal... WOW.. I don't know what to tell you....