Shockingly surprised: ATK impact
I've been reading these forums for a while leading up to & since migrating to the incredible on opening day. My battery life has been marginal at best as I've tried the various suggestions in this thread and others on how to improve battery life. I've gotten through a full workday without a supplemental charge but I limited my "normal" use to make it. I'm almost always near a computer, so access to power isn't normally a problem (IF I remember my micro usb cord...).
On this past Tuesday, I was in a centeral room of the hospital where I work, which is place I get zero Verizon signal. I was there the entire day relying WiFi to stay connected. I HAD to charge in the afternoon to make it through the workday with enough of a charge so I could cycle home & be able to use CardioTrainer to track that ride home.
Yesterday morning, I installed Advanced Task Killer just to see what sort of impact it would have as I was in that same room again, all day. The impact was unbelievable. Where I would've had only 30'ish percent battery life previously, I had 85 percent left. My battery didn't drop lower than 70 percent until just before I left for home 10 hours after I took my Inc off the charger when I left for work that morning. I haven't even charged it yet & I still have 30 percent left.
I've read the warning threads & articles that said to let Android manage the apps & services itself & how task killers aren't helpful or even make battery life worse...
...I'll just say that wasn't my experience. For me, ATK more than tripled my battery life. I've got a lot of apps loaded...and running, apparently...so ATK has helped me manage the processes that have been devouring my battery. I had ATK ignore several apps so that I still received emails/google voice and other alerts & messages. I'll need to try & figure out what app or apps are the power hungry offenders. But for now, I'll say it's great to see my Inc finally last as long as it should.