Battery life not lasting? Your fix is in here

[herbologist]

It's been off the charger since 7:30 DST. I've had 0 phone calls, but I've been texting back and forth all day with a few friends, browsing the web, and the backlight is almost always on because I can't stop playing with it (the phone). I have 1 Exchange account & 1 IMAP account. Between the 2, I've received about 15 emails today (lighter than my work week). It is now 5:08 DST and my battery is at 42%. The stock battery would have been dead hours ago.

I can report back tomorrow night after using it on a workday, when I've had phone call usage from 2-3 hours and receive about 40 emails throughout the day. I'm sure this will decrease the battery life by a few hours.

I will be watching for your feed back, I really need it!

 

[Groucho]

Been monitoring for 48 hours now and have come to the following conclusions which are not earth shaking and do not solve anything but might be useful to some:

Market and Market downloads are battery killers. After hanging at 94% or so for 4 or 5 hours with almost no activity other then a phone call two emails and a couple of texts I couldn't resist heading for the candy store. Five minutes of surfing and one download dropped the battery to 82%.

Started playing with K9 with battery at 82%. After configuring two email accounts, by the way K9 really does push smtp and imap, sending and receiving a dozen or so test emails and talking for about 5 minutes on the phone the number dropped to 74%.

It is pretty clear that Internet activity is a power burner but it was on my Storm 1 as well. The difference is I can get about 10 times the information of the web with the Incredible browser in the same amount of time with RIM's excuse for a browser.

This has probably been said already but bares repeating, my battery stats with the Storm were scary bad the first week I had the phone because i couldn't stop tweeking, playing and adding junk. Once i settled down the Storm did too. Battery life was more than adequate. Let's face it, we are all probably using the Incredible far more right now then we used our prior device. Unless you track it you probably aren't even aware of how much more. As long as I can get through 12 to 14 hours with normal use I'll be a c
happy camper.

 

[TBolt]

Been monitoring for 48 hours now and have come to the following conclusions which are not earth shaking and do not solve anything but might be useful to some:

Market and Market downloads are battery killers. After hanging at 94% or so for 4 or 5 hours with almost no activity other then a phone call two emails and a couple of texts I couldn't resist heading for the candy store. Five minutes of surfing and one download dropped the battery to 82%.

Very interesting, Coach. Are you using Wi-Fi while you surf, by chance? Just VZ 3G? VZ 1x?

 

[markhunsaker]

I have noticed drastic drop in battery life when I browse...especially on 3G.

 

[thevoiceless]

Just a few things that might be worth noting:

A few people have mentioned task killers and all that stuff about Android self-managing everything, but just out of curiosity since this phone has such impressive specs, maybe it's not killing off unused/unneeded processes because they're not using up enough of those ample resources for the phone to say "oh snap, time to close this one" and therefore hanging out in the background using battery power.

Battery technology isn't improving as fast as other stuff, hence the reason we're getting 1 Ghz phones with the same old batteries. Until there's some notable advancement in batteries, I'm guessing the only solution we're going to have is to buy bigger batteries. Also, at least with laptops, I've always heard it was good practice to fully charge and then discharge the battery every so often, or at least when it's brand new, to "calibrate" it or something. I know people will probably say this isn't necessary, but some people have noted an increase in battery life as time goes on, so I doubt it could hurt to try it.
Also, I think I've read that Seidio's batteries for the Eris also work for the Incredible, can anyone verify this?

 

[jshaffer75]

Does anyone know how bad the HTC clock weather widget hurt battery life? Its a good size and check for weather plus the clock. Am I imagining things or is it hurting.

 

[tommy m]

yeah I think when you uncheck it the gmail app slows down.....

 

[rosariorose9]

It is pretty clear that Internet activity is a power burner but it was on my Storm 1 as well. The difference is I can get about 10 times the information of the web with the Incredible browser in the same amount of time with RIM's excuse for a browser.

Boy, ain't THAT the truth! My Storm 1 was so slow and clunky that I gave up using it to access the internet. It's not just the better browser, but the dramatically better processing power (1Ghz on the DI vs 528MHZ for the Storm), for which we pay a price in decreased battery life of the DI, that make it so internet friendly. I'll take an extra battery with me and be happy with the trade off...

 

[sectachrome]

My battery has been killing it today. Going on 11 hours, have 37% left. Have done a decent amount of web surfing, a lot of app downloading, Twittering/Facebooking, gChatting, a tiny bit of video playback, a phone call, took some pictures, some texting, and currently listening to Pandora. This is all WITH the "Always on" option discussed in here checked. Day 3, FYI.

 

[roman08225]

If i turn it OFF, Everything works except POP3 Mail. Its not getting pulled at All. Gmail Works, GPS Works, Weather Works....everything except POP3

 

[howarmat]

pop email works for me still, make sure background service is still working

 

[sum spicy rice]

I really hope they release the extended battery soon.. I'm not talking about the 1750mah one.. I want the 'bigger' one from Verizon.. I don't care if it makes my battery look bulkier.. it sucks having to charge my phone 2 times a day. This is the only downfall with this phone in my opinion.

 

[jshaffer75]

Yea I dropped 14% with 3 texts, 1 email and some idle time. Not too sure this fixed helped.
Brightness is set at about 20-25% as well.

 

[tjubb]

I've dropped 25% in 3 hours of doing nothing. I've tried to tweak all I can with this phone and make sure all the sync options for various programs are set to reasonable times. Hope the VZW extended battery comes out this week. Don't like having to keep the phone tethered all the time to keep it at max power.

 

[threepio]

I just tried the OPs directions and im gonna test it out today.

But honestly guys, i havent been experiencing the battery issues that i have been reading about. I can use the phone normally through out the day texting, emailing, surfing the internet, playing a few games etc. and still have plenty of battery to go.

The other day i had it unplugged from 9am until 1:30am the next day and still had 54% battery left.

 

[GooTz66]

Dont know if its just me but my battery seems to have stabilized a bit. Yesterday i got well over 12 hours with moderate use. I am looking into getting the Seidio Innocell 1750mAh Slim Extended Life Battery too bad Amazon is back ordered.

 

[jshaffer75]

I just tried the OPs directions and im gonna test it out today.

But honestly guys, i havent been experiencing the battery issues that i have been reading about. I can use the phone normally through out the day texting, emailing, surfing the internet, playing a few games etc. and still have plenty of battery to go.

The other day i had it unplugged from 9am until 1:30am the next day and still had 54% battery left.

Thats just crazy talk right there! I wonder if where the phone was built has anything to with battery life. It seems like most of us have battery troubles but there is some who have had good luck.

 

[markhunsaker]

I have sent 10 text messages, got 2 Gmails, 1 7 min phone call, and it's been off the charger for 3 hours...I'm at 86%. Is that good or bad?

 

[alkaline]

this seems to have helped mine quite a bit. i was getting maybe 6 hours. i made this change yesterday and the battery lasted the day. it was just about dead by night but it made it through the day under normal use. i also have the auto brightness off with the birghtness maxed out and changed the screen timeout to 30 seconds. my gmail / facebook still pushes fine.

thanks for the tip!

 

[generous]

I pulled by DI off the charger just now. It was at 100%. I launched this website in the browser, visited this thread, and went back to the homescreen. 95%.

Just for kicks, I just looked down at it while idling. 94%. I have no apps running in the background except for widgets, live wallpaper, and gtalk.