Discuss Tips to Maximize Battery Life Here!

[meyerweb#CB]

Today was probably my first day of "typical" use, when I didn't spend a ton of time playing with the phone. I went 16 1/2 hours before I got the charge warning at 15% battery.

I was on 3G all day. Turned on WiFi a couple of times to look for a public hot spot, but found none so turned WiFi off again.

Half a dozen brief phone calls, a few texts, half a dozen calendar reminders, some modest web browsing (maybe 45 minutes to an hour total), including some speed tests which probably resulted in downloading 10 MB or more of data.

I have a live wallpaper set, no task killer, and I've made no effort to force close any of the apps that keep starting automatically.

I have "always on mobile data" ON. I have Gmail syncing contacts, emails and calendar in real time, and got a couple of dozen messages today. I've got HTC email accessing Exchange Active Sync with syncing "as items arrive," and probably got 60-70 emails today. I also have weather set to sync hourly, and to update my location in the background (Weather Bug).

I have made the change in the phone debugging settings to ensure CDMA Auto PRL is set. I don't use Facebook or any of the other "social" apps, so they're all set not to sync.

Given everything this phone does, and the frequent data use, I'm satisfied with this performance. Rarely will I have to go 16 hours (or even 12 hours) without access to a car charger, AC charger or USB port.

I'm sure some people really are having battery life issues, and I don't know what to tell them, but I've done almost nothing specific to save battery life, and I'm coming close to the performance of my old Palm Treo, which did significantly less.

 

[xorbe]

As far as I can tell, the "problem" isn't always-on mobile data. It's when you run a 3rd party network app with it enabled, then it keeps the phone awake. Disabling always-on "cures" the battery issue, but then poll/push quit, and your network app (im client) disconnects -- which some people don't seem to notice, as the default email app syncs on open, and IM clients tend to reconnect quickly when opened. Then you see the threads about email failing to sync -- these are the people that disabled always-on mobile data.

I was hoping to have a mobile IM client, but apparently that's a 5 hour battery-killer activity.

 

[diplomat2387]

When I go into settings and check the battery usage. It says my camera used 94% and like 5hrs. It says the same thing when I check in spare parts. I don't think I ever used my camera that long. Could that be what's killing my battery?

 

[jason 4]

When I go into settings and check the battery usage. It says my camera used 94% and like 5hrs. It says the same thing when I check in spare parts. I don't think I ever used my camera that long. Could that be what's killing my battery?

Im having the same problem, but with maps. I killed it in task killer but it is still somehow consuming my battery. Anyone have any ideas?

 

[Charlevo]

Android System process using 15 percent

I followed the instructions provided in this. I haven't waited to see how much time i will get out of the battery.

Up till now the battery life has been horrible, to the point of wanting to return the phone.

8 hours of charging would maybe last 8 hours, and that was doing NOTHING with the phone. I would periodically check the app killer and find that sprint navigation keeps opening up, WHY? I'm not launching the app, why does this app keep opening up? Not to mention the other other apps that just randomly decide to start running.

Anyway after running thru this check list I checked my battery percentage used and find that the Android process is still using 15 percent, whereas in the article it shows closer to 3 percent or so.

Any ideas? It's using 15 percent with no apps running, i have my app killer set to be aggressive closing every half hour.

 

[xorbe]

Open app "Sprint Zone" -> Settings, and uncheck pretty much everything.

The 1500mAh lithium battery should fully charge from 0% to 100% with a 1000mA charger in one hour and a half (not 8 hours, that's impossible or your charger is 200mA ...)

For apps like Camera or Maps that get left running (any app which keep the phone awake) -- don't press Home to quit, as that leaves them running in the background. Press Menu -> Exit, or Back button.

My phone says Android System 9%, and the battery life is doing quite well at the moment (5% drain for a bit over 1 hour). Probably 9% Android System because I have 3 email accounts polling pretty often.

Even though you killed the Camera app, it probably keeps the history that Camera used a lot of battery until the next power cycle.

 

[palanilopez12]

Open app "Sprint Zone" -> Settings, and uncheck pretty much everything.

The 1500mAh lithium battery should fully charge from 0% to 100% with a 1000mA charger in one hour and a half (not 8 hours, that's impossible or your charger is 200mA ...)

For apps like Camera or Maps that get left running (any app which keep the phone awake) -- don't press Home to quit, as that leaves them running in the background. Press Menu -> Exit, or Back button.

My phone says Android System 9%, and the battery life is doing quite well at the moment (5% drain for a bit over 1 hour). Probably 9% Android System because I have 3 email accounts polling pretty often.

Even though you killed the Camera app, it probably keeps the history that Camera used a lot of battery until the next power cycle.

So im guessing you have not done a hard reset, rooted, or the HTC suggestion? There is no way that I could do all of that with my phone and have it last 6 hours let alone 12...I really just think that there are good batteries out there and some of us with bad batteries...i guarantee you that if we ran my phone and your phone on the same settings doing the same tasks mine would be destroyed

I took mine off the charger around 7:30 in the morning...had to charge it at 10, an hour before lunch, charged it when i got back at noon till it was fully charged...then had to plug it back in later on that night to charge again...not because it was in the yellow but because it was in the red...I'm really on the verge of calling sprint regarding this and seeing if I could get a new phone or at least a new battery...I've already spent $200 on this phone and to have to spend another $40 for a battery is really absurd to me especially considering some people's battery life such as yours

 

[RayStinkle]

Pressing home button to send maps to background the maps does not use any battery. It will just sit there idle not using any resources whatsoever.

 

[xorbe]

@plopez12 - Uh, I haven't done a hard reset, but it is rooted via Unrevoked ... why do those matter now I'm curious? What's the "HTC suggestion"?? I don't have WiFi or 4G enabled. I have GPS and Always-On-Mobile-Data enabled. I'm running Launcher Pro instead of Sense UI, and Beautiful Widgets Small Home instead of HTC Clock/Weather.

BTW, I take back the max charging time of 1.5 hours -- I have no idea what the phone actually pumps into the battery -- I was thinking about 1000mA on a fancy stand-alone lithium charger.

When it's in the "red", what's the actual battery voltage reported?

 

[map246]

Okay...what am i doing wrong?

My cell standby is at 36%, Phone idle is at 33% and android system is at 19%. (as far as battery usage)

I have tried every tip that i have run across on the "tips for increasing battery life" section and still only get a MAXIMUM of 6hours on a charge. I have wifi turned off, gps turned off, screen brightness set to medium, etc.

The only app that i am running that updates is WeatherBug (other than GMail).

What am i doing wrong?

 

[RayStinkle]

Okay...what am i doing wrong?

My cell standby is at 36%, Phone idle is at 33% and android system is at 19%. (as far as battery usage)

I have tried every tip that i have run across on the "tips for increasing battery life" section and still only get a MAXIMUM of 6hours on a charge. I have wifi turned off, gps turned off, screen brightness set to medium, etc.

The only app that i am running that updates is WeatherBug (other than GMail).

What am i doing wrong?

I have heard bad things about weather bug, that it doesn't let your phone sleep. 6 hours is just bad, something is not right.

 

[toiz]

I really struggled with battery life for the first week with my EVO. Finally I wiped my phone and systematically setup new functions testing the impact to battery life of each. Right now I'm on 18 hours with 58% battery remaining.

I've created a blog post on how I did it at the following link.

Life with Sprint's HTC EVO: Guide to Managing Your EVO Battery: Intro

It's a bit long, but if you're as frustrated as I was (I was ready to send my phone back!) this should help. Hope you find it helpful.

 

[kcpowercat]

Well I couldn't leave good enough alone...I was getting 15 hours consistently but I am heading to LVNV in the AM and I heard how much better everybody was reporting battery life post hard-reset so I did it last night but I had customized so much I didn't want to redo it so I bought mybackuppro app to back everything up. About 2am everything seemed to be back, got up this morning, not much different battery-wise, did some additional apps scene customizations and left the office at 5pm fully charged....by 7pm, I was 50% battery with 0% sleep according to spare parts...tried to reboot, battery pull, uninstall my last apps, nothing was working....so hard reset again and manually re-adding all my stuff (got mybackuppro refund) and not adding all apps back....

So not sure what the issue was between the restore from mybackuppro, new apps including sportsline, or what but word of warning from my experience, hard reset isn't the right move unless you put the time back into it to manually reconfig your stuff.

 

[Eazy123]

I noticed my battery was draining quite a bit faster than usual today, so I ran the System Panel app and noticed that one of the things using the most CPU was Android Market. I found that hitting Home to get out of Market doesn't work and that it still runs in the background and in my case was taking up 15-16% CPU (not sure why, but I did have two apps waiting to be updated). So I entered Market and hit back, which apparently is how you quit out of Market because it didn't show up at all in System Panel anymore after exiting with Back.

If this is wrong please let me know, but I got out of Market a few times using both Home and Back and every time, Back successfully killed the Market from processes running.

 

[xorbe]

Yeah I've had an app or two do that. I've taken to restarting the phone each morning. After 3-4 days up-time, certain operations become strangely sluggish.

 

[richcracker#AC]

so are people believing me about the hard reset yet??? i'm telling you it's an htc issue. at some point they will have to address it. remember this post.

 

[soldierblue]

I squeezed 37 hours out of this last charge. From 100% to when it kept bugging me to charge it. Farly normal usage, maybe just a little light. No wi-fi, 3G only, 4G around here is pretty useless unless you climb up the WiMax tower. Facebook (HTC Sense) set to sync once a day and weather set to refresh every hour, nothing else set to sync. I'd like more out of it, but I'd have to get drastic.

 

[Borgie]

ok something is not right for me... had 100% last night before bed. Got up this morning and this is what I found. Seems bad to me to run 33% off the battery in 8 hours of nothing. Gtalk off, exchange push off, gps off, 4g off, etc... even have the overclock widget and the cpu set to almost nothing when the screen is off.

it seemed things had gotten better for awhile but this seems really off

 

[meyerweb#CB]

This has been posted in several other threads, but there are so many dealing with battery life it's hard to keep track. If you want to figure out what's using battery, download and install the System Panel app. Then search these forums for the discussion(s) about the software.

It will show you what apps are actually running, and the resources they're using. Without a tool like this, everything is just speculation.

 

[Cory Streater]

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