Helpful Battery Tips...

[Darth Pooh#CB]

This isn't meant to be the authoritarian thread on battery life... hell, If I am wrong about something I'd prefer someone to correct me!

Things I've done to help battery life are fairly simple and/or free.

Turn down your backlight to ~20-25% range.
I use the app called Profiles (cupcake, BETA) version to control the sounds/data/display. I set my default display to 20% and then all of the profiles will use the default screen display (you could set it so changing the profile gives you different brightness etc., great app you should def give it a whirl and it shows up as an ongoing notification for ease of use).

 

[Darth Pooh#CB]

Get a decent Task Manager!

There are a few out there, but two stand out for me (namely because they both feature Ongoing Notifications for quick access and auto-kill features based on your time internal of choosing).

Advanced Task Manager (free edition is ad supported) and Task Panel X (free version only) are actually good to use in conjunction with each other and have been able to save battery life due to keeping my processor from constantly using up juice. More importantly, it helps with keeping my Hero speedy (ugh, damn you laggy keyboard when you are bogged down!)

You want to be careful in what you choose to kill, ERDude set up a great thread here showing you how to set up Task Panel X. Obviously you don't want to kill off Sense UI (or you'd end up buying a Moment I suppose if you didn't want that) as well as other vital processes that are required to keep the device working.

 

[spatel9114]

I've placed the Wifi, Bluetooth, GPS, and Airplane Mode switches on my home screen and when I'm not using them, I turn them all off. I use Wifi only most of the time, so GPS, Airplane Mode, and Bluetooth are turned off and I get great battery life.
To do this, tap on the little plus next to phone on the bottom of the screen and go to "HTC Widgets" and then "Settings" and select all the ones above and you can place them wherever you want on either 7 screens.

 

[Darth Pooh#CB]

Don't be Widget Happy!

Sure, having Pandora, Music, Weather, Time, Calendar, and other useful stuff at your hand is awesome! But they come at a price, twofold really...

Obviously processor/RAM takes a hit, something gotta keep those things running and refreshed! Therefore, the battery is draining there in terms of keeping those things up to date. Secondly, refreshing those widgets usually require a sync to data. I.E., Pandora needs the web to refresh the data that is getting displayed in the app already, but if you want to change a song you're saying "Keith, that's an easy cause the widget is right there to change it!", well for one I've noticed its actually borked that widget (it's crashed Pandora for me) and secondly, hitting the Pandora Ongoing Notification will bring up the app fairly quickly if you're running a good Task Manager... so using the widget might be "cool" but it doesn't help in the end.

I have Time, Weather and Calendar running as widgets.... everything else is fluff (i.e. Twitter, Facebook, Music). I'd rather open up those apps knowing that the processor and battery life should be used by them.

 

[Darth Pooh#CB]

I've placed the Wifi, Bluetooth, GPS, and Airplane Mode switches on my home screen and when I'm not using them, I turn them all off. I use Wifi only most of the time, so GPS, Airplane Mode, and Bluetooth are turned off and I get great battery life.
To do this, tap on the little plus next to phone on the bottom of the screen and go to "HTC Widgets" and then "Settings" and select all the ones above and you can place them wherever you want on either 7 screens.

My next point, ADD Toggles to one of your home screens!

He said it beautifully and this has helped me by being mindful of whats running and draining my battery. Thanks spatel14!

 

[ERDude]

For now all this holds true. I'm doing a little test on the task killers with HTC, once it's complete and Im given the ok I'll post the results.

Task Killers may be causing some of the problems we're seeing with the Hero. I've already found one.

 

[Darth Pooh#CB]

Turn off GPS !AND! Location Based Services.

I think turning off GPS when not using Sprint Navigation or CoPilot is a no brainer, but I wanted to add it for completeness.

What might not be so obvious is: Menu>Settings>Location>Use Wireless networks & underneath that is Location Setting.

I think Twitter apps and Sprint Powerdeck Homepage uses it. But, I can't think of any good reasons to keep those running all the time.

Turn those both off... Sprint Nav will prompt you to turn things on when you load it up (as well as other needed apps that require it, just make sure to turn them off if it's not automatic).