More Thunderbolt battery wows

[CCVirginia]

Experts,
I am a new Android & Thunderbolt user (have had an ATT iPhone). I understood that some "power management" may be required to get decent batter life, but even with management I am only getting about 6 hours OF LITE USE & STANDBY. This will not cut it! Perhaps some of the experts can suggest what I am doing wrong, some of the details are below. one thing that stands out is the excessive power required by Calendar - which I used for, perhaps, 2 minutes. I suspect this is due to some sync - perhaps with exchange.

Battery Remaining: 30% after about 6 hours, almost no usage.

Setup:
Network - limited to 3g with ?LTE on/off? , Bluetooth off, WIFi on, gmail sync off.
All running applications stopped with "Advanced Task Killer" in the morning
Sync - set to 1 hour, includes 3 POP mail accounts and 1 exchange account, news, facebook, weather

What it says I have used power for today:
Calendar - 45% !! WHY !!
Android System - 34%
Mail - 6%
Display - 6%
Call standby - 4%
Phone idle - 3%
WiFi - 2%

 

[EvolutionGSR]

Most people are saying that task killers hurt the battery problem more than help it. How long have you had the phone?

 

[CCVirginia]

I have had the phone since last Friday - so I can return it for one more week. I can try getting rid of "advanced task killer", but I would be surprised if that was the problem. I also have the norton utility.

 

[RetiredJedi]

Check the sticky at the top about battery issues and tips. There are about 50 different discussions about the battery and they all say and ask the same. The tips in the sticky are great and work really well. I can use my phone throughout the day at work and get home with 65% left, with stock battery.

 

[zog1977]

how is your display only using 6%?

 

[CCVirginia]

I read the sticky and have done most of those things, including making the display so dark it is hard to read. I have not, as yet, sacrificed any small animals or done incantations - that is the next step.

As far as the display only being 6%, that is because I used it very little today - I really tried to stay off of it as I was not on the road and wanted the best possible case.

Other days the display has been in the 30% range.

It seems like, for a phone in my pocket, 79% usage by "the system" and calendar - or 719 mah (1300mah*.7*.79) is a LOT and indicates SOMETHING WRONG.

 

[mclarryjr]

Your calendar usage should not be higher then a couple of percent, try clearing cache and data in your calendar. settings>applications>manage applications>calendar then clear everything and force close. You should be able to leave your calendar sync on without having it drain your battery. And like posted above any task killer will only drain your battery faster when killing apps because the OS will just end up restarting those apps. Most of them are running in the background and will not drain your battery. Let us know if clearing everything in your calendar helps. I use system panel which may help you with finding out what applications are running down your battery check it out in the market.

 

[roxy surf]

wow, get rid of task killer and force close that calendar

 

[nate44]

Well with that kind of attitude and approach you will get nowhere close to solving your problems.

First like mclarryjr said, uninstall your task killers. They're not needed in Froyo.

Second, what applications have you installed, and what specifically have you done to your phone to try and improve battery life?

 

[Forgetful]

-Uninstall task killer. Now.
-Clear all data and cashes for calender in "manage applications"
-Try disabling calender sync if the above doesn't work.
- Do a reboot. Your phone has something stuck to have usage %s like that.

 

[CCVirginia]

Hmmm, I read the stickies/posting, took the suggestions and have tried to watch what I ran and turned off things I was not using. I tried to post a polite and informative issue. Sorry my attitude and approach is not sufficent, perhaps I am not qualified to own a TB!

On another note - the mail applicaiton crashes frequently but then restarts.

As far as my applications and actions that I remember:

Set up my mail accounts (3 pop. 1 exchange)
Changed the sync options to one hr and only synced what I needed.
Dimmed the display
Loaded Advanced Task Killer, StatsOf & Norton (now removed)
Loaded astro, CNBC, CNN, Weather Channel. ContactsPlus, DirectTV, DroidForum, eWalletViewer, HowardForms, Kindle, LTE On/Off, Movies, StreetAuthority
Set up visual voice mail (which sounds bad, but have not used today)
Set up Hotspot (but have not used today)
Yesterday - changed to only 3g (I am in a 4g area)
I have turned off bluetooth and wifi when not in use.
I have now cleared calendar data - we shall see.

 

[dmarlow83]

^^^^ Kill the task killer, get rid of it, they really have no purpose other than sucking additional battery life.

I don't know if anyone else has noticed this, but I have found that Launcher Pro gives me considerably better battery life than stock sense, and I don't know if it's due to widgets, but I never had that calendar as that high of usage, hell I can't even recall it EVER showing up on the usage meter...

There's obviously a bug with your calendar I've NEVER had a single app take that much juice from my phone, and yea you must really have your screen low to only be using 6% of the battery, mines normally the biggest juice sucker. I'm wondering if some how your task killer is continually force closing some part of calendar system which is making it constantly restart and reload it self?

Restart, check all your info, make sure it's syncing properly, not really sure what else to say, but it's not normal in anyway.

 

[nate44]

Hmmm, I read the stickies/posting, took the suggestions and have tried to watch what I ran and turned off things I was not using. I tried to post a polite and informative issue. Sorry my attitude and approach is not sufficent, perhaps I am not qualified to own a TB!

Not at all. I just have a soft spot for small animals.

Have you done the blockbuster fix? Open and update the app, and then go to menu- settings- disable movie updates

And you got rid of Norton correct? Unless you had a windows phone I wouldn't recommend it. Don't open email attachments from Nigeria, and you'll be fine.

I would also perform a battery pull to make sure you start fresh, and reboot the phone at least once a week from here on out. There is a 'bump charging' procedure in the sticky thread that will help with maximizing battery life as well. It does get better over time so you'll have to be patient with it.

If you followed all of the tips and tweaks from the sticky threads then I really have no other advice to give. There will be an OTA update soon from Verizon that will address many fixes, and battery life issues. As I can attest to that being rooted, and have been using the updated radio for a couple of days now.

 

[Bigdaddy1207]

I don't know why everyone has bad battery life, I get around 15+ of usage and standby, and this is moderate usage. This is on 3g. I have this app called green power and it seems to do an awesome job, it turns off and on date whenever I unlock the screen, it automatically connects to wifi if there is a known network, it also bass night mode that shuts off data for however long at night I want. I have used the phone all days today, normal usage and I am stil at 35% at midnight and I unplugged it at 830 this morning. Also I took off the task killer cause it uses less battery without it.

 

[DC Damien]

Just as a comparison: I also bought mine last Friday. Now getting 15 hours total. Just under 3 hours usage. 87% of usage is display and phone. Ended tonight with several youtube videos. Mainly wanted to watch/hear using the kickstand. Nice! 3 hours usage is average for me. I'm not sure how it will stand up when I'm out of the office for travel and will need exchange email and phone during the day for work :-\ I have great 4G coverage but toggle mobile, wireless, gps and bluetooth off while I'm in the office or not actively on email or the internet. Not sure how much that helps. Go to VZ if yours isn't a lot better soon.

 

[anon(5316299)]

Hmmm, I read the stickies/posting, took the suggestions and have tried to watch what I ran and turned off things I was not using. I tried to post a polite and informative issue. Sorry my attitude and approach is not sufficent, perhaps I am not qualified to own a TB!

On another note - the mail applicaiton crashes frequently but then restarts.

As far as my applications and actions that I remember:

Set up my mail accounts (3 pop. 1 exchange)
Changed the sync options to one hr and only synced what I needed.
Dimmed the display
Loaded Advanced Task Killer, StatsOf & Norton (now removed)
Loaded astro, CNBC, CNN, Weather Channel. ContactsPlus, DirectTV, DroidForum, eWalletViewer, HowardForms, Kindle, LTE On/Off, Movies, StreetAuthority
Set up visual voice mail (which sounds bad, but have not used today)
Set up Hotspot (but have not used today)
Yesterday - changed to only 3g (I am in a 4g area)
I have turned off bluetooth and wifi when not in use.
I have now cleared calendar data - we shall see.

I also have high calendar usage. Part of the issue is what's classified as "calendar". Go take a look in spare parts...it's not just your calendar, it's much of what goes in and out of your device - facebook, twitter, contacts sync, and much more. So, calendar sync being high is not a problem, by itself.

 

[ShaggyKids]

You're sooooooo much more ambitious than me. I give you and anyone else who's done this kind of thing a TON of credit for going to all this work. I took the lazy girl's way out and ordered an extended battery. It should arrive today. I only hope I can live with the bulk and fugliness. I was just going to get the slim one but from what I read I could only expect an extra hour or two of use with that one.

 

[CCVirginia]

So, the conclusion is - the exchange ActiveSync program is the problem. I could not seem to fix it so I did the reset thing - this also gave me a fresh start ofter days of fussing with options. It was still taking a long time to sync (I thought it was still stuck). Let it work overnight and it did, at last, complete a sync. So now Calendar is not eating the batter, that is now the job of the display. I will let you know how it goes after a couple of days. I have no idea why ActiveSync was stuck.:-\