My Evo Battery Experience

[Edge767]

Yes, another battery post.

I will be succinct.

I have found that I have better battery life if:

1. Disabled Talk from starting itself.
2. Charging nightly with the wall-charger vs computer (even with the powered USB hub).
3. Actively managing WiFi vs Mobile wireless (turn off Mobile wireless at home, turn off WiFi when I leave home and turn on Mobile wireless, etc).

These three things have made my battery last over 18 hours and still be in the 40% range. Yes, 18 hours. I'm certain I could have gone the night without charging, but I can't quite test that yet. Perhaps this weekend.

I also don't have a HUGE number of apps polling all the time, but I have a few add-ons like Gowalla and Foursquare and I let Friendstream do it's thing (as well as the rest of the OS).

As always, your mileage may vary, but this is what I did, and I'm getting GREAT battery life out of mine.

 

[akarol]

How do I know Talk is not starting up. I followed someone's instructions by going to Gtalk settings and unchecking Automatically Sign In. Is that it?

 

[Edge767]

Yes, that's it. That's all I did. I'm not using ATK or anything like that.

Today, I've been using my Evo much more due to work, and the battery is still holding up well.

 

[CP4]

Side question of sorts, but I notice a lot of people mentioning charging their EVOs overnight. Is it recommended to leave it plugged in all night? Does that harm the lifepsan of the battery at all? Just want to make sure I don't over/under charge.

 

[Edge767]

From what I understand from reading these forums, the battery life is 1000 charges or so. Charging it all night should not decrement from the 1000 more than 1. At least that's my understanding.

 

[Darthstorm528]

How do you turn off mobile wireless and can it affect phone calls and SMS when turned off.

 

[markwoll]

I run mine all day, and charge with the wall charger at night.
I only needed to do additional charges the first couple of days when I couldn't put it down.
no task killers.
I turn off services like Pandora when I am done with them, little wifi and 4g usage.
Otherwise its been great.

mark.

 

[Edge767]

How do you turn off mobile wireless and can it affect phone calls and SMS when turned off.

I have added the Wireless switch widget to the home screen that contains my 4G switch, Airplane mode switch, etc. All it does is turn off the 3G networking, not the phone's voice capability. I only turn it off when I have WiFi, and vice-versa. I have had no service interruptions of any kind.

 

[DevilInPgh]

Which widget is that? I don't see it in my stock installation, and searching the Market didn't turn up anything noticeable.

 

[Bigtuna00]

From what I understand from reading these forums, the battery life is 1000 charges or so. Charging it all night should not decrement from the 1000 more than 1. At least that's my understanding.

Not exactly: when you plug in to charge, it will charge to full and then *stop* charging.

The battery will run down again (only a little) and then start charging again. AFAIK this will consume charge cycles.

On my laptop I can force it to not charge (even when plugged in) unless the battery is under 25%. I don't know if we can do something similar on the EVO.

Regardless there's no reason to leave the phone on the charger overnight (IMO). I left mine unplugged overnight last night and the battery icon was still full this morning (I didn't check the actual percentage unfortunately). Of course this is based on how I've configured my phone. Wifi was on, Bluetooth and GPS were off. I've also taken the time to configure the background data settings for each app.

 

[Bigtuna00]

Which widget is that? I don't see it in my stock installation, and searching the Market didn't turn up anything noticeable.

It's already on the phone: it's called "Mobile Network" under "Settings" widgets.

 

[Edge767]

Not exactly: when you plug in to charge, it will charge to full and then *stop* charging.

The battery will run down again (only a little) and then start charging again. AFAIK this will consume charge cycles.

On my laptop I can force it to not charge (even when plugged in) unless the battery is under 25%. I don't know if we can do something similar on the EVO.

Regardless there's no reason to leave the phone on the charger overnight (IMO). I left mine unplugged overnight last night and the battery icon was still full this morning (I didn't check the actual percentage unfortunately). Of course this is based on how I've configured my phone. Wifi was on, Bluetooth and GPS were off. I've also taken the time to configure the background data settings for each app.

Thanks for the clarification. If there's one Law of Internet Forums, it's that if you're not correct, someone will come along with the right information very quickly.

 

[HatTrick327]

Yes, that's it. That's all I did. I'm not using ATK or anything like that.

Today, I've been using my Evo much more due to work, and the battery is still holding up well.

That is how you turn off google talk but when you turn it off you MUST sign out instead of just hitting the home button or back button or it will continue running.

google talk > menu > more > sign out

 

[xorbe]

I plugged the phone into my computer, but the phone stopped charging at 82%. Then later it resumed charging. No issues with the wall charger.

 

[RamminIt]

Just a FYI: Siedio recommends charging your battery an additional 3 hrs after the charging light turns green. I've have done this with all my phones and iPods with great results (batteries last 40% longer). The most logical reason I can come up with why this works is most phones do a quick charge when below 80% and a trickle charge above 90%. The charging light turns green while plugged in prematurely because it's not taking in to consideration the power coming from the charger.