[Official] Battery Life Thread

[bones4u]

Hi,

Anyone having a less than adequate battery life? Mine is set to lowest brightness, WiFi off most of the time, Bluetooth always off, and checking one non-gmail account hourly. Despite that and low-medium use I'm getting about 8 to 10th hours before its at 25%. And in the red by 12 hours. Im coming from a blackberry which I used much more intensely and got through a whole day only hitting 50% battery.

I want to know is this just my device or fairly typical for android? Anything else I can so to improve the battery life?

Thanks in advance

 

[andyr2007#AC]

That is normal battery life...it last about an average day of 10-12 hours, depending on usage. With the "4g" type of network, battery will always drain faster than normal. And I have had a blackberry before as well, never again expect such great battery usage as you received from your blackberry ....you can download a task killer app to speed up your phone and keep things from running in the background, that will help the battery a little...

 

[packerbacker]

Actually, downloading a task killer is not a good solution. There are other ways you can improve your battery life.

Root/debloat/run a custom ROM and kernel. It seems intimidating, but the forums have great step by step instructions and are always willing to help you if you get stuck.

Decrease your display brightness. Mine's set to practically zero and it's still plenty bright enough.

Use Wifi whenever you have a strong and clear connection. If your 4G/3G signal is weak, it drains a lot of battery, and Wifi, on a strong connection, doesn't.

Check to see what widgets you have and how often they update- this could also be a reason your battery life is draining.

Turn off GPS if you aren't using it.

These are just a few tips.

PS - 10-12 hours a day is NOT bad battery life for an Android phone. Just letting you know.

 

[pantlesspenguin]

I suggest downloading SuperPower battery saver from the market. The fine folk @ XDA developed it. This thing seems pretty legit. I'm getting 3-4 more hours of moderate use after downloading it.

 

[tam0o]

i came from a blackberry (i appreciate it's battery life a lot more now) and i consider myself lucky to get 12 hours of battery for the mytouch. if i browse, call, or play games, i am down to about 6 or 7 hours.

 

[packerbacker]

I get 12 hours with my Fascinate because I rooted, debloated, and installed a kernel. It is possible to get that kind of battery life, but it comes with a little risk.

 

[Jerzyiroc]

10-12 hours of moderate use isn't that bad at all. Anyone that's coming from Blackberry has to throw away whatever memory of battery life they had with the Blackberry. There's a reason the BB can last literally all day..... it can't do anything. The BB can't do what Android can do. You can't compare the BB to an Android phone. It's like comparing a Corvette to an Accord. You can go nuts with a Corvette and have all the fun in the world, but you'll drain gas faster than you can believe. But if you drive it moderately, it'll still get decent fuel economy. An Accord can't do anything remotely close to fun. It works. It's reliable. But more boring than staring at a wall... But you'll sure get great fuel economy. You have a Corvette now with the myTouch. Enjoy it. But remember, the more you enjoy it, the faster battery it'll consume, but at least you'll be having fun.

 

[fury2g]

An Accord can't do anything remotely close to fun.QUOTE]
WHAT!!???
You sir, have never driven an Accord... lol

j/k
great analogy...

 

[Inca Orchid]

Just keep a power cord at your desk and in your car.

 

[AgTitan06]

Where can I buy a desk charger that utilizes the three copper charging ports on the side? Also, where can I buy a car dock that also utilizes these ports? I've seen them in a review, but can't find anywhere that sells these that are designed to work with the three charging ports. Thanks.

 

[BlackPrince310]

I get AMAZING battery life. I was almost shocked by this. I took the phone off the charger at 6AM and during my 9AM break at work I was still at 100%, my friend has an Evo and was like what the heck lol. Around 13 hours later I'm at 55%.

As I'm writing this it's about 18 hours later and I'm at 32%. Very, very good battery life. My phone is overclocked to 1.7Ghz and I have SetCPU profiles set up. I don't let my phone go above 1.4Ghz though, I don't need that much power.

 

[fredmr85]

Mine sucks. Minimal widgets/updates...low brightness - hell I don't even look at the thing unless it vibrates if I'm out for the day...maybe one 30 second call....no browsing...GPS off - and 8 hours of batt life seems to be the max. Then the thing seems to take forever to charge. I really feel tied down and unable to enjoy the device unless I am sitting where I can get power. I can hear my old BlackBerry laughing at me now.

 

[BlackPrince310]

Hmm. I've always gotten excellent battery life with my MT4G, and it improved by like 6 hours after I overclocked it. I have 5 homescreens all filled with widgets and throughout the day I use my phone pretty heavily.

 

[nightmorph]

Hi. I'm new, but I've been reading AC for several months now, keeping abreast of the phone and carrier developments before switching to T-Mobile. Thought I'd chime in with a battery report for our brand spankin' new MyTouch 4Gs:

Right now, my phone's been unplugged for 41 hours, and I still have 30% charge left.

That's with the stock firmware, no less. I haven't even downloaded any apps or rooted it. Haven't made any real modifications. Left the screen brightness at "auto," changed timeout to 15 or 30 seconds, and changed powersave mode to kick in at 25%.

The first thing I did when I brought my new phone home on Black Friday was to let it drain completely, then charge it up overnight while turned off -- the same "conditioning" trick I've read about on these forums and elsewhere.

In those 41 hours of uptime, I've made heavy use of WiFi, some 3G and 4G data, several calls, browsed the web and the Android Market, explored the phone's features (hey, just using a screen is neat, coming from a 3-year-old featurephone), playing with onboard apps, sent texts, snapped pictures, and rebooted my phone a few times while fixing SIM card issues. Those reboots did more to drain noticeable percentages of power than anything else. I also do have 7 home screens present, but that was an accident -- I was actually trying to figure out how to reduce 5 screens to 3. Hopefully those unused extra screens don't suck too much juice!

Whenever I'm not actively syncing contacts to my phone, updating social networking streams, or browsing the web, I almost always turn off the unused antennas, just letting the phone idle to receive calls. I also turned off the "mobile internet" option so that the 4G connection doesn't kick in once I leave a WiFi network. No doubt an always-on 4G antenna drains battery fast, as does GPS.

The other MyTouch 4G we got for the BOGO deal has had similar life, perhaps a bit better since it hasn't done much WiFi or mobile internet browsing.

These phones have batteries that last longer than our ancient flip-phones, so we're amazed and pleased. I don't really feel the need to make any significant modifications or flash alternative ROMs, since I'm satisfied with their performance so far.

 

[bascosauce]

Yeah i feel like i have to charge my phone twice a day. Changed my settings, widgets and everything, but it says my display takes up most of the battery. I dont know?

 

[cphonetips]

I just got the phone about two weeks ago and sent it back to get a new one just about 6 days ago thinking my battery was defective since it was heating up in my pocket and dying within 9 hours on standby mode! I got a completely new MyTouch phone and battery thinking it would be better. The first few days were fine, but after that it went downhill and my battery is acting up the same way, getting extremely hot in my pocket and dies half way in 6 hours with no wifi, bluetooth or even internet connectivity on, and I have my brightness all the way down with auto task killer. I love the phone and all, but I'm just about to take it back and exchange it for the Vibrant, G2 or BlackBerry 9780. It's very aggravating to deal with a bad battery

 

[Jerzyiroc]

Well for one you need to remove whatever task killer you have. Task killers on Android 2.2 is a HUUUUGE no no. It's 100% useless and more often than not it causes more problems than actually providing any benefit. I can almost guarantee one of two things are happening. You either have a rogue app, or you have something stuck on sync. Download these two apps, System Panel and Watchdog. If an app is rogue you'll notice it's taking more resources than it's supposed to be. If you're using a task killer and you have a rogue app, you can thank the task killer. My gf has a MT4G. She can go literally all day from when she wakes up in the morning til well into the night. There were two days where her battery life plummeted. It wasn't an app like i suspected, instead it was the htc sense facebook contacts that was stuck in a loop. It's happened two other times since so I just had her disable it. So far she hasn't had ANY issues at all. The MT4G has great battery life with moderate use no question. If you can't get at least 14+ hours of moderate use then there's something wrong and you need to look into it.

Btw, to check if you have something stuck in sync, go to settings and accounts in sync. If you see on the bottom left cancel sync, then something is stuck. Even if it doesnt say it, go to each one and make sure on the bottom left of each category it doesn't say cancel sync and something insnt stuck in sync.

 

[sysmgr2]

Only had my phone for a week, but it was quite warm in my pocket, and the battery drained in about 12-hours. Took it back several times. Rebooted, restored, reconfigured, shut-off services... nothing worked. Finally, someone switched the battery, and the change has been total and amazing. Even with moderate voice/Internet use and synching 1 Exchange and 2 gmail accounts, I have over 50% battery left after 12 to 14-hours.

 

[skidooman93]

After having the MT4G for about a month now battery life has improved drastically. After the first weeks I was very dissaponted. And that was one of the major factors in my almost returning the phone. The 1st few days that battery would only last about 6 hours for me with normal use. The 1st big help was the OTA, that helped battery life. But I think just time on the phone and general use has helped condtion the battery. I tried the condtioning steps that HTC and TMO sugggested the 1st few days but that didn't help right away either.


Yesterday I unpluged the phone at 6:15 am. I made 30 phone calls for a total of 1 hour 22 minutes. I spent about 10 minutes on the web checking out some work that was sent to me. I sent 5 text messages, and 3 emails. I used pandora connected to my S2 bluetooth head phones for 45 minutes. I had 43% of my battery left when I put the phone back on the charger at 11 pm. I dont turn wifi off, I dont change any of the settings on the phone. Bluetooth is only turned on when I use it. I only use androids built in task killer. To shut down angry birds, and some card games I play periodically. This battery life is getting close to what I was getting with my 9700. I cant complain, I was orginally thinking about getting a larger battery when they become available but I am rethinking that now.

 

[mckernanjake]

Horrible battery life

I've had horrible battery life on my brand new mytouch, i've done so much research on what I should do, I just get more confused, Do i go task killer or no? Low brightness auto updates off, and all of that and it still dies fast! Is it the battery or am I doing something wrong?