Thunderbolt Battery Complaints + Tips/Tricks

[dajogejr]

*** I use a program called Auto Wi-Fi, which put phone into wi-fi automatically when i get into range of house, and turns off wi-fi when i leave it. So except for grocery shopping durign sat, it was wi-fi all weekend.

So I looked at his app, so I have a question. I leave GPS off unless I'm using the Navigation (WOW...Google Nav is that good).

Do you have to have GPS turned on in order to use this app? If so, seems like a wash for battery life. If you can run it without GPS turned on, I'm gonna try it...

TIA.

BTW. With the fat bastard on back the phone, I'm at 24 hours of use and still 30%. I charged it 8 to 9 hours Saturday night. Powered it off and charged it another 2-3, then turned it on.

Yesterday I texted a bunch, took some 720p video of my boy at baseball practice, shared a vid and a few pics via FB, used the Nav system for 20 minutes just to play, browsed about 30 - 45 minutes. 30 minutes of angry birds. 30 minutes of solitare. I have work email off push and checking every 1/2 hour at night and on weekends (what a nice feature as well)
I went over a buddies and demo'd the google voice search, downloaded a couple apps and ring tones yesterday.... So, for me, probably an above average day.

Next I'm going to calibrate the stocker and see what I can get out of it. If this phone makes it till noon, and it looks like it's going to, I'm perfectly fine with a day and a half on this phone.

 

[Guntherm]

So I looked at his app, so I have a question. I leave GPS off unless I'm using the Navigation (WOW...Google Nav is that good).

Do you have to have GPS turned on in order to use this app? If so, seems like a wash for battery life. If you can run it without GPS turned on, I'm gonna try it...

TIA.

Program does nto use GPS, which is why I love it. it's uses cell phone tower locations. Note: That does make it not 100% accurate at all times. However all that means to me, is sometimes it doesn't trigger until I am 5 blocks away vs 8 blocks or such. Which Wi-Fi- dont reach that far anyways. For the most part, when I hit my driveway, it has already switched over to Wi-Fi... Awesome app.

 

[dajogejr]

Sold.
Thank you much.
Can it do two locations (Home and work both have Wifi, although work is TERRIBLY slow...so that might not be a big deal if not).

Thanks again!

 

[Guntherm]

Sold.
Thank you much.
Can it do two locations (Home and work both have Wifi, although work is TERRIBLY slow...so that might not be a big deal if not).

Thanks again!

It can do all the Wi-fi locatiosn you want. It remebers where you login into Wi-fi and adds these to the list. You can modfiy them, but I don't suggest it... Install and let it do it's thing...

 

[androidburn]

Took my Thunderbolt out on the second day i got it and lasted about 5 1/2 hours, very disappointed about the battery life. I just did the usual Twitter, email and a few phone calls and it was gone. I returned the Thunderbolt and will be waiting for something else.

The battery life is a horror show. I'm completely shocked that HTC had the audacity to make it smaller than the power challenged EVO. I might get 6 hours of moderate usage, phone entering the dreaded yellow battery area by then.

Here's an interesting thought. VerizonWireless allegedly had tens of thousands of extended batteries available on day one of the launch. I wonder whether this device was known to be underpowered to someone in the hope of making an additional $50 upsell right afterwards.

 

[gunmetalgr3g]

So I got through the first 10 pages and decided to skip the other 40 I have been getting all day out of mine here is how

Turn the mobile network off when not using (add the widget)
Widget>Settings>Mobile Network
Screen brightness is about 15% which has been just fine for me the past weekend
I don't let my email auto update.
I will say the first day I smoked the battery in about 1.5 hrs which is fine I have a few extra chargers from my EnV3

 

[corn4ahead]

Ok, so how do I turn off auto sync for everything except The weather?

 

[gunmetalgr3g]

Ok, so how do I turn off auto sync for everything except The weather?

Settings>Acct & Syncs, I just turned off the auto sync for background data and Im seeing what it does

 

[Mustang7303]

So after getting a handle on power management settings of the Thunderbolt (kicking the blockbuster app in the nuts, turning screen brightness down to 30%, and doing adhoc syncs) and noticing I was getting amazing battery life while on wifi all day/night, I wanted to see how it would be without wifi on all day. I have wifi available to me both at home and in the office, so while while commuting am I without wifi.

Already this morning I can tell that there is a noticeable drain on 4G. With 3 hours since unplugged I am down to 85%. The biggest power users at this time is Display at 34%, Cell Standby at 28%, and Phone Idle at 26%. I would guesstimate that without wifi, it uses about 4x more power. Considering I saw less than a 1% drain per hour during my overnight test with wifi on, and the screen has been used for 4 minutes of the three hours there is indeed a noticeable draw on battery life by 4G.

I will continue all day with wifi off to see how much battery life is left by the time I get home from work. I am going to estimate roughly 35% battery life left by the time I get home.

 

[lockandloadlabs]

Battery Consumption: 1st impressions

I was burning through the battery the first few days of having this device.... after a full charge, in 15 minutes, i'd already be down 6% without even having used the device. I would burn through 50% in a little over 2 hours with moderate to heavy usage. I found a REMARKABLE improvement after the 5th or 6th charge cycle. The battery lasted about 8 to 10 hours with normal usage.

After learning how to turn the LTE radio off, I think i'll be able to push it further.

 

[slinky317]

Disable auto-sync? Really? That's part of what makes Android so great!

Sorry, but HTC needs to be held accountable to make devices that have decent battery life. 6 hours is completely ridiculous. There's no point in having all these cool features if it kills the battery in an hour - if you can't get power management under control, then the features shouldn't be included.

 

[jtl]

Bluetooth Volume

I turn the volume all the way up but it just seems way too quiet. I used the same headset on my LG Versa and it was fine. Now, I can barely here the other person. Any suggestions?

 

[racedog]

Disable auto-sync? Really? That's part of what makes Android so great!

Sorry, but HTC needs to be held accountable to make devices that have decent battery life. 6 hours is completely ridiculous. There's no point in having all these cool features if it kills the battery in an hour - if you can't get power management under control, then the features shouldn't be included.

I agree that the battery supplied with this phone is not adequate. However, I've found that I'm getting good battery life with the tweaks that I've done. I've set the syncs that I use to do them at the longest intervals that I can live with and that varies with the feature. That Blockbuster crap was a real drain and it is now turned off. I've set the radio to CDMA and PRL and will only use LTE if/when necessary.

Because of living smack in the middle of tornado alley and with spring here I keep weather syncing at regular intervals, gps turned on so the weather app knows where I am, and alarms and notifications turned on. I only used the phone lightly yesterday but I went 24 hours without a charge and still had plenty of battery left.

I don't think you have to go totally crazy turning everything off to keep the battery from draining, but to wisely choose those things that you don't need all the time and turning them off and keeping the others syncing and/or updating as needed on an app by app basis.

I purchased the huge extended battery with the phone and I really hated it because of the size and conformation (made the phone look pregnant) and I am sending it back today and only keeping the standard battery. However, I will purchase a portable power supply to carry when traveling.

Last night, with the phone unplugged I only lost about 3 percent of battery and I think I've found a good setup for my usage pattern. On Friday I tweaked the phone within an inch of its life and ended up with some features that I needed, especially weather updates, turned off and I couldn't figure out how to turn them back on so I ended up doing a reset to default and starting over and being more careful and judicious with the tweaks. I've ended up with a phone that is serving me well and meeitng my needs well.

R

 

[Pzyborg]

I'm thinking about using my two week trial period to really check this phone out. I want a 4G phone so if this didn't pan out I was going to look at the Motorola Droid Bionic. But here's the deal, I know that the Motorola Bionic will have at least a 1900mah battery which sounds good enough but not so good when you think it will have a dual-core processor and 4G! That alone is going to chew up power. I believe all the 4G phones will be power munchers but dual-core is taking it to another level. One of the reasons I liked this phone is that it was reported to be faster than the dual-core Bionic without the extra power consumption and heat. However, Motorola always seems to have a better handle on battery issues. Either way I'm not so sure that the Bionic won't have problems also. Might be worth giving this phone a chance if its 4G you want. I'm still hoping for a firmware update and/or an extended battery worth having like they did with the Droid X.

 

[pwoznic]

Wow 4G is a huge drain... I also just disabled the auto sync so I'll see how that goes.. I DID order that monster 2750mA battery.. I don't care if it makes the phone bigger. I need the capacity.

 

[KingChicago]

Disable auto-sync? Really? That's part of what makes Android so great!

Sorry, but HTC needs to be held accountable to make devices that have decent battery life. 6 hours is completely ridiculous. There's no point in having all these cool features if it kills the battery in an hour - if you can't get power management under control, then the features shouldn't be included.

I think HTC has taken great steps in the right direction with this phone's power management, as compared to the DInc and Evo...

I keep sync on, have a needless live wallpaper, have 4g blasting the airwaves, and still get easily 12-15 hours of battery life with heavy use, 24 hours+ with little use. Id like to see people post some of the apps they have DL'd from the market, that are having extreme battery issues. Something has got to give.

edit:// This is on a stock battery too.

 

[racedog]

Wow 4G is a huge drain... I also just disabled the auto sync so I'll see how that goes.. I DID order that monster 2750mA battery.. I don't care if it makes the phone bigger. I need the capacity.

I have that extended battery and if you need to supply a lot of juice for an extended period without the ability to charge I can guarantee you that it will supply it. The size if a huge issue for me but it does work and it works well if extended use without charging is a requirement for you.

R

 

[pwoznic]

I have that extended battery and if you need to supply a lot of juice for an extended period without the ability to charge I can guarantee you that it will supply it. The size if a huge issue for me but it does work and it works well if extended use without charging is a requirement for you.

R

I have a routine... I get to work and if it's not a crazy phonecall day, I stream audio from a talk show I like... then after lunch I come back and usually plug in while listening for the rest of the day.. I did that with my G1 and Nexus One and the battery was always near 100% by the time I got home.

I noticed so far with the Tbolt that I do my morning stream but after an hour and maybe a couple checks of my email, twitter, the battery is at around 40%... so I plugged it in. lol

I would like to get from morning to lunch with at least 70% battery left. Once I get home I auto switch to wifi and I always charge it overnight while streaming music on a timer before I sleep... 2 year routine haha

 

[Pzyborg]

Here's a good video for everyone to check out that's thinking about getting the Bionic... YouTube - Motorola DROID Bionic Hands-On. Pay attention to the battery level while watching, I can't be sure but it seems to drop while watching the demo. Also, listen to the demonstrators comments on the Bionic's battery life, not to promising. I will say that Motorola phones always seem to have really good alternative battery options available for us to purchase. Whatever the case, I do not expect the Bionic to have good battery life on the stock battery. If HTC or Verizon brings out a decent alternative battery that doesn't ruin the look of the phone the Thunderbolt would be a good deal. Just something else to consider.

 

[thedeceiver]

Disable auto-sync? Really? That's part of what makes Android so great!

Sorry, but HTC needs to be held accountable to make devices that have decent battery life. 6 hours is completely ridiculous. There's no point in having all these cool features if it kills the battery in an hour - if you can't get power management under control, then the features shouldn't be included.

Well you can buy an extended battery. I for one like the option of a standard battery or buying a larger one if I want the heft and longer charge.

Considering we have people trying to get the best seal possible on the phone I am sure many other would like to see the price kept manageable.

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