Why does it seem like all HTC android phones have terrible battery life?

[elchip]

HTC Hero / Droid Eris... crap battery life. Motorola Droid was much better in that regard, despite having a comparably-sized battery.

HTC Incredible... crap battery life. Droid X was much better in that regard, despite having a battery that wasn't that much bigger.

HTC Evo... crap battery life.

And now, it sounds like HTC Thunderbolt... crap battery life.

I really prefer Sense over Motoblur, and I like the Thunderbolt's additional RAM and storage space over the Droid Bionic, but it seems like the Bionic, with its monstrous 1930 mAh battery, might end up being the phone for me.

What does HTC do to their phones that gives them such poor battery life? Is there something in the Sense UI? Is there something about the hardware they use?

 

[Droid800]

HTC Hero / Droid Eris... crap battery life. Motorola Droid was much better in that regard, despite having a comparably-sized battery.

HTC Incredible... crap battery life. Droid X was much better in that regard, despite having a battery that wasn't that much bigger.

HTC Evo... crap battery life.

And now, it sounds like HTC Thunderbolt... crap battery life.

I really prefer Sense over Motoblur, and I like the Thunderbolt's additional RAM and storage space over the Droid Bionic, but it seems like the Bionic, with its monstrous 1930 mAh battery, might end up being the phone for me.

What does HTC do to their phones that gives them such poor battery life? Is there something in the Sense UI? Is there something about the hardware they use?

Evo and Bolt both have ginormous screens which is why their battery life is worse.

I had a MyTouch 4G, and its battery life was pretty damn good.

I think part of the issue is that HTC has a LOT of synching going on in the background, which eats battery life like crazy. Sense itself is just a battery hog, and HTC hasn't done a great job of tuning what processes are running.

 

[Cory Streater]

Add all the Samsung and Motorola phones to your list too.

We are driving Ferrari's with 1-gallon gas tanks. Battery technology is not keeping up with all the power sucking 1's & 0's that do all the things we do now.

Edit: the OG Droid had a 600 mHz processor; which helped. Overclock that thing and it sucked power with the best of them.

 

[Droid800]

Add all the Samsung and Motorola phones to your list too.

We are driving Ferrari's with 1-gallon gas tanks. Battery technology is not keeping up with all the power sucking 1's & 0's that do all the things we do now.

Edit: the OG Droid had a 600 mHz processor; which helped. Overclock that thing and it sucked power with the best of them.

Bingo. Right now the ONLY option is to pack in much larger capacity batteries, which is what Motorola has resorted to.

To be blunt, unless you want to go with the Apple model, which is extraordinarily tightly controlled when it comes to processes, battery life is going to suffer.

 

[experiment 626]

Doesn't the Atrix have the same battery as the Bionic will have? And from what I've read the Atrix is no better than any other Android phone battery wise.

 

[Stein357]

Doesn't the Atrix have the same battery as the Bionic will have? And from what I've read the Atrix is no better than any other Android phone battery wise.

Dual cores love that juice.

 

[robdec17]

Battery life isnt so bad on the Inspire and it only has a 1250 battery , Not great but it can go an entire day.

 

[prakash99]

Ever since I had BlackBerry Storm 2, I always buy a second battery (and a charging pod if available). I am a power user and no matter what kind of battery the phone holds, it is not going to be enough for me to last a day. Right now I have DInc but it is just a temporary phone for me until I get Bolt. When I get a Bolt I am going to buy a spare battery for it too. This may not sound convenient to most but it works well for me. Serves my purpose.

 

[theGman911]

Dual cores love that juice.

Dual cores use far LESS juice.

 

[zenit#AC]

Dual cores use far LESS juice.

not going to believe that until i see it. they might use less juice under ideal conditions, but in case of android where things are not very optimized, I am almost 100% sure it will use more juice.

There is a reason Moto decided to use 1930 mah batteries, and it is probably not to make us all happy with uber battery life. They are likely just aiming to match the battery life of single core phones, otherwise they would go for making the phone thinner with smaller battery (to be competitive with the obvious suspects)

And why in the world does Android need dual core? They need to get the OS sorted to the level of smoothness of iOS and Windows phone7 which both run great on a single core. Remember, the iphone has an 800mhz single core cpu with crappy graphics unit, yet it runs super quick and smooth.

The whole affair reminds me of lunatic approach that alot of laptop manufacturers used in last couple of years - stuff as much power as possible by using power hungry quad cores and massive video cards just to have the whole mess be bottlenecked by a slow hard drive and 1 hour of battery life.

These laptops did great in benchmarks, but a dual core with a low power video chip felt exactly as fast, but ran alot cooler and laster 5-6 hours on battery.

 

[zenit#AC]

Dual cores use far LESS juice.

not going to believe that until i see it. they might use less juice under ideal conditions, but in case of android where things are not very optimized, I am almost 100% sure it will use more juice.

There is a reason Moto decided to use 1930 mah batteries, and it is probably not to make us all happy with uber battery life. They are likely just aiming to match the battery life of single core phones, otherwise they would go for making the phone thinner with smaller battery (to be competitive with the obvious suspects)

And why in the world does Android need dual core? They need to get the OS sorted to the level of smoothness of iOS and Windows phone7 which both run great on a single core. Remember, the iphone has an 800mhz single core cpu with crappy graphics unit, yet it runs super quick and smooth.

The whole affair reminds me of lunatic approach that alot of laptop manufacturers used in last couple of years - stuff as much power as possible by using power hungry quad cores and massive video cards just to have the whole mess be bottlenecked by a slow hard drive and 1 hour of battery life.

These laptops did great in benchmarks, but a dual core with a low power video chip felt exactly as fast, but ran alot cooler and laster 5-6 hours on battery.

 

[Chrisy]

Meh. Seems like Android phones get worse battery life because you have bigger screen and can do way more on your phones.

My BlackBerry can last 2 days with light use but all I'm doing is email.

If I use the BlackBerry for browsing (Bolt browser) then my BlackBerry dies in 4 hours.

It's all relative!

 

[stray]

There is a reason Moto decided to use 1930 mah batteries, and it is probably not to make us all happy with uber battery life. They are likely just aiming to match the battery life of single core phones, otherwise they would go for making the phone thinner with smaller battery (to be competitive with the obvious suspects)

Trying to compete with fail? Actually so far the Atrix seems to be able to go a full day easily for most people, with plenty of battery to spare. Bionic might be slightly worse with the larger screen, and mileage may vary as we get to Gingerbread and Ice Cream, but for now it seems Motorola is doing something about the fail battery life that plagues too many Android handsets. I can't comment on the efficiency of the Tegra 2, but that might help as well regardless of the extra core.

Meanwhile htc is putting out phones that look nice, and I guess run nice if you like Sense... but 1240 mAh in the Inspire is an absolute joke, and 1400 in the TB is just... sad.

 

[edoublediz]

Doesn't the Atrix have the same battery as the Bionic will have? And from what I've read the Atrix is no better than any other Android phone battery wise.

the engadget review said the atrix was great. 24 hours i believe. double check me.

 

[menschmaschine5]

the engadget review said the atrix was great. 24 hours i believe. double check me.

Many reviewers also said that the Dinc had good battery life.

 

[amotter]

the engadget review said the atrix was great. 24 hours i believe. double check me.

I would suggest you go to our android central Atrix threads and read what the new owners are saying aobut their new phone...

 

[Astrodroid]

And now, it sounds like HTC Thunderbolt... crap battery life.

Wait hold on where are you getting this Thunderbolt battery life info? My one worry about the Thunderbolt has been battery life, but that has just been me guessing based on the large screen and seemingly too-small battery. But as far as I know, the jury is out on how it will actually perform. You hear things about a more efficient processor, for example. So while it has been a worry, I was basically labeling it with a question mark for now. Do you have info from somebody's testing of a demo unit or something? Where's the info?

 

[itsdollar]

I always got extended batteries with my Blackberrys and will do the same with the Thunderbolt. I do not want to sacrifice full use of a phone for battery life. The phone may be a little thicker with the larger battery but I need the phone on all day until I go to sleep. The larger the screen and the more power the less battery life.

 

[Yourdogsdead]

If there is one thing that the Iphone has over Android, it's battery life. If you root your phone, you can usually get better battery life.

 

[Astrodroid]

Wait hold on where are you getting this Thunderbolt battery life info? My one worry about the Thunderbolt has been battery life, but that has just been me guessing based on the large screen and seemingly too-small battery. But as far as I know, the jury is out on how it will actually perform. You hear things about a more efficient processor, for example. So while it has been a worry, I was basically labeling it with a question mark for now. Do you have info from somebody's testing of a demo unit or something? Where's the info?

Whoops, nevermind. Just saw the thread that linked to the Engadget story about poor Tbolt battery life.