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Help About to return

Bramsy

Bramsy

Android Expert
Yeah, the battery.... i know my way around Android. i have a D1 and am the resident phone guy with my friends for problems and whatnot.

what gives?

even after minimal widget use, barely any screen brightness, NO LIVE WALLPAPERS (dont know the need for caps), short screen timeout, uninstalling apps (that i can) that run in the background... the battery if awful!

if i give it a week to get used to the battery, am i going to see THAT much of an improvement?

the speed of the phone along with LTE makes this a great device, but at a total cost!

advice here?

(i honestly almost returned it the day of!)
 
So far my Thunderbolt seems to have starting battery life similar to my Incredible, which is to say not good at all. However after a few battery cycles (being sure to fully charge/discharge each time) I found the Incredible had definite improvements, and ended up getting into acceptable range for me. I can't *know* the Tbolt will be the same, but it's starting out from a similar place so I'm hoping that will be the case..

If not, there are larger capacity batteries available, and all the advantages of the Thunderbolt are still there. I'd say give it a few charge cycles and see where you are, or try any of the several higher capacity batteries first.
 
Both perpsectives are correct:

Long term, the battery life should improve, but may take efforts on the rooting side (better kernel, setcpu, 3G/4G switch on the device, etc).

May be a case of chilling out a few months for the dev community to get settled into the TB, but the catch is only 14 days to return the device.

Question is, even with mods, how much will it really improve (the OP's point)?

Overclocking would seem a slippery slope at this point if already weak battery life.

4G, 4.3" LCD, widgets, social apps, etc takes juice.
 
I saw Seidio has a 1600mah battery that still uses the same case on Amazon for $44.99, but have no idea how good it is.

And, as I mentioned before, I think a few full charge cycles should help. Use your 14 days to see how it goes!
 
dequardo said:
Well you did return it, right? Not much I/we can help with now.
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good eye, forgot the word "almost". edited OP

i feel as if HTC jumped the gun and i did too. duel core seems to be a good way to take some of this load off... too bad we don't know yet!?!?

i'm most likely going to use my full 14 days but ughhh, i really dislike charging mid-day!
 
Bramsy said:
good eye, forgot the word "almost". edited OP

i feel as if HTC jumped the gun and i did too. duel core seems to be a good way to take some of this load off... too bad we don't know yet!?!?

i'm most likely going to use my full 14 days but ughhh, i really dislike charging mid-day!
Click to expand...

Amen to that. I almost hate doing that as much as I would hate carrying a second and third battery around in my pocket just to use my phone. What a treat that would be.

Don't especially mind charging it in the car if I'm driving around though.
 
Bramsy said:
good eye, forgot the word "almost". edited OP

i feel as if HTC jumped the gun and i did too. duel core seems to be a good way to take some of this load off... too bad we don't know yet!?!?

i'm most likely going to use my full 14 days but ughhh, i really dislike charging mid-day!
Click to expand...


Smart move to wait. Seems a 3G/4G toggle swtich will help out too. Perhaps within the next week-ish a toggle will be created and setcpu will be working (both need root).

Surprised it is taking the XDA folks this long ;)
 
With my Incredible, it took a good one to two weeks of a consistent charging schedule for things to significantly improve. I charged towards the end of the day yesterday, and then overnight as that'll be my norm (overnight) last night, so I can't really say how my battery is going to do just yet.
 
Bramsy said:
the battery if awful!

if i give it a week to get used to the battery, am i going to see THAT much of an improvement?!
Click to expand...

You don't say what you experienced or what you were hoping to experience. How bad was it? And what did you think it would be? I think those answers might influence the decision.
 
I think dual core phones will be plagued with battery life issues as well. I know it's not comparable but when i first got my Droid Eris, battery life was horrible. A few changes to the settings and a few cycles later, it lasted me about 20 hours. Now with root, I get well over 24 hours... sometimes even 48 hours.

That being said, the size and power of the Thunderbolt can't be changed, so battery life will be an issue. Hopefully, when I get one, I'll get 20 hours of charge out of it. I'm fine with overnight charging if it lasts through the day.
 
Well, day two...3rd time I've fully charged my phone and here's what I'm seeing.

4G is a battery killer. If you are not using it...turning if off would seem to help (hopefully that functionality is added when rooted/ROMed or from official OTA).

Yesterday with minimal use, I was seeing 10% drop per hour. Today, I've had it off the charger for 3 hours and I'm sitting @ 91%. It appears to be getting better, but I have also turned on wifi.

I'd say sit tight. See what comes of the next few days with power cycles. There is no extra incentive in returning it today vs. day 14...so see what happens.

I already said that the devs will probably target battery life as "the thing" that will make their ROMs stand out with this device. I'm sure we will see improvements from HTC eventually...but I'm sure there will be ROMs for this device pretty quickly.
 
HTC strikes again. Don't listen to anyone that says battery life will improve. It won't. Options are get the humpback battery, keep and and deal with it or get out while the gettin is good.
 
arglebargle said:
You don't say what you experienced or what you were hoping to experience. How bad was it? And what did you think it would be? I think those answers might influence the decision.
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i experienced MAJOR battery drain. i turned OFF sync it got so bad, and i was only sync'ing gmail. i would get the occasional sms, and phone call. at first i surfed until the battery died, but that was out of the box with less than half battery pre-charged.

what i expected was more than 1/4 day worth of battery... heck, 1/2 a day at first, but i can barely make it past the morning with 1/2 - 3/4 :eek:
 
TheXFactor said:
HTC strikes again. Don't listen to anyone that says battery life will improve. It won't. Options are get the humpback battery, keep and and deal with it or get out while the gettin is good.
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ok negative nancy...... you discredited yourself right there
 
I will never understand why people go out and buy a device the first day it comes out. You've waited this long for it, why go and be the "guinea pig" when you could just wait let's say, a week, and see the reviews for it? Blowing $200+ on a device that nobody knows that much about seems stupid, frankly. Maybe I'm just a tightwad, who knows.

I said that to say this, you knew there was going to be problems with the battery, why did you go out and get it on the first day when you could've waited (like me) to see if people complained about it? (What people are doing now.)
 
rushmore said:
Both perpsectives are correct:

Long term, the battery life should improve, but may take efforts on the rooting side (better kernel, setcpu, 3G/4G switch on the device, etc).

May be a case of chilling out a few months for the dev community to get settled into the TB, but the catch is only 14 days to return the device.

Question is, even with mods, how much will it really improve (the OP's point)?

Overclocking would seem a slippery slope at this point if already weak battery life.

4G, 4.3" LCD, widgets, social apps, etc takes juice.
Click to expand...

Great advice there.

I say keep it. I just bought 2 new extended batteries off Verizon's website for 79.99 (they give you a discount for buying more than one). Rated at 2700+ the standard is what, 1400? Should make a big difference.

Bottom line is, I think the OP has a defective battery. My battery life is exactly what I got out of my Incredible. Not really all that great, but you can make up for it with extended batteries. A defective battery, for me, is not grounds for returning a phone, unless I thought the phone itself was bad and responsible for draining a *good* battery.

By the way, I keep my brightness maxed out, run several widgets. Sure, I'm not getting great life out of it, but I'm getting what I expected.
 
Eleer said:
I will never understand why people go out and buy a device the first day it comes out. You've waited this long for it, why go and be the "guinea pig" when you could just wait let's say, a week, and see the reviews for it? Blowing $200+ on a device that nobody knows that much about seems stupid, frankly. Maybe I'm just a tightwad, who knows.

I said that to say this, you knew there was going to be problems with the battery, why did you go out and get it on the first day when you could've waited (like me) to see if people complained about it? (What people are doing now.)
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What a moronic statement. If everyone waited like you there would be no one to complain about it and you'd still be stuck up a creek without a paddle.
 
TheXFactor said:
HTC strikes again. Don't listen to anyone that says battery life will improve. It won't. Options are get the humpback battery, keep and and deal with it or get out while the gettin is good.
Click to expand...

I tend to agree. Lithium ion batteries don't have memory, cycles don't change their capacity. Only the phone's calibration is affected which may appear to improve battery life.

But from the experience with my Incredible, battery life did not improve. HTC clearly puts in too small a battery to make the phone seem smaller.

I had to buy a bigger battery for the Incredible to get it to last a day. I was able to deal with the added heft on the Incredible, but it seems that the Thunderbolt is already hefty and thick. Bigger, heavier battery seems questionable.

I'm hoping LG or Samsung will have better battery life and lighter weight, and HDMI out, and will hopefully be out soon.
 
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