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Help How are you dealing with the TB Battery Issue

T

tbrooks123

Lurker
Bought my Thunderbolt on Friday. Setup installed 45 apps that I had on my Droid x for 10 days before the Thunderbolt launched and I returned it. From the beginning I was searching for battery saving apps and still getting 3-4 hours on a charge. Searching the forums, I collected all the battery saving tips and: disabled all widgets, turned off updates for weather, news etc - except for mail and calendar. Dimmed the screen a bit and set the sleep mode to 30 seconds. Charged it overnight and so far today over 10 hours with 28% remaining. That's with one call for 52 mins and four 10-15 minute calls for almost 2 hours of talk time, plus about an hour of surfing and news app use.

Keep in mind I was in a wifi area most of the day. I don't mind clicking on weather or news when I want to see it. I can live with that.

About/Battery reported Voice Calls represented 60% of usage/Display 29%/ Stdby 3% / Idle 3% / WiFi 2%.

Edit: forgot to mention that what I think had the greatest effect was opening every app from the app drawer, clicking Menu/Settings and looking for background updates and notification settings to turn off. And uninstalling any that appeared to run and update in the background that could not be turned off. Found a bunch.

Travis
 
This is my "Numero Uno" complaint about all of these battery saving tips.

To translate for everyone else, "Use your phone in a completely different manner in which you would really, really like to use it and VIOLA!!" you now can get infinite battery life.

I'm not slamming on you tbrooks. And if that works for you and your happy with it, then by all means go for it and great job.

But I bought a phone that is supposed to be capable of doing things that my HTC Eris would not, and damnit I want it to do those things.

EDIT: My true test will be when I hit the golf course and run SkyDroid. The Eris would make it a full round on a full charge but it would be on the verge of kicking the bucket.
 
Lucidot said:
This is my "Numero Uno" complaint about all of these battery saving tips.

To translate for everyone else, "Use your phone in a completely different manner in which you would really, really like to use it and VIOLA!!" you now can get infinite battery life.

I'm not slamming on you tbrooks. And if that works for you and your happy with it, then by all means go for it and great job.

But I bought a phone that is supposed to be capable of doing things that my HTC Eris would not, and damnit I want it to do those things.

EDIT: My true test will be when I hit the golf course and run SkyDroid. The Eris would make it a full round on a full charge but it would be on the verge of kicking the bucket.
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Honestly though... most apps do NOT need to auto sync. I only need Facebook updates when I open the app to look at it. I don't want constant updates of jibberish and status updates that I could care less about.

I keep the important auto-syncing apps on and battery life is fine - last me throughout the day... pretty much on par with the Eris. Obviously the bigger screen and more powerful phone uses more power... so I'm not surprised.
 
To translate for everyone else, "Use your phone in a completely different manner in which you would really, really like to use it and VIOLA!!" you now can get infinite battery life.
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Clearly we differ in how we "really, really" like to use the phone.

I like a charged phone in my pocket to make hours of calls, send dozens of texts, track my run with gps using the Cardio App and be able to check TMZ or youtube or CNN or the weather map on a really big screen with fast loading when I want to and not have to worry about battery drain. Not so much into animations or widgets constantly updating information I'm not looking at. I still have forty plus apps on the phone and and very happy with how it is working for me.

My last two phones were the original Droid and then Droid x. Droid had ok battery life but was slow. Droid x seemed even slower and seemed to have signal issues with both 3G and wifi compared to the Droid. TB is fast in both cases.
 
In answer to the question about which apps... Some of them are: Gemini Calendar (uninstalled in favor of Pocket Informant), Weather channel widget (kept the app), Pulse news, HuffPo (turn off notifications), Nubi News (stop updates), Native Weather App (turn off update), Native Stocks App (kill update) and others - just go through the drawer checking them all..

Not sure whether turning off widgets or background updates was most significant. I did them both at the same time. You might try turning off all widgets and see what happens with batt life, then go into the drawer another day and see what that does.
 
I turned off wifi, gps, autosync, auto brightness and location services and have seen a decent improvement in battery life.
 
bourne said:
I turned off wifi, gps, autosync, auto brightness and location services and have seen a decent improvement in battery life.
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I guess I need to clarify this. I turn these things on when I need them, I don't leave them running non-stop.
 
destardi said:
I turned my phone off, and have noticed a big improvement in battery life.
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They say it takes twice as much juice to re-start the phone. You might wanna keep it idle. Things like screen protectors and plastic cases also add weight to the device, Making it use more juice. Oh, And when you charge it, Before you remove the plug from the phone, Tip the plug so any electricity remaining at the top doesnt go back down the cord.
 
djb28 said:
They say it takes twice as much juice to re-start the phone. You might wanna keep it idle. Things like screen protectors and plastic cases also add weight to the device, Making it use more juice. Oh, And when you charge it, Before you remove the plug from the phone, Tip the plug so any electricity remaining at the top doesnt go back down the cord.
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Nice...
 
Just got off the phone with top level tech support at VZW. They stated they are having 4G issues on the backend because of the crush of Thunderbolt activations. This is resulting in current Thunderbolt owners having 4G connectivity problems and new owners having extremely delayed activations. For current owners, you might see your 4G flip on and off constantly, even though you have good signal reception. This constant on and off will result in unusually high battery drain. The issue is being worked on by network engineering and should be resolved in a few days. If you are still having problems by the weekend, call VZW and have them check the provisioning on your account. If it's provisioned properly and you're still seeing the "4G bounce", you're either on the edge of a 4G service area or your phone is defective.

TL;DR - 4G is getting swamped and might be the reason for your crappy battery life.
 
That might help, but that can only do so much. they're fooling themselves if they think thats the solution. The solution was put a 1800mah battery in this phone.

So sure we can be optimistic that will fix the problem, but the reality is it will make a minimal impact on battery life. 1400mah battery in a beast of a phone is going to kill battery quickly and nothing they can do about it on the "backend"
 
Yellow Snowman said:
That might help, but that can only do so much. they're fooling themselves if they think thats the solution. The solution was put a 1800mah battery in this phone.

So sure we can be optimistic that will fix the problem, but the reality is it will make a minimal impact on battery life. 1400mah battery in a beast of a phone is going to kill battery quickly and nothing they can do about it on the "backend"
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I watched my phone go from 100% to 60% in 2 hours because of it searching for 4G. I wasn't doing anything other than occasionally turning it on to see if I had a signal lock. It's a huge problem.

If it wasn't doing this, I'm sure I'd be getting 10 or so hours of battery and I'm fine with that.
 
Yellow Snowman said:
That might help, but that can only do so much. they're fooling themselves if they think thats the solution. The solution was put a 1800mah battery in this phone.

So sure we can be optimistic that will fix the problem, but the reality is it will make a minimal impact on battery life. 1400mah battery in a beast of a phone is going to kill battery quickly and nothing they can do about it on the "backend"
Click to expand...

Agree a bigger battery is necessary but they can help that some with future updates I mean the EVO had the same problems and they released an update which helped somewhat.
 
djb28 said:
lol
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I have to say that is the first time I have seen a post as sarcastic as that and still the sarcasm is lost in the text.

Personally I found it hilarious.

That is until I tried it and didn't notice any difference.

Damn.....Thought for sure you were on to something. :p
 
theacoustician said:
I watched my phone go from 100% to 60% in 2 hours because of it searching for 4G. I wasn't doing anything other than occasionally turning it on to see if I had a signal lock. It's a huge problem.

If it wasn't doing this, I'm sure I'd be getting 10 or so hours of battery and I'm fine with that.
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I am in a strong 4g area. I have full bars all of the time. After the battery died the first time I turned 4G off set all my email and selected apps to sync manually and turned off all back ground data.

I then charged it and then bump charged. After one five minute call a 15 second check of facebook and 1 text I was down to 80% after being unplugged for 23 minutes!

My Thunderbolt is now in the Fed Ex box on the porch waiting to be picked up :(
 
I feel bad for all you guys with bad battery life.

My activation was quick. But I was on 3G when it was taking place. My wife activated hers on 4G and her activation didn't go so smooth. The phone seemed confused or something. Now it works great though.
 
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