Battery Life - The Good The Bad and The Ugly

[wrchad23]

does anyone know if i use the charger that came with my blackberry tour can be used to charge the evo? they are the came (micro, i think its called). but i didnt know if using a different brand would damage the battery or phone itself?

thanks in advance.

It'll work perfectly fine. I have it plugged into my Tour charger now. I have a Palm Pre charger at the office I use that works perfectly fine as well.

 

[mrvirginia]

i've posted steps on how to conserve battery life in my signature. tonight i will edit the exact same post with pictures as proof.

you guys with "bad battery life" just need to learn how to tweak the settings in Android

 

[mrvirginia]

how do you get the exact % of battery life? i keep looking for that.

hit phone and type this into your dialer
*#*#4636#*#*
then hit battery information

 

[trife]

That cdma hack was already in my evo. I wonder if our devices have already been tweaked depending on where we bought it.

I have pretty good batt life and one of my things is a page for all my widgets:

sound/vibrate
mobile
wifi
airplane
bluetooth
hotspot
4g
led light
gps
screen brightness
sync

This is alot to keep track of if they're all hidden in settings you might forget or not know they're running. At a glance i know I only have mobile on and just press the button for whatever function i need, then turn it off when im done.

It would be great to keep everything on but its much like my PC i have almost nothing start at bootup and just run programs as I need them. I'm conditioned this way so it doesn't bother me, I kinda enjoy it.

Also i know people think its a placebo effect, but completely draining my battery till the phone literally shut off and charging for a night when it was already full seemed to help. Maybe its just calibration and not really extending battery life, but for whatever reason I never see orange on a full workday. Dont know how long it would last without a charge since i do tethering as my home so I plug it in once a day regardless.

I sync gmail, weather (3 hours i think?) and HTC facebook. Deleted calender from the page but its still running in applications. Here are my running apps

calendar
obexservice
calendar
connectivityservice
google
gtalkservice
android live wallpapers
water
voicemail
cmservice
htc dm
htcdmservice
sprintzone
updateservice
music
mediaplaybackservice
htc iqagent
agentservice
com.smithmicro.dm
dmservice app
touchinput
google voice
calllogservice
updateservice

Looks like half of these are just the process of the app above it but Im not sure which is which so i put them all in. I supposedly disabled gtalkservice but its in there, supposedly deleted calender but its in there.

 

[Mateo]

For those of you switching the GSM over to CDMA using the *#*#4636#*#* method. Try doing the PRL update first and then see if it says GSM. I read on the xda developers site that when you reboot the phone you would have to make that change again using the same method but the PRL update seems to have made the change for me and it sticks.

 

[kiz88]

Turned mine on at 7 am this morning and at 5:30 pm I was still at 34% battery life, 98% Android application 5% web surfing, about 20 phone calls.

Either way I need a spare battery and dock charger for it which I already ordered, need that back up ready to go at all times. Back on the charger now before I go out in about an hour or so.

Im pretty happy about the battery so far.

If you watch movies etc on it alot ofcourse it is going to kill that 1500 battery.

 

[dohmai]

Sorry if this was posted before.. couldn't find via search...

Is there a way to stop Gtalk from loading at startup? I go through settings/running processes and manually stop it, which is usually fine as I don't power off/on very often... but just wondering if I can disable it from starting altogether?

 

[ThatNewAndroidGuy]

So I was charging my phone like normal, and then I see the screen turn on by itself lol, im life wtf. Bluetooth turned on by itself, I THINK. Anyways, I went to the battery options, and now it says "discharging." Why is that? Now I just looked at it after about a couple mins, says charging now and the screen turned off. wtf? lol. Anyone experience that yet?

 

[dohmai]

Question about the GSM to CDMA switch...

I get through the menu/switch radio band/force close.. then can switch to CDMA auto prl in the dropbox...

But then when I exit to home or back button and go through process again (settings/switch radio band/force close) .. it shows up as GSM auto prl again..

Is this supposed to happen, or am I somehow not 'confirming' my switch to CDMA.. and how can I do that?

Also where can I view Time without Sprint statistics?

Thanks

 

[LisaFitz]

Just thought id add, battery is at 43% right now and it been off the charger for 24hrs which means its getting better for me, usually i get it to go for 12-15 hrs and that's with moderate usage

I have everything off brightness down, no task killers, wifi never sleeps but i am also always in a wifi area so that may help, gmail is on to push as well, never have left my phone to fully drain out and die (something i used to have happen with my pre and i noticed the battery long term was lasting less and less the more i let it die out)

Another thing i notice is if you web browse, take a peak at the windows option sometimes you add web windows without knowing (multitasking area in menu or windows as its called) you could have many web pages open at once

Lastly i know gtalk and slacker radio are sometimes sneaky and can run in the background, you can you the settings-applications to see what running, also fring needs to be manually exited out to our it will run

 

[lettcco]

People, I think from now on we need to standardize the way we describe our battery performance. Because one person can say his battery can last all day but in reality it was on standby the whole time, while someone will say they only get 4 hours out of it but he/she can be utilizing the phone the whole time, thus creating a confusion among all of us. Simply reporting the cell standby is at 90% doesn't mean there is a problem if the phone has been unused for 14-20 hours.

Here's what we need to do:
1) charge the phone up to 100% (verify by going into *#*#4636#*#* and battery info)
2) Turn off the phone with the micro USB still connected.
3) remove micro USB cable.
4) Turn on the phone.

At this point, the phone on time since reboot will be reset, thus giving you (and us) a better idea of how you have used your phone.

Report the following:
a. phone on time since reboot
b. phone awake time
c. battery % (using *#*#4636#*#*)
d. any additional observation like cell standby percentage, with whatever feature or setting turned on or off.

To further standardize our result for those of us who are plagued by cell standby battery usage dominating , we could do the following and post back here:

5) Once the phone all boot up, immediately hit the power button so the phone go to standby
6) turn on the phone after an hour
7) Report back the battery % (using *#*#4636#*#*)
8) additional observation/settings, etc.

I will report mine in here in a follow up post.

 

[Markdek]

That's a good idea, because some people are getting crazy and confused as to how they are interpreting all the battery statistics in the various apps.

My favorite is when people are screaming about high standby use at the top of one of the built-in battery reports under settings, when in fact all the standby is reporting is the PERCENT of battery use, not absolute battery use. So, if your phone sits around a lot, of coarse your PERCENT of standby time will be high. It doesn't mean that standby is using alot of battery.

As said above, Up time (a. phone on time since reboot) and Wake time (b. phone awake time) are probably the best initial measures of battery performance.

Before I returned my phone, and w/ my heavy used pattern, I could only get 11hrs Up time, but that was w/ 6 hrs Wake time. At 4 hrs Wake time I could get 13 hrs Up time.

 

[lettcco]

Here's my 1st report:

a. phone on time since reboot: 1:03
b. phone awake time: 0:32
c. battery % 90
d. 4g off, wifi off, BT off, 3g on, 2g on. Background data and auto sync enabled. Cell standby at 75%

I am a bit surprise by this because I am in a dead zone building. I was expecting phone awake time to be close to zero as I follow step 5-7. Will repeat test at home where 3g signal is strong.

 

[Markdek]

Here's my 1st report:

a. phone on time since reboot: 1:03
b. phone awake time: 0:32
c. battery % 90
d. 4g off, wifi off, BT off, 3g on, 2g on. Background data and auto sync enabled. Cell standby at 75%

I am a bit surprise by this because I am in a dead zone building. I was expecting phone awake time to be close to zero as I follow step 5-7. Will repeat test at home where 3g signal is strong.

If I'm thinking correctly, if your phone was unlocked (screen on) you are accruing wake time, so did you use your phone at all (for 32 minutes) during the first 1 hour, 3 minutes? If not, then some other processes are working in the background, which can be normal. Like syncing, etc.

 

[lettcco]

If I'm thinking correctly, if your phone was unlocked (screen on) you are accruing wake time, so did you use your phone at all (for 32 minutes) during the first 1 hour, 3 minutes? If not, then some other processes are working in the background, which can be normal. Like syncing, etc.

see that's what I am surprised by. I followed the instruction I lay out earlier, so the wake time should be minimum (1-2 mins top). As soon as I hit the power button it should go stand by. The office building I was in has no signal whatsoever so some processes is running on its own for 32 mins even the screen is off.

 

[thelobster]

i did the *#*#4636#*#* and my battery life went from 8-9 hours to 30 plus right now.

 

[jeffsaha]

My battery life has not been horrendous, but I did come from a Pre so there's no gauging "good" battery life for me as of yet.

But what I'm kind of worried about is that when I take off my charger in the morning after an overnight charge, the battery percentage drops to about 98% instantly. And after about 5-10mins of checking my online stuff its literally down to 90% or less. I wonder if I got a bad battery or not...

 

[ellykay]

What app do you all have installed that tells you the exact percentage left in the battery? I just got my Evo today.

 

[LisaFitz]

My battery life has not been horrendous, but I did come from a Pre so there's no gauging "good" battery life for me as of yet.

But what I'm kind of worried about is that when I take off my charger in the morning after an overnight charge, the battery percentage drops to about 98% instantly. And after about 5-10mins of checking my online stuff its literally down to 90% or less. I wonder if I got a bad battery or not...

Same thing happens to me what i noticed is that around the high 70s its begins to level off and slow easy down, might just be the area where i work as yesterday in a better area it was slower than i ever experienced

 

[The Wok]

I had HORRENDOUS battery life before (I once got to 65% after 1 HOUR unplugged.) Applied a lot of the tips from this thread and today I'm at 9h 22m unplugged, 40% battery.

The Google Talk settings seemed to make the largest difference.

 

[heavychevy]

I don't know if this has been mentioned before as I've read up as much as I can on the battery life, but haven't read every post in every thread.

I think the problem with many of use is that our battery is running for far longer than we think it is. The auto stop on charging means that when the battery reaches full capacity it stops charging on it's own. I'm not sure how low it lets the battery get before it starts charging again (or if it starts charging again at all), but I'm sure it's a substantial time.

I unplugged my phone from the charger last night right at midnight, it is now 4pm on the dot here which means the phone would have been unplugged for 16 hours, however checking my phone usage statistics it says awake time is 17 hours (16:56).

Being that I had been using the phone the whole time up to midnight even while it was on the charger I'm sure that extra hour saw some significant battery usage. This is why I think the batteries are quick to show discharge after they are unplugged because it's likely they stopped charging several hours ago and are simply running on battery power.

I don't see a way around this as the phone decides when it's charging and when it's not, so actually, charging over night may be the worst thing to do.

I could be completely wrong in my theory, but I know for a fact my time frames are accurate.

 

[meyerweb]

give up easy?

He's got an iPhone. What do you expect? I'm convinced at least half of the iPhone users who bought EVOs did so only so they could talk about how much better their iPhone is.

 

[meyerweb]

I do construction, sometimes I can't charge it for periods of 12-14 hours, I would like to be able to use the phone and check out the things it was meant to do during the course of a day without being scared that it was going to die.

2x 1500mAh battery + dock charger for Sprint HTC Evo 4G - eBay (item 260599966395 end time Jul-08-10 07:29:11 PDT)

2 batteries and a charger for $11. If 3 batteries won't get you through the day, then nothing will.

 

[twospirits]

Nice find, but 25 business days for delivery, damn. Then again anything coming from that part of the world comes by ship usually so yeah 25 days is about right. But the price makes me wonder how good they are.

TS

 

[vlkswagn]

I think I should do the hard reset on my EVO, as my battery life has been kinda crappy since I got the phone. Initially, it would be out after 5 hours, and it goes about 8 hours now. I want the longer battery life though, so I want to know the best way to do a hard reset. ALSO, I installed that systempanel app (wonderful btw) and it shows that HTC Sense is running the the background, using 46.2M of my memory. The app shows 86% used memory, only 14% free (about 60M). Anything I can do about this? Thanks again!