[Battery] Fixes and Tips

[roninld]

I think all the bad battery experiences can be summed into a few categories

1. Phones that sleep correctly
2. Phones that don't sleep correctly

Those in the first category are probably overusing their phones because it is new and shiny. Also, there is possibly a calibration issue with the battery gauge. Both issues are probably resolving with time and that is probably why the number of complaints have gone down.

Those of us in the second category have a legitimate issue. The built-in calendar application prevents my phone from sleeping, plain and simple. If I kill the calendar application, my phone sleeps when it should and I can go all day with fairly heavy usage. If the calendar app is running, I lose about 10-15% battery per hour without touching it. I have a morning routine where I reboot, kill calendar, stop and start gmail sync, stop and start Exchange sync, then restart the calendar that seems to fix it for 24 hours. This is a *bug*, plain and simple, and I have written Verizon and HTC about it. Hopefully they will fix it in the very near future.

I'm in the 2nd category. I get great usage during the day, but then the phone wakes up in the middle of the night. I also follow your routine of killing the calendar in the morning to get the phone to sleep during the day. Although I end up starting the Calendar in order to show it in the list of processes (I use Astro), but when I kill it, the phone sleeps.

Anyway, writting Verizon/HTC about issue is a great idea. Figure I'll send my two cents in to them as well.

Thanks

 

[Callahan]

I tried a tip yesterday someone posted on one of these numerous battery threads. (might even be this one)

I charged the phone till green light, said 98% charged....turned phone off ...plugged it back in...orange light for about 20min more, said 100% charged.....turned it on....turned it off again....plugged it up....orange light for about 10min this time, said 100% charged...turned it on.

My phone has been on since. here are the current battery stats.

up time 37:48
awake time 2:04
56% charge left

Cell standby 38%
Phone idle 38%
Android sys 8%
Wi-fi 7%
Earth 6%
Display 3%

Granted, I haven't used the phone a lot but still impressive results.

 

[zemerick]

I tried a tip yesterday someone posted on one of these numerous battery threads. (might even be this one)

I charged the phone till green light, said 98% charged....turned phone off ...plugged it back in...orange light for about 20min more, said 100% charged.....turned it on....turned it off again....plugged it up....orange light for about 10min this time, said 100% charged...turned it on.

My phone has been on since. here are the current battery stats.

up time 37:48
awake time 2:04
56% charge left

Cell standby 38%
Phone idle 38%
Android sys 8%
Wi-fi 7%
Earth 6%
Display 3%

Granted, I haven't used the phone a lot but still impressive results.

You really don't want to take it on and off the charger a lot. You will hurt your battery over time, and at that rate pretty quickly.

First, just let the phone charge while the phone is off. When the green light appears, it is DONE. Take it off and use it.

Also, it is better over all to just go from about 30%-90% on your charges. You should really only charge to the full 100% when you think you will actually need that extra little usage.

 

[Callahan]

You really don't want to take it on and off the charger a lot. You will hurt your battery over time, and at that rate pretty quickly.

First, just let the phone charge while the phone is off. When the green light appears, it is DONE. Take it off and use it.

Also, it is better over all to just go from about 30%-90% on your charges. You should really only charge to the full 100% when you think you will actually need that extra little usage.

Thanks for the opinion. This may or may not be true, there's so much conflicting information being put out on charging methods, it's hard to separate the wheat from the chaff. I will try a straight phone off charge to see if the results are similar. At any rate, if it does damage the life cycle of the battery, replacements are easy to come by. It is just a battery afterall.

 

[AaronBBrown]

Is it the calander widget or the calender app itself that is the problem?

It's the calendar app. I have 3 calendar widgets for various views and none of them seem to cause a problem.

 

[emil]

Good to hear. I get 20+ hours with heavy use.

I have HTC Desire and with 3G net it lasts max 9 hours of online usage. With normal use, calls and email sync it goes about 12-14 hours. Whad do you do to increase batery life?

 

[Locoman]

The battery does not tell the phone- I am at 100% or I am at 35.5% etc.. Also there is no "microchip" embedded in the battery, its 2 wires, pos and neg attached to the anode and cathode with the hub (piece that physically connects to phone).

The software on the phone measures the voltage and the amperage, during charge it records the time in a "spreadsheet". At the end of what the software considers a "full" charge it stops charging (trickle). The data collected, like time of charge, and voltage amperage, are saved to a "spreadsheet" where a formula is created by fitting a trend-line to the data to estimate battery % and time to live TTL. This is like high school math and common sense here.

bjanow, I, like you, believe the only way for a true charge is by means of an external charger, more efficient too.[/QUOTE]


"This replacement battery has an integrated microchip that prevents overcharging and lengthens battery life".

This is the description copied from where I got my batteries. I looked around the web and found many batteries for different phones that stated that they had an integrated microchip to prevent overcharging. So I'm charging away!

 

[dgourd]

Here are some tips I posted in another thread:

About your battery concerns, the initial battery life on the phone was terrible. What I found to greatly increase battery life (without changing any settings) was cycling the battery (which you should do with every lithium-ion battery powered device). Cycling is using the phone until the battery drops to near zero. I do this until the phone shuts off by itself. Then, I charge it all the way up to 100% without interruptions. Once it reaches 100%, take it off and repeat the cycle (hence the name cycling).

I found that at first, the battery lasted 3/4 of a day. After 1 week of cycling, it lasted about 1.5 days on about the same amount of usage. This is all objective, but there is scientific reasoning on how cycling does improve battery health.

 

[techfreak111]

Hi all I'm finally back and just want to say I love this phone and yes the battery has problems but I use it a lot also!

 

[bjanow]

....I, like you, believe the only way for a true charge is by means of an external charger, more efficient too.

Couldn't agree more.

 

[veloslave]

It was pretty funny and frustrating to see all the people post about this non-issue 1-2 days into use. I mean how dense can people get? Even after numerous replies by those of us who've had other android phones or smartphones people would insist it was a deal breaker and i'm sure a few people tried to return their phone because of it. All you can do is laugh.

2. Keep things civil, no insults or flaming. Debating is and always will be welcome but if it crosses the line you may find yourself on a vacation to banlandia.

 

[Trident]

2. Keep things civil, no insults or flaming. Debating is and always will be welcome but if it crosses the line you may find yourself on a vacation to banlandia.

This was posted prior to me posting those guidelines and merging that thread into here.
No worries! Just remember those guidelines on the OP from now on please!

 

[techfreak111]

alot of the battery has to do with signal quality, like i live in a place without great signal so my battery uses a lot more power trying to pick up the signal. Not complaining though I get pretty decent battery life

 

[Mercutio]

I've had great results by getting rid of widgets such as Pure Calendar and Grid. I'm at 44% and 17hrs on.

I keep "always on data" checked and have exchange, calendar, and Gmail accts all updating via push. 50mins of voice talk time, maybe five emails, ten to twenty texts, eight mins of GPS (Google maps), and Bluetooth on the whole time.

 

[krelvinaz]

No, they don't.

The high-power lithium-ion


I don't know why this myth is still out there. The only thing the "conditioning" that people describe here does is bettery calibrate the gauge on the phone...but that does nothing for battery life.

Correct... The conditioning is not for the battery... it is for the device to learn the capacity of the battery. It takes a couple cycles before it learns enough to provide a more accurate idea of what is there.

In the beginning, the device under reports the available power which is done on purpose to prevent the users from thinking they have more time than they really do. Better to under report than over report.

As a battery is cycled, the device gets smarter about what is really there, and makes the battery appear to last longer. In reality, the amount of power available from the battery has never changed, but the battery gauge now sees it more accurately.

I replaced my stock battery with an extended battery last night. This morning, JuicePlotter for example has been under reporting the amount of time left consistently all day long. I have already passed by normal usage using the stock battery and according to the %, still have 40% left.

After a few cycles, the device will have learned more accurately the real capacity of the battery and will make it look like it lasts longer.

 

[cdodge]

This is wierd.

I am not sure how I went from being scrared because i only got 10 hours with almost no usage to being scared that I am getting 13 hours and still having 67% left after low to medium usage. I am kind of leary on why I am getting such good battery life now. If this continues I am am going to Love this phone.

 

[bjanow]

This is wierd.

I am not sure how I went from being scrared because i only got 10 hours with almost no usage to being scared that I am getting 13 hours and still having 67% left after low to medium usage. I am kind of leary on why I am getting such good battery life now. If this continues I am am going to Love this phone.

Too late, you already love this phone.

 

[cdodge]

Too late, you already love this phone.

Lol, your right thats why I put up with the battery issues. But now I even love it more. If the battery continues to perform the way it has been after letting it cahrge with the phone this will probbaly be the best battery life i have gotten from a smart phone ever.

Its s wierd that i can go from 10 hours before it dies with no use to being on.. wait ,lemme check... just over 14 hours with medium use and still have 59% left.

 

[jamor]

I think you should qualify your battery statements by mentioning if you turn off mobile networks etc.

Some people claiming outrageous battery times because they turn off 3g, no refresh with networks lower volume, no haptic feedback, no vibrate , lowest backlighting.

I can get 23 hours of battery life with 3g(mostly)/wifi(partly) with autosync on, weather app, minor nba gametime lite, 45 min robo defense, some internet surfing, average calls, average texts, browsing market place, pushing gmail and weather, and taking some pictures.

 

[jamor]

Charge your phone while it's off to get the extra 10% (25 or so minutes on the wall).

 

[cdodge]

Charge your phone while it's off to get the extra 10% (25 or so minutes on the wall).

Ya, that fixed my battery issue.

Quick question though. Have people been shutting the phone off to get the extra 20 minute charge everytime they charge their phone or is doing this once good enough?

 

[jamor]

Ya, that fixed my battery issue.

Quick question though. Have people been shutting the phone off to get the extra 20 minute charge everytime they charge their phone or is doing this once good enough?

It's an every time thing..

 

[hal1]

Ya, that fixed my battery issue.

Quick question though. Have people been shutting the phone off to get the extra 20 minute charge everytime they charge their phone or is doing this once good enough?

Just tried this today...

> charged overnight with the phone on (next to my bed of course)
> woke up this AM and the light was green.
> unplugged phone
> turned phone off
> plugged back in, charging light was orange for over 10 minutes (lost track)
> unplugged after turned green again

I just got the best mileage today. 10 hours later still has 70 % left, though today was a VERY light day on it, but had bluetooth on all day.

Tomorrow will be more typical, I'll check back

 

[alison03]

Just tried this today...

> charged overnight with the phone on (next to my bed of course)
> woke up this AM and the light was green.
> unplugged phone
> turned phone off
> plugged back in, charging light was orange for over 10 minutes (lost track)
> unplugged after turned green again

I just got the best mileage today. 10 hours later still has 70 % left, though today was a VERY light day on it, but had bluetooth on all day.

Tomorrow will be more typical, I'll check back

I didn't backread too much of this monster thread, but have you repeated your last 3 steps? is that safe for the battery? Last night at around 11:00ish I did exactly what you did, but after it turned green for the 2nd time, I unplugged, turned it on to see the battery icon. Turned it off and plugged the charger back in. Was read for about 15 more minutes. etc.

I left my phone on all night (sleeping, of course) but when I woke up at 9:00 this morning, the charge was still 100%. No drainage. Used it moderately today (a few short phone calls, a few texts, light internet browsing, played games for about 45 minutes total, and downloaded a few apps).

It's now 9:45 at night (22 hours off the charger exactly). Uptime: 22:00:00 awake time: 2:48:01 and battery is at 35%. I think it's actually much better than before, and it was never too bad to begin with.

EDIT: also - 3g always on, backlight set to automatic, vibrate with ring turned 3/4 of the way up, synch on etc. nothing disabled besides bluetooth (don't have one) and gps.

 

[fortesquieu]

Just tried this today...

> charged overnight with the phone on (next to my bed of course)
> woke up this AM and the light was green.
> unplugged phone
> turned phone off
> plugged back in, charging light was orange for over 10 minutes (lost track)
> unplugged after turned green again

I just got the best mileage today. 10 hours later still has 70 % left, though today was a VERY light day on it, but had bluetooth on all day.

Tomorrow will be more typical, I'll check back

Except bluetooth, did you have 3G on? I have done that, but even with light use, I couldn't get past 10 hours. My uptime and awake time is far apart, nothing in the background.