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[Battery] Fixes and Tips

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.

Haven't touched 3G setting, isn't it always on by default? I always have the 3G on with the flashing arrows.

I didn't do the "double plug in" this morning. We'll see how things look tonight.
 
Well, I'm glad my find was able to help out a bunch of users. I was in no way trying to get everyone to try this as I didn't know what the consequences of my actions could have resulted in.
I think you helped out more folks than you realized. I have posted this fix across forums and have even done this with my wife's LG flip phone. Her battery life went from (don't be jealous, it's not a smartphone) 1.5 days to well over 3 it seems. Been 2 days now and only one bar down for her. I got almost exactly the same stats out of my phone as CDodge did a few posts up. Without the fix I got maybe 12 hours, usually 10 before I needed to charge. The last two nights I plug in about 15 hours later with 58% one day and 63% last night. That is the best battery life I ever got with any smartphone. FYI, I have *everything* except BT on. GPS, wireless, 3G, 4 Exchange accounts, Gmail.. you name it, it's on.
 
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 would eliminate the step of unplugging, I've been getting these results by simply shutting the phone off with a green LED in the morning, it goes orange and then once green I unplug.
 
Anyone have any idea on the power use difference between regular and live wallpaper? Using Battery Left I noticed that the Android system was responsible for nearly all the battery consumption, and I've had a Live wallpaper rolling since I got the thing, and I'm curious if that's a part of the problem.
 
Anyone have any idea on the power use difference between regular and live wallpaper? Using Battery Left I noticed that the Android system was responsible for nearly all the battery consumption, and I've had a Live wallpaper rolling since I got the thing, and I'm curious if that's a part of the problem.

Absolutely I would say Live Wallpapers would affect battery life.
 
It's hardly conclusive, but the battery monitor went from dropping like a rock to telling me I have 1:15 left for the past five minutes. I wonder how many people reporting awful battery life are, like i was, using Live wallpapers.
 
Hey guys this is my first legit post In the android forums. Now I have a HTC Incredible otw. I've read every post in this form about the terrible battery life and it is important to me. Different opinions and different options on what to do about it. Does anyone know will they fix this problem via an update if it's possibile or is there anything that can be done to fix this? I refuse to turn off specific options as the mutli-tasking is what I bought it for. If it's going to die about ten hrs in that's unacceptable. So my question about this is how do I find out if there is an update that will fix this can I just call htc and find out really want to keep this phone but if the battery life is really that bad I will return it for the Moto drod. Which fixes are legit?
 
Hey guys this is my first legit post In the android forums. Now I have a HTC Incredible otw. I've read every post in this form about the terrible battery life and it is important to me. Different opinions and different options on what to do about it. Does anyone know will they fix this problem via an update if it's possibile or is there anything that can be done to fix this? I refuse to turn off specific options as the mutli-tasking is what I bought it for. If it's going to die about ten hrs in that's unacceptable. So my question about this is how do I find out if there is an update that will fix this can I just call htc and find out really want to keep this phone but if the battery life is really that bad I will returnnit for the Moto drod

I'm similar to you. I try not to turn off too much stuff as that's the reason I get a smartphone. But so far, you really would have to do that in order to conserve some battery.

Either that, or help yourself to a higher capacity battery.

I have given myself a week on the stock battery, it just would not work out. So I have ordered a bigger capacity battery.
 
It's hardly conclusive, but the battery monitor went from dropping like a rock to telling me I have 1:15 left for the past five minutes. I wonder how many people reporting awful battery life are, like i was, using Live wallpapers.

i am not using live wallpapers and i have the battery issue.

the work around with charging the phone while it is off is my workaround until HTC fixes the issue.
 
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.
Bingo! I've been running an Eris since its release, and anybody who has followed the Android OS knows that phone had "serious" issues with battery life. I got into a daily routine of charging in the morning (with usually about 20% battery life at 9 a.m.) for about two hours. I would not have to charge, with daily heavy use mind you, until 9-10 p.m.. I would let my battery get into a yellow indicator and charge until I was 4/5 full. The Incredible, which I have upgraded to for obvious reasons, has the same exact batter as the Eris. Granted the Incredible has a much better processor and more impressive screen, however, these discrepancies have to be a usage and management issue. I have been using ATK with every connection, besides WIFI and BT, since day one and my battery has surprised me compared to the initial complaints. Manage your tasks and power draining programs when you need to, and take care of your battery. Running it to zero and back to full is no good for any phone. I had the worst phone in the world before the Incredible, and the Eris before that (BB STORM), and it had the same battery issues as some have described while I was in such a charge pattern with heavy use.
 
i am not using live wallpapers and i have the battery issue.

the work around with charging the phone while it is off is my workaround until HTC fixes the issue.
I have been using LWPS and my battery is not effected much at all compared to using stock WPS. It is a matter of managing what is running and why. Android is built to multitask which is its gift and curse. Manage your processes!
 
I've been doing this for a few days now and I have noticed that late in the "2nd charge" I can hear a high pitch noise and it stops when I unplug. Has anyone noticed this? I don't think it's my outlet, but I wonder if it may be the charger itself or the phone. It's got me a bit nervous. Can anyone confirm?
 
I would eliminate the step of unplugging, I've been getting these results by simply shutting the phone off with a green LED in the morning, it goes orange and then once green I unplug.

^ This. Unplugging and plugging back in is just going to hurt your battery. If your phone is off, and the light goes green, you are done.

NOTE: This is not some bug, and charging while off is not some hack/fix. It's normal. With Li-Ion, when they hit a point in the 70-90 percent range ( depends on the battery ) they voltage stays the same, and the current starts to decrease as the battery fills up. Well...if your phone is ON, it is using some of that current. So, you wind up at 0 current faster than you should, because the phone is stealing some of it. The charging circuits see 0 current going into the battery itself, so it turns the light green.

Turning the phone off, allows all of the charges current to go into the battery, and voila...you finish topping off your battery properly.

I have been using LWPS and my battery is not effected much at all compared to using stock WPS. It is a matter of managing what is running and why. Android is built to multitask which is its gift and curse. Manage your processes!

Yes Android can multitask....but you should never need to use a task killer. Yes, there are some poorly coded apps you can end up downloading that won't behave properly, but you should deal with those yourself. Using task killers can cause far more problems than they help. ( Including using battery power, to activate and kill a program that was not actively running but just in standby. IE: Net change was a LOSS in battery.) NTM the issues of forcing a program closed which does not clear it's resources, or just shutting down something that another program/service wants to use.

If you know what you are doing, and understand everything on your system, then go for it...but most people should NOT be told to use a task killer, because they do not know every single app/process, that apps/processes dependencies, etc.
 
^ This. Unplugging and plugging back in is just going to hurt your battery. If your phone is off, and the light goes green, you are done.

so is the method of turning off your phone without unplugging it just as acceptable as charging it with the phone off? i cannot turn of my phone everynight as i need to get calls/messages, but i do have the opportunity to turn it off for 30 minutes in the morning?

thanks
 
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


This may be the major contributor to my battery issues. My first inc, replaced due to bad sound quality, had 3hr usage/9-11 hr uptime maximums with wifi, gps, bluetooth off and medium use. My new inc has better sound and battery life (5-6 hrs uptime).

Today, I was got my first battery warning after only 3.5 hrs of up time. I checked time off network it was nearly 50%! I had read about the *#*#4636#*#* procedure and did that, finding CDMA on auto, I changed it to CDMA only, then switched it right back to auto. I followed that with the *22899 profile thing. Since then, the phone has been on for 3hrs 15minutes, has had 31 minutes of uptime, and has only dropped another 3%. I need to charge now, but at first blush this seems to have really helped.

Now, my knowledge of each of those procedures is fleeting at best. If someone more familiar with droid and verizon knows why they may/may not have helped, if both are necessary, etc. please inform.
 
so is the method of turning off your phone without unplugging it just as acceptable as charging it with the phone off? i cannot turn of my phone everynight as i need to get calls/messages, but i do have the opportunity to turn it off for 30 minutes in the morning?

thanks

Yup. That'll do the trick:) As long as it is off for that last bit ( it can make it fine up to the 90 percent give or take...it's after that it can't make it any further with the phone on. ) It'll take slightly longer over all to charge while on compared to off, but it's not exactly much.

This may be the major contributor to my battery issues. My first inc, replaced due to bad sound quality, had 3hr usage/9-11 hr uptime maximums with wifi, gps, bluetooth off and medium use. My new inc has better sound and battery life (5-6 hrs uptime).

Today, I was got my first battery warning after only 3.5 hrs of up time. I checked time off network it was nearly 50%! I had read about the *#*#4636#*#* procedure and did that, finding CDMA on auto, I changed it to CDMA only, then switched it right back to auto. I followed that with the *22899 profile thing. Since then, the phone has been on for 3hrs 15minutes, has had 31 minutes of uptime, and has only dropped another 3%. I need to charge now, but at first blush this seems to have really helped.

Now, my knowledge of each of those procedures is fleeting at best. If someone more familiar with droid and verizon knows why they may/may not have helped, if both are necessary, etc. please inform.

It's believed there is a display error when you check what radio band you are on. ( Sometimes. Most INCs seem to be fine out of the box. ) Anyways, while it said CDMA auto, it was really in GSM auto. What was happening, is it would search for a GSM signal, and find none ( because it's a CDMA phone. ) so then it would try CDMA. Of course, it would find it..but it's setting tells it to always try GSM first...so back it goes. Hence the approx. 50% TWOS. This display error is why you are supposed to choose the select radio band which force closes first.

Now, again: Most INCs seem to be set properly, so this should only be done if you have a very high TWOS. ( at least above 20 percent. ) I've managed to put myself back into GSM on accident playing around with those settings, and caught the display error...so I thought I was fine and in CDMA again. 5 hours and a dead battery latter and I fixed that, hehe. Oh, and the display can go both ways...some people will see GSM when they are still in CDMA. They "should" be able to simply change the drop down to CDMA without choosing select radio band to clear that up without actually changing anything. ( The phone sees it as change from CDMA auto to CDMA auto, but because of this sort of update, it will fix the display. )

Cheers!
 
My Android system is using around 40% of my battery, and I think that's a big problem. Any idea what might be going on there?

Sorry if you've posted this already...but what's the full rundown on your battery usage? It's only saying Android is using 40% compared to everything else. It's normal to have Android at 40% if you use your phone for like 6 hours but without higher usage apps. ( IE: 6 hours of texting, email, playing with settings/wallpapers, downloading and installing and trying many individual apps..etc. ) However, if you only use the phone for 2 hours a day, of which say you're talking for 1 hour, and use the camera for half an hour, with the rest email/text/etc...40% probably wouldn't be right. ( I'de expect standby and phone idle to be higher than Android, with Camera and Voice Calls sitting around 5-10 percent each )
 
The big ones are Android System, Phone Idle, and Cell Standby. I mostly browse, chat on Meebo, Tweet, and check email/Facebook while at work, and yet xScope never hops much up above ~4% of the battery use. I'm going to fiddle about some more and see what's up. When it finishes charging in a little bit I'll take it off, leave the battery app on, and play with it fairly heavily to track it.

I have yet to make it through a day of work without it dying. If I leave it with the screen off for a half hour, it STILL drops by about 8%.
 
The big ones are Android System, Phone Idle, and Cell Standby. I mostly browse, chat on Meebo, Tweet, and check email/Facebook while at work, and yet xScope never hops much up above ~4% of the battery use. I'm going to fiddle about some more and see what's up. When it finishes charging in a little bit I'll take it off, leave the battery app on, and play with it fairly heavily to track it.

I have yet to make it through a day of work without it dying. If I leave it with the screen off for a half hour, it STILL drops by about 8%.

When you get a chance, can you make a full run over at following the OPs instructions:

http://androidforums.com/htc-incredible/75229-battery-statistics-reports.html

This will give solid information on how much you are using the phone, and what is using how much, which would help a lot with diagnosing any issues. ( Making sure the phone is off when you unplug it is fairly important btw: It ensures that the Up, Awake and Unplugged times are synced )

If you want to go ahead and PM me with the information that you have right now, following that posts guidelines, I can go ahead and see if theres anything that stands out yet.
 
Quick update: my up time and awake time are the same right now. Both are 2:55. It seems my phone isn't going to sleep. Just for a test I closed both YAAIC and Meebo. Thinking those might be part of the issue.
 
I did try the charge while on then off then on then off again trick yesterday and I used it A LOT last night and it's still at 77%...so I've gone almost 24hrs and it's still going strong...didn't think this would work, so I'm shocked.

The trick is to charge it while on to 100%, then turn it off and charge it (the indicator will be red, so it will tell you it isn't fully charged) and it charged for an extra 20 minutes or so before turning green...I took it off the charger for a conference call yesterday morning for about an hour...it went down to 94%, then I turned it off and did it again, and it went to 100% within 5 minutes...and I've been going strong ever since!
 
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