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Battery Life - The Good The Bad and The Ugly

Does your phone drop 10% quickly in the morning after a full night of charging?

  • Yes

    Votes: 436 79.3%
  • Nope

    Votes: 74 13.5%
  • Not sure

    Votes: 40 7.3%

  • Total voters
    550
Someone was telling me awhile ago that with smartphones it's best to totally deplete the charge when you first get it, then get a full charge and do it again, then you should be good with spot charging etc. Any truth to this?

Li-Ion batteries do not require this kind of treatment. Actually, it is more harmful to them than just charging them normally. The first charge is the same as the 50th and the 100th, and so on. There is no conditioning, no memory effect with these batteries. Simply topping them off is all that's necessary.
 
I have had this problem since day one and nothing seems to fix it. There is a charging issue with the phone because I just received two new batteries and a wall charger that I purchased from eBay for $10.00. I left the battery in the wall charger for several hours, even after it was fully charged. When I switched out the battery, it stayed at 100% for about 10 minutes before it starting counting down and the battery did last longer so I don't think it is a misreading by the phone.
 
i used to be able to say the same thing, except now it's been degrading steadily for some time. i've tried everything that common sense dictates to return it to reasonable performance, but nothing helps. i think it's the way it's reading, AND/OR an issue with the phone or memory card.

There is definitely an issue with the way the Evo software manages battery charging. I don't think it's so much a discharge or use issue, but charging is a problem.

As stated before, once charged to 100%, Evo software stops charging the battery and then instructs the phone to use battery power. If the gap between full discharge & disconnect is more than a few mins, you will start to see instant battery drop when checking the battery.

One thing that does seem to have an impact is to fully discharge the battery 1-2 times. I mean run your Evo until it completely shuts off. Then recharge fully, use for the day or afternoon, and then fully discharge again. The recharging should be done with the phone off so that virtually 0 power is used.

This process isn't so much conditioning the battery as it triggers the battery management software code to work as if it was getting a completely new, unused battery and allowing a full charge + resetting the Evo's internal charge meter.

Some people aren't comfortable with a full discharge, but it's perfectly ok. The only thing you lose is the 90 mins it takes to recharge from 0%.
 
This statement is patently false. You may need to calibrate the battery, but lithium batteries have no memory.

+1. I've suggested people do full discharge, then full recharge with phone off. It's the best way to calibrate the Evo software and battery power levels. Also does a semi-soft reset so both are closer to a 0 reading to start.

Once it's done, it works. I find that it makes sense to do this to recalibrate about 1/month.

Froyo's battery use will be better because of the way it accesses and processes info, but HTC needs to do a software fix to the phone's battery management code so that it allows for top-off charging. That way, when the phone stops charging after 100% charge, the software can resume a short burst of charging after a 5-10% drop that can occur between when the phone originally stopped charging but before the user disconnects and begins to use the phone.
 
I bought a battery/dock/charger off ebay $25.00, now this thing has a USB port and charging port on it. The USB you can use to charge and sync the device to your computer while docked on it and the charging port which is what I mainly use it for I put a USB cable and attached it to the OEM HTC charger to charge just the spare battery.

You can charge a spare battery if you have AC power connected to it and you can dock the EVO and charge it thru USB via the computer USB connection. You can do both but you must have USB PC connection and the AC connection for the spare battery.

With all that said the software that charges and controls the EVO battery while the battery is inside charging in the EVO truly SUCKS!!!!!! I place the spare battery in this dock charger and charge it and it takes a good 2 hours for the phone to go from 100% to 99%. If I charge the battery in the EVO within 2 minutes after unplugging even though the EVO has been charging all nite it goes to 99-98% withing 2-5 minutes, which is telling me that the dock battery charger is trickle charging after it gets to 100% and not letting the battery drain after it reaches 100%.

Its not the batterys that suck its the software in these phones that controls the charging, get a battery dock charger and see the incredible difference you will see in battery life.

I did.
 
Just thought I'd pop in here and say something (which probably has been said before). In short, my battery went from good to bad, I noticed my cpu working on nothing, did a battery pull, and it was back to good. I have no idea what was going on. Anyone else noticing this??

My battery performed relatively well ever since I got the phone but in the past couple of days, I noticed a drop in performance. I did a soft reset but the battery still dropped from 100% to 50% after 4-5 hours of just sitting there with a strong signal. I looked through my system to see if there were any rogue apps but couldn't find any. What I did notice was that the cpu was getting inexplicably overworked. I ended up doing a battery pull and after that the battery drained only by 4% for the next 8 hours with the phone in the same spot.

I'm speculating here, but I'm pretty sure there is some sort of performance efficiency problem with the platform. Battery pulls seem to help, but I bet in a week or two I'm going to have to do it again...
 
So, I am a light user of this new Evo. I absolutely love the phone,.. but man.. the battery drains like 10 percent after being off the hook for 15 minutes.

I'd like to be a heavy user, but the ability to get my phone calls is way more important. Slightly bummed about the battery, but what can ya do?

I actually just got back from going to Sprint, telling this guy about my issue. He did the usual, tell me what to turn off, turned off a bunch of settings, deleted my clock widget, etc. And he deleted all my bookmarks !!! grrr.. He said that they take up way too much battery use, and went and deleted them without asking. heh.. Although he did give me a battery for free, i guess its made for the hero. But wish he didn't delete my bookmarks, lol.

you should have asked him for his phone.... and if stupid enough to give it to you, you should have thrown it across the room and told him it uses too much freakin battery. THE FREAKIN thing came with a GD clock on it! the people getting good battery life that i've talked to, didn't get it by deleting the freakin clock! what an a$$.... i can't believe you weren't mad. i'm mad just reading it.
 
you should have asked him for his phone.... and if stupid enough to give it to you, you should have thrown it across the room and told him it uses too much freakin battery. THE FREAKIN thing came with a GD clock on it! the people getting good battery life that i've talked to, didn't get it by deleting the freakin clock! what an a$$.... i can't believe you weren't mad. i'm mad just reading it.


Some people really are clueless, sounds like that guy had no buisness even touching your phone.
 
I bought a battery/dock/charger off ebay $25.00, now this thing has a USB port and charging port on it. The USB you can use to charge and sync the device to your computer while docked on it and the charging port which is what I mainly use it for I put a USB cable and attached it to the OEM HTC charger to charge just the spare battery.

You can charge a spare battery if you have AC power connected to it and you can dock the EVO and charge it thru USB via the computer USB connection. You can do both but you must have USB PC connection and the AC connection for the spare battery.

With all that said the software that charges and controls the EVO battery while the battery is inside charging in the EVO truly SUCKS!!!!!! I place the spare battery in this dock charger and charge it and it takes a good 2 hours for the phone to go from 100% to 99%. If I charge the battery in the EVO within 2 minutes after unplugging even though the EVO has been charging all nite it goes to 99-98% withing 2-5 minutes, which is telling me that the dock battery charger is trickle charging after it gets to 100% and not letting the battery drain after it reaches 100%.

Its not the batterys that suck its the software in these phones that controls the charging, get a battery dock charger and see the incredible difference you will see in battery life.

I did.
 
After a few weeks of waiting, the Seidio extended battery I ordered from Amazon comes in today.

May be interesting to see how it reacts to the blitzkrieg discharge problem
 
I really hammer on my phones, to the point where I was getting like 4 hours on a charge. Add task killer, which got me out to 12 hours. Then bought an extra charger and extra battery (just change the battery when I get low), and battery life exploded. Right now I have time since unplugged 22 hours, active time 6 hours with 48% left.

The question I have is, do you have to shut down the phone to change the battery or can you just pull it?
 
My battery life has ups and downs. After I rooted -- and after I got rid of Last.FM -- my battery life improved leaps and bounds. But nowadays, even after not installing Last.FM again, my battery life is back to poor. I think it's a program constantly activating the network radios (wifi/3g). When my phone is in airplane mode, I only lose about ~1% per 9 hours. Outside of airplane mode, it's 10-15% while idle. If I use the phone to actually do things, it's even worse. I can make it from morning to bed, but only when I put my phone in airplane mode while I"m inside at work (for 9 hours out of the day). Without that, my phone would be dead in less than 7-8 hours idle. Up time 48 hours, awake time 16 hours.

I've done/do the following:
-Wifi On at home, 3G off, no 4g so always disabled
-CPU underclocks to 245 MHz when screen is off, ondemand otherwise
-rooted with Fresh 1.0.1 w/ Toast kernel (same drain noticed on all kernels I've tried and on stock before root)
-wifi set to sleep after 15 minutes when screen off
-Live backgrounds disabled
-screen set to 20% brightness, no autobright
-Only two things sync: Gmail and the default weather widget every hour
-Facebook uninstalled
-gTalk logged out and auto sign-in disabled
-No AIM/MSN or other chat services/programs enabled (ie: eBuddy does not have any sign-ins, it's only installed)
-Streaming apps (ala Pandora) quit/killed after I finish using it
-GPS on/off, no difference
-App list : kamikazekyle's Apps on the PC36100
NOTE: I don't have Network Speed, Real Signal, or QuickDesk installed anymore

EDIT: Cell signal is max while I'm out and about and inside my house.

About the only thing I could think of that might constantly poll in the background would be Timerriffic, but I never notice that whenever I check for running apps.

Ugh. Just when I thought I had this battery drain thing knicked, here it is again :/

Anyone have any ideas?
 
Phone purchased on 6/6 battery life was ok, not as good as G1 but not horrible like other EVO owners described. Added a new 8 GB SD card with better specs on day two 6/8 reformatted in PC and put media on card, all was good until 7/22 upgraded SD card again to 16 GB added additional music files. Batterey life suddenly decreased by roughly 40%. Tried old card battery life back to normal. Safe assumption its SD card related, checked all differences in the two cards.

1. Brands. good card Sandisk problem card Kingsington
2. size. good card 8 gb problem card 16 gb
3. class good card class 4 problem card class 2
4. formating good card fat 32 block size 4096 bytes problem card fat 32 block size 8192 bytes


Checked the original samsung sd card that came in the phone it was formatted to 4096 bytes. Also the second 8 gb sandisk card was in the phone at the time of the HTC update with sd card fix and that card had the block size of 4096 when i checked it. However if you format an sd card in the phone through the setting menu it will format it to fat 32 and 32 kb block size.

So the probelm could have been slower access times on bigger lower class slower card, but dont think that would consume more battery in idle mode.

If the block size has anything to do with it that would surprise me, but i cant say i know enough about file systems to be sure. If anyone wants to check put your card in a reader and win7 allows you to set block size when formating of caorse you dont actually have to do the format to see the current size. i dont know about xp must be an option somewhere.

I would think most likely a bad file on the 16 gb card that was forcing some process on the phone to access it an work more frequently or constanly the way the battery was draining.

I couldnt believe the SD would casue such a drain it really surprised me. Anyone having short battery life that has check all the other obvious offenders I highly recommend checking your sd card. try the phone without it or save your data and wipe the card, reformat and try it before reloading any files. or try a different card, even a simple cheap 1 gb card as a test. Nothing else has shorten my battery life so dramatically and then restored it equally when corrected.
 
sounds interesting...

question.. did you have all the programs moved and or loaded correctly?

it might be an issue with app (stock or market). Because it is not loaded in the new 16gb card correctly.. causing your phone to never sleep or constantly trying to make it work.

or you might be right... bad card or bad sector that has an important file loaded in that area. Android is always trying to access it.
 
sounds interesting...

question.. did you have all the programs moved and or loaded correctly?

it might be an issue with app (stock or market). Because it is not loaded in the new 16gb card correctly.. causing your phone to never sleep or constantly trying to make it work.

or you might be right... bad card or bad sector that has an important file loaded in that area. Android is always trying to access it.

I cant vouch for all programs loaded correctly, i reformatted and copied only my media files ( mp3's jpeg's) on to the card before installing into the phone. i let android and apps build the files and folders. i didnt manual copy move any app or system files or folders onto the card.

update: i reformatted the 16 gb kingsington card fat 32 with 4096 blocks reinstalled mp3 files and put it back in phone checking battery life now but it seems it may have corrected it. I suspect corrupt file causing the phone to stay awake and or search and drain battery. However I did find this
CONFIRMED: T-Mobile USA HD2 MicroSD is Faulty! [Archive] - xda-developers
similar issue with HTC HD2 phone users confident faulty micro sd causing battery drain.
 
Did u do the update?How do feel about it?I did not update cause 8 have not got any issues with CM6 RC1 and my battery is as good as always.
 
I know gang there a lots threads on OEM vs Aftermarket

I cant test my OEM at the moment, but i have an 1800mAh in. IT was charged on a charger for a few hours too 100%. I place it in the EVO and using SystemPanel I checked the battery. After about 1-2 mins it went down to 99%. Now the question i have is - How many mV should an 1800mAh battery be? According to what im reading off the SP, mV = 4135.

1500mAh (OEM) should be equal to how many mV?

The reason I ask, is to make sure I have an 1800mAh battery not a 1500mAh in sheep's clothing.

if its really an 1500mAh battery, no harm I have extra battery now.

I appreciate any help or insight gang. Thanks again....
 
every battery made for your phone charges between 3.5 and 4.2 volts. that's the voltage range that the phone can run in.
having more mah means that it will hold the voltage at a higher amount for a longer period of time.
so the mV doesn't have anything to do with the mah rating.

think of it like this...
each battery is a glass of water.
in your 1500 mah battery you have 15 glasses of water.
in your 1800 mah battery you have 18 glasses of water.
all the water quenches your thirst the same (same voltage) but you have more in the 1800 mah battery so you can go longer before having to go back to the sink and refill your cups.

i hope that analogy didn't just sound stupid and actually contained some information.
 
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