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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
BetterMost said:
All I have extra is Weather bug elite (installed this since launch day) Solitaire card game, Battery indicator, Mute, and color notes, thats it.
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Lose the Battery indicator, several people have tagged it as an issue.

Following a factory reset (not a soft reset) - do this:

...download the free Network app from the Market. (Network by Philipp Mangelow)

Start it, and scroll down until you see "CDMA auto (PRL)" - change it to "GSM auto (PRL)" - exit Network; re-start Network then change back to "CDMA auto (PRL)" - and finally, go to Menu-> Settings-> System updates-> Update PRL

This sounds like majick snake oil but it's not - it's an idiosyncrasy of the phone's hardware and firmware.
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So first question:
Under the "mobile networks setting" there's something called "data roaming." I understand what it does, but will turning it off save some battery? Also, will turning it off affect my 3g coverage?

My second question is about the "use wireless networks" tab under the "location" setting. Should I keep this off. I understand that my phone will not be able to detect my location off the mobile network. Will keeping it off save me some of my battery life?

Im at a crossroad between maximizing battery, and phone functionality. Thanks for your help in advance.
 
Not all of those 20 tips are worth doing. If there's a flaw with that article, it's that it doesn't weigh the effectiveness of each tip. What I have learned through my experience with my phone is that RADIO eats up the most battery.

Anything that causes the phone to send/receive data, including phone calls, will drain the battery fast. The fastest battery drain of all is using GPS for navigation. Here you are using your radio, and you're peaking your CPU to process your real-time location to a map.

Here are the tips you can ignore:
1) don't bother reducing the screen brightness. Leave it on auto.
6) I set my screen timeout to 2 minutes. I hate having the screen shut on me when I'm still looking at the screen. Pretty negligible battery use.
8) don't bother with this tip. You can keep auto-sync; just go into each app that requires syncing and adjust the settings from there. See step 9. Do that one.
11) keep animations on at full blast. It does use CPU, but only in really short bursts. Doesn't put a dent in your overall usage.
13) this one is TOTALLY FALSE. using a dark wallpaper actually uses more power than a light one. The backlight of an LCD screen is always on, even for a black screen. The reason it's black is because polarizers block the light from passing through the pixel elements. It requires energy to block the light. Use a white background to save power. But it doesn't save much at all, so don't bother. Use whatever background you like.
15) don't use a task killer. consider rooting your phone and deleting the stupid crapware that keep running in the background.
17) this one won't save you anything. turning off a blinking LED as a power-saving tip is a joke.
18) don't bother turning off vibration, unless for some reason your phone is constantly vibrating. It doesn't save much battery.
19) another useless tip. sound production on the phone is extremely efficient and uses almost no battery. I've left my phone mp3 player on for 5 days straight before the battery died (I turned off all radios).
20) haptic feedback also doesn't use much battery, so disable it only if you find it annoying.

There you have it. 10 of the 20 tips you can safely ignore and still have great battery life and a pretty well-functioning phone.

You may also consider rooting your phone at some point, whereby you will have even more powerful battery-saving tips at your disposal.
 
Nice...thanks guys for the info. After reading your posts, I already tweaked my settings. But as for my original question...
 
On Edit: This post was in response to an initial 10% battery drop question, which has now been merged with this thread.



Looks like normal Li-Ion behavior to me. Steep slope in first 10%, then levels off until another steep slope in the last 10%.

Battery Performance Characteristics - How to specify and test a battery

discharge-chemistry.gif



Here is another one from National Instruments:

http://zone.ni.com/devzone/cda/tut/p/id/6855

image60502.jpg
 
I wasn't having a problem with my battery on 2.2 until this morning. I took my phone off charge this morning and my phone was completely dead within 3 hours. I tried taking out the battery for an hour or so and that didn't help. I didn't even use the phone for anything either. Should I try a factory reset? I don't have 4G, wifi, or GPS on.
 
Why is it that I charge my phone to 100% before I go to bed unplug it turn it OFF wake up the next morning turn it on and it starts at 95% or lower some days. I take it off the charger as it turns green? Not that I care cause I charge it again before I leave for work but just think its kinda weird. How can a battery die if its turned off?
 
Once the battery his full charger the phone stops charging and starts running on battery power. It does this because lithium batteries don't like to be trickle charged
 
tyban said:
I wasn't having a problem with my battery on 2.2 until this morning. I took my phone off charge this morning and my phone was completely dead within 3 hours. I tried taking out the battery for an hour or so and that didn't help. I didn't even use the phone for anything either. Should I try a factory reset? I don't have 4G, wifi, or GPS on.
Click to expand...

I bet your phone awake time is 100%. Go to Settings > About > Battery and see if your Uptime and Awake time match. If they do, that is a problem.

I had to uninstall all of my apps so that my phone will sleep while I am not using it.
 
My phone seems to last 15 to 20 hours before it gets to 15% and still has life left at that point, with about 30-40 calls a day, regular email updates and moderate web surfing. Also running live wallpaper, GPS all the time and bluetooth when in the car. Although I'm in a 4G area I just don't use that.
 
vicshalls said:
Why is it that I charge my phone to 100% before I go to bed unplug it turn it OFF wake up the next morning turn it on and it starts at 95% or lower some days. I take it off the charger as it turns green? Not that I care cause I charge it again before I leave for work but just think its kinda weird. How can a battery die if its turned off?
Click to expand...

If you get a separate charger you won't see this problem any longer. I have 5 batteries (paid a total of about $29 for the 4 extras) and have 2 chargers I bought from cellphoneshop.com. Batteries charged on them o not lose 7-10 % within minutes they give a FULL charge. In the morning I take the battery out of the phone(charged overnight) which is supposedly fully charged and put it in one of the other chargers and it shows it as not fully charged and it takes about 20-30 mins to complete the charge
 
ekang said:
So first question:
Under the "mobile networks setting" there's something called "data roaming." I understand what it does, but will turning it off save some battery? Also, will turning it off affect my 3g coverage?

My second question is about the "use wireless networks" tab under the "location" setting. Should I keep this off. I understand that my phone will not be able to detect my location off the mobile network. Will keeping it off save me some of my battery life?

Im at a crossroad between maximizing battery, and phone functionality. Thanks for your help in advance.
Click to expand...

my thoughts on your questions... (guessing)

1.. if you turn off roaming.. it will neg affect your battery, if you are in a bad signal area. when you are in a bad area, your phone tries to find a signal. if you turn off Roaming, my guess is that your phone will keep trying to find the Sprint signal that is not there, which will burn the battery fast. If you have Roaming on, it MIGHT find other services and stop using the radio.

2.. yes. it will save you battery. if GPS is not available and network triangulation is also not available.. it will save battery, but reduce effectiveness of some of your applications.
 
zombdroid said:
I bet your phone awake time is 100%. Go to Settings > About > Battery and see if your Uptime and Awake time match. If they do, that is a problem.

I had to uninstall all of my apps so that my phone will sleep while I am not using it.
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Should I do a factory restore?
 
I have no problem making it through a day after a overnight charge.
Use it all day for internet, games and texting.
I am also rooterd and runnign Fresh 3.1.0.1
With NO task killer.
 
tyban said:
Should I do a factory restore?
Click to expand...

I say go for it. Just know your Google login and all apps are re-downloadable. Make sure you backup anything you might think you need on the phone like email, SMS. Photos and Vids should be stored on your SD card.
 
novarider said:
Once the battery his full charger the phone stops charging and starts running on battery power. It does this because lithium batteries don't like to be trickle charged
Click to expand...

I charge my phone at night using the wall charger. When I unplug it in the morning it drops to 94% (typically right at that every day, sometimes 95%) in short order, about 5-8 minutes. Once it reaches the 94% level I plug it into my computer to 'top it off' to 100%. Once unplugged again it takes literally 90 minutes plus to go from 100% to say 90% even with use.

For actual figures, my phone has been unplugged for 1 hr. and 43 mins. and i'm at 94%. Again. But, first time getting to 94% after unplugging initially this morning was less than 10 minutes. So, go figure. Something is using the battery 'while it's charging' at night that must be creating a "false" 100% reading when you awaken and unplug it. The quick drop must mean it's getting to the "actual" battery percentage left.
 
dan330 said:
my thoughts on your questions... (guessing)

1.. if you turn off roaming.. it will neg affect your battery, if you are in a bad signal area. when you are in a bad area, your phone tries to find a signal. if you turn off Roaming, my guess is that your phone will keep trying to find the Sprint signal that is not there, which will burn the battery fast. If you have Roaming on, it MIGHT find other services and stop using the radio.

2.. yes. it will save you battery. if GPS is not available and network triangulation is also not available.. it will save battery, but reduce effectiveness of some of your applications.
Click to expand...


Yeah I was wondering that myself. With little usage and with following most the battery saving options I have been able to run upwards of 28 hours or so. This is with maybe 30 min of talk time, maybe 1 hour of texting. Also a little web browsing or WIFI connectivity, perhaps 20 min total.

So I am not complaining about my battery life at all as I really have been happy with it. Now in a perfect world I would be able to leave wifi, gps, and everything on and play games all day without needing a charge. At that rate by the way I get like 2-3 hours lol.

So my question is can I go further than 28 hours if I turn off roaming? Is there something to this? Just curious because in my apartment I have really bad signal and my phone is in and out of roaming all the time. All I do at home is text anyway so is there a way to send and receive text messages while on roaming with it turned off? I know that is not well worded but hope nobody makes fun of me lol. :p
 
htmlcssguru said:
I charge my phone at night using the wall charger. When I unplug it in the morning it drops to 94% (typically right at that every day, sometimes 95%) in short order, about 5-8 minutes. Once it reaches the 94% level I plug it into my computer to 'top it off' to 100%. Once unplugged again it takes literally 90 minutes plus to go from 100% to say 90% even with use.

For actual figures, my phone has been unplugged for 1 hr. and 43 mins. and i'm at 94%. Again. But, first time getting to 94% after unplugging initially this morning was less than 10 minutes. So, go figure. Something is using the battery 'while it's charging' at night that must be creating a "false" 100% reading when you awaken and unplug it. The quick drop must mean it's getting to the "actual" battery percentage left.
Click to expand...


In regard to this, I read a post someplace about battery conditioning in which to totally 100% charge your phone you charge it until it is close to 100% then turn the phone off and charge it more until the LED goes green, then unplug it until the LED is off, reconnect and it will be amber again. Then leave it plugged in until its green again. Repeat these steps several times and you will have better battery life and performance.

I do this all the time and have gone 28 hours on a charge with light-moderate use. (Also I have followed a lot of other battery suggestions). Also I read in a lot of places NOT to leave your phone charging overnight because extended charging when the battery is already charged is not good for it? That's what some people are saying at least. I just find that my best luck has been to charge my phone at work and go through my little charging cycle still leaves me at like 30-40% battery the next day 24 hours later.

Anyway I used to charge overnight and experienced the exact same thing you are, 100% to 90% in like 20 min, it was crazy! Now I can go like 2 hours or more before 90% mark. It is defiantly an issue with trickle charging or the lack thereof. :)
 
None of that explains how you charge it to 100
Turn it off unplug it and then turn it on in the morning and it starts off at 95. If it is not on or plugged in then what the hell is the problem?
 
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