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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
Putty said:
Well, I obviously can't tell people what to do with their phone. I suggest you just post what you did to cause your batt to die in 4 yrs.....ie watching movies, games, etc.
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Isn't this what every other person does in every other battery thread? There are more than enough battery posts to determine if this phone is for you. There is also multiple detailed guides that will help you save battery. I don't know what any new info will tell you. And besides, any results posted by this "test" would mean nothing since no one is using it the same. I'm trying to save you from wasting your time...because caring is sharing :)
 
hmmmm yet another pointless, unorganized battery test thread.

Geez, and you know what, two weeks ago I was just polling the Mods asking why they kept closing so many threads. Then I see something like this, which has been left open and it makes my blood boil!!!
 
Ok, I unplugged my phone from charging an hour ago, and the LED had been green no more than 10-15 minutes. I've used the phone for 10 minutes during the hour it's been unplugged (nothing major, just checked email once, looked at settings, and browsed the market...no internet, maps, youtube, etc.)

My battery now shows 94%. Is that really normal for it to drop so much right off a fresh charge and having been used for just 10 minutes? What's going on here?

After an hour of being idle (1%) and 10 minutes of use (I'd guess 1-2% at most, I mean come on, I did almost nothing), it seems to have dropped twice as much as it should have (albeit according to my rather unscientific guess).

Is the phone really 100% charged when the LED turns green, or does it need to remain plugged in longer anyway?
 
JohnJSal said:
Ok, I unplugged my phone from charging an hour ago, and the LED had been green no more than 10-15 minutes. I've used the phone for 10 minutes during the hour it's been unplugged (nothing major, just checked email once, looked at settings, and browsed the market...no internet, maps, youtube, etc.)

My battery now shows 94%. Is that really normal for it to drop so much right off a fresh charge and having been used for just 10 minutes? What's going on here?

After an hour of being idle (1%) and 10 minutes of use (I'd guess 1-2% at most, I mean come on, I did almost nothing), it seems to have dropped twice as much as it should have (albeit according to my rather unscientific guess).

Is the phone really 100% charged when the LED turns green, or does it need to remain plugged in longer anyway?
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Have you really not read the multiple explanations of this already? This is just getting crazy now.
 
skiav8 said:
I'm still having battery issues. My up time and awake time are always the same. I have deleted every app that I downloaded since I bought the phone in June. No matter what i uninstalled it seems like something is still causing the phone to run in the background. When I go into the "applications - manage applications - running" section, why do some of the apps that I uninstalled still show up in the running section (like facebook, nascar, qik....).

Everything else is turned off like wifi, 4g, gps, bluetooth. Everything is up to date on updates. My battery is yellow by 1pm after unplugging at 8am with just normal use. Very frustrated with this phone...
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Did you ever download the Engadget official application? I found that to be the cause of the awake time on my phone. The kicker is, even after uninstalled the glitch would remain. The only fix I found was hard reset and then not install engadget app. This problem plagued me for weeks after FROYO update. I did multiple resets and engadget was my favorite app so I kept reinstalling it thinking there was no way it was that application. I've been free of that app for 2 weeks now, I logged each application and installed them one per day at a time and checked battery use. I now have all of my apps installed except Engadget, I just go to the website now. Not sure if it is the same for you, but worth a shot.
 
Cruecu said:
Have you really not read the multiple explanations of this already? This is just getting crazy now.
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What explanation? I hope you aren't talking about the whole trickle charge thing, because clearly my post was written to rule that out as an explanation, since I explained how I unplugged it after it turned green, etc.
 
JohnJSal said:
What explanation? I hope you aren't talking about the whole trickle charge thing, because clearly my post was written to rule that out as an explanation, since I explained how I unplugged it after it turned green, etc.
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Unplugging it when it first turns green does nothing to change mine. Some have thrown out that it helps and others say it does not. People have stated multiple times that the phone drops in the 90's quickly off a charge. Mine does it, and probably 95% of other evo's do it. It's an HTC issue. Nothing you can do except use an external charger separate from the phone and it should help. It does for me. Then the phone AND the battery knows everything is fully charged. Either way, supposedly the battery life is the same even if it does the quick drop in the 90's. It's all just a meter reading anyway. But all of these things I found out by reading multiple posts at multiple sites. That's all I'm saying. You could have found out these answers easily since the hot topic in every EVO forum is about crappy battery life. You don't have a one in a million problem. You have the same problem as everyone else.
 
Cruecu said:
Unplugging it when it first turns green does nothing to change mine. Some have thrown out that it helps and others say it does not. People have stated multiple times that the phone drops in the 90's quickly off a charge. Mine does it, and probably 95% of other evo's do it. It's an HTC issue. Nothing you can do except use an external charger separate from the phone and it should help. It does for me. Then the phone AND the battery knows everything is fully charged. Either way, supposedly the battery life is the same even if it does the quick drop in the 90's. It's all just a meter reading anyway. But all of these things I found out by reading multiple posts at multiple sites. That's all I'm saying. You could have found out these answers easily since the hot topic in every EVO forum is about crappy battery life. You don't have a one in a million problem. You have the same problem as everyone else.
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Yes, I have read many threads about this issue, but the explanation was always that after the charge reached 100%, it then dropped down to 95% or 90% and then started charging again, so if you unplug it while it's dropped down, this would explain the quick drop in the 90s.

Simply saying that this isn't really the problem and it's just an "HTC issue" is not much of an explanation.

What do you mean by an "external charger"?
 
JohnJSal said:
Simply saying that this isn't really the problem and it's just an "HTC issue" is not much of an explanation.

What do you mean by an "external charger"?
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Do some reading and you will see that the best explanation that people (smarter than me) came up with is that the evo thinks the battery is fully charged when it isn't. So the light is turning green before the battery is actually fully charged. If you use an external charger like you get on ebay that plugs into the wall and holds the battery, the battery will always fully charge. This is because the bug in the evo will not be telling the battery it's full before it actually is. The culprit, which is the actual phone, is no longer involved in the charging process when using an external charger. I bought an extended battery from china on ebay that came with an external charger for about 15 bucks. Check the accessories thread. It was here in less than 2 weeks. I now use my phone however I want and don't ever worry about getting through the day. Some days I can't drain the whole thing if I tried. It will make the phone much more enjoyable when you don't even worry about the battery. A rooted evo running a custom rom and kernel with an extended battery is just about as close to smartphone perfection as you can get. And the thing is, it's really easy to get there. It just sounds difficult.
 
Cruecu said:
Do some reading and you will see that the best explanation that people (smarter than me) came up with is that the evo thinks the battery is fully charged when it isn't. So the light is turning green before the battery is actually fully charged. If you use an external charger like you get on ebay that plugs into the wall and holds the battery, the battery will always fully charge. This is because the bug in the evo will not be telling the battery it's full before it actually is. The culprit, which is the actual phone, is no longer involved in the charging process when using an external charger. I bought an extended battery from china on ebay that came with an external charger for about 15 bucks. Check the accessories thread. It was here in less than 2 weeks. I now use my phone however I want and don't ever worry about getting through the day. Some days I can't drain the whole thing if I tried. It will make the phone much more enjoyable when you don't even worry about the battery. A rooted evo running a custom rom and kernel with an extended battery is just about as close to smartphone perfection as you can get. And the thing is, it's really easy to get there. It just sounds difficult.
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Thanks for the explanation. I had never read about it being the phone itself doing it (as opposed to that trickle charge method). I'm a little wary of rooting right now. I don't think I feel comfortable with that yet (and I don't really see the need for it anyway).

As for the external charger...I don't know, I guess I just don't want to deal with having to put the battery in every day. It's nice to have a better answer about the 90% problem, at least now I know more about it, but until I find myself really running out of my battery too soon, I think I may not mess with those extra steps.

Btw, is the problem something that could be fixed with a software update, or is it a hardware problem?

Edit: One solution I read was to unplug the phone when the LED turns green, then plug it back in for about 20-30 minutes to fully charge it. Does that actually work, or is the bug in the phone still thinking it is fully charged when it's not?
 
JohnJSal said:
Thanks for the explanation. I had never read about it being the phone itself doing it (as opposed to that trickle charge method). I'm a little wary of rooting right now. I don't think I feel comfortable with that yet (and I don't really see the need for it anyway).

As for the external charger...I don't know, I guess I just don't want to deal with having to put the battery in every day. It's nice to have a better answer about the 90% problem, at least now I know more about it, but until I find myself really running out of my battery too soon, I think I may not mess with those extra steps.

Btw, is the problem something that could be fixed with a software update, or is it a hardware problem?

Edit: One solution I read was to unplug the phone when the LED turns green, then plug it back in for about 20-30 minutes to fully charge it. Does that actually work, or is the bug in the phone still thinking it is fully charged when it's not?
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Only an external charger helped the issue for me. No amount of plugging in and out stopped the quick drop in the 90's. And rooting takes just a click of a mouse with the newest method. It will not change anything on your phone unless you want it to. It will enable you to wipe your battery stats as well, which may help your problem. If you want your phone to scroll much smoother and faster, run free wireless from your phone to other laptops or phones, get better battery, and be able to fully control your phone......you'll take a few hours and read the rooting explanations and tutorials. Even the non-techie people who look at my Evo compared to theirs immediately see a huge difference and ask me to root their phones.
 
Cruecu said:
Only an external charger helped the issue for me. No amount of plugging in and out stopped the quick drop in the 90's. And rooting takes just a click of a mouse with the newest method. It will not change anything on your phone unless you want it to. It will enable you to wipe your battery stats as well, which may help your problem. If you want your phone to scroll much smoother and faster, run free wireless from your phone to other laptops or phones, get better battery, and be able to fully control your phone......you'll take a few hours and read the rooting explanations and tutorials. Even the non-techie people who look at my Evo compared to theirs immediately see a huge difference and ask me to root their phones.
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Ok, is this related to the same issue: last night I went to bed with the battery at 73%. This morning I woke up and it was 69%, which seems like a pretty good idle drain rate (after 8 hours).

However, I literally only awakened the phone, took two pictures, sent one by email, and now the battery says 64%! All of this took about 20 seconds.

So it seems to me that even though I get a seemingly great idle drain rate, once I start using the phone again, the battery drops quickly, as if "making up" for the idle time. Is this normal?
 
I know, I know. Another battery thread. This one is different though! I promise!

When I first got the Evo, battery life sucked (we all know). It then got better after some tweaking and was pretty good (full day with moderate usage and a lot of texting).

Starting last week the battery life seems to be much worse without any significant changes I can identify (no new background apps, no changes in usage, etc). I did update a lot of apps recently so maybe one of them is now causing battery drain.

This morning I took it off the charger at 8am. By 10:30am it was down to 70% with NO USAGE. I didn't make a call, text, use foursquare. Didn't even turn on the phone to check the time. 30% drop in 2.5 hours from just sitting there!

Any suggestions for tracking down the culprit? Battery Use just shows the usual (33% Cell Standby, 31% Phone idle, 29% Android OS, 5% Android System, 2% Display).

I'm not using 4G. I do have GPS on but that is not new and no apps should be using it at the moment.
 
jackshakes said:
I did update a lot of apps recently so maybe one of them is now causing battery drain.
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what apps?

it very well could be one of them. I've seriously now in the habit of updating aps one at a time and waiting 24 hours before doing further updates for this exact reason.
 
As far as apps: Twidroyd, Twitter, Handcent SMS, Gmail, Yelp, Kayak, Google Goggles, Shazam ... and a few others but I think those are the most likely candidates for background processing.

I'm going to take another pass and make sure all the background checking is turned off or toned down to respectable amounts.

I have facebook syncing only once every 12 hours. And things like news and stocks are turned off all together. No friendstream either.

Up time 88:42:40
Awake time 61:01:13
 
Possibly, I'll check back later tonight.

12 1/2 hours and at 81% with light use. (I love that ShootMe now works w/ unrooted phones)

snap20100923_143409.png
 
If lithium ion batteries don't trickle charge, then how is it that the Evo wouldn't fully drain, even while plugged in, after an extended period of time (such as 48 hours)?

I thought trickle charging was when it dropped to about 95% (or 90%, whatever) and then charged back to 100%. If it doesn't do that, wouldn't the phone fully drain? Or am I misunderstanding what trickle charging really is?
 
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