best way to save batery

[dunbad]

Ok, so I know the answer would be to not use it, but hey!
I'm getting pretty crap battery life out of my desire and I've had it over a week now. I'm having to charge twice a day, if not three times a day as I'm canning the hell out of it!) But now as my usage starts to drop, what's the best way to conserve the batttery with quick touches when its not being used? I press and hold the power switch and then select to turn off internet. Does this also prevent stuff going on in the background like sync auto update etc. ? I'm seeing roughly 30 to 40 percent battery being used by the Android system, and about 20 to 30 percent being used by cell standby. There's various settings and ways to stop internet I've found, but is there a way to nip all that energy zapping stuff quickly when the phones not being used, and then activate it again quickly when you wanna have a play. Us there anyway to get those percentages for the Android system down?
Thanks

 

[BORIStheBLADE]

Do you do a lot of internet surfing and games on the phone?

 

[dunbad]

No gaming at all, but a lot of basic browsing, with perhaps a minimal amount if YouTube type stuff. Interestingly, my browser appears to use little battery, but its the android system that seem to hog things. Anyway of cutting this down? I tend to sync/update etc when I have the phone on charge over night. Then when I unplug it, I like to only update things, it activate the internet when I need it. Does always enable internet connection unchecked be the same as turning off internet via the power button?

 

[Demache]

Check the Up time and Awake time in the About Battery menu in settings. They should be completely different if you haven't restarted your phone recently. If they are the same, your phone isn't sleeping when the screen is off, which really sucks down the battery. Check if you have an apps that are keeping the phone awake.

 

[brykins]

Daft question, but how do you check if apps are keeping the phone awake? I just checked my Up and Awake time and they are identical at almost twelve hours....

 

[srothkin]

Don't know about the desire, but on my Motorola Droid, turning the display brightness all the way down made a huge difference. Changing display brightness back to auto easily cuts battery time by half.

 

[Demache]

Daft question, but how do you check if apps are keeping the phone awake? I just checked my Up and Awake time and they are identical at almost twelve hours....

I'm not sure directly, but do you have any apps that check for weather, updates, and etc, even when the phone is off? That could be a problem since its keeping the phone awake for the push notifications.

On my Eris, there was a bug in the stock 1.5 OS, which the Messages app would keep the phone awake. The only way to solve it was to use a different app for SMS. It seems to be gone in 2.1 though.