Root Eris Battery is Garbage

[erisftw15]

ok so my eris will be on full charge and under 2 hours of just texting or just sitting there the battery drains to below 80%
wifi is off and so is background data

any tips or roms i can do to maximize the battery life?

 

[erisuser1]

ok so my eris will be on full charge and under 2 hours of just texting or just sitting there the battery drains to below 80%
wifi is off and so is background data

any tips or roms i can do to maximize the battery life?

If you keep the screen continuously lit up, the best you will be able to achieve is about 5 hours of service - about 20% drain per hour. It will drain even faster if you stream data continuously. That is not only normal, it is the way the device was designed. If you need to sit behind a device continuously for many hours - use a computer.

If your phone is draining 20%/hour with the screen off, that is a definite problem, and there are two possible causes: an app you installed is preventing the phone from sleeping (even though the screen is off, it will not sleep). You need to look at your battery statistics after one of these periods to see what is chewing up the battery. The other possibility is that the battery is going bad, although it is more likely the apps installed on the phone and user behavior which is causing it to drain.

A stock 2.1 Eris phone - with no user (Market) apps installed will only drain about 0.5% per hour (when sleeping); it only gets worse from there depending on the apps and user behaviors. (For instance continuous texting, web browsing, or configuring apps to poll for data updates frequently)

eu1

 

[erisftw15]

ok i checked the battery status and it says that cell standby is 54% and phone idle is 36%

any way to lower this?

 

[erisuser1]

ok i checked the battery status and it says that cell standby is 54% and phone idle is 36%

any way to lower this?

[ For reference, my phone currently has: Display 46%, Cell standby 20%, Phone Idle 18% ]

Your cell standby seems kind of high, but there is no way for me to be sure of that because you didn't report how many hours (since unplugged) that is for. If it is many hours, then it sounds like you are in a weak reception area and your phone is using a lot of juice simply because it needs to "shout" in order to talk to the tower it is paired with.

You can either move the phone to a better signal area (yeah, right.), or -

Use the "Toggle 2G" app which turns off the 3G (mobile network) some number of minutes after the phone goes to sleep. You could try that - but pay attention to whether or not you are still getting e-mail when the phone is sleeping.

If you have apps that poll for new data (e-mail, social networking apps) you can try making the polling interval longer. You can also take other obvious steps, such as: (1) reduce screen brightness, (2) turn off radios when they are not in use, e.g. WiFi, GPS, Mobile Network.

A long time ago (January?) I did a survey of cell phones which were out right around the same time as the Eris - I compared standby time and/or talk time divided by battery capacity (mAh) - and it turned out that the Eris was nearly the worst of the bunch, if not the worst. So, what that really means is that it should have shipped with a 1500 mAh battery or a 1750 mAh battery to exhibit similar reserve capacity to other phones.

So, you are not wrong about the Eris - all Smartphones need to be charged far more frequently than dumbphones, and the Eris is nearly the worst of the bunch.

Unfortunately, maximizing battery life has to be customized on an individual basis, since usage patterns for phones are so variable from person to person; so it is kind of hard to make generalities.

good luck

eu1

 

[doogald]

ok i checked the battery status and it says that cell standby is 54% and phone idle is 36%

any way to lower this?

Yes, use the Airplane Mode trick. The stock Eris 2.1 has a bug in which the battery use for cell standby is listed at 50% after each boot. Right after starting the phone, put the phone in airplane mode, let the display sleep, then turn it back on again and turn off airplane mode.

If you do it now you will notice that cell standby will start to reduce.

 

[rick311]

Yes, use the Airplane Mode trick. The stock Eris 2.1 has a bug in which the battery use for cell standby is listed at 50% after each boot. Right after starting the phone, put the phone in airplane mode, let the display sleep, then turn it back on again and turn off airplane mode.

If you do it now you will notice that cell standby will start to reduce.

actually, that's the fix for the "time without signal" bug.