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Extending Battery Life - Success...

Oh man, now you guys are REALLY going to hate me.... :D

So in an effort to fully drain the battery to 1% so I can fully recharge it, I let the phone sit idle unplugged all night long (%all night%)...

It was on 25% when I went to bed, and this morning.... *drumroll*... 21%!!

That is only 4% loss in 9 hours.

I think that's pretty dang good. At least comparable to many other phones.

This is with the settings I outlined above still enabled (GPS, BlueTooth, Live Wallpaper, ActiveSync, no HotSpot, and no 4G (because I can't get it out this way yet)). Oh and I accidentally left WiFi on all night too. It doesn't seem to make a difference and I even have a weak (1/5) signal where I left the phone in the house all night. :)

I'm happy... :D And all of you have the same phone, so you too should be happy. If you are suffering through battery hell right now, please have hope and read the battery threads and try my settings. You should see similar results.
 
What's the over/under on an extended battery becoming available. there are 3200 and 3500 mah batteries for the Touch Pro 2 which uses the same battery. Seemingly all they have to do is design a back cover that would accommodate the battery.
 
I posted this on another thread. I'll post it here as well for some help lol.

First of all congrates to all of you who managed to use this battery for long periods of time. I don't know how you guys do it. After using this phone for the last couple of days...I find this battery very weak. I charge the phone and turn it on. I go through the home screens and the battery is already draining?? LOL WTF?? The 4g, wifi, and gps is all off. I assume when the light turns green it means that the phone is fully charged. MY question is do I need the battery to charge longer even after the green light is on or should I just get a new battery?
 
It wouldn't hurt to take it to Sprint and try to swap batteries. Can you read through my original post above and follow what I did? Can you install ATK and kill all other apps you since installed just to get it down to factory-like apps running?
 
Took it to the beach last Friday. Used it in the car for 4-5 hours and streamed audio and played games. Went from like 75% to 35% after constant use of gps and evdo. Not terrible all things considered. Taking it to the boardwalk where it flipped between Sprint and roaming one bar each absolutely demolished it. Searching for signal is the worst battery killer out there.
 
neodorian said:
...flipped between Sprint and roaming one bar each absolutely demolished it. Searching for signal is the worst battery killer out there.
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I agree. I live off the beaten path a little, and sometimes see 3G, sometimes I don't. Not sure if this is the same, but if so, I would say mine is constantly flip-flopping then. If not, and it just shows 3G say when there's actual data (email or weather updates for example), then it's not the case and it's not flip-flopping like that. My battery life at home is great though!
 
All you have to do is long-press the widget and then drag it off of the screen.
 
I get that GPS would hurt battery life...but if it's on, and certain location services (weather, for example) are set to update every 4 hours...will GPS only be used when those services need GPS, or is GPS constantly communicating with the satellites to determine your location.

If it's constantly determining/reporting your location, then it'd be wise to have it off if you really only use it for weather (what other services use it?), and turn it on when you need Navigation.
 
GPS, AIUI, turns on when needed/called if location is on. My battery life has been fine with it.
 
I think these big differences are all related to signal strength. This will get worked out better with the next release of android and there are a number of things that can be done in the meantime to help.

Also, slow charging your phone over USB should give it a slight amount of extra juice in it versus quick charging on AC.
 
On my EVO, I have been dealing with poor battery life since activating the phone this past Monday, and here is what I have done to fix it. I am still in the battery breakin period and have double or trippled my battery life.

1. Find this app in the market place. Network
Install it and change the setting for Preferred Network Type from GSM auto (PRL) to CDMA auto (PRL) When done, hit the HOME key to exit.
This is a huge Mfg. Glitch that will be resolved in android 2.2.
This was forcing the phone to first look for GSM Networks! DUH HTC! Sprint is CDMA!

2. Uninstall Advance Task Manager or ANY Task Manager.
You should not need any Task Manager.

3. Google Talk is auto activated and running in the background If you don't use it go to your Apps and find TALK. Select it and go to Menu, More, Settings and turn off everthing.





toddpedersen said:
No it doesn't! You just have to be smarter than the equipment!
Click to expand...
 
toddpedersen said:
On my EVO, I have been dealing with poor battery life since activating the phone this past Monday, and here is what I have done to fix it. I am still in the battery breakin period and have double or trippled my battery life.

1. Find this app in the market place. Network
Install it and change the setting for Preferred Network Type from GSM auto (PRL) to CDMA auto (PRL) When done, hit the HOME key to exit.
This is a huge Mfg. Glitch that will be resolved in android 2.2.
This was forcing the phone to first look for GSM Networks! DUH HTC! Sprint is CDMA!

2. Uninstall Advance Task Manager or ANY Task Manager.
You should not need any Task Manager.

3. Google Talk is auto activated and running in the background If you don't use it go to your Apps and find TALK. Select it and go to Menu, More, Settings and turn off everthing.
Click to expand...

thanks but mine was already on CDMA auto (PRL). guess I'm good and could uninstall this now
 
Wow, I had no clue about the resource hogging that Talk was up to! EVERY EVO owner should know about turning that off if they are not using it!
 
mrk said:
GPS, AIUI, turns on when needed/called if location is on. My battery life has been fine with it.
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Thank you. This is the key point on GPS. It is ONLY used when an app is calling it. Turning GPS off doesnt extend your battery...it only gimps whatever location service that you have running that is calling it. If no apps are calling it, GPS is less than neglible.

And to people questions CDMA vs Wifi, Wifi is much better for the battery (most of the time) but a wifi radio SEARCHING is bad. That's why you should turn it off when not in use (or use the app Y5 to automatically do it for you).
 
I had pretty bad battery life for the first few days, then I finally got wifi to work, and have been using that at home. I turned off network data, and that seems to be saving a lot of battery. (I figure I can always turn that back on if I'm somewhere where I don't have wifi).

Right now, I'm at about 21 1/2 hrs since i took the phone off the charger, and my battery is 51% full. I've had wifi and GPS on the whole time. No 4G (don't have it available yet)

Edit: I should also add that I'm a fairly light to average user ... I've sent/rec'd about 20-30 texts, read a few emails, 2 alarm clocks, and a few phone calls, maybe 20 minutes total talk time. I also haven't been at my normal work location (our building gets pretty poor cell reception ... maybe 1-2 bars average). Haven't used the phone much today for Facebook/Web since I've spent a pretty good amount of time at home with a full-sized computer.
 
zpilot said:
Let's just face it, the Evo really sucks in the battery life department.
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thats where i disagree. it was weird in the first few days i had shit battery life. but now its been getting better and will keep getting better :D

i really hope people learn to give it time
 
zpilot said:
Let's just face it, the Evo really sucks in the battery life department.
Click to expand...

Not really when you compare to similar devices. Just consider that they want to show everything off and have all kinds of things turned on out of the box. Kinda like HDTVs that have everything cranked to max when you buy them or computers loaded up with all kinds of background apps out of the box.

The trick is to figure out what you need and want on a regular basis and not have lots of things running that use resources. Any computer I own gets the same treatment. On my Windows PCs I run msconfig and tell them not to run Google and Apple and Adobe updates at boot. I don't need Quicktime or Skype or Acrobat running in the background. They will run when I call on them every so often, not by default.

Likewise, I do want certain things running on my phone and don't go killing processes willy-nilly. At the same time, I don't want social apps and widgets and stuff like that constantly pulling updates while the phone is in my pocket. GPS can go on when I need to navigate. Facebook can update when I want to check it. Email doesn't need to poll every 15 minutes.

I just let the phone manage its own memory but I turn off radios not in use, lower brightness to like 70% when I am just checking emails or messages throughout the day, disable constantly updated widgets, etc.

Smart management of my phone means I can use it for what I want when I need it and not just suck down battery when it's sitting in my pocket or on my desk. This goes for Evo or any other device I use.
 
At one point I would have sided with those that say the battery life sucks. However, after learning how to use my phone in an efficient way, I unplugged my phone and went to sleep. After 6 hours it was at 96%! That, to me, was amazing. I (now) easily use it how i please at work and just manage what radios are on etc, stopped using a task killer, and so on and i'm just fine. Really, the only thing that kills my battery is 4G. Wi-Fi for the win.
 
TuNeCedeMalis said:
At one point I would have sided with those that say the battery life sucks. However, after learning how to use my phone in an efficient way, I unplugged my phone and went to sleep. After 6 hours it was at 96%! That, to me, was amazing. I (now) easily use it how i please at work and just manage what radios are on etc, stopped using a task killer, and so on and i'm just fine. Really, the only thing that kills my battery is 4G. Wi-Fi for the win.
Click to expand...

I think 95% of users will find that if they take the 15 minutes to figure it out like you did - they will experience the same thing! :D
 
TheAndroidWorks said:
Wow, I had no clue about the resource hogging that Talk was up to! EVERY EVO owner should know about turning that off if they are not using it!
Click to expand...

I am a witness to this. I was also getting crap battery life when doing NOTHING (10-12hrs max). I uninstalled Google Voice completely (since I was forced into an Everything Data plan and the stock voicemail app was nice) and now I get 30-36hrs depending on use.

Also, I find that my signal strength on the Evo is just plain rotten. My old phone never got this bad reception, and when I compare to my wife's Moment, she'll be anywhere between 10-18 dbm better! That's 10x to nearly 100x difference!

We all know a big culprit in poor battery life can be cell reception. Anybody else receiving significantly less reception on their Evo compared to other Sprint phones (non-HTC)?
 
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