Help Newbie Question on Toggle Settings

[Netsurfer]

I am new to both smart phones and android. I too have been having varying battery life issues with pretty much the same usage every day. I have had mine since the release date (i pre ordered) and have not seen the battery life improve at all. I actually began getting less battery life over the last week and i am probably a light user compared to most, less than 25 text, maybe 30 min talk time, and 10 min web surfing. Only game i have is a card game (Spades) and no twitter or anything. I keep bt and wifi off always.
I have installed toggle settings following advice i found on here and set up profiles to use to dim the screen, etc, to save battery and it has helped.
Now to my question. I see that there are options to stop running task and running services. i have gone through and set some to auto kill but there are still a bunch of services and task running. Are there any that i definitely shouldn't stop or any that will do harm by stopping? I notice a lot of the services say "background" and "idle", does this mean they are using battery? I want to get the most out of my battery but i don't want to turn my phone into a "dumb" phone either. I want to continue to get the services i switched for (text, email, internet, etc).
Sorry for such a long post but i wanted to give all the information you may need.
Thanks for any help.
p.s. I have tried the plugging back in for 30 min technique and the results have varied from slightly better to horrible.
p.s.#2 After proof reading my post i realized someone is going to tell me that i don't need a smart phone no more than i use it, but i'm beginning to use it more and know i need more battery life.

 

[dylo22]

In my personal opinion, you don't need a task killer to save battery. I think the OS does a pretty a good job in managing resources and most apps (notice I said "most") does a good job in disabling itself when not in use. Here are some of the things I changed to get most out of battery:

1. Lower screen brightness and turn off automatic brightness. I lowered mine to about 20% and still think it's reasonably bright - at least for indoors.

2. Reduce sync frequencies for emails/weather and other widgets. If you have your email weather syncing every 5 mins and friendstream or other widgets updating frequently, then you'll burn through battery like no other. It's just the way it is for multitasking smartphones such as android.

3. Install only trusted/useful apps. I included this because there are poorly coded apps out there that sit in the background eating clock cycles without you even knowing. You may have an app you downloaded just for fun and only used once, but it's doing something in the background causing battery drain.

This is from my experience with the phone. I'm not saying it will work for everyone because there are other factors such as signal strength and usage. But I think it would help. The only thing I have turned off is bluetooth and wifi (i keep GPS on) and I get about 16-18hrs of battery life with moderate usage.

 

[nightfishing]

I didn't find in your post what battery life you are getting, but you should be able to get a day with that type of use.

Stop using any/all task killers (either manually or automatically) for a few days and see if it improves.

How is your signal (searching for signal is the #1 battery killer on any phone).

Do you have wifi available during normal business hours? If so, connecting via wifi uses less juice than mobile network, so that can help.

Use an app like Spare Parts or Battery Left Widget to look at your Partial Wake Usage. If any app is showing significant numbers that may be eating your battery.

And, if you have not installed/tweaked the phone too awfully much, a factory reset might help. I hate to recommend that if someone has spent hours setting up their phone, but if you haven't customized too much it is a good way to eliminate some variables.

Biggest concern I have, from your post, is that you should be seeing improvement after a couple of weeks unless something is awry.

 

[Netsurfer]

Thanks for all of the answers so far.

I would say i am getting about 8-10 hours on average, which isn't terrible, but again thats with fairly light usage. I leave the house around 6:00 am and get home around 3:00 pm and several days i have to charge because it's down to 14% or so. Some day's i would get home and have around 20%. But then there is always a practice to go to or something going on where i need the phone another 6-7 hours.

I do not have access to wifi during the day but i am inside a concrete building a lot so searching for a signal could be my problem. I have cut my facebook synch to once a day and my weather to every three hours. If i'm going to show the phone off, which happens a lot with the moto droid and iphone guys at work, i just synch while i'm showing them.

** Today was my first Full day of using Toggle Settings profiles and i am impressed. I have my night profile turning basically everything off (updates and syncs) which produced a 98% charge this morning. (not sure what i use to get but i know some mornings the green bar would jump down to halfway after only an hour or two) I did unplug and recharge while i got ready which got it to 99% when i left the house. I use a day profile that basically just keeps my screen brightness at 50% but also keeps bt and wifi turned off. I do have some task/services set to "auto kill" for stuff like twitter and youtube and a couple of others i never use. I would say today was another light day of usage although i probably had more talk time than usual, but as i sit here typing, i have 39% battery left. That is by far the most i have ever gotten. So i'm basically at 15 hours and still have 39% battery (it's still in the green!!). I have to credit Toggle Settings for this but i'll let you know more in a couple of days.

Again, thank you for all of your responses and i hope this helps someone else.

 

[jamor]

I understand the 'I don't want to cripple my phone and use it to the full potential' argument.

But if you really don't need to check your email, twitter, and fb every hour.. then it's really easy to swype and toggle to save battery life.

I have the power control bar and mobile toggle. Just wish the power bar had the mobile toggle instead of the brightness.

Not a pain and definitely not crippling