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Optimize your Droid Eris battery life (READ THIS)

hi guys!

So I read a lot about battery usage here before deciding to get the Eris, and for whatever reason I don't seem to be affected by any of the problems listed here. I figured I'd write up my experience so far and add another datapoint for anyone who's still on the fence.

My Eris shipped with a battery that was about halfway charged. I played around with the phone and checked out all the new features for a few hours until I got the low battery warning. Plugged it in sometime in the late afternoon, let it charge, and came back a couple of hours later when the battery was back at 100%. Used it a bit that night, woke up the next morning, took it to work, came home, and saw that the battery was only about half drained. Didn't charge it overnight and used it all the next day; the battery finally pooped out late that evening. Charged it again overnight and used it again in the same way for the next two days, and had the same results.

Usage profile: I get maybe 5-6 emails a day, and have about the same number of conversations through SMS/GTalk/AOL IM. I'll get maybe 3-4 phone calls a day as well. Finally, I'll use the phone to putter around on the internet for maybe 2-3 hours a day. I've tried to be good about enabling WiFi and disabling Mobile Networking when at home, and vice versa when at work or on the road. Screen brightness has been turned down a bit, and the display timeout set to 30 seconds. Most automatic notifications and updates have been disabled or turned down to their longest time period possible.

So, as far as I can tell, one battery charge will give me around two days' worth of light to moderate usage. I'm really impressed with the phone otherwise, so I'm glad the battery issue some of y'all are having didn't seem to bite me!

A few other things which may or may not be informative:
- hardware rev. is 0002
- I don't yet have the 11 December OTA update
- I'm using the stock SMS app, and have not installed any task killers from the market. Phone activity time is down in the 10-20% range
- I live and work in central Massachusetts and generally have pretty good 3G coverage all the time. Can't get a very good signal inside the building while at work though

Hope this is of use to someone!
 
After reading a few posts from folks grumbling about battery life on the Eris, I made it a point to test mine. I've had my Eris since Nov. 6th, but had mostly been using it frequently connected to a PC or USB charger, so I really didn't know what kind of battery life I would observe.

So, made a plan to charge it fully, reboot it, start a bunch of apps, and then put it to sleep at midnight, and not plug it back in until I got a low battery warning. As it happened, I got the OTA update about two hours before I was going to run the test; so I don't know if that made any difference or not, since i didn't do a baseline test prior to the OTA.

I got up at 7am the next morning and checked; it had only 7 minutes of active time overnight - less than 2% activity!

During the day, the battery meter dropped to 90% after about 30 minutes of cumulative "active time", and this pace continued over the next 30 hours - about a 10% drop in remaining battery level for each 30-35 minutes of "active time" (not wall clock time).

I got a notice to plug in the phone charger with a 20% battery charge level remaining, with the phone showing about 5.5 hours of cumulative "active time" - 15% activity. This happened 37 hours after I unplugged the phone.

Now, a little bit about my usage profile:

- Gmail mail client; all synchronizations enabled.

- Personal e-mail, not corporate, so message traffic is low (Spam is not synchronized) - maybe a dozen emails/day.

- GPS, WiFi, and Bluetooth turned off unless i need them specifically; "Mobile Network" left on continuously. (One of my homepages has all the HTC Settings Widgets on it for quick access)

- When sitting unplugged overnight, the unit has an EVDO signal at -73 dbm (good signal), so it is doubtful that it is searching for networks or dropping into RTT.

- If I think I am going to leave the phone unattended with the browser running, I don't leave it on pages that run Javascript loops or frequent refreshes.

- In that 37 hours, I used the phone for voice about 1.5 hours, another 2 hours of back-and-forth text messaging, and maybe another hour or two of web browsing.

All of the following apps were started (but mostly idle when not in use):

- Voice Dialer
- Google Partner Setup
- Browser
- Messages (HTC default)
- Visual Voicemail
- Gmail
- providers.htccdma
- Advanced Task Manager (Aaron La) [ no task killer behaviors enabled, though ]


So... in a way I suppose this is not surprising: if I had used the phone continuously for six hours, I might have drained the battery in that amount of time... or if I had an installed app or service pegging the CPU for 6 hours.

OTOH, if I were planning on sitting in front of a gizmo for 6 hours straight... i suppose that I would use a computer for that, and have a better experience doing so.

I'm going to do a few more tests: (a) overnight with all the radios turned on, and (b) overnight with WiFi+GPS+Wireless Networks turned off - that is, operating it in "dumb cell phone" mode. I bet I already know what I will find out; and i'll be happy with those results.




The best software for preserving battery life runs on a protein-based platform.


eu1
 
still at 20% after 37 hrs?
hmm....I don't think there is any way I could get that and I don't use it nearly as much. What was your awake percentage? 1.5 hours on the phone is a lot too for a device that says it can do ~3.5 hours of usage.
 
Garick said:
What was your awake percentage?
Click to expand...

Well... 5.5 hrs / 37 hrs ~= 15%

Overnight (the first seven hours) it only accumulated 7 minutes of active time - that's something like 1.7%. (I think I saw another report on this forum where someone experienced the same thing - about 2% when the device is sleeping with Mobile networking turned on).

I think I'll run another test tonight in "dumb cell phone" mode ("Mobile Network" off).

BTW, I'm using the stock SMS messaging app. (There were fixes to various SMS behaviors in the OTA bug fix release, so it's probably no longer the same version that folks are claiming had a CPU-eating "bug" behavior)


eu1
 
For what it's worth, from an Eris and smartphone n00b...

Lurked here looking for info to prevent the battery problems I'd heard so much about right from the get-go... conditioned the battery; not using native SMS app due to sleep issue (went to Handcent); made toggles for GPS, BT and Wifi and keep them off unless I need them; sleep the Eris unless needed; turned screen brightness to 15%, etc. etc. etc...

But the biggest improvement was without a doubt, the 1.16 update.

With none of the above done, the unit was grokking at me in 4 hrs, from a 100% charge. With the board tips, that improved to 7 hrs with minimal-to-moderate usage (web, SMS, calls).

I charged up last night and unplugged at 100% this morning at ~8am. When I checked the charge last, it was 6pm. I've been using the native browser about two hours in the last ten, the rest using ShopSavvy and the music player a bit. Always sleeped it and tucked in a pocket when not in use. Environment has been mostly in my car, so depended on network for web access. Bars have been one or two at worst, full house at best, but rarely for more than a few mins at a time.

When I checked battery life at 6pm, 10 hrs without a charge... it was at 86%. The Eris is noticeably snappier with 1.16 as well.
 
unplugged at 7 AM and sat in my pocket all day until 6 PM with mobile network on, ended with 75-80%. I don't believe I have an awake time issue. I just checked it two hours ago and was at 69%. After about 1.5 hours of last.fm listening in that time it dropped to 29%. Signal strength was -89 to -97 db and possibly worse during those two hours, 1-2 bars I believe. Not using a widget, just checking with spare parts.

I'm not getting anywhere close to what you guys are getting. Either my meter is still off, the battery is not so good or my signal strength kills it.
 
Garick, I had also been checking my awake time in Settings > About phone > Status... when I checked it at 6pm it remained the same as a few hours before, 14%. Prior to 1.16, lowest percentage was 40-something. No other changes than the update.
 
Apologies in advance, because I know the answer to this question is in this very thread... but I've looked through it twice just now and cannot locate the post I am thinking about.

My wife's phone today was very low on battery, and she had the mobile network turned off all day while at work (she is a school teacher, so she only needs the phone on in case of emergency call during the school day).

Her awake time is 88%. Not the 100% people say happens due to the SMS app, but I know there was something else that could be the cause... I just can't find that thread.

Any help would be appreciated!
 
albiewan said:
As per a Verizon tech (not a salesperson) supposedly charging your phone with a car charger is only recommended for short bursts like 20-30 minutes because the power coming through the system can burn out your battery pronto.
Click to expand...

I gotta call BS on this...is the Verizon tech implying that the voltage converter used to convert 12VDC to whatever-our-phones-are-haven't-looked (some DC value) in the mobile chargers is responsible for burning up batteries? Techs don't always know what they're talking about, even trained ones, I've seen it time and time again in my profession (electrical engineering). The more likely scenario is that if your car battery somehow managed to drain to a nearly dead state which occurs at ~10.5VDC then the charger itself would burn up first because the lower voltage input would cause it to draw more current to make the same power output (power = voltage * current). Once the charger begins to overheat and the circuit components go belly up then the output voltage and/or current could get whacky and possibly burn up the battery. However, how many times have you burned up a car charger?

Chances are the tech thinks he knows that's the answer to the problem but couldn't prove it or even begin to explain why. If you can talk to him again I would like to hear his explanation please.
 
Put mine on the charger at 36% Battery last night, it had been on for 15 hours, I was texting all day long, listening to music. Had my Always on mobile on, and WiFi.
 
Garick said:
unplugged at 7 AM and sat in my pocket all day until 6 PM with mobile network on, ended with 75-80%. I don't believe I have an awake time issue. I just checked it two hours ago and was at 69%. After about 1.5 hours of last.fm listening in that time it dropped to 29%. Signal strength was -89 to -97 db and possibly worse during those two hours, 1-2 bars I believe. Not using a widget, just checking with spare parts.

I'm not getting anywhere close to what you guys are getting. Either my meter is still off, the battery is not so good or my signal strength kills it.
Click to expand...


something miraculous has happened and with almost the exact same usage the battery is at 56% today
 
Ok, what if I have done all of this and I'm still running at 80%? Is that bad? I see others that say they are now at 20%. I have been playing around with my phone for a couple hours now. Can someone help? What am I missing? Thank you so much in advance! :)
 
Techchallenged said:
Ok, what if I have done all of this and I'm still running at 80%? Is that bad? I see others that say they are now at 20%. I have been playing around with my phone for a couple hours now. Can someone help? What am I missing? Thank you so much in advance! :)
Click to expand...

You need to turn off your phone, turn it back on, and as soon as it loads, press End to put it to sleep. Don't touch your phone for like 10 minutes. Then check your awake time. If it's still high, then something is keeping it up. Otherwise, your awake time should be fairly low, especially after a reboot...15 - 20% range.
 
Is it normal for the phone to switch from 3g to 1x every time you send a text message? I've noticed mine always does. Right after the message is sent and I get back to my home screen, the phone reverts back to 3g. I'm assuming this would be a battery drain?

(maybe this is common knowledge and I'm an idiot. haha)
 
does anyone have and advice or experience with those emergency back up chargers that run on AA batteries? i like to have one to keep on my key chain in case i need some emergency juice for my eris. thanks.
 
FYI - When I got my phone, my sales rep installed an app named "Y5-battery" from the Market place. It is supposed to help with the battery life issue. It turns WiFi on and off automatically based previous WiFi locations it automatically remembers. He also installed the free "Advanced Task Killer".
I installed the patch only hours after getting my phone. I have installed all of the toggle switches. I still have the stock SMS (awake time staying around 20%). I have applied only some of these recommendations (I don't want to make my new smart phone stupid). I can't put my Eris down, and I still don't seem to be having the battery life issue that has been reported here. Maybe there was something in the patch that helped. Very happy so far... ;)
 
I follwed the instructions on this forum and now my battery last between 36-48 hours with moderate use. Texts, long phone conversations, emails and the browser.

At first I thought this phone was a piece of *&%! because of how little time the battery lasted but that its fixed, I really enjoy my Eris.

Thanks a lot! :):):):):)
 
Coq Roti said:
I follwed the instructions on this forum and now my battery last between 36-48 hours with moderate use. Texts, long phone conversations, emails and the browser.
Click to expand...
:eek:

That's amazing! I've followed many recommendations as well, but i only get about 12 hours with moderate use of browser, Facebook, and texting. I keep GPS off. My awake time is usually 15-20%.
 
i agree with above post. my awake time is about 12 to 15% and i can barely get 12 hours of use before the phone shuts down. i am NOT a heavy user either.
 
I did the SMS thing and the Auto backlight.

I setup the emails to refresh every 30 minutes.

I keep the internet ON and GPS and location OFF.

I got rid of the app killer.

my phone stays at 10-15% awake time.

I wait for the battery to be fully drained before I charge it.

I am charging it now. I got an extra charger at work so it makes it more convenient. Once I get it off the charger I will let you guys know. Even if my phone stays on for a long time, as soon as a more powerfull battery is on the market I will buy one... My previous phone lasted at least a week on one charge...
 
Can you please specify how you turned gps and location off? Doesn't that prevent weather from working? Thanks :)

Coq Roti said:
I did the SMS thing and the Auto backlight.

I setup the emails to refresh every 30 minutes.

I keep the internet ON and GPS and location OFF.

I got rid of the app killer.

my phone stays at 10-15% awake time.

I wait for the battery to be fully drained before I charge it.

I am charging it now. I got an extra charger at work so it makes it more convenient. Once I get it off the charger I will let you guys know. Even if my phone stays on for a long time, as soon as a more powerfull battery is on the market I will buy one... My previous phone lasted at least a week on one charge...
Click to expand...
 
tats_06 said:
Can you please specify how you turned gps and location off? Doesn't that prevent weather from working? Thanks :)
Click to expand...


Settings--> Location

Here you will have options to turn on/off.

I have GPS off and location on. It helps if you use Google Maps, Weather, etc..

As far as weather goes, it depends which app you're using. I found the original weather app to be useless. I downloaded Weatherbug and it used battery constantly. My awake time was 100%. I switched to Weather Channel and within that app, I turned location off (i set a home location and a few other preferred locations instead). My awake time dropped under 20% now.
 
Regarding the location. The only check mark I got is Use wireless networks.

I use the original weather app and it works just fine.

It is now 2pm (east coat time) 12/21/2009. My phone is done charging. My current awake time is 20%.
 
I'm actually amazed at how good my battery life has been. I'm a pretty heavy user, with bluetooth on, WiFi on, and push gmail.

By 9 pm, battery is down to 20%, which beats my old iPhone 3Gs, which was usually at 10% by 4 pm.
 
Since the update on 12/11 I have seen some changes in the battery life, but not much. The other day I took it off the charger at 1pm at 1am it was only gone by 15%, however I didn't use it that much. I hope that battery that is being made comes out soon and is at a good price.
 
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