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Should HTC Recall the Batteries?

The biggest thing I've noticed is the lack of information on the threads like this. All that's posted is 'my battery sucks, lets sue...' or 'my battery is defective, I need a new one...'

There are way too many variables to smartphone usage - Evo or otherwise - that can kill a battery quickly (or cell phones in general)...

1) How strong is the signal at your primary location? How strong is it where you charge the phone? For the Evo, do you have 4G - if so do you use it?

The location can make a difference of 30-50% of your battery life. The ones getting 30+ hours above obviously live in a strong 3G/4G market or have the 4G shutdown. I recently moved from a very strong 3G area to a lower quality area and lost about 25% of my time. Went from a solid 8 hours to a strong 6 hours...

2) What program do you check emails on and how many times a day does it pull?

I use K-9 Mail and have 6 accounts running off it. 3 work emails pull every 5 minutes, personal every hour. I know I could set these out to get longer life, but I want to know when I get an email and for work, I need to know now.

3) How high is your screen brightness set?

I have mine set to about 30% on the slider. Great indoors, not so hot outdoors. If you set to Auto brightness, you will probably kill the battery much faster than if you are set low. If you have it set at 100%, it would probably die in about an hour plus of normal use.

With these three basics you can change your phone's uptime from about an hour and a half (everything set on max and 5 minute intervals on email) to about 8 hours (screen at 30% and emails on a 1 hour interval) or extending them even further to 10-15 hours (screen at 10% and emails on manual only) without changing a single app or setting on the phone (besides the screen and email frequency).

Hope that made sense and @jrstinkfish I remember my Q... Had to have that ginormous extended battery to get more than 2 hours from that thing... Loved it though!
 
officer629 said:
I disagree. I purchased two batteries with a battery charger off eBay and I get 30% better battery life with the two after market batteries. I'm not saying all the batteries shipped with the phones are bad, but there is a bad batch out there.
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I get about the same, so either your original battery is worn or it's possibly defective. In any event not nearly enough of an issue, or common enough of an issue, to recall.
 
zcarman said:
The biggest thing I've noticed is the lack of information on the threads like this. All that's posted is 'my battery sucks, lets sue...' or 'my battery is defective, I need a new one...'

There are way too many variables to smartphone usage - Evo or otherwise - that can kill a battery quickly (or cell phones in general)...

1) How strong is the signal at your primary location? How strong is it where you charge the phone? For the Evo, do you have 4G - if so do you use it?

The location can make a difference of 30-50% of your battery life. The ones getting 30+ hours above obviously live in a strong 3G/4G market or have the 4G shutdown. I recently moved from a very strong 3G area to a lower quality area and lost about 25% of my time. Went from a solid 8 hours to a strong 6 hours...

2) What program do you check emails on and how many times a day does it pull?

I use K-9 Mail and have 6 accounts running off it. 3 work emails pull every 5 minutes, personal every hour. I know I could set these out to get longer life, but I want to know when I get an email and for work, I need to know now.

3) How high is your screen brightness set?

I have mine set to about 30% on the slider. Great indoors, not so hot outdoors. If you set to Auto brightness, you will probably kill the battery much faster than if you are set low. If you have it set at 100%, it would probably die in about an hour plus of normal use.

With these three basics you can change your phone's uptime from about an hour and a half (everything set on max and 5 minute intervals on email) to about 8 hours (screen at 30% and emails on a 1 hour interval) or extending them even further to 10-15 hours (screen at 10% and emails on manual only) without changing a single app or setting on the phone (besides the screen and email frequency).

Hope that made sense and @jrstinkfish I remember my Q... Had to have that ginormous extended battery to get more than 2 hours from that thing... Loved it though!
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This isnt the issue, if you read the thread. There's a very specific problem a lot of people, including me, are experiencing, which is a dramatic drop to 90 or 80% after unplugging, then it slows down and operates as normal. It's an actual bug, and has little to do with how you're using your phone. I'm talking about a 10-15 % drop in 20 minutes after unplugging without using the phone at ALL. and then after that it'll drop 1% in 30 mins without use, if that. This is without any change in settings.

A lot of us are trying to find a solution for this specific bug - whether its a new phone, or trickle charge, or whatever, and people who just assume and reply with useless answers about how every smart phone does this (when not even every evo does this) or that we're just whining are making it harder for us to find a solution.
 
I have the same problem with the battery as the OP does. The charge is inconsistent at best. This is my second battery given to me by Sprint.

When they first popped the new battery into the phone I kept a 100% charge for what seemed to be an eternity compared to my original battery. Of course, this great battery charge did not last forever. After that first initial charge the battery hasn't had that charge ever again. The charges I get vary and I don't know why. I have systempanel I check to see what is running and I have no auto syncs besides my gmail (which also has inconsistent push notif). The phone dies quickly with the majority of the battery life going to Cell Standby and not Android so if the phone is recording activity properly it's draining my battery even in an idle state.

The update didn't change a thing with my battery issues. I can drop to 89% battery within 5 minutes of having the phone unplugged. I barely have any of the features on that make the Evo the Evo anymore and my battery still has a terrible drain.

I live in the tri-state area. 15 minutes from NY, If Sprint doesn't have a strong signal here then I don't know where in the world they do.

I think it's either bad batteries or the software has to be tweaked to let the the phone actually charge the battery to full and keep it full.

I made the prl changes, battery calibration, and all the Sprint tweaks. Nothing has changed.
 
Gotta agree with the OP here. I vote for a voluntary recall, or possibly coupons / mailer for a replacement/extra battery.

I tried every trick listed in the forums here, and was still getting only 5 hours of LIGHT use before the battery died. Even when off, it would drain quickly.

Bought 2 cheapo batteries from hong kong for $10 shipped (including charger) and bam, I'm getting 24-30 hours on a charge, with moderate use, including a lot of video.

HTC battery -I- got is just trash. Maybe some people got good ones, but mine is definitely a fancy red paperweight.
 
I'm convinced that the problem isnt with the batteries it's with the charging sub routine on the EVO. When I charge my batteries on my seidio AC wall charger the charge seems to stay much longer on 100% than when I charge it through the phone. As a charger the phone doesn't do a very good job. The good thing is this is fixable with a software update.
 
Funksultan said:
Gotta agree with the OP here. I vote for a voluntary recall, or possibly coupons / mailer for a replacement/extra battery.

I tried every trick listed in the forums here, and was still getting only 5 hours of LIGHT use before the battery died. Even when off, it would drain quickly.

Bought 2 cheapo batteries from hong kong for $10 shipped (including charger) and bam, I'm getting 24-30 hours on a charge, with moderate use, including a lot of video.

HTC battery -I- got is just trash. Maybe some people got good ones, but mine is definitely a fancy red paperweight.
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where did you got it from
 
YaBoiD said:
Please define YOUR meaning of "great battery life"...
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I charge it all night. I don't pull it off when it turns green because I'm asleep... so many people complain that if you leave it after it charges all the way it drains quickly when you first pull it off the charger, but I haven't experienced that problem.

I pull it off when I get up at 6 AM. Take it to work. Use it moderately/heavily throughout the day:
- 60-90 minutes of a navigational program a day (waze)
- numerous foursquare check-ins
- HEAVY texting (anywhere from 100-800 a day)
- facebook and twitter are both set to update every 4 hours, but I tend to update them manually at least every hour. Weather is set to update infrequently as well, but I refresh that a few times a day.
- occasional web browsing (probably a total of 45 minutes)
- some app usage (sometimes I play Alchemy, and I always read two webcomics using "Daily Strip"), as well as moderate usage of the game "The Great Land Grab"
- some camera usage some days

I also sometimes use Pandora. I typically have about 20% battery life left when I plug the phone in at 8 or 9 PM.
 
I just noticed something very interesting. Since the Touch Pro 2 and the Evo use the same battery form factor, I plugged in the P2 battery into the Evo yesterday and charged it overnight. It gave me the 15% warning after 6.5 hours of use.

I popped that battery into the Touch Pro 2, but the TP2 said there was 30% left.

I'm not sure what this means exactly, but this was the stock battery from teh TP2 and not the stock Evo one.
 
I'm getting the whole "save your battery life by doing this and that" concept but as an Evo owner, I want to use the phone to its fullest potential without sacrificing too much battery life. If HTC could build a better phone via better design (better battery/OS optimization) and quality control (screen issues/cap limit) from the get-go, Evo owners wouldn't have to make additional adjustments just to use the Evo for a full day. When I limit my Evo to certain functions like disabling auto brightness for example, that takes an ability that the Evo possesses. Any other adjustments handicaps Evo's full functionality. I did not get the Evo to limit its numerous capabilities to save battery life. I've used a bunch of phones (Palm Pre, HTC HD 2, iPhone 4, Incredible) and the Evo ranks bottom of the pile of all those smartphones. Battery optimization is utterly atrocious to be totally honest. One day I can squeeze out 8 hours and then the next I can only get 6 hours basically doing the same tasks as the previous day. When my laptop lasts as long as the Evo, there is a problem.
 
Cobravision said:
I just noticed something very interesting. Since the Touch Pro 2 and the Evo use the same battery form factor, I plugged in the P2 battery into the Evo yesterday and charged it overnight. It gave me the 15% warning after 6.5 hours of use.

I popped that battery into the Touch Pro 2, but the TP2 said there was 30% left.

I'm not sure what this means exactly, but this was the stock battery from teh TP2 and not the stock Evo one.
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did you try putting the evo battery in the tp2 to see what it said? I have been using system panel to do some tests, the pulling off when it turns green tactic seems not to really work on mine most of the time which explains why it is erratic battery life I think, it will say about 4216 millivolts right when it turns green, when i pull the plug it drops 60-100 points within a second, to around 4150 or less.

And sprint did not want to give me a replacement unless i did a hard rest so they could test the battery, which i refused because i think that is just bs. Tried to say my 3rd party apps were to blame, lol, but sense is a much bigger battery hog then the launcher i am using now, the first month i was using sense and battery life was worse. Took me awhile to setup the phone to where i want it and don't want to do that, i am not rooted so can't do a full backup.
 
I just stuck the Evo battery back into the Evo, so when it runs down, I'll plug it into the TP2 and see how it registers there.

If you think the Evo is bad, I had a Touch Diamond that required three charges throughout the day and another when I got home from work. Now it's an alarm clock and a wifi only web surfing device when I'm brushing my teeth or on the pot. Amazingly, without the radio on, the thing lasts almost two weeks on one charge.
 
Cobravision said:
I just stuck the Evo battery back into the Evo, so when it runs down, I'll plug it into the TP2 and see how it registers there.

If you think the Evo is bad, I had a Touch Diamond that required three charges throughout the day and another when I got home from work. Now it's an alarm clock and a wifi only web surfing device when I'm brushing my teeth or on the pot. Amazingly, without the radio on, the thing lasts almost two weeks on one charge.
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I had a diamond too. My little brother is using it like an i pod touch now, not sure how long the battery last for him, he uses it to browse the web on wifi when at home since his env touch does not have wifi, listen to music and use windows mobile apps. I was using sense 2.1 on it so it ran a bit faster and longer than the stock diamond touch flow 3d, plus has the home screen weather. Actually i remember using the second stock update for awhile as well which improved battery life and performance, but the custom flash rom was better that that. Used sense 2.5 as well on it but that really slowed it down. Gps seems to be the only thing that doesn't work when you deactivate it, and of course the cell radio.
 
I don't see anything different with this battery compared to my old Pre or past WM devices or friends' iPhones. There is minor variation (some people will die by 10 at night, some will last until last call, etc.) but for the most part, you can get a good day's use out of a smart phone as long as you charge every night. If you want to use it heavily (streaming, tethering, or other radio-intensive task) then plan on plugging it in. That's just how it works when you are powering multiple wireless radios, a large touch screen, and a fast processor while attempting to keep the device thin and sexy.

Until battery tech improves, you will be stuck riding that thin line between size and battery life.
 
neodorian said:
I don't see anything different with this battery compared to my old Pre or past WM devices or friends' iPhones. There is minor variation (some people will die by 10 at night, some will last until last call, etc.) but for the most part, you can get a good day's use out of a smart phone as long as you charge every night. If you want to use it heavily (streaming, tethering, or other radio-intensive task) then plan on plugging it in. That's just how it works when you are powering multiple wireless radios, a large touch screen, and a fast processor while attempting to keep the device thin and sexy.

Until battery tech improves, you will be stuck riding that thin line between size and battery life.
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I think the goal will always be one day of moderate use. Because as the battery tech improves, so will the demands of the processors/radios/etc.. in the phones.
 
And personally I have no problem with the current battery life because i'm always near a charger. Plus I just received 2 more spare batteries today that cost me $10. So if i'm ever in a position where I may run out of battery life, I will have a spare or 2.
 
Tell me if I'm doing it wrong, but the this has got to be the worst designed battery cover I've ever seen! It feels like something is going to break off as I slowly pry each point of contact from the case. It feels like I'm making one of those Revelle scale models. All of my other HTC phones had battery covers you could remove in one motion.
 
Cobravision said:
Tell me if I'm doing it wrong, but the this has got to be the worst designed battery cover I've ever seen! It feels like something is going to break off as I slowly pry each point of contact from the case. It feels like I'm making one of those Revelle scale models. All of my other HTC phones had battery covers you could remove in one motion.
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yeah, i start at the top where the little notch is and then move my finger around the edge to take it off.
 
Cobravision said:
Tell me if I'm doing it wrong, but the this has got to be the worst designed battery cover I've ever seen! It feels like something is going to break off as I slowly pry each point of contact from the case. It feels like I'm making one of those Revelle scale models. All of my other HTC phones had battery covers you could remove in one motion.
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It's no rocket science.
 
About 7 hours later, I hit the red (15%) on the Evo, but I used it for a few minutes more. Stuck that stock battery into the TP2, and it registers 20%.

I'm still unsure as to what this all means, but there you go.

Is it possible the Evo is very bad at determining how much battery is left? Maybe that's why some people see it drop 8% right after it's taken off the charger, and maybe when the battery is reported at 15%, it's not actually that low.
 
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