Suggestions on battery life problems

[Beermuny]

Okay, so I've been lurking on the forums for quite some time and thought that I'd ask for some insight on what's going on with my Hero. I know that battery life on smart phones isn't great to begin with, and just something that I've had to accept with this phone, but I think having 3 hours of usage (3-5 voice calls that lasted less than a total of 10 min, 4 or 5 texts, playing WordFeud with a couple friends, one voice search) is absurd. Before I hear the typical suggestions, yes auto update is off, so are facebook notifications, wordfeud notifications, screen is at 50% brightness, there are two widgets running, one is power management (the irony) and the other is overclock widget (set to 480 screen on, 2XX screen off. Yes, I'm rooted and running Fresh 2.4 with the overclock kernel.


Is there any self test I can do to tell if my battery is failing? Could it be the overclock widget, or kernel? I honestly only flashed the kernel so I could turn down the cpu to save battery life, not really interested in overclocking the phone.

Had the battery checked at a sprint repair store and of course they said there was nothing wrong, but I think it's the culprit. The phone charges slowly, wouldn't charge last night, and would die as soon as I unplugged it from the charger, phone gets really hot on occasion when I'm using it while charging and have gotten the flashing orange and green LED's.


I'd just like some insight before I buy a new battery since I'm not looking to spend anymore money on this phone before my upgrade. There seem to be some people here that have "awesome" battery life by tweaking this or that. I've yet to see any improvements at all. Seems silly to have to sparingly use the device that has so many features and is meant to be mobile. I work in the field so I can't be tethered to a charger all day, I'm not asking for much, just to have the phone be able to power on between the hours of 8am to 6pm, without having to worry if checking my email, or answering a text will kill the phone.

Anyway, thanks in advance for any help. Sorry to sound like I'm whining, but I've had this phone since Feb and while I'm satisfied with everything else, this battery issue is killing me.

 

[BlackedOut]

You could purchase a larger battery if you go the route of replacing it. seidioonline.com

 

[Beermuny]

Thanks, I've seen both the larger replacement battery and the huge one that requires a cover and have contemplated both. I just am finding it hard to spend any money at all on this phone just so I can use it normally. I'm not a power user by any means, just want the phone to work a whole work day without having to nurse a charger. I'm by no means a power user, so I'm just really frustrated. I have to remember to take my charger if I want to visit friends, remember to plug it up to the car charger (which has to be the slowest way to charge anything) whenever I'm at lunch or coming home from work. Just seems like I'm making way too many concessions just to use the phone normally......

I've seen the battery life thread, and others that address this. I guess I should start with finding out if the battery I have is bad, I've had the phone since early this year, maybe 7 or 8 months, rarely ever let the phone completely go dead until recently, and end up charging it over night and occasionally during the day. Is there any sure fire way to tell if the battery is dead before I spend money on a replacement battery?

 

[Illuminator]

Out of curiosity, what kind of battery life are you seeing?

I've been off the juice for 17 hours now and I've got about 15% battery life left. This is after some moderate/heavy use. A few voice calls around 5-10 minutes and heavy internet use (about two to three hours today), some downloading and installing widgets, messing around with my home screens and quite a few texts. I have the Seidio battery (1750Mh something?), but it doesn't seem to be that much different from the standard one.

I feel like this is decent battery life for my use, but I'm always a little worried the phone is going to die on me. Yet, it hasn't happened yet, no matter how much I use it. This has been pretty consistent across Zen and CM6. I generally keep GPS off, as well as my screen brightness turned down to about 20%.

 

[Beermuny]

I don't make or receive many calls, on average 3-4 a day, and those calls couldn't be more than 30 min at the most combined. I do have to admit that I do play around with the screens a lil bit, I also have been playing wordfeud, which has been keeping the screen on for several minutes at a time. I have gps, wifi, sync, and bluetooth off. I seldom use any of that except for wifi when I'm home and plugged in. I don't think I ever could get two to three hours of browsing time on my hero. Since my initial post I've gone back and reset all the settings and then set them again, I had an app called screen on that I used whenever I'm home to keep my remote for Itunes from going to sleep, seemed to be running even though I wasn't using it or the Itunes remote. Anyway, the phone did charge a lil bit quicker than it has been and I've seen less drain since. I'll see tomorrow if this is actually what the problem was, even though battery life was sub par before rooting, these apps, and the overclock widget.