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Tip-Trick: 61 hours, 24% battery remaining

robertdahlgren said:
Wallpaper: the live wallpapers (except maps with turns on GPS!) don't chew up as much battery as I had expected. But I went with the built-in paper with the most black but still interesting to save on battery for now until I have time to experiment more with the live ones. What I'd really like is someone to turn that wallpaper into a live one where it's still mostly black but with live moving flames on the X.
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Are you thinking that maximizing black on the display will somehow increase battery life?

The Evo has a LCD, which work by using little liquid crystal shutters to selectively block the backlight. The shutters themselves consume essentially no power; the battery drain is from the backlight, which is on even if all the shutters are closed so that the screen appears black.

Bottom line: the only thing that really matters is whether the screen is on, and how bright you set the backlight.

A live wallpaper could (in principal) chew up battery by running the CPU to calculate what to display at any given moment; it's reassuring that you're not seeing a big effect there. But don't worry about the colors affecting power consumption. No effect.
 
These battery tests are great, but how much talk time is involved? Are you using any apps like Pandora during the day?
 
Thanks so much for these full explanations. I just read the "review" on MobileCrunch and he pretty much just absolutely destroyed the battery in 4 hours and really has me turned off getting the phone now.
 
rhwd2003 said:
Thanks so much for these full explanations. I just read the "review" on MobileCrunch and he pretty much just absolutely destroyed the battery in 4 hours and really has me turned off getting the phone now.
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did they have every thing on? because that would chew it out FAST especially with the 4G radio on
 
rockman1117 said:
Remember if you use 4g, you can use voice and data at the same time. That is a important thing for some people. I would use that feature if I were driving around somewhere and wanted to have GoogleNav going and talking to someone on the phone.
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I believe google nav caches your route so even without data it can keep going... if you drive off route tho, that's another story.
 
apollooff320 said:
will use this trick along with this one [How-To] Better battery life, reduce Time Without Signal. - xda-developers
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didn't really do much for me...
abcdfv said:
Alright, I don't remember who it was, but first off, I would like to thank the person that figured out how to check the radio mode.

Pictures coming soon!


First things first, I have personally tested this with DamageControl 1.0, with Flipz's .03 radio, and found it increased my battery life by 30-40%. I am using the stock 1500mAh battery. Please note that the option to change the preferred network type is not available in 1.5 ROMs, as 1.5 is GSM only. (HTC hacked in CDMA support)

NOTE: when you first open the testing menu, it will show it as CDMA auto (prl). This is a visual glitch, in reality, it is set to GSM auto (prl). If your TWS is around 50%, it means it's GSM auto (prl)

First things first, go into Settings> About Phone> Battery> Battery Use> Cell Standby. Assuming your phone has been on, or off the charger for ~10 minutes, it should show Time Without Signal at around 50%.

Next thing, press HOME, and bring up the dialer. Dial *#*#4636#*#* (Do not press "Call"). After a second, it should bring up the "Testing" menu.

Go into Phone Information, press MENU, and tap "select radio band." You should experience a Force Close, don't panic, this was supposed to happen. Scrolling down shows that the preferred network type is GSM auto (prl).

What this means is that even though you are connected to a CDMA network, your phone is trying to find a GSM network, preventing the radio from sleeping, and causing excessive battery drain.

Remedy this by tapping GSM auto (prl), and changing it to CDMA auto (prl).


Now your done, your TWS should drop dramatically, and you should experience much better battery life!

Note: You need to do this every time you reboot.
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ans you need to do it every time you reboot! annoying
 
Not sure if this has been addressed, but why did you decide on Advanced Task Killer over the others?
 
dwhitman said:
Are you thinking that maximizing black on the display will somehow increase battery life?

The Evo has a LCD, which work by using little liquid crystal shutters to selectively block the backlight. The shutters themselves consume essentially no power; the battery drain is from the backlight, which is on even if all the shutters are closed so that the screen appears black.

Bottom line: the only thing that really matters is whether the screen is on, and how bright you set the backlight.

A live wallpaper could (in principal) chew up battery by running the CPU to calculate what to display at any given moment; it's reassuring that you're not seeing a big effect there. But don't worry about the colors affecting power consumption. No effect.
Click to expand...

The dark wallpaper is because I don't like my phone to have a giant white glow when I'm out clubbing. Even the live galaxy star whitepaper is way too bright in the center. Hence why I want the dark X but as a live wallpaper.
 
muncher said:
I believe google nav caches your route so even without data it can keep going... if you drive off route tho, that's another story.
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Google nav unfortunately doesn't cache nav data if you lose your network coverage for long enough. That's why I still carry a Garmin in the car but can't wait until the nav data for an entire route is cached locally with google navigation.
 
Right, so here it goes...

ATK is a complete waste of time on any Android device that has less than 800MHz of CPU power. The Android OS automatically handles the applications you start and determines what can continue to run and what needs to be shut down, both to increase battery life and performance.

Now, having said that, if you are a Min/Maxer (if you have to ask, then you are not) you might see a small benefit to using ATK on these devices.

Moving on...

On newer phones running at 800MHz and above, with expanded system memory, the Android OS sees all this extra play room and allows more programs and services to run in the background constantly, this has a massive affect on the battery, because the battery is not that much bigger than they are on the slower Android devices, plus the CPU uses more power too. The Android OS does not see this as an issue, because it does not monitor the battery, it only waits for the "low" "critical" and "dead" thresholds to be met (default is 15%, 5%, and 1% I believe, not sure on those because I change mine) and then reacts to those thresholds with "alerts" or by shutting down the system. It does not know the difference between !00% on a 1250mAh battery and 100% on a 1500mAh battery, or even the god of all batteries... the 3500mAh Evo battery ( Seidio - Your Single Source for Premium Smartphone Accessories ) <-- a definite if you are going to use 4G.

To sum this up, if you have a newer/faster phone you will want to use ATK (or an alternative, but I also prefer ATK having used 4 others for 3 weeks each before deciding) to keep the useless junk from running on your phone. I have no idea why Sprint TV or NFL TV or NASCAR TV (if you still have it) like to load themselves up periodically during the day (before using the auto-kill rules I found they would spontaneously load themselves throughout the day on my wife's moment, I never found out why, nor an exact pattern to the timing. It was just that sometimes when I checked one or more of those particular apps would be running AND I NEVER ONCE LOADED THEM MANUALLY, I can say I have never started any of those apps, but they constantly load themselves under Android 1.6.

have fun with your Evo's and everyone getting theirs on Friday, remember to KILL YOUR BATTERY before charging at least 2 or 3 times... ****Update on this**** infamousjax has stated that the Li-ion battery that ships with the Evo does not require you to kill your battery to get the best performance out of it, see post below.

(Oh great Android Gods, please give us Froyo on Friday or Saturday, I'll do the laundry, and mow the lawn, and vacuum, and even clean the toilet! I might even be willing to go to church on Sunday... nah, not that)
 
infamousjax said:
This doesn't do anything, since the Li-ion battery the Evo has doesn't work that way -- it's probably placebo :P
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sweet, thanks for that update, I was trying to figure out how I was going to manage the time to get that done, as I will be travelling 600 miles this weekend. I'll make a note of it in the post.
 
Great tips here. I'm going to give it a shot. Today was my first day at work with the phone, and it was at 10% when I got home. Pretty bad, but I'll see how tomorrow goes using these tips. My usage is similar to the OP's.
 
Colorado_Al said:
Well folks, it's 8:25PM, so 11.5 hours since the test started, with 4G and GPS on the entire time. The phone forced itself to shut down with 1% battery remaining. Made one huge 50MB upload via 4G of a 1.5 minute 720p video to YouTube which really hammered the battery (took 35 minutes). In that 35 minutes the battery went from 50% to 25%.
So, with what I think is pretty hard use with GPS and 4G on all day, with one large upload to YouTube, watching some youtube, taking a bunch of video, uploading screenshots and photos to flickr, listening to pandora, e-mail, phone calls, web browsing, twitter/friendstream, a bit of Skype/Fring, google maps, and several app downloads, the battery and EVO performed admirably!

I will definitely keep a spare battery on hand and I have a battery charger that doubles as a USB phone charger too. But really, all told, I'm pretty impressed.

A few notes:
At 15% battery, the unlock screen gave a visual warning to plug in the phone
At 5% battery, the phone chirped an alarm and gave a visual warning to plug in the phone.
At 1% the phone seemed to do an orderly shut down (with enough time for me to take a screen shot)

The phone still went 1 hour 37 minutes between 15% charge alarm and 1% shut down and I was still taking video and uploading screen shots much of the time.

Here are some screen shots for you to check out:
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Thanks for the juice plotter app
 
I've tried all of the same things as the OP and other things suggested elsewhere, but I still get poor battery life.

Still getting a total awake time of around 4 hours and total up time of 14. This is not acceptable to me. Maybe my battery is bad, but I doubt it.

4G is off, wifi is always on (when connected), bluetooth off... I have nothing set to push... it's all set to fetch once an hour... no more HTC widgets in use besides the time/weather, in which the weather is set to update every hour as well.
 
^ have you disabled google Talk? That, alone, saved my battery. It no longer eats battery while sitting still and doing nothing
 
I remember somesort of battery manager but I don't remember the name. I have the battery juice one, but I remember another one, or am I imagining it?
 
Very interesting. Did u just text a few times and stuff or did u just put it on idle because I can basically do the same thing
 
I just got the Evo on monday to replace my one month old Hero. While waiting for it to come, i started to become worried about all the horrible battery life stories. After getting it on Monday, I charged it, then set it up and downloaded 24 apps. I took it to work on Tuesday and wednesday, where my Hero lasts about 7 hours due to being in a concrete building with no windows.

Anyway, I used the Evo to make some calls, texts, internet, and just played around with it...

I am sitting here on Thursday morning with 48% battery left, and I haven't charged it again yet, as I am trying to kill the battery before the next charge...

This phone kicks the crap out of the Hero in every way, I love it...

I am not a power user, but probably your average type user....
Not using Live wallpapers
Not using 4g or hotspot
GPS and Wifi ON for 50% of the time
Gmail Push ON
Weather on Homescreen updating every hour
 
I am new to Android and smart phones in general, having come from an LG Rumor (Mk1 no less) but I was a little flipped out my first few days with this phone in terms of battery life. I am not exactly a heavy duty user I might ad. When I got the phone, the RS sales chick installed ATK on my phone saying it would improve battery life. I have uninstalled it and my battery life is way better without it. It acts like it is using power more like a normal cell phone to me now.

I know many say to use it but in my case, using Advanced Task Killer was really chewing up battery power... for whatever reason. Maybe it is many combinations of things, I dunno. Other than ATK, my phone is running like it came out of the box, whacky Sprint Apps and all. That has been my experience so far.
 
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