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Tip-Trick: 61 hours, 24% battery remaining

nice work. i wasn't too worried about battery life, tbh. i knew it could last a good 16hrs, which is also a normal day for myself. and i won't use it every 30min while at work.

i'm sure we will all have our ways to improve battery life.
 
How many hours are we talking if we just leave 4G on in an area with good signal where it isn't always having to scan and work to stay connected? Any ideas?

I'm in Vancouver, WA which has a really decent clearwire/sprint 4G umbrella.
 
Yeah exactly. I would prefer just leave 4G on since i have the best coverage rating wherever I might be in Vancouver/Portland. That way an incoming call wont interfere with my daterz, and if I'm on a call I dont want to have to turn on 4G so that I can get online during the call. I just want it to all be ready to at all times.

Phone will be getting returned pretty fast if I have to turn stuff on and off to make it last from 8am to midnight.

My 2 year old iPhone 3G will still do almost 2 days with my usage with BT, WiFi, and 3G w/ Push all running, I never turn anything off.
 
Where is your location? The reason I ask is because I know that when my phone jumps between 2g/3g alot, I tend to chew up battery (mostly going into and out of labs).

If your area has great 3g coverage, I can expect similar results in my 3g areas.
 
thezlog said:
Yeah exactly. I would prefer just leave 4G on since i have the best coverage rating wherever I might be in Vancouver/Portland. That way an incoming call wont interfere with my daterz, and if I'm on a call I dont want to have to turn on 4G so that I can get online during the call. I just want it to all be ready to at all times.
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I guess it really depends on if when you get the EVO, you still get that level of coverage. Time will tell I guess.
 
Took my Evo off of the charger today at 11:00 am; had pretty minimal data usage as i was at work most of the time. Made 8-9 voice calls lasting about 5 minutes each. Data usage increased later at night as i was periodically checking AF forums and NBA gametime app to check out the lakers/suns game. Its 11:38 pm now, and i have 80% battery left. This is with GPS, 4g, wifi, and bluetooth off; strictly using 3g. Pleasantly surprised :D
 
Rizop said:
Took my Evo off of the charger today at 11:00 am; had pretty minimal data usage as i was at work most of the time. Made 8-9 voice calls lasting about 5 minutes each. Data usage increased later at night as i was periodically checking AF forums and NBA gametime app to check out the lakers/suns game. Its 11:38 pm now, and i have 80% battery left. This is with GPS, 4g, wifi, and bluetooth off; strictly using 3g. Pleasantly surprised :D
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did you use ATK?
 
robertdahlgren said:
I'm also lucky to have 4G coverage.
But look what happens to that 22% remaining battery when 4G is on for a bit, bam. So that's why it's normally off unless needed. Do you leave your car A/C on all the time in winter just to drive down your gas mileage? My personal preference is to just turn it on when I actually need it for something but get used to leaving it off by default.

evo4gsml.jpg
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Off topic, but is that one of the live wallpapers that comes with the EVO? 'Tis bitchin!
 
that is one of the "android" wallpapers that come preinstalled on the phone. It's really pretty, but not live unfortunately
 
wow, thanks a lot. i just changed the settings to match yours. hope the battery life is gonna rock it. i was starting to get worried since i've been having to charge atleast every 8-10 hours of up time
 
mangosinslo said:
wow, thanks a lot. i just changed the settings to match yours. hope the battery life is gonna rock it. i was starting to get worried since i've been having to charge atleast every 8-10 hours of up time
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yeah, if you're not having 20+ minute browsing sessions/youtube viewing sessions, and use your phone mostly for voice calls and occasional browsing, then you really should get pretty decent battery life out of your phone. I've been messing around with it a little bit since my first post(downloaded 2 apps, and playing with the spare parts app), and my battery is at 74%.
 
so, you bought an Android phone with a 4.3in screen to use as a blackberry? hmmm :)

on a serious note, thank you for all the tips, this forum benefits tremendously from people like you.
 
I'm using an app called Juice Plotter to track my battery usage.
Check it out here:
Latedroid: JuicePlotter

It shows 4G radio as WiFi, but seems to be working well and I have not seen a significant change in battery consumption from running it.

Also has a home screen widget that gives an approximate usage time remaining. Not sure if it works accurately. I'll test it and see.
 

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Lefort1 said:
You pay extra for 4G but you turn it off only to use Wifi...seems counterintuitive to me.
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Wimax should be treated like Wifi. It's similar technology and acts like a web of Wifi coverage spanning a whole city. Neither should be left on when not in use but since Sprint seems hell bent on positioning Wimax as a 3G analog that you just leave on and use when available, they will likely end up with some disappointed customers.

If your phone is sitting idle in your pocket, there is no reason to leave all of these radios on. Leave your regular 1x/Ev radio (your regular old cellular radio) on to receive and make calls, texts, emails, etc. and turn on Wifi or Wimax when needed for data intensive apps.

It's not counterintuitive when you consider most open Wifi networks are in your home or office or cafes, etc. but Wimax extends that kind of coverage all over town.
 
I'm testing with 4G on and so far so good. I started tracking this morning at 9:00AM with 98% battery level and have been using the device on and off at work, uploading screen shots, web browsing, a few YouTube videos, e-mail, phone calls, downloaded a few apps.
Now it's about 1:45 and I've got a battery reading of 69%. So about 6% usage per hour. At this rate, with 4G on, I should get about 16 hours of use. Plenty for me. I'll post again tonight with further results. Tomorrow, I'll try with 3G only.
 

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gabe2gg said:
wanna give us a update on how the battery is today?
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I wasn't planning to run any more blackberry type usage endurance tests. My goal was to have confidence that I can stop carrying 2 phones and carry just the one and not need a mid-day charge unless I'm using it as a hotspot, a bunch of 4G youtube HD, etc. I put it on the charger every night now and the battery is usually 50% to 20% by the end of the day with decent usage.

Replies to some other comments:

ATK: I like ATK because it doesn't kill off any OS level processes. I simply want to kill off all the Sprint-installed junk each cold reboot since I can't uninstall those without rooting the phone and don't want to spend time finding out what they are doing in the background. I'm not planning to root until someone has tested 2.2 on the evo.

4G: I am in the Seattle area. if I leave 4G enabled while at home, I get 2 to 0 bars. This results in could not load data errors at times so I find it better just to leave it off by default at home until I get a closer antenna. Plus my Verizon FIOS on the wi-fi is faster data when at home anyway. Also, with such a low signal I suspect that was why I had such horrible early battery life results since it's like when you have a very low 3G signal and your battery gets drained. I turn on 4G whenever I want to do something data intensive (NOT email) while out and about. The last 2 times I've wanted to show off the phone I managed to get a 4G connection but at 0 bars it wouldn't route any actual data which makes for a horrible demo when trying to convince people to move to Android....! I'm also disappointed I can't use the 4G as a reliable backup data source at home and will try to get a discount from Sprint when signing up after the free google i/o period of service.

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.

I'm still waiting for my Phantom Skinz and Zagg Invisibile Shield full body kits to arrive. I'll post up which one I go with (or a combination of parts) based on the feel of the touchscreen protector. I've been super happy with invisible shield full kits for other devices in the past.
 
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