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nick325i
12-09-2009 01:43 PM

First and foremost, please make sure you have the Sprint 1.5 Maintenance Release already installed.

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Brightness - Disabling the Auto Backlight feature and setting your brightness to an acceptable low level.
Menu > Settings > Sound & Display
(I have mine halfway between middle and lowest and i'm considering going farther yet as the screen is still pretty bright down this low.)
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Screen Time-out - Set this as low as you can live with it.
Menu > Settings > Sound & Display
(I have mine at 30 seconds and make a habit to turn the screen off before I set it down)
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E-mail polling - Other than your GMail, if you are using the phone for e-mail, it helps to set it to check for new mail on a longer interval 20 minutes.
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Self Updating Widgets - The HTC Flipclock has been called out as a battery hog as well as some weather widgets.
(I try to keep it to one self updating widget per home screen.)
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On/Off Toggles - For Sense UI, HTC has widget toggles for GPS, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. I toggle them all when needed. The extra 2 seconds it takes for them to turn on does nothing to impact my usefulness of the features.
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Location - Location Setting enabled but "Use Wireless Networks" disabled. When needed I toggle on my GPS. Also this will provide a much more accurate location for Google Maps and Sprint Nav.
Menu > Settings > Location
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Automated Task Killers not so good - They run in the background closing out your tasks that you leave open. Two things here that contribute to the bad battery life. If you have to re-open everything from scratch all the time it uses more CPU time. Since android apps enter a pause state when you are not using them the CPU is not being utilized.
(For this I recommend "Close Everything" you open it and hit close everything and if something is open that shouldn't be or what not it closes it. Also good for programs that don't force close on error or back key press.)
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HTC Weather - Turn of the automatic updates if you are using the weather widget from HTC. Possibly consider switching to another app/widget where you can set your update frequency.
App List > Weather > Menu > Settings
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Facebook and other Social Apps - Turn the update frequency down to an hour or more. FaceBook > Menu > Settings
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PRL Update - Your phone can struggle if you are in between towers or have a constant weak signal. As more towers are built or updated so should your PRL list be updated. Try to remember to update this once and a while incase something has changed in your local tower network.
Menu > Settings > About Phone > System Updates > Update PRL
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Disable Haptic Feedback on KB - This may be a smaller gainer but its still a gain. Disabling the vibration on every key press, especially if your a heavy text'r or tweeter.
Menu > Settings > Locale & Text > Touch Input > Text Input > Vibrate when Typing

The following tips will incur feature loss with the Hero


Disable Always on Mobile Network - This will make it so you have to manually update most of your widgets and applications.
Menu > Settings > Wireless controls > Mobile network settings
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Disable Background Data - This will disable all automatic sync of Gmail, Google contacts and calendars. If you do not use any of these, feel free to disable.
Menu > Settings > Data synchronization > Google > Background data

In addition to the above tips try charging your phone while its off for a much faster charge!

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how much of a power hog is the htc flipclock? I like that it shows the current weather with it, although if its a huge battery hog I wouldn't mind finding a replacement.

Not sure how much of a power hog it is but I just realized the other day that having the clock set to "current location" might also hurt the life because it's always checking for the location. I just set it to my home town because I very rarely travel to a different time zone.


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So "Use wireless networks" and "Enable GPS satellites" should be unchecked, leaving "Location Setting" the only thing that is checked? (I only turn on GPS when I need it).

Yes.

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I use the 1x1 weatherbug widget because

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weather widget by android apps.

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Hero has three separate lines, "Use Wireless Networks", "Location Setting" and "Enable GPS Satellites".

Turn off the first and last.

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Swift was released in the Market and I have been testing it all day. Features and speed are unsurpassed. Set it to update every 5 minutes for testing purposes and has been easy on my battery. I'll let you know what I see for the next couple days.

Being a big Twitter user, this app rocks better than any other I've seen so far. Yes even Twitdroid, and it's free
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Close Everything is a program freely downloadable from the market.

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Originally Posted by TF1984 (Post 178384)
Excellent Test!
I do have a question for you though...

When you leave your applications to go to home screen or switch to a different app etc, what button do you press on your phone. Do you press the home button or do you use the back arrow.

It is my current understanding that if you use the back arrow the program closes and if you use the home button the program is left open.

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my Advanced Task Manager auto-ends apps every thirty mins. so it takes care of that for me. Plus I have a real addiction to tapping my ATK widget on home screen to force close the non-excluded apps.

I buy it because i've tested it. If you open a bunch of crap and press home after you open each one go look in your task manager. Close it all then open a bunch of stuff and use back to get back to your home screen and see how much is still open.

My point is our difference in battery over the same time frame is the fact that I never use the home button. I always use back to close the apps. Then I run my "Close Everything" about 2-3 times a day for the other stuff that doesn't close when its done or has hung and not FC'd.

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Posted by nick325i (Post 178953)
As far as my tests conclude back = close app. I think the reason the dolphin browser has the hold back to exit feature is because browsing is one of the only applications where if you press back it doesn't exit the program on the first one or two presses if you've been browsing for 15-20 minutes you'd have like 30 pages to go through and that would be annoying. I use dolphin specifically for this feature
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Press the back button as many times as it takes to get back to one of your home screens, if your in a message you'd need to hit it twice.
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Manual VS Automatic checking is always better for battery when you manually check. Having it at 4 - 8 hours would be pretty good on your battery though.
1. Open market, locate "Spare Parts" & Download
2. Open Spare Parts> Battery History
3. you'll see two drop downs and a list of apps/services below. The "CPU" drop-down should be changed to "Partial Wake Usage" and the "since last unplugged" can change to whatever.

you want to look at battery history and change the drop down to "Partial Awake" to see which app is keeping your CPU from sleeping.

The top services and apps below are the ones keeping your phone from sleeping (partially). Note that there should be some apps there, but "android" should be on top. If you notice another app you have at the top, then you should delete it and find a replacement.

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Also what is your awake time %?
Menu > Settings > About Phone > Status

If all of these are within reasonable parameters then you need to download Spare Parts b/c something is keeping your phone from entering "sleep" which puts the cpu into a power save mode. Get that, then open spare parts and check battery information, change drop down to "partial wake usage" and find what apps are keeping phone from sleeping. It's that simple.

If you have a brand new battery, with poor service coverage in signal and data, high screen brightness, long timeout, 4 email accounts constantly updating, problematic apps and constant usage - face the fact that you will need to adjust your "charging habits".

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Advanced Task Killer Free" which seems to find more open applications that other task killers don't, and I did not use my silicone gel cover.

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BTW - the widget Battery Life (CurveFish) kicks butt, IMO.

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I think I figured out how to get it to show whatever location you pick rather than your 'Current City.' After trying to figure it out for a few minutes I deleted the HTC Clock widget from my home screen. Then I went in and added it back and it gives me the choice between Current City and adding a location. I added my location and it says 'Topeka' instead of 'Current City' now so I'm hopeful that will stick. Hope this helps someone else.

Just make sure the city you add is first on the list for that time zone. I added Chicago and it kept picking Kansas City before I rearranged the cities.

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1. Look into an app called timerific. I have mine set to be silenced at 11:45pm, ringer at 45% volume at 5:20am which leaves

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Posted by sleepybird (Post 264550)
Wouldn't charging the whole night overcharge the battery?

When the little light goes green, it stops charging.
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Battery widgets -- battery drainers?
Yes, I tested a few for over a week myself and all of them drained my battery even more. I uninstalled them and timed the battery once again and noticed that the phone battery runs longer without battery widgets, etc...

I was under the impression some of them did and some of them did not drain. Did you test "Batterylife" by Curvefish?

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All Programs -> Missed Reminder -> Missed Call Preferences (or whatever service you are being notified for) -> Notification Intervals = 1m and Number of Repeats = 10

It was set to 1m and repeat forever.

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Home -> Menu -> Settings -> About Phone -> Status

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XxdejavuxX
So here is what I did:

Facebook app -> update every 4 hours
Locations -> disabled wireless network and GPS( can be turned on manually when needed)
Brightness -> very low but still brigh
Screen time out -> 30s
Advanced task killer -> I kill every app that I dont need on
Battery widget and htc clock widget -> Ditched it
stock gmail and handcent for sms installed
ditched youmail and locale, after checking spare parts( was keeping phone awake 100%)

I went from 6 hours of use to 18 hours without charge. I actually feel that the phone is sort of cold now when I hold it comparaded to before.

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I use Lockbot Pro, so i can see the Notification bar even when it's locked). (Note: from reading this thread, still questionable to me whether Lockbot Pro impacts battery drain)

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Task manager being evil or necessary thing?
When I don't have one, I've found my battery life is worse cuz there are certain built in apps (namely the stupid f*ing voicemail) that just keep opening themselves and running when I don't need them to. Now just cuz an app is showing as open, doesn't mean it's actively running. So I have all the stuff I want to update in the ignore list and only the repeatedly stubborn running programs set to autokill. Using this method I've found my battery life is MUCH better. I don't think a kill all is needed, but if there's stubborn apps that won't stop opening it can be quite helpful.
I did just turn off all the auto update stuff so hopefully I'll get more battery life

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Do you have Google Voice installed? I was doing great for awhile then discovered google voice to be the culprit after uninstalling and reinstalling it.

It was force closing every time I turned on my phone so I uninstalled and reinstalled it. It didn't fix the problem but whatever. I went into the settings to set up the notification interval and could have sworn that it used to push notifications like gmail. It doesn't. At any rate, I figured I would have to do 10 minutes, I would hate to be in an area with no service for a couple of minutes, miss a call, and then not find out until an hour later when the notifications refreshed. It turns out that this was killing my battery. Now I have voicemail notifications sent to gmail which then pushes to my phone.


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Which is better? Gmail Notitification and Gmail Unread Count? I kept Unread Count, but uninstalled Gmail Notificaiton.


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From what I've managed to work out there are 3 basic rules

1) DON'T use a task killer

2) Try to go 48 hours without installing any new apps.

3) DO fully charge your battery

NB If you install a new app and your phone uses battery at an incredible rate don't assume that the app is bad. Leave it on for a day or two and see if the phone sorts itself out. If you still have problems then maybe you will need to uninstall.

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You can stop Gmail by going into your SETTINGS->Data Sync->Google-> uncheck Gmail.


I think the stock e-mail service may be the source of your poor battery life. I was using it for my gmail and hotmail and it was killing my battery like crazy, even when I changed it to sync every 2 hours. I switched to the native Gmail app and haven't looked back. Battery life has been much better.

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I don't use a task killer either. This was a huge drain on the battery when I was using it. I also have GPS on, using WiFi about 60% of the time and a few widgets. The key seems to be the app updating.

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bzzzzz
02-09-2010 12:13 PM

Another helpful pointer here is one made earlier

Don't go installing any new or updating any old apps if you're going to want good battery life.

It seems to take a day or so for Android to get used to the new app.

I charge my phone once every couple of days now.
I last charged my phone 36 hours ago. It's now on 50%
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Tip: Keeping your phone in 1x rather than Hybrid (when you go through long periods of non-data use, or heavy texting) mode saves tremendous battery life.

Settings>Wireless Controls>Mobile Network Settings>Mode of Operation

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Settings>Social Network>Menu>Account Settings and then change the update frequency of facebook. I just stumbled across this the other day. I really don't care how often my contacts list gets facebook updates so I changed it to 24 hours from the default of 2 hours. I went from about 35 hours to 42 or so. It's a lot of data to update so the less it does it the better.

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I like your calendar notification at the top. Which one is this?

It's called SMOOTH CALENDAR. It's a great handy little widget.


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I'd get rid of OSMonitor as well. The problem with a lot of these monitoring applications is that they are on all the time and so don't allow the phone to go into sleep mode.

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My wife just joined me with a Hero and switched over from her Blackberry. She compared it to going from dial up internet in the 90's to high speed broad band now and couldn't believe she had put up with her Blackberry for so long.

The thing she hated the most, though, was the slow internet. she's been surfing the web on her Hero and loves Swype. That's made the transition much easier.
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When someone talks about an app "keeping the phone awake," does this mean the screen is lighting up periodically, or can an app keep your phone awake and you know even know it?

Menu>settings>about>battery -->There is a field for "awake time" and a field for "up time"

===== end === as of March 21, 2010 =====