Help Battery life and battery management

[JimKnuckles]

Well, something odd is going on (3-4 bars is OK, but using WiFi is still the way to go to keep battery drain to a minimum in my experience).

I'd suggest getting SystemPanel (search Android Market for it) and then run it for a few hours. If you see the battery diving down, you can list the applications using the CPU and often find the one(s) that have spikes during that time. You can also watch your network use to see if something is always on consuming a bunch of bandwidth/power. Maybe that online game is keeping a connection open? Just a thought.

I'll download it amd try it out. No, i make sure its closed out. Battery is down another 5%

 

[tygger]

I have my display set to auto, but it doesn't appear to adjust automatically. It's especially noticeable at night when my screen is super bright.

Anyone else have this issue?

 

[jerofld]

Make sure that when you have wifi enabled that you disable mobile networks. My phone's 3G seems to still pull power when wifi is enabled and active.

 

[Rose4uKy]

I keep my mobile network off all the time now when I am on wifi and then when I leave for work and am driving I reverse it and turn off wifi and put mobile network back on. I don't get a good signal at work so it helps leaving mobile network off and then I connect to our works guest wifi. I notice a difference in battery. The 3D is much better.

Make sure that when you have wifi enabled that you disable mobile networks. My phone's 3G seems to still pull power when wifi is enabled and active.

 

[JimKnuckles]

Make sure that when you have wifi enabled that you disable mobile networks. My phone's 3G seems to still pull power when wifi is enabled and active.

How can you tell if It's using 3g while on WiFi with the 3g symbol not there?

 

[tygger]

Make sure that when you have wifi enabled that you disable mobile networks. My phone's 3G seems to still pull power when wifi is enabled and active.

When I have my wifi on, I know the 3g icon in the status bar goes away... but didn't check to see if it was actually off. I don't have wifi right now so I can't check.

 

[jerofld]

How can you tell if It's using 3g while on WiFi with the 3g symbol not there?

I watch a widget that gives me percentages. When mobile networks is on, and I'm using wifi, the phone uses power faster than when wifi is enabled and mobile networks are off. Although I haven't calculated it, it seems to be very close to the power consumption rate of using 3G anyways. So I have been clicking off mobile networks when on wifi and the 3vo seems to be sipping power instead of gulping it.

Edit: It could just be in the situation I'm in. I'm trying to figure out if my unit is defective or it's some sort of interference with my unit. Getting my unit checked out tomorrow to ensure it's good at a repair center. But if it is RF interference that is kicking out my wifi, that may be causing my 3G to constantly kicking on to prepare to take over (even thought it never takes over because wifi reconnects). YMMV and all that. It's just in my experience, thus far, that killing mobile networks when in wifi range saves battery power, so I do it. I've gone 6 hours of moderate-heavy use and still have 50%, so it's been a lot better than near dead after 6

 

[Spartanzz]

so i was considering buying the 1850 mah china battery off ebay anyone gotten these yet? if so do the help battery life at all?

 

[Camika]

How can you tell if It's using 3g while on WiFi with the 3g symbol not there?

You do know if you are on a call for 10 mins and you have WiFi enabled while the phone is pulling mail, weather, or anything else you are going to drain a lot of battery right? Doing voice and data at the same time = battery drain.

 

[JunBringer]

Does anybody know of an app or anything that will automatically set your brightness using the sensor but keep it a certain percentage below what it normally would to save battery?

 

[Rose4uKy]

I bought 3 x 1800 ones plus a wall charger for 15.98 and one extra wall charger only. My friend he got the same thing and he says they work fine. I have yet to take my back off my phone and trade out batteries yet. I am always with a plug. But I am headed to a concert in Indianapolis tonight and i am sure after taking pictures and doing lots of stuff I may finally have to learn how to get the back off and on and swap out a battery.

so i was considering buying the 1850 mah china battery off ebay anyone gotten these yet? if so do the help battery life at all?

 

[tygger]

Does anybody know of an app or anything that will automatically set your brightness using the sensor but keep it a certain percentage below what it normally would to save battery?

I thought that was what the auto brightness setting was supposed to do... But it doesn't work.

 

[Vipfreak]

JimKnuckles you may want to consider you have a defective batt./phone. Also, what is running? On the EVO 4G when i'd restart it would clear out and wouldn't drain so fast. Those are my guesses anyway.

In other news, have a live wallpaper (shadow galaxy ftmfw!) and I still managed 19hrs. before it fully died. Awesome!

 

[JunBringer]

I thought that was what the auto brightness setting was supposed to do... But it doesn't work.

Yeah I was hoping somebody made an app or hack that is more conservative with it.

 

[oOMavrikOo]

Auto brightness works for me. I like how its not super dim just because it might be dark in the room. And I love not having to try and adjust it myself just because I stepped outside of someone turned a light on. I think people are spending too much time worrying about the battery drain. Personally, whenever I choose to just not worry about how much battery I've lost and just charge it whenever I can, it doesn't seem to bother me as much.

 

[Spartanzz]

I bought 3 x 1800 ones plus a wall charger for 15.98 and one extra wall charger only. My friend he got the same thing and he says they work finr. I have yet to take my back off my phone and trade out batteries yet. I am always with a plug. But I am headed to a concert in Indianapolis tonight and i am sure after taking pictures and doing lots of stuff I may finally have to learn how to get the back off and on and swap out a battery.

Ah ok. I was just thinkin about getting the set of 2 1850 and a wall charger cuz im usualy out and about and would rather have a back up plan in case my phone does die lol

 

[Vipfreak]

Hmm... I think my last post was a little overstated, can't seem to restart my batt. discharge time.

 

[bantaa]

what monitoring app is that?

What is your signal strength? If it's less than 4 bars, I've found it does drain battery. Also, do you have 4G enabled? Even worse battery drain especially if not at full signal strength.

The low signal strength drain is the biggest problem Sprint has, I think. I've had this problem on every Sprint phone. I wish someone would make the "use all available power to search for better signal" algorithm a bit less aggressive. In fact, if I have poor signal AND am doing data over 3G, the phone gets hot! Turn on WiFi if you do this (if you can). That's been my solution for years.

I get 16+ hours on my phone, now, with push mail on four accounts, 15-minute updates on other accounts (twitter, some email, etc.) <10 minutes of voice, a few texts and 1+ hours of web use (not downloading that whole time, of course). At this point, I'm a bit under 30% charge, on average... extrapolating (which is not quite valid, but whatever...) that's 22 hours. I'm not playing online games or watching movies, but I do watch a youtube video occasionally, for example. I'm not trying to save battery, but using the device as I think I should.

Finally, here are some screen shots clearly showing what others have said (including me but now I have photos):

1) Notice what happens as you get to 100% charge:

2) Here's my last three days of usage to "prove" what I'm saying, above:

 

[Needforspeed]

System panel

 

[Vipfreak]

I estimated that I took the phone off the charger at about 10 am or 11 am and it's now 12 midnight. I have 8% left. I'd say that's still pretty good since having a live wallpaper and doing various things on the phone.

 

[JunBringer]

It'd be nice if we had a battery tips thread like we did with the Evo 4G. I know a lot of them are the same, but it'd still be nice to have

 

[EarlyMon]

I've been profiling mine to see which tips may make sense. The Shift required no care and feeding, so I'm not of the mind that all of the old tips matter, unless you really need extreme battery life.

It's taking time for me decide in light of being able to stay online with Talk and Skype with minimal power draw.

Also, we locked into a lot of goofy ideas prior to the June 28, 2010 stability update, 1.47 on the Evo. I'd like to avoid that here, as I believe we're due for the same.

PS - I'd like to avoid... Means me personally, not as a mod, ok.

 

[cmanbrazil]

Waiting for a siedo 3500 for this phone. Once I have that i will be straight. This phone is definitely better than the evo, but not than the evo with a siedo 3500 battery.

 

[JunBringer]

I'm hoping I won't have to get the extended battery, but we'll see. I gotta experiment more.

 

[Camika]

I love the fact that the app Battery Indicator Pro will notify you with an alarm when your phone is fully charged so you can unplug your phone. Also, the developer coded the app to have alarms for different situations. You can set the app to notify you if your phone reaches a certain temperature (very useful/important tool). I set my alarm to notify me if the phone reaches 108F.