• After 15+ years, we've made a big change: Android Forums is now Early Bird Club. Learn more here.

Battery life

Phases

NO LONGER ADMIN
Sep 9, 2008
9,068
20,634
Nashville, TN
I was thinking last night what the battery life on the Dream will be like. With all the apps and all their glory, will the battery drain quickly?

My current phone, the Voyager, runs out by the end of the day (or nearly) if I use the apps heavily. Apps that require pushing/pulling data at least.

Thoughts?
 
For the peps that have the G1 in hand, how has the battery life been? I have used a G3 iphone and was shocked at the poor battery life...is the G1 better? worse? same?

supposedly if you keep the wifi enabled, it'll drain faster than an iphone with wifi turned on. I can't recall off the top of my head what kinda general life it had in a 3g network....but one review said thay they played their music playlist on shuffle for over 11 hours straight.
 
Upvote 0
For those of you who have your phone, how is the battery life? With moderately heavy internet usage my battery indicator is already yellow and it been on from 7 to now (12:15)

Not that great. I'm sure they'll improve it with updates, but in the mean time, ill need a car charger asap and it would be nice if someone came out with an extended battery.
 
Upvote 0
For what its worth, when my battery died it seemed to charge back up when plugged in pretty darn quickly. I'm not even sure if different phones/batteries recharge at different speeds but I was impressed.

Totally agree on extended battery and updates should increase battery life. Not only that, but some apps are just battery hogs and hopefully we can come together and pinpoint what settings optimize battery life.
 
Upvote 0
I agree, this isn't that great, and here's my thought.

We need to be able to close programs, rather than just minimizing them and letting android close them whenever. This was one of the biggest complaints about Windows Mobile and I can't believe they repeated that mistake. The only thing missing is an "X" Button in the corner that minimizes the program instead of closing it.

This needs to be figured out at the OS level, not a 3rd party app. And there needs to be just a tiny bit more customization on the data (WiFi, 3G, Edge) settings to help manage the battery better.

Don't get me wrong, I like being able to open up to 7 programs at the same time, and it's great that it can do this without slowing things down, but I don't always need the last 6 things I was doing still available. When I'm done listening to music, I want to exit the player, same with youtube, settings, and a lot of other apps. So it would be nice to be able to actually exit programs, any program, when I need to.
I have a feeling having the last six apps still running in the background ain't helpin the battery none.
 
Upvote 0
We need to be able to close programs, rather than just minimizing them and letting android close them whenever.

Well, first off, you're assuming they're still running. ;)

I'm willing to bet the method of operation is very similar to how the sidekick works...when you leave the app, it "sleeps". Since Andy was instrumental in the development of both devices, and there are so many other parallels, I'm willing to bet it works the same way.
 
Upvote 0
Well, first off, you're assuming they're still running. ;)

I'm willing to bet the method of operation is very similar to how the sidekick works...when you leave the app, it "sleeps". Since Andy was instrumental in the development of both devices, and there are so many other parallels, I'm willing to bet it works the same way.

Regardless, sleep does not equal "off". They're still using up battery power and memory. Considering how quickly they come back when you use the home button switch, they're certainly not in a coma.
 
Upvote 0
I'm hesitant to comment since I don't want to appear too negative... but the battery life is downright unacceptable. At 8 yesterday morning I had a full charge, and yes I was playing with it a good deal and had all the gadgetry turned on, but by 5 p.m. I was down to less than 30% charge. That's just darn near unacceptable to me. And yes, I fully realize what a challenge it is to run all this widgetry in a cell phone and still keep a decent battery life, but there's a point where it's downright impractical and we are right at that point IMHO. I am simply not going to charge my phone twice a day.
 
Upvote 0
Unplugged at 5:30Am, low battery shutdown at 12:30pm. That's 7 hours and that just sucks. I've now killed locale, run only on EDGE and still it's pretty weak. I'm seriously disappointed in how poor the battery life is. I'm going to knock off some more apps that are most likely hitting GPS and whatnot in the background, but once you start doing that, the advantage of the device kinda disappears. :(
 
Upvote 0
i think it's okay to be negative about it. it's a brand new phone, and i'd think the company would want to hear about it.

i just had a sidekick and that had an awful battery, so i'm used to charging my phone while i'm at work, and that it charges thru usb on my PC is quite convienent.


I completely forgot about that, I was about to buy another charger, duh!


The upside of the battery, in my opinion, is that it charges up real quick. None of this 4-5 hours with it turned off to get it back up to 100%, I haven't timed it, but it seems like it happens within an hour (maybe 2) and that to me is a point in it's favor.

To be honest, I didn't expect much. My Wing, with no data plan, one hour phone call, and some minor usage (excel entry, notes, a few minutes of music) would easily be at 50% or below by 5pm. And keep in mind this is not using WiFi for more than a minute, without using bluetooth at all, and with the screen brightness at 60% and the screen shutting itself off after 30-seconds to 1 minute.

Smartphones drain batteries, period. If you haven't had one before, get used to it. Especially if you want a thin, light device. More battery power = bigger battery. Data connections, phone calls, WiFi and bluetooth are energy PIGS. Video and music playing aren't exactly turtles when it comes to eating battery life either. There's no way around that for the forseeable future. A fast device with super fast connections is going to eat batteries like potato chips.

I think many of us are playing with the phone a lot, and that eats up battery two.
Today, I started off with a full charge. I've sent out a handful of text messages, and that's it. It's almost 2pm here and I have 90% battery still.
I think the battery life will pick up when we're not all hammering away at our new, cool device all hours of the day :)
 
Upvote 0

BEST TECH IN 2023

We've been tracking upcoming products and ranking the best tech since 2007. Thanks for trusting our opinion: we get rewarded through affiliate links that earn us a commission and we invite you to learn more about us.

Smartphones