Conserving the battery charge daily....

[jim_h]

Hi all,

I have significantly improved my battery life over the past few days by changing two simple settings....email and wifi.

Email first -
I have accounts set up on the Hero with Yahoo, GMail and Hotmail. When I looked, the Yahoo was checking every 15 minutes. GMail every hour and Hotmail once per day. As I am often in front of a PC with email open, this seemed like overkill.

So, I altered all three accounts to check only once each day automatically.

I also switch my wifi connection on as soon as I get home and leave it connected until I go to bed. I've now started turning this off when I'm not actively using it.

Here's my non-scientific results:
Getting up at 6:30am each day and using the Hero as normal before altering these settings would get the battery charge down to 25% at best by 11pm when I put it back on charge. It would often be less than 25%.

After changing the settings as above, my battery usually stays over 85% until probably early evening. My usage goes up when I get home from work quite a bit though and yet by 11pm, I still haven't seen the charge less than 65% yet.

A vast improvement for me!

Cheers,
Jim

 

[andy d]

Good call Cheers.

 

[myhero123]

Hi all,

I have significantly improved my battery life over the past few days by changing two simple settings....email and wifi.

Email first -
I have accounts set up on the Hero with Yahoo, GMail and Hotmail. When I looked, the Yahoo was checking every 15 minutes. GMail every hour and Hotmail once per day. As I am often in front of a PC with email open, this seemed like overkill.

So, I altered all three accounts to check only once each day automatically.

I also switch my wifi connection on as soon as I get home and leave it connected until I go to bed. I've now started turning this off when I'm not actively using it.

Here's my non-scientific results:
Getting up at 6:30am each day and using the Hero as normal before altering these settings would get the battery charge down to 25% at best by 11pm when I put it back on charge. It would often be less than 25%.

After changing the settings as above, my battery usually stays over 85% until probably early evening. My usage goes up when I get home from work quite a bit though and yet by 11pm, I still haven't seen the charge less than 65% yet.

A vast improvement for me!

Cheers,
Jim

hey Jim....i'm wondering if u can help me...any chance you could give me a step by step account of how you were able to put your hotmail onto your hero?

i've only recently upgraded on the 3 network to the hero(love the phone!) but i'm sorta new to this and i can't seem to get authorisation for hotmail

Any help u guys can give would be greatly appreciated

 

[Xyro]

An option to consider is having hotmail forward all emails to the gmail account you have on the phone. That way you have push (instant) email even if hotmail don't offer it. Having about 5 email addresses it's certainly easier to have them all forward to one account IMO.

 

[jim_h]

myhero123 - I'm on 3 too! It's actually much easier than you think to set it up with Hotmail. Here's how...

Open the "Mail" app.
Press the hard "Menu" button.
Select "More".
Select "New account".
Press "Other (POP3/IMAP)".
Enter your Hotmail email address and password.
Select "Next"
You should now see a small window saying "Verifying account information".
All done!

Hotmail shouldn't need any manual setting up of ports or anything else. Entering the simple info as mentioned above worked with my account.

I think Xtiro's advice is worth thinking about too, even if you don't use GMail. I do have a couple of domains registered where I have the catch-all email forwarded to my Yahoo account. It saves having lots of email accounts set up on the phone and having to log into them all.

I hope that helps. If not, post again here with why it didn't work and I'll try and help.

Cheers,
Jim

 

[jim_h]

Same for me - i have email to check every 5 mins ( i need it ) but i turn wifi of when im out during the day and turn it on when i get home and i get around 70% by the time i get home....65% by the time i sleep
awsomeee

Yeah, having wifi on all the time canes my battery, even if it's not connected to any network.

I've had my wifi on for most of today (from around 11am) and most of yesterday evening. My Hero hasn't been on charge since 6:30am on Friday morning when I unplugged it to go to work. It's now 20 past midnight on Saturday/Sunday, so it's been switched on for 42hrs without charging. According to About Phone/Status, I still have 40% charge available. That's all because of the settings I posted above. Nice. I don't feel the need to buy an extended battery any more

 

[Xyro]

There's a pretty useful app I've tried called JuiceDefender that saved power by controling when WiFi and mobile data were on. I had it set to turn them on when the screen was on, and also to turn them on for 3 minutes every half hour if the screen was off. It also knew to not turn on WiFi when away from home. Unfortunately it's a 2.1 only app

 

[jim_h]

There's a pretty useful app I've tried called JuiceDefender that saved power by controling when WiFi and mobile data were on. I had it set to turn them on when the screen was on, and also to turn them on for 3 minutes every half hour if the screen was off. It also knew to not turn on WiFi when away from home. Unfortunately it's a 2.1 only app

Thanks Xtiro. That's on my must get list for when 2.1 finally comes out!!

 

[choccy]

I take my phone of charge at 7.30am, by 11am its between 70 and 65% left I have to charge it again around 3pm otherwise when I get home I am well under 15% left.

My battery has been bad since day one in October, My normal use is email once a day, Facebook approx 15m max a day, a game maybe 10 - 20 mins max a day or read a book for ten mins on way to work, twitter to refresh manually, texts 30 a day approx, screen brightness is between 45-50% max - no syncs are on and it's on G2 only as 3G fails on T-Mob G3.

Was gonna buy a new battery, but with desire out soon I might wait to get that and use as main phone.

 

[pgraber]

Where can you adjust the setting for how frequently Hero checks for new email, calendar entries etc?

 

[myhero123]

myhero123 - I'm on 3 too! It's actually much easier than you think to set it up with Hotmail. Here's how...

Open the "Mail" app.
Press the hard "Menu" button.
Select "More".
Select "New account".
Press "Other (POP3/IMAP)".
Enter your Hotmail email address and password.
Select "Next"
You should now see a small window saying "Verifying account information".
All done!

Hotmail shouldn't need any manual setting up of ports or anything else. Entering the simple info as mentioned above worked with my account.

I think Xtiro's advice is worth thinking about too, even if you don't use GMail. I do have a couple of domains registered where I have the catch-all email forwarded to my Yahoo account. It saves having lots of email accounts set up on the phone and having to log into them all.

I hope that helps. If not, post again here with why it didn't work and I'll try and help.

Cheers,
Jim

thanx for the feedback....unfortunately i'm still getting the authentication failed verify username/password warning:-(

i've also tried xtiro's idea of entering a new email addy on my hotmail account but it seems to bring me to a page with a dodgy security certificate...any other ideas?

i don't mean to hijack ur thread btw!!!

once again any help is appreciated.

 

[heronaddict]

An option to consider is having hotmail forward all emails to the gmail account you have on the phone. That way you have push (instant) email even if hotmail don't offer it. Having about 5 email addresses it's certainly easier to have them all forward to one account IMO.

Hi Xtiro.
I have just tried to set up forward to my gmail acc, but my msn tells me "You're only able to forward mail to a custom domain or an e-mail address that ends in hotmail.com, msn.com, or live.com"
Is there something I am missing ?

TIA

 

[Xyro]

I haven't ever tried to link hotmail, but this is how I would do it if it wont let your forward them.

1) Go to Gmail on the PC and go to the settings.
2) Click on accounts and import.
3) Then scroll down to the Check mail using POP3 section of that page, and click Add POP3 email account.
4) Then put in your address and password. I think all the other settings there will be correct already.

Once all that's done your Gmail account will check your hotmail for new emails, copy them to Gmail and then they'll appear on the phone. It's also possible to configure gmail to send emails from your hotmaill address too if that makes it more convenient. That's how I use one gmail account to manage about 5 of them

Has to be said that gmail suits this set up more since your accounts aren't deleted if you dont log in often enough.

 

[myhero123]

I got my hotmail sorted Many thanx guys

ps....i'm sure it'll not be long b4 i'm back here with a different problem...lol

 

[heronaddict]

Thanks Xtiro, that seems to be working a charm.
Only downside is it seems gmail can only check every 15 minutes.

Thanks again.

 

[Xyro]

Yeah that's why I suggested forwarding first, because it's instantaneous. Shame hotmail are being stingy with who you can forward to.

 

[jim_h]

I got my hotmail sorted Many thanx guys

ps....i'm sure it'll not be long b4 i'm back here with a different problem...lol

Glad you got it sorted!

 

[bluenova]

Thanks Xtiro, that seems to be working a charm.
Only downside is it seems gmail can only check every 15 minutes.

Thanks again.

Depends which app you are using. With HTC Mail you can set whatever frequency you like. With the official Gmail app it uses PUSH instead of polling which is much more efficient as it doesn't have to keep checking for new mail, the mail is pushed to the phone when it arrives.

 

[jim_h]

Depends which app you are using. With HTC Mail you can set whatever frequency you like. With the official Gmail app it uses PUSH instead of polling which is much more efficient as it doesn't have to keep checking for new mail, the mail is pushed to the phone when it arrives.

But, the downside to that is that if your GMail account is receiving mail throughout the day, your connection will constantly be on. I'd rather be in control of the frequency and prevent it from connecting too often.

 

[Xyro]

Depends which app you are using. With HTC Mail you can set whatever frequency you like. With the official Gmail app it uses PUSH instead of polling which is much more efficient as it doesn't have to keep checking for new mail, the mail is pushed to the phone when it arrives.

That's true, but gmail checks hotmail manually every X mintues for new emails, rather than them being pushed to gmail. So there's still a delay even if they are pushed from gmail to the phone. That's why forwarding from hotmail to gmail would be better.

But yeah jim, as I understand it Push email uses less data because you only connect to the server when an email arrives, rather than connecting every X mintues even if there isn't one.

 

[jim_h]

But yeah jim, as I understand it Push email uses less data because you only connect to the server when an email arrives, rather than connecting every X mintues even if there isn't one.

Yes, fair point. So, it's going to be much more efficient for those people with a limited data allowance to use GMail push than any of the other web based accounts. Even just polling the server for mail every so often will generate some small amount of traffic.

 

[ted_sd]

How do you set hotmail or yahoo for that matter to push to gmail?

 

[ted_sd]

TO follow up. I have Yahoo, Hotmail and Gmail apps running as well as Mail app. The mail app check both hotmail nad yahoo. I can adjust the frequency of when 'Mail' checks but am unable to do so with Hotamil or Yahoo.
It seems to me that the 'Mail' app is getting pushed from the other two.
Is running Hotmail and Yahoo increasing my battery useage?