Googles take on Battery life

[aleis]

Google: "If You Are Not Getting A Day [of Android Battery], There Is Something Wrong" - Android battery life - Gizmodo


very good read. i just read a post on here saying the same thing.
even though im an incredible guy now i still got love (well my mom has my eris now) for my eris peeps!

 

[ACD168]

I totally agree, If your not at LEAST getting one day there is something very wrong.

The only way my battery frys up before a days end is if I'm not near a computer and

end up browsing longer than I thought. Granted I've learned some good tricks on

the forums here, I do however leave 3G off until I actually use it for the browser or

market or for another app. Thus giving me 3 and even 4 days of use.

 

[lessit]

I basically agree with the article. I am very familiar with three different users of Eris', including my own. I have seen an Eris with virtuallly no apps get less than a day of life. Lo and behold the user sits in a corporate cubicle location that has very poor cell reception and the phone is trying to establish a connection (i.e. eating up the battery) continually. Guy moves over 2 cublicles and miraculously the battery is providing over 2 days of power.

I've also had a phone that had multiple widgets enabled, getting continual feeds from 6 or more services. Again, battery life of a day or so.

Other times of seen just one app draining the battery. Does that mean the app is defective - not necessarily. It just means it needs more power for the functionality it provides OR, it is written poorly - you can't tell.

On my phone I have a goodly selection of apps and moderately use my phone all day. 3G is always on, GPS locator is used and I don't do anything with task killers. I make reasonable choices regarding my phones configuration and have no problem getting 2+ days between charges.
The basic conclusion though is that you can't make a general statement about battery life.

 

[Ra21V12eN]

I've had my Eris for a while now and prior to upgrading to the 1.5 version, I could get nearly 2 days of battery life with the phone on the entire time. This would be me taking it off the computer on Monday around 7:00 am and not plugging it back in until 6:00 PM on Tuesday in the car followed by attaching to the computer around 10:00 PM on Tuesday.

I've not added new apps since the update to 2.1 and includes several apps that are running all the time which backup the phone etc.

After the 2.1 update, I barely get a full day. I will take the phone off the computer just as I head out the door to work. When I get home from work, it is showing the yellow bar and will give me the 15% error just before I go to bed. Call it 15 hours of total unplugged battery time.

From what I can tell, Apps aren't fully closing in the 2.1 version of the OS. I had opened several of the newer 2.1 apps just to see what they were and if I would want to use them or not. When I logged onto the Advanced Task Killer app, it showed all of these apps still running. My take is that apps aren't gracefully closing and are sucking cycles when you thought that you closed them.

Now that I know this, I'll keep checking it and see if that helps with the battery life.

Ra21V12eN

 

[mc48]

yes I read that article on Giz today. I have just resigned myself that I will need to recharge my battery once or twice a day, especially if I want to make sure i don't get stuck with a low battery and no way to charge. so i have a charger for my car and one for my desk at work as well as the one at home that came with the phone. I like to have lots of widgets and sync everything several times a day and surf the internet and tweet, use the bluetooth, wifi, mobile network, etc. That's what I have the phone for. I just consider it a trade off. i have just decided not to worry about it and got rid of the battery widget and just use one in the notication bar.

 

[lessit]

I've had my Eris for a while now and prior to upgrading to the 1.5 version, I could get nearly 2 days of battery life with the phone on the entire time. This would be me taking it off the computer on Monday around 7:00 am and not plugging it back in until 6:00 PM on Tuesday in the car followed by attaching to the computer around 10:00 PM on Tuesday.

I've not added new apps since the update to 2.1 and includes several apps that are running all the time which backup the phone etc.

After the 2.1 update, I barely get a full day. I will take the phone off the computer just as I head out the door to work. When I get home from work, it is showing the yellow bar and will give me the 15% error just before I go to bed. Call it 15 hours of total unplugged battery time.

From what I can tell, Apps aren't fully closing in the 2.1 version of the OS. I had opened several of the newer 2.1 apps just to see what they were and if I would want to use them or not. When I logged onto the Advanced Task Killer app, it showed all of these apps still running. My take is that apps aren't gracefully closing and are sucking cycles when you thought that you closed them.

Now that I know this, I'll keep checking it and see if that helps with the battery life.

Ra21V12eN

Hate to be a pain but something changed if you're saying 15 vs. 48 hours. First, unistall your task killer. Then go through each app and determine whether you need it or not - delete those you don't. Of the remaining, check the configs to see what your update intervals are. See how many live widgets you have and whether they are needed. Validate your use of texting, browsing and phone usage - most people's increase in the first few days of a new release. Think about where you've been with the phone post-OTA. What if you just happened to be in bad reception areas? After you've cleaned up, reboot, recharge and report back.

 

[AZ Timeshift]

Since the update to 2.1 from 1.5 my uptime of 79 hours 21 minutes has had the awake time of 74 hours 25 minutes. Nothing added - battery life has dramatically decreased. At first I thought that it might be recalibrating the battery due to the OS update, but now I see that there must be processes running abnormally causing the battery drain. I run network only - wifi, gps and bluetooth off. The phone may need a hard reset to correct the issue, but before I do that I'm going to try a reboot.

 

[thenestor]

Since the update to 2.1 from 1.5 my uptime of 79 hours 21 minutes has had the awake time of 74 hours 25 minutes. Nothing added - battery life has dramatically decreased. At first I thought that it might be recalibrating the battery due to the OS update, but now I see that there must be processes running abnormally causing the battery drain. I run network only - wifi, gps and bluetooth off. The phone may need a hard reset to correct the issue, but before I do that I'm going to try a reboot.

If you're having 100% or nearly 100% awake time, that's obviously going to kill your battery. Here's the easiest way (without installing any new apps) to see what's keeping your phone awake:

1. Go to "Phone".
2. Dial *#*#4636#*#* (you won't need to hit send).
3. In the menu that shows up, choose "Battery history".
4. In the first drop-down menu, choose "Partial wake usage" and wait ten seconds for it to load.
5. Top item in the resulting list is what's killing your battery.

If it's "Calendar" it means one of your sync accounts (Google, Exchange, Facebook) is stuck in an endless loop of trying to sync. Reboot usually fixes that, or you can go one-by-one and manually sync till you find the culprit.

 

[BMF136]

I thought about starting another topic but I'll try this here since there are enough topics on battery life...

I have no idea how some of you get two days out of a battery charge. How much do you use the phone, what is your up time and awake time? Do you use the mobile network?

I'm lucky to get from around 8am to early evening on one charge. I'll have an up time of around 9 hours and awake time of around 2:30 when my battery goes amber and I have 3 yellow bars on the battery level. My awake time includes a few calls that may total 45min to an hour. The rest are a few emails, some texting, checking the weather, and some browsing.

I'm not huge into apps, I'll list the apps I have and how often I use them...

*Barcode scanner: Used only a few times, haven't opened it for a couple weeks.
*Google Shopper: used about as much as Barcode Scanner, been a while.
*Speedometer: I used it on vacation back in March to keep myself entertained on a long trip. Almost never use it around town.
*MyTracks: Got it to see what it was all about. Haven't used it in weeks.
*GPS Tracker: Will have a use for this app but soon but, again, used it twice to check it out and am waiting til I actually need it.
*TooDoo: my shopping list and stuff like that. Might use it at most twice/week for a few minutes.
Handcent SMS: I use it for my text messages. Some days I send/receive 5 texts, some days 50 or more.

That's all the apps I have.

I sync my Google mail, calendar, and contacts. Email is important to me but should I set my contacts and maybe calendar to only sync when I make changes to them? Maybe that would help.

I set the weather to update every 3 hours.

I set Facebook for HTC Semse to sync 1/day and I don't sync FB Contacts.

I keep the brightness seting on "auto" and screen timeout at 2 minutes but put the phone to sleep as soon as I'm done with it 90% of the time.

Mobile Network isn't set to "always on" but it's connected to 3g all the time.

I think my usage and settings are reasonable and, for the most part, am not complaining about the battery life but if there is anything I can do to increase it I'd love to. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks!

 

[Demache]

With moderate usage, I can get it to last 7 AM to about maybe 10 PM. Still, I'm going to get an extended battery, to get rid of some of my concerns of battery life.

 

[DDustiNN]

I thought about starting another topic but I'll try this here since there are enough topics on battery life...

I have no idea how some of you get two days out of a battery charge. How much do you use the phone, what is your up time and awake time? Do you use the mobile network?

I'm lucky to get from around 8am to early evening on one charge. I'll have an up time of around 9 hours and awake time of around 2:30 when my battery goes amber and I have 3 yellow bars on the battery level. My awake time includes a few calls that may total 45min to an hour. The rest are a few emails, some texting, checking the weather, and some browsing.

I'm not huge into apps, I'll list the apps I have and how often I use them...

*Barcode scanner: Used only a few times, haven't opened it for a couple weeks.
*Google Shopper: used about as much as Barcode Scanner, been a while.
*Speedometer: I used it on vacation back in March to keep myself entertained on a long trip. Almost never use it around town.
*MyTracks: Got it to see what it was all about. Haven't used it in weeks.
*GPS Tracker: Will have a use for this app but soon but, again, used it twice to check it out and am waiting til I actually need it.
*TooDoo: my shopping list and stuff like that. Might use it at most twice/week for a few minutes.
Handcent SMS: I use it for my text messages. Some days I send/receive 5 texts, some days 50 or more.

That's all the apps I have.

I sync my Google mail, calendar, and contacts. Email is important to me but should I set my contacts and maybe calendar to only sync when I make changes to them? Maybe that would help.

I set the weather to update every 3 hours.

I set Facebook for HTC Semse to sync 1/day and I don't sync FB Contacts.

I keep the brightness seting on "auto" and screen timeout at 2 minutes but put the phone to sleep as soon as I'm done with it 90% of the time.

Mobile Network isn't set to "always on" but it's connected to 3g all the time.

I think my usage and settings are reasonable and, for the most part, am not complaining about the battery life but if there is anything I can do to increase it I'd love to. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks!

Uncheck your "auto" brightness, and manually set it to around 25% or so. It's perfectly visible at that setting and the phone won't have to work to decide when to dim the screen or not. Another annoying note about that... I hated that setting when I first got the phone, because when I'd turn the phone horizontal I'd always accidentally cover up the light sensor, which would in turn dim the screen. It took me a while to figure out what was going on... much better now

My battery is currently at 42%, been unplugged for 18 hours. Actually, I take that back... I did plug it in for 10-15 mins in my car while I was using Navigator, though I doubt any charging actually got done since it got quite hot from doing so much work... also the car charger doesn't seem to charge very fast.

I have all of my Google stuff synced, as well as the Weather Channel widget, Dictionary.com Word of the Day widget, and Urban Dictionary widget, all being updated regularly (whatever their default settings are). I have Mobile Network and GPS both set to "On" (I never use Bluetooth or Wi-Fi). I usually have a few phone calls per day, some text messages, e-mails, and minimal web browsing.

Not sure if any of that helps, but that's my setup and I very rarely run out of battery before I go to bed and charge it. I usually don't even plug it in when I'm in the car... today I just did because I knew Navigator would eat it up.

 

[Cajun83]

Turn off all haptic feedback... that function eats batteries bad.

 

[mdeblaz]

If you're having 100% or nearly 100% awake time, that's obviously going to kill your battery. Here's the easiest way (without installing any new apps) to see what's keeping your phone awake:

1. Go to "Phone".
2. Dial *#*#4636#*#* (you won't need to hit send).
3. In the menu that shows up, choose "Battery history".
4. In the first drop-down menu, choose "Partial wake usage" and wait ten seconds for it to load.
5. Top item in the resulting list is what's killing your battery.

If it's "Calendar" it means one of your sync accounts (Google, Exchange, Facebook) is stuck in an endless loop of trying to sync. Reboot usually fixes that, or you can go one-by-one and manually sync till you find the culprit.

Good to know!

I did this and my "Partial Wake Usage" culprit is from the Android System.

"Partial Wakelock:Android System"
What is that?

I've also noticed that since my last battery charge, my awake time is 100%... where as it was just under 10% prior to the charge. The only change I've made is I turned animations back on. I'm turning them back off now to see if that brings me back to 10%...

 

[UncleD]

Having battery issues with my Wife's phone and can not figure out what is causing it. Doing a battery use check it comes up with this:

cell standby = 43% Phone idle = 35% Android System = 16% Display = 6%

From what I can tell, her settings as far as sync goes are exactly like mine, but I have no problems, my battery lasts me all day with what I call normal use. If anyone has any ideas on what to check I would appreciate your input

 

[AZ Timeshift]

If you're having 100% or nearly 100% awake time, that's obviously going to kill your battery. Here's the easiest way (without installing any new apps) to see what's keeping your phone awake:

1. Go to "Phone".
2. Dial *#*#4636#*#* (you won't need to hit send).
3. In the menu that shows up, choose "Battery history".
4. In the first drop-down menu, choose "Partial wake usage" and wait ten seconds for it to load.
5. Top item in the resulting list is what's killing your battery.

If it's "Calendar" it means one of your sync accounts (Google, Exchange, Facebook) is stuck in an endless loop of trying to sync. Reboot usually fixes that, or you can go one-by-one and manually sync till you find the culprit.

Thanks for your help on this issue - since I did a reboot the usage appears to be back to normal (pre 2.1) behavior. FYI - the battery usage history can also be accessed using spare parts.

 

[Ra21V12eN]

Hate to be a pain but something changed if you're saying 15 vs. 48 hours. First, unistall your task killer. Then go through each app and determine whether you need it or not - delete those you don't. Of the remaining, check the configs to see what your update intervals are. See how many live widgets you have and whether they are needed. Validate your use of texting, browsing and phone usage - most people's increase in the first few days of a new release. Think about where you've been with the phone post-OTA. What if you just happened to be in bad reception areas? After you've cleaned up, reboot, recharge and report back.

I'm very much a creature of habit and haven't increased the usage of any features on my phone since the 2.1 update. I'm a heavy texter and that hasn't changed.

I live in an area where I get great 3G reception all the way between home and work. At least I did with the 1.5 version of Android. Haven't looked that closely at my 3G reception in 2.1.

Why would I want to get rid of my Task Killer??? That's dumb. I'm finding that the 2.1 OTA is leaving apps open after I exit them which is spinning extra cycles. I'm killing them so that they're not spinning cycles.

In doing a test, killing the apps that aren't closing properly when I exit them has increased my battery life by at least 50%. I'm not fully back to where I was with 1.5, but close.

 

[Eric2]

Battery use is a good feature...(referred to by UncD)

To use it, go to Settings => About phone => Battery => Battery use

 

[DDustiNN]

Turn off all haptic feedback... that function eats batteries bad.

In addition to my above post, I have haptic feedback ON, as well as the clicking sound when typing ON.

Also, I have the HTC battery widget on my home screen. So I disagree with OTD's assessment on that widget being a battery drainer.

Yesterday I had my phone unplugged from 6:30 am until 2:30 am when I went to bed... I think my battery was at 28% at that time. Moderate usage - various phone calls and texts were made throughout the day, and a few apps used here and there.

No matter what you're doing, the biggest battery killer is the SCREEN BEING ON. That's it.

 

[Bswartz95]

In addition to my above post, I have haptic feedback ON, as well as the clicking sound when typing ON.

Also, I have the HTC battery widget on my home screen. So I disagree with OTD's assessment on that widget being a battery drainer.

Yesterday I had my phone unplugged from 6:30 am until 2:30 am when I went to bed... I think my battery was at 28% at that time. Moderate usage - various phone calls and texts were made throughout the day, and a few apps used here and there.

No matter what you're doing, the biggest battery killer is the SCREEN BEING ON. That's it.

When I check my battery usage, the Display is always towards the bottom. Even on days with heavy usage. I've turned my brightness all the way up for a couple days and didn't notice any significant difference in battery life.

 

[misterdroid]

If you're having 100% or nearly 100% awake time, that's obviously going to kill your battery. Here's the easiest way (without installing any new apps) to see what's keeping your phone awake:

1. Go to "Phone".
2. Dial *#*#4636#*#* (you won't need to hit send).
3. In the menu that shows up, choose "Battery history".
4. In the first drop-down menu, choose "Partial wake usage" and wait ten seconds for it to load.
5. Top item in the resulting list is what's killing your battery.

If it's "Calendar" it means one of your sync accounts (Google, Exchange, Facebook) is stuck in an endless loop of trying to sync. Reboot usually fixes that, or you can go one-by-one and manually sync till you find the culprit.

I did this and the culprit is Android System as well--100%. Previous to 2.1, I averaged about 14% partial wake time, and was scrupulous with my apps/clearing caches/etc. etc. I have the phone set up the same way, but it is awake 100% with 2.1. Any thoughts?

 

[Romparoo]

Or you could just place your phone on the charger for a quick charge and continue to use your phone for all the things you like to do and play with.

 

[Mer2112]

In the Accounts & Sync area of Settings I turned off Sync Contacts and Sync Calendar for Google and set my Facebook to sync once per day. This has made a HUGE difference in my battery life. I've had it off the charger since 6:30 and am still at 99% as of 9:00. I have received emails, browsed Facebook and checked the weather in that time.