novox77

But think about the savings for ppl on OLED screens. Some day if OLED becomes the dominant display tech, we'll all need to use dark avatars to save the environment. A bright avatar is going to be the equivalent of driving a hummer.

ok, maybe not.

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apinkel

That's a bummer. Hopefully they've found other ways to improve 4G battery life (driver tweaks, power mgmt, etc.).

cmanbrazil

The op makes good a good point. I would have taken mine back as well, but I am not leaving sprints prices, and I didn't see a better option. Plus I was coming from a htc diamond, and anything was a step up.

This issue of denying a drawback about a device because you feel like you have to defend it is weak. You can love your phone, and realize it has strengths and weaknesses. People have to pick sides like they think they belong to a political party or something.

To the issue of battery life on the evo. I bought the siedo 3500 battery and am much happier. I can usually make it to the end of the day without a problem. This includes youtube, netflix, web surfing, some game play, texting and some phone usage. Some days I seem to do a lot and the battery lasts well, and other days it seems to drain the same when I do little.

I hope siedo comes out with a 3500 battery quickly for the 3d

apinkel

I was glad to see that HTC stuck with a design on the E3D that allows for an extended battery and associated back cover (unlike some of their phones that have moved to slot loaded batteries w fixed aluminum backs). Hopefully the battery life is good enough w the stock battery that it's not needed but I'm glad the option (hopefully) will be available.

BigMamma

The EVO has a standby time of 146 hrs and the EVO 3D has a standby time of 355 hours.

markgbe

i for one could not care less about battery life. I'll get if a flip phone if i want battery life. I want performance. I dont care if i have to plug it in one a day or even twice a day.

Saying "Battery life will make or break this phone" is like saying gas mileage will make or break the the next Lamborghini....

BigMamma

LMAO. I assume some people complain because they are not around an outlet all day long or they are too cheap to buy a car charger.

apinkel

Battery life is an important aspect to any smartphone for me... I understand this isn't a flipphone but I need to be able to make it thru a day without having to charge the phone. I don't have the luxury of being around an outlet or sitting in a car all the time.

And I hope those mfr's specs on battery life are correct (more than double the Evo 4g)... but I'll be waiting for some real world reports.

drexappeal

LOL...I wouldn't go that far. Almost everybody can afford a smartphone nowadays. I bet less than 1% of the US could afford a Lamborghini or ANY high end sports car in that price range.

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novox77

I think a lot of people just want to see the battery not drain so much when they aren't doing very much on the phone. Most people understand that battery life has to take a hit when in use. The ROM can definitely be configured better out of the box in a battery-friendly way.

Even a parked and idle Lamborghini shouldn't empty the tank that quickly.

drexappeal

I agree 100%. Coming from my Touch Pro, the EVO 4G battery life was 10X's better. The only complaint I had, after having the phone for almost 1 year now, is the battery drain while the phone isn't being used. Granted, JuiceDefender seemed to work very well for me (as far as that was concerned), but having held off on rooting (just because I'm too lazy to make sure I back up everything possible), I'd love for that to be a non-issue on the EVO 3D. And that would definitely sway me towards upgrading, rather than sticking with my current EVO.

jdsingle

I can't believe medium usage is 20 txt sent and 20 received. I easily go through hundreds of texts a day not including google talk messages. Combine that with my need to use navigation here and there along with browser. Just no possible way.

BigMamma

I have to question you because if you are not around an outlet and you don't have the time to top your battery off in the car on your way to work, during the lunch drive, or on your way home then what are you doing at work all day? So you are playing on your phone all day long at work? If not, then the battery will last for way more than a day. Can I have your job? I'm sorry, but if anyone phone is draining and you barely use the thing then you configured your apps wrong. My phone will sit in idle mode and drain battery power very slowly and I'm not even rooted. If I'm using the navigation system on the phone I have my phone plugged into my car charger. Everyone knows the GPS takes a bite out of the battery.

Last edited by BigMamma; May 16th, 2011 at 05:58 PM.

apinkel

I never said my phone was draining. I said I need my phone to make it thru the day on a charge. I've chosen my last two phones specifically because they were the android phones with the best battery life I could find. I don't want to be tethered to an outlet.

I don't play on my phone. I use it to see what emails I have in between meetings, to view calendar events and to make calls. During the week at work I could plug in at times. But I get up and go a lot and don't want to have to mess with plugging/unplugging my phone between meetings.

On the weekends, I'm outside working on projects, working on houses, working on my yard, etc.. I'm not always around a charger while I'm working on that stuff.

Sure, I could get by with a phone that needs to be plugged in to make it thru a day, but for me it's a priority not to have to deal with that kind of a PITA.

Also, for the record, I'm not making any predictions about how this phone will do battery-wise, but I'm also not going to place much merit in marketing or guesses either. I just want to hear real world reports... and those don't exist yet.

BigMamma

Making a few calls, checking a calendar, and downloading email doesn't stress the battery to depletion by the end of the day unless you have 10 meetings a day and you download emails 20 times a day.

apinkel

I Never said it did.

Last edited by apinkel; May 17th, 2011 at 08:06 AM.

brownhornet

Actually having an Evo ill just say this.. most of the time when you see people claim to have crazy long battery life its mainly because they dont use half of the features of the phone. Like disabling background data, 4g, not using facebook, twitter, etc. I dont care what type of method you use, if you actually USE the phone and all of the features itd be dead by noon without a charge. And this is coming from someone that actually uses one of the SBC kernels. Battery life is simply terrible unless youre not using it to its potential.

They most definitely need to have that in order with the 3D.

brownhornet

Or some people think that it shouldnt be a necessity to carry a charger around with you everywhere you go without having to disable half the features on the phone.. and you shouldnt.

drexappeal

I actually USE the phone, but the only time it'll drain quickly is when I am on the phone constantly w/o putting on standby for 4 hours. In that case, it definitely drains quickly, but who realistically uses their phone like that except for people that either 1) work in the tech world, 2) work in business where majority of what they do is on the road on their cell, or 3) students that have time to kill.

What exactly would classify "using the phone to its full potential?" I could almost guarantee you that the general consumer, which is likely the majority as far as EVO owners are concerned, doesn't use the phone to its "full potential." And the general consumers will ALWAYS be the corporations' targets because that's the majority of the money. The minority (people that are tech savvy / forum members) are the ones that I'd peg to actually know how to reach the phones "full potential" as you say.

But I am curious as to what exactly you mean by that more specifically. I'm not even sure that I use the phone to its "full potential"...LOL.

BigMamma

I don't disable background data. Doing that doesn't really help with the battery, depending upon what apps you have loaded on your phone and if you keep 3G, 4G, or Wifi on all the time. Who walks around with 4G on all day long? Do you drive with your lights on during the daytime? Why would you leave a radio on that you are not using? If that's the case, keep all your apps open too. I don't use facebook or twitter because those things are just fads. What happened to Myspace? Yeah, what...who. If I want to talk to communicate with someone I will send them a text, shoot them an email, or just call them. Don't need a social networking site to do those things.

VGPOP

According to Engadget, they've destroyed phone into a "million pieces" then due to battery life.

wake69

I am not worried about battery. they said 14 hrs full charge to 7% i will be around a charger within 14 hrs

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brownhornet

His argument is actually VERY understandable. The battery almost was enough to make me take my Evo back too and if there had been any better options available on Sprint I most definitely would have. Apple got the hint and upgraded their battery for the iphone 4 and in general they are way better at lasting throughout the day than Evo's are. And I get sick of the fact that people think that it should actually be normal to have to carry around 15 spare batteries in your pocket or charge the phone.. unplug it.. wait til it runs down.. charge it again just to get it to last.

I also think its ridiculous that some people HAVE to basically disable half of the features of the phone for it to last past lunch. I always hear people tout these "my phone lasts 20 hours on heavy usage" claims but its mostly BS. I've tried every rom/kernel combo there is but the main way people actually pull this off is to have basically EVERYTHING on the phone.. sometimes even including 3G..OFF. That's just not acceptable these days for phones you're paying $500+ for. And its especially annoying when you use your phone for work and travel.

Many people dont, but I actually preferred the push notification method of the iphone over the Android one. The apps didnt always have to poll and check for updates all the time and saved battery life. The push we have still doesnt seem to be 100% functional.. especially with facebook. And ive only seen ONE out of the tons of twitter apps we have that uses real push notifications and that's issimo.. an app in closed beta.

Obviously, HTC knew the battery thing was an issue which is why they increased the size of the battery. And I think the whole thing of having to turnoff my facebook, twitter, background notifications, etc is just a copout for HTC not doing what they shouldve been doing and putting in a bigger battery. Honestly, I wouldve much rather them had found a way to put in a 2000mah battery than put in 3D.

brownhornet

Well you do know most newer cars do keep at least part of the headlights on when the car is on whether its day or night right? And I could use your same rhetoric and say who walks around with 3G on all day. I would venture to say MOST people do. As far as 4G, I dont turn it on at all because with the penetration issues its pretty worthless for me. But even without it, I could turn the screen on on my Evo right now, browse the web for a few minutes and just watch my battery trickle like a balloon with a hole in it. THATS my complaints.

And YOU may not need social networking, but TONS of people do.. thus the main reason twitter and facebook are IMPLEMENTED into the phone.

legacy

Engadget slams the battery life saying they were "hardly doing anything" on the phone. Except for taking 80 photos (most in 3D), which in ALL the reviews has been shown to be one of the largest drains on the phone's battery. And it still lasted 14 hours.

novox77

Too much misunderstanding by this Engadget reviewer.

Camera app on Evo 4G was also a HUGE battery drainer. It's the nature of the live view processing. It's a huge battery drain on dedicated digital cameras as well.

The fact that the phone took 80 pics (duration of this photoshoot is unknown but is more important than the number of photos taken) and still lasted that long is actually impressive.

Glad to see others around here not taking these reviewers at face value.

kenn

As a point of reference, the HTC Droid Incredible didn't exactly have stellar battery life out of the box. In fact, most said it was "poor" at best.

Rooted on CM7 (gingerbread) and not using social apps, I used my phone "moderately" and could very, very easily go a day and a half or more... The amount of control you have once rooted is astonishing. I had an aftermarket kernel that was undervolted. The phone used almost zero battery at night while sleeping with wifi turned on...

EarlyMon

They also did the exact same thing they did with the Evo last year - from the review - they left ALL the radios on except Bluetooth, the whole time.

Want to see an Evo (or even a Thunderbolt, using a totally different tech for 4G) have its battery life spike up?

Turn off the 4G radio when not using it.

This reputation plagued the Evo last year.

And Engadget says this is really no improvement.

Evo owners - note the review said the battery had some life after 8 hours. Show of hands - how many of your Evos last 8 hours with WiMAX on?

Exactly.

evotitans

To add onto what Earlymon just said, I posted this in the review thread:

From that PC Mag Review

"
Battery life is an interesting poser here. The EVO 3D gets eight hours of talk time, which is great. But heavy 3D or 4G use will kill the 1730 mAh battery; if I left 4G on, or took a lot of 3D videos, the phone could be dead after about 12 hours of use."

I for one do not leave 4G on all day at work, so I'm assuredly going to get more than 12 hours. And im pretty damn sure I will not be taking 3D videos at work.

Considering, with my EVO, my 9+ hour work day, it truly depends on the day as to what my EVO's battery will be at.

I can tend to be a heavy text user while at work, medium web browser...and I have my work email pushed to my phone. It varies on the day and usage.

Some days I can leave work and my battery be at 70%, some days at 30%. Truly depends on what you are doing that day.

As long as the 3D can beat that...and by that PC Mag post, it looks like it can...Im a sure deal of getting the 3D.

Putty

Not looking good as far as battery goes. DAMMIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

sikclown

I disagree. I get over 24 hours with my Evo4g non rooted and stock and all indicators are that the 3d has a better battery life than the 4g. If you currently have an Evo 4g you should be very pleased with the 3D's battery life using the same tweaks.

Spartanzz

Iv had my evo 4g since about a week after it came out mine is rooted and i do regulate whats on when needed and whats not. Currently i can go almost two days off medium usage mostly texting and data usage and it will be at 30% left at 1 day 22 hours. I live in a family that only own macs grandfather has an iphone 4 3 other macs an ipad and same goes for my parents. They all hate me because of the battery life of my evo. Then me and my uncle got talkin (who is also a PC pro man) we strongly argue that macs now a days are basicly what "cool" they arent the best, they are some of the most expensive devices you can buy, and they dont allow you to control much. So even my parents and grandparents only give me one answer when i ask them "Why did you guys buy all this stuff from apple?" They answer with "Because its apple."

Halfbaked

They are called daytime running lamps and I have them on my Accord. Have nothing to do with the light bulbs used for night time driving. And I've had people honk at me thinking I left my lights on driving around during the day time. I've had my Accord since 2006 and the daytime running lamps have not burned out because they were built for running during the daytime.

The 4G was not built thinking people like you would walk around with every radio turned on. I know this because I owned the first HTC touch phone called the Touch. Battery life sucked unless you turned off 3G.

Everyone who works in buildings with pretty thick walls, take the subway, or fly in pvt planes know to turn 3G or 4G off because it will kill your battery. Nobody that works in my fortified building at work complains about turning 3G off on their EVOs and I know 5 people who have a 4G.

Your just not thinkin correctly if you think I can take a satellite phone to Iraq and think I can leave it connected to a satellite all day long and think it won't drain the phones battery. Just like a cell phone connecting to a tower a sat phone has to connect to a satellite. That takes battery power.

Last edited by EarlyMon; June 16th, 2011 at 03:55 PM. Reason: watch the name calling, even if friendly. :(

novox77

Personally, I rarely use 4G. Why? Because I'm a working stiff. I'm at my office for 8-10 hours a day, and the company has wifi. That wifi is very easy on my battery and it's faster (especially upstream) than any 4G in this country. At home, my wifi on Fios is even faster.

So, the time in between work and home is my commute. My phone is in my pocket when I drive, so I really don't need ANY data connection. That's why my 3G is off.

Now, the only time I might need data is if I'm out and about on the weekends. And even then, if I were to use data, it would be to check my email or casually browse the internet. Neither of these tasks require a super fast connection like 4G.

If, some day, I had to transfer a big movie from my home PC to my phone, and I was out and about, then I would consider turning on 4G to speed up that transfer. But that use case is so infrequent.

Therefore, when someone says that a phone's battery sucks when on 4G, I say, "so what?"

Halfbaked

The HTC Evo 3D ships with a bigger 1,730mAh lithium ion battery than the Evo 4G and has a rated talk time of 6 hours. Though we’re still conducting our battery drain tests, we’ve already noticed better battery life in day-to-day use. Starting with a full charge in the morning and with moderate to heavy use (including playing 3D games and video), we were able to go a full day, sometimes early into the next day, before needing to recharge. As soon as we complete testing, we will update this section with our battery talk time results. According to FCC radiation tests, the Evo 3D has a digital SAR rating of 0.885W/kg and a Hearing Aid Compatibility Rating of M4/T3.

Now that is a site doing some battery testing folks! Battery myth debunked!
HTC Evo 3D (Sprint)

sikclown

I am in the same boat. 90% of my average day I am around a much faster Internet connection and use WiFi. Some people think "Well I pay for 3G/4G so I am only using that" where as I am just all about the fastest available connection. Now when I am out and about in the field I use 3G and 4G but know that if I am going to use 4g I better be charged up. And on occasion I meet friends out and laptops or tablets need internet and I turn on 4G and my Hotspot and watch everyone's mouths drop. Unless there is a damn Thunderbolt in the crowd. LTE smokes WiFi here.

Halfbaked

I agree with both of you. Only really use 4G if I'm around town and i need to download something pretty quickly. Otherwise, every place I visit has free WiFi.

Putty

Well, your usage is most likely next to none. Are you even reading the reviews....I'll quote

"HTC gave the EVO 3D's battery a significant boost over the original EVO 4G, increasing its capacity from 1500mAh to 1730mAh. Sprint said they believed that the increase would help squash the well-deserved complaints about the EVO 4G's battery life. While there is a definite improvement, the EVO 3D still does not have what I'd call "good" battery life. Where the EVO 4G barely lasted through lunch time, the EVO 3D at least makes it past 5PM consistently. Under WiMax coverage, it definitely died off in about 10 to 12 hours. In 3G-only coverage regions -- with the WiMax radio turned off -- the EVO 3D performed only marginally better. Ranging instead between 14 and 16 hours from full charge to dead. Bottom line: charge it every night, and make sure you have a USB cable handy at all times."


"My biggest gripe with the EVO 3D is the wireless performance, It's bad enough that the WiMax radio barely worked, but add to that poor 3G performance, and poor voice performance, and you've almost killed off all the reasons to buy any phone. Crummy battery life doesn't help, either".

This has been consistent with most of the reviews..everyone isnt picking on the 3vo..personally, I am buying the phone anyway, but if I find the batt life is horrid, it's going back...simple as that. No way I'm locking myself back into 2 years and deal with 4g type batt life...I'll wait and get a vzw iPhone 4s/5

Last edited by Putty; June 16th, 2011 at 10:43 PM.

novox77

When a reviewer says that this doesn't qualify as good battery life, the problem is that they have an inaccurate expectation of how much power 3G requires. It's that simple.

If you leave an iPhone 3G, 3Gs, 4 on 3G all the time, you have to charge it every day. Same with my Evo.

If your expectation is a 2-day phone, surely you don't need 3G while you are asleep? Android has apps that allow you to schedule your toggles. You can have 3G auto-shut off and on based on time, location, etc.

And you can use wifi during the day and night as well, which nets you a MUCH faster transfer rate and MUCH improved power consumption. Why WOULDN'T you use wifi where available...

3G draining battery (along with 4G draining battery) is only a problem for people who expect a 2-day phone with 3G always on.

evotitans

I HIGHLY agree. I wonder what people do all day at work, that they are constantly on their phone like that?

I get a normal 18hr( I sleep about 6 a night) day out of my EVO. Obviously from 9 to whenever, I am at work. Why would I have my EVO on 4G all this time if its not in use? Hell I have my 3G set to sleep when the phone is not "up". It only grabs data when it needs it.

During the work day, all I get is texts, and emails from my non work accounts. My exchange account is set to pull every 30 mins. Why? Because if I'm in front of my laptop, why do I need my work mail pushed to my phone?

I give my EVO some regular juices in the car, during lunch, and on my way home and I still make it thru the day just fine.

If what the reviewers are saying are right about the 3D's hours, I will do just fine with that battery. And I suspect that the Data issue is not hardware radio, and can be atleast software fixed.

sikclown

No my battery life is the norm for those of us that have tweaked the 4g to our benefit. . I have my brightness set to 30% or below, I have Always On Data Unchecked, and I use WiFi whenever I am near it. Also I changed my account sync schedules so they aren't always running. The biggest battery savers are the display brightness (especially after GB upgrade) and disabling always on 3G. Also the GB update really gave the battery idle power savings Steroids. So common sense dictates that if I do all of the following on the 3vo, which all reviewers said had slightly better to noticeably better battery life than the original, than I will enjoy some decent life on a day to day basis. Of course the first few weeks I will drain the battery with non stop testing and playing.

novox77

And just a reminder that on CDMA phones, voice calls and SMS are 2G only. Always. So if your 3G is off, you still get calls and texts.

jerofld

I know you meant secure Wifi...but others reading your posts may not pick up on that. I'd never connect my phone to coffee shop wifi. Or any other public wifi, for that matter.

NeoteriX

Seconded. With FireSheep and other variants floating around, until phone apps do a better job of using SSL connections (do any?), I think it is way too dangerous to be having apps log into accounts and sending unencrypted user/logins over public wifi.

novox77

well I don't make it such a hard rule, but definitely use some common sense. In general, when I'm not on my home or work wifi (where I know no one is monitoring), I'll avoid going to sites that require me to log in.

If I'm just googling or surfing, there's very little risk from using an unsecured wifi connection via a phone.

The concern with open wifi hotspots is that someone can sniff your packets. So if you're reading email, those email messages can be intercepted. If you log in, your user/pass can be seen. With a rooted Android and some advanced tinkering, you can do everything through a secure pipe, either via VPN or a clever port forward for SSH tunneling.

When in doubt, assume someone can see everything you're doing.

apinkel

Sorry to be OT... but how do force a CDMA phone to 1X? I haven't found a way to toggle this easily.

EarlyMon

Just so we're clear - 1x is still 3G.

apinkel

1x is CDMA but this is the first I'd heard it was 3G. Is that true?

Edit: I think I see what you are saying... that CDMA2000 is a 3rd generation network technology which encompasses 1x as well as EVDO rev 0/a/b. So what I probably should have said was how can I switch between EVDO and 1x (and for that matter does that provide any battery life benefits).

Last edited by apinkel; June 17th, 2011 at 03:03 PM.

Putty

I must say I have never...never turned my 3G off. The 4G, off all the time. Here's my problem...I have a 4g phone that I have to turn the 4g off and even the 3G in order to get good batt life. To me, that is unacceptable. The verdict here is that batt technology has not caught up to phone tech. I did the screen brightness, always on, sbc kernel, etc and my 4g is horrid! Granted I have apps on that are checking constantly, but I am in a position in my life where I need informed I have an email, right away.
Also, I find it hard to compare an iPhone to these androids. My 3GS would go an entire day and into the next with the same level of use...no problem. Is 18+ hrs possible..totally, but to get that, I have to basically not use my phone the way I need to.
The fact that this was the biggest complaint with the 4g, htc should have used a 2500 battery...lol. There should be a no question difference...just my .02

EarlyMon

According to the ITU, the standards body that decides which G is what, yes. You can find wags still calling it 2.5 - but it's 3G.

It's simply a data rate calculated at 1 times radio frequency, whereas updates after that performing multiplexing tricks got a faster data stream through that same frequency.

No power benefit, it's a matter of what the radio hardware and firmware will support, and again, that's a matter of implementation. Your radio supports 3G as either 1x or EVDO, the way to get any power benefit is turn off that radio.