Help Battery discussions, maintaining battery life

[NeoteriX]

If I'm reading novox77 correctly, it means HTC/Sprint has sacrificed the benefits of a user-accessible battery in favor of a thinner phone, or making it look "cool" at the expense of a desired feature.

Honestly, it looks like this is the way the industry is headed.

Thin sells more phones off the bat... the customer can deal with any buyer's remorse coming from a battery that loses its pep later, but the manufacturer has the money pocketed already

 

[Adar]

Would I have preferred a removable battery? Yes. Will the non-removable battery make me less likely to buy it? No.

Battery life on my Evo3D is not great. I never make it through the workday without charging, unless I only use it for calls without bluetooth and texting. I have pretty poor reception in most of the places I spend my working day. Bluetooth sucks battery like crazy. I could do better if I rooted and used custom roms but I haven't bothered. I have a spare battery, but it is generally useless except in emergencies, because between the terrible design of the door, combined with having an OtterBox Defender case, swapping the battery is more annoying than charging.

The new LTEvo I expect will last at least as long as the Evo3D and likely much longer. We know ahead of time that it is non-removable, and what size the battery is. The chances that it will last less time than current phones is pretty slim. The people who will be affected by it fall into two groups. People who don't research their phones before buying, and people who expect very long life from all their phones. The people that don't research have no one to blame but themselves. The power users, it won't really matter, because they will tweak them and root and customize the roms until they get what they want anyway. For anyone not in those two groups, it will most likely be more than acceptable.

Again, I would definitely prefer a removable battery, for those unforseen situations, hence why I always carry a spare right now. It won't dissuade me one bit though to buy this phone at launch.

 

[mlb]

I thought I read somewhere it had a li-po instead of li-ion battery, now I can't find it. I'm not sure the difference it would make,but a buddy of mine uses only li-po in his remote control airplanes.

 

[SamuraiBigEd]

I can see how this issue is a hot topic of its own, so I have moved posts here to start this thread.

If that's a problem for anyone, please let me know.

~~~~~~~

From my post in the voting thread -

I voted the love, but had they given it a replaceable battery, I'd have called it perfect.

Make me go hunt down my post why don't ya!

For everybody else, I will rephrase: The non-replaceable battery will kill the phone for power users such as myself.

During my busy season I can put 5+ hours a day on the phone, have 1 pop3 and 4 imap accounts checking every 30 minutes, 1 Gmail, bluetooth, GPS enabled, in other words batteries tremble when I approach!

I can get 30-40 hours on a light day or I can kill it in 14 hours with a 4000mah Seidio battery so 2000mah is going to be a limiting factor for me. I work in the field a lot and don't always have access to power unless I happen to have this with me. It has come in handy a few times!

 

[nick2k]

BIG reason on why not having a removable battery option is just insane on HTC's & Sprint's part: What happens when the CHARGING PORT BREAKS? Which it will. How exactly are we supposed to charge those expensive paperweights of a phone, HTC/SPRINT?! Hello? Hello? Anybody home? Huh? Think, McFly. Think!

 

[Complex757]

BIG reason on why not having a removable battery option is just insane on HTC's & Sprint's part: What happens when the CHARGING PORT BREAKS? Which it will. How exactly are we supposed to charge those expensive paperweights of a phone, HTC/SPRINT?! Hello? Hello? Anybody home? Huh? Think, McFly. Think!

As you can see I've had three HTC phones, and I haven't had a charging port break yet. So I'm not sure where you got that from.

 

[Citizen Coyote]

BIG reason on why not having a removable battery option is just insane on HTC's & Sprint's part: What happens when the CHARGING PORT BREAKS? Which it will. How exactly are we supposed to charge those expensive paperweights of a phone, HTC/SPRINT?! Hello? Hello? Anybody home? Huh? Think, McFly. Think!

If your charging port breaks you take it in. I took my original Evo in twice (for unrelated reasons) and got a repair or replacement both times. It's not insane to have a non-replaceable battery. Apple has done that from the very start, and they seem to sell iPhones just fine. Insane would have been slapping a 1400 mAh battery inside (*cough*Thunderbolt*cough*).

The current phone market demands thin phones, and any thick phone gets blasted in the tech media as "bulky." For HTC to make the phone as thin as it is with everything that's inside, they made the battery non-removable. Could they have done it with a removable battery? Maybe, but likely not without adding cost or making some other sacrifice.

 

[dan330]

i have had 5 htc phones... touch, diamond, pro touch, hero, evo
and a few replacements for different reasons...
and never a charging port issue.

 

[Adar]

Well, to be fair, I did have a problem with the charging port on my HTC Mogul. Of course, that was after using it as my primary phone for like, 4 years. I guess it is possible to have a problem with it and not be under warranty. Of course, that is why you pay for the insurance, but I can see how some people may not be able or willing to pay for the insurance.

I still think that is probably the weakest argument against the non-removable battery. Any situation that involves a broken charging port would likely be more of an issue with the phone overall and its quality, as opposed to being a reason that they shouldn't have used a non-removable battery.

 

[smitty543]

An Achilles heel for the EVO 4G has been real time battery life (or lack of it). The EVO 4G LTE does not have a [consumer] replaceable battery - if it is a power hog, the phone may be doomed. (The EVO 4G has been a power hog with an inadequate original battery, where some people reported not getting a full day's use from a single battery charge. What will be the power draw of EVO LTE - stay tuned!)

While most people have not had problems with the EVO's charging port, the Forum has had enough responses to suggest that it has been a problem for some, when NONE would be an appropriate number. Has the charging port and it construction been improved in the EVO LTE?

 

[EarlyMon]

Charging port construction on the Evo Shift and the 3D was dramatically improved, I think that it's a long past issue now.

The 3D and Shift both feature impressive battery improvement over the Evo.

The Evo is really three full technology generations behind the LTEVO, so I don't think that using the Evo to set expectations is the best bet.

 

[smitty543]

Will the EVO LTE "Jumbo Display" [significantly] adversely affect battery life. Intuitively, the larger the display the greater the power draw.
Yes / No??

 

[i.have.droid]

Will the EVO LTE "Jumbo Display" [significantly] adversely affect battery life. Intuitively, the larger the display the greater the power draw.
Yes / No??

No one knows yet?

 

[dan330]

positive...
bigger battery
better CPU

Negative...
bigger screen, but new tech and how it performs
LTE on 1900mhz.. will it have penetration issues


so NO ONE will know how well this phone will preform on battery life.. till it is released.

also.. if you have terrible battery performance because of bad location and bad signal strength.. you might still have issues.

 

[entiel]

I don't have a problem with a non-removable battery. I'm still rocking a launch day EVO 4G with the original battery that last 36 hrs with normal use.
The original battery out performs my off market back up battery.

The problem is poorly designed apps {cough...skype...cough} that are power and resource draining hogs.

 

[novox77]

Someone mentioned that this battery might be Li-Polymer. I think that's probably true given the increased capacity in a smaller form factor. AFAIK, Li-Po is not quite as efficient as Li-ion, but it can be shaped into whatever form is needed and therefore can hold more charge per volume compared to Li-ion. Li-Po also has a slower degradation of the cathode, which means the battery retains its max capacity longer than Li-ion. Otherwise, they are pretty much the same.

 

[BenChase7]

Someone mentioned that this battery might be Li-Polymer. I think that's probably true given the increased capacity in a smaller form factor. AFAIK, Li-Po is not quite as efficient as Li-ion, but it can be shaped into whatever form is needed and therefore can hold more charge per volume compared to Li-ion. Li-Po also has a slower degradation of the cathode, which means the battery retains its max capacity longer than Li-ion. Otherwise, they are pretty much the same.

Awesome report! Thanks for sharing. I know in the R/C car/plane world, Li-Po is the best thing since sliced bread... but damn they're expensive! I'm glad you posted this.. Thx!

 

[NicksGarage]

BIG reason on why not having a removable battery option is just insane on HTC's & Sprint's part: What happens when the CHARGING PORT BREAKS? Which it will. How exactly are we supposed to charge those expensive paperweights of a phone, HTC/SPRINT?! Hello? Hello? Anybody home? Huh? Think, McFly. Think!

Well I guess you probably shouldn't be buying HTC phones then if you're so jinxed. Especially since you already know that the charging port in a phone you've never touched WILL break. You must have companies breaking down your door trying to hire you for your psychic product testing abilities.

My launch day EVO 4G might as well have a non-replaceable battery as I've only taken it out once back when I changed the SD card way back in 2010. Good thing I got the one charging port that didn't break.

 

[cmanbrazil]

Its nice that i will need to wait until my city gets the LTE (Columbus, Oh) which will give me time to evaluate the phone better, especially through forums like this one.

If they improve the sound, camera, and battery over the 3d, I will be in. Even though I don't like the above about the 3d, I do seem to like the feel and sense better on htc phones than others.

My son has a case for his iPhone that has an extended battery. He uses the case battery first, and then when it runs out, it switches to the iPhone's battery. This would be ideal if it becomes available.

 

[NeoteriX]

I feel pretty confident in saying those three things are improved on the LTEVO

1.Sound - HD Voice (when available) and Beats audio (integrated throughout the phone) will drastically improve the sound, speaker call quality will still be typical of smartphones (crummy overall compared to dumb phones) I'm confident this area will be improved atleast slightly

2. Camera - the camera is the same as that on the ONE X... best smartphone camera to date by a long shot, i KNOW this area is GREATLY improved, no point in really discussing it further haha

3. Battery - the battery in the LTEVO is Bigger, so +1, the CPU is more optimized so +1, the CPU is on a 28nm fab process +1, LTE is less of a power hog than WiMax for 4g +1, ICS helps battery all around, the OS is much better optimized so +1..... the screen is also more battery friendly than that of the 3D so +1 - I'm confident here as well that the battery will improve over the 3D, by how much, nobody knows.

FYI -- HD Voice will require both handsets to be HD Voice compatible... so in other words, in the near future, you will only be able to experience this benefit when they flip the switch and when talking with another LTEVO user unfortunately.

But, much of what you said regarding the battery life is pretty accurate, although regarding the LTE, it's not quite clear yet how things will be. The big advantage to the WiMax implementation was that at least you could turn it on/off on the fly, and with the WiMax radio off, the battery hit was lessened quite a bit. However, IIRC, the former HTC LTE/4G handsets were not integrated in a way that allowed that -- you needed to reboot the phone every time you wanted to turn on/off the 4G. Plus, the LTE was horribly inefficient and battery hungry.

But yes, improvements in the software side and efficiency, performance, and fabrication gains on the hardware side should bode well for our device, though it's tough to say what kind of negative impact the higher resolution and larger screen size will have on battery life.

 

[NeoteriX]

higher res will only affect battery when your gpu is rendering stuff like in Games anything else it won't make a difference, screen size, while bigger i hear SLCD-2 is also more efficient so i dont know what to make of that yet, could be BETTER could be the same could even be worse...

the 4g toggle thing, i think sprint will have it toggle on off. you can do it with WiMax on the OGEVO, and sprint has already made a strong point that this will be the case on the GNEX so i don't see why they WOULDN"T on the LTEVO

My understanding is that higher resolution displays, regardless of the type of graphics being displayed (although high res 3D graphics certainly requires more from the GPU, and the GPU will consume more power, but we're just talking about the display itself) fundamentally consumes more power.

That is evidenced: 1) http://www.energystar.gov/ia/partne...ownloads/displays/Draft_1_Comments_Lenovo.pdf and 2) any comparison of the power consumption of the iPad 2 and iPad 3 which features a much higher resolution, only a bump in GPU power (core CPU stays the same), and I've seen estimates of a 30% power consumption increase.

So yes, the 720p will definitely make some difference over the qHD of the Evo 3D and of the 800 by 480 Evo 4G screen.

As for the 4G toggle... it's not Sprint's or anyone else's decision. It's a hardware limitation. I haven't looked too closely at the LTE implementation of the S4 Krait used in the LTEvo so it may very well been a second generation design that mitigates the problems of the prior LTE implementation (I vaguely recall that it was a separate LTE chip whereas the Krait here has LTE integrated which should be better, but I'd have to read more into it).

 

[EarlyMon]

The S4 includes the LTE modem. A separate radio is still required. Same as it was for its predecessors, advanced modem support built in.

Edit for citation - http://androidforums.com/htc-evo-4g-lte/517584-official-sprint-htc-one-x-pre-release-thread.html#post4089044

 

[Rush]

A-hem... I'm out and about right now, and I've already changed two of my batteries (Evo 3d) on my phone already. So, I'm hoping the ("non-removable") battery in the EVO 4G LTE will last much longer.

I'm sure the first couple of days will be the worst, so that's understandable.

 

[EarlyMon]

What are you doing to chew that much power so quickly? 4G? Other?

 

[Rush]

What are you doing to chew that much power so quickly? 4G? Other?

I'm always using 4G. I get 'good' 4G and 3G signal here in the Big Apple. But I'm doing several other stuff on the web, as well as checking inside the forums on a regular. Busy busy... !!

Just got back home -- batteries are now charging and getting ready for a long night.