Battery Life*

[jennakoutro]

my battery life on my htc hero has been gradually lasting less and less. when i bought it, around 8 months ago, it lasted a good 2 days without charge. as of now, i cant finish one school day without my phone dying. is this a normal wear and tear effect?

 

[Joehunni]

After 8 months, probably. Taking the phone off and back on the charger a lot and leaving it plugged in after its fully charged will reduce the lifespan of the battery.

 

[JB in AZ]

my battery life on my htc hero has been gradually lasting less and less. when i bought it, around 8 months ago, it lasted a good 2 days without charge. as of now, i cant finish one school day without my phone dying. is this a normal wear and tear effect?

Welcome to the forum!

Keep in mind that most, if not all re-chargable batteries act this same way.

I happen to own a Toyota Hybrid Camry...one way Toyota was able to get such long life out of it's batteries is to never over-charge it, or ever let it go completely dead. I think the computer trys to keeps it within 20%-80% of full charge. I'm not saying that you should never fully charge the Hero battery, just that it is a characteristic of re-chargable batteries. Perhaps never letting it go completely dead will help.

 

[KitsapAndroid]

You can always try to re-calibrate the battery and see if that helps you at all.

 

[chawski]

yes, this is normal wear and tear on the battery. Your best bet is to pick up a new one. theyr cheap as hell on amazon. while youre in the neighborhood, the extended life ones arent too much more. The only downside about the extended life ones are the constraints of the battery...the only way to make a Li ion battery last longer is to make it heavier and larger. some require a new back cover to the phone.

On that note, for computers, I have my laptop set to only charge to 80%. Doing this, ive had batteries go well over 2 years and still hold a charge. if you can deal with a slightly shorter charge when off the plug, i definately recommend it

 

[Hunter11]

You can always try to re-calibrate the battery and see if that helps you at all.

Stupid question but how is this done?

 

[Rube8514]

You can always try to re-calibrate the battery and see if that helps you at all.

Stupid question but how is this done?

2nd this*

 

[Joehunni]

To calibrate the battery: Fully charge battery (green light on and then some, just to be sure), boot to recovery, wipe battery stats, reboot and remove from charger, fully drain battery without rebooting or powering off.

 

[LBPHeretic]

Does wiping the battery statistics just involve wiping the cache on our handsets? Does it involve some other process that I am not aware of?

Can one wipe the battery statistics on a non-rooted Sprint HTC Hero? Sorry for the rapid succession of questions.

 

[Joehunni]

Well you don't have to wipe any cache, and frankly, I'm not sure if you can calibrate the battery without root/recovery menu, if there is, I haven't heard of it.

 

[LBPHeretic]

Okay, so that still leaves the question, how do I wipe the battery statistics? I would like to know even though I am not rooted yet.

I appreciate your help. Thanks.

 

[Joehunni]

When you boot to the recovery menu (home key + power key while powered off), there is an option to wipe battery statistics, where in the recovery menu it's located depends on which recovery you are running.

 

[LBPHeretic]

Oh wow, haha. I did not know that and I have been reading up on recovery images for the last two weeks or so.

I guess that was sort of on the bottom of the list of things to learn during my research. That is very good information to know.

 

[Joehunni]

Yeah, recovery menus are very simple and vary very little between different ones. This is the last thing to worry yourself with if considering rooting.

 

[LBPHeretic]

Yeah, recovery menus are very simple and vary very little between different ones. This is the last thing to worry yourself with if considering rooting.

Oh yeah, I found that out quickly. I suppose what I meant when I said I was spending two weeks researching them was that I was spending two weeks researching all the aspects of rooting in general, not just recovery images.

I am not worried about the process of rooting at all. I have that down to a great understanding. The only thing has bothered me lately was the article i read about passwords being stored in plain text on your Sprint HTC Hero. Thus, if you granted access rights to a root app that wanted to look at that it could potentially send those passwords back to the developer. However, I am pretty sure that by reading the access privileges before installing any root app would let you know if it was going to try to access something suspicious. Also, I am certain a rogue root app that was dangerous to your handset's security would be discussed in these forums.

 

[expose11]

After 8 months, probably. Taking the phone off and back on the charger a lot and leaving it plugged in after its fully charged will reduce the lifespan of the battery.

My understanding of t he HTC Hero circuitry is that when fully charged, it turns to trickle charge. Trickle charge is actually good for a NiHM battery and not destructive. In other words, you can't over charge your Hero unless you mess with the circuitry. FYI, when hooked to a computer via usb it automatically trickle charges.

Oh yeah, I found that out quickly. I suppose what I meant when I said I was spending two weeks researching them was that I was spending two weeks researching all the aspects of rooting in general, not just recovery images.

I am not worried about the process of rooting at all. I have that down to a great understanding. The only thing has bothered me lately was the article i read about passwords being stored in plain text on your Sprint HTC Hero. Thus, if you granted access rights to a root app that wanted to look at that it could potentially send those passwords back to the developer. However, I am pretty sure that by reading the access privileges before installing any root app would let you know if it was going to try to access something suspicious. Also, I am certain a rogue root app that was dangerous to your handset's security would be discussed in these forums.

One click Android Root works great and takes all the work out of rooting. I have done it both ways and wish the one click method was around the first time. BTW, the one click root works for 2.1 with the .6 update. This is not published that I could find..

 

[LBPHeretic]

My understanding of t he HTC Hero circuitry is that when fully charged, it turns to trickle charge. Trickle charge is actually good for a NiHM battery and not destructive. In other words, you can't over charge your Hero unless you mess with the circuitry. FYI, when hooked to a computer via usb it automatically trickle charges.

That is all well and good, but the Sprint HTC Hero, uses a lithium ion battery, not a nickel metal hydride battery. The best practice, in my opinion, is the same as what Joehunni stated and that is to let your handset charge up till the LED turns green and let it charge a bit longer, then remove it from the charger.

I appreciate the information on the Universal One-Click rooting method, although I was already aware of it. I have done some pretty extensive research on several rooting methods and it definitely seems like it is the one I will be using when I do root my Sprint HTC Hero.

 

[Joehunni]

I don't think our batteries are NiHM...

 

[expose11]

My bad, I meant Li-On. But its the same with both. Micro-processors tell the battery how to charge.

 

[expose11]

This is pretty informative. See paragraph 6 for why Li-On don't over charge.
Is lithium-ion the ideal battery?