Finally getting longer battery life!

[jayb5]

First, I've got to give credit to the other post for figuring out the main reason for the short battery life I was getting. If you're already getting good battery life - ignore this post.

It only took me two months to figure it out (I had this phone since the pre-release Friday from Best Buy), but the main culprit was the HTC clock with weather widget (or the TWC app). By process of elimination I tried literally everything but ultimately figured out that it was either the default HTC clock widget w/ weather or the "The Weather Channel" widget, or both. I got rid of both and my battery life has improved dramatically.

I used to unhook my phone charger at 6:30 a.m. and my battery would be less than 15% by 5 p.m. with moderate use (few texts, few calls of 5 minutes each, and three emails pulling every 15 minutes). I tried lengthening the time interval to an hour for email pulling, changed the "default" mail account to my yahoo account from my activesync exchange account, unchecked "always on mobile", "background data" sync for google, no gps, no wifi, etc. but still couldn't last a 15 hour day without the battery dying. I did the SMS fix, got the MR update and still got crappy battery life despite never exceeding 18% awake time.

Finally, last night I got rid of the HTC default widget clock w/ weather as well as the weather channel widget and today I went through 15 hours with heavy usage (more calls, longer calls, more text messages, and more emails than normal) and still at 30%.

While this isn't earth shattering, it is a significant improvement than before. Hope this helps somebody.

 

[jdawg0024]

I use the HTC Clock with Weather, and have my phone check my email (pop account) every 2 hours. I would say that I do Heavy Usage with my phone (i.e. running games phone calls and tons of texts) and I unhook my phone at 6am every morning and by 10pm its still around 50% or so. Changing the email to pull less is what will cause your battery to last longer. Usually if Im expecting an email I will go and refresh my inbox, other than that I am fine with reading my non important emails when ever my phone pulls them from the server. I dont think that the HTC Clock/Weather widget uses that much battery power.

 

[jayb5]

That's impressive battery life! I'm wondering now if the poor battery life was due to "the weather channel" app/widget...

 

[cooolone2]

Well good info, hope it helps those with the issues... I will try it just to see for verification, but I like my weather/clock so will keep function over battery.

 

[BSki]

I think the poor life has more to do with reception. I am always near some place I can charge my phone but I haven't needed to.

I do moderate usage. Mostly texting, games, browsing, maybe 30 mins of calls a day. I have the HTC widget on my main screen, I do not have Weather Channel widget.

I have bluetooth, gps, I use background data and auto-sync. My widgets are S2 Cal, HTC clock/weather, sportstap, music, and a photo album. I have 36 apps installed, including always on apps like screebl, proximity sensor, wavesecure etc. I only use google mail and facebook. I am logged into twitter, but I do not use that app or widget.

I unplug at 6:30am and sometimes at 10pm I will see 15%, mostly the phone is at about 30%-40%. I am sure I can get better if I turn off services I am not using.

I am in an area with good coverage, so I am not searching for a signal. If I go to a friends house that has poor signal, my phone will drain in 5 hours.

I was a homebody over thankgiving. Charged the phone Friday night. didn't use it Sat or Sunday, sunday night going to be the phone was at 50%.

 

[jay24k]

The clock widget doesn't take much if anything. The only time it updates when the screen turns on. The weather rarely updates and generally you have to click it for it to update. I've found the same. Poor reception causes it to search more. If I am in a roaming area, my phone will drop faster then Tiger Woods on a waitress under a table.

 

[poor_red_neck]

Reception, reception, reception.

When I'm in the city, my battery lasts all day now after MR. If I goto a friends house where it struggles to get one bar the battery drains so fast the phone gets HOT. That's with no apps running. If I use the HTC mobile on/off widget to turn data off it dramatically helps.

 

[poor_red_neck]

Reception, reception, reception.

When I'm in the city, my battery lasts all day now after MR. If I goto a friends house where it struggles to get one bar the battery drains so fast the phone gets HOT. That's with no apps running. If I use the HTC mobile on/off widget to turn data off it dramatically helps.

 

[ajuarbe]

I have not had any issues with my battery life, I do manually refresh gmail when I am curious to see if something as come through. I unplug at 6:30 AM and I do text and gchat a lot, as well as refresh my gmail sometimes more often than others. I also talk on the phone at least 1-2 hours a day, and on the weekend even longer. My battery is still at 50% by the time I normally go to bed which is 11:30 - 12:00

 

[Nanan]

I am getting about 50hr of battery life on avg out of my phone with my normal usage of 3-4 hours on the phone and 40 or so texts with frequent web page lookups.

 

[glorify]

First, I've got to give credit to the other post for figuring out the main reason for the short battery life I was getting. If you're already getting good battery life - ignore this post.

It only took me two months to figure it out (I had this phone since the pre-release Friday from Best Buy), but the main culprit was the HTC clock with weather widget (or the TWC app). By process of elimination I tried literally everything but ultimately figured out that it was either the default HTC clock widget w/ weather or the "The Weather Channel" widget, or both. I got rid of both and my battery life has improved dramatically.

I used to unhook my phone charger at 6:30 a.m. and my battery would be less than 15% by 5 p.m. with moderate use (few texts, few calls of 5 minutes each, and three emails pulling every 15 minutes). I tried lengthening the time interval to an hour for email pulling, changed the "default" mail account to my yahoo account from my activesync exchange account, unchecked "always on mobile", "background data" sync for google, no gps, no wifi, etc. but still couldn't last a 15 hour day without the battery dying. I did the SMS fix, got the MR update and still got crappy battery life despite never exceeding 18% awake time.

Finally, last night I got rid of the HTC default widget clock w/ weather as well as the weather channel widget and today I went through 15 hours with heavy usage (more calls, longer calls, more text messages, and more emails than normal) and still at 30%.

While this isn't earth shattering, it is a significant improvement than before. Hope this helps somebody.

Disabling it helped me as well today.

 

[jayb5]

I'm sure reception has a lot to do with battery life, but reception in my area is really good and I was still getting bad battery life. Getting rid of the weather widget (still not sure if HTC clock widget or TWC widget/app) definitely helped my battery life.

Another thing I'm realizing is that my activesync exchange email is probably taking up a lot of battery. I get about 50 emails a day via activesync that used to pull every 15 minutes (in addition to two yahoo accounts). I switched it to every two hours and that also helped. For those of you getting long battery life, are you using activesync to sync an exchange account?

 

[illiniguy]

TWC widget kills the battery as it is constantly using the GPS to update your location. They need to update it so you can change your location manually so you can save battery life.

 

[cooolone2]

Does anyone check settings? Gee... lmao!
Goto weather, menu, settings and turn off "update automatically"... then you can just go into it and hit refresh icon and get weather when you need it.

 

[illiniguy]

Well that does not fix what I would like it to do. I like the constant weather update but hate that it uses the GPS to constantly check my location. I spend 90% of my time within a 20 mile radius, so the weather does not change from home to work to friends, etc. I like that the weather is right there and accurate when I check the phone though.

 

[cooolone2]

Tell ya' what, I turned off that setting, but I have GPS on always because it only uses Battery when an app or program call sfor its function and my battery life has had a noticeable effect., longest I have got prior was 14 hours, I am well past it now, running 15+ with significant battery life left, lol...

Anyway, I turned off the automatic updating and what is interesting is the weather still updated and was aware of my location I would imagine due to the GPS being on, even with automatic update settings disabled. It did change as I moved around from town to town also.

Interesting... So what exactly is the automatic updating then? lol...

 

[jayb5]

Yeah, I didn't mention this is my original post, but I already tried unchecking the "update automatically" box but battery life did not improve (and it still updated my location as well as my weather, so I don't know what function the "update automatically" box really does??).

There are a couple of GPS option settings (use wireless networks, location setting, and enable gps satellites) but I always had "use wireless networks" box checked as I liked how google maps could instantaneously find my location, so I'm sure that's how the weather knew where I was.

Anyway, it's been several days and my battery life still seems to last longer than before.

The only issue now is that over this past weekend I noticed dust under the glass!!!!! This is after two months of not having dust!

 

[Bob Loblaw]

I used my phone pretty heavily yesterday (Facebook, 30+ texts, NFL Live, web, 30 minutes on the phone, Pandora running a bit, and reading some twitter) and I had 40% left when I plugged it back in last night and 10:30 last night. I don't kill any of the tasks that are running at boot and I have Screebl and the proximity sensor.It had been off since about 10am, so 12 hours of use and my battery was still good. This is with the HTC clock and weather running. I think the problem with a lot of people is email pulling. I don't have any emails pulling on my phone other than gmail and I've never had any problems with battery life. When I had it pulling from two email accounts my battery sucked. Even when I changed to interval to 1 hour or 2 hours. I say if you can get by with just using gmail, do it. That has made the biggest impact of all.