I Found & Fixed an HTC Incredible Battery Bug

[marabuchi]

Thanks to this thread, I think I have been able to fix the battery issues with my Incredible. I was also having the symptom of identical Up time and Awake time. I tried the suggestion of force closing the Calendar app, but that was only a temporary solution. Based on the replies to this thread and some google searching, I also came across this thread in a different forum:

Partially solved: Potential cause for excessive battery usage - xda-developers

It looks like the thread/forum is dedicated to the Desire, but the Incredible and Desire are both Android phones made by HTC with Sense. This thread suggests that the flickr sync somehow is tied to the Calendar app which never lets the phone go to sleep. A lot of people reported that removing the flickr account and restarting the phone stops the Calendar app from running constantly. I tested this, and my Up time and Awake time are finally different after doing this. I then re-added the flickr account (because I still want to be able to upload to flickr), but turned off Sync Stream and Sync Contacts in Accounts & sync. After another reboot of the phone, it looks like the Calendar app is no longer stopping the phone from going to sleep.

I also had the issue with Contact sync being broken like the OP and syncing every second with the message "sync is currently experiencing problems" flashing in red. This killed the battery very quickly as well, but I think it is unrelated to the Calendar app not allowing the phone to sleep. I only say this because it seemed to coincide with me making a lot of changes to my contacts through gmail over the web using a desktop computer. I basically deleted over 100 old contacts. Instead of unchecking Sync contacts, I removed the account and re-added it. I hope this helps someone out there with similar symptoms! I really like the phone besides these couple bugs. I'm glad there is a large enough Android/Incredible community out there to help me troubleshoot these issues though.

 

[jaybeewaybee]

Turning off 'MyLock' app finally fixed my problem, after I had unchecked contacts and mail in Google sync without success.

 

[roninld]

Thanks to this thread, I think I have been able to fix the battery issues with my Incredible. I was also having the symptom of identical Up time and Awake time. I tried the suggestion of force closing the Calendar app, but that was only a temporary solution. Based on the replies to this thread and some google searching, I also came across this thread in a different forum:

Partially solved: Potential cause for excessive battery usage - xda-developers

It looks like the thread/forum is dedicated to the Desire, but the Incredible and Desire are both Android phones made by HTC with Sense. This thread suggests that the flickr sync somehow is tied to the Calendar app which never lets the phone go to sleep. A lot of people reported that removing the flickr account and restarting the phone stops the Calendar app from running constantly. I tested this, and my Up time and Awake time are finally different after doing this. I then re-added the flickr account (because I still want to be able to upload to flickr), but turned off Sync Stream and Sync Contacts in Accounts & sync. After another reboot of the phone, it looks like the Calendar app is no longer stopping the phone from going to sleep.

I also had the issue with Contact sync being broken like the OP and syncing every second with the message "sync is currently experiencing problems" flashing in red. This killed the battery very quickly as well, but I think it is unrelated to the Calendar app not allowing the phone to sleep. I only say this because it seemed to coincide with me making a lot of changes to my contacts through gmail over the web using a desktop computer. I basically deleted over 100 old contacts. Instead of unchecking Sync contacts, I removed the account and re-added it. I hope this helps someone out there with similar symptoms! I really like the phone besides these couple bugs. I'm glad there is a large enough Android/Incredible community out there to help me troubleshoot these issues though.

Removed my Flickr account last night. Things are looking good so far. Phone went to sleep after about 3 minutes yesterday, and so far, I'm at 9 Hours uptime with 9 minutes awake, all without having to kill the Calendar process!

Good find marabuchi!

 

[mhamann]

Woo hoo!! Removing my Flickr account seems to have completely solved the problem! I'm going to add it back later and just disable sync, since I don't really need that part of it anyway.

I'm breathing much easier

 

[jprow507]

Woo hoo!! Removing my Flickr account seems to have completely solved the problem! I'm going to add it back later and just disable sync, since I don't really need that part of it anyway.

I'm breathing much easier

I just disabled all syncing of my Flickr account and rebooted the phone an hour ago. Now Uptime is 1 hour and awake time is 10 minutes when before they were pretty much equal before the change. It seems Flickr is extremely flawed!

 

[jprow507]

I just disabled all syncing of my Flickr account and rebooted the phone an hour ago. Now Uptime is 1 hour and awake time is 10 minutes when before they were pretty much equal before the change. It seems Flickr is extremely flawed!

This is weird .... since I did this, my Incredible successfully falls asleep (last looked and awake time was 28 min, active time was over 2 hours) but it is no longer notifying me when new emails come in via Active sync until I wake the phone by pressing the power button. Is anyone else noticing this?

 

[AaronBBrown]

While the calendar application is still causing the no-sleep issue and is the main problem, removing my flickr sync account dramatically increased the sleep time on top of that.

Someone should report this to HTC, also.

 

[roninld]

Battery is working great after removing my Flickr account. Uptime is 32 hours, Awake time is 2 hours and I have 5 battery bars left. And I haven't had to kill the Calendar process at all!

Any else have luck with removing Flickr account? Worked for me!

 

[compulsionnra]

I had woot watcher installed and only told it to update once a day. Regardless it kept running itself and keeping my phone awake. It was solely killing my battery. I uninstalled it and everything is okay for me now. I have no trouble with calendar being synced or facebook checks every 2 hours.

 

[ejkeebler]

I'm not sure awake time means bad battery life. And I'm starting to think mine is a phone problem

I was getting like 10 hours moderate usage, swapped batteries with my wife's incredible that had not been activated was just charging and discharging a few times, got the same crappy battery life.

I thought my wife was too, checked her phone yesterday and noticed it was green, but had 10 hours of up time and awake time, slacker turns out to be the culprit.

Today I checked phone phone she had 59 hours of up time and 50 hours of awake time 50% battery and 10 hours since unplugged, so it looks like she is getting good battery life,despite equal awake and up times.

I will switch batteries with her again and see if I get improved battery life, if not i guess it's my phone......

 

[ejkeebler]

I'm not sure awake time means bad battery life. And I'm starting to think mine is a phone problem

I was getting like 10 hours moderate usage, swapped batteries with my wife's incredible that had not been activated was just charging and discharging a few times, got the same crappy battery life.

I thought my wife was too, checked her phone yesterday and noticed it was green, but had 10 hours of up time and awake time, slacker turns out to be the culprit.

Today I checked phone phone she had 59 hours of up time and 50 hours of awake time 50% battery and 10 hours since unplugged, so it looks like she is getting good battery life,despite equal awake and up times.

I will switch batteries with her again and see if I get improved battery life, if not i guess it's my phone......

 

[ojordahl]

A quick comment about the HTC Incredible's battery life. You can really lengthen battery life by doing three things:
1. Proper break-in of the battery;
2. Actively manage which wireless radios are on at any given time; and
3. As noted in other posts herein, properly manage active applications.

I've had my Incredible since the day they were released by VZW. Based on my past experience with lithium ion batteries, I knew that the first ten charge cycles should be full cycles - i.e., going from fully charged to fully discharged. Having done that now, and coupled with active application and wireless radio management, I now get two to three days out of a single charge on my stock Incredible battery - **much** better than when I first got the phone.

Regarding the wireless radios, if you're not using WiFi or Bluetooth, turn them off. If you're using WiFi, turn off the "Mobile Network" (3G) radio. If you don't use Bluetooth at all, make sure it's off and stays off. Simply doing this will usually have a significant impact on the battery life of your Incredible.

 

[AaronBBrown]

You can really lengthen battery life by doing three things:
1. Proper break-in of the battery;

Lithium Ion batteries are not subject to "conditioning" or "breaking in." I really wish people would stop passing this wives tale around.

I've had my Incredible since the day they were released by VZW. Based on my past experience with lithium ion batteries, I knew that the first ten charge cycles should be full cycles - i.e., going from fully charged to fully discharged. Having done that now, and coupled with active application and wireless radio management, I now get two to three days out of a single charge on my stock Incredible battery - **much** better than when I first got the phone.

The only thing you are potentially doing is calibrating the *meter* on the phone. Nothing more. If everyone would spend 5 minutes on google, they would learn that the conditioning concepts date back to NiCad batteries in the 80s and are not relevant contemporary LIon batteries.

That being said, some of the battery issues people are having are legitimately related to the phone not sleeping. My specific issue, which is with the calendar application, makes all the difference. I can run Wifi, GPS, Wireless, etc, etc and it doesn't change anything if the phone doesn't sleep.

 

[jprow507]

Does killing the calender process screw the reminders up or the widget if you are using it.... the other day I killed flickr and my phone was going to sleep fine, but today it is dead after 4 hours and I haven't even used it ..... This is really frustrating!

 

[kenyu73]

That being said, some of the battery issues people are having are legitimately related to the phone not sleeping. My specific issue, which is with the calendar application, makes all the difference. I can run Wifi, GPS, Wireless, etc, etc and it doesn't change anything if the phone doesn't sleep.

Exactly why I'm "trying" to make a decent battery tool...

Picasa Web Albums - Eric - BatteryDetective

 

[AaronBBrown]

Does killing the calender process screw the reminders up or the widget if you are using it.... the other day I killed flickr and my phone was going to sleep fine, but today it is dead after 4 hours and I haven't even used it ..... This is really frustrating!

It doesn't seem to, but I am able to restart calendar after going into my Exchange and Gmail accts and toggling all the syncs off then on again. I have to do this every morning after a reboot. Verizon gave me HTCs phone number and I'm going to call them in the next few days.

 

[howarmat]

i know people say the battery doesnt need conditioning but i am positive the battery responds better after a few full discharges and charges. i have seen it with 4-5 straight batteries in my storm 1, storm 2 and not the Inc with the stock and extended batteries.

They all perform better after the first week. I just went 25 hours on my 1750 inc battery and last week i was struggling for 15-18 with about the same use.

 

[kenyu73]

They all perform better after the first week. I just went 25 hours on my 1750 inc battery and last week i was struggling for 15-18 with about the same use.

Isn't it possible that last week you used your phone alot more.. hence the correlation that this week, it's not as new and you play less...which resulted in a longer life?

Just saying...

 

[howarmat]

no i actually used it more last night and today than normal and still had 10% left when i started charging it again. i compared awake times to judge my use and it was a couple hours more than the last couple days where

the batteries with the storms were replaced after awhile with the original batteries also, so the usage would have been the exact same with those too. the batteries operate better after a a few chargers

 

[AaronBBrown]

no i actually used it more last night and today than normal and still had 10% left when i started charging it again. i compared awake times to judge my use and it was a couple hours more than the last couple days where

the batteries with the storms were replaced after awhile with the original batteries also, so the usage would have been the exact same with those too. the batteries operate better after a a few chargers

You realize that what you are claiming is completely contrary to what every single person involved in the actual development of LIon batteries is saying, don't you?

 

[howarmat]

yep i do and like i said i am getting probably 5 hours more life than the first week of using the new battery

 

[RadYOacTiVe]

I'm not sure where I read it but I charged the phone overnight with the phone off and with about the same usage as previous days, i have about 43% battery life compared to probably 15%.

I also noticed that the phone hovered in the high 90% range a lot longer this morning than on other days where I left the phone on to charge. I could be at 93% by the time I get to work and today I believe i was still at 98%.

 

[liquidicem]

So, removing Flickr syncing has completely cured all of my phone not sleeping issues. That's for sticking with this everyone. This looks to be the root cause on my phone!

 

[kenyu73]

Just published my app for anyone interested (.99c). Search for "Battery Detective" or "kenyu73".

Going to add more monitors and tools soon... hopefully the following... high cpu apps, non sleeping apps, etc

Exactly why I'm "trying" to make a decent battery tool...

Picasa Web Albums - Eric - BatteryDetective

 

[kenyu73]

Bah, it's FREE now... just added "AdMob" to it... enjoy!

Just published my app for anyone interested (.99c). Search for "Battery Detective" or "kenyu73".

Going to add more monitors and tools soon... hopefully the following... high cpu apps, non sleeping apps, etc