My Battery Life Extended

[ukgovsucks]

Just a quickie to say that since I received my HTC Desire HD last week, and after reading through the many tips on this excellent forum, I have just managed to last 34 hours on one charge!!
Sounds sad I know, but when I received the phone and left things pretty much as they were, it only lasted about 6 hours! So by doing the following I have done myself a huge favour without stopping me using it the way I want.

1. Using a Static Wallpaper. (My own Union Jack pic)
2. Turned off Sync on all Apps. (Manually done now when needed)
3. Enable USB Debugging mode.
4. Installed Juice Defender.
5. Turned down the Brightness setting to about 1/4 of the way across. (was at 100% when I received the phone. Way too bright!)
6. Bluetooth and GPS are disabled. (When I need to use either, I toggle them on/off using a Widget on one of my screens. Wifi is always on.)

Quite happy now. I have also ordered a 1800 battery from ObiStore as a few people say they are worth it. We shall see!

By the way. I tried to put a pic of my screen on here, (via Imageshack) but I can't seem to do it?

 

[El Presidente]

Did you just drag and drop the file via imageshack into your new post box? What you need to do is get the url of the file, then put it between 2 img tags. If you hit the "Insert Image" button (the little yellow one at the top of your reply/new thread box), that will bring up a box for you to paste the image url in. Click ok, and insert the image for you. Make sense?

I've found the brightness doesn't really make a massive difference. It's set at about 80% so if you find what you've got is too low, there is room for increasing it a little.

There's also an app called Green Power which turns off wifi and 3G connections whilst the screen is off. I can't remember if that was one of the options in Juice Defender so you might want to give that a try too?

 

[ukgovsucks]

Ahhh.. there we go! Nice one mate. ;-)

So, as you can see (although this pic was taken while I'm charging it), the widget thing in the bottom left corner shows me the current power usage. Now normally (when I'm not charging), when I turn the screen back on, that widget will show me it's running at around 3ma. So from that I can see that when I'm not doing anything with the phone it is hardly using any power.

Like I said, I am really pleased with this phone and what it allows me to do on it. Having had a Nokia E63 for the past year or so, this is amazing in comparison. Now I have the battery life lasting longer at no expense to my usage, I'm quite happy!

 

[El Presidente]

No worries chief. What's the app on the bottom row next to 3G Watchdog?

I'm not going to deny it has its quirks, but on the whole, it's a cracking wee handset.

 

[Xyro]

Green power and juice defender both control 3G and wifi. I think JD is more complex but it'd also a paid app for all the features.

 

[mailroomman]

really glad your trying obostore and for just over

 

[ukgovsucks]

No worries chief. What's the app on the bottom row next to 3G Watchdog?

I'm not going to deny it has its quirks, but on the whole, it's a cracking wee handset.

It's called DroidStats. It tells me the following...

1. How long until the next billing date.
2. How many Calls (incoming and outgoing) and how long. Monthly total, and the total total! AND who to on each call!
3. Same as above with SMS.
4. Total Network Data used, and total Wifi Data used. Daily/Monthly/Total.

Really handy and FREE!!

 

[El Presidente]

I'll take a look, cheers

 

[Deleted User]

whats the battery widget in the lower left mate?

 

[Deleted User]

also if u wanna save EVEN more battery lol try turning off animations in display settings, and also turn off vibration as that uses alot

 

[ukgovsucks]

whats the battery widget in the lower left mate?

That's the HTC Battery Widget mate. Tells me how much % of power I have left. Well useful and a bit more precise than using that simplistic thing along the top.

 

[ukgovsucks]

also if u wanna save EVEN more battery lol try turning off animations in display settings, and also turn off vibration as that uses alot

I have actually already turned off the vibrations. (I forgot to mention that).
As for the animations though, which animations are they?

 

[mailroomman]

go in to display and then tap animations .
then you have the options .... no animations some animations ... all animations..
id go for no animations . kind of tweeks just a bit more juice of of you batterys

 

[Joelzinho]

I have done everything you have with the exception of using Juice Defender. I was jumping around on whether I should use Juice defender or Task Killer??

 

[mailroomman]

For me I went for green power app now that makes one hell of a diiferance.
I went for this in the end because I noticed in other threads juice defender may be taking a bit to much juice no pun intended.
Green power shuts all data apps off when the screen is off and puts sense to sleep = result

 

[SB13X]

For the love of god and all this is holy STOP USING TASK KILLERS to extend battery life they are irrelevant to the Android Platform.

Read this and educate yourselves people:

Activity | Android Developers

 

[mailroomman]

But if it works and saves battery and data what's the harm / problem ?

 

[SB13X]

But if it works and saves battery and data what's the harm / problem ?

Its a placebo...:shrugs: The only apps they are useful for closing are buggy apps that have badly coded power management. IMHO I can live without apps like that and they don't get a look in on my phone and are promptly uninstalled, even then the phone has a built in force stop button anyway. So I suppose they benefit the lazy?.

 

[mailroomman]

Well it works for me and others so that's good enough for me ..... lazy or not !

 

[SB13X]

Here is a raft of further information to support my stance and statements from the Devs who know best:

Androinica Google and Cyanogen comments imply task killer/manager apps are pointless

FAQ: Why You Shouldn’t Be Using a Task Killer with Android

Myth: Android devices need task killers | Smartphones - InfoWorld

Now when I search for Task Killers prolonging battery life the only things I find are in support of their use prior to 2.0 on legacy devices. Then the other blogs you read saying they are needed are clearly speaking from a PC non-linux experienced person. Who believes when the RAM gets full it slows things down (as we know Windows can't manage memory for poo).

A good quote to understand their mentality is:

 

[bonerp]

Its a placebo...:shrugs: The only apps they are useful for closing are buggy apps that have badly coded power management. IMHO I can live without apps like that and they don't get a look in on my phone and are promptly uninstalled, even then the phone has a built in force stop button anyway. So I suppose they benefit the lazy?.

I've tended to agree but of late I have become sick of the shocking battery life.

So I have used task killer and sorry to say my battery has lasted longer by approx 4-6 hours. Enough now to get through the day at least.

I was finding Assasins Creed was running in the background and opening everytime I restarted my phone. WHY?! Its now been uninstalled.

Together with a number of other apps that start by themselves, that have subsequently been killed every time I've restarted the device, you can't tell me that this doesn't impact on battery life. Its not a placebo for me. Its actually allowing me to get through the day, which my phone isn't great at.

Even a fresh factory reset removing all non standard apps don't allow me to get through the day - yes thats with everything off and only used when required ie wifi/3g.

Some seem to get 36 -48 hours battery life but when my phone is set up the same, I get around 12-15 hours.

Why is this? Is task killers or stopping the app (which does the same thing doesn't it?) works for me, why wouldn't I do this??

...and I don't think theres any need for referring that people are lazy for anything like.

If there is a fact for increasing battery life consistently, lets hear it.

Maybe a list of apps that manage power poorly might be of use?

Something is running on my phone so I am trying to find out what. The links above state that the way linux runs means apps cannot use power when its not in use. Stublake13 just said yourself that you uninstall apps that manage power poorly. Isn't that a contradiction??

 

[Deleted User]

That's the HTC Battery Widget mate. Tells me how much % of power I have left. Well useful and a bit more precise than using that simplistic thing along the top.

oh right, thanks mate - thats probably why i have never seen it lol cos its a HTC Desire HD widget and I have a normal HTC Desire which has the old sense of course. which i got rid of anyway and im now running stock android Gingerbread

 

[mailroomman]

So just goes to show us mear mortals might just right about this that task killers alike
can and do work.
I would sujest we agree to disagree on this thread and put this puppy to bed.
And move on.
As i think we are all right in are reasoning in are own way regarding this .

 

[SB13X]

I've tended to agree but of late I have become sick of the shocking battery life.

So I have used task killer in Battery Left and sorry to say my battery has lasted longer by approx 4-6 hours. Enough now to get through the day at least.

I was finding Assasins Creed was running in the background and opening everytime I restarted my phone. WHY?! Its now been uninstalled.

Together with a number of other apps that start by themselves, that have subsequently been killed every time I've restarted the device, you can't tell me that this doesn't impact on battery life. Its not a placebo for me. Its actually allowing me to get through the day, which my phone isn't great at.

Even a fresh factory reset removing all non standard apps don't allow me to get through the day - yes thats with everything off and only used when required ie wifi/3g.

Some seem to get 36 -48 hours battery life but when my phone is set up the same, I get around 12-15 hours.

Why is this? Is task killers or stopping the app (which does the same thing doesn't it?) works for me, why wouldn't I do this??

...and I don't think theres any need for referring that people are lazy for anything like.

If there is a fact for increasing battery life consistently, lets hear it.

Maybe a list of apps that manage power poorly might be of use?

Something is running on my phone so I am trying to find out what.

Not got the calendar app in your battery usage stats have you? I also don't use any widgets at all, I only use shortcuts, widgets are always in the foreground therefore running constant CPU cycles and will always be found under running processes. I just use shortcuts and when I press back out of them the process shuts down (highly rated well coded apps).

Oh and I am not referring to anyone as lazy in general terms just in regards their phone management.

(Oh and in addition I'd be getting in touch with Gameloft regarding the AC game its badly ported. I'd also leave a low rating and a comment with the above.)

The links above state that the way linux runs means apps cannot use power when its not in use. Stublake13 just said yourself that you uninstall apps that manage power poorly. Isn't that a contradiction??

No I uninstall apps that don't shutdown properly and force the phone to keep them in the foreground state running CPU cycles draining power. Thats bad coding on the app devs part as it won't allow the OS to do its job properly. Which then means for those of you using Task Killers to sort them out rather than removing them that not only are those apps running power draining CPU cycles but your adding extra cycles on by opening up a task killer and using that to close them. Its not the fault of Linux or the Android Kernel.

 

[Xyro]

Stu is right. Task killers fight against the way android is designed to handle apps and they actually use up more power than if you didn't use one.

Using them to kill poorly written apps is fine, but using them to automatically clean up your RAM is the problem.