The Ultimate Hero Battery Life Thread (Tips & Discussion)

[Stryf3]

Google Voice is now push

 

[threehills]

Sorry if this was already posted, but I was having a problem with programs starting up randomly, like Sprint Navigation and totally killing my battery. The app "Startup Auditor" was the solution to this as you can block certain programs from starting up on their own, or limit them to starting only in certain circumstances. Getting close to a day and half now between charges where before I was lucky to get 8 hours.

 

[cephraim]

Sorry if this was already posted, but I was having a problem with programs starting up randomly, like Sprint Navigation and totally killing my battery. The app "Startup Auditor" was the solution to this as you can block certain programs from starting up on their own, or limit them to starting only in certain circumstances. Getting close to a day and half now between charges where before I was lucky to get 8 hours.

Startup Auditor is interesting.
But, can't you do the same thing by just using a task killer after booting? Or, am I missing something?

 

[acp]

Startup Auditor is interesting.
But, can't you do the same thing by just using a task killer after booting? Or, am I missing something?

hahahah this is funny

I sincerely just clicked through my email to post the exact same thing, Startup Auditor seems to be a good solution for speeding up reboots, but to save battery I would've just assumed using a task killer would be the tool to use or at least in conjunction with Startup Auditor because a lot of programs continue to run in the background no matter how you exit them. I downloaded Startup Auditor and I also use Advanced Task Killer, so far it seems as though Startup Auditor does its job, but I don't feel like I'm rebooting that much faster.

The whole argument surrounding task killers has always confused me because I use mine to disable programs that randomly open such as Sprint Navigation and Pandora or Browser seems to continue running no matter what I do (back out of it etc), so when I'm stopping those invasive programs my available memory usually goes from 29mb to 70+mb, which I'm assuming is RAM and having more RAM available by my understanding is beneficial to the user in regards to speed.

 

[rhodiggah]

Not sure if this was addressed and I'm baffled by this running app that's draining my battery.

Used Spare parts
Clicked on Partial Wake Usage (since last plugged in)
and the first thing on the list says:

UID 10068

Not sure what it means or what app it is (if it is an app)

I hope someone can tell me what this is...

Thanks...

 

[dmm5157]

Not sure if this was addressed and I'm baffled by this running app that's draining my battery.

Used Spare parts
Clicked on Partial Wake Usage (since last plugged in)
and the first thing on the list says:

UID 10068

Not sure what it means or what app it is (if it is an app)

I hope someone can tell me what this is...

Thanks...

UID processes via Spare parts has been discussed before. Here's a post of how I figured out what the app was attributed to the UID that was displayed.

http://androidforums.com/sprint-htc-hero/28313-helpful-hint-awake-time-problems.html#post314463

And another here:

http://androidforums.com/sprint-htc-hero/57041-spare-parts.html
there are other similar posts out there, if you do a search for "UID ANDROID SPARE PARTS"


Let us know if this works.

 

[rhodiggah]

Thanks to DMM5157 for the tip. I downloaded ACTIVITY EXPRESS MANAGER and found the culprit. It was HANDCENT SMS. All is well now...

 

[dmm5157]

No worries. I'm not sure why some people have problems (myself included) with Handcent. On my wife's phone Handcent shows up with its name. On my phone, it is displayed with the UID.


Glad you got it figured out, though.

 

[vals4con]

Hi, this thread has been so helpful to me. I've had my Sprint Hero for almost a week and I've done some of the things that have been suggested here. Up till now, I've only had extremely simplistic phones. This is a whole new world. I found this forum by googling because of the battery problem. I got rid of much of the clutter on my homepages and changed settings as you have described and I think I'm ok now. I was nervous at first, wanting to run back to the store and exchange it. After reading here, I'm going to wait the 30 days and just keep playing with it.

 

[rhodiggah]

No worries. I'm not sure why some people have problems (myself included) with Handcent. On my wife's phone Handcent shows up with its name. On my phone, it is displayed with the UID.


Glad you got it figured out, though.

It turns out that if you are using HANDCENTS font pack along with Handcent sms, on spare parts, it's gonna show up as "UID" and not the actual "Handcent" name. So I uninstalled the Handcent font packs and the "Handcent name is now displayed on spare parts.

By the way, Handcent SMS is still the culprit with draining my battery. Even after force closing the app. Handcent is still on top of the list of partial wake time (spare parts). This is also the case when using ChompSMS. I might just use the native SMS and see how that is. I'm gonna miss the "bubble" texting look

 

[T Mac]

My battery has been draining badly since yesterday. Ive been checking everything, and finally I just found that my phone has been "downloading" an update to World War from the Market since yesterday morning. Im still going to try Advanced Task Manager since I purchased it a while ago.

 

[atapjn]

Ok i have read all of this info and have my phone to 16% wake time and i can get threw the day but about bedtime i am down to 30% or less battery life.
Now my son has the same phone we got them together and he is at 100% awake time and can go 2 days without charging and he plays games all day..
Does anyone know what the differance might be?? I cant figure it out

 

[apollomaker]

Howdy All --- after upgrading to a Seidio BASI17HTP2 battery, from the stock battery that came with my Hero, here is what happened after an appropriate test period.

The new battery claims 1750 mAh versus 1500 mAh capacity of the stock battery. Recall this is the battery that does NOT require a case change -- not the BIG one!!!

I allowed the new battery ten charge cycles before I started taking data mainly on standby time with various ratios of loading use.

The new battery has tested well, with a total standby time just taken running under Fresh 2.1.1 at about 80 hours of up time before need for recharge (down to 20%). This is with only about an hour of awake time with heavy use during that one hour period. In my usage, I need the longest standby time since my use is intermittent, but heavy during short periods -- talk, net surfing, and GPS.

Thought I would post these results for anyone looking for a good replacement battery for the stock one.

 

[glen4cindy]

8 hours and dead, you have to have a different issue going on. I could leave my wifi and gps on and guarantee i get 16 hours on a full charge.

have you installed the latest firmware?

There is NO WAY I can EVER get that much time, and I have lots of stuff turned OFF.

I'm not trying to hijack this thread, but, I'm with the former blackberry guy. I have almost everything under the sun turned off, and by 9PM I am nearly dead. I leave my house at 7am on a full charge. I've never tried to have GPS turned on or WiFi turned on, because with these things OFF, I can barely last the day as it is.

I do have background data on so I can get my notifications and updates, but, that is all I have turned on, other than weather. It updates 1 hour intervals.

The first few days I had my phone, it was dead in 6 hours, but, it has improved to what it is now.

I just turned GPS on to see what it does for my battery life. I unplugged at 7 am CDT and I am at 77% according to Battery Time Lite, Android shows 5Hrs and 29mins since unplugged, so we'll see how it goes.

EDIT: Google Sky Map seems to be a bad offender! I just was doing some checking after reading thru all the pages of this thread and found it to have used 45% of my battery, but, surely that would only have been calculated since it was last run. I ran it last night about 10:30 CDT. Guess I didn't hit the back button, or it didn't close properly. But, this is only one day, and my battery usage isn't particularly different today than any other day.

Right now, it's 4:03 PM CDT, and my battery is down to 52% and I'm 9Hrs since unplugged, as opposed to what's posted above where I was at 77%. My phone has had very little usage during this time. Maybe 1 short phone call, and 2 short downloads from the Market.

 

[robinscrest]

I have turned off the hepatic feedback on my kb, but it continues to have it with every letter I type....any suggestions????

 

[robinscrest]

thought I posted this last nite, but can't find it today...I have disabled the hepatic feedback on kb, but it continues to work even tho it shouldn't any ideas on how to turn it off???

 

[WookieOnRitalin]

If you want more battery, turn off data when you don't use it. Your battery life will double. It is by far the biggest drain on your system. I noticed it randomly one day when I was disconnected from my data connection for two days. After two days, I still have 30% battery that included phone calls and texting. I was surprised.

So if there are times when you know you won't be heavy using your data, just shut it off, and then turn it back on when you need it.

 

[salb222]

UPDATED 2/15/2011 by salb222:
I added the "Running Services" app/widget/program/shortcut (can't remember where I found it), to one of my seven screens on my Sprint HTC Hero. After I load a newly charged battery (I have three now rotating out each one once they get below 15%), I kill all apps using Advanced Task Killer (ATK) app (the $ version auto-set to Kill Apps every 1/2 hour), then click on the 'Running Services' app and "stop" all non-essential running programs.

Using the 'Running Services' app and stopping certain services has significantly increased my battery life by at least 1/3 to 1/2 the time (really). I usually stop all running services EXCEPT the following: ObexService, HTC Sync (FDHttpdSvc), HtcIQAgent, Touch Input and BatteryWidget$Update. Your experience of running programs may differ, but only keeping the ones above and stopping all others has certainly increased my phone's battery life much more than I've ever seen since owning the phone (1 year now). Try it, it really works.

Hope this helps. Let me know, or add your own suggestions specific to "Running Services." Thanks!

 

[salb222]

I just updated the list of exceptions of services to NOT to stop in my original post to include HTC Sync. If you stop this service, HTC Sync will not work.

 

[salb222]

Here's my post re battery life that may also help: http://androidforums.com/sprint-her...ery-life-another-alternative.html#post2283053