Help This is flipping rediculous!!! I need STRAIGHT answers!

[truestory.dl]

As you all know, my Incredibles battery life SUCKS. I read so many things on how youre "not supposed to use a task killer" (are you or are you not!?). When I used the task killer, I was able to go a full day and wake up in the morning to a set alarm before it was in the red zone. Today, I uninstalled my task killer after what ive read, it was charging in the morning while turned off, fully charged around 1230PM, turned on. it is now only 9PM and I am in the yellow/orange zone.....now please, someone tell me why I shouldnt use the task killer if I got nearly another 10 hours out of my battery? (its the stock 1300mah battery)

And if i really shouldnt use a task killer, what am i doing to drain the battery so darn quickly? I am not a heavy user, the only things i use are the FB app, receive and send emails and MMS, Pandora radio (when i drive) and occassionaly the browser and Maps. No games, No other apps, nada! So as you can see, I am a very lite user.

My awake time was always lower than the up time, and since i havent used the task killer today, both the up and awake time were nearly the same. only just an hour ago they became a minute apart.

Please, someone, give me straight answers before i begin to hate my incredible!

 

[Bug Splat]

If it works for you, use it. Easy as that. I tried both and got better life out of not using a task killer. There are a lot of factors that go into battery life so each person is going to have a different result.

 

[zemerick]

As you all know, my Incredibles battery life SUCKS. I read so many things on how youre "not supposed to use a task killer" (are you or are you not!?). When I used the task killer, I was able to go a full day and wake up in the morning to a set alarm before it was in the red zone. Today, I uninstalled my task killer after what ive read, it was charging in the morning while turned off, fully charged around 1230PM, turned on. it is now only 9PM and I am in the yellow/orange zone.....now please, someone tell me why I shouldnt use the task killer if I got nearly another 10 hours out of my battery? (its the stock 1300mah battery)

And if i really shouldnt use a task killer, what am i doing to drain the battery so darn quickly? I am not a heavy user, the only things i use are the FB app, receive and send emails and MMS, Pandora radio (when i drive) and occassionaly the browser and Maps. No games, No other apps, nada! So as you can see, I am a very lite user.

My awake time was always lower than the up time, and since i havent used the task killer today, both the up and awake time were nearly the same. only just an hour ago they became a minute apart.

Please, someone, give me straight answers before i begin to hate my incredible!

Basically using a task killer is like putting a band-aid on a bullet wound. Sure...you stopped some of the bloodloss, but you didn't actually fix the problem.

Judging by what you say at the end," both the up and awake time were nearly the same. only just an hour ago they became a minute apart. " says that you have a rogue app that is keeping your phone awake. It isn't best to just kill that app over and over and over...but to fix the problem keeping it awake.

From what I've read, it could be most any app doing it, though a few seem to crop up a little more often ( such as the HTC FB app ).

It can be a bit of a pain to figure out what exactly is causing the problem ( usually the app itself isn't really doing anything and draining your battery, it's the problem that it keeps Android itself awake and the CPU ramped up to run Android, that kills the battery. )

I'm unfortunately not too good at finding these, either, as I've only had it happen one time and it was fixed by rebooting the phone. ( Have you done that lately? ) If you manage to find it, you usually need to remove the app and reinstall...or for things like HTC FB delete the account, and re-create it.

 

[jrm1013]

Hey there! In your case, the task killer was helping you achieve better battery life, because there is at least one app on your phone that is preventing your phone from "sleeping", which is why your times are virtually identical. The task killer was obviously closing the rogue app (tho sometimes that app will reopen on its own later, and keep your phone awake).

Basically, apps are written to not use the cpu if they do not have to, especially if you tap your power button to turn your screen off. Sometimes you will come across an app that will continuously use your cpu, even when your screen is off (asleep). It is caused by poor programming (a facebook update a couple weeks or so bad had this happen... when you closed out of the facebook app, and put the phone asleep, it was still using the cpu. it has since been fixed). Essentially, when your screen is off and your phone is asleep, your phone should use extremely little power. There is an app that is causing your battery drain.

When you are not in that situation, the task killer will actually consume more battery life, as it will close programs that are already cached (open but not consuming battery) and then when you go to open the program later, executing it will consume more battery than leaving it cached. I know, its all very confusing and I hope I explained this some-what well.

What you need to do is find out what is keeping your phone awake. Once you do that, your battery life will be a lot better than it has been - task killer or not. There are apps called System Panel and Spare Parts that can help you figure out what is doing it. In Spare Parts, if you go to Battery History and select Partial Wake usage, it may be able to show you which app specifically is doing it. Once you uninstall the app doing it, your battery life will improve drastically.

 

[truestory.dl]

Hey there! In your case, the task killer was helping you achieve better battery life, because there is at least one app on your phone that is preventing your phone from "sleeping", which is why your times are virtually identical. The task killer was obviously closing the rogue app (tho sometimes that app will reopen on its own later, and keep your phone awake).

Basically, apps are written to not use the cpu if they do not have to, especially if you tap your power button to turn your screen off. Sometimes you will come across an app that will continuously use your cpu, even when your screen is off (asleep). It is caused by poor programming (a facebook update a couple weeks or so bad had this happen... when you closed out of the facebook app, and put the phone asleep, it was still using the cpu. it has since been fixed). Essentially, when your screen is off and your phone is asleep, your phone should use extremely little power. There is an app that is causing your battery drain.

When you are not in that situation, the task killer will actually consume more battery life, as it will close programs that are already cached (open but not consuming battery) and then when you go to open the program later, executing it will consume more battery than leaving it cached. I know, its all very confusing and I hope I explained this some-what well.

What you need to do is find out what is keeping your phone awake. Once you do that, your battery life will be a lot better than it has been - task killer or not. There are apps called System Panel and Spare Parts that can help you figure out what is doing it. In Spare Parts, if you go to Battery History and select Partial Wake usage, it may be able to show you which app specifically is doing it. Once you uninstall the app doing it, your battery life will improve drastically.

Hey jrm,

thanks for explaining. i have just installed spare parts and under partial wake usage, it shows "Android System" with a very skinny blue bar on the left end and then "Dialer" with no bars. What exactly does this mean? Should i be checking for anything else?

 

[93civiccpe]

I've heard this debated for a long time and am somewhere in the middle here. The linux based operating system is great for closing applications/programs down itself, unless they were coded badly. If you leave a task killer running to kill applications, then it stays running and eats battery life itself. I compromised and I have a task killer, but I have it set NOT to run constantly. I just have it so when I'm done using my phone and am going to put it in my pocket, I open ATK, kill all the apps (INCLUDING ITSELF), then put the phone in my pocket. I've noticed the best battery life for myself doing it this way.

 

[jayochs]

yes, but even when you kill itself, it starts running again. go check in like system panel or services or something, you'll see it open. i'm trying an experiment where i'm going a week or so without it to see what happens.

 

[truestory.dl]

well...i just got the 2.2 update this morning. I have only opened Facebook and the Market thus far and my battery life is WAYYY better than what it was before the update. Not sure if its the update itself or just because I havent opened Pandora yet, maybe that running in the background will kill my battery? but so far its great. Fully charged before I went to bed, woke up to 3 set alarms, updated to 2.2, used Facebook. and still have over 90%. Awake time is just a small fraction of what up time is, i think up time was almost 2 hours, awake was about 20 minutes. I also deleted an app that i finally decided i didnt need, an app that kept track of my car's maintenance. That was always started up automatically by the phone (i knew from task killer list) and i have now deleted it. I am not currently using a task killer....but so far so good!

 

[kayst]

I had a couple of apps that wouldn't sleep and the way I found them was to reboot the phone, insure the phone was sleeping correctly by looking at up time/awake time, then start 1 app and run it for a little bit then close it. Then I'd write down the up/awake times, put the phone to sleep for 10 mins or so, then compare the times again. If everything was OK I'd go on to the next app. When I found the app I thought was causing the problem, I would use system panel to kill that app only, then check that the problem was solved.

It takes a while to do this for every app, but is worth it. Every now and then if I think my battery is draining too fast, I will do a test of the awake/up times to make sure everything is ok. Last night before I went to bed I wrote down all the stats. This morning after 8 hrs my awake time had only increased by about 4 mins. So everything is still good.

 

[truestory.dl]

whats the difference between system panel and spare parts?

 

[zemerick]

... or just because I havent opened Pandora yet, maybe that running in the background will kill my battery?...

Oh massively. Pandora is streaming information off the internet ( connecting to Wifi will help. Just remember to disable Wifi anytime you are somewhere that does not have access. ), and that is how it plays the music. Because it is running, yes it keeps Android awake. Finally, because of the requirements to play the music on top of android, etc..your CPU will stay much higher rather than underclocking. All of this adds up to a decent drain on your battery over the top of anything else you do. Always make sure to actually quite Pandora rather than just back out...though Pandora IS a properly coded app, so it should close on it's own if not used for awhile.

 

[truestory.dl]

Oh massively. Pandora is streaming information off the internet ( connecting to Wifi will help. Just remember to disable Wifi anytime you are somewhere that does not have access. ), and that is how it plays the music. Because it is running, yes it keeps Android awake. Finally, because of the requirements to play the music on top of android, etc..your CPU will stay much higher rather than underclocking. All of this adds up to a decent drain on your battery over the top of anything else you do. Always make sure to actually quite Pandora rather than just back out...though Pandora IS a properly coded app, so it should close on it's own if not used for awhile.

without a task killer, how do you completely close out Pandora when not in use? (if Android doesnt do it on its own)

 

[callmeox]

without a task killer, how do you completely close out Pandora when not in use? (if Android doesnt do it on its own)

Menu > Quit

 

[zemerick]

Menu > Quit

This. Also, when not actively playing music it lets Android shut it down. ( Also, if you don't have the setting for it to keep the phone awake..after around 5 mins of the screen being off Android will shut it down even while playing music. )

Pandora is a good example of a properly coded app. It lets Android close it, it has options to handle this ( such as also a time out for low memory situations. IE: If the phone has been low on memory for 5 mins pandora will close itself to give room for something else. ),and it has a quit option that fully closes the program.

It's a great app...it's just the very nature of what it is that makes Pandora a bit of a battery hog