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HUGE improvent in battery life/management

modelyacht

Member
Apr 8, 2010
59
17
Last week my Incredible...(or as my colleague calls it, my Droid immaculate) was dead by lunch time. I had left open a website (bicycling I think), and the next thing I knew there was a battery warning on screen. I'd never seen it that bad. This was unacceptable, and I was on call that night.

I did a number of things that day. Deleting large apps I don't use, setting screen brightness instead of leaving it on auto, turned off the Wifi, started being careful with the GPS - turning it on only when I need it, started using Athene task killer, and the next thing I knew....it started lasting considerably longer. Only down to about 50% after 14 hours today.

Heard it reboot at 5 am the other day on the night stand. Could it have been an OTA, not me? What's the most current update people have heard of?
 
There has not been any recent OTA pushed out, so that is out of the question. The reason you have a dramatic increase in battery life is due to several things, not including the task manager (IMO). By deleting some apps, you probably got rid of one that kept your phone awake and unable to sleep. This alone will almost double your battery life. Turning off unnecessary things like wifi (ONLY when Unavailable - otherwise, this will actually prolong your battery life if you have a port available) and GPS will help too.
 
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I used to shut everything down and leave WIFI and GPS off. few weeks ago I tested leaving on wifi and had zero difference in battery life. Last week I read that leaving GPS on will not drain battery unless you use an app that uses it. Turned on the GPS and left it on and again no difference in battery life. I would even launch Nav in the morning and shut it down a few minutes later so I knew the GPS was indeed turning on. So now I keep on GPS, wifi, auto screen brightness, and have no task killer installed and I have as good battery as I did on day one. 24 hours of battery easy. I have pushed it to 36 hours with little use.
 
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I leave wifi on at home (where it can use it) and turn it off all other times. All I do other than that is leave brightness on auto and use System Panel (which is superior to any task killer, IMO) and I can easily make it the whole day. Probably about 18 hours with at least 5 hours of awake time.

What exactly do you mean by system panel?
 
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i did the following to my wife dinc and noticed a big improvement
SAVING BATTERY ON DINC

1. Turn down screen brightness to less than half- the default appears to be max: absolutely unnecessary.
*****2. Turn off MOBILE NETWORKS ALWAYS ON- extends battery considerably (you can still do almost everything- talk, text, web, email) this has little affect on data or cell usage- may affect PANDORA, exchange email and gtalk

SETTINGS>WIRELESS & NETWORKS>MOBILE NETWORKS>uncheck ENABLE ALWAYS ON

Final step (very important)
3. There is a charging "bug" with the dinc that has been well documented and notated by HTC. So you have to "bump charge". or a variation of it:
here's what we do


  • Charge the phone fully while on (till orange light becomes a green light)
  • Turn off
  • Charge the phone while power is off (till orange/ amber light becomes a green light)

OTHER TASKS THAT MAKE SMALL AFFECTS


  1. I put task killers on her phone and set them to auto kill at a certain interval (controversial but appears to help)
  2. I set her social networking to sync at a greater interval of time- she gets updates but not every 15 mins I put most at an hour
  3. I put her non- google push email check interval at 30 mins. The default was checking like every 5-10 mins: unnecessary
__________________________
***** Warning: turning off MOBILE NETWORKS ALWAYS ON MAY RESULT IN LOSS OF SOME FUNCTIONS DURING PHONE IDLE
 
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Final step (very important)
3. There is a charging "bug" with the dinc that has been well documented and notated by HTC. So you have to "bump charge". or a variation of it:
here's what we do


  • Charge the phone fully while on (till orange light becomes a green light)
  • Turn off & unplug
  • Charge the phone while power is off (till orange light becomes a green light)

You do not need to unplug it. When I wake up in the morning, it is green. All I do is turn it off and it goes amber, starting the bump charge.
 
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what do you mean by this, never really found a suitable explanation?

4G uses more power than 3G which uses more power than WiFi. At least that is how it is today....

Think of it this way, in terms of range: WiFi has a range of 150 feet. 3G has to work in as much as 10 square miles. 4g, at least Sprint's wimax system, is a lot like a more powerful version of wifi.

Does that help?
 
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2. Turn off MOBILE NETWORKS ALWAYS ON- this doesn't affect your phone but extends battery considerably (you can still do everything- talk, text, web, email) this has no adverse affect on data or cell usage.
SETTINGS>WIRELESS & NETWORKS>MOBILE NETWORKS>uncheck ENABLE ALWAYS ON

Just want to point out that it is very misleading to say that this "doesn't affect the phone", and should be clarified for people that don't understand this setting. As posted in several other threads, while this will save battery, this will cause problems if you require data to run while the phone is idle for ~10 or more. For instance, Gtalk, Exchange email, Pandora, etc, will not work with this setting off and the phone idle for long periods.

http://androidforums.com/tips-trick...about-battery-trick-have-you.html#post1129528
 
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I don't know. One day I had everything stock with all of the twitter/facebook/weather/EarthRot updates running and I got about 6 hours. The next day I shut down the apps, turned off wifi and gps and set the update frequency much higher. 6 hours. A look under the battery manager says that Android system (SenseUI I expect) is eating up over half of my battery. I know where my finger's pointed, and when my 2150 mAh battery comes on Friday I'll be much happier.
 
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Just a tip I found on here, I downloaded Y5-Battery Saver and it automatically connects to wifi in places where I have connected in the past. So now, whenever I walk into my house my wifi goes on automatically and turns off when I leave my wifi range...pretty cool.

Ditto, this is great.

I left wifi on during a road trip (whoops) and drained the battery in a bit over five hours as it kept trying to find and connect to wifi APs as I drove by.
 
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juicedefender is a much better option than y5-battery saver because it will not only connect you to all remembered wifi just like y5 will, but it will also turn your mobile network off for 14 out of every 15 mins your phone is on (with default juicedefender setting). so you will still get everything you want synced synced in that one minute that your mobile network is active.
 
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Just thought I'd give me 2 cents on battery.

I leave EVERYTHING but Bluetooth on. WiFi, GPS, Sync, you name it. I have 3 or 4 apps that auto update every 30 minutes or so. I have NO power management software.

I'm also using the undervolted Hydra kernels, and setCPU to underclock my phone. Whenever the screen is off, it runs at 245 MHz, and the lower the battery gets, the slower the processor will run when the screen is on.

With the kernel and profiles, I can get a good 10-12 hours of battery out of my phone with all the aforementioned stuff on. I'm sure it'd get crazy good if I toggled everything off, but 11 hours of battery life is good enough for me.

Before putting on the kernels, I would squeeze out about 8 hours (barely) and that was WITH gps off and using battery saving software (y5, juice defender).
 
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