• After 15+ years, we've made a big change: Android Forums is now Early Bird Club. Learn more here.

Battery Life Improving...

Needsdecaf

Android Expert
Nov 6, 2009
1,005
41
Northern VA
So, I've bemoaned the battery life of the Eris on here, but I have to say a bit over 2 weeks later it's getting better.

I've had Advanced Task Killer (killed my battery), Advanced Task Manager, and now nothing. I've run with Wifi on to reduce battery life, etc.

Yesterday I decided to run my battery until it gave out and the phone shut off. Starting at 70% (at 10:00 AM) I ran the phone HARD (phone, web, YouTube, Facebook, SMS and IM). Awake time was around 60%.

The phone lasted until 6:30 PM before shutting off.

I let it charge overnight, and have had it off all day today. With light usage (awake time at 10%, just some email and web use) battery percentage at 4:15 PM is at 75%.

:D
 
I did the same thing you did yesterday--decided to see how long it would take to completely drain the battery. Normally, I would plug it back in around 30% based on the rate of depletion up to that point.

Took the phone off the charger around 7:30 AM, and sure enough, the battery icon turned orange around 5:00 PM on my ride home. Instead of plugging it in, I just rolled with it.

To my surprise, the battery made it until I went to bed around 12:30 AM. The battery meter read 2%. I had 3G and Wi-Fi on all day. Made around 4-5 calls, sent lots of Gmail chats and texts, and did a fair amount of web/marketplace browsing.

I've used the phone similarly today--even turned the GPS on momentarily to use Footprints. My battery reads 30% at 9:20 PM :D.
 
Upvote 0
my phone yesterday was reading all over the place on the sleep time. today it wouldnt budge from 100%. There is more to this than not using the native sms app since i have never switched to anything else. Something else is making the phone not sleep.

Agreed, see my other thread.


I should also note that GPS is on, and always has been.


Phone is still over 50%.
 
Upvote 0
I traded my Droid in for the Eris last night. When I got it home I put in on the charger. While on charge I installed Handcent and some other apps. I took it off the charger with a full charge around 11pm. I used it off and on today and right now(9:45pm) my battery is at 50% with up time at 21:25:00 and my awake time is 1:57:03(9%)

Thanks to these forums on how to optimize battery life, I don't think I will have the issues with battery life. Now I know I didn't use it like some of you do, but it's not as bad as I feared when I was considering the exchange.
 
Upvote 0
I traded my Droid in for the Eris last night. When I got it home I put in on the charger. While on charge I installed Handcent and some other apps. I took it off the charger with a full charge around 11pm. I used it off and on today and right now(9:45pm) my battery is at 50% with up time at 21:25:00 and my awake time is 1:57:03(9%)

Thanks to these forums on how to optimize battery life, I don't think I will have the issues with battery life. Now I know I didn't use it like some of you do, but it's not as bad as I feared when I was considering the exchange.
I agree as I read the forums and make the adjustments my battery life has become more than acceptable for what the phone does. Coming from a Blackberry and being a heavy user of voice and data, I had gotten used to plugging the phone in nightly.

Jimbo
 
Upvote 0
mine just lasted 40 hours with light-moderate use. I think I can live with that. Took it all the way down until the screen came on by itself and said attach the charger. hopefully its gets even better with this full charge cycle. Really the times when I need it to last the most I'm not using it much anyway.
 
Upvote 0
I don't think the adjustments are necessarily what is improving it I think it is time. When I first got my Eris the battery life was pretty bad so I did quite a few tweaks to it but they didn't seem to make much difference. Now with those tweaks removed and a decent amount of apps running I am getting what seems like double the life I was originally.
 
Upvote 0
I don't think the adjustments are necessarily what is improving it I think it is time. When I first got my Eris the battery life was pretty bad so I did quite a few tweaks to it but they didn't seem to make much difference. Now with those tweaks removed and a decent amount of apps running I am getting what seems like double the life I was originally.


I agree. I think that there are two factors to good battery life:

1) Make sure nothing is preventing the phone from sleeping. I had an issue a couple of days ago (see my other thread) where I could NOT get the phone to sleep. It wasn't the SMS application. I ended up having to delete all the applications I had installed and re-installed most of them. I had the problem happen again to me on Wednesday.

Turns out it was the Weather Bug widget that was preventing the phone from sleeping.

2) Battery conditioning. I think the battery needs to be discharged fully a couple of times before the phone has optimum battery life. I am not sure if this is a battery issue or a meter issue. I would suspect a meter issue since there is no real reason battery wise that this would make sense.

Since I now have it sleeping right, I went from 90% charged yesterday morning at 8:00 to 15% charged at 11:00 PM. This includes 4 hours of bluetooth use in the car including a couple of BT phone calls, a couple of other phone calls, and a moderate amount of surfing and whatnot.

More than acceptable in my mind. I hope that the software update makes it even better! :D
 
Upvote 0
I agree. I think that there are two factors to good battery life:

1) Make sure nothing is preventing the phone from sleeping. I had an issue a couple of days ago (see my other thread) where I could NOT get the phone to sleep. It wasn't the SMS application. I ended up having to delete all the applications I had installed and re-installed most of them. I had the problem happen again to me on Wednesday.

Turns out it was the Weather Bug widget that was preventing the phone from sleeping.

2) Battery conditioning. I think the battery needs to be discharged fully a couple of times before the phone has optimum battery life. I am not sure if this is a battery issue or a meter issue. I would suspect a meter issue since there is no real reason battery wise that this would make sense.

Since I now have it sleeping right, I went from 90% charged yesterday morning at 8:00 to 15% charged at 11:00 PM. This includes 4 hours of bluetooth use in the car including a couple of BT phone calls, a couple of other phone calls, and a moderate amount of surfing and whatnot.

More than acceptable in my mind. I hope that the software update makes it even better! :D


How do you know if the phone is sleeping or not? I also think the battery life has to do with signal, I was in this house where it kept going between 3g and 1x and my battery went from 65% to 20% within 2 hours with me doing nothing on it.
 
Upvote 0
Also to get a true idea of "Up Time" and "Awake Time", You should power off your phone then back on again after taking it off the charger. Then let it "sleep" for awhile. Then check Settings-About Phone-scroll down. When it is charging it is always awake. By turning it off then on you can see what awake % you have.
 
Upvote 0
I agree. I think that there are two factors to good battery life:

1) Make sure nothing is preventing the phone from sleeping. I had an issue a couple of days ago (see my other thread) where I could NOT get the phone to sleep. It wasn't the SMS application. I ended up having to delete all the applications I had installed and re-installed most of them. I had the problem happen again to me on Wednesday.

Turns out it was the Weather Bug widget that was preventing the phone from sleeping.

2) Battery conditioning. I think the battery needs to be discharged fully a couple of times before the phone has optimum battery life. I am not sure if this is a battery issue or a meter issue. I would suspect a meter issue since there is no real reason battery wise that this would make sense.

Since I now have it sleeping right, I went from 90% charged yesterday morning at 8:00 to 15% charged at 11:00 PM. This includes 4 hours of bluetooth use in the car including a couple of BT phone calls, a couple of other phone calls, and a moderate amount of surfing and whatnot.

More than acceptable in my mind. I hope that the software update makes it even better! :D

I hear you on the weather bug app, I removed it and I noticed better battery life the next day.

SO when you guys talk about the phone in "sleep mode, do you mean just hitting the hard red phone key to shut the screen off??

thanks
 
Upvote 0
Is 46% awake time bad? with No GPS on, no WIFI or bluetooth, and sometimes mobile network

Depends on your up time.

Your awake time should correspond roughly to the time you're using the phone, plus some connection time for the phone to sync for network stuff. That sounds a bit high, but if you only had the phone on for 4 hours and you were using it for two, then it's realistic.

Make sense?
 
Upvote 0
I hear you on the weather bug app, I removed it and I noticed better battery life the next day.

SO when you guys talk about the phone in "sleep mode, do you mean just hitting the hard red phone key to shut the screen off??

thanks

Yes.

Checking phone stats will tell you what % and actual time spent in sleep mode.
 
Upvote 0
I agree. I think that there are two factors to good battery life:

1) Make sure nothing is preventing the phone from sleeping. I had an issue a couple of days ago (see my other thread) where I could NOT get the phone to sleep. It wasn't the SMS application. I ended up having to delete all the applications I had installed and re-installed most of them. I had the problem happen again to me on Wednesday.

Turns out it was the Weather Bug widget that was preventing the phone from sleeping.

2) Battery conditioning. I think the battery needs to be discharged fully a couple of times before the phone has optimum battery life. I am not sure if this is a battery issue or a meter issue. I would suspect a meter issue since there is no real reason battery wise that this would make sense.

Since I now have it sleeping right, I went from 90% charged yesterday morning at 8:00 to 15% charged at 11:00 PM. This includes 4 hours of bluetooth use in the car including a couple of BT phone calls, a couple of other phone calls, and a moderate amount of surfing and whatnot.

More than acceptable in my mind. I hope that the software update makes it even better! :D

So I did a full discharge (phone off) again on Thursday night. My last "stuck on awake" issue was Wednesday night.

Charged phone to 100% by 10:00 AM yesterday.

Minimal use - still at 8% awake time over 4 days.

Phone at 43% 24 hours later.

I think as long as you condition the battery (meter) and make sure you don't get stuck at 100% awake, the battery life is fine.

P.S Verizon Tech's support solution to the 100% awake problem? Return the phone. :rolleyes:
 
Upvote 0

BEST TECH IN 2023

We've been tracking upcoming products and ranking the best tech since 2007. Thanks for trusting our opinion: we get rewarded through affiliate links that earn us a commission and we invite you to learn more about us.

Smartphones