Battery Life - The Good The Bad and The Ugly

[BetterMost]

I'm guessing your phone's having a pretty hard time finding a signal. You've got 1 bar in all your pics. Perhaps it's unnecessarily staying awake and roaming? Certainly would drain a phone's battery.

Time for Evo # 4?
Kidding. Update your prl, profile?

Oh No maybe DroidX and Verizon if this keeps up however.

 

[sagedil]

Or maybe read the fixes already posted.

Nah , you just like to complain.

 

[BetterMost]

Or maybe read the fixes already posted.

Nah , you just like to complain.

Fixes? Like turn it off and Volla no more battery drain?

 

[BetterMost]

What does my issue with Froyo have to do with battery issues from May? Nice job moderating.

 

[eric3316]

Wife had a baby yesterday and I was in the hospital for 15 hours before I was able to charge my phone. I would say I used it a lot surfing the web, text messages, pictures, video, emails, text messages, and phone calls. My Android usage on the battery program was about 25% along with a lot of other things and I still had 15% battery left at the end of the day.

I read more then pleased and surprised at how long I got out of this thing!

 

[sagedil]

What does my issue with Froyo have to do with battery issues from May? Nice job moderating.

And folks wonder why you are on probation. But nice try with that forceful thread title.

Between you and me I am hoping mods saw it just like I did.

 

[Carl6]

Seeing another thread regarding up time versus awake time, I found mine were running the same (they should not be). I uninstalled a dozen apps, powered down the phone, pulled the battery, then fired it back up. Up time versus awake time were now running normally.

I'm going to watch the battery drain today. If it is back to normal (which was good), I will then re-install the apps one or two at a time until I fine the offender.

 

[dan330]

Wife had a baby yesterday and I was in the hospital for 15 hours before I was able to charge my phone. I would say I used it a lot surfing the web, text messages, pictures, video, emails, text messages, and phone calls. My Android usage on the battery program was about 25% along with a lot of other things and I still had 15% battery left at the end of the day.

I read more then pleased and surprised at how long I got out of this thing!

congratulations buddy!!!

Ps... congratulations to the new baby too!

 

[Venkman]

I've been adding widgets and apps one by one since the hard reset last night. Slept 7 hours and I'm looking at uptime to awake time of 9:58:xx to 0:41:xx (made some phone calls, listened to some music and just screwed around a little).

The widgets/apps I've added and and ran so far are:

• WeatherBug Elite
• Astro File Manager
• Twitter for HTC Sense
• HTC News Widget
• HTC Calendar Widget
• GolfLogix
• Power Control
• SportsTap - still good
• Google Buzz - still good

I will continue to update this list and post my findings as I add more apps/widgets throughout the day.

Battery is still >80% after 10 hours of uptime (I know I haven't really used it much because I was sleeping, but this is still way better than what I was getting before when uptime=awake time).

Furthermore, I haven't done the CDMA trick. I'm seeing how this works out. However, phone was pre-set to CDMA auto (PRL) after the hard reset. I didn't have to modify this.

 

[karong]

my battery is a little worse, didnt think that was possible. I took it off the charger 2 hours ago and with very light web browsing, auto sync off, 4 texts, and no calls im down to 65%. that is ridiculous. It dropped 10% within the first hour before i even did anything. BTW my uptime is 20:50 and awake time is 6:27 not really sure what that means tho but i saw a few ppl mention it.

 

[sikclown]

my battery is a little worse, didnt think that was possible. I took it off the charger 2 hours ago and with very light web browsing, auto sync off, 4 texts, and no calls im down to 65%. that is ridiculous. It dropped 10% within the first hour before i even did anything. BTW my uptime is 20:50 and awake time is 6:27 not really sure what that means tho but i saw a few ppl mention it.

That means you it has been 20 hours and 50 Minutes since you last rebooted and out of that 20 plus hours you have used it for 6 hours and 27 minutes total. Have you gone through all of the tips and tricks for battery life? Under Battery and then Battery Use what is your Display percentage and if you press it what is the CPU total time?

 

[karong]

That means you it has been 20 hours and 50 Minutes since you last rebooted and out of that 20 plus hours you have used it for 6 hours and 27 minutes total. Have you gone through all of the tips and tricks for battery life? Under Battery and then Battery Use what is your Display percentage and if you press it what is the CPU total time?

Ive tried the battery tips. 4G, wifi, GPS all off. lowered the brightness, manual check my emails, made sure Talk is not running. Those helped a bit but since i upgraded to 2.2 its gotten alot worse. right now im at 52% and its only 11am. Before i could at least made it to 4 or 5pm before i needed a charge.

3h 3m since unplugged
android system 39%
cell standby 20%
phone idle 16%
display 13% Time on 59m
Android OS 10%
internet 2%

 

[stainlessray]

so would all the new lifelong memories be in h.264? or 720p then?

quoted the wrong dude, sorry

 

[sikclown]

Ive tried the battery tips. 4G, wifi, GPS all off. lowered the brightness, manual check my emails, made sure Talk is not running. Those helped a bit but since i upgraded to 2.2 its gotten alot worse. right now im at 52% and its only 11am. Before i could at least made it to 4 or 5pm before i needed a charge.

3h 3m since unplugged
android system 39%
cell standby 20%
phone idle 16%
display 13% Time on 59m
Android OS 10%
internet 2%

That Android System is high. Sounds like something is getting stuck updating in the background continuously draining your battery. You can search and test to see which app or service it might be but anytime I ever run into something like that with Android I find it is time to do a good backup and Hard Reset. Some people only suggest that as a last resort but I find I spend far less time doing them.

 

[karong]

That Android System is high. Sounds like something is getting stuck updating in the background continuously draining your battery. You can search and test to see which app or service it might be but anytime I ever run into something like that with Android I find it is time to do a good backup and Hard Reset. Some people only suggest that as a last resort but I find I spend far less time doing them.

How can I search to find out whats causing it?

 

[jdugan26]

I pulled my phone off the charger at 830 this morning and it is now 1130 and i have 74%. I don't notice much of a change since updating to 2.2. I'm a location manager at a sprint store too and I run my bluetooth all day long so I usually get anywhere between 7-10 hours religously.

 

[ExPalm]

My battery life is much worse since the 2.2 OTA update.
I unplugged it at 8:30 today, and have used it as little as possible.
after 2.5 hours, mostly off, it's down to 72% per Juiceplotter app.
Yesterday, under fairly heavy use, it lasted 6 hours before the battery alert.

 

[sikclown]

How can I search to find out whats causing it?

See there in lies the problem. It is a lot of searching and trial and error. It could be some app that you have that just didn't transition to 2.2 properly. It could be you have a Task Killer and have it set aggressively (I know 2.2 handles Apps and closing them way more aggressively so Task Killers are having some isssues, or so I have read, I don't use a task killer). It could be that for some reason after the update your Facebook and such are updating more frequently or stuck in an updating loop. You might need to try the CDMA auto PRL trick (search the forums for that one). You see it could be a ton of things which is why I always backup and then hard reset after an update. In the long run it saves tons of time for me.

 

[karong]

See there in lies the problem. It is a lot of searching and trial and error. It could be some app that you have that just didn't transition to 2.2 properly. It could be you have a Task Killer and have it set aggressively (I know 2.2 handles Apps and closing them way more aggressively so Task Killers are having some isssues, or so I have read, I don't use a task killer). It could be that for some reason after the update your Facebook and such are updating more frequently or stuck in an updating loop. You might need to try the CDMA auto PRL trick (search the forums for that one). You see it could be a ton of things which is why I always backup and then hard reset after an update. In the long run it saves tons of time for me.

Ok yeah that does seem very time consuming. maybe I will just try a hard reset. Now I just have to find a good backup app.

 

[sikclown]

Ok yeah that does seem very time consuming. maybe I will just try a hard reset. Now I just have to find a good backup app.

I use MyBackup Pro which is well worth the 4.99 but I know some fellow forumites have success with some of the free ones. MyBackup Pro just seemed to me to back up the most things.. i have heard good things about mIQ- Backup which i think is from Best Buy Mobile. Also download AppBrain which is a good App Backup tool.

 

[karong]

I use MyBackup Pro which is well worth the 4.99 but I know some fellow forumites have success with some of the free ones. MyBackup Pro just seemed to me to back up the most things.. i have heard good things about mIQ- Backup which i think is from Best Buy Mobile. Also download AppBrain which is a good App Backup tool.

Yup i downloaded the trial version of Mybackup. seems to work well for my data and apps. havent done the reset yet tho. One thing, im using Launcher Pro and have spent many hours customizing it with different icons and such, will mybackup restore that back to how it was or will i have to do that all over again?

Also i checked my 4G status, it was on and "scanning". they are slowly rolling out 4G here in NYC so i get a signal in some places and some I dont. seems like the phone was constantly searching for a 4G signal which may be contributing to my rapid battery drain. I turned it off and I'll see if the battery improves. If not then I will hard reset

 

[sikclown]

Yup i downloaded the trial version of Mybackup. seems to work well for my data and apps. havent done the reset yet tho. One thing, im using Launcher Pro and have spent many hours customizing it with different icons and such, will mybackup restore that back to how it was or will i have to do that all over again?

Also i checked my 4G status, it was on and "scanning". they are slowly rolling out 4G here in NYC so i get a signal in some places and some I dont. seems like the phone was constantly searching for a 4G signal which may be contributing to my rapid battery drain. I turned it off and I'll see if the battery improves. If not then I will hard reset

Oh man yeah keeping the 4g on is a killer for sure. Can't speak to how MyBackup handles Launcher Pro because I don't use it.

 

[jongo]

So i just found out my area in orlando has 4g but is very weak signal i get mostly just no bars to 1 bar of 4g but my question is does 4g kill the battery when ur on 4g?

Another question is instead of using cellular towers to trianglulate ur location when gps is off do u think you would save battery if u turned that off under location settings and just used gps to figure ur location out? since using wireless network finds ur location even while ur not using any apps.

 

[Venkman]

In reference to my post about finding apps/widgets that are causing 100% awake time, I may have found one of the culprits.

I decided to install the Official Twitter App from the Android Market because I like its functionality more so than the HTC Widget. However, despite turning off syncing/having it sync once every 6 hours and telling it not to sync contacts, etc... It was continuously syncing. My awake time was continuously on the rise despite turning all automatic syncing off with the official twitter app.

As soon as I uninstalled the app, my awake time stopped rising. This may only be a problem on my phone though.

I'll continue to see which apps/widgets are causing problems.

 

[VSpike915]

I know that they're are alot of threads out about this issue, but I wanted to give my personal experience. DISCLAIMER: MY RESULTS DO NOT MEAN THAT YOU WILL HAVE THE SAME OR EVEN SIMILAR OUTCOME.

Problem: After updating to Froyo, I watched my battery plummet to just under 10% after being fully charged and sitting idle in my pocket with 3G (Mobile network widget). So I decided to research about it and get a good night's sleep. I heard of the factory reset being the fix to this problem, but I was worried. NOTE: Unless you want to back up your apps and settings, all of your contacts will be fully restored when you re-sign in with your Google account, as well as anything on the SD card (ex: camera pics, music)
SOLUTIONThere are two methods for doing this, but the one I used was :
Hold the volume down key until the android menu comes up with the Android bot skateboarding. Let it load. Hit clear data or whatever is similar to that. Follow the instructions and continue. After this, re-sign in and everything that I stated should be restored.

MY FINDINGS
My time without a signal was priorly always above 90% no matter where I was. After the factory reset, TWS at its HIGHEST was 33%.

I saw many threads discussing how certain apps screw with Froyo and can make it do what mine was doing. I re-installed all my apps and everything is still PERFECT. From a Tech expertise's point of view, it's easy to see how the Caches get screwy seeing the Froyo update is just over-layed over 2.1's settings and etc.

My EVO was always very warm. I contributed it to my case (White accent shield) My Zagg invisible shield screen only protector, and the recent string of hot weather where I live. I bought the Sprint silicone case (which I will review, and quickly: Best case I've seen and used for ANY phone. Tough to back up, but I look forward to it.) But was still warm. (Thought it was the felt in the accent shield.) And my TWS was always so high. After reset-ing it my TWS went dramatically down and so did battery temperature.

MY BATTERY RESULT AFTER TESTING

I turned my EVO on at 11am and left GPS and 3G on. (I was priorly turning these off to conserve battery)
I decided to not hold back, as I was close to a charger. I sent well over 200 txt messages today, browsed the web and downloaded apps, listened to music via fm radio and music on my SD card. Adding all this up, probably 3hrs of steady use all combined. My signal was 2-3 bars depending. (About average) and it is now 6:29PM and I have 4 bars on battery level remaining after being up for exactly 8:07:23. FOR ME: This is outstanding, considering how much I used it. I also heard that the last 30% take the longest to drain. My goal was 12hrs of use (I don't think that's asking too much or too little) and if I didn't PURPOSELY use it alot, there is no doubt in my mind that it would have EASILY gone 12hrs.

So there you have it, I'm sorry if organization of this is bad (as it's my first guide/how to) but I tried! Any questions, comments, please leave them! I plan on getting screenshots once my DSLR gets home.

HTC EVO 4G non-rooted running 2.2 Froyo