My Battery Life Experiment.

[alinver]

I'll start a new thread if that's ok.

I carried out a little experiment over the last couple of days.

I switched off my Hero, fully charged it off the wall socket & switched it back on.

I left WiFi on, GPS on, Mobile Internet on.

I did my usual browsing, email(15-20), messaging(dozens), phone calls(20?) and playing around with the phone. I changed some of the screens, installed a few new programmes off The Marketplace & deleted a few others. I didn't listen to music or play any games apart from solitaire a handful of times.

The phone was left switched on overnight.

All in all my phone lasted 42hrs before I got the 15% "charge your phone" warning. That seems quite a long time to me.

Is that normal? I ask because some people appear to be having issues with a short battery life. My Hero is a little over 2 months old running the 1.5 firmware & no fancy ROMs just the stock Orange one.

I'd be interested in finding out if anybody has tried the same experiment.

Cheers Al

 

[quantumrand]

That's pretty normal from my experience. I'd call your usage fairly light though, compared to some. A lot of people use their phone to listen to internet radio all day (on 3G of course), and they complain when their battery only lasts 8 hours.

I really don't know how they can demand so much from it. I mean an iPod Nano only manages something like 30 hours of audio playback, and all it's doing is reading it off some local flash memory. The fact that any phone can last 8 hours while playing internet radio is a pretty amazing feat imho, let alone doing it at 3G speeds while running a complex OS, background apps, and telephony services.

 

[alinver]

Thanks quantumrand, I didn't think it was too bad, although it felt as if the phone was never out of my hand. It is one of those phones you like to play with.

Cheers Al

 

[capuman]

if you turn off wifi, gps and google background tasks the phone should last about 2 to 3 days before you need to charge.

Currently with my sony ericsson w960i i get about 3 days before a charge and it doesn't have half the stuff the hero does. So considering the fact that i get the same usage if i turn all those things off its actually pretty good.

Bottom line for me is turn those things on when and if you need them.

something else that i have found about all mobile phones is that after a few weeks battery usage seems to get better..as if the phone/battery adjusts itself. Kinda like when you buy a bike or car and after few 1000km the petrol consumption gets better.

 

[david83]

i'm a light user. if i unplug my phone when i get up at 7am it lasts me until about 7pm the following day. so about 36 hours.

i have mobile data on all the time. wifi kicks in when i get home at 5:00pm but i set locale to turn it off between 11:30pm-7am when i'm asleep in order to save battery.

 

[NewYorkLaw]

Why do you use wifi at home? Do you not get a good data connection at that location?

i'm a light user. if i unplug my phone when i get up at 7am it lasts me until about 7pm the following day. so about 36 hours.

i have mobile data on all the time. wifi kicks in when i get home at 5:00pm but i set locale to turn it off between 11:30pm-7am when i'm asleep in order to save battery.

 

[CitizenErazed]

NewYorkLaw: WiFi is faster than HSDPA and doesn't cut into a data allowance, which is very important if you're with Orange UK and their ilk, who only give you 500mb/month.

 

[NewYorkLaw]

That makes sense, thanks.
Pete

NewYorkLaw: WiFi is faster than HSDPA and doesn't cut into a data allowance, which is very important if you're with Orange UK and their ilk, who only give you 500mb/month.