Battery confusion

[Solitary]

Hey everyone.
I got my Eris a couple of days ago and I absolutely love it.
I am also very lucky that i found this forum because i was able to find some good tips.

However i have a question. As I was reading different posts about battery i got confused. Can someone explain to me in detail the battery? Is lower percentage good or bad? What is up time? What is the difference between up time and awake time?

thank you

 

[ttran97]

Hey everyone.
I got my Eris a couple of days ago and I absolutely love it.
I am also very lucky that i found this forum because i was able to find some good tips.

However i have a question. As I was reading different posts about battery i got confused. Can someone explain to me in detail the battery? Is lower percentage good or bad? What is up time? What is the difference between up time and awake time?

thank you

When you use your phone, it is awake. When you press the red hang up button, that will lock your phone and put your phone to sleep. So the lower the awake time percentage, the longer your battery will last. But many times, some program/app/widget is running in the background and prevents your phone from sleeping. That will reduce your battery life since it's constantly running.

Uptime is just the total amount of time your phone has been on since the last time you restarted it. Awake time is the time that it's been active, or awake, divided by uptime. So if you're phone's been on for an hour and you've been using it for the whole hour, your awake time % is going to be 100%.

A good way to test to see if some program is keeping your phone from sleeping is to turn off your phone completely and then restarting it. As soon as it fully loads, press the red hangup button to turn off the screen and let it sleep. Don't touch your phone for 10 minutes. Then turn it on and then press Menu -> Settings -> About phone -> Status. Scroll to the bottom and you'll see Awake time. It should be roughly 10% to 20%, or less.

But don't worry if you get a higher awake time. It's only when the awake time is at 100% all the time that there's a problem. It seems the update fixed the previous problems with the Messaging keeping phones constantly at 100%.

 

[Solitary]

awesome, thanks for a quick reply.

 

[Solitary]

i did what you suggested and when i turned it on to check the awake time it was at 24% after 12 minutes.

 

[ttran97]

i did what you suggested and when i turned it on to check the awake time it was at 24% after 12 minutes.

Nice. 24% pretty good. It'll probably be high the first few weeks that you have the phone since you'll be playing with it a lot. hehe. Mine was like at 80% all the time since I was always messing with it. But today, I had it all the way down to 5% since I barely touched my phone all day!

You can do things like adjust how often the Mail program checks your mail, and set the Stocks and Weather programs to manual update in order to reduce your awake time.

 

[Solitary]

Nice. 24% pretty good. It'll probably be high the first few weeks that you have the phone since you'll be playing with it a lot. hehe. Mine was like at 80% all the time since I was always messing with it. But today, I had it all the way down to 5% since I barely touched my phone all day!

You can do things like adjust how often the Mail program checks your mail, and set the Stocks and Weather programs to manual update in order to reduce your awake time.

Yea i did change email options, and I never even opened stocks (dont need to know that info). Stopped facebook from sending notifications about people in my phonebook and the battery does awesome.
Yesterday i had some medium usage, but as the evening came and i was doing some christmas shopping i was on the internet for like 2 hours straight and the battery didnt even go red..So i took it off the charger at 9 am, put it back on at 1:30 am and it was still yellow. Pretty good i think. Gives me confidence that if the usage becomes heavier it wont die on my after like 6 hours.

 

[kraze0g]

how often should you power down the phone? is it very beneficial to do so?

also- if i understand u correct.. the LOWER the awake %, the longer your battery will last?

thanks

 

[Mortgage_It]

anyone have one of those AA size battery keychain emergency back up chargers for their eris? any luck with these?

 

[ttran97]

how often should you power down the phone? is it very beneficial to do so?

also- if i understand u correct.. the LOWER the awake %, the longer your battery will last?

thanks

I don't power down phone too often. I don't see any real benefit unless something is making your phone lag.

Yes, the lower the awake %, the longer your battery will last.

anyone have one of those AA size battery keychain emergency back up chargers for their eris? any luck with these?

I haven't tried those chargers but I do think they're pretty neat. I've seen the rechargeable ones too, but I think regular AA is better. No hassle. Just keep a 4-pack of AA's in your trunk or glove box and you're good to go.