Battery Life Walkthrough - Methods that helped me

[Deleted User]

My battery life was horrible when I first switched from my rotten apple to my little green android

I did a little exploring and found some nice applications to extend battery life.

The Tools: WiFi OnOff, GPSOnOff. BluetoothOnOff & Taskpanel

We all know that GPS, BT, and Wifi will drain a phone no matter what brand. Toggle WiFi , GPS. and Bluetooth with the respective applications (free) when they are not in use. We also heard claims from apple about Iphone not multi tasking natively to save battery life. I am not sure why but a lot of apps load at startup like AK Notepad, PEEP and other seemingly load for no reason.

Enter Taskpanel you can choose the apps you want to ignore at startup. For example ignore IM if you use Meebo, ignore mail if you use GMail. Let's say you tweet occasionally you can also auto kill applications after an allotted time. I can run peep and set auto shutdown after 5 min. Between TaskPanel and the toggle apps my battery life has been extended.

You can also keep auto dim enabled (use the volume button to wake the screen up). Little tweaks like this pay off.

 

[les anderson]

thanks for taskpanel- I like it.

 

[Edaze55]

Question. Did you get your toggle switches off Market? Or did you use the ones that came with the Hero?

 

[Deleted User]

I got them all off of the market.

Question. Did you get your toggle switches off Market? Or did you use the ones that came with the Hero?

 

[americonium]

I had trouble in Las Vegas this weekend with Curvefish's GPS on off toggle. Seems it wouldn't turn on the GPS when I would toggle it. Deleted the app, used the built in switch, and it's working fine. Don't know if it was me, but I will toggle GPS with the settings screen instead. The BT and the Wifi work just fine.

 

[Edaze55]

I had trouble in Las Vegas this weekend with Curvefish's GPS on off toggle. Seems it wouldn't turn on the GPS when I would toggle it. Deleted the app, used the built in switch, and it's working fine. Don't know if it was me, but I will toggle GPS with the settings screen instead. The BT and the Wifi work just fine.

Ive got no issues with any of the built in toggle switches, currently have BT, WiFi, GPS and Airplane. I dont use the Airplane mode much and can easily get to that with the end call button, so that may be headed to the trash been real soon.

I use the BT ad GPS ones more than WiFi. Mostly cause I dont need the WiFi on at work, or at home as I'll just use my PC for what I need.

My recommendation to anyone thats using switches just for these settings would be to use the ones that come with the Hero.

 

[fildrigar]

Everyone who is complaining about short battery life needs to read this thread, instead of posting to threads complaining about short battery life.

The stock switches work just fine, and only take up a small section on a panel.

Also, changing Twitter / Flikr / Facebook to check status changes less frequently. If you need to know more often than that, you can always check manually.

 

[kayos]

I have noticed that keeping off wifi and mobile network until needed extends the battery life of my phone by a lot.

 

[fildrigar]

I pulled my Hero off the charger at 5:30 am, and now at 4:20 pm I'm still at 90%. That's with medium usage, a couple of emails, a couple of phone calls, obsessively checking Facebook once every half an hour or so, and checking in on a Forum.

 

[Edaze55]

I pulled my Hero off the charger at 5:30 am, and now at 4:20 pm I'm still at 90%. That's with medium usage, a couple of emails, a couple of phone calls, obsessively checking Facebook once every half an hour or so, and checking in on a Forum.

Your "couple of phone calls" must have been rediculously short to have 90% battery life after 11 hours. Im just sayin'.

 

[Deleted User]

Question. Did you get your toggle switches off Market? Or did you use the ones that came with the Hero?

Everyone who is complaining about short battery life needs to read this thread, instead of posting to threads complaining about short battery life.

The stock switches work just fine, and only take up a small section on a panel.

Also, changing Twitter / Flikr / Facebook to check status changes less frequently. If you need to know more often than that, you can always check manually.

Good call! I just stumbled upon the built in toggle switches under shortcuts HTC and Settings.

 

[Archon810]

Yeah, having the stock switches, I was a bit confused why similar apps are so popular on the market. Until I realized it was HTC's switches and not Android native.

 

[Sabre66]

I noticed yesterday my uptime jumped to 54% when it had been holding steady at 13% after switch to ChompSMS. Then noticed Chomp wasn't functioning properly. My battery life has since dropped 20% over 9hrs of zero use.

Discovered that the stock msg app had turned on again after reboot. Anyone else see similar on reboot?

 

[illini]

Two things that suck the battery is ALWAYA ON DATA this is what refreshes all your widgets. BACKGROUND DATA is only used for the android market turn these two off an you will see an increase in battery life. You need to realize that it will not refresh your widgets.

 

[Sabre66]

I'm an idiot. Just realized that awake time is merely a fraction of Up Time...dah. So now my awake time is back down to 6% after reboot and letting it sit (manual sleep of course). Guess the stock msg app really does affect battery life.

Sorry for wasted post, been sick for a few days so brain not working properly.

 

[koolhand79]

I find it interesting that these phones do so much and thats why we get them, but due to battery life being so poor we end up disabling half of what it does so it can work for a decent amount o time. How will sprint ever get there 4G network going when batteries seem to still be adequate for only 2G networks. hmmmmmm.......

 

[illini]

I find it interesting that these phones do so much and thats why we get them, but due to battery life being so poor we end up disabling half of what it does so it can work for a decent amount o time. How will sprint ever get there 4G network going when batteries seem to still be adequate for only 2G networks. hmmmmmm.......

I agree 4g will suck the life out of these phones.

 

[koolhand79]

I agree 4g will suck the life out of these phones.

Yea... When 4G arrives our battery saving tips will be to just put the phone in airplane mode anytime u arent using it.

 

[Quazar]

Whats the difference between, 2G(3g disabled) constanly on VS mobile network off til needed (toggle).
Is there much difference in battery with having 2G on constantly?

 

[illini]

Whats the difference between, 2G(3g disabled) constanly on VS mobile network off til needed (toggle).
Is there much difference in battery with having 2G on constantly?

You cant do that with sprint, its all or none. ATT you can disable 3g and save alittle battery. But it not worth it i always kept it on.

 

[Deleted User]

It looks like you can do the same with sprint. Settings Local Network -Mode of operation 1x-Only might be the 2G equivalent. I do not know how this would impact coverage area as EVDO gets more mainstream.

Whats the difference between, 2G(3g disabled) constanly on VS mobile network off til needed (toggle).
Is there much difference in battery with having 2G on constantly?