[Battery] Complaints and Problems

[alison03]

My battery life also greatly improved doing the top off. Right now my phone says:

uptime: 53:02
awake: 3:01

30% left.

Granted it's the weekend and I don't use it as much as during the week, but I left it 'on' overnight, don't turn any syncing off etc, and talked for about an hr, texted about 10 times, downloaded and used a few apps, took about 5 pictures, used GPS for about 10 minutes, browsed the internet for about an hour, and played games (mainly Toss It). So light/moderate use and great battery so far for me (using the top off..and it actually didn't even turn green again as I had to leave for work). I'm impressed.

 

[prophet0p]

I can honestly say this is by far the best phone i have ever owned or played with. The battery life is horrendous. I have played with everything to try and make it better. I use it constantly. 3-5 hour i get max... I need to charge it though out the day to make it last... They need to come with a much better battery.

 

[indianajonze]

there already is one. get the seidio innocell 1750 man. i was in the exact same boat as you and now i'm loving life. consistently getting 26 hours of uptime out of it now, with 12-14 hours of heavy use per charge

 

[Yeshuah]

Treat your battery right from the start and it will easily last. I don't use any of these task killers, never turn off the mobile network, and I get anywhere from 24 to 30 hours of battery life per charge. I use the phone throughout the day for web, phone, texting (a lot), some apps, etc. Obviously using it for hours on end and/or watching videos will not yield the same results, but with moderate use, you'll easily be fine.

I have treated my battery right from the start. I turn down the screen when I can, and I don't run the GPS & Sync. I actually bought the Seido 1750mAh extended battery & I'm still having problems with the battery draining. I've disabled the accounts, except for GMail. I use ATK ALL THE FREAKING TIME, because apps just pop up & run for no reason at all. I would say that I'm a heavy user, but that should be acceptable since that's why I bought the phone...to use. I don't play games, and I really don't even listen to a lot of music. Most of my phone usage is web browsing & Twitter on Touiteur. If I had a schedule like the OP said they have, there's no way in hell I'd make it. 24-30 hours of battery life is "incredible" indeed - if that's true.

 

[Mr. Spontaneous]

I have treated my battery right from the start. I turn down the screen when I can, and I don't run the GPS & Sync. I actually bought the Seido 1750mAh extended battery & I'm still having problems with the battery draining. I've disabled the accounts, except for GMail. I use ATK ALL THE FREAKING TIME, because apps just pop up & run for no reason at all. I would say that I'm a heavy user, but that should be acceptable since that's why I bought the phone...to use. I don't play games, and I really don't even listen to a lot of music. Most of my phone usage is web browsing & Twitter on Touiteur. If I had a schedule like the OP said they have, there's no way in hell I'd make it. 24-30 hours of battery life is "incredible" indeed - if that's true.

I do email, browsing, twitter (with Touiteur) and have the 1750 - I get 20-24 hours on a single charge.

 

[thepro8]

In a heavy user but I'm not getting anywhere near as long of battery life ad the iPhone. I thing I'm returning the phone today.

 

[dibs ODDJOB]

I have treated my battery right from the start. I turn down the screen when I can, and I don't run the GPS & Sync. I actually bought the Seido 1750mAh extended battery & I'm still having problems with the battery draining. I've disabled the accounts, except for GMail. I use ATK ALL THE FREAKING TIME, because apps just pop up & run for no reason at all. I would say that I'm a heavy user, but that should be acceptable since that's why I bought the phone...to use. I don't play games, and I really don't even listen to a lot of music. Most of my phone usage is web browsing & Twitter on Touiteur. If I had a schedule like the OP said they have, there's no way in hell I'd make it. 24-30 hours of battery life is "incredible" indeed - if that's true.

Stop doing that ^. Android keeps things in memory for speedier use. It doesn't necessarily mean things are actively running.

 

[blkhrt]

For the most part, does just a small percentage of your phone has a short battery life? I am up for a new phone and am wanting the Incredible, however after reading numerous threads about the battery I may rethink my thoughts.

 

[garment69]

Regarding screen settings; if you look at your usage the screen is always at the bottom. right now, with the screen setting on auto the battery usage screen shows that "display" is responsible for only 4% of total battery consumption. These AMOLED displays seem to consume nothing in terms of power. In comparison, on my Droid, the display was always way up there in the high teens and low twenty's. I think thats why HTC went with the 1300MAH (besides being cheaper). The droid has a 1400MAH battery but a conventional lcd. I had my Droid OC'd at 1 Ghz. Overall, I think my Droid was as good with the 1400MAH OC'd to 1gzh as my incredible using the 1750 seidio. I'm hopefull a software update could help with battery life.

Its also amazing to me how different my battery discharge rate can be. Some days it doesnt move at all, today, Im off the charger for 6 hours and Im down to 60%. Other days at this time I can be as high as 75%. Same usage pattern. I need to figure that out.

 

[dibs ODDJOB]

For the most part, does just a small percentage of your phone has a short battery life? I am up for a new phone and am wanting the Incredible, however after reading numerous threads about the battery I may rethink my thoughts.

The battery life isn't that great, but your options aren't that much better IMHO.

If you have other options, go read their forums. You'll see just as many problems.

Online forums are like a hypochondriac's worst nightmare.

 

[Bearly]

I don't buy that ATK is "not needed." I experience slow downs on my phone and I have to use ATK to clear memory.

I think usage is one parameter to gauge battery life but set up is another: what widgets are running, update intervals for widgets, live wallpaper, etc.

There is no way I could get 20-24 hours of run time, even with moderate use. I'm using the 1600 mAh battery and I dont' get more than 14 hours. Something is draining my battery and I don't know what.

 

[groovin]

noob alert
I ordered the 1500mah battery off of ebay from this

url hxxp://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=230439043798&ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT The battery fit (snuggly), however the phone will not boot up or take a charge. Anyone else have this problem? The part number is 35H00123-00M.

 

[turbomentor]

I've been trying very hard to track my batter life over the last two weeks, since it "appears" that my btty is crap. Love the phone, very much dislike the btty. I'm coming off of a BB Storm, and my usage pattern is the same as it was with that device. On my Storm, I could go two days with my usage pattern, and as long as I charged it on day 2, I was usually GTG. Not so much with my DINC. I'm fortunate to get 10 hrs of up time on a single charge!

So lately have been trackinng some usage stats. Things like: home at 6:30, loss of 20% btty power in 5 hrs (phone asleep, no WiFi, no calls, no text etc). Went to bed btty at 37%. Woke up and btty is below 9%. Went to work at 6 AM, by 1, phone showed 7 hrs of up time, 1.75 hrs of awake time and btty was down to 52% (only one very short phone call, a few texts, no internet etc etc etc).

Walked in to VZW store, first question that was asked is "Are you using ATK?" I patiently explained that while I did have a TK loaded (ES Task Manager) I don't use to to Task Kill because with Android its not needed. I was asked 3 times by 2 employees if I had ATK and used it. I showed them Settings --> About --> Battery and it was a revelation to the low level sales guy I first spoke to and the store manager. Neither of them had a clue about seeing what the battery was doing, up time, awake time etc (Thanks Android Forum for teaching me this cool stuff!!). In any case, I was able to show them that there were no random apps sucking btty pwr or CPU clock cycles and they conceded I "might" have a btty problem. They had no batteries in stock and offered to order me a new one.

I am almost at my 30 day window and asked them if I could take the btty out of the DINC demo that they had. Apparently, they didn't think of making that swap! So they agreed and I made it plain that I would monitor my usage for a week and if it still sucked, I would expect them to order me a new battery.

I love the phone, but the btty stats I've been getting are awful. I'm sure "part" of the problem is my work area is bad for reception (ie searching for signal and TOS is high) but I've done all the tips n tricks for app monitoring. I bought a SmartPhone to be..well...smart, not to have to turn everything off in order to be able to have enough juice to make a call or send a text. I am hoping that perhaps my OEM battery was just...bad...and perhaps this replacement might improve my stats. All I am asking for is a full 14 hr day of use; I can handle daily recharging.

 

[Steven58]

I consider this thread important enough to sticky it, for now. (Keep it at the top). I hope this helps.

 

[Mammal186]

Ive been turning off Background Data when Im not using it.

It has really increased my battery life.

(Settings > Accounts & Sync > uncheck Background data)

Check it out if you are having battery issues.

 

[Bearly]

This is unbelievable. If I take phone off charger (after being plugged in overnight!) the battery immediately drops to 96%

I've been texting for five minutes and the battery dropped from 100% (I unplugged and replugged, like others have been doing) to 90%

How is that possible?

I have widgets running but would they drop the battery THAT fast? Come on.

If the issue is with widgets, I doubt I'll see a huge improvement with the HTC Extended battery. I need to figure something out because this is breaking my heart.

I love the phone otherwise.

Can someone guide me to figuring out which WIDGETS might be sucking up a ton of juice?

 

[MissMoy]

I too have problems with battery life. In fact I thought something was wrong with my first Incredible and returned it. This second phone has the same problem: exactly the same up time and awake time. I get 3-4 hours tops on battery life. That's with the occasional checking of email. No texting, no FB, no WiFi, nothing else. I use a task killer and make no phone calls. I have also done factory reset and have NOTHING on the phone except Google mail, which I don't use.
I realize this is a powerful phone, but I think 3-4 hours is a little unreasonable. I have done the charge, then turn off and charge more.
I'm at the point of giving up. I have the Seidko extended life battery and that didn't help at all. There is some bug with the phone that is not allowing it to sleep. There should be a difference between the up time and awake time and there isn't.

Battery Usage details: Cell standby is 45%, phone idle is 37%, and the Android System is 18%.

 

[GiveMeItNow]

Z

I too have problems with battery life. In fact I thought something was wrong with my first Incredible and returned it. This second phone has the same problem: exactly the same up time and awake time. I get 3-4 hours tops on battery life. That's with the occasional checking of email. No texting, no FB, no WiFi, nothing else. I use a task killer and make no phone calls. I have also done factory reset and have NOTHING on the phone except Google mail, which I don't use.
I realize this is a powerful phone, but I think 3-4 hours is a little unreasonable. I have done the charge, then turn off and charge more.
I'm at the point of giving up. I have the Seidko extended life battery and that didn't help at all. There is some bug with the phone that is not allowing it to sleep. There should be a difference between the up time and awake time and there isn't.

Battery Usage details: Cell standby is 45%, phone idle is 37%, and the Android System is 18%.

One of your apps is keeping your phone awake. There is a thread around here about how track it down. Do a search for it.

 

[moptart]

Ive been turning off Background Data when Im not using it.

It has really increased my battery life.

(Settings > Accounts & Sync > uncheck Background data)

Check it out if you are having battery issues.

What happens when you turn off background data--do apps like News Rob not get updated?

 

[Mammal186]

I manually update things when I look at them.. doesnt seem to be a problem with any of the apps I have, most of them have a "refresh" or "New Posts" option in menu.

 

[serenityseeker]

Does placing the battery in an external charger give the same results as topping off?

 

[im a android but thats ok]

I too have problems with battery life. In fact I thought something was wrong with my first Incredible and returned it. This second phone has the same problem: exactly the same up time and awake time. I get 3-4 hours tops on battery life. That's with the occasional checking of email. No texting, no FB, no WiFi, nothing else. I use a task killer and make no phone calls. I have also done factory reset and have NOTHING on the phone except Google mail, which I don't use.
I realize this is a powerful phone, but I think 3-4 hours is a little unreasonable. I have done the charge, then turn off and charge more.
I'm at the point of giving up. I have the Seidko extended life battery and that didn't help at all. There is some bug with the phone that is not allowing it to sleep. There should be a difference between the up time and awake time and there isn't.

Battery Usage details: Cell standby is 45%, phone idle is 37%, and the Android System is 18%.

like a previous poster said a rogue app is keeping your phone up. i was having the same problem getting about 50% battery drain over a 8 hr period just on standby, not even using the phone. though a lot of people swear you dont need it i downloaded system panel ( a sort of task killer but also system manager that tells you how much % consumption each app is using) after spending 2 weeks shutting down every app in site and setting sync rates to highest time alloted i finally did a kill all and shut down the app. for the record i had sports tap, a raider news grabber and facebook widgets that i thougt where constantly updating and sucking power when they werent. in short you can start shutting down running services one by one to see if that helps to find the culprit. my battery life improved dramatically and will keep a running log and graph of cpu speed, battery drainage, over a period of time 2hrs -1 week to get a good visual of when your phone is sleeping or not. again not necessary but a highly recommended app in my opinon for system resoruce managament that is second to none.

 

[kayst]

Does placing the battery in an external charger give the same results as topping off?

I've found it does a better job than topping off, and is much less annoying too.

 

[hellojane]

Well seems most android devices have this issue so Incredible is not a battery saver for sure. Try some apps in android market, ATK, Memory Booster or something like that to prevent those idle process from killing your battery. Hope it will help you out.

 

[GhotiPhish3]

Honestly, it won't last..but IF you use the ATK to kill the apps throughout the day it'll go a lot farther and also, you should def use the power control widget and turn off the wifi/bluetooth/ satellite location/auto sync & I wouldn't turn the brightness more than halfway up...I have a car charger and a home charger, I charge my incredible when I'm not using it...hope this helps. I suggest buying an extra battery so you can switch it out when the 1st 1 dies. ***The internet radio will kill it all by itself if you listen for 3 hours, even with the screen asleep.

System Panel is a MUCH better app killer. I've heard from more than several sources that ATK is just the Verizon store's "cure all" for anything that's going wrong with your HTC device.

System Panel gives you a read out of your CPU usage, Memory, and an advanced list of Active, Inactive and Background apps that you can either exclude or kill whenever you use it.

It doesn't run in the background killing battery, and in my opinion is a much more effective task killer, rather than the standby ATK.

It's all your decision and since I don't own an Incredible...yet. I can't say whether it's going to work the same way on that as it does on my Eris but I figured I'd drop that line.