10 Hour Evo Battery Life: Graph of Battery Usage

[pingpongboss]

We've seen a lot of people claim very different battery life for their Evo. I used to claim 8-9 hours, some guy claimed 61+ hours of battery life http://androidforums.com/tips-tricks-evo-4g/85497-tip-trick-61-hours-24-battery-remaining.html

I propose that we all post our battery life graph like the one I am about to post below. This way we can look at these claims in scrutiny, and perhaps figure out why it is that some people's Evos seem to last longer than others.

Here is a graph of my Evo's Battery Charge over 1 day:

Wake up at 7:30am to disconnect the charger, listen to Pandora on the car to work until I arrive at 8am. Idles until lunch time at 12pm. Use the Evo to read up on some news at lunch until 1:30pm. Listen to Pandora while working until 5pm. Drive home while listening to Pandora in the car. Battery starts giving warning indications while driving, and phone dies when I get home at 6pm.

Very usual day, and matches what the battery charge graph shows. The top apps of the day are:

System Processes contains mediaserver (2.4% due to Pandora), akmd (0.3% accelerometer polling), and everything else is <0.1%. As you can see I barely used my phone during the day for anything but Pandora.

So based on my data, I'd say that the normal battery life for the Evo is under 10 hours. My settings are: no 4g, no wifi, no bluetooth, yes gps, yes bckgrnd data, auto brightness, no live wallpaper, yes taskmanager (ATK, set to "safe" setting. Will probably get rid of this..), no friend stream, no flickr.

I'd love to see other people post up their Battery Usage graphs as well. The App used is "SystemPanel App / Task Manager", available for free in the market. Go into Settings and allow it to Monitor. The screenshots were made by ShootMe, also available in the market.

 

[freeza]

Nice idea. I will participate Friday morning

 

[pingpongboss]

Nice idea. I will participate Friday morning

Looking forward to your results

 

[mrk]

That is an incredibly badass program.

 

[keyholeSecrets]

Is this app already included on the Evo or would I need to grab it from the android market? I'd really like to try this when I get my Evo on fri. (yee! so excited)

 

[bwillie007]

I can't wait until they come out w/ 3000mAh batteries w/ the extended door. I don't care how awkward and crazy they look. That thing will power it all day under 4G indefinitely.

 

[Mabster]

Is this app already included on the Evo or would I need to grab it from the android market? I'd really like to try this when I get my Evo on fri. (yee! so excited)

The apps are listed in the last paragraph of the OPs post, I missed it the first read through also:

The App used is System Panel, available for free in the market. Go into Settings and allow it to Monitor. The screenshots were made by ShootMe, also available in the market.

Very nice breakdown ping. I'm interested in seeing other results and once I've gotten into a normal routine with the EVO I'll post some results as well.

 

[newone757]

I did this yesterday. Tried to screenshot my chart but the included Sd card crapped out again while i was doing so ;(.

Basically after 10 hours of moderate out and about usage (texting, couple quick calls, push email, handful of pics, few videos, 10 minutes of charging while i transferred some stuff, and more i cant remember--(GPS< WIFI< 4G all off) I got about 10 hours by the time i went to sleep and still had 28% battery left. Prolly coulda got 11 or 12 out of it total. Not too shabby. But if you hammer it you can kill the battery in No time

 

[skpd]

I'd love to see other people post up their Battery Usage graphs as well. The App used is System Panel, available for free in the market. Go into Settings and allow it to Monitor. The screenshots were made by ShootMe, also available in the market.

strange, I can't find it on AppBrain..

 

[NeoteriX]

I love analytical software like this! I'll contribute too when I can.

...but part of me has to wonder how much battery is being consumed by having a such a service thread constantly running. :lol:

 

[esone1ll]

strange, I can't find it on AppBrain..

Me neither. Can someone post an AppBrain link?

 

[pingpongboss]

strange, I can't find it on AppBrain..

Me neither. Can someone post an AppBrain link?

Full name is "SystemPanel App / Task Manager". Here you go SystemPanel App / Task Manager - Android app on AppBrain

 

[robertdahlgren]

Very cool app.
Plot started now at 42% battery since I didn't charge last night.

 

[ChristmasLights]

Pingpongboss,

From your screenshots I see you have two bars, and three bars of reception out of five. Transmitting power is a huge battery drain, so your proximity to a tower will radically alter your mileage. It would be nice if we could somehow include reception bars in our usage graphs.

 

[pingpongboss]

From your screenshots I see you have two bars, and three bars of reception out of five. Transmitting power is a huge battery drain, so your proximity to a tower will radically alter your mileage. It would be nice if we could somehow include reception bars in our usage graphs.

Actually, 3-4 bars out of 6, but that's not important. At work (8am-5pm) I always have full bars of reception. But still it does not seem to drain less battery than at home.

 

[TheGoatLantern]

Very cool app.
Plot started now at 42% battery since I didn't charge last night.

Just be careful with the widget it's a big red x that will kill all apps running on the phone...

 

[jmxp69]

Couple of observations:
- Autobrightness is a killer on my hero. I shut that off and saw immediate battery life increases.
- Apps that are constantly running like task killers and battery graphs also hit the battery. I used to run a battery profiler until I realized how much battery it consumed after killing it for a few days.
- Wonder why your CPU spends so much time around 20%? It looks like from around 12-6pm your CPU averaged around 20%. That cannot be good for battery life.

Would you be willing to turn off the task killer, battery profiler, autobrightness, and report your findings?

 

[pingpongboss]

Couple of observations:
- Autobrightness is a killer on my hero. I shut that off and saw immediate battery life increases.
- Apps that are constantly running like task killers and battery graphs also hit the battery. I used to run a battery profiler until I realized how much battery it consumed after killing it for a few days.
- Wonder why your CPU spends so much time around 20%? It looks like from around 12-6pm your CPU averaged around 20%. That cannot be good for battery life.

Would you be willing to turn off the task killer, battery profiler, autobrightness, and report your findings?

Good idea I'll do this for tomorrow's test. I think that's Pandora using the CPU.

Today my Evo's battery is lasting way longer than yesterday. I'm not sure why. This is the longest it's ever lasted:

It's 6pm right now, and usually the battery should be dying. But it's still got a good 60% right now. The only difference from yesterday is that I didn't listen to Pandora in the afternoon. I wonder if Pandora affects the battery life that much...

mediaserver leads at 0.4% under System Processes. I'll update when this battery dies.

 

[jmxp69]

I think the hint is in your CPU usage. Notice the CPU graph: It only momentarily peaked above 10% for a short period compared to 30% for a sustained period.

 

[Thefoodman52]

Honestly, I vote against Pandora on our phones until they optimize it for android. Lastfm works hella better.

 

[bodu]

Off topic: any opinions on Slacker?

 

[pingpongboss]

Off topic: any opinions on Slacker?

Hmm the reason I stuck with Pandora is because on my Moto Droid slacker wouldn't let me log in no matter what, and Last.fm would consistently crash the whole phone after streaming for 30 minutes.

 

[Android 17]

What's wrong with Pandora now? I like both Pandora and Last.fm, but personally I feel like Pandora tends to pick better choices of songs based on your artists, not always, but for the most part.

Another thing is, from what I've read, Last.fm does not offer a higher quality setting, with them you're stuck at 128 kbps which is just ok, but with Pandora, you can set the quality to 192kbps.

 

[pingpongboss]

Yea I kind of abandoned the graph for my 2nd day battery test because Root came out. going to do another graph tmr

 

[robertdahlgren]

Here's a plot of 23 hours. This was a lower than normal usage day with a few phone calls in and out, lots of email, a fair bit of web browsing, a couple youtube videos, but no extended data session on 4G or 3G while out.

Normally this type of day wouldn't use a close to a full battery for me but in this 24 hours I went from 40% to 15% charge to 98% back down to 40% so essentially a full battery drain.

Gaps in data:
The two day-time gaps were while playing sports (hence the lower than normal usage day).
I shut off monitor recording but did not power off the phone or charge overnight for the 8 hour nighttime gap. Recording seems to be taking a decent chunk off battery life as I haven't been using a full battery up in 24 hours unless I have an extended GPS or 4G sessions (or mobile hotspot usage) while out and about. It looks like the idle usage was substantially lower with recording off based on battery consumption over those 8 hours versus the day-time idle periods.

Auto-brightness off (medium and high manual settings used while indoors / outdoors)
GPS off except when using maps
Bluetooth off except when driving and making / taking a couple phone calls
ATK used to clean up
Off wi-fi on 3G during day-time idle periods plus gaps around them.

Time to go root now. Should be entertaining to take a rooted Evo into the local sprint store to look at accessories tomorrow.