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For people who's battery go from 100% to 90% in a matter of minutes

What are your results ?

  • It works!

    Votes: 30 22.9%
  • It doesn't work ... *SOB*

    Votes: 36 27.5%
  • I have yet to try it

    Votes: 30 22.9%
  • I'm still waiting for more feedback

    Votes: 35 26.7%

  • Total voters
    131

sh4o8kid

Well-Known Member
May 27, 2010
176
93
*IMPORTANT*
The results of this have been mostly positive. Although we aren't having problems now, we may run into a few bumps later on as this solution is very premature at the moment. Please do not put your hopes and dreams on this solution just yet until we have more time to play with it.


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I may have found a solution and you'll only need to do this one time (hopefully)

For most of who got the EVO's a bit later, we had the update that fixed the SD card issue. All was great so most of us most likely did not do a format on the micro sd card. I tried to make my battery last longer by doing all these tips and tricks and the one that helped most was the turning off and charging it over n over again. It's a pain doing that so i figured what else haven't we tried?

I charged my phone to 100% and decided to take the micro sd card out and just play with the phone. I noticed that my battery didnt drop 10-15% in a matter of minutes so i thought that was weird. I decided to format the micro SD card (the slow way) and now i notice that when I'm at like 90% and i start charging, it takes a lot longer to charge up to 100% . When i take off the charger, my battery doesn't drop anymore. Can anybody confirm this?


Format was 32kb, and unchecked "quick format'.

Formatting on a Computer
Step 1
Insert the tiny micro SD card into slot located at the bottom of the the larger SD card adapter. Insert the combination into a USB card reader or your computer's onboard card slots--if available.

Step 2
Open the "My Computer" menu and then insert the card reader into a USB port on your computer. Note the drive assignment your computer gives the reader when inserted (ex F:Card Read ).

Step 3
Right-click on the drive your card is inserted into and choose the "Format" option from the menu that appears. Click the "Start" button at the bottom of the "Format" menu.

Taken from:
How to Format a Sandisk Micro SD Card | eHow.com


edit: Ive been charging my evo when it hit 90%, it's been 25 minutes and its at 98% and still charging.

edit2: It's been 15 minutes since i hit 100% and i'm still at 100% battery life. with moderate usage.

edit3: it's been 37 minutes and i'm still at 100%

edit4: it's been 42 minutes, 100%.

edit 5: 43 minutes, 99% battery, 37% android system, 20% standby, etc etc. Not bad for using the phone for so long such as messaging and e-mails.

edit 6: Right now i'm at 83% battery life at 8H 35M

What i did so far since 99%:
4-5 Text messages
25 Minutes of Youtube video on my own wifi
1 Minute of checking forums
Check both my email accounts (I cycle through this only once a day)
Took 6 camera pictures with no flash

edit 7: I charged it back to 100% (It took some time to charge from 90% to 100%). The reason why i'm charging back to 100% is because this format fix is to only address the 10-15% loss of battery life. So here i am, i'm at 100%, no rebooting or anything of that matter. The 100% still sticks and is running smoothly! I for one will shout out to the world that the format of the sd card fixed my 10-15% loss of battery life issue.

edit 8: Some people have reported that it works, some reported that it doesn't. Try if you have nothing to lose. Note that a lot of people are still testing this and problems can arise later on in the future. In the meantime, the ones that got this to work haven't ran into any problems just yet. We'll see how this works out as it plays out in the next couple days.


Also, i wanted to thanks for all the feedback.
 

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Wow. This worked for me as well. Its only been 20 minutes and still at 100%. I know for a fact I'd be down to 95-96% right now. Thank you for this tip. It definitely needs to be added to the list of ways to conserve battery life.

Also, I used a SD adapter for my microSD card. At first my Mac was showing the card as "read-only" even though the adapter wasn't set to the lock position. I moved the lock button between locked and unlocked and then I was able to get write access to format the card. Just in case any of you are having this issue, that's the fix.

**Btw, most may know this but formatting your card erases all the data on it. So make sure you backup the card first by simply copying all the data to a folder on your computer first.
 
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Upvote 0
So is the theory something is wrong with the SD card and it is forcing the system to "work harder" and thus expel 10% battery juice initially?

I don't really buy it, if anything when you pull the SD card, you break an app like Facebook, which is constantly trying to cache data (to the now unavailable SD card). It likely suspends caching for a while and that is why you notice this improvement. In a day or so, I'm sure it will be back to it's normal self.
 
Upvote 0
I may have found a solution.

For most of who got the EVO's a bit later, we had the update that fixed the SD card issue. All was great so most of us most likely did not do a format on the micro sd card. I tried to make my battery last longer by doing all these tips and tricks and the one that helped most was the turning off and charging it over n over again. It's a pain doing that so i figured what else haven't we tried?

I charged my phone to 100% and decided to take the micro sd card out and just play with the phone. I noticed that my battery didnt drop 10-15% in a matter of minutes so i thought that was weird. I decided to format the micro SD card and now i notice that when I'm at like 90% and i start charging, it takes a lot longer to charge up to 100% . When i take off the charger, my battery doesn't drop anymore. Can anybody confirm this?

Also when i formatted the card, i unchecked the quick way of doing it. It takes a while longer but it seems to help?

Formatting on a Computer
Step 1
Insert the tiny micro SD card into slot located at the bottom of the the larger SD card adapter. Insert the combination into a USB card reader or your computer's onboard card slots--if available.

Step 2
Open the "My Computer" menu and then insert the card reader into a USB port on your computer. Note the drive assignment your computer gives the reader when inserted (ex F:Card Read ).

Step 3
Right-click on the drive your card is inserted into and choose the "Format" option from the menu that appears. Click the "Start" button at the bottom of the "Format" menu.

Taken from:
How to Format a Sandisk Micro SD Card | eHow.com


edit: Ive been charging my evo when it hit 90%, it's been 25 minutes and its at 98% and still charging.

edit2: It's been 15 minutes since i hit 100% and i'm still at 100% battery life. with moderate usage.

edit3: it's been 37 minutes and i'm still at 100%

edit4: it's been 42 minutes, 100%.

edit 5: 43 minutes, 99% battery, 37% android system, 20% standby, etc etc. Not bad for using the phone for so long such as messaging and e-mails.

So is the theory something is wrong with the SD card and it is forcing the system to "work harder" and thus expel 10% battery juice initially?

I don't really buy it, if anything when you pull the SD card, you break an app like Facebook, which is constantly trying to cache data (to the now unavailable SD card). It likely suspends caching for a while and that is why you notice this improvement. In a day or so, I'm sure it will be back to it's normal self.

Well I guess we'll have to come back and check on you progress... Could you please update your post and let us know how this is doing as time goes on.. maybe tomorrow and the next day...

On another note, let's say this actually does work... I for one have games downloaded from Gameloft, if I format my sd card I'll lose everything. Even if I back it up it wont let me reload / download / reinstall the game... I guess I'd be SOL wouldn't I?!?!?
 
Upvote 0
Has anyone else been able to confirm that this works? I want to pick up the Evo, but I was really concerned about the battery life.

I am sure HTC will have firmware updates that will resolve these issues. I had the Palm Pre previous to this, and it sucked for a few months until Palm got it correct. Battery life was like 3-4 hours at first, but they figured it out, and eventually got it to where I was getting 12-14 hours with decent usage.

You just have to ask yourself, are you an early adopter?
 
Upvote 0
Well I guess we'll have to come back and check on you progress... Could you please update your post and let us know how this is doing as time goes on.. maybe tomorrow and the next day...

On another note, let's say this actually does work... I for one have games downloaded from Gameloft, if I format my sd card I'll lose everything. Even if I back it up it wont let me reload / download / reinstall the game... I guess I'd be SOL wouldn't I?!?!?

i think with gameloft games you have to repurchase the game. it sucks.
 
Upvote 0
Posted in another thread about battery, but can anyone actually test battery drain in a way that would help us all. I suggest 1) charging battery in Evo to full, then time draining and compare it to 2) a spare battery charged with a separate battery charger until full, then inserting into Evo and draining using the same settings/features as in step 1.

If there's a noticeable difference, then the phone's software/firmware have to be the culprits.
 
Upvote 0
Has anyone else been able to confirm that this works? I want to pick up the Evo, but I was really concerned about the battery life.

Two things. First, kindly note the OP said that this had to do with when people got their Evos.

I got my Evo on 6/6.

Second:

So is the theory something is wrong with the SD card and it is forcing the system to "work harder" and thus expel 10% battery juice initially?

I don't really buy it, if anything when you pull the SD card, you break an app like Facebook, which is constantly trying to cache data (to the now unavailable SD card). It likely suspends caching for a while and that is why you notice this improvement. In a day or so, I'm sure it will be back to it's normal self.

I believe I'm on firm ground that it's the crufty and unnecessary (for some of us) pre-loaded apps that are indeed doing weird things.

When you get your Evo, try the many battery tips here - I have - and especially note the various threads giving great advice about configuring your screen widgets so you can control the radios quite easily and effectively.

Finally, I've attacked the Sprint and HTC installed apps at startup, others have as well, and I'm getting GREAT battery results with my Evo configured for business use.

http://androidforums.com/htc-evo-4g/102336-real-app-startup-control.html

Note my last post: 22 hours on with 3 hours of talking and double that for light emailing, with a total battery consumption of only (92-27=) 65%.

If one downloads the SystemPanelLite Task Manager by NextApp, Inc. you'll see that the CPU clock speed is NOT constant, it seems to increase or decrease speed depending on what apps are running. If this app is indeed accurate, in that it shows that the CPU speed will increase when more is running, then it's therefore true that more processor-intensive applications, or a large number of running applications, will send the Evo into a higher CPU-speed state.

When microprocessors run faster, they get warmer - I think you'll find that's substantiated by checking on the bazillion websites for gamers giving them CPU overclocking advice for their PCs.

And that additional heat dissipation is coming from higher power consumption, because it does generally tend to take more juice to run a given processor at a higher speed.

Hope this helps.

Meanwhile - I'll be monitoring this thread as well, because I never say never and I like to leave no stones unturned.

Maybe there is something screwy in how some of the SD cards were formatted.
 
Upvote 0
Right now i'm at 83% battery life at 8H 35M

What i did so far since 99%:
4-5 Text messages
25 Minutes of Youtube video on my own wifi
1 Minute of checking forums
Check both my email accounts (I cycle through this only once a day)
Took 6 camera pictures with no flash

I'm glad to hear that it's working for some of you. Can you guys update us on how well this works? I know that this might not give us great battery life still but it still gives us that extra 10-15% of battery loss back.
 
Upvote 0
Do you format the card in FAT32??

Definitely going to try this when I get to work today......Hopefully it can be formated in the phone or hooked up to my computer through a USB since I do not have a card reader.....

I forgot what it was, I believe it was FAT32. All i did was when i hit format, i unchecked the quick format and proceeded. I never changed the system type.
 
Upvote 0

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