Help 3:45 Battery Life. WTF is going on?

[rickyaustin]

I disconnect my phone in the mornings from an all-night charge at 8:30am. It's been decent battery life, but I've been playing with the phone as a novelty and running it down.

Now that the novelty is up, I'm now working at work and the phone just sits on my desk. The last two days, like clockwork, the phone gives me the 10% or less battery remaining before 12:30pm.

4G is off. All programs are off. No live wallpapers. Widgets running: Foursquare, time/weather HTC default thingy, and Calendar.

I listened to music for 20 minutes via headphones on my train ride to work.

No phone calls.

Mail checks once every hour. I'd consider this very light usage.

Battery usage:
Cell standby: 37%
Phone Idle: 34%
Android System: 14%
Android OS: 4%
Display: 4%
android.process.acore: 3%
Mediaserver: 2%
Calendar: 2%

What gives? I'm not using the phone and it's draining as fast as it should as if I were using it constantly. FYI I have 3-4 bars of 3G where I sit, so it's not looking for service.

I'm wondering if this is normal? Or should I take my phone in? I'm still within the 30 day return period and it's crossing my mind to get rid of this thing all together. This is completely unacceptable.

Appears to be fixed. Head down to the post here.

 

[armandov99]

Are you using Facebook for HTC sense?

 

[rickyaustin]

Are you using Facebook for HTC sense?

Nope.

 

[redandblack1287]

Download the app "batteryhistory" and open it when your battery gets low. Look through the different sections and report back. Don't be alarmed at the app "0" taking up a ton of battery, as that represents the battery used by the radio.

 

[armandov99]

Download the app "batteryhistory" and open it when your battery gets low. Look through the different sections and report back. Don't be alarmed at the app "0" taking up a ton of battery, as that represents the battery used by the radio.

Ha...thanks for that. I kept wondering what the heck this was and hadn't seen this answer before.

Yes, try downloading that or Spare Parts to check battery usage. In my case it was Calendar that was stuck using constant network data and killed my battery in a few hours. I never found out why but I still suspect Facebook for HTC Sense as do a few other people on the forum.

My battery was fixed with a hard reset. After a hard reset, I am at 80% end of day with light usage or 50-60% with medium usage. It went from unacceptable to completely amazing and almost like my blackberry.

Before returning I would highly, highly recommend a hard reset.

 

[crawdad689]

The best part of owning an Evo is that if you forget to plug it in at night, you can guarantee that you'll have "Low Battery" when you wake up - EVEN IF YOU HAVE ALL BACKGROUND PROGRAMS CLOSED!!

Of course this thread will contain apologists who are trying to convince you that operator error is the main issue here, but pay them no mind. The battery life on the EVO is downright laughable. (And yes I've given it a hard reset). I leave it plugged into my computer the entire time I'm at work, as well as every night before I go to bed (notwithstanding the few times mentioned above where I haven't), and I STILL have to deal with low battery warnings and shut-offs pretty much every day!!!!

Luckily I timed my purchase so that the new iPhone will be available before my 30 day trial period w/ Sprint is up! PEACE!

 

[armandov99]

The best part of owning an Evo is that if you forget to plug it in at night, you can guarantee that you'll have "Low Battery" when you wake up - EVEN IF YOU HAVE ALL BACKGROUND PROGRAMS CLOSED!!

Of course this thread will contain apologists who are trying to convince you that operator error is the main issue here, but pay them no mind. The battery life on the EVO is downright laughable. I leave it plugged into my computer the entire time I'm at work, as well as every night before I go to bed (notwithstanding the few times mentioned above where I haven't), and I STILL have to deal with low battery warnings and shut-offs pretty much every day!!!!

Luckily I timed my purchase so that the new iPhone will be available before my 30 day trial period w/ Sprint is up! PEACE!

Weird. My EVO was unplugged yesterday morning at 8:30 AM, used rarely during work but still was on. Used for GTalk all evening and for about 30 minutes of calls. Went to bed with 70% battery left. On all night WITHOUT CHARGING and woke up to 50% battery left at 8 AM today. I have GMail running with push service and Exchange Activesync pulling every 4 hours (so really only once overnight - I don't need push while I sleep). GTalk ALSO stayed signed in all night.

I wonder how this could be explained...hmm...for a device with laughable battery life it sure seems great to me.

 

[rickyaustin]

I wonder how this could be explained...hmm...for a device with laughable battery life it sure seems great to me.

Consider yourself lucky. I'm heading to lunch with a dead phone that I haven't used since I unplugged it at 100% this morning.

 

[crawdad689]

I wonder how this could be explained...

Well that would make 2 of us!

 

[neodorian]

The best part of owning an Evo is that if you forget to plug it in at night, you can guarantee that you'll have "Low Battery" when you wake up - EVEN IF YOU HAVE ALL BACKGROUND PROGRAMS CLOSED!!

Of course this thread will contain apologists who are trying to convince you that operator error is the main issue here, but pay them no mind. The battery life on the EVO is downright laughable. (And yes I've given it a hard reset). I leave it plugged into my computer the entire time I'm at work, as well as every night before I go to bed (notwithstanding the few times mentioned above where I haven't), and I STILL have to deal with low battery warnings and shut-offs pretty much every day!!!

Then why are you still here? I graph my battery usage and if I were to just let it sit on the table, it would last about 2 days at the rate mine goes. During a normal day, using it for constant emailing, occasional calls, text, web browsing, and screwing around, I typically run my phone from 8-9am until maybe 1-2am. If I don't top off via USB at my desk at work I'm usually around 25-30% by the time I go to bed after 17 or 18 hours. If I plan on going out after work on a Friday I maybe charge it for an hour in the evening so it lasts a little longer (like until 3am or later).

Compared to my other touch-screen smart phones and those of friends (various Android phones, iPhones, etc.) I find my battery life to be roughly the same.

The way I do this? I don't treat it like a desktop computer and leave all sorts of things running when I am not using them. If I am not downloading a big file I leave Wimax and Wifi off. If I don't need pinpoint location accuracy I leave GPS off. I do leave data on and I stay logged into "Talk" because I use it a lot. I do not keep any social networking widgets on my home screens so the phone is not constantly polling sites for info.

This is similar to how I use my laptop when running on battery. Smart use stretches battery life. It's common sense.

 

[armandov99]

Consider yourself lucky. I'm heading to lunch with a dead phone that I haven't used since I unplugged it at 100% this morning.

My coworker had the same issue. She was using some auto task killer though so that probably made it worse for her.

I hard reset her phone, re-synced her GMail accounts (3 of them) and she was back in business with over a full day of use on a single charge.

Some app somewhere is screwing up. Hard reset. It sucks, as you have to start over with your apps and settings, but I believe it'll fix your issue.

 

[rickyaustin]

I'll try a hard reset if this issue persists. I wouldn't mind cleaning out the apps and starting over because I actually use far less than what were installed on the phone from the beginning (honeymoon, playing phase).

I've removed the Foursquare widget, and the favorite people widget, as they both retrieve (a small amount) of data constantly. I also was poking around in Twitdroid and noticed there's a setting buried in there to allow constant updates which drain battery. I unchecked this as well.

Phone seems to be stabilized the last couple hours since.

I've never owned anything that needed this much babysitting. Cripes! If I can get a stable setup I'll gladly keep the phone because I don't want to jump back on AT&T's limited plans.

Please please please Evo —*just work.

 

[AndroidN1Girl]

Sounds like you have a crap battery. I had the same issue where I could get only 5 hours of battery (did all of the tweaks) and the phone was sitting idle mostly (wtf). I exchanged phones and I can already see an enormous difference in battery life without any tweaks. Now, 1 hour of moderate-heavy usage brings me down only 5% as opposed to 20-25% like before.

 

[Smiles]

When I first got my EVO, the battery drain scared me. But now, like a few other people on here, with what I would call average usage, I unplug it at 06:30 a.m. and have about 70% battery left at approximately 4:00 p.m. Sometimes more, sometimes less. If I have a 30 minute or longer phone call during the day, I will be at 57% at about 4-4:30 pm.
I have done all the suggestions. I believe that leaving the GPS off helps. Also, the suggestion to calibrate the battery meter by doing an 8 hour charge with it off and regardless of the green light on, is when I began to see a significant improvement. I will probably repeat that charge thing once a month as I saw recommended. I don't find the battery laughable anymore.

 

[leegseegs]

I disconnect my phone in the mornings from an all-night charge at 8:30am. It's been decent battery life, but I've been playing with the phone as a novelty and running it down.

Now that the novelty is up, I'm now working at work and the phone just sits on my desk. The last two days, like clockwork, the phone gives me the 10% or less battery remaining before 12:30pm.

4G is off. All programs are off. No live wallpapers. Widgets running: Foursquare, time/weather HTC default thingy, and Calendar.

I listened to music for 20 minutes via headphones on my train ride to work.

No phone calls.

Mail checks once every hour. I'd consider this very light usage.

Battery usage:
Cell standby: 37%
Phone Idle: 34%
Android System: 14%
Android OS: 4%
Display: 4%
android.process.acore: 3%
Mediaserver: 2%
Calendar: 2%

What gives? I'm not using the phone and it's draining as fast as it should as if I were using it constantly. FYI I have 3-4 bars of 3G where I sit, so it's not looking for service.

I'm wondering if this is normal? Or should I take my phone in? I'm still within the 30 day return period and it's crossing my mind to get rid of this thing all together. This is completely unacceptable.

Rickyaustin,

My wife's EVO had far worse battery life than mine, similar to yours (mine lasts all day and plus some with medium usage). I did the following things to her phone ( all in one night) and her battery life improved remarkably, to where it is now on par with mine:

* Factory reset
*GSM to CDMA fix [How-To] Better battery life, reduce Time Without Signal. - xda-developers
*SD Card Format http://androidforums.com/955129-post1.html
*Battery Trickle Charge Does this work for the battery? - BlackBerry Forums at CrackBerry.com

Other things that I've done to my phone:
Turned "Enable always-on mobile date" to off
Turned off "Network notification" for when a WIFI network is available
Stopped using task killers


(sorry for the two outside links but i couldn't find direct links on AF that had the instructions up front)

Not sure which one of these was the actual savior but I think they all functioned in two ways: it removed two likely culprits for battery life degradation, and reset the battery so it charges and uses power correctly

Second thing I would do, if your still having trouble, like others suggested is to get a replacement battery from Sprint. It could be defective (and I think many of the users here with poorer battery life may just have a defective battery - I've seen too many people on this forum, including me, who get decent / great battery life to pin down the phone as the ultimate culprit)

 

[RoboMonkey]

I'm testing out something with my EVO. I started a clean Scene (I call it iPhone) and the only widget I have is the HTC weather one. Also no task killers. I do have a start up killer for the sprint crap (I figured that wasnt cheating).

Since its my iPhone Scene I did not have Live Wallpaper running, but I'm going to turn it on tonight and see if the battery stays about the same.

I have all the other options pretty much stock (with the exception of contacts and calendar I dont use them). I set up my auto sync, left background data on, along with Mobile Network.

My synch schedules are; News 2hr, Stocks 4hr, Weather 6hr, and my backup non google email account is 1x a day (its my spam email).

I went to bed with 100% battery 7 hours ago I woke up to 97% battery.
So it seems to be behaving well while on standby. Oh one more thing I do have wifi set up as priority over 3/4g (my signal for those isn't so well at home).

 

[htcevolee]

Something worth trying, i wouldnt have believed it if i didnt try it.

Try charging your phone via USB to your computer "if you have that choice" and let it charge fully until the LED turns green and maybe a little more. Then spend a day with it and see how your battery does. After charging with USB my battery has lasted alot longer it seems, it could just be a illusion but worth a try. =)

I am setup with gmail and Activesync and google voice so my phone is constantly pulling something.

 

[rickyaustin]

Looks like your tips are working. I thank you all.

I'm at about 5 hours off my 100% overnight charge, and battery is still over 80%.

What I did:
Hard reset phone, removing all apps. Started over on everything.
Formatted SD Card too, start from scratch.
Added back about 60% of original apps, only the ones I was using.
Did not add Facebook for HTC, no Facebook synching of any kind, it only exists as a static app.
Turned off Twitdroid's constant updates.
Set Mail to update once an hour.
Am running a live calendar widget.
Am running the HTC default time/weather widget with updates every hour.
Then filled my screens with some non-3G-sucking widgets and a ton of app icons.

Seems to be working like a charm.

Let's hope it keeps up. Thanks gang. I like the phone, and would like to get this stabilized. Reeeeeally don't want to jump back to AT&T.

Moral of the story: Something was sucking 3G and draining the battery. I'm more tuned into this now and it should be better.

 

[RoboMonkey]

Just to update, after 13h 56m I just received my 15% notification on my phone. I have been using the heck out of it today, so my guess is the widgets must be killing the battery.

I'll take 7 hours of music, texting, web surfing, news, and video any day. God I think I've been watching videos for 4 hours.

I can post a screen cap if anyone cares.

I'm testing out something with my EVO. I started a clean Scene (I call it iPhone) and the only widget I have is the HTC weather one. Also no task killers. I do have a start up killer for the sprint crap (I figured that wasnt cheating).

Since its my iPhone Scene I did not have Live Wallpaper running, but I'm going to turn it on tonight and see if the battery stays about the same.

I have all the other options pretty much stock (with the exception of contacts and calendar I dont use them). I set up my auto sync, left background data on, along with Mobile Network.

My synch schedules are; News 2hr, Stocks 4hr, Weather 6hr, and my backup non google email account is 1x a day (its my spam email).

I went to bed with 100% battery 7 hours ago I woke up to 97% battery.
So it seems to be behaving well while on standby. Oh one more thing I do have wifi set up as priority over 3/4g (my signal for those isn't so well at home).

 

[armandov99]

Alright, it happened again. I found out what triggered it. I took a picture and tried to e-mail it. It gets stuck in the outbox as usual (another problem for another thread).

Now I have 100% awake time. Disabling sync doesn't fix it. Removed my facebook account, nothing. Turned the phone off then on, nothing. Under spare parts, top usage on network and partial wake usage is 'Media'

I reformatted the SD card. Nothing. Still stuck.

Now that I think about it, when this happened to me last time, I was taking pictures that day as well. Trying to e-mail a picture seems to be what triggers this ridiculous sync/media issue that drains the battery in a few hours.

I don't know what to do, I might have to do another hard reset, but I'm going to play around to see if I can find a fix first...

 

[DirtyDozen]

OP..........its your 3G signal at work it has to be very poor just turn off your mobile network while your sitting at work and turn it back on at lunch/out of work. I have to do the same thing cause they seem to have a lead ceiling at my job....

 

[armandov99]

This has NOTHING to do with signal strength, absolutely nothing. It is fine sitting on the desk all day and uses 10% of the battery every 5 hours if just idling.

Trying to attach a picture to a GMail message is what caused an issue.

Update: I removed my microSD card. Awake time is down to 30%. No longer running 100%. Something to do with trying to send the e-mail with an attachment from the media card screwed everything up royally. With it getting stuck in sync it somehow screwed up the media card and caused the phone to go into 100% awake usage with the card. I suspect this is what caused the issues my coworker and I were having. Initially "Calendar" seemed to be the culprit as well. This is really pissing me off.

 

[rickyaustin]

OP..........its your 3G signal at work it has to be very poor just turn off your mobile network while your sitting at work and turn it back on at lunch/out of work. I have to do the same thing cause they seem to have a lead ceiling at my job....

This was definitely my original thought. However, my 3G speeds are fine and it's showing a consistent 3-4 out of 6 bars at my desk.

As an experiment since reconfiguring the entire phone I have left 3G on all day at work, it's 5:20pm, so roughly on for 9 straight hours and I'm still showing better than 70%. I've actually used the phone today too with hourly email updates.

Something was sucking 3G the entire time, and I've managed to eliminate it, finally.

 

[kiz88]

The best part of owning an Evo is that if you forget to plug it in at night, you can guarantee that you'll have "Low Battery" when you wake up - EVEN IF YOU HAVE ALL BACKGROUND PROGRAMS CLOSED!!

Of course this thread will contain apologists who are trying to convince you that operator error is the main issue here, but pay them no mind. The battery life on the EVO is downright laughable. (And yes I've given it a hard reset). I leave it plugged into my computer the entire time I'm at work, as well as every night before I go to bed (notwithstanding the few times mentioned above where I haven't), and I STILL have to deal with low battery warnings and shut-offs pretty much every day!!!!

Luckily I timed my purchase so that the new iPhone will be available before my 30 day trial period w/ Sprint is up! PEACE!

I have to disagree with you, I have left it on over nite with all backround apps off and it went from 100% to 89% over nite.

Sounds like a few people did not charge it correct the first nite, minimum 24hrs and I get 13-15 hours minimum out of 1 charge with heavy use.

Enjoy the iphone. But you may have a bad battery or you just have way to may backround apps running.

Im @ 11 hours and 21 minutes right now and have 42% battery left.

 

[LearnIIBurn]

The EVO is a pretty inconsistent phone. Sometimes it seems like the battery is hard to drain and other days it drains super fast. Sometimes my apps all sync perfectly and other days nothing gets pushed until some random time the phone decides to receive everything at once (explosion of notifications). This is definitely the most exciting handset I have ever owned in a good and bad way. I payed a ton of my hard earned money for it and will continue to every month I guess. I am getting random reboots now out of no where. I like Android a lot, but holy hell it needs a lot of work. Especially the Market. I mean, how the hell am I supposed to diagnose anything that's wrong with my phone when the programs I PURCHASE through the Market may or may not be breaking my phone more!? Google needs to REGULATE a little more in my opinion. We all scramble around trying to come up with voodoo and placebos as to what can be wrong (God bless this forum ), but I still feel like I'm spending more time diagnosing my handset instead of using it. Gets old...

Still love it though... in a weird way.