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Help No 3G or WiFi Kills Battery QUICK!

infinitempg

Member
May 14, 2010
58
7
Since upgrading (froyo) and factory reset, bumping charging phone and staying disciplined about turning off WiFi and Bluetooth when not needed, my standard Incredible battery stays charged all day long. I have found that if I go somewhere that is a very enclosed building space, like a local Applebee's I frequent, where I can not get 3G service and barely can get signal enough to call, my battery gets HOT and discharges SO FAST I can go from about 3/4 full charge to dead in an hour. This is with WiFi off, Bluetooth off, data roaming off and enable always-on mobile off and not doing anything with my phone. I am also using Advanced Task Killer with Auto Kill Level set to Aggressive. This works great if I don't go to places with no 3G/WiFi.

So my question is, what the heck is killing my battery in places like this and what can I do to prevent it? I don't really care about getting data service in places like that, I just want to leave with a little juice left on my battery without having to turn my phone off.

Any help?
 
camron-u-mad.gif
 
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I thought so, mainly talking about the infinite''s applebees.
No WiFi, also no NHL, MLB or NFL packages :(

As far as the task killer, on three (3) separate occasions with three (3) different Verizon tech support people and once from face-to-face with tech support at a store, I was told to *USE* Advanced Task Killer. Don't have issues with having it on, in fact I kind of like the ability to kill games that remain active after I stop playing them. My issue is the battery drain at low/no signal spots without WiFi.\

I'll try the airplane mode next time and see if that helps, but tried no ATK right after froyo and phone and battery work much better with it IMHO
 
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Yeah, ATK was useful prior to Froyo, but now Android does a much better job suppressing background apps from running non-stop. You'll probably burn through more battery killing those apps only to have them auto-restart in a few seconds.

Also, if you're rooted, I highly recommend removing (or freezing with Titanium Backup) the Amazon MP3 app. It's constantly trying to find a connection.
 
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I agree that most VZW techs are dumbasses, but don't delete ATK. It doesn't hurt your battery whatsoever. Not sure it helps, either, but it doesn't hurt.

If he uses ATK to *selectively* kill apps, that's ok.

But if he's got it on some sort of automated schedule, then there could be bad consequences, such as notifications *not* activating, sms/mms not sending etc.

It appears that a lot of people swear that TKs "saves their battery" - we can give them the benefit of the doubt about that BUT the cost is lost functionality in Android. So do they want a phone that works or has a lot of battery but only works some of the time and causes frustrating intermittent problems?

That's the tradeoff: better battery life or better functionality? Only the user can decide.

Personally, I think they're playing with fire if they use TKs. But that's just my opinion.
 
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its not even saving your battery.

If you are killing all the VZW bloatware with ATK then you are wasting your battery because the phone is going to start them back up, thus using battery.

Download system panel, use it to actually see what apps are active and using CPU cycles and what are just sitting there cached in memory. You can then use that app to kill processes if you feel like.

ATK is for people who dont want to actually know how their phone works and their hands held like a 2 year old.
 
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VZW techs are dumbasses, delete ATK

Not necessarily DAs but not well educated. They don't have an understanding as to how Android OS works, and why TK is actually BAD for the OS. I was speaking to the mgr of a VZW store. Nice guy but had no idea. His "troubleshooting" first response was "Do you have ATK installed?". Of course, that's what he's told to say, or at least what culturually he has learned as a response. Doesn't mean it is the correct response...
 
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To get back to the OP's point, here is what I have done to save battery.

I added the Modible network widget to my main screen and will toggle it in areas I know my 3G sucks (1 bar at work in my plant). It switches to basic cell network (Talk and text only with 3-4 bars) which is good enough for me while at work since I have my computer.

I have the extended battery and currently have 37.5 hours uptime and 5 hours awake with 67% battery left.

Give that a shot and hopefulyl it will save battery in those dead areas.

-Sev
 
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ATK is a "easy" way out for tech support. It's like calling Comcast and them telling you to reboot and install anti-virus...

With the rare exception that your trying out or using a badly designed app. a ATK can only HURT your phones performance.(at best it does nothing)

There are many articles and blogs by Google engineers explaining why task killers are not needed and can actually hurt your phones performance.
 
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So if ATK'ers are bad for the OS and don't save battery life YET Verizon tech support is instructed to tell EVERYONE to use them... I have heard some tech support tales before but that's up there with wearing a tin foil hat.

Checked emails an hour ago with my phone, used ATK and killed everything. Powered it on just now and had Skype, Handcent SMS, Weatherbug, Drive Safe, TV Guide, Facebook, and a boat load of other apps running. So you're telling me these have no impact on battery life? I'd just like to know what was wrong with running apps WHEN you wanted to run them, rather then having all this crap fire off all on it's own.... ::sigh::
 
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App called "No Bars"

you can set a pre-determined length of time for it to check for a good signal, if there is none - it will put the phone on airplane mode. It will check for signal at a pre-set interval and when there is a good signal it will stop airplane mode.

this does not work 100% of the time but its a good backup in case you forget to put your phone on airplane mode when you get to work.

Does not work so well in areas that have ify service, works best if there is good service or no service, but not in between...

just my 2 cents
 
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