Help Battery discussions, maintaining battery life

evofrompre said:

I charged my phone, it got to 99%. I downloaded a few apps, played some games, checked email -- I've now been using it for 1 hr 20 min, and my battery charge is.....still 99%. Weird.

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You may find that with more charge cycles, the battery indicator becomes more accurate. I suspect this is a case where the battery indicator still doesn't know the true range of charge of the battery and prematurely gave out the 99% charge reading. This is pretty common with a brand new phone.

CriticalCritic said:

It's not that weird. I've been running my phone hard all day, 11.5hrs and I just hit 16%. This thing is awesome on battery life!

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I'm a power user and was very concerned about battery life on this monster. That's great to know.

andrdrulz said:

For lord vader-Sorry for a late response but ive used an app called battery notifier (big text) and its always worked pretty well.. Free too. Every once in a while when I first started using it my task manager would kill it but stopped doing it after a while. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.larryvgs.battery

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I uninstalled Battery Indicator Pro and tried this. HUGE difference. Much better. Thanks for the heads up.

I'm shocked at how long this battery lasts. I work in a factory so I listen to audio books for 8 hours straight. With my OG Evo, if I left the house with 100% battery it'd die about 6 hours into my shift and I'd switch batteries. With my LTEvo I get home with about 66% left! I was worried the permanent battery would be an issue, but I'm glad to see I was WAAAAAY wrong.

Well, I'm 6.5 hrs into my CDMA vs LTE+CDMA option test (yes, wifi is disconnected this time). Again leaving my phone stationary without being used.

Right now I'm running the LTE+ option and I still have 93% battery. Taking into consideration that I have added several (but battery conscious) data syncing features since my last test (so an overall slight increase in consumption should be expected), I'm thinking that this will end up being right on par with my previous results of consumption at about 0.8% per hour.

In other words, I'm guessing that there will be little to no difference in battery consumption between the two options. I guess we'll see...

CriticalCritic said:

It's not that weird. I've been running my phone hard all day, 11.5hrs and I just hit 16%. This thing is awesome on battery life!

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When you say hard, what type and how much usage are you referring to?

SamuraiBigEd said:

When you say hard, what type and how much usage are you referring to?

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Yesterday? Giving it my best guesses... I spent about a little over an hour in an area with no signal while playing a simple game for about half that time (nonintensive graphics), about 45mins total phone calls, about 20mins setting up and customizing my various email accounts, probably about 5-6 total hours of internet browsing (using both XScope and Tapatalk depending on my needs... I tried to use my phone for everything I could), about 30mins total of remote-accessing my laptop, about 15 minutes testing some Cinemanow movies that I am trying to convert, and maybe 15 total minutes of texting.

So when I go to bed at night or the phone is sitting in my pocket while I at work but I'm am connected to wifi are you saying I should turn off 3G to save battery? I always used to shut it off whenever wifi was on but then I was told leave it on it knows your using wifi and not 3G and won't drain battery so that when you disconnect wifi your 3G will automatically connect and you don't have to turn it off or on. I don't know I am confused a little now. But I have been leaving my 3G on and wifi now since my friend told me to do that and that he's done that with both of his EVO's.

novox77 said:

3G and 4G are a completely different story. these connections require significant power, even when signal strength is decent. Turning them off when in standby saves a lot of power. Of course, doing so means certain tradeoffs, like not being able to stream music, do GPS tracking, get push email notifications, etc. So it's not always appropriate. But smart management of 3G/4G radio is a big battery saver.

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I really am amazed at the battery life ltevo has.... As the days go by it seems like the battery lasts a little longer each day... And I am a heavy user... TONS of txts.. Facebook twitter instagram Tapatalk Web browsing.. Games... Skype you name it.. And I am easily surpassing the day.. I had to tryand conserve battery before but with ltevo I'm free to do as I please... Which is awesome!

3vodroid said:

I really am amazed at the battery life ltevo has.... As the days go by it seems like the battery lasts a little longer each day... And I am a heavy user... TONS of txts.. Facebook twitter instagram Tapatalk Web browsing.. Games... Skype you name it.. And I am easily surpassing the day.. I had to tryand conserve battery before but with ltevo I'm free to do as I please... Which is awesome!

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I can confirm this as well

My battery life was amazing out of the box, and it seems to have only gotten better over the last several days.

CriticalCritic said:

Yesterday? Giving it my best guesses... I spent about a little over an hour in an area with no signal while playing a simple game for about half that time (nonintensive graphics), about 45mins total phone calls, about 20mins setting up and customizing my various email accounts, probably about 5-6 total hours of internet browsing (using both XScope and Tapatalk depending on my needs... I tried to use my phone for everything I could), about 30mins total of remote-accessing my laptop, about 15 minutes testing some Cinemanow movies that I am trying to convert, and maybe 15 total minutes of texting.

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Thanks CC, you are using more internet based service compared to me. This time of year I put a minimum of 2 hours on the phone and up to 5 on really busy days. I also have 1 POP3 email account checking every 30 minutes and 4 IMAP, internet usage varies greatly, 20+ texts a day, GPS always on as well as WiFi and Bluetooth, and I play games when I am on breaks.

My business partner is pretty much the same except that he regularly does 5+ hours a day on the phone. He can kill the Seidio 4000mah battery in his 3D in as little as 8 hours, it usually gets me 12+!

so here are the results of the CDMA vs LTE+ options.

This is the shot after about 12.5hrs on LTE+. Immediately after this shot I changed over to CDMA only.


This shot is after an additional period of time running CDMA only.

I'm very busy right now, so I can't go into more specifics at the moment. But know that there is no LTE in my area.

Well I had a bad night tonight and was upset. I so nee done of those battery packs and soon. Went to dinner around 7 had 90 something signal wasn't great talked on the phone for about 15 minutes took a couple pics and tried to upload to facebook and I was sitting outside and signal just wasn't great. I should of turned off 3G all together cause then I went to a bar and around midnight or 12:30 my phone died completely. All I had done at the bar was a few text and some facebook and once again I tried to upload a pic and 3g wasn't great and there was no wifi. I threw my charger in my purse and got to charge it for 5 minutes but not enought to do much.

I've been getting good battery life every day but I am home on wifi at work on wifi with not much usage of course when working. And I should of checked to see what was using the battery and I didn't. My screen isn't up high. So I don't know I think cause it was trying to get a 3G signal. If i at least had that battery pack thing I could of let phone sit in purse charging for a bit and just checked it every now and again for a text. But it turned off on my by 12 or 12:30 I would say 1 at the latest and at 7pm I had like 94%. And I didn't do much. Usually I am just on Facebook and texting. My auto sync was on too I am guessing I should of turned that off. I thought it was off but it wasn't. Cause I can open email and facebook to see stuff it doesn't have to sync to be current.

I just don't know which battery pack to get I saw a 5200 one for 33 bucks I think in Amazon. But other than the 1st day of having the phone I've been great with battery except tonight but I'm usually always near a plug or it's charging on dock in car. I think it was a combination of no good 3G signal and auto sync on I don't know how often it's set to sync what. But I love this phone so much I wouldn't trade it. I just need the battery pack thing.

Rose4uKy said:

Well I had a bad night tonight and was upset. I so nee done of those battery packs and soon. Went to dinner around 7 had 90 something signal wasn't great talked on the phone for about 15 minutes took a couple pics and tried to upload to facebook and I was sitting outside and signal just wasn't great. I should of turned off 3G all together cause then I went to a bar and around midnight or 12:30 my phone died completely. All I had done at the bar was a few text and some facebook and once again I tried to upload a pic and 3g wasn't great and there was no wifi. I threw my charger in my purse and got to charge it for 5 minutes but not enought to do much.

I've been getting good battery life every day but I am home on wifi at work on wifi with not much usage of course when working. And I should of checked to see what was using the battery and I didn't. My screen isn't up high. So I don't know I think cause it was trying to get a 3G signal. If i at least had that battery pack thing I could of let phone sit in purse charging for a bit and just checked it every now and again for a text. But it turned off on my by 12 or 12:30 I would say 1 at the latest and at 7pm I had like 94%. And I didn't do much. Usually I am just on Facebook and texting. My auto sync was on too I am guessing I should of turned that off. I thought it was off but it wasn't. Cause I can open email and facebook to see stuff it doesn't have to sync to be current.

I just don't know which battery pack to get I saw a 5200 one for 33 bucks I think in Amazon. But other than the 1st day of having the phone I've been great with battery except tonight but I'm usually always near a plug or it's charging on dock in car. I think it was a combination of no good 3G signal and auto sync on I don't know how often it's set to sync what. But I love this phone so much I wouldn't trade it. I just need the battery pack thing.

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Check to see which apps and other power-hungry items you may have quietly running in the background, unbeknownst to you. Sometimes there's a big app running without your knowing it.

As far as battery packs, there are numerous ones out there. I decided to not go the cheap, poor quality route. Instead, I bought one that is powerful. It's not cheap, but its 5-star review convinced me to give it a try. I'm glad I did, because this thing is awesome.

Found it on Amazon: Amazon.com: Seidio BD2-PBPT22 Charging Vault Kit for Most USB Ready Devices - Retail Packaging - Black: Cell Phones & Accessories

toddpedersen said:

Please understand that it will take 3 to 5 charges and discharges to fully optimize your battery.

It is also critical that you rarely let the battery drain lower than 25% to 30%, as it can harm the battery permanently.

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I think folks appreciate any advice they can get but honestly this is an old wives tale regarding LIon/LiP batteries that seems to travel around the internet multiple times then it lands back here again periodically.

There is -no- optimizing that can be done on these batteries. The internal circuitry prevents over and under charging. The phone will shut down when it reaches a certain point. The damage that can be done comes from leaving the phone in a highly discharged state and the charge decay continues (which isn't likely to happen with these folks here).

With that being said I'll post a few observations of my own shorlty. My daughter decided to interrupt me playing with this new handset so I could take her to her bff's house to play

Children....

Ok, back to my earlier results. It seems that I lost about 1% per hour using LTE+CDMA while my phone sat idle, and I lost about half that (0.5% per hour) when on CDMA only. Taking into account that the LTE+ option was run from the hours of 10am to 10:30pm (mostly daytime hours), and the CDMA option was run from 10:30pm to 11:30am (mostly night hours, also running into a weekend) the LTE+ version was seeing slightly more auto syncing because the test was run during peak hours, so slightly more consumption should be expected. Also, you can see that I did take a phone call (brief) during the LTE+ test run, which led to another slight decrease.

So to sum it up, there really is no significant battery impact between running the CDMA or LTE+CDMA options. Just because the phone arrives with the LTE+ option checked doesn't mean the battery is going to be any worse when the phone is sitting idle (it's not like the phone is using resources to try to find LTE service).

If I had to guess, the LTE is being implemented into existing Sprint towers, and the phone is setup to connect to whichever tower has the best CDMA signal (no surprises). So if that tower has CDMA capability, then the phone will utilize it, but it's not going to seek out CDMA from all surrounding towers. Just a guess...


So overall I've found that:
- The CDMA vs LTE+CDMA option do not lead to any significant difference in the battery life of an idle phone in an area without LTE service, and
- Checking the 'best wifi performance' option will significantly drain the phone's battery when sitting idle and connected to a wifi network (not sure about its impact when wifi is on but not connected, though I would guess it's the same or significantly worse).


I hope this information is useful to everyone!

CriticalCritic said:

Ok, back to my earlier results. It seems that I lost about 1% per hour using LTE+CDMA while my phone sat idle, and I lost about half that (0.5% per hour) when on CDMA only. Taking into account that the LTE+ option was run from the hours of 10am to 10:30pm (mostly daytime hours), and the CDMA option was run from 10:30pm to 11:30am (mostly night hours, also running into a weekend) the LTE+ version was seeing slightly more auto syncing because the test was run during peak hours, so slightly more consumption should be expected. Also, you can see that I did take a phone call (brief) during the LTE+ test run, which led to another slight decrease.

So to sum it up, there really is no significant battery impact between running the CDMA or LTE+CDMA options. Just because the phone arrives with the LTE+ option checked doesn't mean the battery is going to be any worse when the phone is sitting idle (it's not like the phone is using resources to try to find LTE service).

If I had to guess, the LTE is being implemented into existing Sprint towers, and the phone is setup to connect to whichever tower has the best CDMA signal (no surprises). So if that tower has CDMA capability, then the phone will utilize it, but it's not going to seek out CDMA from all surrounding towers. Just a guess...


So overall I've found that:
- The CDMA vs LTE+CDMA option do not lead to any significant difference in the battery life of an idle phone in an area without LTE service, and
- Checking the 'best wifi performance' option will significantly drain the phone's battery when sitting idle and connected to a wifi network (not sure about its impact when wifi is on but not connected, though I would guess it's the same or significantly worse).


I hope this information is useful to everyone!

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thanks for the update and your time doing this...

but i read your results with a different tilt...
1% / hr with LTE on (with little usage)
.5% / hr with LTE off

that is a huge difference...
LTE doubles the usage!.. halved the battery life
or
LTE off saves you battery.. doubles your battery life

dan330 said:

thanks for the update and your time doing this...

but i read your results with a different tilt...
1% / hr with LTE on (with little usage)
.5% / hr with LTE off

that is a huge difference...
LTE doubles the usage!.. halved the battery life
or
LTE off saves you battery.. doubles your battery life

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Very true. That's certainly an understandable interpretation when the options are compared against each other.

However, the overall decrease in battery is very minute when viewed compared to the overall battery life. Also, I didn't keep all variables constant between the two tests (the night vs day syncing variable, and the phone call I accepted during the LTE+ test [not to mention the calls that rang but didn't accept during the day vs no calls that night]).

So I think that these two uncontrolled variables would have an impact on battery life which would help explain the difference, especially when considering the minute levels of overall consumption.

@Rose:

If you're connected to a wifi hotspot, 3G is automatically turned off. This is handled by Android. When I mentioned I was managing my 3G state manually, it was for situations where I did not have wifi access. If you're connected to wifi, standby battery life SHOULD be very good. If it's not, something on your phone is probably using data via the wifi heavily, or you're doing something that is CPU-intensive. In both cases, you should be able to tell because your phone will be warm to the touch.

I know LTE isn't out yet, but the only reason I would use 4G was the fact that I could not use voice and data on 3G, But now that I can use voice and data on 3G, I will use LTE for demanding things, but I will use less now than on my OG Evo!

The battery life is awesome I unplugged my phone at 7:20ish am and it's now 6:50pm and I'm at 80% battery life....FWIW I also disabled NFC, don't know if this really made a difference!

CriticalCritic said:

Very true. That's certainly an understandable interpretation when the options are compared against each other.

However, the overall decrease in battery is very minute when viewed compared to the overall battery life. Also, I didn't keep all variables constant between the two tests (the night vs day syncing variable, and the phone call I accepted during the LTE+ test [not to mention the calls that rang but didn't accept during the day vs no calls that night]).

So I think that these two uncontrolled variables would have an impact on battery life which would help explain the difference, especially when considering the minute levels of overall consumption.

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im sorry, i may have missed this, but how do you turn off the LTE radio?

Ramzes13 said:

im sorry, i may have missed this, but how do you turn off the LTE radio?

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Settings--> Mobile Network --> Network Mode

Ramzes13 said:

im sorry, i may have missed this, but how do you turn off the LTE radio?

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Beware: turning off LTE mode currently slows down the regular 3G CDMA mode, and informal testing has shown that leaving on the LTE mode does not significantly impact power consumption.

So whenever on wifi leave 3G on and when I leave work or home my wifi says disconnected so is it ok to leave it on too knowing it's not scanning and just says disconnected? I go from home to work and back and usually turn off wifi when I leave the house and turn it right back on when I get to work then do the same when I leave and come home. But tonight I saw where wifi said disconnected when I left work and wasn't scanning so I was thinking maybe I should just leave wifi and 3G on unless of course I am off for the day or I know I am not gonna be on wifi at all while I am out. And I think when I know I don't get a good 3G signal like the other night at this bar I should've turned off my 3G and I bet my battery would've lasted longer plus I have turned back off my auto sync.

Oh and I downloaded this Battery life and was using this widget that changed colors at certain percentages. Yesterday I was at the casino for 4 hours with 3G off at 88% and left and it was still on 88% I turned back on 3G drove 20 minutes home and it was still 0n 88% and I found out the app was messed up so I uninstalled it. I now tried another one and when I go to widget all it puts on my screen is a white little % sign I think it's messed up too. I was gonna try the big text one but I decided on Battery by Macropinch. I like what it does when you touch the app. And by the picture it looks like it has a colored changing widget but it's not working for me.

But thanks everyone for explaining stuff to me I just want to get the most out of my battery and I am pleased for the most part cause I always had to charge my battery at work and now I always leave with 20-30% tonight it was 8% but it went straight on my dock in the car to charge so I was good.

Also I am having trouble with texting I use handcent and my text aren't going through I'll look up 10 minutes later and it's still sending the circle is still spinning. I know 3G doesn't have to do with texting but should I keep CDMA/LTE on cause tonight on my way home from work I noticed my 3G wasn't working good.

novox77 said:

@Rose:

If you're connected to a wifi hotspot, 3G is automatically turned off. This is handled by Android. When I mentioned I was managing my 3G state manually, it was for situations where I did not have wifi access. If you're connected to wifi, standby battery life SHOULD be very good. If it's not, something on your phone is probably using data via the wifi heavily, or you're doing something that is CPU-intensive. In both cases, you should be able to tell because your phone will be warm to the touch.

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I took it off the charger exactly 24 hours ago...I will be making.more calls today to have more real world use, but my 3evo would be dead by now regardless.

Sent from my L Tevo via Tapatalk Pro