Battery life

johnkzin · Oct 23, 2008

I've noticed that it has a short life, but I haven't been terribly bothered by it. I'm more bothered by it having 1 port for charge/headset/data than having to charge it frequently.

I doubt I'll ever be away from a USB port long enough to care about it, really.

joephu · Oct 23, 2008

I'm noticing fast drains too but I think you need to give it several charge and drain cycles before the true life will reveal itself. Regardless, I use Wifi at work & home, BT in the car, andplaying with the GPS turned on from time to time, so I'm sure I'll be charging every night.

turbo2ltr · Oct 23, 2008

So I got it yesterday and I ran it down to the red (said 15%) before I plugged it in overnight.

I stopped charging at 6 this morning. I've been playing with email all day running tests (30-50 emails received), texting, gtalk, maybe 20-30 minutes of calls, been in a 2G area most of the day, maybe 3-4 hours in 3G area. Wifi on (But not connected to an AP), bluetooth off. No pop or IMAP email.

Its now 8:30 PM, and the battery level says 50% under the "phone info" in settings. The indicator icon makes it look more like 65-75%.

Needless to say, I am quite happy with this. All i need is it to last the normal 18 hour day without having to charge it. looks like it will be fine for my normal usage. 50% after 14 hours is pretty good.

Dmoney21 · Oct 24, 2008

i just really hope they release a extended battery or ship us free ones like they did with the shadow once t mobile discovered the battery was horrible.

Renge · Oct 24, 2008

I still have all my chargers from my shadow so I have my car/home combo, a home charger, and the one that came with that G1. I've been pretty good about recharging the phone, wi-fi really kills the battery, or so i've noticed. Hopefully having as little apps as possible running in the bg will help. I've been using the task switcher app to keep track of the apps that are running in the background, then i go into them and close them using the back button. I just started doing this so I'm not sure how the affects are, will update soon.

dkaufman1 · Oct 24, 2008

turbo2ltr said:
So I got it yesterday and I ran it down to the red (said 15%) before I plugged it in overnight.

I stopped charging at 6 this morning. I've been playing with email all day running tests (30-50 emails received), texting, gtalk, maybe 20-30 minutes of calls, been in a 2G area most of the day, maybe 3-4 hours in 3G area. Wifi on (But not connected to an AP), bluetooth off. No pop or IMAP email.

Its now 8:30 PM, and the battery level says 50% under the "phone info" in settings. The indicator icon makes it look more like 65-75%.

Needless to say, I am quite happy with this. All i need is it to last the normal 18 hour day without having to charge it. looks like it will be fine for my normal usage. 50% after 14 hours is pretty good.

Turbo - Your experience is much different than mine. I was using imeem on wifi from 7am until about 8am, and reading some email and surfing and dropped from 100% to 59%. That was a bit shocking and it is right in line with the past few days of quick drain.

With my sidekick and other devices, playing music off of memory is a low drain activity, but certainly buffering songs in the background is a high drain, since i it using wifi/3g/Edge to download the data.

bhang · Oct 24, 2008

I think there are 3 big factors in why some folks are whining about the battery life...

1: batteries need a few charge/discharge cycles to get up to full stregnth

2: I know myself I havent put the damn thin down since I got it...

3: at default the brightness level on mine was set at like 5%, this screen is so readable unless your in direct sunlight thats a fine setting, but I think alot of peeps (like me) upped it due to experiences with older screen tech.

So I say dont judge till you have had the phone a few weeks, then if its still not enuff juice for ya try another battery, I almost always have 2 or more batteries for my most used portables

bhang

dkaufman1 · Oct 24, 2008

bhang said:
I think there are 3 big factors in why some folks are whining about the battery life...

1: batteries need a few charge/discharge cycles to get up to full stregnth

2: I know myself I havent put the damn thin down since I got it...

3: at default the brightness level on mine was set at like 5%, this screen is so readable unless your in direct sunlight thats a fine setting, but I think alot of peeps (like me) upped it due to experiences with older screen tech.

So I say dont judge till you have had the phone a few weeks, then if its still not enuff juice for ya try another battery, I almost always have 2 or more batteries for my most used portables

bhang

1 - I have had it since Monday morning, and due to #2, I have had to charge it many times already.

3 - I have my screen turned down very low as well. I also have just set up shortcuts to disable the wifi and 3g (manually) when the phone is sitting in my pocket or on my desk doing nothing (black screen).

RobPuba · Oct 24, 2008

I spoke with T-Mo Customer Service and was told to disable Auto-Sync in your setting. That will give you better battery life.

sajj · Oct 25, 2008

there are computers everywhere on campus, dont see a problem, just go up to a cute girl and start talking to her.... only to use her laptops usb hub :X

drustvold · Oct 25, 2008

I have no problem with the batterie life, albite short. For me there are more places to charge then not. At home, in the car, desktop, laptop, and USB port.

The iPhone has a comparably bad batterie life. You can't complain about it. Everyone knows.

The fact is, and nobody would tell you otherwise, if you NEED to have 8, 12, 20+ hrs of active/talk time in your phone then you should be thinking about that when you buy a phone.

This is like buying a sports car and then complaining that it has bad gas milage.

pestilence · Oct 25, 2008

I started setting my phone to 2g only and turning on 3g when I need faster access, and it's made a HUGE improvement to battery life.

You can use anycut to make a shortcut to 'network settings' to go straight to the 2g/3g checkbox.

drustvold · Oct 25, 2008

It would be nice to see 3g just activate whenever it senses you could need it as oposed to just staying on all the time.

2g when the phones at idle in your pocket, 3g when you open maps, get an email, or an active program asks for it.

This sounds like it would be a well recived upgrade to android. they just need to add "auto select" to the 2g/3g settings.

pestilence · Oct 26, 2008

By far the biggest drain on battery life besides GPS and WIFI is 3G. If you leave 3G off unless you need a lot of speed, it makes a TON of difference.

You can set up a shortcut to the 'network settings' activity in anyCut to get right to the 2g/3g checkbox.

In my opinion, they should make the G1 stay on 2g until the user uses an app like the browser or maps and then it should automatically kick up to 3g and back down again after a minute or two of no data requests.

pestilence · Oct 26, 2008

Definitely - someone told me the 3g iPhone does that.

dkaufman1 · Oct 27, 2008

pestilence said:
By far the biggest drain on battery life besides GPS and WIFI is 3G. If you leave 3G off unless you need a lot of speed, it makes a TON of difference.

You can set up a shortcut to the 'network settings' activity in anyCut to get right to the 2g/3g checkbox.

In my opinion, they should make the G1 stay on 2g until the user uses an app like the browser or maps and then it should automatically kick up to 3g and back down again after a minute or two of no data requests.

Thanks I added this to my shortcuts folder. Now all we need is a macro to enable all location network services and disable all at one time.

66batman · Oct 27, 2008

Ever since I changed my setting to 2g, my battery lasts more than it did. I think the best solution is to purchase a high capacity battery, if and when it becomes available. I was going to return the phone but it is starting to grow on me now, besides all the quirks I been having. I even went as far as to order another one for my son.

David

dkaufman1 · Oct 27, 2008

66batman said:
Ever since I changed my setting to 2g, my battery lasts more than it did. I think the best solution is to purchase a high capacity battery, if and when it becomes available. I was going to return the phone but it is starting to grow on me now, besides all the quirks I been having. I even went as far as to order another one for my son.

David

Nice job Dad! Thanks I can't wait to get it. You are the greatest. Oh, yeah my "new son application" is in the mail.

Vivid · Oct 27, 2008

with WiFi, GPS and 3g on and heavy, but not constant, usage I only last 1/2 a day... IMO The phone requires you to have a charger in at home, in the office and in the car...

The phone does charge very quickly and although the bat life is poor at best IMO for the functionality I can deal with the bat life.

66batman · Oct 27, 2008

dkaufman1 said:
Nice job Dad! Thanks I can't wait to get it. You are the greatest. Oh, yeah my "new son application" is in the mail.

LOL! I will be on the lookout for it!

David

dkaufman1 · Oct 27, 2008

3G Update - Wow....I think we have a winner in the battery resource issue.

3G vs Wifi vs. GPS

I have all 3 off and am still at 86% and I have been playing local music all morning. I did check some email, made a few calls, checked the weather with the weather channel app (which was very quick under "E" still), did some SMS. No games, web browsing or maps, but still. I think the solution is:

Battery Usage Solution
Use AnyCut to setup 4 Shortcuts.
1 - Battery Info
2 - Wireless Controls
3 - Unlock Pattern
4 - Network Settings

Turn off Wifi/Bluetooth in Wireless Controls
Turn off Wireless Networks, GPS in Unlock Pattern, My Location sources
Turn on Use only 2G Networks in Network Settings.

pestilence · Oct 27, 2008

Yep, that's what I'm doing. By the way, if simple weather is all you need, the 'Weather' app is one meg smaller than the Weather channel one.

dkaufman1 · Oct 28, 2008

pestilence said:
Yep, that's what I'm doing. By the way, if simple weather is all you need, the 'Weather' app is one meg smaller than the Weather channel one.

I tried many of the Weather Apps and the The Weather Channel's video forecast by far is the killer app to show off to people when demo'ing the phone. AccuWeather was nice.

I checked out my memory usage and I have a ton free, so I am not to worried.

Miss Spicy McHaggis · Oct 28, 2008

i'm waiting for my battery to drain...it's actually having a good lifespan now LOL i didn't charge it all at last night and haven't yet at work today...i'm at 39%

sleebus.jones · Oct 28, 2008

Running on EDGE only has really helped my battery life. I dumped locale, which was very cool, but a battery hog since it keeps bumping the GPS. When i'm in a concrete building, it keeps trying to aquire and kills the battery. Other than that, i leave the gps enabled, so I can use it if I need it, but I avoid running aps in the BG that use GPS.

With all the marketplace updates, i'm downloading like a fool, so that is another source of battery depletion. I think everything will be just fine once that all settles down, and i'm not on it 24/7.

Battery life

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