24 Hour Battery Life for Me! A few thoughts / tests for you

[Deleted User]

I'm not at all complaining about the battery life. I think the battery life on my Evo is just fine.

All I'm saying is that going 24 hours on a charge isn't very realistic for your average "power user", which is the majority of people that will own a phone like this.

Sorry, the "complaining" bit wasn't directed specifically at you.

 

[skaramanga]

So what is considered "good" battery life? It seems to me that the expectations for battery life in smartphones is a bit unrealistic. A phone like the EVO can do most of the functions of a notebook/netbook in addition to making and receiving phone calls. Now a notebook computer battery will generally last about 4-6 hours with normal use. Add in a cellular radio, bluetooth, Wi-Max/4G and you would see that time plummet.

Now the EVO battery has less than half the capacity in mAh of a laptop battery, but is expected to handle nearly the same tasks, as well as phone specific tasks, AND last more than 12 hours on a single charge. That just doesn't seem reasonable.

If you purchase an EVO or any other comparable smartphone and you are a heavy/power user, you should expect to be charging it at some point during your day or carrying a spare battery(s).

Some of these complaints strike me like complaining that I don't get the same gas mileage as my neighbor when I drive my car 80 mph, gun the engine constantly as well as run the a/c all the time, while my neighbor drives 50 mph everywhere he goes....

Great point!

 

[Lokire]

I think it might be instructive for people to note their uptime:awake time ratios when discussing battery life. I run at about 2:1 and get up to 12 hours or so out of the phone, which is pretty good by my standards, and at 6:1 like the OP I would expect a similar battery life.

OP: Do you have any social media syncing to the phone? I think that's a big battery killer.

Sorry, I haven't been keeping up on this thread lately...

Yes! The uptime:downtime ratio is what I'm most interested in as well.

I have facebook set to sync once a day (that's the lowest interval I think), but honestly I'm not sure what the point is exactly? I don't use the facebook widget (didn't like the interface much; facebook mobile, or the full version through the browser is good enough for me). I guess facebook syncs my friends so I can view or link them in the phone's contacts? I've linked a handful of people that way, but I don't think it's a big power draw to just sync once a day.

Just as another note, I've been staying away from task killers after reading various articles on them. A couple days ago I started having significantly worse battery life (no usage changes), around 14 hours until the battery hit 0% and shut down. After the restart, I was back to the awesome battery life I had before. I hadn't turned the phone off since shortly after I got it probably, so I think it's a good idea to restart the phone every few days or so, just to get a fresh start. I'm guessing I eventually had every app running/sleeping in the background and that was starting to add up.

 

[skipbrown]

I read thru all the "tricks" and "hints" but nuthin seemed to work for me... i was still only getting 4-5 hours to a charge. I talked to my buddy that manages the local Sprint store and he told me when he got in his next shipment, he'd swap it out.... which i did last Saturday. What a freakin difference. I now can go 16-18 hours on a charge.

I LOVE my Evo again!!

 

[pank]

How are you doing the screen shots?

Download shooter from the market place. It says you have to be rooted to use but it works perfectly on my NON rooted EVO

 

[hey dude]

HOW I FIXED MY BATTERY LIFE:

Everyone that is not getting a long day needs to check this thread out:
android.process.acore - Android Central Forums

So what does that thread say? Basically, the facebook sync seems to be CONSTANTLY syncing for some people (maybe some other syncs too???). It was for me. PEOPLE, under the processes on system panel kept coming up and giving high usage even though I had just rebooted the phone with nothing running. Hours later? People still chunking away.

What do I use my phone for?
all the usual, MP3, wifi surfing, two exchanges, two gmail, a twitter, facebook, etc. I am not just babying the phone. I pick it up to do something every 10 minutes.

Here's the BEFORE ( Average battery was getting 8 hours on light-normal use):

See that 30%+ usage? That was me not doing anything other than turning stuff off and trying to finally figure out why the phone was sucking so bad. Look how fast the battery starts to go down!!! The blank space is a reboot, and then the removal of the facebook syncing (changing timer didn't seem to help, I was already at 3 hours or so). Once I saw the drop in usage down to LESS THAN ONE PERCENT I went to bed and let the phone charge over night.

Then I went out today with the phone:

That's my daily usage. You can see some of the previous day from when the background facebook syncing was going crazy. That's 100% ->40% charge and it's right at 13 hours later (on track for 21+ hours of ACTUAL usage). Notice that throughout the day, my CPU never goes above 30% when it was doing that normally at idle!! Highlights for today include all of the above stated, a BUNCH OF WIFI and a 45+ minute phone call this afternoon and beating my previous record on toss-it.

Here's the battery screen:

What else have I done??
I turned the screen brightness down instead of auto (I finally gave in)
I slowed my twitter syncing in friendstream to 3 hours. Still use the widget
I still run a facebook widget
I normally run GPS, but this evening I turned it off to see if it would drop the usage further. I think I'm going to keep it on as its annoying to turn on when I use maps so often
I don't use bluetooth
I don't sync stocks or news (not for battery, just don't)
I use a couple of organizer and calendar apps that poll internet data


So yeah, get systempanel and find out what's eating your battery up if you can't make it through a day without charding. Maybe HTC's update tomorrow will fix this???

Hope this helps someone

 

[apollooff320]

What I noticed about all the screenshots is that you guys are not using your phone to talk on it. You guys screen shots show NO voice calls and if they do the percentage is very low.

 

[hey dude]

What I noticed about all the screenshots is that you guys are not using your phone to talk on it. You guys screen shots show NO voice calls and if they do the percentage is very low.

Who talks on their phone?

 

[rjfetz]

hi guys, newbie here - I was wondering how your android system usage is only at 13-14%? My android system usage is at 42% what do I have to do to reduce that usage? Second question is I set up my wifi - do i really need it on? I do not use the phone in the house so my thought is i don't need it?

Thank you

 

[Captain Sexy]

I really need my phone to last about 16 hours as somtimes I'm just not near a charger so in other words 8-8. I"m that guy that actually talks to people. So for example today I had 30 phone calls and read a bunch of emails-maybe 50ish? The battery is pretty much shot after 9 hours, I have facebook off all auto sync things other than email turned off. Anybody have suggestions for me to get more usage?

 

[rjfetz]

How do you turn facebook off??

 

[Captain Sexy]

How do you turn facebook off??

startup cleaner app

 

[natdm]

I'd love to take a screenshot of my phone to show how excellent it finally is but the battery is dead.

And not because the battery sucks, it's because I've lost the charger three days ago and it just died during a meeting at work. It took a good week to tune in right when I first got it. Just underclocked the CPU with advice given here, task killer (restricted to 3rd party apps) and I don't have auto-sync on which KILLS your battery. So facebook/email/etc doesn't sync but I'd rather have the phone last days on end instead of 4 hours idle time.

And to think I almost returned this phone to go back to AT&T.

 

[mike208]

HOW I FIXED MY BATTERY LIFE:

Everyone that is not getting a long day needs to check this thread out:
android.process.acore - Android Central Forums

So what does that thread say? Basically, the facebook sync seems to be CONSTANTLY syncing for some people (maybe some other syncs too???). It was for me. PEOPLE, under the processes on system panel kept coming up and giving high usage even though I had just rebooted the phone with nothing running. Hours later? People still chunking away.

What do I use my phone for?
all the usual, MP3, wifi surfing, two exchanges, two gmail, a twitter, facebook, etc. I am not just babying the phone. I pick it up to do something every 10 minutes.

Here's the BEFORE ( Average battery was getting 8 hours on light-normal use):

See that 30%+ usage? That was me not doing anything other than turning stuff off and trying to finally figure out why the phone was sucking so bad. Look how fast the battery starts to go down!!! The blank space is a reboot, and then the removal of the facebook syncing (changing timer didn't seem to help, I was already at 3 hours or so). Once I saw the drop in usage down to LESS THAN ONE PERCENT I went to bed and let the phone charge over night.

Then I went out today with the phone:

That's my daily usage. You can see some of the previous day from when the background facebook syncing was going crazy. That's 100% ->40% charge and it's right at 13 hours later (on track for 21+ hours of ACTUAL usage). Notice that throughout the day, my CPU never goes above 30% when it was doing that normally at idle!! Highlights for today include all of the above stated, a BUNCH OF WIFI and a 45+ minute phone call this afternoon and beating my previous record on toss-it.

Here's the battery screen:

What else have I done??
I turned the screen brightness down instead of auto (I finally gave in)
I slowed my twitter syncing in friendstream to 3 hours. Still use the widget
I still run a facebook widget
I normally run GPS, but this evening I turned it off to see if it would drop the usage further. I think I'm going to keep it on as its annoying to turn on when I use maps so often
I don't use bluetooth
I don't sync stocks or news (not for battery, just don't)
I use a couple of organizer and calendar apps that poll internet data


So yeah, get systempanel and find out what's eating your battery up if you can't make it through a day without charding. Maybe HTC's update tomorrow will fix this???

Hope this helps someone

Does the free version have the battery monitor, or is that just in the pay version of system panel? Also it says the pay version comes with a task manager, is that the same as a task killer? I don't want one of those.

 

[The Dorian]

hi guys, newbie here - I was wondering how your android system usage is only at 13-14%? My android system usage is at 42% what do I have to do to reduce that usage? Second question is I set up my wifi - do i really need it on? I do not use the phone in the house so my thought is i don't need it?

Thank you

The only way to keep your Android System that low is to not use your phone. These guys (that are getting 24+ hours battery life) simply don't use their phone as much as most people that have a phone like this. Or they were probably intentionally avoiding usage to see how long they could get it to last.

My "Android System" is ALWAYS highest on the list.

I keep WIFI on while I'm at home. I've heard that it actually uses LESS battery than 3G, although I cannot confirm this. But it's been so far so good for me.

 

[iamtybaby]

How the heck are u guys getting such little "Android System" percentage?? im stuck at around 60% (No live wallpaper, 2 widgets, gps off)

They Dont Use There Phone...Thats Why...They Braggin About There Battery Life Going For A Day Plus...We All Know That Aint Possilble If Ur Actually Using The Device

 

[SamuraiBigEd]

The only way to keep your Android System that low is to not use your phone. These guys (that are getting 24+ hours battery life) simply don't use their phone as much as most people that have a phone like this. Or they were probably intentionally avoiding usage to see how long they could get it to last.

My "Android System" is ALWAYS highest on the list.

I keep WIFI on while I'm at home. I've heard that it actually uses LESS battery than 3G, although I cannot confirm this. But it's been so far so good for me.

They Dont Use There Phone...Thats Why...They Braggin About There Battery Life Going For A Day Plus...We All Know That Aint Possilble If Ur Actually Using The Device

Agreed! Why buy a phone if you aren't going to use it?

This reminds me of the hybrid drivers who would follow the rules for maximum mileage to the limit so they could say they were getting the highest mpg possible, never mind the fact it took them 30 minutes to make a 10 minute trip!

 

[bernechad]

I've went to the extreme on both ends of the battery issue. Meaning, I've shut everything down just to see how long I could get a charge to last and I've also been crazy hard on it to see how quick I could kill it.

For myself, it set a baseline and allowed me to dial in how I use the phone in different situations. If I'm not gonna be able to charge for awhile, I know what I need to do in order to make it last 2 days. On the flip side, I can also set it up to show off and kill the battery in 2 hrs.

 

[Lokire]

People talk about using their phone a ton and being 'power users', etc. I'm admittedly not using my phone nearly as much as some people do. I don't make too many calls (usually just a few a day maybe). Mostly just e-mail use, light texting, and occasional web browsing and camera use.

WHAT I WANT TO SEE FROM EVERYONE: is the 'time on' number when you go into the battery indicator app and click on display. This is the amount of time that the display has been on. I'd like to know what everyone has at the end of a typical day. Mine is at 1h 46m, with the battery currently at 20% and 15h 22m since unplugged. This is probably about average for me, a little under 2 hours of actual time spent looking at my phone / actively using it per day. How about you?

 

[iamtybaby]

You guys don't use your phone enough. That is why you get the long life. I can get 24 hours too with that kind of usage. All the same I can drain my battery dead in 3 to 4 hours just by using the internet heavily. Intermitten internet usage about 6 to 9 hours. Light internet usage and automatic push emails I can definitely get over 20 hours. But that would mean no video playback, which is a no go for me as this is the whole reason I bought this phone).

Exactly lls..They sit there phones in there pockets the whole day, come home and take a screen shot of it....Lames

 

[Lokire]

Exactly lls..They sit there phones in there pockets the whole day, come home and take a screen shot of it....Lames

Umm...no. If it were actually on standby the entire time, then it would be more like 36-48 hours or something. How many hours a day do you actually use your phone? I tend to do things in my life that don't require cell phone use for the majority of the day. Crazy, I know.