Battery Life - The Good The Bad and The Ugly

[Hrshycro]

Just a thought: Lets get all of the tips that improve the battery life for most people's EVO on the wiki article. Yes, I understand some of your evos came out of the <strike>womb</strike> noodle carton with perfect battery life, personally, I'd say about half did, but the other half of us don't seem to have anywhere close to good or acceptable battery life.

HTC Evo 4G - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[twospirits]

Not a bad idea.

TS

 

[mercdizzle]

yea, battery life isn't an issue, which explains all these threads.

 

[junglizste]

It's taking me almost 4 hours to go from 0% to a full charge while using a 1amp ac-USB charger. Is this normal?

I'm getting great battery life. about 18 hours normal usage... 8 hour of which is standby sleep screen-off time. But the slow charging thing is annoying.

 

[SeauxCrazy]

USB Charging has been known to be a lot slower than plugging it into a wall.

 

[RiverOfIce]

You should never run your battery down to 0%, li-ion's like to sip power. When you run the battery to 0% you are destroying it.

 

[sagedil]

Plug into wall , you will cut time more than half. And very yes to above. Don't ever run battary to zero.

 

[wrchad23]

Unplug it from the charger at 8am, in the orange by 1pm. medium use (texting, web, fb) wifi, gps, 4g, and bluetooth off.

My friend has the same phone, lasts all day. I can't even get through an 8 hour work shift.

 

[forensicbp]

Unplug it from the charger at 8am, in the orange by 1pm. medium use (texting, web, fb) wifi, gps, 4g, and bluetooth off.

My friend has the same phone, lasts all day. I can't even get through an 8 hour work shift.

I'm experiencing the same thing. I am getting HORRIBLE battery life with this thing! I've read the many suggestions across the web and have applied most of them. I have turned off all services and have never turned on 4G and I still can't even make it through a whole day. This morning, I started using my phone at 5am (it was fully charged), I did some intermittent internet usage for roughly 40 mins (since I log my gym time online) and other than that have really not used it at all and at 11:30 am, it told me I had 10% battery remaining. I set all my sync settings to 4 hour intervals which is it how it came default except my company exchange which is (as items arrive).

I can't figure out what else to do? I don't want a phone with a load of cool features that I can't even use due to battery life. I mean, this is not bad, it makes the phone virtually worthless.

Anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks,

 

[mercdizzle]

I'm experiencing the same thing. I am getting HORRIBLE battery life with this thing! I've read the many suggestions across the web and have applied most of them. I have turned off all services and have never turned on 4G and I still can't even make it through a whole day. This morning, I started using my phone at 5am (it was fully charged), I did some intermittent internet usage for roughly 40 mins (since I log my gym time online) and other than that have really not used it at all and at 11:30 am, it told me I had 10% battery remaining. I set all my sync settings to 4 hour intervals which is it how it came default except my company exchange which is (as items arrive).

I can't figure out what else to do? I don't want a phone with a load of cool features that I can't even use due to battery life. I mean, this is not bad, it makes the phone virtually worthless.

Anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks,

according to everyone here, you must really be doing something wrong because the evo is fantastic at battery life and no one is experiencing any problems.

Seems like some are ok, some are terrible. Try asking sprint to replace the battery?

 

[coolguy949]

Yeah, but what's your reception like? I was in a meeting at work that resides in a black hole. There is hardly any service in this room and the phone is constantly alternating between Sprint and roaming. My battery dropped 15% in that 1 hour meeting while on standby.

 

[forensicbp]

My reception is good. It's about 4 bars. I don't see any indication that it's roaming. I do however notice that my 3G arrows are constantly lit up like data is constantly being sent/received. I've looked through all my sync settings and everything is set to 4 hours except my corporate exchange but I've only got one e-mail today.

I'm really trying here. I REALLY like the phone's features and it operates smooth as can be but I gotta solve this battery issue.

 

[coolguy949]

Try turning off exchange sync and see what happens to your battery life. I read somewhere it's not very efficient on these devices.

 

[forensicbp]

I just set it to manual and the arrows are still fully lit up. I can't turn it off, I have to have my corporate e-mail. Besides, exchange sync can't possibly be that resource consuming.

Thanks for the suggestions though.

Are there any apps in the store that can show me what's using data and/or resources?

 

[wrchad23]

Are there any apps in the store that can show me what's using data and/or resources?

settings-->about phone-->battery

 

[forensicbp]

settings-->about phone-->battery

Thanks, I was a aware of that but it's not specific. For example, it tells me that cell standby has used 35% and phone idle has used 27%. However, obviously there is some app/widget or otherwise that is sending/receiving data whether in standby or not as I can see the 3g arrows never grey out.

 

[wrchad23]

Yea I don't know any app for that.

Here is my day so far.

8am - unplug phone from charger completely charged

1:13pm - plug into charger at work at 15% warning came up

3:00pm unplugged from charger and it's always down a notch on that battery meter.

I'm definitely taking this phone back, there is something wrong with the battery.

 

[junglizste]

Fully discharging a Li-ion is bad but, you can not actually completely discharge a li-ion battery to 0% in an electronic device, through normal usage. All electronic devices that use them have protections that keep them from going below around 5-10%. When you do discharge them as much as they'll allow you recalibrate the sensor that reports how much charge they have remaining. While it is better to charge them before they get down to 30%, sometimes a recalibration is necessary. It also is better for them to not charge them up all the way... But I'm not leaving the house with 75% on my evo, especially when the battery is calibrated.

So now that we got that out of the way.

Considering plugging the phone in the wall would give it 110v AC current and probably cause it to explode, I'll still with the adapter.

I stated that I was using a 1 amp AC-USB charger. An AC adapter that puts out 1 amp to charge. most devices don't want more than this. It would be cool if the EVO could take 1.2 amps. I've never seen an AC charger that put out more. many only put out .5-.7 amp. computers typically put out .5 amp or .1 if they device is not recognized, which is why they charge slow.

With a 1 amp charger I've never seen the complete charge of any phone take more than an hour.

so... back to my original question.

Is anybody anybody having super long charge times?

 

[forensicbp]

Yea I don't know any app for that.

Here is my day so far.

8am - unplug phone from charger completely charged

1:13pm - plug into charger at work at 15% warning came up

3:00pm unplugged from charger and it's always down a notch on that battery meter.

I'm definitely taking this phone back, there is something wrong with the battery.

Are your 3G arrows constantly lit up?

 

[wrchad23]

Are your 3G arrows constantly lit up?

Yea it's looking that way.

I'm in a 4G area but I have it off 90% of the time cause it doesn't get 4G at my work and when I'm home I turn WiFi on.

 

[forensicbp]

I think I may have found the culprit. It's actually google's contact/calendar/gmail sync. If you look in your sync settings, you'll see that there is no option to set this to sync on a schedule and it appears that the contacts on my phone were updating pretty much continually. I stopped the contact syncing, rebooted the phone and now my 3G is greyed out most of the time. I sure hope this is the final solution.

 

[fayester]

I am experiencing what I deem a major battery problem. This just started today and I had no issues since launch date.

I had my phone on the charger all night and unplugged it when the alarm went off @ 6:50 am. My phone was frozen, couldnt get the the alarm to stop, powered it off...turned it back on. Battery 100%
Turned on the phone a few times (pressed the power button) during my morning routine to check the time. Most of the time it was off.
Left the house @ 7:50 am got to the parking deck @ 8:08 (I noticed because it said 8:08) and my battery was down to 89% WTF!!!

I was watching a movie at work and decided to charge the phone around 1245pm. Movie finished, closed out the application but left the phone charging. Did not play with the phone for the rest of the afternoon. Unplugged it @ 4:52 pm, green LED 100%. It takes 5 mins to walk from my building to the parking deck. Answered a total of 4 missed texts. After 15 mins of driving with the phone resting in the cupholder the phone the battery was down to 88%!!!

I don't have any task killers installed. I have done every tip and trick posted here for battery optimization. What gives? My phone does not have any crazy apps installed that are known to cause battery drainage. Is a hard reset gonna solve this?

 

[EVO'd]

I have had my EVO two days. When the EVO is on and I plug it in (Wall, Car, or Computer) it will not charge. When turned off it will charge no problem. If it is off and charging and I turn it on, then it will stop charging. Called tech support and they had not heard of this problem. I am currently on a waiting list for another one. Any one else experiencing the same problem?

 

[forensicbp]

Look at your 3G icon and see if it's staying lit up (not greyed out) which means it's sending/receiving data. If so, you've got a problem similar to my own where something is running in the background continually syncing or w/e and draining your battery. For me it was google contacts that seemed to have got stuck in an infinite sync loop, for you it may be something else.

 

[EVO'd]

Look at your 3G icon and see if it's staying lit up (not greyed out) which means it's sending/receiving data. If so, you've got a problem similar to my own where something is running in the background continually syncing or w/e and draining your battery. For me it was google contacts that seemed to have got stuck in an infinite sync loop, for you it may be something else.

3G is greyed out. I do have Advanced Task Manager and stopped all programs, but it still won't charge.