Battery Life

[ekyle]

So, after starting this thread and getting pretty annoyed at my battery life, I called HTC. The guy wasn't that helpful. I jumped through all the hoops, just to show that I hadn't got anything running that was going to kill the battery. I understand that he had to check a lot of things. When I got nowhere, he told me to run down my battery to zero, wait until the phone switched itself off, then charge it again. I hadn't done this since after its first charge. I agreed to do that, but got a case number, because I was sure I'd be calling back to try to get a better battery.

So, I turned on GPS navigation and Pandora and killed the battery over the course of around an hour (from 22%). I took the battery out, left it sitting out for maybe 20 mins, and recharged it overnight. I was shocked to see that it actually helped a lot - now I'm able to use my phone throughout the day (8-5) and have around 50% battery at the end of it. Nothing like the first day, when I tried to show it to some friends at 2.30PM, just to have the battery die in mid Google Goggles demonstration.

How much do you use it though? I sms and gtalk all day with a couple phone calls and I get about the same. I don't hit 30% or 40% until 9 or so with mobile network on all day, gps off, wifi off. I'm just curious because I've never had a phone with battery life that is so bad. My friend, who owns an iPhone, said he gets about the same as I do. I am probably looking too much into it since I came from a BB.

 

[ecb]

I'm able to get a full day's use moderate use. Since moderate use can mean different things to different people, here's what I do:

Taking a few phone calls (20 - 30 minutes/day), using the web (about 30 - 60 minutes/day), auto syncing Google services, polling for other email once every 15 minutes, polling for Tweets, polling for Facebook updates. Bluetooth and Wifi on, GPS off.

At the end of the day, I usually have 20 - 30% battery life left.

I did condition the battery for the first 2 days (let the battery completely discharge then charge completely) but I'm not sure if that helped.

The battery life is on par with the Moto Droid and IPhone 3GS so I'm happy with it, but it's not shockingly better than the average smart phone....sorry, SuperPhone

 

[mi_canuck]

Screen: first level of backlight on power widget.
Wi-Fi: on all day
Mobile network: on all day
Sync: all Facebook, Twitter, Gmail on all day

Have been texting, couple of calls, internet and playing games.

Just dropped to below 30% at 9.30 pm.

that power widget is handy... for me, it's turning out to be better than using auto-brightness... the first level from no backlight is about 25% (you can go check in the brightness settings...)... off is well, 0%... and full is 100%... so the 25% level is still bright to be useful in lit rooms, but not sucking down juice as much...

WiFi - interesting... although i guess if a solid wifi signal is present, the cell data doesn't have to constantly be searching and/or swithching between edge and 3G if the signal is a bit weak...

with your usage, doesn't all that stingy, and about how i use mine... i'm wondering if various batches have shittier batteries... or if there is just one small variable that either makes or breaks battery life that it's obvious yet at this point...

cheers

 

[mi_canuck]

So, after starting this thread and getting pretty annoyed at my battery life, I called HTC. The guy wasn't that helpful. I jumped through all the hoops, just to show that I hadn't got anything running that was going to kill the battery. I understand that he had to check a lot of things. When I got nowhere, he told me to run down my battery to zero, wait until the phone switched itself off, then charge it again. I hadn't done this since after its first charge. I agreed to do that, but got a case number, because I was sure I'd be calling back to try to get a better battery.

So, I turned on GPS navigation and Pandora and killed the battery over the course of around an hour (from 22%). I took the battery out, left it sitting out for maybe 20 mins, and recharged it overnight. I was shocked to see that it actually helped a lot - now I'm able to use my phone throughout the day (8-5) and have around 50% battery at the end of it. Nothing like the first day, when I tried to show it to some friends at 2.30PM, just to have the battery die in mid Google Goggles demonstration.

hmmmm..... i may have to try this myself...

when you first got it, did you start using it right away out of the box? or perhaps just charge it for a few min then use it?

when i got mine, i didn't give it a full charge right away... i just started using it because, well, I was stoked to finally get it!

anyways... i'll try running it down to dead later today and then give it a full overnight charge with the wall charger...


cheers

 

[informale]

WiFi - interesting... although i guess if a solid wifi signal is present, the cell data doesn't have to constantly be searching and/or swithching between edge and 3G if the signal is a bit weak...

That depends whether you Wi-Fi switches off when the screen is off. On Android 1.5 it did so by default, dunno about 2.0+

 

[cptb]

Just to add my own two cents, I think the 'drain and recharge once' trick does work. Yes, I read the literature on how it shouldn't matter for that type of battery. I don't know how or why, but it helped me!

Yesterday: Phone unplugged at 100% at 6am - WiFi/GPS/Sync on Gmail and Exchange/Music played/Browsing/General playing around with my baby - Battery 50% at 1pm and dead by 4pm.

I let the battery expire, got home, put the phone to charge and left it alone (very hard to do!).

Today: Unplugged it at 100% again at 6am today, same use if not a little more, and my battery is only just getting below 50% at 5pm.

I don't know how significant it is, but I also noticed that Dolphin browser keeps running in the background forever after you use it.

 

[kafkef]

It's good to fully drain this kind of batteries about once a month to kinda "calibrate" them, or else the battery life will shorten.

 

[mi_canuck]

OK - drained the Nexus last night until it shut off by itself. Charged it from about 10p to 7a. I left it completely turned off during the whole charging duration. Unplugged at 7a... Will use like I normally do. WiFi will be on while at my office. Brightness set to 25% (second "position" on power widget).

Will be using a mix of email, web, pandora, sms, voice. Yesterday I was at ~50% by 1pm, and about 15% by 5p. I'm HOPING for much better results today after having done the whole drain down and full charge cycle.

Stay tuned...

 

[raremage]

My experience: unplugged yesterday at 7 AM (at 100%, charged thru the night)
Normal use, which includes two email accounts (GMail and Google Apps), maybe a dozen texts, snapped a few pics, a little over an hour on the phone, some browsing and other apps.
Around 10:30 PM I was at 11%, at which point I plugged it in again. So I am making it through a day, but definitely need to charge daily. Slightly worse than the Droid, much worse than my old iPhone (where I could go two or sometimes even three days without a charge).

 

[mi_canuck]

well.... battery life continues to suck badly... at almost 12:45p I'm down to 41%. Unplugged since about 7a (under Battery Use, have 5h 47m usage). Screen is responsible for 60% - according to that panel. Screen has not been constantly in use. I'm at about 25% brightness. Had a couple of 10-15min phone calls. Listened to Pandora for maybe 30-45 min max. A bit of emailing and web access. That's about it. WiFi has been on maybe 50% of the time. My cell signal is somewhat weak where I sit in my building, although still 1-3 bars - it varies.

At this point, I'm at a loss.... A FAR cry from what other users have posted above, with nothing standing out as far as usage to me. So ???


Either my battery is defective.... or when at the office, and having a weak signal, the phone is searching for a signal more often than not and causing rundown... could that be the culprit???

 

[smitty24]

well.... battery life continues to suck badly... at almost 12:45p I'm down to 41%. Unplugged since about 7a (under Battery Use, have 5h 47m usage). Screen is responsible for 60% - according to that panel. Screen has not been constantly in use. I'm at about 25% brightness. Had a couple of 10-15min phone calls. Listened to Pandora for maybe 30-45 min max. A bit of emailing and web access. That's about it. WiFi has been on maybe 50% of the time. My cell signal is somewhat weak where I sit in my building, although still 1-3 bars - it varies.

At this point, I'm at a loss.... A FAR cry from what other users have posted above, with nothing standing out as far as usage to me. So ???

streaming anything will eat battery. I have bluetooth and wifi on all day and dont stream at all (but still take calls, email, gtalk, sms) and im only at 40-45% come 10PM after unplugging at 615AM

check your screen brightness, make sure your FB, twitter, news apps arent syncing every hour and gps is off...

 

[mi_canuck]

my brightness is at 25% (the second "click" on the brightness power widget... i've double and triple checked the setting... i mean... do i need to drop down to 10% brightness??

what are your settings?

i have my FB syncing every 30min.... Twidroid not syncing at all (notifications are OFF)... the bundle weather/news app every 1hr...

i also have weather channel which doesn't appear to have a sync interval... weather bug is set at 1 hr intervals...

Under the Acounts & Sync panel in the phone settings, Background data and Auto-sync are both on (I think these were set as default... I don't remember changing these....)


Otherwise, no IM running, or anything else. I have no updating widgets on my home screen.

 

[smitty24]

my brightness is at 25% (the second "click" on the brightness power widget... i've double and triple checked the setting... i mean... do i need to drop down to 10% brightness??

what are your settings?

i have my FB syncing every 30min.... Twidroid not syncing at all (notifications are OFF)... the bundle weather/news app every 1hr...

i also have weather channel which doesn't appear to have a sync interval... weather bug is set at 1 hr intervals...

Under the Acounts & Sync panel in the phone settings, Background data and Auto-sync are both on (I think these were set as default... I don't remember changing these....)


Otherwise, no IM running, or anything else. I have no updating widgets on my home screen.

my brightness is at the first click above 0 in the settings (only thing i dont use the power control widget for)
gps off
wifi on
bluetooth on/off as needed
twdroid sync off - no notifications
fb - no sync - manually refresh when i log in
background data and auto sync on
gtalk logged in and running
news/weather widget sync each hour

only thing i can see you have is weather channel and weather bug. those are known battery eaters too

 

[mi_canuck]

gonna change the news/weater refresh to 3hrs... FB to 2hrs... Weather bug to 2hrs...

 

[mi_canuck]

only thing i can see you have is weather channel and weather bug. those are known battery eaters too

I don't even have an IM running, but you do.....

I like weather bug due to the temp up in the status bar... i haven't found another app that does that...

so maybe i need to remove weather channel altogether (as it doesn't even have an interval option to even set...) although it has the better radar map....

 

[mi_canuck]

the % reported in the status and the battery gauge in the status also aren't synced very well... dunno that's a normal Android quirk (this is my first Android device... so i don't know all the tricks yet...)... Battery in status bar shows about half... yet in the status panel, it's at 31%.... arrrghh

 

[smitty24]

I don't even have an IM running, but you do.....

I like weather bug due to the temp up in the status bar... i haven't found another app that does that...

so maybe i need to remove weather channel altogether (as it doesn't even have an interval option to even set...) although it has the better radar map....

i just hit the web for my radar... m.accuweather.com and m.weatherchannel.com both have radar maps...

the temp in the status bar is nice, but its updating every so often...

 

[mi_canuck]

deleted weather bug and weather channel... will see what happens... they weren't optimised for the higher resolution anyways... i'll use the built in one for now...

 

[what29]

deleted weather bug and weather channel... will see what happens... they weren't optimised for the higher resolution anyways... i'll use the built in one for now...

i suggest to anyone trying out "automatic task killer" from the android store, its free and you can set it to kill any apps once the screen blacks out, you choose the apps to kill or kill them all. i just installed it and it has seemed to make a difference already over the last 3 hours.

 

[mi_canuck]

is there a way to see which apps are running in the background on an Android device? is there a process panel? i haven't found one... thought maybe a specific key sequence on the dialpad (like how you enter field test mode on an iphone... for example)...

 

[oniongirl]

I have a quick question... under About Phone -> Battery Use, what is Cell Standby? It says battery used by cell radio 63%, but I have been in aeroplane mode near enough the entire time the phone has been off as my new sim card with data allowance has yet to arrive.

 

[oniongirl]

is there a way to see which apps are running in the background on an Android device? is there a process panel? i haven't found one... thought maybe a specific key sequence on the dialpad (like how you enter field test mode on an iphone... for example)...

I downloaded Advanced Task Killer (Free) from the marketplace. Seems to do the job. The icon is the little android robot with a blue cross on his chest (to help you find it more easily)

 

[mi_canuck]

ok... just D/L'd this... had a TON of apps running... is this normal??? How would one otherwise see and/or know which apps are running, and subsequently kill them?? seems like there should be a native way to do this, no?

i'll give this ATK a shot...

 

[T-Mobile]

I went 4 days with 12 hr battery life. Then I left my phone charge for 24 straight hours like the manual suggests (I didn't do this out of the box).

Now I'm getting a full day's charge!! One major difference is the first 5 hour drop, it's not declining near as fast with similar usage.

 

[Markdental]

Have any of you thought that the battery indicator app itself could be draining your battery as well?

I uninstalled mine and am going to see what happens.