HTC Inspire Battery Experiences...

[Burntorange817]

The Atrix' battery life is not good either...yeah its a bigger battery but all the juice from that dual core is something to think about it. im getting a full 24 hours on my inspire with decent use..


im happy

 

[andrews317]

The Atrix' battery life is not good either...yeah its a bigger battery but all the juice from that dual core is something to think about it. im getting a full 24 hours on my inspire with decent use..


im happy

what do you call "decent use"

i live in central america, i want to buy an unlocked phone and use it here. we dont have 4G yet, only 3G. i would use my phone mostly for multimedia, web browsing and sms. i go out to work at 6:30 am and get back home at 8:00 pm. i hope the inspire battery can take that.

 

[mrcamp]

With the recommendations here about managing battery usage, you should be able to get that. BTW, I do not think the htc inspire is sold unlocked by any carrier, so you have to go the ebay route. They are going for at least $400 there.

what do you call "decent use"

i live in central america, i want to buy an unlocked phone and use it here. we dont have 4G yet, only 3G. i would use my phone mostly for multimedia, web browsing and sms. i go out to work at 6:30 am and get back home at 8:00 pm. i hope the inspire battery can take that.

 

[guybysea]

Had mine for about 2 months. Have never run the battery less than 1/2 way down.
Am going on a cruise so bought 2 extra 1600 ma batteries with a very compact charger, from China, on e-bay for $8.99 with free shipping. Only took about two weeks.

 

[Icstars06]

The battery that I bought does do a better job. And since I bought it, I have an extra one that is charged if I know that I'm going to be out and using my phone a lot. I do a lot of music download, Sms, phone calls, and using the web. So Im a heavy user on the which is why I don't get great battery life out of it. Even when I had my Blackberrys I still could drain the bettery in a day.

Yes the battery isn't that great but having a phone that works, and it awesome is a much better plus to me then bettery life. Like I said I can deal with the battery not being wonderful.

 

[andrews317]

With the recommendations here about managing battery usage, you should be able to get that. BTW, I do not think the htc inspire is sold unlocked by any carrier, so you have to go the ebay route. They are going for at least $400 there.

yeah, i plan to buy it on ebay. i guess ill have one charger at home and another one at work.

 

[schlockmaster]

ok, i'm giving my Inspire another chance with this battery issue. I HAD decided to dump and go to the Dark Side..

I think the conditioning procedure might be something, but i still say that this smartphone technology is probably in front of the battery technology, and thus this is what we have...

I would NEVER recommend this to a techno challenged person to geek out their phone so they don't have to charge it when they get home from work...

Here is some more information which I left out of my original post. HTC makes great phones and they definitely use a lot of the same hardware and just change the outside. They also use a battery that probably costs them $0.50 to manufacture. They probably outsource the batteries to another company in Taiwan and give them some degree of specs for the batteries. However in my experience the quality control at some of the battery factories (which I have visited) are not that great. They do a guestimate test of the rundown by simulating conditions. Thats not going to give an accurate idea of what real world battery life is going to be. What I suggest is that you look for an aftermarket battery that comes from Seidio Innocell 1300 mah. IT is a slimline battery and does not require an expansion door (that would not be possible with a Unibody Inspire) and purportedly gets great battery life.

One of the settings I have omitted is to switch your Settings-Wireless and you can select either Auto, WCDMA, or GSM. I leave it set to GSM. Its a bit slower but when I'm not using DATA it doesn't make any difference. The drain on the battery is also reduced by using this setting as the radio is not trying to hit a 3G signal.

 

[h@ystack]

Here is some more information which I left out of my original post. HTC makes great phones and they definitely use a lot of the same hardware and just change the outside. They also use a battery that probably costs them $0.50 to manufacture. They probably outsource the batteries to another company in Taiwan and give them some degree of specs for the batteries. However in my experience the quality control at some of the battery factories (which I have visited) are not that great. They do a guestimate test of the rundown by simulating conditions. Thats not going to give an accurate idea of what real world battery life is going to be. What I suggest is that you look for an aftermarket battery that comes from Seidio Innocell 1300 mah. IT is a slimline battery and does not require an expansion door (that would not be possible with a Unibody Inspire) and purportedly gets great battery life.

One of the settings I have omitted is to switch your Settings-Wireless and you can select either Auto, WCDMA, or GSM. I leave it set to GSM. Its a bit slower but when I'm not using DATA it doesn't make any difference. The drain on the battery is also reduced by using this setting as the radio is not trying to hit a 3G signal.

I couldn't find this option using the path you gave.

 

[burtonvdp]

The Atrix' battery life is not good either...yeah its a bigger battery but all the juice from that dual core is something to think about it.

im happy

I had an atrix for almost a month and I and going to respectfully disagree here. There were problems with the atrix but battery life wasn't one of them. Especially if you used the same process of saving battery life as we do on the inspire.... I was getting 24 hours out of the box with medium usage and up to 48 hours with my "normal usage" and no live wallpaper. Dual core tech should actually save power if designed correctly as well.....

That being said however guess what phone I like better? Yep so far its the inspire hands down.... Although I've got my eye on the infuse....

 

[burtonvdp]

Do any of the gingerbread ROMs out there offer noticeable battery life? If so have you had any drawbacks using it?

 

[LittleAnt]

Do any of the gingerbread ROMs out there offer noticeable battery life? If so have you had any drawbacks using it?

I have been using CoreDroid v5.4. It seems to have excellent battery life, and i'm quite happy with it. Give it a try!


[ROM][18 APR] CoreDroid HD GB 2.3.3 V5.4 & FROYO V3.3 |SENSE|FAST&STABLE|1GHz| ONLINE - xda-developers

 

[Burntorange817]

Do any of the gingerbread ROMs out there offer noticeable battery life? If so have you had any drawbacks using it?

I'm running cyanogenmod 7 and my battery lasts 20 hours with my use which is pretty heavy. Def worth it

 

[tonyb81]

The battery for the Inspire is apparently an Engineering design failure. To expect their customers to manage these work-arounds, and not to have picked this huge issue up in their pre-release testing, is very worrisome.

They cannot expect their customers to be techno-nerds like i am, and some of us, to manage all this stuff to be able to use the product for a day without dying on them.

Probably going to go with Atrix now as much as i hate too.

I hope you aren't expecting amazing battery life on the Atrix. I own both, and can tell you it sometimes is actually worse for me than the Inspire. Also have fun with MotoBlur neutering your dual core processor.

 

[gtalum]

I just flashed LordMod's latest kernel over my CM7 installation, and flashed the -50mv undervolt script. I have SetCPU set to run the CPU at 122 MHz when the screen is off, and otherwise it's set on Interactive with 122 minimum and 1.2 GHz Maximum. At 7 hours since I unplugged, I'm at 80%, and I've been using the phone pretty heavily today. I'm also runnign Juice Defende,r but I've bene running that since the day I bought the phone. My battery life now is absolutely incredible. Previous to this I've never been able to make the Inspire go a full day with any more than about 5% juice left. At this rate I should still be well over 50% when I plug it in tonight.

The Inspire is a great phone, but it's absolutely EPIC once you root it and get a decent ROM and kernel on it.

 

[Brianksh]

I guess I will chime in as well. I took my phone off the charger this morning at 8:00AM CST and as of 7:00PM CST it is at 45%. That 11 hours of moderate use. Several phone calls, WiFi on for short periods ( 15 Min max each time) and Bluetooth on periodically to play music and make calls. I play Slot Machine most of the day.

I don't have GPS turned on at all. The screen is set to 35%. I kill all apps that I am not currently using and lock the screen when not using it. I probably wont charge it until I go to bed. My last phone a LG enV Touch wouldn't last even half as long with the same amount of usage.

I am very happy with my Inspire, considering the features it has, it's the best phone I've ever had.

Brian

 

[h@ystack]

There is definitely some verisimilitude (sorry, I've just always wanted to use that word) to the theory of increased battery drainage when in areas of lower reception.

I was home for the past 4 days straight, and I'm talking heavy heavy usage. Constantly on, playing games, on the internet, on message boards, facebook, youtube, etc. I had it on constantly for 6 hours straight while laying on the couch and I lost about half.

I get to work today where service is very spotty, in an enclosed building that holds up reception pretty well, and its burning the battery just sitting there. No settings have changed from yesterday to today.

 

[AndroidZombie]

I'm running cyanogenmod 7 and my battery lasts 20 hours with my use which is pretty heavy. Def worth it

THIS! Instead of going and taking the time to search for an aftermarket battery, and spend money, take a few hours and do some research and root your phone. My battery life was dissmal with the display taking 80% of my battery life after only 1 hr to 1 1/2 hrs display time. And this was after lowering brightness, no BT, no GPS, no auto sync and stopping the WISP service and AT&T navi in the background (which actually helped my battery alot.) I finally made the jump and rooted the phone and flashed cm7 w/ gingerbread. My battery life easily quadrupled! I now easily get 4 hrs of display time with heavy usage and another ~16-18 hours of standy by time on top of that. Both Bubby's one click and the hack kit are not very hard to do. Just follow the youtube videos. Easier than i expected, and well worth it.

 

[h@ystack]

THIS! Instead of going and taking the time to search for an aftermarket battery, and spend money, take a few hours and do some research and root your phone. My battery life was dissmal with the display taking 80% of my battery life after only 1 hr to 1 1/2 hrs display time. And this was after lowering brightness, no BT, no GPS, no auto sync and stopping the WISP service and AT&T navi in the background (which actually helped my battery alot.) I finally made the jump and rooted the phone and flashed cm7 w/ gingerbread. My battery life easily quadrupled! I now easily get 4 hrs of display time with heavy usage and another ~16-18 hours of standy by time on top of that. Both Bubby's one click and the hack kit are not very hard to do. Just follow the youtube videos. Easier than i expected, and well worth it.

Does rooting change the dynamic of the phone at all? Same usage and look? Or is it like ocmpletely changing the OS on a PC?

Also, if rooting and then running in to problems and the phone has to go back, do you just reset the original OS on the phone?

 

[AndroidZombie]

Does rooting change the dynamic of the phone at all? Same usage and look? Or is it like ocmpletely changing the OS on a PC?

Also, if rooting and then running in to problems and the phone has to go back, do you just reset the original OS on the phone?

Yes and no... Rooting basically unlocks yous phone for you to do what you want with it. Better battery life is just one of the many pros of rooting your device. As far as changing of th OS once you root its up to you on what rom you flash onto your device. You can root and keep the stock rom so that froyo and HTC sense are still intact, although i'm not sure how well the stock rom works with the battery, or if it has any affect at all. There are also many other roms that still give you superb performance while keeping HTC sense. After root you can always turn your phone back to stock out of the box 2.2 w/ sense. The best thing I can tell you is to go over the XDA in the inspire development forums and do research in Bubby's one click root thread, and the other rom threads. There is a wealth of information over there.

 

[Aatos.1]

The battery for the Inspire is apparently an Engineering design failure. To expect their customers to manage these work-arounds, and not to have picked this huge issue up in their pre-release test.

Smartphones are like every other tech product, a series of compromises.

That said a feature phone designed primarily for calls and texting may serve your preferences better. Battery life is very long.

 

[Eboni1956]

I have had my Inspire for 2 weeks. I've been reading this forum for a few days, trying to get some tips on improving the battery life. But, since the most I'm getting out of it is 6 hours, I'm wondering what else I can do.

I got up this morning and unplugged my phone and turned it on around 6:45 am. I answered two text messages and listened to one voice mail. I then went to church. Used my phone to read the scripture during service. Received two voice mails during church. Called my friend after church and talked to her for maybe 15 minutes. By 1:30 this afternoon, I was down to the 10% battery warning. I turned it off, charged it all afternoon to 100%. I just made another 15 minute phone call, listened to two voice mails, and I'm almost at 50%. According to the phone's battery use information, it has been 11h 17m since it was unplugged (I unplugged it about an hour ago), and the phone has been awake for a little over 5 hours.

For settings:
Wifi - off - unless I want to stream movies or music - haven't been able to do that much because of the battery
Bluetooth - off unless I'm driving
Mobile Data - it's set on, but it's my understanding that JD enables and disables this - however, I do have a widget on my home screen so that I can disable it, as well as the wifi and bluetooth
Display - not sure how you tell the percentage, but I have it so dark that nobody else can read it but me (I've got pretty good eyesight for an old woman *smile*)
Screen timeout - 30 seconds
Flash LED for notifications
Background data on
Auto-sync off
GPS - off
I'm running Juice Defender Ultimate on Advanced mode

I must also add that because I'm living in a rural area, I received a free MicroCell. Whenever I'm home, the phone is on MicroCell. Since I'm unemployed right now, I'm home most of the time, so 95% of the time I'm using my phone right here in my home.

In the time that it took me to type this, the battery has drained even more and I'll be getting the 20% warning very soon. It drains even when I'm not using it. I'm not running Facebook in the background - I have the computer for that. I've checked the running apps, and I can't for the life of me figure out what might be draining the battery when the phone is on standby.

I'm typically a moderately heavy user of a smartphone. I'm coming from the iPhone. But, most of the things I did with my iPhone, I can't do with my Inspire because the battery won't last long enough. I was even worried about going to church with it this morning, but I figured I'd take a chance. Not sure I want to do that again, since one more phone call would have drained the battery completely and I would not have had the bible apps.

I'm at a loss as to what else I can do. I've read all the discussions about the difference between heavy and light users. Personally, I think my use today has been very light. I don't want to get in the habit of using the phone while it's charging, but since it is my only phone (I don't use a landline - only cell), I may have to opt for that if I can't figure out what the problem is.

Thanks in advance for any help. And I apologize because I know some of you are sick and tired of hearing whining about batteries. But if I can't get this to work for me, I'm guessing I'm going to have to take the phone back to AT&T. I love this Inspire - much better than the iPhone any day. I just need to get at least a day's worth of battery usage, that's all.

 

[andrews317]

Wow... that tells a lot about this issue. Now I am even doubting on getting this phone.

I have had my Inspire for 2 weeks. I've been reading this forum for a few days, trying to get some tips on improving the battery life. But, since the most I'm getting out of it is 6 hours, I'm wondering what else I can do.

I got up this morning and unplugged my phone and turned it on around 6:45 am. I answered two text messages and listened to one voice mail. I then went to church. Used my phone to read the scripture during service. Received two voice mails during church. Called my friend after church and talked to her for maybe 15 minutes. By 1:30 this afternoon, I was down to the 10% battery warning. I turned it off, charged it all afternoon to 100%. I just made another 15 minute phone call, listened to two voice mails, and I'm almost at 50%. According to the phone's battery use information, it has been 11h 17m since it was unplugged (I unplugged it about an hour ago), and the phone has been awake for a little over 5 hours.

For settings:
Wifi - off - unless I want to stream movies or music - haven't been able to do that much because of the battery
Bluetooth - off unless I'm driving
Mobile Data - it's set on, but it's my understanding that JD enables and disables this - however, I do have a widget on my home screen so that I can disable it, as well as the wifi and bluetooth
Display - not sure how you tell the percentage, but I have it so dark that nobody else can read it but me (I've got pretty good eyesight for an old woman *smile*)
Screen timeout - 30 seconds
Flash LED for notifications
Background data on
Auto-sync off
GPS - off
I'm running Juice Defender Ultimate on Advanced mode

I must also add that because I'm living in a rural area, I received a free MicroCell. Whenever I'm home, the phone is on MicroCell. Since I'm unemployed right now, I'm home most of the time, so 95% of the time I'm using my phone right here in my home.

In the time that it took me to type this, the battery has drained even more and I'll be getting the 20% warning very soon. It drains even when I'm not using it. I'm not running Facebook in the background - I have the computer for that. I've checked the running apps, and I can't for the life of me figure out what might be draining the battery when the phone is on standby.

I'm typically a moderately heavy user of a smartphone. I'm coming from the iPhone. But, most of the things I did with my iPhone, I can't do with my Inspire because the battery won't last long enough. I was even worried about going to church with it this morning, but I figured I'd take a chance. Not sure I want to do that again, since one more phone call would have drained the battery completely and I would not have had the bible apps.

I'm at a loss as to what else I can do. I've read all the discussions about the difference between heavy and light users. Personally, I think my use today has been very light. I don't want to get in the habit of using the phone while it's charging, but since it is my only phone (I don't use a landline - only cell), I may have to opt for that if I can't figure out what the problem is.

Thanks in advance for any help. And I apologize because I know some of you are sick and tired of hearing whining about batteries. But if I can't get this to work for me, I'm guessing I'm going to have to take the phone back to AT&T. I love this Inspire - much better than the iPhone any day. I just need to get at least a day's worth of battery usage, that's all.

 

[Aatos.1]

I have had my Inspire for 2 weeks. I've been reading this forum for a few days, trying to get some tips on improving the battery life. But, since the most I'm getting out of it is 6 hours, I'm wondering what else I can do.

First, my compliments for your excellent, detailed post. Thanks to your specific outline, I have a complete picture of your experience.

Second I think you've done a very good job of addressing this.

Like any other brand and model, their is some variation from phone to phone. Usually by the two week interval, one is getting the best possible battery life. Unfortunately as much as I like the Inspire, and as good of a model as it is, the one shortcoming is battery life, especially for those of us, that like to use them frequently thru the day.

At this point the good news is you are still within your return period. On May 15, AT&T is releasing the new Samsung Infuse 4G. It has a much larger battery, a gorgeous 4.5" energy saver display. This is a phone I plan to buy.

I would encourage you to give it serious consideration as well. I've included a link below that compares it side by side with your current phone.

Any questions you have I'd be happy to answer



HTC Inspire 4G vs. Samsung I997 Infuse 4G - GSMArena.com

 

[kb58]

I just got my Inspire about a week ago, and I use it a lot. And it's really only last me about 5 hours before is almost dead. I have a lot of the setting turned down, my screen is at like 30%, and I have the app killer so things in the background don't just keep running. But I just order a bigger battery off amazon that 1600Mah that fits for the inspire. It had 6 reviews on it and all were 5 stars for giving the inspire a longer battery life by at least 50%. So if I can't get at least a good 8 hours of heavy use out of it with the new battery I will be happy. The battery was only 30 bucks with free two day shipping.

This is the pseudo science that keeps everyone running in circles. Lets assume that this no-name battery maker somehow bent the laws of battery technology and figured out how to actually make a 1600maH battery, when HTC couldn't. The stock phone comes with a 1230maH battery, so the BEST this magic battery could do is 1600 / 1230, or 30% better... 30%, not 50%, so right there we have a problem with totally dumb claims. Second, without running back-to-back identical tests, any differences in run-time are Much more likely to be human nature at work, treating the new battery differently without being consciously aware of it.

Summed up, until someone does some real tests, these wonder batteries are a total unknown, so lets please not pass along BS info as fact, it's how religions get started.

 

[Simba501]

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=13642982&postcount=29