I Found & Fixed an HTC Incredible Battery Bug

[silasmarner]

Thanks all for throwing this thread together. It's been a good read. I realize there is a lot to learn with Android. Kind of a fun process all together.

So my battery life has been fairly crappy so far. I left my house today around 7:30am and on my commute home around 5 my phone was dead. Ridiculous. Less than 12 hours. Yes, I used my phone, probably more than I would if it weren't a new toy, but I was not playing games, using GPS, playing with the camera, etc. I did a bunch of texting, made a couple calls, listened to Pandora and did a bunch of web browsing throughout the day.

So I stumbled upon this thread and have been intrigued. I started checking the up time and awake time while the phone was plugged in and the two numbers were identical. I'm not sure if this has to do with it being plugged in or not, but I did kill the calendar app, then unplugged and it looks like the phone went to sleep, cuz the numbers separated.

Looks like tomorrow I'll be keeping a close eye on things. I've been following some of the other threads regarding whether or not to use a Task Killer. I ended up removing it from my phone. If anyone is interested, there are a couple threads going on about this stuff. Just search if want to read.

Would love to get that Day 6 battery boost to 20+ hours. Definitely do not want to be constantly worrying about my batter percentages all the time. I'm sure a few of you can relate.

OK, end rant.

I've noticed that awake and Up are exactly the same if it's plugged in after a reboot. I've been tracking time via my blog.
Conti's Corner

 

[Novaglarion]

My issue was "Sync Gmail", I can leave contacts and calendars on and it's fine, but if i sync gmail my uptime and awake time are the same...

I though Gmail was supposed to be push now? why would a time based sync be needed if the emails are being pushed to our phones? I can see it for contacts and calendar... but not for email. With "Sync Gmail" off i no longer receive emails unless i manually refresh, so push is not working...

I tested this with my exchange account, with exchange sync turned off you can't even get new email... So i have it enalbed and the download frequency set to as items arrive and i still get at least 75% more battery life now with just gmail sync turned off.

Last night i woke up at 3am from my phone beeping. I had forgotten to plug it in. It was at 7% battery. I clicked on the battery usage button, it said (estimates) System 40%, Standby 40%, display 5%, phone idle 5%. it had been 6hrs since it was unplugged...

 

[Brian_83]

Ive also been trying to figure out why my phone wont sleep. All I have to do is a reboot and im fine for about 20 hours. Then it will stop sleeping again. Ive tried killing every app and process I can but nothing fixes it until a reboot. From everyhere I look it appears to be Android System causing it. I've tried killing all apps everyone in these threads has mentioned and no luxk. Anyone one else in this situation?

 

[servenus]

Any breakthrough stories of dramatically increased battery life?

for five (business) days in a row, left home at 7:00am with a fully charged Incredible. got the it's-time-to-charge red light between 3-6pm, depending on my usage. after force-stopping the calendar yesterday (and keeping it that way) fully charged the device last night and unplugged it around 9:00pm, and now (14 hours later), have 75%-80% battery with periodic email/browser/app usage (approx 60 min usage including last night and this morning). had to force stop Calendar only twice in that time frame.

[edit: up time: 14:30; awake time: 00:40]
[edit: up time: 21:04; awake time: 1:40, with 50% battery remaining<-- dramatic from a total of 9-10 hours. note: Calendar process has not resumed after the two force quits mentioned above]

but (ahem) the Incredible still doesn't have to put on the red light.

 

[Germwise]

wow sorry, I followed about 10 pct of this thread.

Can someone summarize what you need to do to improve battery life? and start a new thread?

 

[silasmarner]

Before my battery dies I wanted to report the times. 26 hours 10 minutes up time. 2 hours 56 minutes awake time. Doing better.

Droid Incredible Battery Life Update 4 Conti&#039;s Corner

 

[johnperkins21]

wow sorry, I followed about 10 pct of this thread.

Can someone summarize what you need to do to improve battery life? and start a new thread?

It depends on your issue. Many people seem to have issues with their phone going to sleep. Check this by going to Settings - Battery and compare up time vs. awake time. If they are the same, or very similar, then something is keeping your phone awake. My issue with this was resolved by doing a force stop on the calendar. Go to Settings - Applications - Manage Applications, and find Calendar. Scroll down and select Force Stop. Other people have had success putting the phone into Airplane mode, letting the phone sleep for a minute, then bringing it back out. And still others have gotten results by just killing any random application, like the FM Radio for instance.

If your phone is indeed sleeping when you are not using, and you're still going through your battery really quickly it could be myriad things. Depending on the rate of battery drain, it could be poor signal, an overzealous application using too much power when your phone is awake, using an advanced task killer, or just really heavy usage. It's tough to say exactly without knowing more about your particular experience.

 

[darkfiber]

I installed the app "Spare Parts".
Changed the option "End Button behavior".
Select "Go to sleep".

My Up/Awake timers show different times now.

 

[htcincredibl]

I had Up Time = Awake Time
I think the problem is fixed with a hard reset.
When I did this the phone forces a reactivation and it also updates firmware and/or OS software.
The phone will now sleep.

Now my problem is that the News Feed from Facebook reports an error, but that is for another thread and a problem with Facebook not my phone, I believe.

 

[servenus]

Before my battery dies I wanted to report the times. 26 hours 10 minutes up time. 2 hours 56 minutes awake time. Doing better.

Droid Incredible Battery Life Update 4 Conti's Corner

Seems to be similar to my device: 1:40 awake time with 50% battery remaining. All this after force stopping the Calendar (x2) (again, thanks to John)

 

[mhamann]

My phone is beginning to sleep relatively normally when I kill the calendar after a reboot. It's gotta be some sort of bug. The question is...do I attempt to exchange the phone for a replacement or just wait for an OTA (who knows when that might be...)?

Opinions? Would a new phone even make a difference??

 

[roninld]

My phone is fine during the day and sleeps without any issues. But it seems to wake up during the night and stay on. End up starting Calendar just to see it listed as a process in Astro in order to kill it. After which, the phone starts going to sleep again.

So far, have tried disabling Google and Peep before going to bed, but still having this problem. Will try Facebook tonight.

Anyone else have this problem of the phone waking up during the night and not going to sleep anymore?

 

[johnperkins21]

As an update to my issue, after a while it seemed like running a force stop on the calendar no longer helped, or at the very least, didn't help for very long. So I decided to just bite the bullet and do a device wipe.

I wiped the phone last night, without adding any accounts during the setup. I slowly added accounts individually then did multiple sleep/awake tests before moving to the next account. My phone is now pretty much back to where it was before and it consistently sleeps when it should. I'll report back after another few days, but at this point, it seems to have done the trick.

 

[AaronBBrown]

My phone is fine during the day and sleeps without any issues. But it seems to wake up during the night and stay on. End up starting Calendar just to see it listed as a process in Astro in order to kill it. After which, the phone starts going to sleep again.

So far, have tried disabling Google and Peep before going to bed, but still having this problem. Will try Facebook tonight.

Anyone else have this problem of the phone waking up during the night and not going to sleep anymore?

Yep, yesterday morning that happened to me. This morning, it doesn't seem to have...though it's still early.

 

[roninld]

Yep, yesterday morning that happened to me. This morning, it doesn't seem to have...though it's still early.

Hmmm ... hasn't happend to me either this morning. I hope that is good sign.

Sent an email to HTC support on their website as well detailing everything that was happening to me and everything I had done to get the battery life working. Worth a shot I figured.

There are also some threads on the Incredible forums on the HTC website with this problem.

 

[roninld]

As an update to my issue, after a while it seemed like running a force stop on the calendar no longer helped, or at the very least, didn't help for very long. So I decided to just bite the bullet and do a device wipe.

I wiped the phone last night, without adding any accounts during the setup. I slowly added accounts individually then did multiple sleep/awake tests before moving to the next account. My phone is now pretty much back to where it was before and it consistently sleeps when it should. I'll report back after another few days, but at this point, it seems to have done the trick.

That would be great if this works. Here's hoping this does the trick!

 

[StaggerLee]

Is anyone else using the Good for Enterprise corporate email/calender app? My wife and I both have new Incredibles. My DINC sleeps fine, but hers never sleeps (Up time = Awake time). Our phones are pretty much the same (installed applications)except her company uses the Good for Enterprise app to manage email. I've done some research and apparently this app is keeping Incredibles Awake 100% of the time and killing the battery in about six hours.
There is no option to set a sync interval so I'm assuming it's contantly syncing and preventing the phone from sleeping. Is anyone else forced to use this app to manage thier e-mail. Any suggestions on how to keep it from constantly syncing?

 

[mhamann]

Is anyone else using the Good for Enterprise corporate email/calender app? My wife and I both have new Incredibles. My DINC sleeps fine, but hers never sleeps (Up time = Awake time). Our phones are pretty much the same (installed applications)except her company uses the Good for Enterprise app to manage email. I've done some research and apparently this app is keeping Incredibles Awake 100% of the time and killing the battery in about six hours.
There is no option to set a sync interval so I'm assuming it's contantly syncing and preventing the phone from sleeping. Is anyone else forced to use this app to manage thier e-mail. Any suggestions on how to keep it from constantly syncing?

I have no idea. It would be best for you to start a new thread about that specific application as this thread is more related to a probable Incredible-specific software bug.

The only advice I have for you is to kill or uninstall the suspect application and watch the device carefully over the next couple of days to see if it starts sleeping. If so, you have your answer, in which case you can use a 3rd party app to force-kill the email app every time the screen turns off.

 

[StaggerLee]

Thought about a new thread, but have been reading a lot of posts here and it seems folks are sick of new "my battery sucks" threads, which this basically is...

 

[mhamann]

Thought about a new thread, but have been reading a lot of posts here and it seems folks are sick of new "my battery sucks" threads, which this basically is...

Totally understand! Just was thinking you might know for sure that the Enterprise Email app was the culprit and would need to "debug" that rather than just another battery problem.

That said, if it turns out killing/removing the app doesn't work for you, you're definitely in the right place! ;-)

 

[kenyu73]

For those interested, I'm working on a new app. I searched around in the market, and found tons of CPU monitors, battery meters and a few other battery tools... but not anything that babysits your battery system for you.

I'm going to code it based on helping users identify issues instead of threatening to return the phone.. I dunno, maybe it'll help.. maybe not.

ETA is a few days before beta and maybe market.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/49852276@N03/sets/72157624033454708

 

[jprow507]

For those interested, I'm working on a new app. I searched around in the market, and found tons of CPU monitors, battery meters and a few other battery tools... but not anything that babysits your battery system for you.

I'm going to code it based on helping users identify issues instead of threatening to return the phone.. I dunno, maybe it'll help.. maybe not.

ETA is a few days before beta and maybe market.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/49852276@N03/sets/72157624033454708

Thanks. Looking forward to it.

 

[mntbighker]

I think with all the various problems and methods tried to solve them that this will wind up being a process or combination of them that get stuck probably going after a network connect. The central theme is obviously network related. If someone had "console" access this might be easy to prove.It would be nice if Verizon or HTC could say definitively they know what it is and are working on a fix. But everyone seems much more comfortable treating the public like mushrooms?

 

[Lev16]

Just want to say big props to the OP on this thread. Today was a significant bump up from my usual crappy battery days.

Method:
I plugged phone in last night and turned it off.
Green in the morning. Did not unplug
Turned the phone on.
Then turned it off again.
The red light came on for about 20 min.
Let it charge. Turned Green
Turned back on and voila. I took it off the charger around 7:30am.

Current Up Time at ~9:50pm: 14:14
Awake Time: 6:08

Battery = 9% (Not great, but let me explain...)

I did not hold back in any way today in terms of usage. I browsed the web, did quite a bit of emailing, texted, used the camera, streamed music, played more music, and browsed the web some more. I downloaded apps and uploaded pics. I pretty much used it as heavy as I could.... And for the first time, I was not the least bit concerned about my battery. If I can make it 14 hrs doing all that, then I'm more than impressed.

This phone seriously has not ceased to impress. I feel like a total dork for saying that too

Edit: I just realized this probably belongs to another thread. Oh well. Hopefully it helps someone here as well. Cheers

 

[bbonox]

I'm not sure if this question has been asked already, but I didn't want to wade through every battery thread to find out --

I'm pretty sure there's a consensus that the reason for full charge/discharge cycles is to calibrate the battery meter on the phone. My question is, do you always need to charge the phone while it's off in order to top off the battery, or will it eventually calibrate such that you don't need to do that? Or does the charger simply not supply enough current to charge the battery that last few percent when the phone is on?