increase battery life/ widget ideas

I can't help you on the widgets, except for Synker https://market.android.com/details?id=com.afterhoursdevelopers.android.synker
which will allow you to sync when you want after turning off auto sync.
As for battery life look in Settings>About Phone>Battery use to see what could be killing your battery other than Cell Standby and Phone Idle.
Beyond that, if you're not rooted, I'd suggest doing so and installing Sense ROM by joneidy
http://androidforums.com/optimus-m-all-things-root/323247-rom-theme-sense-rom-optimus-m.html
I've noticed a big increase in battery life with that versus the stock ROM, which I had removed all bloat from too.
Now I can leave GPS on, have live wallpapers and still have a little battery left, around 15%, after 14 hours.

 

I too am experiencing short battery life. I went to sleep last night with my phone at 100%, woke up at 15%

It also seems like it's taking about 4 hours or more to charge. I borrowed my room mates charger for his Motorolla phone and it seems to charge a bit faster...

Under the 'about phone' area it says that "while unplugged for 10h 33m" this is what used up all my battery:

cell standby - 64%
phone idle - 32%
wi-fi - 4%

Is this normal? my phone should lose approx. 90% of its charge overnight just from being on standby and idle? I'm thinking my battery is defective or something.

 

The new option available lets you 1click root your phone even on 2.2.1. The only thing is you need to have your SD Card backed up just in case.

With stock setup and no apps even installed, my battery life was 6-7 hours untouched. If I went to bed on a full, just unplugged battery, I woke up to a dead phone. All I needed was root to save my battery. I keep sync, WiFi and GPS enabled 24/7, and my battery last anywhere from 16-34 hours; calls and media usage depending. I found that the only thing killing my battery life was Metro's bloatware.

 

Motorola charger?? Be careful with using chargers that were made for other phones or off brand chargers found on ebay. The amount of power allowed to your phone for charging is specific, an off brand or another phone charger can deliver too much juice while charging and could cause the battery to leak, over-heat or worse.
My wife bought some off brands from ebay that were supposedly for the LG Optimus M but they were delivering way too much juice. I'd pick up the phone while it was charging and couldn't unlock it or do anything with it because of the extra current flowing into it.

I know I'm going to get some grief for this but, it is my experience that batteries need to be seasoned. Meaning that they should be fully charged, then fully discharged, several times for them to have a longer battery memory.
NiHM batteries are supposedly not affect by this problem but practical experience proves to me that they are.
If I get a new NiHM battery, charge it fully and then only let it drain to 20% before charging again, that 20% level will now be its 0%.
I now a lot of us are guilty of not being able to put down the new toy so that their batteries can be seasoned but, it does pay off in the long run.

 

I'm not too worried about off brand chargers, it's using a slightly non-standard mini USB plug. I was thinking maybe the one that came with my phone is defective. I get about 15% per hour while charging. Which means I basically have to spend 1/2 the day plugged in, because my phone dies every night. And in checking the 'about phone' area it seems this is normal.

Is LG known for crappy batteries? Any recomendations for a replacement battery, or a proper charger that could charge this phone in an hour?

I'm assuming Standby & Idle are essential processes, but if they run down the battery to 10% overnight it's almost a deal killer, that means my alarm won't go off and I may miss an important morning phone call or message.

 

Back up your sdcard contents to your PC via USB.
You need to do some reading over here Optimus M - All Things Root - Android Forums

Rooting http://androidforums.com/optimus-m-all-things-root/336196-1-click-root-optimus-m-gingerbreak.html
Install Custom Recovery http://androidforums.com/optimus-m-...nally-custom-recovery-2-2-1-stock-phones.html
Choose a ROM to flash. I'd suggest the Sense ROM
http://androidforums.com/optimus-m-all-things-root/323247-rom-theme-sense-rom-optimus-m.html
2 Videos tutorials on how to
http://androidforums.com/optimus-m-...-video-how-flash-custom-roms-nand-backup.html
&
http://androidforums.com/optimus-m-all-things-root/314401-video-tutorials.html

 

You should definitely root my phone is smoother faster and with some custom settings (setcpu, juice defender) my batt life is great.

 

Jabba linked you to a good deal of information. Just remember that after you root, everything else is (kinda) optional. If you don't feel comfortable going beyond that point, you don't have to. The battery times I posted are with the stock ROM and I used a program called Titanium Backup to disable the bloatware. This way I can always re-enable everything and do a standard factory reset if necessary. When my comfort level gets better, I'll probably move up to custom ROMs.

This phone doesn't charge in an hour. I don't think I've seen any smart phone charge in an hour, lol. Best you'll get is ~3 hours with the phone on after rooting. Because the stock setup eats away at the battery, you're losing juice as you put it in. Problem with most apps is they don't register under battery usage. I can spend 3 hours killing my battery with Angry Birds but it won't register. However location based apps such as Foursquare, Google Maps and Waze GPS do if they run for a measily 5 minutes.

 

What exactly did you get rid of and what did you replace it with (in cases of easy wifi manager)?

 

Frozen Apps:
(Metro) AppStore
Boingo WiFi (to the extent which it freezes)
Calculator: Using RealCalc from Android Market
Free Games
Gmail: I use stock mail
Loopt
mail@metro: I use stock mail
Metro411
metroBACKUP
MetroNavigotor: Google Maps, Waze Social GPS
MetroPCS Easy WiFi: built in WiFi
Mobile Banking
Mobile IM
MocoSpace
MyExtras
PocketExpress
RSS Reader
SNS: replaced with Facebook for Android, TweetDeck for Android
UNO
VirtualCard
Weather 2.2: Weather.com App, giving Go Weather a try at the moment.

I haven't deleted anything in case I need a quick Factory Reset. Deleting them is not worth the ~15MB gained and having to flash the phone to return it to stock.

 

You dont know what youre missing by rooting your phone, I aim on the cm7 rom and if youre into customizing your device nothing better out there . very simple instructions. i tried the sense rom then the cm7 rom in a matter of 10 minutes just to see the difference in speed, cm7 much better.

 

if your looking for battery life, i can get almost a full days worth on my phone, i use juice defender for its ability to manage my radio when i don't need it and cut off things like data, and i use overclock widget to manage my processor speed when the screen is off and when it's on.

this is with my screen at full brightness, no live wallpaper, data sync and gps enabled, and powerAMP playing music all day c:

_____EDIT
im rooted though and i have removed all the metroPOS bloat ware

 

I installed Gas Buddy and experienced much shorter battery life.

I uninstalled it and the problem persisted.

This morning I rebooted the phone by removing the battery and re-installing it.

I'll let you know if that worked or not.

Notes

 

Try Juice Defender.

 

Go one click father and you can see more details. If you have a high percentage of time without a signal, that will kill your battery. Keep in mind that the phone will constantly search for a signal until it is connected to three towers. You might never actually lose a signal, but it could still be wasting battery looking. I have not found a solution to this.

 

It worked.

My phone is back to normal now.

Instead of discharging over 50% in 6 or 7 hours, it has hardly discharged at all.

I don't know why it worked, but I remember the woman at the Cell Phone store telling me that whenever the phone acts weird, take the battery out, wait 10 seconds, and put the battery back in to reboot the phone.

Notes ♫

 

My first post! And I can actually contribute

My wife and I bought 2 phones on MetroPCS. She got the Indulge and I got the Optimus M. She hated her phone once she found it was a battery hog. I wasn't too happy with the Optimus at only 8 hours or so. I started with the basics like wifi, GPS, BT, display, etc. Same. No change. I did think it was strange that wifi ssid's were showing with the wifi off. Then I figured it out, without rooting. MetroPCS easy wifi and/or Boingo wifi was turning wifi on without my knowledge. I went into the settings of both apps and disabled them.

No root. My use got me 19 to 20 hours at 5 to 10% battery left. Then the wife found out and now she has the Optimus and I still have no battery life (until the extended battery comes out)

Hope that helps

 

The thing with gas buddy is it connects to the internet, and to gps so if you let it it will be using battery 3 ways, its own process and then by searching gps and internet. That is why it used so much battery.
You can do 2 things make sure that the app is closed when your not using it, just pressing the home button does not turn it off you have to use the back button to close it, from what I read. And other ways is to have gps disabled so its not constantly polling the gps.

Oh and I think all the wigets can consume battery as well.

 

Thanks for the back button tip. I could not find a way to turn Gas Buddy off. They should have put an off option in the settings box.

Right now I'm using it in the web browser and it works fine. I have GPS disabled on the web browser, but it isn't much work to type the zip code into the Gas Buddy web page, so I don't know if I'm going to re-install.

But after leaving my phone on standby all day, when I plugged it in and hit the home button it showed charging with 97% left in the battery so the draining problem is definitely solved.

Notes ♫

 

That is always good, I use the gas buddy app, If I am not home and need it the app is much quicker then loading the web page, I barely get 40k/bs speeds and I cant stand waiting minutes for a web page to load up, that is not even counting the time it takes to search.