It WAS my Hero

[howiesf]

To put it bluntly- that is the reason I went off in my post. From what I have seen on forums and talking to the 30 or so Sprint people I know, most people are NOT getting the battery life you state, no matter what "tweaks" they make. It appears that 1 out of like 100 people get sufficient battery life with light-moderate usage. Then there are people like me. For example, I have WiFi, GPS and BT off, auto-backlight- off, I made 4 calls today for a total of 23 minutes. I read the web on the bus for 15 minutes, I checked email (Gmail Push) for about 10 minutes. I am now down to 69 % and I took it off of the charger at 8:45 AM and it's only 3:30. This is what is driving me crazy about this phone that I do love. I never had the Awake time issue and I now use Spare Parts and my Awake Time is under 20 % all the time. The biggest user of my battery is the "Android OS" so I have no idea why my battery life is so sucky. I am beyond my 30 days so I can't return it. However, it now appears that I have the dust under the screen , so maybe # 4 will be a charm !

isn't there a battery out with twice the capacity now?

Either way...I'm amazed people can't get a good 12 hours out of their battery. I mean, I was on the Canadian border, in the middle of a lake, with virtually no service. I sent 200 texts, and played games on my phone the entire day, as well as the occasional internet browsing (terrible fishing that day lol). Now, that's pretty heavy usage if you ask me, and I still managed to get a good 10 hours out of that charge. If you can't get at least 10-12 hours on a normal days usage, then you've apparently got a battery problem, or your phone isn't sleeping properly. My normal usage, I can get 20+ hours on a single charge.

 

[MisterB]

To put it bluntly- that is the reason I went off in my post. From what I have seen on forums and talking to the 30 or so Sprint people I know, most people are NOT getting the battery life you state, no matter what "tweaks" they make. It appears that 1 out of like 100 people get sufficient battery life with light-moderate usage. Then there are people like me. For example, I have WiFi, GPS and BT off, auto-backlight- off, I made 4 calls today for a total of 23 minutes. I read the web on the bus for 15 minutes, I checked email (Gmail Push) for about 10 minutes. I am now down to 69 % and I took it off of the charger at 8:45 AM and it's only 3:30. This is what is driving me crazy about this phone that I do love. I never had the Awake time issue and I now use Spare Parts and my Awake Time is under 20 % all the time. The biggest user of my battery is the "Android OS" so I have no idea why my battery life is so sucky. I am beyond my 30 days so I can't return it. However, it now appears that I have the dust under the screen , so maybe # 4 will be a charm !

Dude, seriously. Throw the phone on a charger while you're sitting at your desk early afternoon for maybe an hour, and you'll be all set.

You can sit there and expect perfection, or you can just do this one simple little thing and you'll be much happier.

Would I prefer my battery lasted like my BlackBerry did? Sure, but the positives of having a phone that puts the BlackBerry to shame outweigh that in my book.

 

[tatonka_Hero]

guess I got lucky with my phone's battery then...that doesn't happen very often (or ever) for me.

 

[t1jordan]

Dude, seriously. Throw the phone on a charger while you're sitting at your desk early afternoon for maybe an hour, and you'll be all set.

You can sit there and expect perfection, or you can just do this one simple little thing and you'll be much happier.

Would I prefer my battery lasted like my BlackBerry did? Sure, but the positives of having a phone that puts the BlackBerry to shame outweigh that in my book.

They just don't get it MisterB!

 

[teckn1caLity]

I got a charger so I can charge my charger while I'm charging my charger.

 

[toomuchgame441]

Yea I carry a usb most of the time, use it at work. Today I was shopping for cars on a web site and I was browsing literally 2 hours str8 at my fiances house. I had my battery at like 90% before I started my searches, I was down to about 45% when I was done. Was I a little dissapointed? Yea kind of. But thinking about it having a great overall and LONG browsing experience was worth the battery sacrifice in my book.

 

[memphis9489]

I got a charger so I can charge my charger while I'm charging my charger.

Now that's funny!

 

[BSki]

To put it bluntly- that is the reason I went off in my post. From what I have seen on forums and talking to the 30 or so Sprint people I know, most people are NOT getting the battery life you state, no matter what "tweaks" they make. It appears that 1 out of like 100 people get sufficient battery life with light-moderate usage. Then there are people like me. For example, I have WiFi, GPS and BT off, auto-backlight- off, I made 4 calls today for a total of 23 minutes. I read the web on the bus for 15 minutes, I checked email (Gmail Push) for about 10 minutes. I am now down to 69 % and I took it off of the charger at 8:45 AM and it's only 3:30. This is what is driving me crazy about this phone that I do love. I never had the Awake time issue and I now use Spare Parts and my Awake Time is under 20 % all the time. The biggest user of my battery is the "Android OS" so I have no idea why my battery life is so sucky. I am beyond my 30 days so I can't return it. However, it now appears that I have the dust under the screen , so maybe # 4 will be a charm !

So on 31% of your battery you got 6 hours with some mild usage. What are you expecting? It isn't just sitting there doing nothing, you are pulling data, synching data, etc. It is functioning.

At the rate you are seeing, you should get a minimum of 18 hours battery life with this usage. This seems like a user problem. I go to bed after about 16 hours off charger and I will have about 40% left with medium usage.

Go get another phone. Or buy a bigger batter. Or buy a second battery. No one on these boards can fix your complaints.

Remove ALL your widgets and only use gmail, do not even setup a pop account. Turn off bluetooth, wifi, gps, always on data, auto sync. Run that for a few days and that should show you the MAX your battery will last.

 

[flammenwurfer]

I think you're expectations are just WAY too high. Doing what you did from 8:45 AM to 3:30 PM and having 69% battery life left sounds like pretty excellent battery life to me. You used it quite a bit for almost 7 hours and only used 31% battery. At that rate your phone shouldn't be dead til 6 AM the next morning. What more do you want from it?

 

[rayla117]

get automatic task killer!!

 

[jamespg81]

I had a pre before the hero,and battery life on that was much worse than my pre... so yeah it sucks,but its an improvement for me. Ive just learned to deal with it... i have a car charger,home and work chargers.. i use mine alot but as long as i put it on a charger here and there it never gets below 60%

 

[thefley]

For all you whiners: would you like some cheese to go with that whine? Get real fellas. This is just a damn phone. All the crap added to it is a bonus. I just bought an extended battery for my laptop. guess how long it lasted last night playing on the internet...guess how long it lasted from a full charge...2 hours. I played on the internet on my phone yesterday and had music playing..it lasted 3-4 hours before the battery was at 50%...get a grip...the holy grail of phones doesnt last any longer than ours does...and guess what...you can get an extended battery for ours easily...can you do that with an iphone?

I AGREE 100%, Go back to the BB. I have had the palms and switch quickly to the
windows mobile over the crappy palm so called OS. After the HERO I would never think of going back to those others again! Doesn

 

[droidme]

i have not had a chance to review all of the threads, and i am sure there is a thread for this out there somewhere but... I am no genius and i only know from experience. Speaking for the "Hero" in specific, if you turn the Wifi and the GPS off while your not using either (you can set buttons for both on one of your 7 screens for quick reference) and charge your phone ONLY when it says it has minimal battery life left your battery life will last significantly longer, and then let it stay on the charger until 100% full. (something about if you charge the battery when its not dead and taking it off when its not done really messes with the battery life.) I also use a Power Manager App and my phone lasts sometime 30 plus hours depending on how much game playing i do. In the same case, keep that charger with you.


Good luck to you all.

 

[memphis9489]

I was patiently waiting for the Hero since it was deemed a top Android phone and was shot down rather quickly after the purchase. When I bought this phone I instantly thought "I'll never be bored". Well when you charge your batter over night, every night, and are in the middle of the day around 2-3pm-ish you think twice about playing around with it when your bored. So that makes me think, why would someone create a phone with more than 10,000 apps, 7 home screens and a bunch of widgets to only be able to use it minimally? I understand some of you may come into this thread and think "my battery is fine, maybe you should read the "Battery Management Sticky Thread"", but I have. If I wanna reserve battery and only use it for texting/calling and almost never web browsing, maybe I should have stuck with my blackberry. It pretty much comes down to how much you use your phone. I know for myself when I'm sitting around waiting for something to get done and have a gadget in my pocket that does virtually everything a PC can do, It won't be staying in my pocket but I might be surfing the web, playing games, listening to music, twittering etc. If you only use your phone to text/call and use it occasionally why would you even have a device like this? To sit in your bed and play with your Hero while it's being charged simultaneously? I guess at this point you need something that's convenient and reliable if you can't really get what you want out of your current phone. So I will be trading my phone in for another Blackberry. I really though the Hero was gonna be my first Android device and I thought it was gonna take me onto another Sprint android phone which will then lead me to another Sprint android phone and so on. Feel free to leave responses and discuss this, if you feel the same way I do or if you rebel what I had to say.

You are suggesting that "overcharging" the battery shortens its life. Unlike laptop batteries, that is not true.

 

[Geoponic]

I agree.
It's take me about 20 minutes for me to get bored.
But i still love it, if i want to play on something above 20minutes
i'll buy a pspgo

 

[nateo200]

I can get about 11-14 hours of juice out of my Droid. I'm not about to complain either. My phone when its in my pocket is checking my email, catching my email, checking the weather, receiving texts and constantly adjusting its power levels. So yes naturally i would expect the battery life to be less than some stupid dumb phone. I keep wifi off when I'm not using it and keep the screen brightness on the lowest setting, idk about you guys but the screen doesn't need to blind me in order for me to see it...

isn't there a battery out with twice the capacity now?

Either way...I'm amazed people can't get a good 12 hours out of their battery. I mean, I was on the Canadian border, in the middle of a lake, with virtually no service. I sent 200 texts, and played games on my phone the entire day, as well as the occasional internet browsing (terrible fishing that day lol). Now, that's pretty heavy usage if you ask me, and I still managed to get a good 10 hours out of that charge. If you can't get at least 10-12 hours on a normal days usage, then you've apparently got a battery problem, or your phone isn't sleeping properly. My normal usage, I can get 20+ hours on a single charge.

I bet the roaming charges were a buzzkill.

 

[tatonka_Hero]

I bet the roaming charges were a buzzkill.

Roaming charges? Nah, it was a Verizon tower. That's the great thing about Sprint, there's essentially no difference between Verizon's network and Sprint's, including when it comes to the bill...of course, this could be part of the employee pricing plan. The only difference was that using Verizon's towers, I can't use 3G...but big deal when I'm in the middle of a lake lol

 

[pipskicks]

My .02 after using Pearl, Curve then 8900 with T-Mobile for 5 years.

1. Touchscreen takes getting used to, I can type "well" I will admit I could type a longer e-mail on my BB, but then again, most of those times I really wanted to go to a computer like I would now, if I really couldn't it is possible with the touchscreen, and I am still improving on speed (mostly with incorporating the text prediction).

2. It is right about the battery, except my BB wasn't cool if I used a lot of apps, even worse, if I left a nasty draining one open, it killed my battery without me even knowing, I'd be at 20% mid-day because I forgot to kill an app! So they both have issues with using it a lot.

3. Since they both can't be used all day long, I figure I will use the Hero as a phone in general, and if I want to do more and use a charger, I'm going to play on the Hero, the 8900 was easy to kill the battery life of, but wasn't nearly as fun to play on as the Hero.

Just my .02

 

[pipskicks]

And on top of my post, my view is BB is extremely well established (even though their network does go down) and they rarely have many issues. they have limitations though.

Google has a lot more possibilities, but they are not established very well AT ALL.