Recommendations for optimizing battery life?

[KRCarlson]

Hey all, from everything I've read and seen on the internet, the droid doesn't have the most spectacular battery life, that said, I'm really interested in maximizing my phone's settings to spare my battery life. If someone has some recommendations so I can get around 48 hours without having to throw it on a charger, that'd be great. I'm brand new to the phone, and moreover, I'm brand new to the Android OS, so be gentle.

P.S. I'm constantly listening to music, and I play SNES for almost 2 hours every day on my commute to and from work. Other than that, I use the phone for the basics. Though that may change soon if my company wants me to test the email settings.

 

[mjschmidt]

@KRCarlson: Look here: http://androidforums.com/android-lounge/6423-power-saver-modes-android-battery-life.html

Remember (in all friendliness) try searching forums first, most likely someone else has had the same question, or similar.

 

[KRCarlson]

Ah, thanks. Sry, I'm a newb to all of this.

 

[mjschmidt]

Don't worry about it. We all start out as newbs. Tiny, mewling newbs with little to no hair.

 

[slarti]

The standard smartphone advice for maximising battery life is;

- put screen brightness at the lowest level you can stand
- minimise the use of radios (i.e. if you're not using Bluetooth, GPS, Wifi turn them off)
- minimise the use of data, e.g. set email downloads at a longer interval.

There are some other things you can do, e.g.

- go into settings and tell the phone to only use 2G networks, this really slows the data transfer rates but saves battery.

- root your phone and underclock the processor

 

[johnlgalt]

Only problem with DROID is that...

No one has been able to root it yet (as of this posting).

@KRCarlson - Check out Locale to help automate some of these settings as well - for example, when I am in class, I have it set to turn off radios and go on vibrate mode for the duration of my classes, then change back to normal afterward.

There are other methods for automation like this as well.