The Ultimate Hero Battery Life Thread (Tips & Discussion)

[JB in AZ]

I think some people spend more battery life just checking on their battery life!

 

[chocmatic]

I think some people spend more battery life just checking on their battery life!

True story LOL

 

[bzzzzz]

I'm down to 82% and its been 9 hours since the last charge.

I have 2 recommendations.

If you've just installed a new program, leave it for a day or two (and expect poor battery performance). I don't know this for sure, but it appears that android needs a bit of time to optimise the power settings for a new application.

Try to leave the battery charging until it is fully charged (green light). In my experience the battery drains faster from half charge than full charge.

 

[TheBiles]

So I've done everything in this thread, and I still seem to be getting crappy battery life. I've gotten rid of the flip-clock, made sure all of my updates are set to over 30 minutes, turned off GPS and wifi, and changed the SMS application (however, I notice that I am still getting messages in the default Messages app, I'm just not getting them because the notification is off).

Should I look into a task killer? I seem to have about 10% discharge rate per hour with the stock battery.

 

[dmm5157]

I'm down to 82% and its been 9 hours since the last charge.

I have 2 recommendations.

If you've just installed a new program, leave it for a day or two (and expect poor battery performance). I don't know this for sure, but it appears that android needs a bit of time to optimise the power settings for a new application.

Try to leave the battery charging until it is fully charged (green light). In my experience the battery drains faster from half charge than full charge.

Yeah, I'm buying giving Android time to learn how to manage new apps. Yesterday at this time I was down in the 60's at this time (9 hours of use). Today I'm at 79% with some web browsing and texting. I'm pretty happy with that.



To the poster above (Thebiles), can you check SpareParts partial wake and take a look at that?

Do you have a lot of apps? How many do you have total? How much free internal memory do you have?

Also, when is the last time you rebooted your Hero?

Is your phone rooted?


I'd avoid using a taskiller. I did for the first month I had mine and my battery life was sorry. I stopped using it (it was tough at first) and it easily doubled my battery life. I used to barely be able to make it bedtime before it'd die. Now, I usually have 50% or more, even with pretty good useage, when I go to bed.

 

[bzzzzz]

I know I've posted a lot of updates about this, but its served as a diary for me to record the battery life, and I hope others have been able to learn from it.

Today battery started at 100% at 6:30am I'm not at 9:30 pm and I have 78% battery.

From what I've managed to work out there are 3 basic rules

1) DON'T use a task killer

2) Try to go 48 hours without installing any new apps.

3) DO fully charge your battery

NB If you install a new app and your phone uses battery at an incredible rate don't assume that the app is bad. Leave it on for a day or two and see if the phone sorts itself out. If you still have problems then maybe you will need to uninstall.

I would be very glad to hear of other peoples experience.

 

[TheBiles]

Yeah, I'm buying giving Android time to learn how to manage new apps. Yesterday at this time I was down in the 60's at this time (9 hours of use). Today I'm at 79% with some web browsing and texting. I'm pretty happy with that.



To the poster above (Thebiles), can you check SpareParts partial wake and take a look at that?

Do you have a lot of apps? How many do you have total? How much free internal memory do you have?

Also, when is the last time you rebooted your Hero?

Is your phone rooted?


I'd avoid using a taskiller. I did for the first month I had mine and my battery life was sorry. I stopped using it (it was tough at first) and it easily doubled my battery life. I used to barely be able to make it bedtime before it'd die. Now, I usually have 50% or more, even with pretty good useage, when I go to bed.

-My wake time was around 25% after a day of use.

-I have about 15 (additional) apps with 98MB free internal memory.

-I just rebooted it after not rebooting since I rooted it.

-Yes, it is rooted.

Is there any way to completely prevent Gmail and Messages from receiving email/SMS? I have the notifications turned off, but they still receive them and waste battery. I use Handcent SMS and the standard Email program.

 

[dmm5157]

-My wake time was around 25% after a day of use.

-I have about 15 (additional) apps with 98MB free internal memory.

-I just rebooted it after not rebooting since I rooted it.

-Yes, it is rooted.

Is there any way to completely prevent Gmail and Messages from receiving email/SMS? I have the notifications turned off, but they still receive them and waste battery. I use Handcent SMS and the standard Email program.

You can stop Gmail by going into your SETTINGS->Data Sync->Google-> uncheck Gmail.


I think the stock e-mail service may be the source of your poor battery life. I was using it for my gmail and hotmail and it was killing my battery like crazy, even when I changed it to sync every 2 hours. I switched to the native Gmail app and haven't looked back. Battery life has been much better.

 

[daman7676]

+1 on using the Gmail app vs the stock email app. I've noticed solid battery life when I switched to this. I do still pull mail from 3 different accounts using the stock app: 1 is set to every 4 hrs, the other two are set to once a day (clearly this three mail accounts aren't that important).

 

[bzzzzz]

Battery started at 72% today

9 hours later its on 50%

So everything working much better.
Only things that's a bit odd is the 72% Awake time!

 

[cmcfarland21]

Newby here?
What is the Dialer? When I use Spare Parts, battery history, partial awake usage, since last unplugged, the top app is dialer

Also my software version = 1.29.651.1, how can I update?

 

[bzzzzz]

Newby here?
What is the Dialer? When I use Spare Parts, battery history, partial awake usage, since last unplugged, the top app is dialer

Also my software version = 1.29.651.1, how can I update?

I presume it's what you use to dial

you know the keypad with numbers on it.

 

[cmcfarland21]

Is that from typing....

 

[bzzzzz]

Is that from typing....

I don't think so, I think that's keypad or something.

 

[vertigo_2_20]

I've read in numerous places, including HTC's website, that turning off GPS will help battery life, however, I've read in a few other places that the GPS is not always on, only activating when called upon by a program. If this is true, it seems to me it may as well be left on. Is it true, and if so, can somebody explain why it should still be turned off, and only enabled when needed, or else reaffirm that it doesn't matter? Thanks.

 

[tatonka_Hero]

GPS is not always on, unless an app calls it up. I've checked this one out myself, as I was also under the impression that leaving it on meant it was always in use.

Basically, if the GPS icon isn't in the taskbar, your GPS isn't on. Simple as that.

 

[mrkniceguy]

I know I've posted a lot of updates about this, but its served as a diary for me to record the battery life, and I hope others have been able to learn from it.

Today battery started at 100% at 6:30am I'm not at 9:30 pm and I have 78% battery.

From what I've managed to work out there are 3 basic rules

1) DON'T use a task killer

2) Try to go 48 hours without installing any new apps.

3) DO fully charge your battery

NB If you install a new app and your phone uses battery at an incredible rate don't assume that the app is bad. Leave it on for a day or two and see if the phone sorts itself out. If you still have problems then maybe you will need to uninstall.

I would be very glad to hear of other peoples experience.

I decided to try this approach out. The main issue from above was I've been using aTrackDog almost every day looking for updates. If one was there I'd update to the "latest and greatest" (not always the case!).

I haven't updated in a few days. I've noticed I'm getting longer battery times each day. I can't seem to find the percentage but it looks like about 40% after a hard day's use (8am to now 11pm ish). I think this is the answer!

Update apps only as needed. There are only a few apps I need the "latest" versions of. I'll just stack up the others and update on the same day. Not updating until I need it is paying off for my battery!!! Thanks for the tip!

FTR I don't use a task killer either. This was a huge drain on the battery when I was using it. I also have GPS on, using WiFi about 60% of the time and a few widgets. The key seems to be the app updating.

 

[dmm5157]

I decided to try this approach out. The main issue from above was I've been using aTrackDog almost every day looking for updates. If one was there I'd update to the "latest and greatest" (not always the case!).

I haven't updated in a few days. I've noticed I'm getting longer battery times each day. I can't seem to find the percentage but it looks like about 40% after a hard day's use (8am to now 11pm ish). I think this is the answer!

Update apps only as needed. There are only a few apps I need the "latest" versions of. I'll just stack up the others and update on the same day. Not updating until I need it is paying off for my battery!!! Thanks for the tip!

FTR I don't use a task killer either. This was a huge drain on the battery when I was using it. I also have GPS on, using WiFi about 60% of the time and a few widgets. The key seems to be the app updating.

If you don't have a battery indicator app, you can check your battery life using Spare Parts ->Battery Information. It'll give you the percentage in increments of 1%.

 

[mrkniceguy]

If you don't have a battery indicator app, you can check your battery life using Spare Parts ->Battery Information. It'll give you the percentage in increments of 1%.

Awesome! Thanks for the tip.

 

[dmm5157]

Well, just to log my latest findings:

I flashed the Gumbo custom kernel + SetCPU to 480/160 and then noticed a little unexpected additional battery drain. Checked Spare Parts and noticed Android system was keeping my phone awake.

Decided to give "close everything" a shot (at the advice of someone else about problematic programs). It closed 2 processes. Since then, I've been texting, and playing around with the phone quite a bit for the past hour. It only dropped 1% during that time and seems to be holding steady more than it's been in weeks!

Not sure if that's a flaky battery reading or not yet, but I'm going to keep an eye on it tonight to see if this continues.

If it's true, I'm really excited about picking up additional speed through the custom kernel + SetCPU.

 

[tatonka_Hero]

running Fresh 1.1 with the Gumbo kernel, and SetCPU at 528/160 on performance, and my battery life seems to be a fair amount better. 14 hours off the charger, and I'm at nearly 60%. That includes playing games for the past couple hours as well. Not to mention the performance boost. My lockscreen pattern no longer lags at all, and apps open that little bit quicker.

 

[CSmith154]

Of course the battery life is what would pull me out of hiding for my first post.

My batt life went to crap yesterday/today. Based on what I read it looks like K-9 mail might be the culprit. With little usage I was dead at about the 12 hour mark, no gps, very little time actually using the phone. I have K-9 set up to push receive around 24 IMAP folders...didn't think that would kill the battery, but based on this graph I'm wondering if that's where I'm going wrong.

Certainly appreciate feedback- Thanks!

 

[CSmith154]

Wow not a lot of action here since my post. Either way, I ended up killing off K9 mail and decided to push my mail through GMail. MUUUUUUCH better. Made it through Monday with very little phone usage and still had about 50% batt at the end of the business day. K9 mail had me dead inside of 6hours with next to no talk time once again, so I'm glad I tried trashing it.
Now, for a preface. I'm sure it's not K9 mail as an application since many people have it and are happy...I'm betting it was more the push/sync of 25 folders. Even still, with all of that going on via GMail now the usage GMail shows in my Spare Parts is negligible.

 

[jhale83]

I was having pretty poor battery life and decided to get rid of the Weather Channel widget that was on one of my pages. I still have the app installed and it shows the temp in my status bar (which is what I look at most anyways). Apparently it was part of the problem and since removing it, my battery life is MUCH better. I actually went the whole day (starting at 7:30am) yesterday without putting it on the charger and still had about 25% left around 11pm.

 

[dmm5157]

I was having pretty poor battery life and decided to get rid of the Weather Channel widget that was on one of my pages. I still have the app installed and it shows the temp in my status bar (which is what I look at most anyways). Apparently it was part of the problem and since removing it, my battery life is MUCH better. I actually went the whole day (starting at 7:30am) yesterday without putting it on the charger and still had about 25% left around 11pm.

Yeah, the weather and facebook apps that update automatically seem to drain a lot of battery.

I have TWC app installed, but don't have the widget running and I'm getting great battery life now. A whole day for me is 7:30AM - 12:00AM and I usually have around 40-50% battery left, depending on how much/little I use the phone. I haven't been below 40% on a full day of use in a while now, which is great. Now I don't have to worry about going out in the evenings and having my phone die before I get home.