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Help Who cares about battery life?

I'm usually at home, in my car or in my office. Amazingly enough, all of those places have electricity that I can use to charge my phone. When I book an African safari, i'll just make sure I have an extra battery or two.

OK?

Some people aren't always at home, in the car or in the office. During the work week I will be away from a place to charge for up to 14 hours sometimes...the phone should be able to last that long with moderate use on an average day.
 
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I'm usually at home, in my car or in my office. Amazingly enough, all of those places have electricity that I can use to charge my phone. When I book an African safari, i'll just make sure I have an extra battery or two.

I work in a lab with very harsh chemicals. Not a place to put my phone down. I would rather have it in a holster behind a lab coat plugged in to my headphones so I can listen to music while I work. In this scenario, I won't be able to plug it in to a charger.

But whatever works for anyone to get it through the day would do just fine. At least you have a solution to a problem. And I think that's what it all boils down to.

Cheers!
 
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I don't have the phone yet, but honestly it's all about how you use your phone.

Ditch the widgets you don't need and use a task killer.

I have a MyTouch 3G. My battery lasts forever, but one day I added a stock widget and without even using it it drained my battery in half the time it normally does.

Also read this thread

http://androidforums.com/htc-evo-4g/85497-tip-trick-61-hours-24-battery-remaining.html


I only use the flipclock, bookmark, smaller music player, pandora, power control and a people widget.

Only one I think helps kill my battery is the flipclock, the rest aren't really doing anything
 
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I'll admit I haven't finished reading the thread as it looks to be getting a little ridiculous but here is my argument:
1. Why spend more money to make a phone function
2. An extended battery makes the phone too thick, it's big as it is.
3. Where am I going to keep an extra charged battery with me? A phany pack? I don't want to have to cary a bunch of other stuff to make my phone work, I like it to just work.
4. While it might seem trivial to some I hate having to plug my phone in a bunch of different places. I like it to be in my pocket it when I am not using it or charging by my bed at night. It's not only simpler but keeps you from ever forgetting it.

I'm hoping I won't really have any problem with battery life though as I can easily make it through 2 days on my iPhone but I guess I use it so little because it is slow and I don't have a data plan so I have to be in WiFi, that I fear I could easily drain the EVO in a day but I guess I won't know until I try it. From the reviews it sounds to be pretty standard fair as far as smartphone's go so I doubt I will get much better use elsewhere unless the 4th gen iPhone does something amazing, but I am stuck on moving to Sprint so I don't really have a choice anyway.
 
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I'm on my iPhone right now and I just hit 10% battery with 4 hours and 45 minutes of usage and 1 day and 22 hours of standby. That's why battery life matters and that's why I'm waiting to hear some more real life reviews before I make the plunge.

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My 2c...

The phone might not have the greatest battery life. In engineering every decision carries a trade off and with technology following an exponential growth curve the linear progress of the battery just can't keep up.

HTC did everything they could to make battery life the best it could be but to be honest we are testing a lot of new features with this phone, it has significant power requirements.

The consumers will vote with their wallet, those who feel this is acceptable will buy the phone and maybe an extra battery or charger, and those who feel it is not acceptable will not buy the phone.

What more needs to be said?

I'll leave you guys with this clip:
YouTube - Everythings Amazing & Nobodys Happy

Puts things in perspective for me ;) somehow "my 1Ghz, 8mp all-in-one awesome 4G capable phone/computer only lasts for 8 hours on a full charge with the standard battery, this is bull***!" just seems silly sometimes!
 
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3. Where am I going to keep an extra charged battery with me? A phany pack?.

Umm....

Your pocket??? Seriously, it is really small. One pocket has my credit card holder/money clip, and extra batery, and my motorcycle keys. My other pockedt has my phone and one or two cans of snus.

Why would it be an issue carrying a small, VERY thin battery in your pocket??

My friend, this is the 21st century. I know you have a hard time imagining it. But non iphone phones, you can open up and replace the battery. I promise it is very easy!! And it really makes this whole topic go away. I can slam my phone for 4 -5 hours, then replace the battery, and go right back to slamming my phone with a new 100% green battery.
 
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Its finally here and I knew it from the beginning. I knew the battery life on WiMAX would be horrendously low. Its all because the the frequency WiMAX uses. Compared to the new LTE 700mhz networks coming out WiMAX with its 2.5ghz is short range and requires the devices to have a more powerful transmitters. Not only that 2.5ghz does not penetrate buildings well compared to lower frequencies like 700-800mhz which further demands more powerful transmitter having to be built into the device.

It no surprise battery life is shockingly low with WiMAX enabled. I really dont see any benefit with WiMAX on mobile phone. The slight increase in connection speed is NOT worth the massive battery drain IMO. 3G speeds are still plenty and wont have you running to your charger three times a day.

Having the option of turning on or off your 4G connection is much better than not having that option at all. Turn your 4G connection off when you are trying to conserve battery life. Turn it on, to download movies and digital content much faster than any other network. At least the Evo has options and not locked down to 3G. :)
 
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For anybody commenting on battery life, would you please indicate if you have an EVO and speak from personal experience. Lots of comments come from people who are assuming things and have not run an EVO every day for a week or more.

I have an EVO. Here's my experience:

1) Phone came with the screen backlight at full blast. I changed it to "auto adjust" and it keeps the backlight dimmer, but plenty bright in all circumstances, so far.

2) I Turned off the Friend Stream application that also came set up and ready to go (with a simple configuration of one's twitter/facebook/etc accounts).

3) I ran the battery down to 5% each day and then charged it over night.

After four days (four recharge cycles) I am getting more than 12 hours of battery life under the following circumstances:

a) 4G is on all the time - with >3 Mb/s down and almost 1 Mb/s up speeds
b) Email used very, very often (I get a ton of email on four different email accounts and need to respond, quickly, to most of them). Both sending and receiving emails.
c) Some web browsing
d) At least one youtube video a day (not a usual use for me, but I wanted to benchmark battery use to some extent)
e) Lots of market downloading (I need to configure my device, of course)
f) I installed a couple of games and play them a total of 15-20 minutes a day (these are "action" type games with scrolling graphics, 3D, etc. I'm not a big game player but wanted to see what this device can do)
g) A fair amount of "configuration" as this is my first Android device. I've spent 20-30 minutes every day poking around, making folders, rearranging things, "tuning" options, etc. The point is that I'm "using" the EVO; backlight is on, I'm using the touchscreen, etc.
h) a couple minutes of Sprint TV as a benchmark, mostly.
i) a few (2-3) SMS messages per day
j) Oh yeah, some phone calls... 10 minutes per day... 5-6 calls.
k) Almost forgot... TURN OFF GPS! This was a killer (and one I'm used to in other phones). It easy to turn it on when you need it.

The bottom line is that I use the device for things that are part of my normal day (I'm using this phone as my primary phone during my free trial... I'll probably activate it on my account after that... I'm quite happy so far). YMMV of course. If you do a ton of video, hundreds of SMS messages, hours of phone calls, GPS mapping all day long, playing MP3s as you work, etc. then you may find the battery to not hold you for a day.

I'm used to high-end phones that require a charge every night if they are used during the day (Toshiba TG01 which uses the same chipset as the EVO) so I'm not put off by this. Just a habit, now.
 
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WiMax is here, LTE isn't. By the time LTE phones come out it will be time to replace the EVO. So for now, why not enjoy the speed of WiMax.

As far as battery drain, it's simple. Don't walk around with 4G running. Why would you? Cut 4G on with the little toggle switch when you need it. Without 4G running the battery last just as long as any smartphone battery. I have had my EVO for over a week and the battery is better than my previous Palm Pre or my iPhone 3GS.



You just made my day! All I'm asking out of this thing when I get it Friday is that it lasts as long as my iPhone 3Gs.
 
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Thanks for the info dzar.

I agree that most of the people don't have an evo in their hand yet and are clueless on its battery usage. It's going to be different for everybody.


Regarding the whole "just walk around with 5 charges and 6 spare batteries!" thing, well that's just not applicable for most people...for numerous reasons already highlighted in this thread. Battery life IS a very important thing to nearly everybody, but fortunately there are LOTS of ways to tweak it and get the most out of the device.
 
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Thanks for the info dzar.

Regarding the whole "just walk around with 5 charges and 6 spare batteries!" thing, well that's just not applicable for most people...

Actually, since this is a micro-USB connector, getting chargers is easier and since I already have a ton of them due to previous phones, having one in each car and a USB cable at my office and in my laptop bag makes a quick charge easy.

For anybody worried about getting through the day, get some extra cables and you should be fine. Of course, don't buy those from Sprint, Radio-Shack or any other official source. Any old micro-usb cables/chargers will work so buy cheap!
 
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The other thing to watch out for in regards to battery life is buggy applications.

When I had the incredible some people were running into issues where Gmail or the calendar app would check for updates every second not allowing the phone to go into "sleep mode" when it's not in use.

This caused the awake time and usage time (think that's what they are called) to be almost the same, which when you are not using the phone all that time, presents a problem and a huge battery drain.

If you are having battery issues with your Evo and you don't understand why check the awake time vs. usage time.

Just a FYI.
 
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It matters to me because being outside all day (construction) doesn't afford me opportunities to "plug in".

With that said I'm seeing more and more with those willing to use a little common sense and not act like most of the braindead reviewers that if you simply turn off some of the more power draining apps you will be fine.

I can't see why its not clearer to some that if you have your backlight on full blast and you are messing with your phone for 30 mins at a time x multiple time a day = your battery time is gonna be drastically reduced.

That and leaving on gps and web streaming music. Cuz that was the BIGGEST hog I've ever seen on my touch pro.


eh , I should talk. I don't even have my phone yet.

Yet. :)
 
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It matters to me because being outside all day (construction) doesn't afford me opportunities to "plug in".

:)


Good point... shows how I don't think... :eek:

And the GPS and backlight were the biggest savings for me, it seems (although I changed several things at a time so this is not a great test). Interesting that at least my phone came with the backlight at full blast!
 
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It matters to me because being outside all day (construction) doesn't afford me opportunities to "plug in".

With that said I'm seeing more and more with those willing to use a little common sense and not act like most of the braindead reviewers that if you simply turn off some of the more power draining apps you will be fine.

I can't see why its not clearer to some that if you have your backlight on full blast and you are messing with your phone for 30 mins at a time x multiple time a day = your battery time is gonna be drastically reduced.

That and leaving on gps and web streaming music. Cuz that was the BIGGEST hog I've ever seen on my touch pro.


eh , I should talk. I don't even have my phone yet.

Yet. :)

Well said! Just common sense, people.
 
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