Yet another battery life thread: sharing NEW finding

[syhead]

I have been reading this forum for some time now and decided to register to share something I found out.

I have followed most of the battery saving tips I could find in this forum. I can get fairly good battery life. But I have alway been angry about the amount of juice spend in idle.

I have all the radios OFF, except for the main Phone function. I only power bluetooth, gps and wifi on when they are needed.

I have also turned off automatic sync. Here's the problem: I THOUGH that automatic sync was off. Actualy it wasn't because of the following widget in the bottom of this screen:

http://i304.photobucket.com/albums/nn162/twynn373/6.png

Everytime you push sync ON and then push it OFF, autosync remains ON.
It's definitely a bug in that widget.

For the first time since I had this phone, it has a full bar after a whole day being not used (a Sunday staying home).

I suggest this tip/bug report is added to those nice threads that put together all the battery saving tips.

 

[Rastaman-FB]

are you on 2.1 or 2.2
when i used it it used to enable background data and autosync but leave background data on and autosync off when you click off

 

[Deleted User]

I have problems with that widget too. It used to work perfectly and then for some reason I find I have to push a button twice for it to toggle. Even when you can see the button responding to your touch it still doesn't toggle!

 

[syhead]

are you on 2.1 or 2.2
when i used it it used to enable background data and autosync but leave background data on and autosync off when you click off

I'm using 2.2

exactly! The widget leaves background data on. I mentioned autosync by mistake.
Background data seems to have a big impact on my battery life.

settings >> accounts & sync >> Background data ON

 

[Rastaman-FB]

I'm using 2.2

exactly! The widget leaves background data on. I mentioned autosync by mistake.
Background data seems to have a big impact on my battery life.

settings >> accounts & sync >> Background data ON

background data has never been turned off by this widget, btw thats by design on android from 1.6 upwards

 

[syhead]

background data has never been turned off by this widget, btw thats by design on android from 1.6 upwards

if this widget turns background data ON, it should also turn it off

 

[StevenSeed]

The problem with switching background data off is that nothing will get updated automatically, and you won't know you have an email until you physically open Gmail and hit refresh.

You've got me wondering what the "Entended Controls" app does to the background data now.........

 

[Rastaman-FB]

if this widget turns background data ON, it should also turn it off

well it doesnt and never has done since 1.6

when you manually turn background data off it gives a warning. im guessing thats why the widget doesnt do it.

the widget is for sync not for background data, auto sync needs background data to work so it turns it on however it doesnt need background data to be off to turn it off

 

[PsymonS]

Does anyone know of an app / widget that will turn both autosync and background data off?

 

[syhead]

well it doesnt and never has done since 1.6

when you manually turn background data off it gives a warning. im guessing thats why the widget doesnt do it.

the widget is for sync not for background data, auto sync needs background data to work so it turns it on however it doesnt need background data to be off to turn it off

I understood what you mean now.

If I turn the radios and autosync OFF, background data is not required and should be off too. Therefore, that's bad software design (not sure if that's an Android problem or HTC Sense problem).

Turning background data off make a huge difference. I prefer to have it off and save battery. I turn it on only when I want to check email etc. It takes just a few seconds to start. I'm on my third day now without recharging. Battery is on 85% (light use). It's better than my old Nokia N95, which if incredible. If background data were on and considering the same amount of usage, I would have had to recharge the HTC it already.

I have a feeling that a good number of people having battery issues could be partially because of background data.

 

[Red_Avatar]

I turned it off myself without knowing and was surprised how I lost only 8% over 8 hours. With it on, after 4 hours, I'm already down 12% (although i spent half an hour chatting on Trillian).

 

[SpaceDementia]

Does having background data on drain the battery even if mobile data is tunrd off?

ie: is it still trying to auto sync even when it knows there's no connection?

 

[syhead]

does having background data on drain the battery even if mobile data is tunrd off?

Ie: Is it still trying to auto sync even when it knows there's no connection?

yes!

 

[blue90]

Interesting! cuz i used to turn off my mobile data to save battery but it seems that it still drains battery because it still tries to sync and thus u gotta switch background data off too!

 

[dredg0r]

on a related note: I turned off my phone at 45% battery, charged it for only 20mins and when I disconnected it and booted it up it was at 75%! something like 3x faster at charging when powered off! I knew it would be faster but thats crazy.

 

[Rastaman-FB]

I understood what you mean now.

If I turn the radios and autosync OFF, background data is not required and should be off too. Therefore, that's bad software design (not sure if that's an Android problem or HTC Sense problem).

Turning background data off make a huge difference. I prefer to have it off and save battery. I turn it on only when I want to check email etc. It takes just a few seconds to start. I'm on my third day now without recharging. Battery is on 85% (light use). It's better than my old Nokia N95, which if incredible. If background data were on and considering the same amount of usage, I would have had to recharge the HTC it already.

I have a feeling that a good number of people having battery issues could be partially because of background data.

actually the market needs it and some other apps
try getting into the market with it off
thats why it leaves it on i would imagine as all youve done is turned off sync, you havent told it you dont require it for any other app

this is not a background data toggle its a sync toggle

i do agree it saves a bit of battery though

 

[Deleted User]

I have all the radios OFF, except for the main Phone function. I only power bluetooth, gps and wifi on when they are needed. I have also turned off automatic sync. For the first time since I had this phone, it has a full bar after a whole day being not used (a Sunday staying home).

I don't use that widget, and I leave background data and autosync on all the time. Yet when idle my phone only uses about 3-4% battery when I'm sleeping. I don't have email or twitter or facebook syncing though, instead those apps sync when I use them because I'm not addicted to those sites and I can't read email when I'm sleeping, and when working I'm too busy to check constantly as well. So my battery life is better because I don't have all those apps doing background updates. However, even when I did have email and twitter going in the background, I still only lost about 1% per hour.

Note that tower proximity and signal stength greatly affects battery life since the RF unit in the phone must work harder to maintain a connection when the signal is weaker. At work I get 2-3 bars, and at home I have all 4 bars.

 

[DudeZXT]

I've found that if I leave background data enabled and have mobile data de-activated on Mytouch 4g, I often get Htc sense not responding messages and it seems my phone locks up.

Solution=always disable background data before you de-activate the mobile data radio.