Database Users

Battery Life Solution

I am using the CDMA hero, but this should apply to anyone with a Hero (although our GSM friends have probably figured this out long ago.) Feel free to move my post if you like.
So I too was experiencing extreme battery draw down. I considered the SMS issue with perpetual awake times but after isolating the issue, I was still hitting 30% after after 12 hours with only moderate use. I found that unacceptable considering my Treo has been in standby for 2 weeks now and the battery has not budged. Solution? Turn of Google background services.
I know it hurts to have to manually refresh email, contacts, and calendar, but the return is almost zero battery drain (unless you are actively playing with the phone.) I know this is an obvious fix and I read it elsewhere online when I first got the phone. However, I am addicted to Gmail so I was really hesitant to turn it off. The background services option seems to keep a constant data connection when I really just want it to check my email every 15 minutes or so and update my calendar and contacts once a day. Has anyone found a way to limit the update frequency without the HTC widget. (I prefer the stock Android Gmail client.)

I do not know about the frequency of Gmail syncing,
but the main battery saving trick for me
is to turn the mobile data connection completelly off
when i know i will not (or want not) to be online
for a longer period of time (e.g. in the night, longer car drives, etc)
i am using the build-in htc widget for this

Thanks. That is a pretty good solution. Still wish I could curtail the sync frequency though......

So we need to re-enable it when we want to visit the Market, right? Annoying but if it improves battery life, then not a big deal.

How often do you recharge your Hero?

hi,
I would like to know how often you recharge your Hero?
With moderate to low usage I'm recharging every day and I'm thinking that autonomie on my Hero is really very bad. Before I used Polaris and I had to recharge every 2 or 3 days.
I'm thinking that maybe my phone have manufacture default. On official web page they say that autonomy on standby is 440 hours, its like 15 days, mine keeps barely 1 day, wtf!!!
Even during night when I don't use it all and put on plane mode battery loses 20%.
whitealien

i recharge everyday with mild usage. gaming - usually keep it plugged in.

with moderate usage i recharge my GSM Hero every 2-3 days. by moderate i mean, like 1h Wifi, 2h mp3, 0.5h phone usage, 1.5h online activity over 3G.
Thats about it. And even if i multiply the usage above by two, it will last two days.
During flightmode inthe night, it loses about 5-10%.
so it seems something is sucking really bad on your battery!
Cheers,
Chaos42

I would say I charge mine every 2-3 days. I'm a relatively low user but wifi is on all of the time and I use it for browsing a bit in the evenings when I don't have my PC turned on. GPS, mobile web and bluetooth is off for the most part.
My wife has the same phone and her battery life is a little shorter than mine but she has the mobile web on and uses hers a bit more then me so I would guess around 1.5-2 days.
My battery is rated at 1350mAh which I think is standard.

I have to charge it every day.
Unplug it from charger at 0700 and by 2200 it has less than 10% battery.
But I have WiFi on for over twelve hours a day, mobile web on and quite a few things updating online!

Background apps may be draining your battery
Hi whitealian,
Check the application list to see which applications are running in the background. One of them may be draining your power.
You can check the task list using Estrongs File Explorer (start the app, then menu->Task Manager). There are plenty of other task managers, of course...
In my case, I think it was ShopSavvy that was running in the BG. Once I removed it the battery performance was much better. See this post.
You can also use one of the apps that turn on/off wifi based on location. A quick market search finds "Y5 - Battery Saver". Haven't tried it myself yet!
Good luck!

mobile.dev said:
Hi whitealian,
Check the application list to see which applications are running in the background. One of them may be draining your power.
You can check the task list using Estrongs File Explorer (start the app, then menu->Task Manager). There are plenty of other task managers, of course...
In my case, I think it was ShopSavvy that was running in the BG. Once I removed it the battery performance was much better. See this post.
You can also use one of the apps that turn on/off wifi based on location. A quick market search finds "Y5 - Battery Saver". Haven't tried it myself yet!
Good luck!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for advice. I was not using ShopSavvy, but I had doubts that either I got faulty device or some app is draining battery.
I called customer service and they advice me to put phone in safe mode and test it for awhile. It extended a little my battery life, but still recharge every day. Next step was to reset to factory default. This is what I did yesterday and now I'm at the end of second day since last charge and I still have 40% left, what seems to be normal, but still a little to early to judge that everything is good.
I still don't know from where battery drain was coming. Probably from some app.
I'm putting my bet on NewsRob - google feed reader. It was the only app that was using network in background (apart from mail and tweeter sync).

too often. mostly once a day.
but when i'm at home im ususally plugging the as adaptor in either way, because i'm afraid to have to little battery left if i leave the house without a 100% battery level. (this can happen fast if you sync a lot of rss feeds, surf the net, have an exchange server connection and gmail push and so on...)
They really need to make better batteries. They should last 2-3 days on full force usage.

Shahpur.Azizpour said:
They really need to make better batteries. They should last 2-3 days on full force usage.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I wish it could

I think once every 2 days, but at night I have the ''phonestuff'' turned of using it as an alarm clock only. I do use the mobile internet connection all day. Tried once without that and got almost 4 days out of one charge.
I agree they have to make better battery's but I don't think the hero's that bad.
I had a diamond wich I had to charge almost twice a day when data was on...
So for me the hero's a big improvement.

I too get 2 to 3 days use out of a charge. Got rid of standard HTC Twitter client and replaced with Twidroid Pro. Only have Gmail push synchronization on.

I am pretty sure you are aware if the standard HTC SMS app battery drain issue?
Someone pointed out that HTCs SMS app constantly drains the battery, because it stopps the phone from entering standby mode. You can replace it by going into Applications menu, open "Messages", "Clear defaults" and install HandCent. As soon as a new SMS comes in, it will ask you which app you want to handle SMS messages. Choose HandCent, make it default and you are set.
Gave me a huge battery performance boost.

every day. that is the only bad issue of my hero.

I charge mine daily when I go to bed as it's usually giving me the 15% warning about 24hrs after I last charged it.
The joys of smartphones

At least once a day.
I've got a desk stand so it sit's in that for a constant juicing up, when im in the car I put it on to charge.. At work its on USB charge.. Basically I just juice it whenever I can..
I dont think theres anything wrong with yours.. they just have bad battery life.
If you think thats bad try the fossil palm powered watches.. i have to take it off every couple of hours to charge it!

Too often. Exchange, gmail, 1 additional pop3 inbox, facebook every 2hrs, twitter every 2hrs is enough for my phone to barelly hold a charge for a day. But when actually using the phone (music, calling), it doesn't hold even a day.

klaus27 said:
I am pretty sure you are aware if the standard HTC SMS app battery drain issue?
Someone pointed out that HTCs SMS app constantly drains the battery, because it stopps the phone from entering standby mode. You can replace it by going into Applications menu, open "Messages", "Clear defaults" and install HandCent. As soon as a new SMS comes in, it will ask you which app you want to handle SMS messages. Choose HandCent, make it default and you are set.
Gave me a huge battery performance boost.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Tried it. I installed Handcent, but when I want to want to make it default, the button is greyed out. What am I doing wrong?

klaus27 said:
I am pretty sure you are aware if the standard HTC SMS app battery drain issue?
Someone pointed out that HTCs SMS app constantly drains the battery, because it stopps the phone from entering standby mode. You can replace it by going into Applications menu, open "Messages", "Clear defaults" and install HandCent. As soon as a new SMS comes in, it will ask you which app you want to handle SMS messages. Choose HandCent, make it default and you are set.
Gave me a huge battery performance boost.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's a US only thing though, right? The European ones don't suffer with that issue AFAIK.
...Which I'm glad about as I sometimes have to charge my hero twice a day. Data is on all the time when I'm out and I'm a pretty heavy user of it. In terms of calls perhaps an hour a day, and not a huge number of texts (more than ten would be unusual). I do use the phone to listen to music quite often too.
I think the apps in the background thing is what needs to be checked. I use a news widget and Facebook and Weather and a travel one which I think adds up to a lot of refreshes. I'm thinking about making a Sense Profile (or whatever it's called) that has nothing on the homescreens at all for times when I might want to be a bit more frugal with battery life.
I do think it's somewhat ridiculous that the phone is capable of doing so many things but that if you have it do them it withers and dies. I would've thought the way to calculate battery life would be to have the phone doing the things that people will want to do with it and work from there. It seems that battery life is calculated by turning the phone into as dormant a state as possible and then tip toeing around it trying not to disturb it.
I get by though.

tatwamasi said:
That's a US only thing though, right? The European ones don't suffer with that issue AFAIK.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, I cannot confirm that. I have a European one and mine drained the battery. I searched the net and with this trick I came from ~1 day to over 2 days with moderate usage and push enabled all the time.
tombond said:
Tried it. I installed Handcent, but when I want to want to make it default, the button is greyed out. What am I doing wrong?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, have you cleared the default for message application?
You probably want to google it or just read over this posts:
http://www.phonenews.com/improving-sprint-htc-hero-battery-life-9720/
My battery went even better once I configured Locale to go into airplane mode during night time and stopping sync services during work time. I don't need push when I am at work (timescal set, no GPS), because there I have all my mailboxes open and directly connected.

Some more tipps to improve battery performance.
Disable 3G - Set to "only 2G" in mobile network settings
Set display timeout to 30s or lower
Remove as many widgets from your homescreens as possible (I only have calendar)
use task killer app to check which apps are still running in the background and try to tweak their settings to not autoload or don't notify you on updates - and of course kill them
disable screen animations
uncheck WLAN for location checking
don't check your mailboxes too regular
disable vibration totally. disable haptic feedback for the keyboard as well

Gmail sync schedule draining battery

Hi, sorry if this has been asked, but I'm a follower of the entire Nexus One forum, and could not find it.
It drive me nuts I cannot find how to set synchronization for the Gmail account. I want to have it check for mail every 15 or 30 minutes, and not continuously as how it looks is happening now. I think this is one of the reasons my battery drains so fast in standby.
Is this possible? ( I almost swear I saw it once, maybe at initial setup of the Nexus), or it's just my ex WinMo thinking?
Regards,
Alin.

As far as I know Gmail is push, no?

I need the answer too, but it seems that it is pushed mail.. it draws the battery quickly.

I leave my sync on and don't seem to have any significant battery life problems... I mostly leave my phone in 2g mode though, activating 3g/wifi when I actually want to do something.
I charge once a day when I am sleeping usually, but it seems fine to me.

Someone please correct me if Im wrong.
Im under the impression that Push email allows Gmail to stay completely idle until a wireless msg is sent and activates the updating process.
Thuse greatly reducing battery since it only has to check when told to instead of periodically.
Unless of course your constantly getting emails in which case it may be ALWAYS being told to check.

Guys, how long does the N1 need have to last. I life in an area where I can charge the N1 every night while I'm sleeping. It is set to Autosync with GMail and I use it quite a lot, maybe around 40-60 min. Internet and a few minutes phone and a few SMS and (at least now to get used to my new toy) a lot of playing around and about 30 min MP3 a day. It's empty when I go to bed but who cares? I got power beside my bed and do charge it while I sleep. That's how it should be, or? If I'm away and maybe don't have a power grid (where the heck is this today, in the middle of a dessert or rainforrest?!) and need more than a day than I would switch off the Internet and syncing and put down to display brightness.

sthoeft said:
Guys, how long does the N1 need have to last. I life in an area where I can charge the N1 every night while I'm sleeping. It is set to Autosync with GMail and I use it quite a lot, maybe around 40-60 min. Internet and a few minutes phone and a few SMS and (at least now to get used to my new toy) a lot of playing around and about 30 min MP3 a day. It's empty when I go to bed but who cares? I got power beside my bed and do charge it while I sleep. That's how it should be, or? If I'm away and maybe don't have a power grid (where the heck is this today, in the middle of a dessert or rainforrest?!) and need more than a day than I would switch off the Internet and syncing and put down to display brightness.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The topic has less to do with how long the battery has to last and more about how do you change the GMail app to poll for new mail rather than relying on push. Mail sent to GMail account is by no means urgent and I for one don't want to drain my battery for a feature that I do not need.
For those that are skeptical that push technology drains the battery - the following is a quote from GMail's blog regarding the GMail app for WinMo (sorry I can't post the link due to user restriction): "Once you're set up, new messages are normally pushed to your phone within seconds. While this type of speed is pretty awesome, push connections tend to use more power than fetching at intervals, so don't be surprised if your battery life isn't quite what it used to be."
Anyways, I haven't found a way to change the GMail application to a poll model rather than push so as an alternative I've setup K9-Mail against my GMail account and have it poll on a regular interval and disabled the GMail application altogether.

So you want your Gmail account to update at a predifined interval (like every hour?)?
This is simple: Open up the Email App (NOT Gmail), and enter your full gmail account ([email protected]) and password. It will set up your Gmail account in the Email app. In this app press Menu > Account Settings, and set the email check frequency to your liking. You can also set other options like delete emails from the server when you delete them on the Email App.
In this way you will use the Email app to check emails, meaning you can turn auto-sync off and save battery.

You could also sync your email account once. Then turn off sync. And manually sync your email anytime you want to check for new mail. Since it's not "urgent" as you said.
Or do as melterx pointed out.

Thanks guys for all solutions provided. I'll test them out and see what's happening
Answering to the guy who mentioned about how long should battery last, well, I'm simply not used to charge my phone daily. I had Touch HD before the N1, and with same usage (phone calls, gmail sync, internet) I had almost 3 days with a full charge.
Well, I'm still blaming the "new phone" factor for my battery draining problem, and I mean by this that I'm simply using it too much compared to a normal, "already used to it", usage.
But again, there are other topics for battery usage, so let's keep this only for email sync options

turn off auto-sync. when you want it to fire up, fire it up, then shut it down again. i went all day today, and ran less than half the battery off, because it wasn't polling over and over and over...

I'm not sure how much push drains the battery. One of my Gmail accounts is a work account. I have it and my personal email on push. Went for 10 hours, got about 40-45 emails with several calls and numerous text messages and still went down to 57%. I do have my phone on 3G most of the day(gotta love Atlanta).

Windows Live Push vs. my battery

When I have Windows Live Push ("as items arrive," "always") enabled on my HD2 my battery life tanks. In about 8 hours it drops 20% or more while in standby without doing anything else. That's about 40 hours of standby battery life.
When I have it set to manual my battery drops 2% in 8 hours. That's around 400 hours of standby battery, which makes a lot more sense.
Is this normal? Does anyone else experience this using this feature? I am seriously curious as to why MS Live push e-mail keeps up an ACTIVE data connection that is not defeatable, and why it insists on wrecking battery life. If this is a consistent phenomenon, then push e-mail in this way is absolutely useless.
I have seen people with MS Exchange-based push (not Live) email get fine battery life, so this bothers me.

friend'scatdied said:
When I have Windows Live Push ("as items arrive," "always") enabled on my HD2 my battery life tanks. In about 8 hours it drops 20% or more while in standby without doing anything else. That's about 40 hours of standby battery life.
When I have it set to manual my battery drops 2% in 8 hours. That's around 400 hours of standby battery, which makes a lot more sense.
Is this normal? Does anyone else experience this using this feature? I am seriously curious as to why MS Live push e-mail keeps up an ACTIVE data connection that is not defeatable, and why it insists on wrecking battery life. If this is a consistent phenomenon, then push e-mail in this way is absolutely useless.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's perfectly normal mate. For push to work your phone needs to keep an open connection to the live server, which means some kind of heartbeat or keepalive message being sent every now and then (anywhere between every 30 seconds to every 10 minutes - it varies from software to software). This is therefore constantly using your battery. I was amazed at how much my battery life increased by changing the live synch settings from "as items arrive" to "every 15 minutes".
Look at turning down how regularly you update things like the weather and facebook too, and you'll see just how good the battery life on this thing really is!

johncmolyneux said:
It's perfectly normal mate. For push to work your phone needs to keep an open connection to the live server, which means some kind of heartbeat or keepalive message being sent every now and then (anywhere between every 30 seconds to every 10 minutes - it varies from software to software). This is therefore constantly using your battery. I was amazed at how much my battery life increased by changing the live synch settings from "as items arrive" to "every 15 minutes".
Look at turning down how regularly you update things like the weather and facebook too, and you'll see just how good the battery life on this thing really is!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I know, but one of the reasons I got my HD2 was because I'm a MSN junkie. I have read that people have got "2 days" battery life with MS Exchange push and that makes me feel kind of bothered. My Motorola Milestone with Gmail push didn't see anywhere near this kind of battery drain.

johncmolyneux said:
It's perfectly normal mate. For push to work your phone needs to keep an open connection to the live server, which means some kind of heartbeat or keepalive message being sent every now and then (anywhere between every 30 seconds to every 10 minutes - it varies from software to software). This is therefore constantly using your battery. I was amazed at how much my battery life increased by changing the live synch settings from "as items arrive" to "every 15 minutes".
Look at turning down how regularly you update things like the weather and facebook too, and you'll see just how good the battery life on this thing really is!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i have MS Exchange push e-mail using 3G/HSDPA and I have experienced extra battery life when compared to POP3 email synchronization !
It seems to me that push e-mail is more energy efficient.
Last night @ 23h00: 100% battery. This morning 9h30: 95% battery...

Well my phone went from 1 day of average use to 2-3 days of average use, just by turning off push email, so we're getting different results from the same thing.

Battery Life?

I've had the HTC Aria for about four days now and my biggest issues is the battery drains to quickly. At first I attributed it to use because android phones prompt you to use them more often. However, even without use it still drains pretty rapidly. Does anyone know of a solution to this issue software wise. I have already turned off Bluetooth, GPS and Wifi. Are there other solutions

I got mine on Saturday, and I've actually gotten pretty good battery life out of it. I'm still in the habit of charging it every night, like I had to do with my old WinMo phone, but I think I could probably go two days without a charge. And that's with GPS / data always on, Wifi parts of the day, and pretty heavy use, since I'm always playing with it.
Have you tried something like Advanced Task Killer to keep apps closed that you aren't using? You can also adjust your screen brightness and timeout to try and save power.

It says that of my power is used by cellular idle or something like that 50% of it was used by that. Could it be my AT&T service

I don't get more than 10 hours out of mine. When I know I will be out all day, I turn the screen brightness almost all the way down to help conserve energy.

Good as it Gets.
With basic usage (some texting, a few calls and some market browsing or playing a game here and there) about 2 to 2.5 days without charging. Maybe the ones having issues with there phone sucking battery have to many widgets running.
In my current configuration I am only using 3 of my screens and only 3 widgets [favorites (small one), HTC clock/weather widget, and the HTC calendar widget (small)]. I have my work email checking every 30 minutes for syncing. I also have gmail and the default mail app pulling mail. I run ATK but only to kill apps on startup (cause it runs almost everything), other than that you don't need a task killer as you will have to reload these tasks next time and that will drain battery. I don't use it after that to kill anything. I am also running my screen at about 30% brightness.
Just some tips, widgets are nice, but they suck the battery life as well as constant updates. Check to see what you are running and disable/remove what is not needed or adjust sync times.

My battery life is fine. I got two days over the weekend with light usage. You need to look at what services are running and disable any widgets that you dont need. You may also want to look at the sync settings and turn off things you dont use (such as news). You do not need a task killer.

Also, see this post:
cranked said:
some quick tips:
1) disable market notifications - Market -> Downloads -> Notifications -> 'Don't Notify Me
2) Lower the sync times for your social network apps like twitter and facebook (or make them manual)
If you still suffer, have a look at some of the great tips HERE on the Cyanogenmod forums...ignore 1 and 3.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

Also one might do *#*#4636#*#* then change phone setting from WCDMA to GSM .... Then that get little more out of battery...

It's critical that you turn off auto-sync; I have found that it absolutely destroys battery life.
Before I was losing maybe 5-10% every hour on standby, but ever since turning off auto-sync, I'm still sitting at 100% battery after 5 hours of standby.
Turning off mobile data/Wi-Fi doesn't make an impact on battery life, in my experience.

hi2u2 said:
It's critical that you turn off auto-sync if you don't want update to happen, such as Facebook, email, google account (cal/contact) sync, etc..; I have found that it absolutely destroys battery life.
Before I was losing maybe 5-10% every hour on standby, but ever since turning off auto-sync, I'm still sitting at 100% battery after 5 hours of standby.
Turning off mobile data/Wi-Fi doesn't make an impact on battery life, in my experience.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I edited your response..
Auto-Sync in itself is not going to be a problem.. Depends on what's syncing. EVERYONE will have different battery life because everyone uses their phones differently. Different configurations, different accounts used, different amounts of traffic on those accounts, not to mention actual usage patterns.

khaytsus said:
I edited your response..
Auto-Sync in itself is not going to be a problem.. Depends on what's syncing. EVERYONE will have different battery life because everyone uses their phones differently. Different configurations, different accounts used, different amounts of traffic on those accounts, not to mention actual usage patterns.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
90% of people will have *slightly* different battery life.
5% of people will drain it fast.
5% will use it like a voice phone and might even get 16 hrs out of it.
But to turn off all apps makes for an invalid test because then you're testing the phone as if it were a non-smartphone, like a voice only phone.
I think the battery is too small for me and probably too small for most people. I look forward to fat batteries for this great phone.

bwolmarans said:
90% of people will have *slightly* different battery life.
5% of people will drain it fast.
5% will use it like a voice phone and might even get 16 hrs out of it.
But to turn off all apps makes for an invalid test because then you're testing the phone as if it were a non-smartphone, like a voice only phone.
I think the battery is too small for me and probably too small for most people. I look forward to fat batteries for this great phone.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
My wife gets 2+ days out of hers... The battery is not that much smaller than my Nexus One, a more powerful phone, and I'm a power user with a lot of crap running including IMAP push mail, weather syncing... I look in at Market, Facebook, Twitter and manually sync those types of things etc.. I can easily get a full day out of it, off charger ~8am back on the charger midnight, 20-30% left. What I don't do is sit staring at my phone all day or play games for 8 hours at work, nor do I use it as a mp3 player..