How I nearly tripled my battery life! - Nexus One General

If you just wanna see my tips then skip over the next few paragraphs lol!
Hi! I am not sure if this exactly has been posted already, or if it's common knowledge and I am just slow lol, but the last couple days I found out how to maximize the battery life on my phone by (imho) a huge amount. And I wanted to share with the community.
So before I did this, I'd generally get maybe six to eight hours of uptime before the battery was critically low. This was really frustrating because by the time I got home from work my phone would be almost dead. So I'd charge it in my car for a little bit, but then when I went out I'd have to turn off Wifi, GPS, Bluetooth, brightness all the way down etc. just to have enough battery to survive the night.
But now I managed to get 18-24 hours out of a single charge, without having to manually touch the settings too too much (GPS/Bluetooth when I need them.) Now I think a lot of this depends on your personal usage, but for me this worked great. And here is how I did it:
1. Disabling/making less frequent updates in apps. For me this was Twidroid, Facebook, and NewsRob. I realized that I keep notifications off for these apps (I don't need to see a notification everytime someone I follow tweets you know?) and that even when they were all set to auto-refresh every 30 minutes or whatever, I STILL always hit refresh when I went in anyway. So I disable automatic updating. Obviously this depends on your usage, but for me, I didn't need up to the minute social networking information, and manually refresh anyway. But I went through all my apps that updated automatically and changed the setting.
2. Task Killing. In a perfect world, Android would efficiently manage it's own app load, but unfortunately the world isn't perfect. I found that if I know I'm going to be putting my phone down for a while, take a second and kill all the runnings apps. I use Astro, but there are countless apps that can do this for you. This is something I don't do frequently, but for example, if I'm going to go to bed and I don't have my charger, but want my phone on in case of an emergency, I'll kill all the running apps.
3. Brightness. After weeks of changing it back and forth because I don't really love the way it auto adjusts, I just said f**k it and put in auto. While sometimes the level of brightness it selects seems a little whack, it's definitely saved battery life. And saves me the trouble of changing it myself. I also found that setting the timeout to 15 seconds seemed to improve battery life.
4. Juice Defender. You can find this app on the marketplace. It has two modes, easy and advanced. If you want, you can go into the advanced and set schedules and all kinds of stuff. But for me, I just went into easy and hit enable. From what I understand, what this does is that if the screen is off, it disables network access for 14 minutes, turns it back on for 1, then off again for 14 etc. So, something like Gmail which is push will only be able to access the network every 15 minutes. Unless you are on WiFi. Now, if you NEED push e-mail and don't have WiFi, this isn't a very good solution. But according the stats in the app itself this has given me a 99% increase in battery life, and I believe it.
5. The trackball. This is perhaps the weirdest of my findings. The trackball light apparently can DESTROY the battery life. The other morning at around 80% I let my alarm on the phone go off and didn't stop it, so the trackball was flashing really fast. Without a couple hours the phone was completely dead. Nuts right? So I found that if I disable the trackball light when I know that I won't be able to dismiss my notifications quickly (like in a meeting or sleeping or whatnot) I'm able to avoid this happening.
6. GPS/Bluetooth. Again, this might seem very case specific, but I use bluetooth ONLY with my rokr headset when I'm on campus at night, and I use GPS only for navigation. So I keep the off when I'm not using them. With the power strip widget this isn't very difficult.
Anyway, that's it really. Like I said, maybe this is all common knowledge and I am just stupid haha. But I figured if not, I was pretty thrilled to go from 6 hours to 24 hours without having to do too much. BTW, some weird things I found didn't have an effect as much as I thought they would - 2g/3g, I actually got MORE battery life when I had 3g enabled. And WiFi was the same way, even when I didn't have a wifi connection, the difference in life with having it on or off was negligible.
Anyway, I hope this is helpful! If I remember anything else I'll add it.

I really like this guide and I'm going to use it when I get my n1. I like all (and will try) of the steps except #5.. the trackball notifications is just too sweet to ever turn off imo. Thanks for the guide.

I'm really surprised to hear that your LED light in the trackball destroyed your battery life

I don't bother killing apps anymore. Since they're not in focus their not using the CPU so whats the point. (right?)
I dont have rubbish notifications on either, nor bluetooth/GPS unless needed. Ive got auto brightness on too.... might try juicedefender in future actually, it does sound good.
So what did you triple your battery life from anyway... 12 hours?

cymru said:
So what did you triple your battery life from anyway... 12 hours?
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only about 6-8 hours.
crachel said:
I'm really surprised to hear that your LED light in the trackball destroyed your battery life
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I was too but I duplicated that scenario a few times to make sure. Also, it might matter that I am running trackball succession and color hacks.

Trackball succession is killing your battery, not the trackball light.

only about 6-8 hours.
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Oh....
Mines gets over 48 hours no problems anyway.

cymru said:
Oh....
Mines gets over 48 hours no problems anyway.
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Geez, whats your secret?

ChillRays said:
Geez, whats your secret?
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I second that, holy crap lol.

cymru said:
Oh....
Mines gets over 48 hours no problems anyway.
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!!! Were you hit by lightening as a child or something? I can only conclude your natural charge is keeping it going :->
Also - OP - nice set of tips - thanks

cymru said:
Oh....
Mines gets over 48 hours no problems anyway.
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Wow... I only get that good of a battery life if I turn my N1 off!

Are you guys being serious?!
I am indeed consistently getting 48 hours battery life...

cymru said:
Are you guys being serious?!
I am indeed consistently getting 48 hours battery life...
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48 is on the high side of things... I usually go to bed with about 40% remaining, and put it on the charger overnight... I get up at 8AM and go to bed around 12AM. So I am getting about 26 hours out of mine.
Edit:
Accidently typed in 36 when I meant to type 26. Fixed.

I have a noob question, which this forum is how I get most of my N1 knowledge...
Which uses up more battery life, 3G or wifi?
Thanks to whoever replies.. (my best guess would be 3G)

pjcforpres said:
48 is on the high side of things... I usually go to bed with about 40% remaining, and put it on the charger overnight... I get up at 8AM and go to bed around 12AM. So I am getting about 36 hours out of mine.
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That's actually 26 hours.

muncheese said:
That's actually 26 hours.
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Which is still a lot. I'd really like to know how you are doing this. Do you make any voice calls? Do you text/e-mail a lot? Watch videos? Browse the web? Play music etc.?
I mean my usage is based on maybe an hour a day of talking on the phone, and a few hundred text messages, maybe a couple e-mails, frequent twitter/Facebook updates, and maybe a couple hours a day of playing games, watching videos, reading news etc.
I imagine if I just left the phone there it'd be close to 26-30 hours, but not with regular use.

cymru said:
I don't bother killing apps anymore. Since they're not in focus their not using the CPU so whats the point. (right?)
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Erm, this is not correct, is it?
The whole point of multitasking means things still carry on when not in focus. If you leave everything running, they will all try and use data and CPU cycles, no?

Some nice suggestions there c0wb0ycliche! Thanks.
A couple of other thoughts/suggestions...
1. In the choices of kernels, pershoots is regarded as being excellent with battery life (partly from being undervolted I imagine) and the fact it's also overclocked at the same time ain't so bad either.
2. Not sure how much extra juice is saved by not using a Live Wallpaper, but if we're talking about battery savings here it might as well be said.

I would not be surprised if a large majority of people who get 25+ hrs hook onto wifi networks for a majority of the data usage. When switching to wifi the phone steps down to 2g mode for phone services.
AndyCr15 said:
Erm, this is not correct, is it?
The whole point of multitasking means things still carry on when not in focus. If you leave everything running, they will all try and use data and CPU cycles, no?
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No. Some applications have sister services that do this, but not all applications.

Namuna said:
1. In the choices of kernels, pershoots is regarded as being excellent with battery life (partly from being undervolted I imagine) and the fact it's also overclocked at the same time ain't so bad either.
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Good point, has anyone mentioned SetCPU? If you set up a profile, it will lower your clock speed to 300mhz while the screen is off. Saves quite a bit of power.

Related

Battery life? Is it really that bad?

Gizmodo and MobileCrunch have pretty much bashed the battery life to make it sound like if its not on the charger, it will die in a matter of an hour or three. For the people who got one from the I/O or other means. What do you get from the phone during a normal days usage? If its that bad, have you guys use SetCPU/Locale/App Killers etc? Thanks.
With light to moderate use, it lasts through the day. A bit worse than Nexus One in that respect, but not too bad.
Agree with sergey.povzner.
Android central had a great review on this. I have heard a mixed bag of battery life. Some sounded very good some didn't. But it's the most power smartphone out there so additional drain is expected.
http://www.androidcentral.com/review-sprint-htc-evo-4g-android-smartphone
It not as good as my n1 but its close. It gets a lot better with custom roms without sense.
Uptime 10:08:35
Awake time 1:46
I had it plugged into computer for about 25 mins to transfer a movie.
I have 80% battery left.
No bluetooth, no GPS, no WIFI.
I don't have anything extra except gmail and another account frequently syncing. I get 4-5 hours of browsing and email with 4g on or off, wifi off, gps off. Standby time doesn't seem to have significant effect though I'm sure it would be measurable if you left it in standby for a day. Adequate to get me though a day, but I hardly use voice.
What if you are watching full length movie on HTC Evo, how long will the battery last (especially if I put it on airplane mode)?
I am planning to switch from from Xperia X10i to HTC Evo. My x10 has the usual battery drain problem but I have controlled it with task killer. However, I am yet to run a full movie on it. If x10's battery life has more survival time (with task killer on it of course) then HTC Evo then I might think twice.
Also can the 'task killer' improve HTC Evo's battery life?
Does anyone know if the Evo uses the HTC Touch Pro size battery like the Hero?
If so then I've already got an external charger and three extra batteries!
Honestly if anyone is that worried about battery life get another battery as a backup. Its been said many times on these forums that a HTC Touch Pro 2 and also a HTC Hero all use the same batteries as the EVO. (Confirmed). You can pick them up on ebay for around 7 or 8$. Which is pretty cheap! Nothing better than having an extra juice pack laying around waiting to be used! Hope this helps somewhat
Stunna4life888 said:
Honestly if anyone is that worried about battery life get another battery as a backup. Its been said many times on these forums that a HTC Touch Pro 2 and also a HTC Hero all use the same batteries as the EVO. (Confirmed). You can pick them up on ebay for around 7 or 8$. Which is pretty cheap! Nothing better than having an extra juice pack laying around waiting to be used! Hope this helps somewhat
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LOL we posted at the same time, thanks for answering my question! I'll keep a backup in my glove box and one in my back pocket. This method worked great with my Hero.
danknee said:
LOL we posted at the same time, thanks for answering my question! I'll keep a backup in my glove box and one in my back pocket. This method worked great with my Hero.
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Great minds think a like. Ya man wont get to hot in that glove box either. Its always nice to have a little something extra especially when we will be showing this bad boy off 24/7 to anyone that wants to see it! Cant wait to "Officially" get mine lol. Im about 17 hrs and 3 minutes form my appt.
Stunna4life888 said:
Great minds think a like. Ya man wont get to hot in that glove box either. Its always nice to have a little something extra especially when we will be showing this bad boy off 24/7 to anyone that wants to see it! Cant wait to "Officially" get mine lol. Im about 17 hrs and 3 minutes form my appt.
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i'm so excited, wish I had an extra battery though, it'd be nice
8hrs 15min till i get mine!
Gotta say this thing blows my old Moment's battery out of the water... 4.5 hours hard and heavy use... 60% left - no 4G coverage area (but it was left on by accident - ooops) and no video watching, but heavy text, email, and facebook/twitter activity.
I ordered the extended slim battery from seidio.com. 1750 vs 1500. Should give a bit more in the long run.
Its been decent for me though. Just dont jack up your brightness, keep it on auto.
Wifi kills my battery. The signal never settles even though the coverage should be good all over my house.
You want to go into advanced wifi settings and change WiFi sleep policy to never otherwise your phone will shut off WiFi after 15 mins of screen being off and you'll be using 3g which will use a lot more battery.
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Sent via the XDA taptalk app from my EVO
donatom3 said:
You want to go into advanced wifi settings and change WiFi sleep policy to never otherwise your phone will shut off WiFi after 15 mins of screen being off and you'll be using 3g which will use a lot more battery.
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Sent via the XDA taptalk app from my EVO
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Its already set to never.
Mybattery was pretty terrible. Lose 10% per 40 minutes on standby mode alone. After messing around with it for a while I discovered the culprit was the location services. I turned them off and now I lose about 2% per hour on standby.
tadda said:
Mybattery was pretty terrible. Lose 10% per 40 minutes on standby mode alone. After messing around with it for a while I discovered the culprit was the location services. I turned them off and now I lose about 2% per hour on standby.
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I'm curious, how exactly do you go about turning off the location services? Unless it's included with the GPS tab of the settings, I haven't been able to find such an option on my brother's Hero.
Mecha2142 said:
I'm curious, how exactly do you go about turning off the location services? Unless it's included with the GPS tab of the settings, I haven't been able to find such an option on my brother's Hero.
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It's under settings , location and then location setting. This does not disable the 911 location which is good.

Double the battery life!

i ran across this....
full article here http://jsharkey.org/blog/2010/07/01/android-surfaceflinger-tricks-for-fun-and-profit/
Looking forward to this release! At work I have a hard time charging my phone. Getting notifications all day and being able to use the phone normally is great but I am work for over 8 hours. If I can click a widget and reduce battery drain while I am not using it....awesome! I can always press the widget to restore when I want to view back to normal. I can see how this would be useless to most, but this gives me the ability to use the phone for that 8 hours and not have the phone die before I get home.
I dont get why anyone would trade a great looking for screen for a unicolor one just for one more day of battery life.....
EPIC FAIL.................
Terrible idea. Why don't we just buy 5 year old blackberries...They have great battery life.
Yeah, this is really dumb.
RevJesseJ said:
Looking forward to this release! At work I have a hard time charging my phone. Getting notifications all day and being able to use the phone normally is great but I am work for over 8 hours. If I can click a widget and reduce battery drain while I am not using it....awesome! I can always press the widget to restore when I want to view back to normal. I can see how this would be useless to most, but this gives me the ability to use the phone for that 8 hours and not have the phone die before I get home.
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If you can't use your phone for 8 hours there's a problem somewhere. You probably have apps sucking the battery to death
Ownatik said:
If you can't use your phone for 8 hours there's a problem somewhere. You probably have apps sucking the battery to death
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I haven't had 8 hours on a change since I first got my G1. I never have on my nexus either. But I do use the phone a lot.
Nexus One, Virtual Boy Edition.
I'm running an 800mV kernel right now, with SetCPU at 806mhz...
...I've had the phone unplugged and have been doing normal/daily use. 12 hours and I'm at 72%
/shrug
Heavy usage, phone JUST died, 21 hours use. Thats texts, internet, maps, GPS, and phone calls.
6-26-10 925mv wildmonks kernel
Ryjabo said:
I'm running an 800mV kernel right now, with SetCPU at 806mhz...
...I've had the phone unplugged and have been doing normal/daily use. 12 hours and I'm at 72%
/shrug
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care sharing kernal?
and exact CPU settings?
antiochasylum said:
Heavy usage, phone JUST died, 21 hours use. Thats texts, internet, maps, GPS, and phone calls.
6-26-10 925mv wildmonks kernel
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you too
Ownatik said:
I dont get why anyone would trade a great looking for screen for a unicolor one just for one more day of battery life.....
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I would come handy when the battery is below the 10% mark ...
suren21 said:
I would come handy when the battery is below the 10% mark ...
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As would a spare battery..
But if filters are posible why can't we change the colors by ourself (reduce the saturation for some who don't like it)... Sounds plausible after seeing this hack, love to see an APK or ROm which have included this... Some Days battery hold for hours and hours, other day my max is 8/9 hours (heavy usage )
Ryjabo said:
I'm running an 800mV kernel right now, with SetCPU at 806mhz...
...I've had the phone unplugged and have been doing normal/daily use. 12 hours and I'm at 72%
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well you would get that battery life if your degrading your cpu to Hero standards, lollol
Im overclocking on CM6's standard pershoot .34 kernel and im getting a day always, i take it off charge at 8am and when i get home around 7pm its at about 20-30 percent... And that is proper heavy use, I watch video's on the way to work, mp3, browsing, the phone is actually an extension of my bod lol
I think this is the norm if you want to have the super phone you paid for, and not underclock it and undervolt it into T-mobile pulse territory, lol
JD
Those replying this is stupid need not bother in this thread any long I guess.
For me, usually my battery lasts long enough, but at the same time, the time I might need it would be I've finished my work day and just found I'm not going home to charge it but need to go elsewhere, or like yesterday I had to stay at work and my N1 was needed, but I couldn't charge. When you realise you need to stretch your battery life, you want to know what you should change to extend it. This is just another of those options. It will be useful to have for emergencies.
I for one would like to see this added as an option. As stated in certain cases it could be very useful to be able to use the phone with screen on and lower the battery drain.
Ownatik said:
If you can't use your phone for 8 hours there's a problem somewhere. You probably have apps sucking the battery to death
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I know why my battery drains. I know what apps I am running and I can keep track of all that. I have chosen all my own apps and run what I want/need during that 8 hours. No work around other than turning off those apps. What is the point then? Keep my battery lasting longer but not enjoy the phone and all its purposes? I could always just turn my phone off. No apps running then. Like I said, this would not apply to very many users out there, but not all users are in my situation.
skittleguy said:
Nexus One, Virtual Boy Edition.
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FO3 FTW!

no battery life with the 2.2 update

My battery made it to 1:00 o'clock today with the new 2.2 update that i did last night. It normally lasts till 11 - 12 at night. Whats up with that?
FYI - All the same apps,widgets, and settings
**UPDATE**
Doing a factory reset fixed the problem for me!!
opie2l said:
My battery made it to 1:00 o'clock today with the new 2.2 update that i did last night. It normally lasts till 11 - 12 at night. Whats up with that?
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Strange, I'm sitting at 75% after 5 hours off the charger and using it for moderate text usage (probably less than 80 messages today). Usually around this time it's sitting closer to 60%.
i have the .3 update and went from about 24 hours to about 8-10 hours. Battery life cut in half. My friend who has .3 is having same issue too. So much for increasing battery life.
formulabird said:
i have the .3 update and went from about 24 hours to about 8-10 hours. Battery life cut in half. My friend who has .3 is having same issue too. So much for increasing battery life.
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Wow. Have you searched the forum to see if anyone else has the same issue? If not I hope it's not an isolated incident. Then again if it's isolated maybe you can get support on it better...? Good luck finding a solution.
You gave us zero information to help you. So thus, you will not get any help.
There are about a billion threads on here about battery life and how to tweak it. When you flashed 2.2 you will need to do those steps again.
yeah some people are reporting bad battery life after update. most people i know are on .3. don't know if .6 fixes this hopefully we get update soon
I did a test last night. Dropped 13% between 1130 and 3:30am With wifi on (got up cause of baby), then only 10% between 330 and 8am with wifi off. So a drop of only 23% overnight.
That's with one exchange account, one gmail account (both syncing as items arrive), htc news set to not sync, but newsdesk and feedr both syncing. Facebook for htc set to sync contacts only.
Sent from my PC36100 using Tapatalk
I had the same issue on all 2.2 ROMs I tried.. i am now going through the apps one at a time to see which one is the issue.
right now I am 7 hours in and sitting at 75% very light use ( read about 7 emails, 5 new articles and little to no Web surfing). installed 10s so far other than the standard with Fresh latest ROM that is.
I've actually had very good battery life, I'm running the .3 release. Battery life for me has been very comparable to running Baked Snack 9.6, with its underclocking/undervolting power save features. Moderate use of the phone for 8 hours (wifi, browsing websites here and there, one navigation route, texting, bunch of short phone calls, playing some games), my battery was around 65 or so, same as I had before for similar usage.
I did do a full wipe though, and haven't calibrated my battery since updating.
Aridon said:
You gave us zero information to help you. So thus, you will not get any help.
There are about a billion threads on here about battery life and how to tweak it. When you flashed 2.2 you will need to do those steps again.
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I am just stating a observation on my part. And i know all the little tricks of how to get better battery life. But like i said, before the update i was getting a full day of battery and now after the update i am getting half. With the same settings and the usage on my part.
opie2l said:
I am just stating a observation on my part. And i know all the little tricks of how to get better battery life. But like i said, before the update i was getting a full day of battery and now after the update i am getting half. With the same settings and the usage on my part.
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maybe because some of the htc sync stuff that you might have disabled before re-enabled.
Check that.
-mark
diomark said:
maybe because some of the htc sync stuff that you might have disabled before re-enabled.
Check that.
-mark
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Yeah, i already went through all the settings last night.
Aridon said:
You gave us zero information to help you. So thus, you will not get any help.
There are about a billion threads on here about battery life and how to tweak it. When you flashed 2.2 you will need to do those steps again.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is not directed at you personally, but at the words you chose to use:
I am sick and tired of "tweaks and settings and cutting things off." I used them and got over 30 hours on both DamageControl and Fresh.
I paid Sprint/HTC good money for this awesome phone (and am committed to pay them a whole lot more over the course of the next 22 months).
While I can understand the 4G thing, why should I have to cut off Data-WiFi-Bluetooth, power down the CPU, not use it a lot in order to get... in short, drive it like a Toyota Prius when then phone is billed as a Maserati? Why should I have to try out this app and that app(Overclock widget, SetCPU, System Manager, Task Killer, Autostarts etc which all use battery too) in order to get the phone to do what it should have done on June 4, 2010?
Most of the battery draining apps and widgets come pre-loaded with sense (i.e. the Favorite widget, Friendstream etc). Why should I have to resort to rooting my phone or not using it in order to get the thing to last all day?
I'm keeping my EVO cause I love the device, but maybe Sprint/HTC need a little of the medicine that Jobs/Apple is getting in the form of lawsuits due to over-promising/under-delivering.
/off_my_soap_box
You should send that rant to HTC and Sprint... I think we all stand behind you on that one.
there are lots of reasons a battery might not last. there are way to many tweaks out there which is why you have to do it yourself.
First set the phone up like you normally have it and test the battery life. if you can live with it your good. if not start looking at the settings. Read the tweaks but don't just take them as golden as everyone is different and uses their phone different. Ask yourself if you real need that setting. (I like my screen time out at 2 min. do I need it NO 1 min is fine). When done with the settings move to the apps. load the flat ROM no apps and run for a hour and track your battery life. then add the apps 1 at a time or in small groups and let run an hour and track. there are was if find what apps are using the CPU or Battery but many do this normally and yet don't effect the battery much. Only way i have found is old school add them one at a time. When you find a bad one decide if you need it or can find a replacement.
I am done with Sense as Launcher Pro Plus is awesome and now with the only Widget I was missing (Calendar). Once I done going through my app list I will create a new thread in General to list the bad application I found unless someone else has or does before I done that is.
From what I have gathered from using .3 that apps auto sync/update on their own now with "always on mobile data" turned off. if you use advanced task killer, do a kill of all apps then turn the screen off. If you wait for a few minutes and turn the screen back on you will notice that apps like news, messages, Twitter, Facebook clock, weather and others will be active. From what I gather the decrease in battery life is from apps like those will send/receive data on 2.2 while on 2.1 apps would not update/sync until you manually refreshed or opened the app, as long as you didn't have "always on mobile data" enabled.
Edit: this reason is why I uninstalled fring. Just too bad I cannot uninstalled qik.
trojandnc said:
This is not directed at you personally, but at the words you chose to use:
I am sick and tired of "tweaks and settings and cutting things off." I used them and got over 30 hours on both DamageControl and Fresh.
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It is a mini-computer. You don't use it like a "phone" anymore. You shouldn't expect more than 15-20 hours on it. Do you get angry when your laptop runs out of life after 5-6 hours? If you don't want to do tweaks, then don't. Keep a micro-USB at your desk at work and charge it there. I, myself, enjoy rooting so I don't mind tweaking it. I also get 30 hours of life on it due to this. If you don't like to do that, you get what you put into it.
trojandnc said:
I paid Sprint/HTC good money for this awesome phone (and am committed to pay them a whole lot more over the course of the next 22 months).
While I can understand the 4G thing, why should I have to cut off Data-WiFi-Bluetooth, power down the CPU, not use it a lot in order to get... in short, drive it like a Toyota Prius when then phone is billed as a Maserati? Why should I have to try out this app and that app(Overclock widget, SetCPU, System Manager, Task Killer, Autostarts etc which all use battery too) in order to get the phone to do what it should have done on June 4, 2010?
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Again, you have unrealistic expectations for a smart phone it seems. All I have is Set CPU running on my phone with Fresh 3.0.1 and works just fine. I still use my phone like a "Maserati", it just lowers the CPU when the screen is powered off. That is like saying you want your car to idle when you get home at night until the next morning. It doesn't change how you drive it, just how you store it in the garage.
trojandnc said:
Most of the battery draining apps and widgets come pre-loaded with sense (i.e. the Favorite widget, Friendstream etc). Why should I have to resort to rooting my phone or not using it in order to get the thing to last all day?
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Click to collapse
You don't have to use them though. You can remove friendstream and go with either the twitter or FB update app or go without either and just check facebook like anyone else. As far as favorites go, you don't have to use that either. You can just make shortcuts to each person's phone number on that same screen if you think that is sucking all your battery life. There are always other options or fixes, but again you expect the phone to come out of the box perfect without any customization. You are getting away from what Android really is. Something tells me the Iphone would have been more your liking since it is built around lack of true customization. This isn't a rip, but just saying if you want cookie cutter phone reliability, it is hard to beat Apple. If you want the ability to tinker with the phone, the power to change things, and the power to make your phone yours, then that is more Android.
trojandnc said:
I'm keeping my EVO cause I love the device, but maybe Sprint/HTC need a little of the medicine that Jobs/Apple is getting in the form of lawsuits due to over-promising/under-delivering.
/off_my_soap_box
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Click to collapse
I can understand your frustration, but nothing was ever promised to us on purchase. I don't remember anywhere seeing something saying the battery would last 30+ hours out of the box. Apple had an actual structural issue with their phone, that is why they had the lawsuits and PR nightmare. This is just the phone doing what most would probably expect(at least anyone who had a G1 or Hero or any of the earlier Android phones). You love the device enough to keep it even with your frustration, something tells me it works quite well for you. But I have yet to see any over-promising/under-delivering on the Evo myself.
And no, I don't work for Sprint or HTC. And no offense meant to you as a person, just I didn't understand your motives on your frustration. Guess we will have different opinions on the Evo so far.
diomark said:
maybe because some of the htc sync stuff that you might have disabled before re-enabled.
Check that.
-mark
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Click to collapse
I had the same battery problem after updating to 2.2. After 3 hours my battery was at 50%. Normally it'd be at 50% after 9 to 10 hours of usage.
I did find that some settings had been reset. Once I turned off all the crap syncing, gtalk logging in, Sprint Zone, etc my battery usage has seemed to flatten out.
I made it an hour and only dropped 2% which is much more like it. This is all with very little usage going on.
Buy a new battery! Best solution!
No joda!
Sent from my EVO!
very funny just pluged my phone in using flipz newest after 19 hours
make sure you are signed out of googletalk !!

How To Get At Least 15+ Hours of Battery Life

Alright, so here's how it goes. I happen to be really anal about battery life, and if I come home from a 8 hour day and I have less than 50% of battery life, it just bothers me.
So, with a bit of reading, I have my phone set up to where I get almost 24 hours of battery life. So here are the steps I took to achieve that:
Have all the basics down:
Be on the lowest brightness (because even that is extremely bright) unless in extraordinary situations.
Always use wifi over 3G/2G and use bluetooth and the GPS as little as possible.
Also don't install any task killers - they do more harm than good.
1. Flashthe Bionix ROM. For those of you who haven't done it yet, you are missing a lot. The speed of ROM is incredible and has a lot of little tweaks that will improve battery life. Don't be afraid to root and flash these ROMS - they have been throughly tested and proved to almost always solve problems instead of creating new ones! Make sure to download the Bionix ROM that runs on the J12 modem. Pick it up here:
HTML:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=782027
2. Wipe battery stats!!! This one is without a doubt the most critical. I did this and my battery life increased by more than 2X. Make sure you follow the instructions that state:
1. Charge phone completely, leave plugged into power
2. Boot into recovery
3. Wipe battery stats
4. Reboot
5. Remove power cable
6. Drain that sucker all the way
7. Recharge fully
8. Rejoice!"
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
To do step 6, I had my phone at full brightness with Bluetooth and GPS on, with Pandora running all while recording a HD video. It drained it pretty damn quick lol.
3. Install Autokiller from the market, and apply the Aggressive preset. This will really lower CPU usage, and really speeds up your phone. This is NOT a task killer, this just allocates memory more harshly.
4. Install JuiceDefender, and have it enabled at all times... A lot of people have had mixed results with this. Mainly, it will turn of data while your phone is asleep, but turning data on and off is a battery drainer. Juicedefender will automatically recognize what settings will produce the most preservation of battery for your phone, so leave it at the default settings. It all depends on how often you use your phone, and what your data connection is like in the areas you reside. It does great things for most people, so I really suggest you try it out. Make sure you download the "battery" version and not the beta.
5. Have all apps/widgets that regularly stream information to the lowest interval possible. Let's be honest, you don't need your Facebook widget to be refreshing every 5min, so set it at an hour.
With all this done, I am at this very moment at 44% battery with a little over 13 hours of use. Even if I had my phone asleep the entire time, 24 hours is a lot better than what most people would seem to get. My day usually consists of 20min of talk time, 30 min of texting, 40 min of browsing, 30 min of gaming, 1 hour of music playing, and a bit of picture taking/editing. My phone is asleep for a long periods of time while I am at school. Yes I don't use my phone as heavily as some do, but if it guarantees me a full day of battery, I don't mind too much.
I don't really see how this can't work for others. We have the exact same hardware, and the exact same battery. You may use the phone more than I and pump out a few hours less, but still get over 15 hours.
Hope this helped!
nearblack said:
Alright, so here's how it goes. I happen to be really anal about battery life, and if I come home from a 8 hour day and I have less than 50% of battery life, it just bothers me.
So, with a bit of reading, I have my phone set up to where I get almost 24 hours of battery life. So here are the steps I took to achieve that:
Have all the basics down. Be on the lowest brightness (because even that is extremely bright) unless in extraordinary situations. Always use wifi over 3G/2G and use bluetooth and the GPS as little as possible. Also don't install any task killers - they do more harm than good.
1. Flashthe Bionix ROM. For those of you who haven't done it yet, you are missing a lot. The speed of ROM is incredible and has a lot of little tweaks that will improve battery life.
2. Wipe battery stats!!! This one is without a doubt the most critical. I did this and my battery life increased by more than 2X. Make sure you follow the instructions that state:
To do step 6, I had my phone at full brightness with Bluetooth and GPS on, with Pandora running all while recording a HD video. It drained it pretty damn quick lol.
3. Install Autokiller from the market, and apply the ULTIMATE preset. This will really lower CPU usage, and though it the most extreme of all presets, I haven't had any issues. This is NOT a task killer, this just allocates memory more harshly.
4. Install JuiceDefender, and have it enabled at all times... A lot of people have had mixed results with this. Mainly, it will turn of data while your phone is asleep, but turning data on and off is a battery drainer. It all depends on how often you use your phone, and what your data connection is like in the areas you reside. It does great things for most people, so I really suggest you try it out. Make sure you download the "battery" version and not the beta.
5. Have all apps/widgets that regularly stream information to the lowest interval possible. Let's be honest, you don't need your Facebook widget to be refreshing every 5min, so set it at an hour.
With all this done, I am at this very moment at 44% battery with a little over 13 hours of use. Even if I had my phone asleep the entire time, 24 hours is a lot better than what most people would seem to get. My day usually consists of 20min of talk time, 30 min of texting, 40 min of browsing, 30 min of gaming, 1 hour of music playing, and a bit of picture taking/editing. My phone is asleep for a long periods of time while I am at school. Yes I don't use my phone as heavily as some do, but if it guarantees me a full day of battery, I don't mind too much.
I don't really see how this can't work for others. We have the exact same hardware, and the exact same battery. You may use the phone more than I and pump out a few hours less, but still get over 15 hours.
Hope this helped!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I would specify what settings you use on JuiceDefender, because it really depends on what settings you use and such. You made this guide to help people, so don't leave them wondering.
I would include other ways to save battery life, even if they have been said over and over, just so no one misses anything.
Also, with Bionix you will probably want to only recommend the JI2 modem, because it is not universally accepted that JI6 helps battery life, in fact it is quite the contrary.
Mark271 said:
I would specify what settings you use on JuiceDefender, because it really depends on what settings you use and such. You made this guide to help people, so don't leave them wondering.
I would include other ways to save battery life, even if they have been said over and over, just so no one misses anything.
Also, with Bionix you will probably want to only recommend the JI2 modem, because it is not universally accepted that JI6 helps battery life, in fact it is quite the contrary.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I am running JI6 with bionix, and im running on 14 hours at 45%
DaSmittyman said:
I am running JI6 with bionix, and im running on 14 hours at 45%
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Good job. Proud of you.
Mark271 said:
Good job. Proud of you.
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Click to collapse
lul, I added the JI2 bit to the post. You are right, that modem has proven to perform more efficiently.
Near black excellent
Near black excellent Written play by play well done !
I'm bone stock just running LP and I'm pretty sure I get better battery than that. My buddy with a Fascinate has been getting excellent battery life too. Not really sure how some of you guys are able to kill it so quickly
*shrugs*
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App
Its easy. They play with their phones constantly, they leave 3g on, Wifi on. They stream pandora all day.
lolcopter said:
I'm bone stock just running LP and I'm pretty sure I get better battery than that. My buddy with a Fascinate has been getting excellent battery life too. Not really sure how some of you guys are able to kill it so quickly
*shrugs*
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
kizer said:
Its easy. They play with their phones constantly, they leave 3g on, Wifi on. They stream pandora all day.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Aside from steaming pandora all day I'm doing all that too. Wifi always on, gps navigation, watching youtube/nfl app videos, twitter/email throughout the day, forums, etc. The only way I can kill my phone anywhere near that fast is hours of constant video steaming over 3g
Edit: oh, and angry birds all day every day, haha
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App
kizer said:
Its easy. They play with their phones constantly, they leave 3g on, Wifi on. They stream pandora all day.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
lolcopter said:
I'm bone stock just running LP and I'm pretty sure I get better battery than that. My buddy with a Fascinate has been getting excellent battery life too. Not really sure how some of you guys are able to kill it so quickly
*shrugs*
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Agreed, I moderately use my phone the whole day and I am left with 25-30% after a 15 hour day. Its not necessary to have max brightness, 3g, bt, syncing, wifi, tons of widgets on all day.
My secret was just getting another battery sent to me. The one that came with teh phone jus wasnt all that great. New one lasts 4 to 5 hours longer doing the same things.
I leave bluetooth on all the time. Never turn it off. Only turn on GPS when needed. And at work where i dont usually get wifi, i leave 2G on most of the time unless i need it to be faster for something, but most times, 2G is fine for tweets and emails. Of course it all depends on how much im using it. I use it if i have to. If the battery is lower than usual when i get home, who cares? I charge it up over night every night anyways. I'm not anal that way.
Most ive got for a day is 18 hours. Had 17 or so many times and had a little over 16 hours today w/ 10% left but plugged it in anyways.
My secret Is to leave the music playing overnight. With headphones.
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App
Lol. I have a HTC legend with stock rom and i just checked running time. I have one day and three and a half hours....at 55% battery
Sent from my HTC Legend using XDA App
=D
thank you! I will try this out. =]
I wanna put Bionix on my phone so bad, but if I screw up and brick the phone, then no more Vibrant for me. :/ need a better job imo.
Wearespacepeople said:
I wanna put Bionix on my phone so bad, but if I screw up and brick the phone, then no more Vibrant for me. :/ need a better job imo.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's really hard to screw up. (assuming you have made it though an educational system successfully)
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App
Mark271 said:
It's really hard to screw up. (assuming you have made it though an educational system successfully)
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hah, I think I'm taking this as a personal challenge. How about if I DO screw up you send me your Vibrant? Deal?
Wearespacepeople said:
Hah, I think I'm taking this as a personal challenge. How about if I DO screw up you send me your Vibrant? Deal?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No, because this phone is unbrickable. You just need average reading comprehension and moderate computer literacy.
On a side note, the recommended autokiller setting is far too high. It kills anything after you exit out of it. (i.e. checking a text, it will kill the texting program after exiting) I lowered a few levels to see if I'll keep it.
added to the thread Mark. You are right, having it at such a high level will not only kill some running apps, but those apps will go onto restart, which kills battery. I think the "aggressive" setting is most suitable, or the lowest preset where your phone is still fast enough.
nearblack said:
...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Interesting...great write up.
So would you say Bionix is the the best ROM for the Vibrant? There are so many ROMS's out there and I can imagine how it would confuse the heck out of those who are looking for the best ROM available to date for our phones.
What are your thoughts?

Best radio signal to use? (battery life)

I can use *#*#4636#*#* and I read somewhere that it can help with battery life if I set a certain antenna from there? I forgot where I read it though, if someone can please let me know that would be great. There are NO rogue apps running, I only have about 10 installed.
The phone is 4 days old, so it could be why but I've battery cycled it twice already (letting it run dead and recharging it for 10 hours). All my widgets are off except weather and that is set to update every 3 hours and it is NOT using GPS. Wifi is off, so is bluetooth. Gps is off as well.
Is anyone using maximum power saver or just the regular nighttime setting for those reporting better battery life? I also uninstalled launcher pro, it seemed to glitch my phone a lot with the google toolbar and also seemed to have a slightly bigger toll on my battery. Also battery health is stating "Good". Is that the best or does it still need more conditioning?
You probably shouldn't change things in there. Look elsewhere to conserve battery.
You didn't note what your battery life is like either. But you should still let the battery charge and drain a few more times before trying to squeak out more battery life by modifying something like this....
bongd said:
You probably shouldn't change things in there. Look elsewhere to conserve battery.
You didn't note what your battery life is like either. But you should still let the battery charge and drain a few more times before trying to squeak out more battery life by modifying something like this....
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well I'll give you an example. The phone was unplugged almost 6 hours yesterday, and I used it around 3 hours and 46 minutes max. It got down to 5 percent and shut off. I had my music i was listening to for 25 minutes. I had my IM program on for about an hour, had a 12 minute phone call. Was texting back and forth mainly, and I checked a few things on the browser and exited out. MY IM program uses GPS to get my location but only when I request to do so, then shut the gps off. I force closed it when I was done to be sure it wasn't gonna drain any more of my battery. My notifications are off mainly except for my texts and such. And this was with JuiceDefender on the last half of the battery.
I don't like programs like Juice Defender to be honest. They usually go buggy and drain the battery more than it saves. People just get excited and leave positive reviews.
I'd honestly reset to factory settings in case there was a one-off glitch. Set things up again and use it like you would normally to gauges things. My battery lasted over 40 hours from the first charge.
With results that bad, I wouldn't troubleshoot beyond resetting it. Take it back if that's the case. That's not right. And it's not worth your time.
bongd said:
I don't like programs like Juice Defender to be honest. They usually go buggy and drain the battery more than it saves. People just get excited and leave positive reviews.
I'd honestly reset to factory settings in case there was a one-off glitch. Set things up again and use it like you would normally to gauges things. My battery lasted over 40 hours from the first charge.
With results that bad, I wouldn't troubleshoot beyond resetting it. Take it back if that's the case. That's not right. And it's not worth your time.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks. I just got the phone not sure why I would need to factory reset it. Is there a way I can back my data up and such like texts and pics/apps?
Also 40 hours!? Jeeze do you like never use your phone at all? haha. That is insane my iPhone 4 never even got that good of battery life.
tripleh3lix said:
I can use *#*#4636#*#* and I read somewhere that it can help with battery life if I set a certain antenna from there? I forgot where I read it though, if someone can please let me know that would be great.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That code just pushes your phone to use EDGE only and not 3G. It can increase battery life if your phone is constantly trying to hold on to a spotty 3G signal, which can be common .
gnahc79 said:
That code just pushes your phone to use EDGE only and not 3G. It can increase battery life if your phone is constantly trying to hold on to a spotty 3G signal, which can be common .
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ah, no I have about 4 bars of HSPA+ in my house, I think i'm good on that, thank you!
Did you do the OTA update? seems to have helped a few people with battery life including myself.
Kaoe said:
Did you do the OTA update? seems to have helped a few people with battery life including myself.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yep it's updated I'm wondering if it was the chat program yesterday I was using.. It has notifications on so it was probably connecting 24/7. I'm gonna keep it off today and use regular apps like facebook. Do you guys keep your notifications for those with good battery life?
Kaoe said:
Did you do the OTA update? seems to have helped a few people with battery life including myself.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
(off topic) is that your atrix? and how did you get your lockscreen to look like that?
Banditlol said:
(off topic) is that your atrix? and how did you get your lockscreen to look like that?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's an application called WidgetLocker. It's quite an amazing application if I do say so myself.
tripleh3lix said:
Yep it's updated I'm wondering if it was the chat program yesterday I was using.. It has notifications on so it was probably connecting 24/7. I'm gonna keep it off today and use regular apps like facebook. Do you guys keep your notifications for those with good battery life?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Chat programs are generally notorious battery hogs. Stick with Google Talk.
stewartsoda said:
Chat programs are generally notorious battery hogs. Stick with Google Talk.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've been using PingChat for about a month now and there is no significant battery drain. Very nice and reliable, more than google talk where messages sent would occasionally never be received.
gnahc79 said:
I've been using PingChat for about a month now and there is no significant battery drain. Very nice and reliable, more than google talk where messages sent would occasionally never be received.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Generally. I allow that there are some that are not battery hogs. I do know the chat program on my Touch Pro (I forget what it was) would suck my battery dry in an hour or two if left running in the background.

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