The best way to get more life out of the battery - EVO 4G General

I have tried a lot of the tricks posted on this forum... and they DO help... but I was still loosing a battery life. So I have a new list of things you can try:
- Don't turn on your phone every 5 mins to look at it
- Don't try and show every single feature available to every person walking by
- Don't check every 10 mins to see if your area suddenly has 4G
- Don't play games on it for hours at a time
I realize that this may be hard to do... but eventually as the phone gets more mainstream (and it will once the iphone 4 and droid X come out), you will notice that your phone can go a lot longer on a single charge.

Related

Help - Battery Drain excessive

*jump to ashtricks for immediate problems without reading software/ROM changes.
I know this is going to be made especially difficult with all the different software/combo's that can be loaded, but I have to post this up and see if any one else has seen this and if it might be hardware or software.
I have a HERMS 100 (8525). I first got the phone in April with WM5 (don't know which build they might have been on then) and which ever Radio was coming on them then. My battery would usually last 2 days with my avg use.
This has been the case threw upgrades until the last 2-3 months. I upgraded From one version of WM6 to VP3G's 2.X build of WM6 and I upgraded the radio to which ever version was the newest at that time (maybe 1.47 or 1.50). I Noticed a sudden drop in battery life, but the phone pretty much always made it a full day even with high use, so I didn't think much of it. I did notice about this time that sometimes the phone would alarm me and say it had 20% battery remaining, but if I rebooted the phone it would say 80 or 90% power remaining when it came back on and work fine the rest of the day.
The following has been over the last month. I upgraded to VP3G's 3.0 and again later to 3.6 and again to 3.62. I noticed the battery continued to degrade throughout this time. So I upgraded the radio to 1.54. The battery continued to go down hill at an even rate, but I noticed something else, the battery would not take very long to charge, but was dying faster and faster.
Well I started tracking and experimenting. Starting last week (no change in software or ROM's for the last 2 or 3 weeks) the battery would rarely make it through the day even when the phone was not in use any during the day (Granted I get no cell service at my desk at work, but I never have even back when the phone would last 2 days searching for signal). Most days last week it wouldn't make it 5 hours from being unplugged even when the phone wasn't in use. I decided to run the battery all the way down to where it wouldn't even turn the phone on anymore as I had heard sometimes you needed to do that after a rom upgrade. It did not help, but I noticed that the phone said the battery was fully charged within 2 hours from being completely dead.
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Today was the worst, I unplugged it after being plugged in all night. Unplugged it at 6:45am. I did not use the phone, it just stayed in standby (I hadn't even taken it out of standby any today. I am at work with no service (When I say no service, I don't mean sometimes it finds something, I mean no cell service from any carrier makes it past 10 feet of the front doors entering the building and I am about 150 feet from the closest wall to the outside). I grab the phone at around 10:30am to check on a meeting notice, clicked on the phone to wake up and the battery alarm alerted and the battery said I only had 20% power remaining. In 5 minutes of doing what I was doing the battery had gone down to 10% remaining (so the phone went from lost 90% of it's power, never being used in less then 4 hours). I went back to my desk, plugged the phone back in and within an hour I noticed the amber light on the front that I relate it to telling me it's charging had turned green, I unplugged it and checked it and the battery said it was full 100%. Could the battery really charge that fast?
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I know this would be easier if I could remember what radio and what version of WM5 came on this phone and loaded it back on and I am in the middle of downgrading the radio since I had ran WM6 with no battery issues separate from WM5 until I did that one upgrade with the radio. I guess I am curious if this could be a hardware (phone or battery) where it's not charging fully or if this seems to be a software issue.
I know all the factors that can be involved make this hard, but thanks for any responses you guys can give.
ok, how about this one, Is my battery screwed? I notice while I am using the phone the battery gets really hot. Today it did the same thing of all of a sudden saying I had 10% power after only using it for 5 mintues, rebooted the phone and now I am back to 70%.
Hi,
There's a lot on here about this problem. Have you read the wiki?
Some solutions you might try:
- turn wifi off.
- turn off all beams
- put in the fake server trick.
- search to see if you have any software that continuously polls the battery or is seeking an exchange server
- ensure all your apps fully close rather than minimise
- invest in a new battery.
WB
Thanks, I have gone through the wiki Continuasly since I got the phone in April, but with all the stuff out there, I could have easily missed something.
- turn wifi off - Never turn it on
- turn off all beams - Beaming disabled
- put in the fake server trick - Have to research that one
- search to see if you have any software that continuously polls the battery or is seeking an exchange server - have to check, don't have exchange server setup. I do have it checking emails every 15 minutes, but I never had any issues with that setting and the battery lasting a couple of days
- ensure all your apps fully close rather than minimise - X button set to close not minimize and I often check it to see whats running.
- invest in a new battery. - Will be doing that next. Just waiting to see what case I might get for Christmas.
Thanks again, I will research those other items.
I had a similar problem where the stock battery would only ever last for ~7-8 hours - even on standby. I got an extended life 3000mAh battery and that managed to last for about 14 hours.
I had a talk to HTC and they agreed to warranty claim it. I'm still waiting for it back... It was sent back to them on 14/11, and I'm still waiting.
Stop your device checking for emails for a few days and ses what happens. Definitely install the fake server trick. Activesync continuosly trying to do its dirty work can be a pain in the arsenal, at times.
Let us know how you get on.
WB
wacky.banana said:
Stop your device checking for emails for a few days and ses what happens. Definitely install the fake server trick. Activesync continuosly trying to do its dirty work can be a pain in the arsenal, at times.
Let us know how you get on.
WB
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well I turned off email checks last night and disabled the radio this morning so it wouldn't search for signal when coming to work and set the phone on my desk. I never used it this morning, just had it sitting on my desk in standby, until about 4 hours after I took it off the charger and the phone buzzed me and when I checked the phone the battery said 0% remaining and the phone cut off a few seconds later (now I am sure if I would have turned it back on the battery would say something like 70%, but I didn't do that this time). I left the phone off and plugged it into the computer to charge, the LED on the front come on amber for about 20 minutes then went to green. I turned the phone on and it says 100%. I don't see how the battery went from 0 to 100 in a matter of 20 minutes.
I did a lot of searching the last couple of days and phone issues from email to bad manufactured batteries (which I happen to have the brand someone suggested as a bad one), I also saw people pointing out do the fake server trick, yet I can't find a single time where anyone said what the trick is or how to do it. Not even in the WIKI where the trick was mentioned as a possible fix (or google for that matter, just the same words first posted in a thread here about it).
So, how do you do this server trick?
I plan to get a new battery after Christmas at any rate.
Check this thread:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=338421&highlight=fake+server+trick
I was having the same battery drain problem (less than 8 hrs on a full charge), I did the fake server and turned off auto day light saving time checking the clock settings, I now get 12 - 15 hrs on a full charge.
I'm running vp3G's 3.62.3 AT&T ROM with radio 1.54.07.00
Thanks! I was just finishing flashing a new ROM when I saw this. I did the fake server trick, but this rom doesn't have the Dya Light Savings time option where the instructions say it should be. Maybe that's all removed by this rom. TIme will tell.
Thanks again.
@ Firehawkns
hey buddy!!
I am using a JasJam for the last 2 months. i dont know if my reply is useful to you or not. As far as battery life is concerned am impressed with mine. Am using TNT's latest ROM and my radio version is 1.54.07.00. I use my phone all day with couple of calls that last about 2-3 min each. But every night I get calls from my gf, to whom I talk for 3 hours straight(mostly starting from 11pm to 2 am) and every day I put my phone to charge after I finish the call. So after finishing the call I still have 50% of battery. Moreover our call starts right after I leave work at 11pm so by the time I reach home which is around 11.30pm my phone connects to wifi too. So all the time am on the call as well as an active wifi connection.
So as per my experience the battery life is cool. So try TNT ROM!!!
Interestingly enough, now I've got my phone back from the warranty claim, it's only drawing 81mA with backlight on, no wifi or BT. Before sending it back, it was drawing ~180mA with backlight on, no wifi or BT.
This will just about double the battery life that I get in theory...
Install BatteryStatus on your device and see what it tells you.
That is a cool program.
First off I really hope it isn't the phone, for one it's my third one from Cingular since the first two died within 2 weeks (back in may), second it's got one big gash down the corner where it came out of the holder and hit the road one day. I think that would be just enough reason for them to not do anything with it.
Anyway, I am going to replace the battery because I can't figure out why the phone is doing things like saying it has 20% batt remaing, then I reboot and it goes to 70%. I am hoping this is a battery issue. So far the phone has been unplugged for a tad less then one hour, has not been used and the battery meter is on 90%.
Battery Status is a kick butt program and I plan to do some searching today to see if people have benchmarked there ratings/draw. I notice mine jumps randomly. With wifi, BT, all programs all terminated, backlight on the lowest it will go and radio has one bar 3g sometimes, two bars Edge sometimes, but didn't change during watching this list below, but the MA does this every 5 second refresh:
111--190----125-----109----250----210-----140----135----226---111---etc.
I am currently running a barebones fresh flash WM6 rom with nothing installed except Cingulars media net/ISP settings, radio is 1.47.10. Going to try 1.50 today I think.
I turned the radio off just now and the MA went down (expected) to 84 and is jumping between that and 104. The battery has dropped to 80% since I listed 90 above. The phone has now been unplugged for right at an hour. Also it might be interesting to note that the little battery percent/bar icon on the "Battery Status" software once in a while will display -1% like it is right now, the phones battery display says 80% and when I tap the battery icon on battery status it jumps to 80%.
Anyway, I am just listing points since this thread is here, I know I need to replace the battery first before any additional insight can be brought forward.
Thanks everyone.
Hmm.. On my Schaps 4.22full, radio 1.54.00 on good reception (on Finnish network) I get around 30 mA with GSM and 3G when idling(no wifi, no bluetooth, no beam, backlight around halfway). With airplane mode on I get around 28 mA. Tried with backlight dimmest and the drain was 15mA on GSM network.
Usually I put the 3G off so the battery would last longer.
The phone takes more power when searching the network so it would be a good idea trying to switch the phone part off at your office.
Well, looks like it was indeed the battery. Over the last week the phone would randomly shut off (about 4 times a day), the battery would be at 10% within 4 hours even if the phone hadn't been used, and while using the phone you could almost watch the battery go from 90% to 30% within a 5 minute talk time, reboot the phone and it would be back at 80%.
Put in the new battery yesterday after charging over night and the phone not only didn't shut off at any point, but I had 60% power remaining by the end of the day (with some data and voice use).
The old battery was a Dynapack from China, that I had read on here is prone to defects.
Thanks for the help everyone, wish I would have gotten a new batt sooner.

battery problems

So I'm having problems with the battery/power on my T-mobile MDA. Pretty recent problems.
Battery goes dead in about 5 or 6 hours even with very moderate use, say it gets down to 10 percent. Then I reset it, and it says 50 percent again. Then in an hour it goes down to 5 percent and shuts itself down. So I head out to the car and plug it in, and after a couple minutes start it back up and it reads 50 some odd percent again. So I use it and a while later after around 20 minutes of calls, it goes back down to around 10 percent. So I plug it back in and restart it and it reads 80 percent after about 5 minutes. 80 percent burns off in about 30 minutes of calls.
Battery, or phone? What do you think? I'll happily pick up another battery if it seems like that'll help, but the inconsistency of it seems like the phone itself to me.
Like I said, this is a relatively recent development, and I've already ditched the couple recent software additions. I've already done a hard reset and reloaded general programs, but not any heavy stuff. So no over clocking going on for instance. Internet connection and WiFi only on when I'm using them.
So my question is, does that sound like battery or bad phone.
Thanks folks, hoping you've got something helpful for me, cause I'm just about to pop my gourd with this thing, I use it for work etc, so it's a big deal.
Syn
synghyn said:
Battery, or phone? What do you think? I'll happily pick up another battery if it seems like that'll help, but the inconsistency of it seems like the phone itself to me.
So my question is, does that sound like battery or bad phone.
Thanks folks, hoping you've got something helpful for me, cause I'm just about to pop my gourd with this thing, I use it for work etc, so it's a big deal.
Syn
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Do a battery test. Plenty of programs around, or you could use this link I found somewhere http://forum.xda-developers.com/show...56&postcount=5
You'll have your answer, though if you've used your battery for anything over 2.5 years, my guess is that its the battery.
Had close to the same problem with my battery after a flash. Bought a new one and everything is BETTER than normal Havnt flashed back to a WM6 (why I havnt been on the forums.) But I keep the old as a "backup" if I do decide to flash and it was a "memory effect" as some have stated.

Really poor battery.

Hi guys, please bear with us on this one.
This is my 2nd Android phone, I used to have an Hero about 6 months ago. i really liked the front end but the screen was small so I upgraded to an HD2 which I still have. On the HD2 the screen is huge but Win Mobile lets it down a bit. The marketplace is expensive and very limited and the amount of apps for Win Mobile seem to be getting less and less, especially supproting the 800x480 WVGA screen on the HD2.
Anyway I was due an upgrade and Orange offered me the X10 for £20 which i couldn't refuse. I am trying to like the phone but the biggest issue for me is the battery. I did the usual of leaving it plugged in for 16 hours as recommended by orange etc. If the phone is on standby I seem to get around 8 hours and the battery will be down to about 40% remaining charge. That is on standby with the top button pressed and the phone on a black screen. This is really poor considering the HD2 can run almost 2 days on standby before loosing 60% of its charge.
Anybody got any suggestions on how to improve this? Would it be wise for me to do the debrand as mentioned in other threads? It is currently on build R1FA014.
Thanks for the help.
The battery will improve in time, after a few weeks of use the X10 will loose 1-2% of battery each 2 hours (at least my X10 R1FA016 and two of my friends X10 R1FA014 do). This is with 3G on, wifi sometimes on, GPS sometimes on. Just give it some time. I think the X10 is one of the best smartphones out there. There is an extensive thread on Power Usage which can be found here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=657265
In the end it comes down to:
-Give it some time
-Disable auto search for software updates (settings>about phone>update)
-Wifi seems to drain sometimes
-Streaming drains.
Thanks for the pointers Vin87, I have got wifi turned off now but I am at work for the next 7 hours and I only have about 28% charge remaining
I'm going to have a good read through the thread you mentioned all 50+ pages LOL.
I do like the phone and for the cost I am going to keep it and hopefully we will get some new updates soon?
It gets better...way better. 13 hours since my last charge, and it's at 71%. I've been using it every now and then, Facebook, sending emails ect.
Great battery life now!
From a work perspective, I miss the X10 having a dock.
With my G900 each time I returned to my desk,I would throw it the dock and so it was receiving a charge throughout the day, the X10 is more fiddly as you need to play around the the flap and then figure out which way to plug in the mini-USB cable...
I wish they had chosen a better connector than the mini-USB as the standard, as it's not that easy to quickly connect it....
I could almost throw my G900 at the charging cable and it would connect.
Basically (if you want to use the smartphone):
1. In the beginning you will use the phone a lot. Installing apps, trying apps, games, music etc. so the battery drains faster. When you will stop pushing the phone to the limit will be better
2. Wait for a week, the batter will get better.
3. Get a task killer/boot manager and set it to autokill moxier. Don't kill other apps
4. Set facebook/twitter sync at 1h (or more) if you are not a hardcore fan of this social platforms.
5. Email: if you need instant notification there is not much you can do. If you don't need it, disable background sync and sync manually.
6. Disable location using wireless networks.
7. Wifi/3G: if you need instant notifications, wifi will drain your battery pretty fast but if you don't have 3G data plan like me, there is no other choice. If you have a good 3G plan, you can set wifi sleep policy to turn off wifi when phone goes to "sleep". Also, you can use this together with Juice defender free to turn 3G on 2 min every 3min to get notifications so, you will save even more battery.
8. Enable bluetoot/gps only when you use them and keep them disabled when not.
9. Set brightness to manual and around 25% when you are indoor and "sleep time" (screen timeout) to 30sec
10. Oh, i forgot, disable search for software updates and if you didn't install too many things, try a factory defaults. Some people did a SD card format (be sure you save everything first) and reported battery improvement.
If you want to use the dumbphone inside then turn everything off (BT, GPS, 3G, WIFI, Twitter/Facebook, email, background sync, etc.) and your dumbphone will last way longer

Tutorial for Better Battery Life on EVO 4G

Hey Guys,
So I have a HORRIBLE battery life on my EVO 4G - Granted, I have tons of apps, and even with the Task Manager, I feel I am doing it wrong. I think you need to root the phone to delete Friend Stream for Sense - which I have heard can save you TONS of battery.
As it stands, my phone lasts about 3-4 hours with light use. If I am playing a game I will lose 5-10 % per 10 minutes... Anyways, I was wondering if someone would be willing to draw up a step-by-step "Dummies Guide to Making your EVO 4G Battery Last Longer" including all the various things that can help quite a bit?
This is one "Trick" thread I have found - I will post any other I find here - as well as hopefully we will get a great step-by-step tutorial for Stock phones to extend their life to what I hear some people get ( a day and a half + ): http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=700601 - Changing GSM PRL to CDMA
Thanks!
good on you man, one more happy camper
i dunno if i'm allowed to post other forum links on XDA, so i'm not going to risk it. but there's a fantastic tutorial on android forums that works perfectly for me.
I copy and pasted this from the other battery thread. I wrote this pretty quickly so ignore grammer mistakes, its late.
Just to add to all this. Bad battery isnt just a HTC Evo problem. Go read the forums of almost every android phone released and they all report the same things (in the beginning). Someone that has had a android phone in the past probably hasnt said much about battery. There are so many things you can do to increase battery.
1. manage your apps. Exit them instead of leaving them running (press back button until the app closes, or some apps you can Menu> exit) Pressing home doesnt close the app, it only takes you to the homescreen. Also change the sync times of all your apps. If you dont use gmail or google calendar, then uncheck the "sync" in Menu>accounts & sync> google. One last thing use a task manager (not recommended by some devs) I use it to end tasks of apps that use data, or ones that i use maybe once a day or once a week, i dont need them cached for quick returning, so i end the task all together. I ignore apps so they dont end that i use very frequently or ones that dont use data or run in the background.
2. Calibrate your battery once like so.. Charge your phone to 100% and then use your phone like normal until its so dead it shuts off by itself. Dont plug it into the computer or wall charger in that time. Then once it shuts off, plug the phone into a wall charger and charge it till its 100% again. After that, plug and play as much as you want.
3. Use less widgets that sync. If its really not that important, then just dont use it. If you do want them, like above, change the sync time. Also the weather app syncs, so if you dont check the weather every hour when its just hot and clear outside, change it to sync every 2, 3, or 4 hours.
4. Buy a car charger, usb cord for the comp, and maybe another wall charger. Buy an extra battery or extended battery (if available). Doing the above and adding these to them, youll have a huge increase in battery.
I have an htc hero and i can get well over 12 hours of use by just watching what syncs and what uses data. And i use my phone alot, and wake it up a ton to check for notifications.
I use a friends Evo so im not new to the device and I understand its a different phone.
Stock htc phones come with a lot of stuff preinstalled and widgets. When signing into them with your accounts the sync times are usually pretty high, some like every 15mins. Watch what you are doing with the phone and youll have normal battery life.
OP, I was in the same boat as you, needing to charge my phone several times a day, and if I was playing a game, I pretty much had to leave it plugged in.
1) I didn't delete friend stream, but I did change the update to once a day (default is every 2hrs), and I disabled sync live feed.
2) I also did the CDMA auto, battery trick thing that you linked.
3) I also did several of the steps posted on another android forum in a guide that someone created.
I would say doing steps 1 & 2, really made a HUGE improvement on my battery life. The phone will easily last an entire day while I play games, and browse the internet on it all day. The phone is still new so I play with it a lot. If I didn't play with it so much, I honestly feel the phone could last 1-2+ days without a charge now.
My battery life is awesome. I didn't have to remove things like friendstream. I used some of the battery life suggestions like the WiFi always alive, as well as stopping all the auto syncs I don't need. It only takes seconds to sync up manually as it is.
Also, at the suggestion of Android Central I bought "autostarts", best purchase ever. You should all get it. Unlike a task manager, which I still believe in, it stops apps from starting when they shouldn't. It shows you all the apps that boot at events. A lot of normal apps boot at virtually every event the phone has, most of which seem to have no relation to the particular apps. Now, after pruning all the events, my phone only runs the apps I load and a task manager has become useless for anything buy ending apps easily.
You can find 20 battery tips for the EVO here: http://www.goodandevo.net/2010/05/20-tips-to-improve-htc-evo-4g-battery-life.html
light usage, with background data and auto syncing off, updates on widgets set at 4-6 hours, my location off. wifi on, with sleep set to never.
i had over 80% left after 16 hours.

I9505 Android 4.4 GE battery issue explanation

Hi,
Reading the thread of Jamal's Google Play Edition 4.4 ROM, i noticed some users were saying they could get 4 hours of screen on time. Sadly enough this wasn't the case for me, and I think many other users can confirm. On a full charge, i can barely get 2hours of screen on time out of it, which is of course unacceptable. I decided to analyse the battery usage.
What I've got after a full discharge is illustrated in the attachment. If you know how I used my phone during this period, the curve is very surprising and hard to explain. The first hours I had my 4G on for extended periods and I noticed pretty decent battery life, i.e. 25% gone after 1 hour of screen on time. That's surely an acceptable score and would give me also that beautiful 4 hours. But suddenly, the phone made a weird change. You can see that the phone starts discharging much faster with a new and constant slope. I tried stopping it but it didn't change at all. My 4G and wifi were all set to off, even my location settings were turned off. Nothing changed.
I started searching the web if some applications were not optimised for android 4.4 yet, but didn't find anything significant. But then I found topics about the Exchange issue which already gave many android 4.4 users headaches. I read about a constant error-looping that could cause fast battery drain and, sneaky enough, doesn't start immediately when the phone boots but can start after a period of several hours. I decided to shut the whole thing off and deleted my Exchange account. Rebooted the phone and the issue was gone.
Hopefully a fix will be brought out soon!

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