Database Users

Do you leave your advantage ON, or PLUGGED IN at night?

Just curious what people do with their bricks when their sleeping..I like the idea of leaving it on, plugged in overnight next to my bed in case I get any emergency calls, but is there any possible wear/damage issues to the microdrive by leaving it on for extended periods of time?

About the Microdrive, no, not really.
But I couldn't vote in your poll: I personnaly leave it unplugged and in stand by (not completly shut down).
I am one of those who believe micro-leaking hurts batteries, even if they are supposed to be without memory-effect. So I don't leave it plugged, and when I charge it, I disconnect it ASAP.
That worked for me for all my batteries, which I kept up and in shape for a long, long time.

Thanks for the input Heartofdarkness, I guess I should have added another option to the poll at least one for none of the above. With work and everything, it seems like I am constantly in and out of my office with wifi, and bluetooth on. I'm fairly sure I would not make it thru the entire day on one charge, should I be charging it in spurts of like 30 mins? Currently im trying to get it as much charging time as possible, and unfortunatly thats in short bursts. I'm interested to see what everyone else does as well....... I guess it really doesent matter if the battery eventually craps out, at least its a replacable item.

My devicedoesn't shut down. It's always on 24x7. At night, it's my MP3 player if I'm not listening to my am talk back radio. It's also my alarm clock for the morning calls. Yes, my golf buddy can call me closer to the morning if there is any change in golfing plan, or just send me an SMS. Most probably, I still read and answer to XDA forum on bed until I get sleepy. Sometimes I download youtube videos and watch it before sleeping.
There will also be a scheduled backup that happens automatically at 4am.

Im option E: plugged in and completely off.
I suspect you would be fine if you didnt charge it all day. Mine goes on at 6am, gets a call or two and some browsing through the day (staying on standby otherwise), and by 8pm I have about 80 to 90% left. It then gets heavy browsing between me and my wife between 8 and 10pm leaving me around 30% at the end of the day. If I start browsing earlier than 8 Ill be left with 10 to 20%. Most of the day Im on a 3G/HSDPA network which uses more power than EDGE.
Have you tried going all day without charging?

Im option E: plugged in and completely off.
I suspect you would be fine if you didnt charge it all day. Mine goes on at 6am, gets a call or two and some browsing through the day (staying on standby otherwise), and by 8pm I have about 80 to 90% left. It then gets heavy browsing between me and my wife between 8 and 10pm leaving me around 30% at the end of the day. If I start browsing earlier than 8 Ill be left with 10 to 20%. Most of the day Im on a 3G/HSDPA network which uses more power than EDGE.
Have you tried going all day without charging?

techntrek said:
Have you tried going all day without charging?
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Never happen for me. A single battery will not last the whole day for me. I use it so much that I normally also use a spare battery. When a battery runs out, I simply go the charger to take out the then fully charged one and swap them. So I never get caught not having any juice. If I'm in the car, then a single battery will suffice as the car battery quickly fully charge it.

eaglesteve said:
Never happen for me. A single battery will not last the whole day for me. I use it so much that I normally also use a spare battery. When a battery runs out, I simply go the charger to take out the then fully charged one and swap them. So I never get caught not having any juice. If I'm in the car, then a single battery will suffice as the car battery quickly fully charge it.
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Today I went 5 am to about 7:30 pm without a charge. But man was I hurting when I got to the car! Had to plug in right away, down to the short red bar on the top, I think that's 10%.

thanks for the responses
cool, I feel a bit better about leaving it on all night. even if its just standby mode, I need it there for the calls....and who knows maybe ill wake up and wanna check some news

On and powered - Its on the bedside table and runs SPBTime as a bedside clock. I use phonealarm to turn down the screen brightness to zero, volumes to 10% at midnight, then at 6.45, turn up the display back to 100%, volumes upto 60% and then trigger a connection to BBC Radio 1 via Windows Media Player to wake me up. And if that fails, SPBTime kicks off an alarm at 7am which I can't ignore and wakes me up.
I pretty much leave the thing running 24x7 and it doesn't spend that much time off the charger (Charged when by the bed, and charged at work - only between times that it doesn't get plugged in). I accept that the battery will probably need to be replaced at some point, my biggest concern is the backlight wearing out.

Well, I don't really use wifi that much, but BT's always on. And it is always in stand-by mode when I'm not using it. And currently, I think I could go about 3-4 days without charging it, and using it quite heavily as it is both my personnal AND professionnal PDA and phone and I'm on the phone A LOT.
My secret (I feel like a "Barbara Gould Woman" ) ?
- stand-by after 1 minute inactivity instead of the default 2;
- Pocket Hack Master + "disabled XScale scaling functionalities" + PHM scaling engine with specific settings, among which 204 MHz as lower speed;
That way, my Athena's about 98% of the time at 204 MHz, and still feels responsive because of my scaling settings.

Thanks for all your responses!

[Q] How can I test if battery is bad or phone isn't charging properly?

Does anyone have any suggestions on what I can do to test which one might be bad? Any app you know of that can monitor things and tell me if a rogue app is killing the battery or if the battery is bad?
I was running mik 1.1 and was using it pretty heavily with gaming and downloading stuff. The phone died after about 7 hours. I thought that maybe the rom or cwm or something else might be killing the battery. Something strange though is that, like I said, I ran the battery until the phone shut off. Then I left it off and put it in a wall wart charger for about 8 hours and the status light was still orange. My gf had the phone and told me once she left it plugged in overnight and in the morning it was only at like 50 something percent. I thought maybe the charger went bad so I gave her another one and she didn't say anything else about it. I'm starting to wonder if maybe the phone's battery has a weak or bad cell. I kinda doubt that there's something wrong with the charging circuitry of the phone but there could be, anything is possible. I will probably take it to the repair center and tell them about it and see what they say. I tried looking on htc's site for oem replacement batteries but couldn't find anything. I found lots of aftermarket but I didn't want to go that route.
I don't know if it would not be a good idea or not to try and use my original evo battery just flipped over. I suppose if that's the only thing I have to try and troubleshoot this problem then it will have to do.
Can anyone give me suggestions or has something similar happened to you?
Now let me see if I can find that evo battery..........

Spare parts, in the market if not on your rom by default, had a battery information tab that will indicate battery health as well as what kind of plug the phone detects when charging (usb, ac, or none)
Sent from my PG06100 using XDA App

Like danaff37 said, spare parts can be useful. Also try CPU Spy, free from the market, which shows what % of the time your CPU spends at each frequency, but this actually more relevant for determining if your phone is properly sleeping..
For proper charging you can get an app like CurrentWidget or Battery Monitor Widget which tells your the current consumed during usage or current injected during charging, as well as the voltage in mV. Full charge should reach around 4200 mV, and when charging the current should be around ~800 mA for lower % battery left.

Thanks for your input. I found the evo battery and did the same thing as before. I ran it until the phone shut off and then put it one the (same) charger and went to bed. About seven hours later, it was still orange charging. Both times the phone was off. Now something that could be a possibility is the charger is weak or bad. When I put my evo on it, it charges seemingly fine. I should try using the battery until it shuts off again and use a different charger and see what happens. Six to eight hours charging, with the phone off, coming from a dead battery, on a Motorola charger that has a rated output of eight hundred milliamps at five volts. I have others at different output rates and a two amp charger intended for an ipad. Some might say that the charger is too much for the phone. The charging circuitry only pulls as much amperage from the charger as the phone was designed to. Now on the other hand if I put a smaller output charger on, say one hundred and fifty milliamps, it will take longer to charge the phone than usual. "They" say trickle charging is better. Whatever. I will post my results if I find any. Or, I just might trade the phone in for a nexus s or an evo 3d.

I was just about ready to throw in the towel and say the phone was defective, but then things started happening. I will fill you in on what I have done in the meantime. Okay so the flipped over evo battery kinda works but not completely. It will charge but not to 100% and green light. To test this, I took the evo battery out of the shift. It didn't seem to want to go more than 98 or 99%. I put the battery into the evo and after a few minutes the light went green. This was initially off. Then I booted the evo and let it go to sleep. After it booted the light went orange then green after a few minutes. Okay so the evo battery is capable of going to 100%. These charging tests were done with a different charger.
I forgot to tell you, I let the evo battery charge while I was at work and the phone was off. So the battery was charging roughly twenty hours and still no green light. I suspect that even though the positive and negative terminals aligned with the correct tabs on the shift, the center two contacts must be different internally than the shift battery. I speculate that those center tabs are for the battery and phone to communicate to each other during it's charging state. I am guessing that the battery tells the phone it is fully charged and to go trickle charge and perhaps the evo battery wasn't communicating to the phone or the phone didn't know when to say it is done charging. The battery never got hot either.
The shift was rooted, running mikshift 1.1 and the latest clockworkmod recovery. Here is where I suspect that there still might be charging bugs with that setup. I used the pcxx.zip file that when booting into the bootloader, would flash the phone back to stock everything. After trying this and assuming that the phone was back to stock, I kept going with my what the hell is going on with this phone battery charging test. A note about the flipped evo battery. Yes it will work in a pinch but it won't charge properly. Luck has it that the notches in the battery and phone allow it to work in a shift. Only thing is, the shift battery won't work in the evo. The tabs are on the wrong side and the phone's tabs won't allow the contacts on the battery to meet up with the phone's terminals.
Okay, where was I? Trying different chargers wouldn't make the shift green light full charge. I tried the same chargers on the evo with it's original battery in and it would green light after a few minutes on or off. There wasn't anything wrong with the chargers. Oh and another note, while using the battery monitor widget, I noticed that both phones wouldn't pull more than a little over three hundred milliamps of power from the charger to the battery. Interesting to know how much it really pulls from the charger.
Anywho, I tried something different for my process of elimination testing. I actually ruu flashed the shift back to factory and guess what happened..... The battery and phone were charging both on and off all the way to green full charge at 100%! I think I'm getting somewhere with this! All my luck, either it is a known bug somewhere in the forum in a place I haven't stumbled across or I'm the only one that this is happening to. It doesn't really matter I guess.
My conclusion, which isn't scientific by any stretch of the imagination, is that the phone isn't truely back to factory unless you ruu it. The pcxximg.zip doesn't put everything back to stock. I haven't narrowed it down to what is causing this behavior. I don't think it is root. It could be cwm recovery or the rom or both. I didn't try the stock rooted zip either. I suppose I could go further with this investigation but I am too lazy to now. I might root it again and just leave things stock rooted. I might activate this phone in the morning and run it all day tomorrow and see how it acts. I will have to charge it a few times during the day to keep the levels up when I really use the phone heavily. I've written enough for now. Does anyone have anything to ask or add to this topic?

Since the latest update to CWM phone-off charging finally works again but the light never turns green. It charges fully but with the phone off the LED never turns green. It's not just you.
EDIT: If this is not the actual question I apologize. The posts were far too long to actually read
^ Shift Faced

OK. I thought something might have been broken.

Forgive me, I am truly a newbie to Android after having a BB for 8 years. This battery thing is killing me. I am on my 2nd Evo Shift, the 1st one wouldn't last for more than 2 hours with barely any usage so they gave me a new one. This one barely lasts 5 hours. I am barely running anything. I took it into the store and they thought I was going to be running all these programs, but I kill everything. They told me the "battery trick" about turning off the phone and unplugging it and plugging it back in 10 times so I did that but I am not getting any more life out of the battery. My display is constantly using at least 70% of the battery it says even if I turn it down very low or if I set it to choose its setting. Do you have any advice for me? I am not running a task killer, I kill all the programs I am not using. I have no widgets running because I am afraid to use the battery, I only have 2 screens out of the 7 with things on them. I am being help hostage by my cool phone that I want to use but am scared to kill the battery! (sorry for the long post)

Ok if you use a lot apps just close them after (for stock 2.2) . Even on stock you can literally stream music and movies for about 4-6 hours. (sometimes a lot more) . The background info that runs doesn't use a lot of juice , but if you want you can go to your home screen any of them hit menu (but not with the app drawer open) select settings go to accounts and sync turn off background info and just turn it on manually when needed such as the android market . You can also turn off the auto sync and just manually choose to sync , like in the clock (and gmail etc.) it will say no weather after you click it , just hit menu you will see a little sync button option to sync and voila you have weather . So when you visit the market it will automatically ask you to turn it on (background info as will all apps that need this) . And the screen on any android is a battery killer . So when not using your phone simply tapp your power button to turn your screen off and lock (and to keep from pocket dialing lol) . But if all you do is text , emails , and web surfing (surfing drains more but no where near as much as streaming) you can literally do that all day , the screen will actually suck the most power . If manually turning off your apps is too much . Just turn your phone off (not just the screen) and on . If a new app didn't turn off after you start your phone back up you know that will be a problem later . So when not using your phone turn off your screen it will last soooo much longer . I only make a call or two and a couple of texts maybe a few minutes of internet with opera mini . My battery lasts over 24 hrs , but I barely use my phone . Hope that helps .
Sent from my HTC Vision using XDA App

BTW if you have a bunch of apps running in the background video games etc ... and you charge your phone all night and in the morning it is not charged . You should probably turn your apps off . Or simply power your phone off which shuts off most apps . Then turn it back on . The phone should not take all night to charge , it should only take an hour or 2 . 3 hours max .
Sent from my HTC Vision using XDA App

i suggest watchdog lite,it monitors cpu usage and alerts you when 1 uses more than your max threshold.if this helps,please click thanks.

When you changed ROMs, did you do it with a full charge? If not, your battery stats file is probably messed up.. Ive used Battery Calibrator free from the market in the past to fix that problem.. I believe a brand new battery on the Shift shows about 4200mV when fully charged or just slightly below that.. Run the app, when it gets close, calibrate (which essentially just deletes the battery stats file and creates a new one)

Battery won't charge past 88%.

Battery won't charge past 88%. How do I recalibrate it?

goodintentions said:
Battery won't charge past 88%. How do I recalibrate it?
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I am sure there are other ways, but if you are running CWM you can try booting into recovery and clearing the battery cache.

wiping cwm bat stats doesnt do anything. Still cant charge beyond 88%. Should I exchange for another one?

goodintentions said:
wiping cwm bat stats doesnt do anything. Still cant charge beyond 88%. Should I exchange for another one?
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If I could I would - have not had any problems of this nature myself, you are (I think) the first or second person here on XDA to report this - since you just purchased it perhaps a exchange would be a easy fix

goodintentions said:
wiping cwm bat stats doesnt do anything. Still cant charge beyond 88%. Should I exchange for another one?
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Are you charging with the tablet turned on? If so, I've had a similar situation where it wouldn't charge past 92% while plugged in. I just ran it down to almost no battery, shut the tablet off, charged it up while I slept, and all was well again,

My left side is creaking anyway. So i will exchange tomorrow.

how come there is not a 'never' setting for when screen turns off? I cant keep it on to drain battery.

goodintentions said:
how come there is not a 'never' setting for when screen turns off? I cant keep it on to drain battery.
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There may be other ways to do it, but look for extended controls in the market. It has an option for 'screen always on'
Hope that helps

vanisleguy1976 said:
There may be other ways to do it, but look for extended controls in the market. It has an option for 'screen always on'
Hope that helps
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You can use GPS Test to keep the screen on. Found in market.

I use screebl. I love it because I set it to turn off my screen in 5 seconds when the tablet is flat on it's back and to never turn off then I have it on my lap.
That way I can download or do anything and it won't turn off on me and I don't have to manually lock it if I set a long timeout for the screen and I just place it on my desk and do something else.

bpivk said:
I use screebl. I love it because I set it to turn off my screen in 5 seconds when the tablet is flat on it's back and to never turn off then I have it on my lap.
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Thank you so much for telling me about this app.
I just got a new iconia. I actually had a choice to exchange for either another iconia and a transformer. After weighing the options, I went for the iconia. The ports just can't be beat. I've been incorporating the gtab in to my work. I am now going to incorporate the iconia into my work. The full usb and hdmi just can't be beat.
About the new iconia that I got, wow. Very solidly built. No creaks at all. Testing out the battery now. I'm going to let it run out of battery from 36% that came with it. Then I'm going to charge it all the way up. Hopefully, this one will go to 100%.
Playing around with it, I can already tell this runs smoother than the one I traded in. I guess the other one just had hardware problems.
Anyway, I am happy that I was able to find one within 10 minute driving distance. I called around this morning and almost every place is out of iconias. Then I called this place 10 minutes away and they had 1 more in stock.
Anyway, I'm happy with the end result.

Do you guys turn your tablet off when not in use?

This is my first tablet and not sure about battery life and everything. So I left my tablet on through the night and lost roughly 10% through the night. Not sure if thats normal or not. But if so, I will definitely be turning it off throughout the night or when I won't be using for awhile. But is there a standby mode or something we can put the tablet into?

tu3218 said:
This is my first tablet and not sure about battery life and everything. So I left my tablet on through the night and lost roughly 10% through the night. Not sure if thats normal or not. But if so, I will definitely be turning it off throughout the night or when I won't be using for awhile. But is there a standby mode or something we can put the tablet into?
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I don't turn it off, no. One thing that will save you battery is to turn the airplane mode on when you're not using it.

I just turn off wireless and pwer off screen.

never been off
I never turn my tab off. At night.it will loose. 6 to 8 percent. At night maybe a bit more or less depending on how long its off.
And I use it often thru out the day
Awesome battery life

Haven't turned it off yet. I use it all day and plug it in at night around 20-30%, wake up charged and do it again.

I just turn the screen off overnight while charging; I leave wifi on to synch work emails & calendars. Nearly a decade of smartphone use has gotten me in the dedicated habit of charging everything every night.
Thing to keep in mind, tablets arent Kindles with week+ battery life; keep in the habit of charging it whenever convenient & you won't run out of juice unexpectedly.

I'm in the minority here.
I turn my Tab and Evo off every night, the phone just before bed. It save a bit of batt life and unwanted calls in the middle of the night or any alert tones as I'm a pretty light sleeper. I've also been doing this for probably 7-8 yrs with all my smart phones (Symbian, Win-Mo, Palm, BB and now Android).

Sometimes I turn it off at night, sometimes I just leave it on. It's definitely on ALL day. I haven't really seen it losing much battery if I leave it on overnight, but I don't have it configured to sync frequently. Whenever I notice the battery is getting a little low, I charge it up again -- don't really have a set pattern or routine that I charge it.

Anytime I know I won't be using it for twenty minutes or more, I just shut it down.
Not sure there is a right/wrong, good/bad way to do this, as it's pretty much a personal preference thang!

If I'm not gonna use it for more than a day, sure.
I also turn on airplane mode when I'm reading via Kindle or anything else that doesn't require wifi.
On a semi related note, does anyone else find the screen is too bright if you're in a dark room reading, even if you have brightness on the lowest setting?

So far I never see any difference to turn AIRPLANE MODE on... but anyway some people believe so... let say that work... hu hu hu
well
to answer I never turn off my tablet, neither turn off the wifi
I try to not use AUTO brightness, set brightness to medium.
I will turn it off... well... actually I do not.
to muqali. on lowest setting? on dark room lowest setting I think it's fine (but I have an antiglare screen... that dim the light)

muqali said:
If I'm not gonna use it for more than a day
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Not use it for more than a day??
That is crazy talk! I'd suffer some serrrrrious withdrawal
On to the question, no, my tablet stays on 24/7. The closest it gets to off is booting into recovery, but then it's right back on.
All my backups, security scans and cloud syncs are scheduled for the wee hours of the morning so wifi stays on at night too. Also, my iconia is my alarm clock, which is very useful for a shift worker who needs different alarms on different days.

only if the battery is low and Im to lazy to go charge it

I only turn my tablet off in order to reboot when it freezes up or gets laggy (maybe once a week). The rest of the time, it's on standby or being used.

I leave it on sometimes, other times I will randomly turn it off. I mean, its not a phone.. no reason it should be on 24/7. I don't even leave my PC on 24/7 - as it saves a lot of electricity to turn it off.
My phone (Droid X) however, stays on 24/7 =P

Yeah, I've been leaving mine on and its been just fine. I notice it turns off wifi or I guess at least disconnects when the screen is off so I'm sure that helps. At nights I guess I can turn airplane mode on and that should help. I'm impressed though with the battery so far.

I always turn it off when done, unless I know I will be using again in a short.

muqali said:
On a semi related note, does anyone else find the screen is too bright if you're in a dark room reading, even if you have brightness on the lowest setting?
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I use the Nook app as my eBook reader instead of the Kindle app. The Nook app has a separate brightness control within the app, and it allows me to turn even the white page brightness down to where it's very comfortable to read even in a pitch dark room. The nice thing about this is when I'm done reading and exit the Nook app, the global brightness settings for the tablet are restored so my dark wood wallpaper isn't too dark.
I'm not sure if the Kindle app has its own brightness control or not, but it might be with looking into.

muqali said:
If I'm not gonna use it for more than a day, sure.
I also turn on airplane mode when I'm reading via Kindle or anything else that doesn't require wifi.
On a semi related note, does anyone else find the screen is too bright if you're in a dark room reading, even if you have brightness on the lowest setting?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
yes, I noticed too, it's too damn bright, but not as bright as my phone, on the good side screen comparison between iconia, transformer, zoom and ipad2 the iconia gets praise cuz it's super dark black... you can notice easily (like me) if you're in the dark and look the status bar

I do not. I don't really ever turn mine off actually, except if the battery is at low and I'm out and not able to charge it, but that rarely happens.
I don't turn my PC off either. Turns out it doesn't save as much energy for me vs. time. I'd save roughly $90 a year if I diligently turned my PC and HTPC off...my PC however serves as the file server for everything in my home and I'm also very random in terms of bed times so it would cost me so much time (and maybe some parts issues as well) turning it on and off every time I needed to use it.

My GF washed phone....

My gf washed my phone. It had like 7% or less when it went into wash. Full cycle.
I took battery out, put in rice for like 2 days, then I put it in warm place, on dash of car in sun for 20 minutes at a time in between delivering pizzas, ect....
I throw away the battery, and I use one of my back-up HD2 batteries. I use the external charger to charge it.
I boot it up, and it works! Touch screen, buttons, internet, speaker, camera! EVERYTHING. The screen after 2 days even looks perfect. No discoloration.
One issue.....
Battery drain. It loses like 2% battery per minute, even in airplane mode and screen is off. It won't last more than 40 minutes with moderate to low usage.
I plugged it into USB via my pc when it was at 15%. An hour passes, and now it's 3%. I confirm that it is plugged in, and the "charging" animation happens.
It's not the battery, because it's brand new.
What is the issue? Is it a short? Can I fix this? The phone is 100% working condition except for the horrible battery life.
I appreciate anyone's insight into this issue....

but here is almost the exact issue posted two days ago : http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1226979
you might find something there

Hmm. I never heard of that. I do know when I got mine wet it acted really odd for several days and worked itself out over time. Example: I would click open app drawer and it would call a random person or I'd click the end button and it would start the calculator.
I'm thinking there could be damage left over from minerals that may have been left over from being in the wash. Do you use alcohol to clean it up? In the thread above I gave a detailed description on how I fixed mine, worth a read I think.Have you tried to make sure you don't have any of the battery pins bent? I know they have to match up though because your able to turn it on and use it but sometimes something simple like that is really all that's wrong. I'm curious to know now myself what could cause this.
Sent from my HTC HD2 using XDA App