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I've had my HTC Touch on CDMA/Bell Canada for about half a year now. I love the phone but the battery life just sucks. I can't get through a full day without having to plug in. Where I work and where I live the CDMA signal is weak. My phone is constantly flipping back and forth between X1 and EVDO and voice calls are not very reliable.
I know things like Push mail, GPS...and other data agressive applications will drain the battery, however even when I turn everything off except for the phone itself I can't get through a fully day.
I suspect my phone is constantly busy trying to maintain a connection to the cell network. Does anyone have any tips on how I could help get better battery life?
Leon.
lbloo said:
I've had my HTC Touch on CDMA/Bell Canada for about half a year now. I love the phone but the battery life just sucks. I can't get through a full day without having to plug in. Where I work and where I live the CDMA signal is weak. My phone is constantly flipping back and forth between X1 and EVDO and voice calls are not very reliable.
I know things like Push mail, GPS...and other data agressive applications will drain the battery, however even when I turn everything off except for the phone itself I can't get through a fully day.
I suspect my phone is constantly busy trying to maintain a connection to the cell network. Does anyone have any tips on how I could help get better battery life?
Leon.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It is very hard to provide you with any help when we really don't know what you have installed and running on your phone. Some plugins can drain your battery while they are running - EG - WeatherPanel - Try not to let this program keep running if you have it installed - especially with animated weather icons. Reduce the brightness of your display screen if you can manage that. Make sure that your display is shutting off as well. Keeping the display on will surely drain your battery. Set it to shut off after so many seconds of inactivity. Take a look at your task manager to make sure that you don't have many programs running in the background - and set your task manager to actualy close programs when you tap on the x as it is default setting to just minimize your apps and not close them. If they are all running in the backgroung, you will surely see battery drain.
With a bare bones configuration my battery would last around 10 hours before I had to plug in. All I had running was basically my phone and some light web surfing.
I've since loaded up my phone with a apps/plug-ins and my battery last about 5 hours now sometimes less. I am running some apps which do things in the background:
-Weather Panel, no animated graphics (Auto update every 6 hours)
-HTC HUB (Auto update every 6 hours)
-Push Email (Zimbra mail, looks like Exchange)
-Pull Email (Gmail) every 30 minutes
Even if I can get all these applications to be much less power hungry, I'll get at most 10 hours. I'm hoping to get multiple days of battery life, not just hours.
While on holiday I turned off the phone, went into Flight mode for a week, but still used GPS on occassion. My batteries then lasted days!
Thanks for your suggestions about those apps.
I can almost go more than half a day, which is enough to get me from my house, to work (or wherever I go), and back home. I'm thinking I should get a spare charger for my office though.
But I have running:
FlexMail, with 2 IMAP accounts, and Live account
Palringo or Live Messenger (depends which ROM I'm using !)
Some Opera browsing
Occasional GPS
Some MP3's
And the obvious phone calls
Ohh, and when I get bored, some Kevtris!
I leave work at 4pm, and when I arive at work the following day at 7am, I'm usually at 20% battery life, and that's with it being plugged in via usb for at least 3-5 hours during the evening. Barebones flash, with SPB Mobile Shell 2.0, and that's about it. It's a bummer, having to stay close to a usb port or wall outlet.
I did notice, my normal power consumption is 150-250mAH, however when I plug in to usb, it jumps to 400-500mAH, sometimes higher. That is with activesync or without, doesn't seem to make a difference.
Well, I don't know about Zimbra, but I know the SEVEN push service absolutely *destroyed* my battery life. I just set my phone to check my Gmail every 5 min, and it's good enough for me, with much better battery life.
That said, your problem is your location. Your phone will burn a lot of juice if you work in a basement or dead zone trying to find towers. There's not really anything you can do about it, other than turn off the phone radio when you know you're going to be out of range, but of course, that defeats the purpose of having a cell phone.
Get a new job, get a 2nd battery, or plug it in at work. Smart phones don't have great battery life to begin with, and if you are getting a weak signal, you are just out of luck.
[EDIT]
Or, you can try one of those Sprint base stations. You may not be able to set one up at work, but you can at least do it at home. Should help some.
I got an extended battery (Seidio 2000 mAh) and my phone lasts for more than 24 hours now, probably 2 days if i let it go without a charge long enough.
Like right now I have had a bunch of phone calls, done a bunch of texting, played some kevtris and my phone has a lot of stuff installed on it. It's been off the charger since 9:30AM and its 4:40PM now and the battery is at 81%.
Before I got the extended battery my phone would probably be at less than 50% at this point in time. The extended battery does make the phone A BIT bulkier, but its really not that big of a difference to me.
Ok, I have only had my new Rogers Magic since last Thursday. I have unlocked it to AT&T and flashed it with the HoFo Community Rom. I am converting from a Blackberry. Email is probably the most important thing to me. First of all, Android OS is absolutely the best thing I have run across. It has everything I wanted and used from Blackberry but in better delivery. It also bridges the gap to the iPhone experience and gives me all the feature I would want and use from that type OS. I hope to make this my new phone and OS indefinitely. There is only one main issue, battery life.
I am a power user. I am on my phone a good bit when I travel but in the office, it can stay on the charger if necessary. I have a couple of apps installed that may be using too much battery but if I can't use them regularly, the phone's advantages no longer become useful. Here is a list:
Touchdown-On (syncs every 15 mins)
Gmail Sync-On (push on)
Youmail-On (syncs every hour)
Twidroid-On (syncs every hour)
Bluetooth-Off
Wifi-Off
GPS-On (read where this does not effect things unless an apps is using it)
3g-On (have switched to 2g and do not gain appreciable life so far)
I also have something showing up in taskiller I do not know what it is. It shows up as com.google.android.apps.maps:FriendService. I do not know if this is killing the battery.
I am also using 4 widgets:
Battery Widget by mippin
Touchdown Calendar
Google Search
Portrait/Picture Frame
I do have 4 toggle widgets for Bluetooth, Wifi, Brightness and Ringer. I did not think these effect battery life but they do show up in taskiller. Screen brightness is set to 20%.
As an example, today I took the phone off the charger from an overnight charge. It was showing 100% battery life. I did this at 8:12 am. I sat it on my desk and did not touch it. I got 3 emails though Touchdown and 3 emails through Gmail. I opened the phone to read and delete. That was all I used the phone for. At approximately 9:45 (1.5 hours later) my charge was down to 76%. Another example. Last night I took the phone off the charger at 100% to make a phone call. I talked for 1 hour and 10 minutes. When I got off the call, I had 54% battery remaining.
I tried to be as detailed as possible here. If there are questions let me know. I hope I do not have unrealistic expectations but overall I am thinking there may be something wrong. I am up for any suggestions and I am going to give this phone all the time I can. I have read through every battery life thread on this forum. I plan on conditioning the battery this week and have read to top it off as often as possible. Sorry for the length but I am actually hoping there is an issue and I can fix it. I still have my Blackberry and don't want to go back but I just can't be looking for a charger in every airport or meeting room I am in.
I Cant tell you what the process is called as I only use gmail, but you can set gmail up to check your other emails & Then use only the native email push to the phone rather then the extra email apps syncing once an hour.. I Can tell you that I too am a power user, but in a different way.. I only have 1 email address, but I use the met on my phone as well as gTalk & sms constantly & I have absolutely no batter life issues.. I am also running nearly as many widgets (you have the rounded labs ones to turn everything on & off?).
With heavy use my battery will end up in the 50% range after a full day away from a charger.
bastage said:
I Cant tell you what the process is called as I only use gmail, but you can set gmail up to check your other emails & Then use only the native email push to the phone rather then the extra email apps syncing once an hour.. I Can tell you that I too am a power user, but in a different way.. I only have 1 email address, but I use the met on my phone as well as gTalk & sms constantly & I have absolutely no batter life issues.. I am also running nearly as many widgets (you have the rounded labs ones to turn everything on & off?).
With heavy use my battery will end up in the 50% range after a full day away from a charger.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the reply.
I can't use Gmail to get my corporate email so that is out. I do have the rounded labs widgets and I am keeping everything off at the current moment. I am trying the top off method to condition the battery. I read about that on here. Maybe things will get better soon.
It might just be a fluke, but ever since I started killing my browser (via taskiller or advanced task manager) when not in use, my battery is lasting much longer now. Also, its not uncommon for it to clear up to 30mb ram that was in use from the browser.
I'm also on the hofo community rom (v 1.10) on a rogers magic and come from a blackberrry myself and have a similar setup (gmail push, touchdown synch 15 minute and push turned on, other email x2 on 15 minute sync, wifi and bluetooth off, but i leave 3g on most of the time).
Cheers.
Did you drain your battery fully in the few days you've got your phone? You're not supposed to drain the battery very often, that's bad for these batteries, but it is recommmended to do it when you buy your phone and every once in a while afterwards. Just let it drain until the phone switches off (do NOT turn it on again trying to drain the battery even more!), then put it on a charger and charge it for a few hours (you can turn it back on once you put it on the charger). Keep it on the charger even after it says it's fully charged. If you don't do this every once in a while (say, once a month or two), the battery meter won't be accurate and will tell you you've got less battery left than you really do.
If this doesn't help, I'd suggest investigating the widgets and/or background applications. Some of the widgets may be preventing letting the phone enter sleep mode, therefore causing unnecessary battery drain (ironicaly, even the battery widget can do this), or may be checking something a bit too often. I'm running my Magic with stock ROM, but pretty much the same setup as you (wifi on, 2G only, Gmail/Contacts/Calendar autosync on, mail and Twidroid set to 30mins, but slightly different widgets and I do close the apps in the background when I don't need them using TaskPanel), and it takes me almost 24 hours of light use of the phone (reading a few mails/SMS/twitts, replying to them, installing updates from Market etc.)to get to something like 70%.
Thanks for the replies. Actually I did drain my battery a few times. Once on purpose and 1 other by accidentally leaving it off the charger over night. I am beginning to see a bit better life from the battery now that I am getting it conditioned.
Also, I did run some tests today while the phone was on my desk. I installed Watts to monitor battery usage. I used Taskiller to kill everything and added the programs that I thought might be using battery back in one by one every hour. I noted the biggest drops. The worst offender was actually Youmail. I had just been notified of a beta version and updated a few days earlier. Turns out it had a pretty bad bug in it where it used 100% CPU resources trying to connect. I emailed Youmail about it and they sent me another download. It seems to be doing better now but I will monitor it closely. Next worst was Background Data. Turning this off helps a bunch. WeatherBug, Twidroid and Touchdown all seem to effect battery life very little depending on how often you have them set up to update. I did all this with 3g on so I know I can save more with 2g. With everything on except background data and just updated Gmail myself, I am seeing = to or less than 5% battery drain per hour. When I really crank things up by browsing or downloading, I see a bigger drop. Phone call also cause a bigger drop.
Overall, I think I am getting a handle on things. I still am a bit upset by overall battery consumption. I just hate having a phone with all this function and flexibility being severely limited by the battery.
I also have a battery issue. Overnight the phone drains about 70% of the battery. I tried the battery on a friends HTC Magic 32A, and it lasts about 2 days.
I no widgets and using TaskKiller and Advanced Task Killer Free to monitor the running applications, but up to now, I haven't been lucky, and it keeps draining the battery.
The ROM I am using is "Smartphone France ROM by spfrance - Based on HTC Magic, dedicated for European users", but while using the original ROM it was the same...
Any ideas on this?
I have already created a topic on this, but up to now, had no luck:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=569319
On my g1 and my new mytouch i have the same ridiculous issue. The battery will charge to 100% and then without using it will read like 50% after an hour or so. I put it on the charger and its at 99% after about 5-10 minutes. The battery just doesnt read properly, it never has for me. Sometimes itll say 30%, 40% or any unbelievable number but its really at 100% percent. The absurdity of it all is absolutely infuriating.
Heard that Magic needs a bit overcharge and topup charging at the first place to keep the battery runs longer.
havn't got the source here but it was form vodafone forum and the message was posted by the official support over there.
i dont have this issue with my vodafone 32B
i can use it for 2-3 days with minimal use
with average calling and medium usage it lasts 1,5 days.
no unusual draining.
just when i play tower defence, it lasts less than a day.
snudel said:
i dont have this issue with my vodafone 32B
i can use it for 2-3 days with minimal use
with average calling and medium usage it lasts 1,5 days.
no unusual draining.
just when i play tower defence, it lasts less than a day.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Can you tell me what is your ROM and your radio version?
i used qtek 1.6
now i am using RAV 1.6.2 http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=538645
i am sick of the speed with hero roms. so i am back to non-heroes
battery is even better now because this rom needs less cpu
snudel said:
i used qtek 1.6
now i am using RAV 1.6.2 http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=538645
i am sick of the speed with hero roms. so i am back to non-heroes
battery is even better now because this rom needs less cpu
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What is your Radio version?
where do i see the radio version?
Turn off the phone, then push the back button + power button, you should see something like this:
SAPHIRE PVT 32B SHIP S-ON G
HBOOT-1.33.0007 (SAPP10000)
CPLD-10
RADIO-2.22.19.26I
Saphire unknown 32b ship s-on g
hboot-1.33.0007 (sapp10000)
cpld-10
radio-2.22.19.26i
Humm, damn, the same as mine...
The only difference is the spl..
Does anyone knows if the the spl can influence the battery life?
I'll try to keep this short and sweet. I'm coming from a phone that was married to its charger (an overclocked-to-all-hell Pre) and I constantly micromanaged its battery by turning on data, wifi, and gps only when needed. With the Atrix's huge battery and the upgrade in phones I decided, "What the hell. Crappy battery life with this phone is still better than the best battery life with my old one. Enjoy the features." So I left Wifi, GPS, and Sync on 100% of the time. (I did, however, set all my apps to manual sync.) I have 3 homescreens and very, very few widgets. With a normal day's use this usually netted me about 14-17~ hours with about 2~ hours of screentime. Not the greatest, but amazing comparatively to the Pre.
Today I finally took the time go around and start messing with Tasker and other battery optimizing techniques. Here are a few thigns I did that have already netted me large returns:
The first is the simplest: I changed my screen brightness from Automatically adjusting to a static 15%. Though not the best, this is is bright enough for me in close to all situations and the ones where it's not I just change it back to automatic (this is done via the excellent Widgetsoid).
I use Google Voice for texts and that means I always need a data connection--this throws out things like JuiceDefender because it prevents me from receiving instant notifications. Between home and school I'd say I have a WiFi connection about 85% of the time, so i went into the Wireless preferences and turned my WiFi Timeout to "Never." In case you didn't know, a wifi connection is much more battery friendly than a 3G/4G one. Remaining always connected keeps my phone from cutting the connection and then rescanning for a network to connect to several times a day.
I used a Tasker profile I found online (it was either Reddit or Lifehacker, you can probably find it on both) that turns my GPS on only when I load an app that I've specified I want GPS on. I've known about this for a while but I was hesitant about instituting it because a luxury I wanted was to be able to open up Navigation, Yelp, or Foursquare and have an instant lock-on with my location. After testing today, between being generally located by wifi or cell-tower triangulation, and then having an exact location a few moments later with GPS, I found almost zero difference between leaving GPS on and having it enabled right when the app was opened.
Lastly, I downloaded the newest SetCPU here from XDA (it's free for XDA members. Search for it.) and had it throttle back the processor all the way while the screen is off. In addition, it will have the processor scaled back some when the battery reaches 30% and 10% respectively, and a few other instances such as the phone temperature getting too hot.
I'm laying into bed right now and according to Circle Battery Widget I have 37% battery left after 11 hours of being unplugged. Now, while this doesn't sound very great at all I want to specify that this is with my display having been on for 4 hours and 15 minutes. This is by far the largest battery hog (45% in this case) and there is no way my battery would have lasted before I changed these few things. I don't know how applicable they are to anyone else but they sure did help me and I felt I should let people know.
The battery on this phone is freaking AMAZING!! I use my phone a lot! Prior to this I had the Captivate and I would have to charge it around 3 or 4pm cause it was already at less than 15% and dropping quickly.
On 4/26 this phone lasted me 11 hours with lots of usage around 3 hours of display time.
On 4/27 I unplugged it at 10 and it died today at 1am! That to me is sick!! I charge every night so lasting a whole day of use is fine for me!
Oh and I have my brightness at a bit more than half, which I could have never done on the Captivate lol
my experiences have been rather positive as well.
4/26 unplugged at 12am.
4/27 flashed ginger-blur, restored apps, ubuntu webtop mod, all of the other mods.
@6pm i had 7 hours and 16 minutes of screen time and 1 gb of data used. I was at 15%
my only issue is that i only get battery updates every 10%. any idea why?
songokussm said:
my experiences have been rather positive as well.
4/26 unplugged at 12am.
4/27 flashed ginger-blur, restored apps, ubuntu webtop mod, all of the other mods.
@6pm i had 7 hours and 16 minutes of screen time and 1 gb of data used. I was at 15%
my only issue is that i only get battery updates every 10%. any idea why?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
you need the circle battery widget to get 1% updates. There may be a couple other battery apps that do it as well, not sure.
Ive got a 120 apps installed and get close to 14hrs of battery life with screen on time of 4-5hrs
LancerV said:
Ive got a 120 apps installed and get close to 14hrs of battery life with screen on time of 4-5hrs
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm pretty sure the only way I could get 5 hours of screen time is in airplane mode.
Coming from the Pre ( I still love that phone OS) I can testify to glorious battery life on my Atrix. I don't even charge it at night, I run all day long and charge it usually at my home office desk before I go to bed.
I do miss my Pre. My wife has one and it gives me sad puppy eyes every time I look over at it.
Hello everyone, new poster here.
Just got an arc last week and have been enjoying it. Big gripe was with battery life but it seemed to have improved slightly after killing the battery completely and charging back to 100%. My phone was at 100% when I went to sleep last night, woke up 8 hours later with around 90% battery life ( not sure if thats descent or not, can I get a base for comparison).
However, I used the phone a bit this morning and then put it back in my pocket. Checking it 2 hours later, I see in the battery monitor that the phone has been awake the full time even though the screen is off. There must then be a service or app keeping it awake? How long does it take before the phone goes to sleep?
I am not using green power or juice defender, no apps are open besides email, baconreader (reddit app) and normal google stuff.
I am also using the following widgets: beautiful widgets big and weather forecast widget, google search, youtube and baconreader.
How long does you guy's battery last?
thanks
Well I've solved my issues with battery life on the SII. It may not be a solution for everyone, but for me Tweetdeck was the issue:
http://www.smartphonegurus.com/forums/topic/13669-samsung-galaxy-sii-battery-life-issues-solved/
Oh well, you should have posted in another battery thread instead of starting a new one. It all comes down to certain apps, besides all the android system apps that run in the background. I had problems with Phantom Music Control, which drained my battery like crazy when being in stand-by.
I set Tweetdeck to manual sync a while ago when my battery issues began. I was barely getting 8 hours with almost no use. The culprit in my case turned out to be Qik. I had to download OS Monitor from the market and really watch the activity. Qik was hitting the CPU regularly, despite the fact that it wasn't actually running. I think it must check for new video mail or something in the background.
Anyway, since removing Qik, I'm back to comfortably getting 15 hours with heavy use and over 24 hours with light use. Go figure. I was about ready to switch phones again. It just goes to show that all it takes is one app to ruin your day.