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Fixing the Battery Problem your Android Smartphone Seems to Have

Android and cupcake at the Googleplex

Image via Wikipedia

I shared some of my recent Android experience here, with the two leading phones, Verizon’s HTC Incredible and Sprint’s EVO  now it’s time to share a trick (actually two) that makes or breaks your experience with these two mobile powerhouses. Matt Burns @ MobileCrunch loves the EVO but considers the battery a deal-breaker:

Simply put, the battery sucks. It’s a deal breaker. I’m really sorry to say that, too. In fact it hurts me because I wanted this phone so bad, but the battery life is horrible. The phone will lose a third of its battery sitting overnight with the GPS, WiFi, and 4G turned off. Even with Advanced Task Killer set to aggressive and auto killing apps every hour, the most I can get out of the phone is about ten hours.

I know – been there, done that and could not believe how bad it was.  In fact with everything (Wifi, GPS, Mobile Data) off and without activity, in Sleep mode the battery died in 6 hours.  So why have a Smartphone if I have to turn everything off to be able to make a few calls?  I refused to accept it, searched, searched, experimented, and found the two tricks that can dramatically improve battery life.  They are actually simple: start with more, and don’t lose it 🙂

Start with more juice

No, I don’t mean buying a bigger battery pack. Get more out of what you already have. Charge with Power OFF.  Seriously.  If you charge your phone turned on, it will reach full charge status very fast.  The problem is, it’s not really full, only  Android thinks so.  Turn it off,  and recharging will last hours longer, but it will truly be full.  Since it appears to be a software glitch, we can hope an OTA update will fix it … one day.

Don’t lose your juice

Keep your Apps under control.  No, Task Killer and similar tools won’t help, some programs do get restarted no matter what you do.   Here’s what you need to check:  After power on, keep the phone in Sleep mode for a few hours.  If Uptime and Awake time are close to each other, or even 2:1  3:1 ratio, you have a problem.  An application does not allow your phone to go to sleep.  Keep on trimming your App list (and I don’t just mean shut down, but full uninstall) until you’ll see awake time less than 10% of uptime.

With those two tricks, your phone should last 2+ days in Sleep mode, and otherwise it will obviously depend on your actual usage.

Oh, and I am switching from the Incredible to the EVO 🙂

Comments

  1. I think there is something wrong with the Evo because with my Droid running 2.1 I get usually 2 days of light use out of it before having to recharge. That is with Gmail syncing 24/7 and background processes for 100+ apps. I have really good battery life honestly. There is no reason that just because a phone has a faster processor that it should die in 6 hours without any use.

  2. I just did a post at my blog about the same issue. Check out http://www.brockhatfield.com to find some other ways. I'm going to have to write an addendum to mine to include that first one. Good article! Thanks!

  3. You should try Juice Defender as well. It's helped me increase my battery power on the Desire by 2x

  4. Oh well, my Nokia e71 only last 4-5 days… such a pain :))

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