Lousy Battery Life on Incredible

compnird · May 4, 2010

Please forgive me if this is a duplicate thread, I searched and only found folks complaining of other things with battery, not the length of life. Feel free to move this if it belongs in another forum.

I was one of the early recipients so I've been using the Incredible for a week already. Here are my findings on battery life and opening to further suggestions to stretch this out some more.

I am using the standard battery that came with the phone. I have a wall charger at my desk at work and a car charger in my car, all in addition to the charger on my night-stand. Fortunately these carried over from my Omnia2 since they are Micro USB. However, I have to use these constantly.
I have been using a smartphone for quite a few years and this one is by far the best yet... however, it also bleeds the battery dry like any other smartphone. I am also a power user, Exchange connection for work calendar and mail, Gmail, internet use and Facebook app. I also use the camera a lot, which yields impressive photos for a phone.

Average day for me; if I unplug the charger at about 7:00am as I leave for work and do not plug it into anything for power, the battery bar turns orange at about 2:30-3:00PM. I use Advanced Task Manager to kill things I don't use and have removed apps I had installed but use minimally which start up on their own (Skype, Photoshop Mobile... etc.). I also keep an eye on the running services to ensure the minimum is running at any given time.

Before I used Advanced Task Manager I was getting to about noon before the battery bar turned orange.

With occasional use of wall and car charger I can get through a full day before I get to red and the "plug into power" warning message. This past weekend I bled it to the point that it turned off on it's own, which was about 10:00PM

I typically have 2+ bars of 3G in my area, at home I have a signal extender so I have full strength signal, if that is off I have 1 bar of 1x.

Anyone have additional tips or tricks on how to milk even more battery life out of my Incredible phone? I expected lackluster battery performance but would love to get through a day without having to keep a charger on me.

carlbettag · May 4, 2010

NOEAOMD

Try this - seems to be best trick with little or no effect on usability:

Settings > Wireless & Networks > Mobile Networks (2nd one down)-

Uncheck 'Enable always-on mobile data'. Does not affect my push Exchange, and dramatically helps battery life.

Credit is due to one of the users at androidforums.com.

raptir · May 4, 2010

That battery life sounds about right. Keep in mind that having all of that stuff syncing in the background is going to kill your battery life. Also, ATK could be hurting your battery life in general. You clearly have something that it's helping with, but if you're just killing every background process your phone will use more power reinitializing those programs than it would have just keeping them in RAM. In general, if something's not using any CPU time, it's better to leave it running.

theoneownz · May 4, 2010

My old phone was the touch pro 2. the battery equipped with it has a 1500 mah. The battery is slightly thicker but cover easily closes still and i can now enjoy my phone almost lasting the entire day

p

also my friend works a tmobile and supposedly the HD2 also uses the same battery but with a higher rating. They throw them out after awhile and he said he will get me a few of them for free cant wait

)

fygar66 · May 5, 2010

I had a similar issue...

I was having a similar issue where my Incredible wouldn't make it through the day without charging, and I found that Google Maps was eating the lion's share of my battery. I tried using Advanced Task Killer to stop it, but it didn't show up in the list of tasks, but if I checked my battery usage, it was always the task using the most energy (not just by a little...it would typically be responsible for 70-95%). I had turned the Locator feature on within Maps just to see how it worked, but even with it disabled the task would still be running. The only way I was able to rid myself of the process was to reboot Android. My battery life has improved drastically since then.

I'm not saying this will solve your issue, but it's something to look at.

roninld · May 5, 2010

Check this thread on androidforums:
http://androidforums.com/support-troubleshooting-incredible/72539-i-found-fixed-htc-incredible-battery-bug.html

I think the problem is battery Uptime vs Awake time. If they are the same then the battery drains like crazy.

I ended up turning phone off completely, charging, then killing the Calendar process (but I have read killing any process will do) after boot with Astro File Manager.

I am currently at 19 hours 42 minutes Uptime, with 7 hours 12 minutes Awake time (Phone was awake all night apparently and I ended up killing my last processes: Mint, Firewallet, Fianancisto as well as Calendar which showed up in the list again).

And I have GPS, location, syncing on and set to 4 hours for most everything (except for Gmail Contacts and Calendar which I turned off).

Anyway, hope this helps someone.

EDIT: Oh, and I have 60% battery (6 green bars). I'm not using any battery apps or any task manager apps apart from Astro File Manager to kill processes.

compnird · May 5, 2010

carlbettag said:
Try this - seems to be best trick with little or no effect on usability:

Settings > Wireless & Networks > Mobile Networks (2nd one down)-

Uncheck 'Enable always-on mobile data'. Does not affect my push Exchange, and dramatically helps battery life.

Credit is due to one of the users at androidforums.com.

So far this has done the most good. You are right it doesn't really delay my Exchange much. I notice a few seconds more of a delay when I am at my desk but I will never have something so critical that a few seconds will matter.

damnhao · May 6, 2010

carlbettag said:
Try this - seems to be best trick with little or no effect on usability:

Settings > Wireless & Networks > Mobile Networks (2nd one down)-

Uncheck 'Enable always-on mobile data'. Does not affect my push Exchange, and dramatically helps battery life.

Credit is due to one of the users at androidforums.com.

would this effect google voice?

Namolas · May 6, 2010

I am also curious to know what all is effected by disabling that setting...

th3drow · May 6, 2010

i disabled it and my google voice works fine, my weather widgets work fine, my dictionary.com widget works fine all updating themselves.... i'm not sure what it changed

compnird · May 6, 2010

damnhao said:
would this effect google voice?

My Facebook app only refreshes when I open it or manually, Skype IM shows me offline most of the time. Otherwise, just longer battery life.

m1k3- · May 7, 2010

For what it's worth, I disabled all of the htc widgets and sense (installed helix launcher 2) and I can get through pretty much an entire day on a single charge. Took phone off the charger around 7am and it's just now red at about 10pm.

th3drow · May 7, 2010

I thought you couldnt disable sense on this phone.

Calibob2001 · May 7, 2010

Thanks!

theoneownz said:
My old phone was the touch pro 2. the battery equipped with it has a 1500 mah. The battery is slightly thicker but cover easily closes still and i can now enjoy my phone almost lasting the entire day p

also my friend works a tmobile and supposedly the HD2 also uses the same battery but with a higher rating. They throw them out after awhile and he said he will get me a few of them for free cant wait )

Might I say- THIS IS BRILLIANT! Yes, the TP2 bat fits just fine and gives a bit more time on the life of the Incredible... good find!

jbh00jh · May 7, 2010

My Imagio 1500 mAh and 1750 mAh batts also work fine in the Incredible .

theoneownz · May 7, 2010

Calibob2001 said:
Might I say- THIS IS BRILLIANT! Yes, the TP2 bat fits just fine and gives a bit more time on the life of the Incredible... good find!

Np man I knew it would help someone :0p I knew i wasnt the only one to swap over lol

Ed Zachary · May 7, 2010

We got two Incredibles on Wednesday. The Boss Lady's went through the "select language, etc" drill described in the user's guide on first startup after charging. Mine went straight to the Home screen without any setup options. So I did a hard reset and was walked through the setup.
We left them both on chargers during the night.
Yesterday, after two hours off the charger and doing NOTHING, mine had used up more than a third of the battery.
Boss Lady's was still pegged.
After four hours, still doing bupkiss, mine started begging for the charger. I put it on a car charger. Also fired up Advanced Task Manager (the only app I installed on it), and killed off every app in its list. Some of them, like HTC Checkin and People, just would not die or would restart immediately.

Since we were travelling, Boss Lady spent the trip setting up contacts, texting, checking the weather, and hitting the interwebs.
After a six-hour drive, Boss Lady using hers and mine on the charger, her battery was still nearly topped off. Mine would start begging for the charger five minutes after being disconnected.

Last night about eleven PM, Boss Lady's bettery was still at about 75%. Mine still begging for the charger. Put mine on the charger overnight. (Hers charged for about 30 min this morning). Two hours after taking mine off the charger, and again doing nothing, battery was half gone.
Oh, and during all this, the battery was VERY warm while charging and would immediately warm up considerably when the screen was on.

I checked the battery timers on both phones. Boss Lady's up timer was somthing like 12 hours, awake timer showed less than 7 min.
My timers both showed the same time and were updating in tandem.

I called support, described the Incredible Shrinking Battery. A new Incredible is on its way to my house.

Boss Lady's is still "bone stock" (no special settings) and her battery is chuggin right along...

NeutronBomb · May 7, 2010

th3drow said:
I thought you couldnt disable sense on this phone.

Im running GDE because helix2 kept force closing on me but same result. My battery now only runs down if I'm actively using the phone. With sense running it was burning through the battery. Huge improvement.
I was also able to replicate every sense widget but one and that being the contacts widget.

The way to do it is just set helix or GDE or whatever as your default and then restart the phone. As long as you don't manually launch sense after that it will stay turned off.

The reason people think you can't disable sense is that they didn't include some aspects of vanilla android. The messaging program and browser and a few other things aren't there and the artwork for others like the notification bar. You won't have access to the HTC widgets but you will still be able to use the HTC apps.

Anyway long story short. My battery life is MUCH improved with sense disabled.

rkaplins · May 7, 2010

carlbettag said:
Try this - seems to be best trick with little or no effect on usability:

Settings > Wireless & Networks > Mobile Networks (2nd one down)-

Uncheck 'Enable always-on mobile data'. Does not affect my push Exchange, and dramatically helps battery life.

Credit is due to one of the users at androidforums.com.

THIS SOLUTION WORKS FANTASTICALLY! I am still at 90% when I used to be 35% by this point in the day. Thank you so much.

mycomputerisjunk · May 7, 2010

Try this - seems to be best trick with little or no effect on usability:

Settings > Wireless & Networks > Mobile Networks (2nd one down)-

I don't think this is 100% accurate. When you disable this setting, you disable data services after your phone goes to sleep (turning off the display). It does not happen right away, but after I put my phone to sleep and wait a few minutes Gmail and ActiveSync don't push notifications to the phone. If the phone comes out of sleep for some reason (text message, phone call, etc).. Then the notifications works again, because it reconnects to the data network. I have also used K9's push feature, which also stops working after the phone is sleeping for a few minutes.

Also, when you turn off the always-on mobile connection setting the data symbols (3G/1X) go away in sleep. If you wake your phone, you can actually see the data symbols are gone but eventually return.

Lousy Battery Life on Incredible

Senior Member

Member

Senior Member

Senior Member

Member

Senior Member

Senior Member

Member

Senior Member

Senior Member

Senior Member

Senior Member

Senior Member

Senior Member

Senior Member

Senior Member

Senior Member

Senior Member

Member

Senior Member

Similar threads