Incredible's battery life is not incredible

[tempo]

How is your Incredible's battery life?

I'm hoping for a better experience today than yesterday when my phone barely lasted the 11-hours I was away from my charger. I really only made a handful of calls and did some basic apps and web, and it was nearly kaput at 7pm.

Today I've got GPS off, Wi-fi off, Bluetooth off, screen at medium brightness, I removed most of the "active" widgets (like Twitter). I made one call this morning -- the phone was at 66% when I picked it up and 59% at the end -- the call lasted 3-4 minutes.

 

[tempo]

It's been all of 1h 19m since I unplugged my phone (fully charged) and I'm already at 88% battery. I haven't even placed a call! :icon_evil:

Battery use shows:

• Cell standby 43%
• Idle 41%
• Android system 9%
• chompSMS 4%
• Display 3%

Do you think I have a bad battery? This seems crazy to me.

 

[Darkseider]

It's been all of 1h 19m since I unplugged my phone (fully charged) and I'm already at 88% battery. I haven't even placed a call! :icon_evil:

Battery use shows:

• Cell standby 43%
• Idle 41%
• Android system 9%
• chompSMS 4%
• Display 3%

Do you think I have a bad battery? This seems crazy to me.

Cell Standby 43%. Seems to me like you either live in a lead lined house OR the signal by your is incredibly crappy. I have a couple of suggestions though.

1. Put your phone in airplane mode (if it is possible on the Incredible) for approx. 1 minute and then go back to normal and see how that goes.

2. *228 option 2

3. Power cycle

4. I'm outta ideas.

 

[jpoutre]

I had my Incredible charged full and unplugged it at about 7am this morning and it just went below 10% at about 1:10pm. Now, I listened to Pandora quite a bit and played with it a bunch, so I know I had used it more than normal being my first day with it. I did bring my charger to work and am charging it back up. Probably not the best battery but I will work around it. Probably plug it in while at work most of the time..

 

[Darkseider]

I had my Incredible charged full and unplugged it at about 7am this morning and it just went below 10% at about 1:10pm. Now, I listened to Pandora quite a bit and played with it a bunch, so I know I had used it more than normal being my first day with it. I did bring my charger to work and am charging it back up. Probably not the best battery but I will work around it. Probably plug it in while at work most of the time..

Pandora + bad reception = battery nuke

 

[brandar711]

ya all the reviews said that the battery was really bad...besides that tho it seems like a solid phone right?

 

[tempo]

Thanks for the suggestion, Darkseider. I just re-programmed it, which triggered a reset, so now I'm charging it up and will check back in 90 min to see how it compares with the metrics I posted earlier. I'm in downtown Portland, Oregon; coverage here is generally good.

reviews said that the battery was really bad

I would argue that this isn't just bad, it's unusable. At this rate, I could see killing the battery by noon, and you could forget the occasional conference call that lasts more than an hour.

Cheers.

 

[BzB]

i haven't read a review that said battery life was really bad.

in the 48 hrs i've had my incredible battery life is the same or slightly better than my droid.

the droid was rooted and oc'd, but the setcpu profiles had the phone underclocked and power saved while in standby.

 

[jamjr74]

Easy fix!!!! Drop the $40 bucks and grab the Seidio slim extended life battery 1750 MAh. Thats more juice then the Droid offers! I ordered mine last night!

 

[zengirl]

I hope I'm not being Captain Obvious here, but have you guys downloaded one of the task killer apps? I have one called Advanced Task Killer by ReChild that works pretty well. If I get done checking my email, the weather, and shopping for apps, I just tap the task killer icon, and hit "kill selected apps." This prevents a bunch of apps from running in the background without your knowledge, and saves battery + memory.

Second, many apps have settings that you can change w/ respect to how often they come active. For instance, I downloaded a BBC app, and realized that the default setting was updating content every minute or something crazy like that...I only wanted it to update when I opened it! One way to combat this is for sites like BBC is to save a "link" to the BBC mobile site rather than downloading the app. That way, you only get news when you want it. This is true for many of the apps, BBC and Facebook are particularly bad.

Also, running Pandora just isn't smart unless you have it plugged in to a wall. It uses a lot of battery and memory, and just isn't worth it.

 

[tempo]

Link? Their site doesn't indicate Droid Incredible computability, but perhaps it's just slow to be updated.

 

[Darkseider]

I hope I'm not being Captain Obvious here, but have you guys downloaded one of the task killer apps? I have one called Advanced Task Killer by ReChild that works pretty well. If I get done checking my email, the weather, and shopping for apps, I just tap the task killer icon, and hit "kill selected apps." This prevents a bunch of apps from running in the background without your knowledge, and saves battery + memory.

Second, many apps have settings that you can change w/ respect to how often they come active. For instance, I downloaded a BBC app, and realized that the default setting was updating content every minute or something crazy like that...I only wanted it to update when I opened it! One way to combat this is for sites like BBC is to save a "link" to the BBC mobile site rather than downloading the app. That way, you only get news when you want it. This is true for many of the apps, BBC and Facebook are particularly bad.

Also, running Pandora just isn't smart unless you have it plugged in to a wall. It uses a lot of battery and memory, and just isn't worth it.

Task Killers, Advanced Task Killers, Auto Process Killers are NOT NECESSARY. Please read the following post on multi-tasking operating systems.

http://www.droidforums.net/forum/droid-general-discussions/41390-multitasking-phones-gizmodo.html

Please for the love of God and all that is good and right that is left in this world do not use one.

 

[jroc]

Link? Their site doesn't indicate Droid Incredible computability, but perhaps it's just slow to be updated.

Seidio - Your Single Source for Premium Smartphone Accessories

You had to search for it a lil differently to find it. One way is under 'New and Upcoming' on the home page, click in HTC Incredible.

 

[Erron]

Well, if people would have read the specs more before buying it...it's listed as being less than half the standby time and 25% less the talk time than the moto droid...so this should not be surprising at all.

 

[jpoutre]

Task Killers, Advanced Task Killers, Auto Process Killers are NOT NECESSARY. Please read the following post on multi-tasking operating systems.

http://www.droidforums.net/forum/droid-general-discussions/41390-multitasking-phones-gizmodo.html

Please for the love of God and all that is good and right that is left in this world do not use one.

I have one question (call me a dumb noob, this is my first day with a smartphone). But I was playing Pandora going into work and would like to stop the app so when I leave my car, it's not playing. I know I can just hit pause but if I am done with it until the end of the day, I don't want it sitting there paused. I could not find a way to exit the app (maybe there is and I missed it). In this case, I would like to exit the app. I had to power down / power up the phone to remove it (I found advanced task killer after this) and will only use it for things like this.

Am I missing something?