Tips to Help Improve Battery Life on ThunderBolt

[slinky]

I just hope these updates coming out next week will help the battery life issue.

Any details on the updates?

Spoke to a Verizon rep. He says they haven't heard about any problems with the phone at all. As someone else pointed out, I'm impressed that there isn't even one negative review on VZW's website for the Thunderbolt at all! Nobody knows what the story is but it is very difficult (if not impossible) to believe they didn't know about all of the issues we are uncovering so far...

 

[biggles]

Thunderbolt battery life 1/2 as long as Droid X

HTC Thunderbolt Review - Battery, Pricing, Value, & Verdict

Discuss. I would like to know how this compares to the Droid 1, my current phone. Anyone know how the Droid X battery compares to the Droid 1?

 

[biggles]

I'm in 3G, and I'm getting the same battery life that I would get on my OG rooted droid. I went 7.5 hours yesterday, screen on 2 hours, was around 50-60% battery life. Bluetooth/wifi/sync off, gps on, brightness on auto. I was doing speed tests against my friends iphone, running facebook, and a lot of texting. I think the main culprit to all of these problems is the 4G. Once they come up with a switch to turn it off, I bet all of these battery issues will be gone.

Could be although I'm seeing weird drops I'll have to check over time. I don't know that there is a solution but we didn't buy the phone to turn off 4G now, did we? It's hard to believe the Thunderbolt has a smaller capacity battery than the EVO and is more powerful. Perhaps an incentive not to use 4G? We need something that turns off 4G for non-browser activities, e.g. mail checking etc. Still no excuse. As Motorola did, perhaps a larger capacity battery is the solution.

Yeah, your right. It uses battery the way it should, the problem is the pitiful battery. I think that comes with this being the first 4G phone on verizons LTE, and did verizon really know how it was gonna act as far as battery goes? Maybe they weren't expecting this kind of drain, and it was too late to change batteries in the production phase. Not sure exactly how it works. But yeah, on 3G I can't complain and maybe once I get too 4G I'll have a different opinion. I sure hope htc/verizon helps us and either gives an update to optimize it for us or at least give us a nice 1800 battery option for us.

My new theory on this is that they will re-release the phone in a month or so with a larger capacity battery. It will be similar to how they re-released the Iphone 4 with the antenna issue fixed so a case is no longer needed.

 

[Droid66]

I don't have the bad battery life on the Thunderbolt people are talking about. I get a full day of use on a single charge from my Tbolt with normal usage. Thats the same as I got from my D1 that was rooted and overclocked to 1ghz. For me the D1 and Tbolt are comparable on battery life. I don't live in a 4G area so maybe that's the difference for me, I don't know.

 

[biggles]

I don't have the bad battery life on the Thunderbolt people are talking about. I get a full day of use on a single charge from my Tbolt with normal usage. Thats the same as I got from my D1 that was rooted and overclocked to 1ghz. For me the D1 and Tbolt are comparable on battery life. I don't live in a 4G area so maybe that's the difference for me, I don't know.

4G kills battery life fast, so that would make a big, big difference. To me, the whole point of buying a 4G phone would be to take advantage of the 4G speed boost. And luckily, I do live in an area with 4G Verizon (LTE).

 

[Z06_Mir]

So basically they re-release it and then they either:
A: Leave us original owners in the dark
B: Sending us the new batteries

I hope it's B.

 

[Grouchy]

I'm curious, where did you guys hear about the updates that are coming to the TB next week? I looked online but could not find anything.

 

[FlyFishinX2]

You know, these are handy tips, but two things come to mind

1. Why did VZW not have a 3G4G manual toggle in settings? Nuts, unless VZW are forcing 4G plans on folks (or planned to, prioir to the network delays)

2. All of that trouble is a key reason why a lot of folks just get iPhones instead. Sure it is constrained, but to most folks, Android is too much effort compared to the ball & chain known as the iPhone.

If I were not a geek, I would agree with the iPhone crowd.

I've been on here defending the Tbolt and I love this phone but there is definitely a battery issue and at first I didn't think it would affect me,,If my phone can't hold a charge for at least 24 hours it will go back and I'll get the Iphone

 

[biggles]

So basically they re-release it and then they either:
A: Leave us original owners in the dark
B: Sending us the new batteries

I hope it's B.

Yeah, I think option B is more likely. I think HTC is the best Android phone manufacturer out there (aside: currently I own a Droid 1 but my wife has the Droid Incredible and her phone is worthy of the name). Apple gave away free cases to fix the problem for early Iphone 4 buyers. So I think HTC will give away free batteries if enough people (both users and professional reviewers) whine and complain about the battery situation.

 

[tu3218]

I agree, if they want this phone to continue to do well an take off then they need to fix this issue. If they really did send out new batteries, that would be very nice and I guarantee that it would move more users over to buy this phone who are worried about the battery life.

 

[kcluggish]

Minor Tweaks made all the difference.

First day I had my Thunderbolt - no phone calls, no texts no downloads; basically just standby and used the Bluetooth for 1/2 hour and battery was down to 10% in less than 5 hours.

I found that when Verizon transferred data to my phone they also brought over all my apps from the original droid. I removed Advanced Task Killer, turned off automatic synching of Gmail, Facebook, etc. Set my screen brightness to auto and the next day after about 17 hours my battery charge was at about 85 - 90%; this was after more usage than the previous day. Quite a big difference.

Most days I'm not a heavy user and, when I am, I expect a higher drain on my battery. The first day I was ready to take it back; the few adjustments I made changed my mind. I can live with charging it nightly and more frequently when my usage is heavier. I am going to try some of the other tweaks in the article and will make adjustments as needed.

I thought I might not like the larger size of the phone, but I love it. I definitely like it better than the original Droid. I don't live in a 4G area but work in one and can't wait to try it out Monday.

 

[BigMcGuire]

Is it possible that the google sync is causing all this battery loss?

 

[CsonkaBear]

Oh, the humanity. I'm confident they will resolve any issues in short order. I have 12 more days to take mine back, so I'm gonna ride this out.

My battery life hasn't been all that bad so far.

 

[slinky]

Oh, the humanity. I'm confident they will resolve any issues in short order. I have 12 more days to take mine back, so I'm gonna ride this out.

My battery life hasn't been all that bad so far.

LOL. Not life threatening but the issue is as bad as many are making it out to be. Just hard to believe VZW would allow the phone to be released like this with so many discrepancies. I'm going to use the phone today and benchmark my activities, now that the battery has been fully charged, bump charged, etc.

 

[CsonkaBear]

Oh, the humanity. I'm confident they will resolve any issues in short order. I have 12 more days to take mine back, so I'm gonna ride this out.

My battery life hasn't been all that bad so far.

LOL. Not life threatening but the issue is as bad as many are making it out to be. Just hard to believe VZW would allow the phone to be released like this with so many discrepancies. I'm going to use the phone today and benchmark my activities, now that the battery has been fully charged, bump charged, etc.

I will say this, if the battery was what was holding up the release of the phone can you imagine how crappy the first batteries were? Yikes.

I still have a good feeling about it overall and I have an escape clause should I need it. I am trying to be the eternal optimist here.