Tips to Help Improve Battery Life on ThunderBolt

[slinky]

What is Verizon's "standing" LTE time? I had mine on LTE for almost 15 hours straight between charges yesterday and today. Now, obviously, that included overnight time, as well as somewhat light usage when I was awake.

Most of you are not saying the same thing. Having the phone on in an area where you can pick up a 4G signal is not "use." It's no big deal if the phone battery "lasts" all day not doing anything. The problem is actually using the phone. Today here's what I did, autobrightness which works pretty well:

Phone @ 100% battery
- Phone rang, sent to voice mail
- checked 5 email accounts
- 1 minute phone call
- 48 minute phone call
- 4 minute phone call
- about 15 minutes of 3G
- Sent 2 emails

Battery @ 67%

- Checked 5 email accounts
- On standby for an 90 minutes
- 1 email account checks every 10 minutes (7 times, twice out of range)
- Use 4G for 8 minutes
- Sent 2 emails

- Battery @ 54%

- Standby for 20 minutes
- Screen on to show applications for 8 minutes
- Email to check all 5 accounts once, one account checked 3 times
- Used 4G to check droidforums for 5 minutes
- Sent 1 email

- Battery @ 49%

This is not very good battery life. While I rarely talk for an hour in a day, it could happen. The phone would have lasted probably for around 3 hours 30/40 minutes of talk time, which is not too impressive with nothing else. 4G usage really drains this battery. With this kind of drain rate, you can get through a day with light usage without too much fair. Moderate usage starts getting you nervous around lunchtime if you haven't recharged the phone during the day at least once. If you're working most of the day and just need to answer occasional emails, web surfing, some music playing, you'll be fine. But anything more and you'll start to worry about a low battery. It's a 1400 mAh and is what it is.

 

[sportadic22]

i did the bump charging last night... and my phone has been now unplugged for 9hr 25 mins... and im at 42% left.

display 55 percent
cell stanby 9 percent
phone idle 8 percent
words with friends 7 percent
voice calls 5 percent
android system 5 percent
wi-fi 3 percent
os 2 percent
and 3 other 2 percent items.

i have lowered britness and have been on wifi anytime ive been at my house today. gps...bluetooth is off. vibration response to key touches thru menus is off and animations are off. im using LP PLUS. with weather widget basically being the only one taking info every hour.

ive been playing words with friends often today. i have been on about 15 websites.. listened to music thru headphones and speaker for a total of about 1.5 hrs. used gps once to locate a store. made about..ehh 50 texts.. 4 phone calls. 2 sent pictures. and downloaded a few apps.

id recommend doing the whole bump charge.. on off on off orange light etc etc i wanna say it has helped me alot.

 

[slinky]

I like to keep IM on during parts of the day to be accessible. Unlike Blackberry messenger, keeping an IM client open (such as GTalk) will kill the phone within 6-7 hours with zero use except having it on in the background. You can talk about battery conservation all you want. I think if you can get to a charger regularly you can do OK with the regular battery. But if you are not at the charger and want to keep things running in the background, listen to music on your commute and do some reasonable 4G surfing, you will need the extended battery. Figure out your needs and manage your expectations.

I think sportadic22's numbers are right on what I'd get. Pretty light usage, mostly listening to music, a few short calls, minimal 4G and he's gotten through the day but is at 40%. If you're a business person who relies on your phone like I do, you don't want to risk having one long phone call and 4G background usage put you in that yellow battery territory.

I'll take some pictures of my phone with the extended battery and the case. Don't like the bulk but it's really not as horrendous as I thought it would be. It's just the need to spend $55 because of HTC/VZW underpowering the battery that is annoying.... but so it goes. Hope this info helps some of you trying to get a feel for expectations, as per my experience.

 

[georgek]

Does anyone have BatStat installed? Did your battery drain faster?

Sent from my ADR6400L using DroidForums App

 

[guitarchris123]

No fugly hump here. LOL. Yeah, I paid for the Pro Battery Life so I could calibrate both the standard and extended. Just died on my while eating dinner. My best estimate is about 30 or so hours off the one charge. Gonna see how long I can get on the next charge.

So did you calibrate and use the stock battery for a little while before going to the Seidio? If so, what were your readings on the stock one before switching? BTW, my reading on Battery Life for the stock battery went down to 21.5 hours for a full charge after today (down from 23), so it seems there can be several hour swings easily depending of your particular level of use for the day.

 

[mark3748]

I'm at 59% after 15 hours, ~9hours of that in 4g, a lot of texting and web browsing, some facebook time, and maybe 30 minutes playing games. basically a normal work day

What I've done:
*Root and debloat rom, location indicator remover and SU fix are the only other changes to the rom
* Juice defender beta on default settings,
* most syncing widgets gone, don't use them anyway, I open the apps when I need them
* Screen at 20%, turn it up in sunlight
* Syncing tweaked, Exchange email at 1 hour during primetime, gmail still push, weather at 2 hours, stocks off.

Still very functional and battery life is great.

 

[jalb07]

My battery life has increased significantly since bump charging last night and using just 3G for most of the day (through the Phone Info app). its reading 9 hrs since unplugged with 52% remaining. I've been texting, emailing, and tweeting on and off while playing stupid zombies.
Yesterday I was on 4G and was very displeased with the TB, but since bump charging and swithching to 3G I'd say I am VERY pleased.

 

[sportadic22]

i did the bump charging last night... and my phone has been now unplugged for 9hr 25 mins... and im at 42% left.

display 55 percent
cell stanby 9 percent
phone idle 8 percent
words with friends 7 percent
voice calls 5 percent
android system 5 percent
wi-fi 3 percent
os 2 percent
and 3 other 2 percent items.

i have lowered britness and have been on wifi anytime ive been at my house today. gps...bluetooth is off. vibration response to key touches thru menus is off and animations are off. im using LP PLUS. with weather widget basically being the only one taking info every hour.

ive been playing words with friends often today. i have been on about 15 websites.. listened to music thru headphones and speaker for a total of about 1.5 hrs. used gps once to locate a store. made about..ehh 50 texts.. 4 phone calls. 2 sent pictures. and downloaded a few apps.

id recommend doing the whole bump charge.. on off on off orange light etc etc i wanna say it has helped me alot.

***UPDATE***
my baby just died at 14hrs....
i used another 3 hours of music tonight... words with friends often.. facebook. and ya like 50-100 texts..

bump charge helppppppppppppped

 

[MailboxHead]

Thanks to everyone for your tips/advice/input on the battery, I've enjoyed reading and implementing many of the suggestions. I just wanted to add my two cents on performance so far -

Brought it home the evening of 3/21, charged it until it was full then unplugged and left it over night. From 11 pm - 7 am with only the alarm in use (snoozed, ahem, two or three times) and one gmail check it was around 85%.

Charged it up at work, anticipating being out of the office in the afternoon but plans changed. To test it, I applied about 65-70% of the suggestions on the OP (the only "big" ones I didn't do are to leave my Friendstream to update every hour, bluetooth is always on (I rarely talk on my phone w/o bluetooth) and haptic feedback on. I really like it when I'm typing).

Between 11 am and 8:45 pm (when it went below 15%) I:

• streamed about 45 minutes worth of content from Jetflicks
• played three levels of Guns'n'Glory
• half a dozen or so games of Fruit Ninja
• checked some emails, handful of texts
• messed around putting new apps on and playing with settings/features, made two calls - one about 10 minutes, another was about 90 minutes and got the low battery warning an hour in.

Not overly impressed, but not a dealbreaker for me either (coming from an Incredible). I'm near a charger most of the time, but would still like a solid battery for those days I can't get near one. I will be getting an extended battery for travel though.

I did the bump charge last night/this morning and will see what happens. It has been off the charger for a little over 90 minutes and is at 93%.

Other notes: I don't often use wireless and am in a 4G area (and it's pretty awesome, as a side note - ran my laptop off my 4G and it performed like my wireless at home).

 

[slinky]

I'm at 59% after 15 hours, ~9hours of that in 4g, a lot of texting and web browsing, some facebook time, and maybe 30 minutes playing games. basically a normal work day

What I've done:
*Root and debloat rom, location indicator remover and SU fix are the only other changes to the rom
* Juice defender beta on default settings,
* most syncing widgets gone, don't use them anyway, I open the apps when I need them
* Screen at 20%, turn it up in sunlight
* Syncing tweaked, Exchange email at 1 hour during primetime, gmail still push, weather at 2 hours, stocks off.

Can you and one other guy explain how you report 9 *hours* using 4G -- with an expectation of getting 20 hours... when Verizon Wireless even says you won't get anything near that even with best conditions?

Believe me, I'd be happy to know so that I don't have to use the extended battery but it seems that this is the only way to go if you want to actually use 4G for more than 3-4 hours, if you can even get that much usage. I am somewhat skeptical because even the iPhone 4, pretty battery efficient, can't even get half of this much 3G usage on almost the same battery.

This said, the experience I have testing the extended battery is remarkable. At least out of the box, it is even better than my Incredible with Seidio's 3500 mAh battery (I wonder about efficiency.) I did notice that while the extended makes the phone bigger, in your hand it fills the natural gap that exists when you hold the phone. Not ideal but not as bad as anticipated. Still, HTC should replace the 1400 battery with something reasonable like 1700 for a single core Snapdragon at barest minimum.

 

[jawa6969]

No fugly hump here. LOL. Yeah, I paid for the Pro Battery Life so I could calibrate both the standard and extended. Just died on my while eating dinner. My best estimate is about 30 or so hours off the one charge. Gonna see how long I can get on the next charge.

So did you calibrate and use the stock battery for a little while before going to the Seidio? If so, what were your readings on the stock one before switching? BTW, my reading on Battery Life for the stock battery went down to 21.5 hours for a full charge after today (down from 23), so it seems there can be several hour swings easily depending of your particular level of use for the day.

I did calibrate the stock battery but I didn't jot down the stat's (I know, duh right). I will get back to you on that. I did save the profile for the stock so I won't have to re-calibrate.

I will note that after full calibration of the extended battery, the full battery life listed went down about 5 to 6 hours from 31 to 25 or so. I may have gotten excited a little prematurely. We shall see over the next few days.

 

[evilssj4]

I did the calibration thing and I can say that the battery has actually improved! something weird just happened right now tho, I plugged it to the charger and it was at 64% and it was going down instead of up!?? it went down to 59% so I unplugged it and plugged it back and it jumped to 60% now 62%...any input on this??

 

[twinklystar129]

Hi!
First post at DroidForums. While I'm at it, first smartphone as well, and I AM LOVING IT. Played with my cousin's DX, not very impressed (not a fan of motorola phones either), two of my cousins have the iphone and the screen was amazing, but nothing beats my TB. I am on the nation's fastest network! =D

So, I thought I'll dedicate my first post to the battery life since that was my major concern while following the release news of the phone. Note: I am still using the stock battery. Picked up the TB after work on the day of launch... got it out the store by around almost 9pm.

DAY ONE after the VZ store
Phone died around 11pm. It was pre-charged at about 40% I believe, and I really didn't do much with it. Btw, I am in an area with 4G LTE (LOS ANGELES!). Left it charging overnight because I had work early the next morning.

DAY TWO
Got it off the charger around 7am. Had 4G on all day, and the phone was down to 62% by noon. I was worried. I didn't even touch the phone much as I was busy all day working, so it was pretty much on standby all day. I made a couple of txt and 2 5 minutes phone call. That was it. When I left work around 7pm, I had about 40% left (which was surprising consider it drained 38% in 5 hours and only about 20% the next 7). Phone officially died around 9pm when I got home. Again, put it on the charger overnight.

Forgot what happened over the weekend... but I was able to live getting it off the charger at 6am and not having it die until 9pm or so (15 hours!). I am not a heavy user when I am at work. I noticed the battery life got consistently better as the week have gone by. I don't know if it was due to the fact that it has gone through a couple rounds of full charges (I usually plug in when I am down to about 5% and leave it overnight - this thing takes a LONG TIME to get a full charge. When I plugged it in at 8pm yesterday it was still not done at midnight). My longest night was Monday night from 6:30am - 10pm, and I had 4G on ALL DAY as well. That was mighty surprising.

In summary, here are some of the settings I remember on top of my head:
- data on at all times, but I do try to use wifi when I am home. However, my longest day use (Monday), I had 4G on all day.
- auto-sync on, fb sync every 2 hours, twitter sync every 30 mins.
- brightness down to about 20%
- bluetooth and GPS off unless I am using it
- email auto-sync on

The widgets help a lot to switch the settings on/off. I do notice that if I am in an area with strong, stable connection (be it 4G or 3G), the battery last longer because it doesn't have to search. Today, it's down to 70% already because I'm in an area where it's constantly switching between 4G/3G/1x.

All in all, the battery is not as good as I expected, but with an OTA update it should help. For someone who is not a heavy user, it can last all day. The best way to save battery is turn off data when you don't need it and use wifi (at least to me).

Currently: 6/10 bars lighted (assuming the battery is around 60-70%), been off the charged for about 5.5 hours.
66% voice calls (don't know why, i'm not calling anyone!)
14% display
7% cell standby
6% phone idle
3% android system
2% android OS
2% live wallpaper

The first few days I had it, display accounted for over 50%. For the past 3 days, I noticed it doesn't account for more than 18%. I didn't tweak the brightness since the first day I got it and left it at around 20-30%, so I don't know what caused the change.

By the way, is there a way to tell the exact percentage of battery left on your phone? I noticed a lot of you say "78%, 93%" but I don't know how to get that information.

I'll share more once I play with it for a couple more days. I'm changing settings around everyday to see the effect on the battery...

 

[jaskil1975]

I am trying to do the bump method and I am on my 7th or 8th charge and it still does not go to green on first plug in. Any ideas?

 

[funkyb]

Stop! It won't go green on first plug in.

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