Tips to Help Improve Battery Life on ThunderBolt

[lorax12]

My 1st Full Day Results

Since thursday was not a full day result, Friday was the first time I tried to use the phone all day. Charged it over night, took it off charger about 8:00am. used it to do some texting, download some apps, played with phone, made a few calls, put it back on charger for about 1 hour, took the phone with me into the city, used maps, used a few other apps, friend played with the phone, said she wanted one, got stuck in traffic for about an hour, used the maps again, with GPS, went to her house for a while, the phone was just sitting on the table not being used. Drove home at about 11:00pm, battery was LOW (Kept saying "PLUG INTO CHARGER [you idiot]" (Bracketed text added by me). But I made it home, talking on the speakerphone in the car the whole way.)

over all, not unimpressed. I'm going from a primitive flip phone that would literally last ALL week on a single charge of it's 1000mAh batter, so this clearly will require more attention to charging than that!

I turned screen brightness down, and used task killer to keep the number of apps running to a minimum. Still not sure how to limit synching to a more reasonable interval (maybe 5 minutes), I am not a gamer, but I think the battery was adequate, not great. I'll probably end up getting the Seido battery that fits in the normal case, and just carrying an extra battery with me.

NOTES: I am around Boston, meaning 4G LTE all the time. I spend a part of my week in central NH, which has not 4G (but also has pretty weak coverage anyway, so mobile phones spend a lot of energy searching for towers, period) so I'll be able to compare results next weekend perhaps, of 4G vs. 3G use.

Again, final thoughts. Not overly impressed by battery life, but not panicking either. I like the phone so far, and with more battery optimization, maybe could get it to last 24 hours with minimal/moderate use.... that may be wishful thinking.

 

[manilaboy1vic]

I seriously think the battery will last longer when everyone just stops constantly gazing over it and mucking around with it constantly...

 

[dajogejr]

You're going from a Fiesta to a Ferrari.
You simply can't compare battery life on a "primative" flip to a full blown mini computer with 5 times the screen size and 100X the processing power.

You simply will not get 24 hours unless you get the bigger battery, and even then it's a maybe.

You don't need an app for task killing, it does it just fine on it's own. Task killer might be hurting performance.

Just gotta tweak some settings to get it to last longer, it'll never be like your old phone though.

 

[nateccnn]

Ok...battery not as bad as I originally thought.

My first days experience was bad. I had to recharge a couple times. A lot of the syncing and download of previously purchased apps took place on battery...so that explains some of the battery depletion. But after all that syncing was complete I charged it again and ran it down to 20% pretty quickly...like 2.5 hours.

The second day I unplugged it at 7 am and did no recharges throughout the day. I ran it completely out of power at 9 pm. Not heavy use until about 7 pm. Just normal use throughout the day. Checked emails. A couple 10 to 15 minute phone calls. Light browsing and some settings to enter my WiFi codes when we rebuilt the bad router. 7 to 9pm I was doing all I could to run it down.

Before the battery died last night I read a post by GuitarChris on how to save your battery and applied some of his suggestions. I won't get into which options I turned off because they are all personal preferences. But I did turn off the ones I felt would not.bnefit.me.

So at 9 pm last night I plugged it into the charger and let it charge in the off state all night. This.morning I turned it on at 5:30 am. It is now 7:50 am. I have been surfing websites and changing setup all morning...nonstop. in a little more than 2 hours I have 83% of battery left. That is not terrible. I've seen worse with the OG Droid.

Syncing and.widgets seems to be the big culprit of battery life. Go find GuitarChris' thread and make some personal choices if you're suffering from poor battery life. I am impressed.

Nate

 

[Vulcan1600]

I am not happy with the battery drainage myself, however I decided to try JuiceDefender on this phone like I used on my D2 and it does help and the battery life is quite a bit longer now. Just thought I'd throw that out there too.

 

[lorax12]

You're going from a Fiesta to a Ferrari.
You simply can't compare battery life on a "primative" flip to a full blown mini computer with 5 times the screen size and 100X the processing power.

You simply will not get 24 hours unless you get the bigger battery, and even then it's a maybe.

You don't need an app for task killing, it does it just fine on it's own. Task killer might be hurting performance.

Just gotta tweak some settings to get it to last longer, it'll never be like your old phone though.

Totally agree. Didn't mean to imply I was expecting it to last as long as my previous phone. Just saying that I am not coming from another smartphone, so it is hard to make relative comparisons. I just learned about the task killer issue today, and am exploring that. I saw Advanced Task Killer on a list of '25 Must Have Android Apps' so I followed the herd there. Will probably remove it today

As far as the '24 hour' comment, it is more of a psychological benchmark. If I forgot to plug it in over night, it'd be nice if it could make it until the next morning when I could realize my folly, and bring the charger to work with me. Also, there is something comforting about knowing you could make an emergency trip somewhere and not have to worry about the charger, and for some reason 24 hours seems comforting. Yes, I realize I can just turn the phone OFF if I need to safe juice. As I said, the 24 hour comment is more psychology than a technical requirement.


On a related note, any electronics people willing to say whether it is safe to plug ANY charger that has a matching connector into the thunderbolt?

I have a Samsung charger that has this same type of connection, but am leary. Is it a standard amount of power that comes off the 120v wall outlet from the brick? Thanks.

 

[richardmmartinez]

The secret to awesome battery life.

For those not used to Android....the battery life is generally pretty bad. Here are three things that have really helped me in the past:

1) Get JuiceDefender from the marketplace. It's free, it's small, and it works.

2) Get a good car charger. If you need a recommendation, Amazon sells a nice Motorola charger for $4.50, shipped.

Amazon.com: Motorola Vehicle Power Adapter micro-USB Rapid Rate Charger: Cell Phones & Accessories

3) Be careful what you install. Some programs and many widgets run in the background and constantly pull data, which drains the battery. Reading the app reviews before you download something often helps screen out the worst offenders.

Hope that helps!

dancedroid

 

[Vulcan1600]

Here is a suggestion though.

25. Ultimate Juice is the paid version of Juice Defender, which activates a lot of battery saving automation features that Juice Defender is missing. If you can't or don't want to pay for Ultimate Juice, then Battery Fu is for you. It offers everything that you get with Ultimate Juice for free. I personally use Green Power, which is like the previously two talked about applications except I paid a $1.49 for the premium version of it after talking to the developer about somethings that made me have a little sympathy for the guy, to simply put it.

Juice Defender worked well for me since I installed it yesterday. However, I'm trying Green Power at your recommendation to see how it seems to compare now. Thanks for mentioning it. Curious though, you think Green Power is as good, better or not quite as good as Battery Fu?

 

[BigMcGuire]

Totally agree. Didn't mean to imply I was expecting it to last as long as my previous phone. Just saying that I am not coming from another smartphone, so it is hard to make relative comparisons. I just learned about the task killer issue today, and am exploring that. I saw Advanced Task Killer on a list of '25 Must Have Android Apps' so I followed the herd there. Will probably remove it today

As far as the '24 hour' comment, it is more of a psychological benchmark. If I forgot to plug it in over night, it'd be nice if it could make it until the next morning when I could realize my folly, and bring the charger to work with me. Also, there is something comforting about knowing you could make an emergency trip somewhere and not have to worry about the charger, and for some reason 24 hours seems comforting. Yes, I realize I can just turn the phone OFF if I need to safe juice. As I said, the 24 hour comment is more psychology than a technical requirement.


On a related note, any electronics people willing to say whether it is safe to plug ANY charger that has a matching connector into the thunderbolt?

I have a Samsung charger that has this same type of connection, but am leary. Is it a standard amount of power that comes off the 120v wall outlet from the brick? Thanks.

I also agree 100%. My daily driver Sunfire gets 450+ miles on a tank of 14 gallons of gas. A Ferrari 360 Modena averages 11 MPG and will only get about 200 miles on a tank of gas. Is that surprising? lol.

I'm using my Droid's charger to charge my HTC Thunderbolt and a small small Motorola charger that I got for my LG Cosmos back in the day (use this to charge overnight next to my bed).

To my knowledge, the smaller the charger, the longer it takes to charge, but it increases the longevity of your battery significantly because the faster you charge a Li-Ion, the faster it degrades due to heat.

 

[BigMcGuire]

Agreed, I bought a Motorola charger for my Droid on Amazon (OEM) and I'm using that for my HTC Thunderbolt. Granted, it doesn't charge fast but I have to drive to the High Desert (2 hours one way) once a week. Very useful.

Not installing junk is one of the greatest ways to save battery. I see people with AIM, Ebuddy, and who knows what running in the background when they're not even using it. And they wonder why they run out of juice in a few hours. lol


I've never been a big believer in JuiceDefender. I am always on Google Talk and want to know the instant I get an im.

 

[geoff5093]

There is already a thread on improving battery life.

 

[geoff5093]

I guess I'm in the minority, I am really impressed with the battery life. Unplugged this morning and I've been running it for over 3 hours, half the time in a poor 0-2 bar signal area, with light use and it just went down to 90%.

 

[TRIKOTRET]

So what's battery time for average users so far. I know are all excited about new and playing with it so hard to tell the battery life. Any average user can tell me battery life with average user

Sent from my DROID2 GLOBAL using DroidForums App

 

[KrautBurner]

Not installing junk is one of the greatest ways to save battery. I see people with AIM, Ebuddy, and who knows what running in the background when they're not even using it. And they wonder why they run out of juice in a few hours. lol

not turning your phone on works well too


most people buy smartphones so they can do all these things
if you're not gonna use the features/capabilities
you might as well just get a flip phone (one of the free ones)

 

[nateccnn]

Screen brightness seems to be the biggest factor. What is yours set at? Mine is 20% and seems more than sufficient.

Nate