Tips to Help Improve Battery Life on ThunderBolt

Yesterday I had the phone on 3G most of the day to see how that impacted my battery life (I live in a 4G area). From what I’ve read on this thread, my battery performance has been very average for the TB and I wanted to see if I could get it to do better. I generally keep it at 15 – 20% brightness, only sync gmail and that backup assistant (can I get that only sync once a week?) and have weaned myself off of a task killer (bad habits die hard). I do tend to keep my Bluetooth on, but that’s typically only 2% of my battery drain.

Around 5:30 I was on my way to pick up a friend, and she wasn't answering her phone so I went to email her (don't worry, I was stopped at a red light). I noticed that I wasn't connected to ANYTHING so I turned 4G on to see if that would get me online and the phone just wouldn't connect. Light changed, I started driving and after a few minutes she called back. I answered on BT but didn’t check the screen to see where I was at network or battery wise.

At dinner I pulled the TB out and showed it off a little. I did notice that HTC's battery indicator was still in the green zone and it was on 4G but didn’t look at a battery widget for a percentage estimate. Tossed it back in my purse and didn't think about it the rest of the night.

When I got home around 8:30, something was wrong and my phone wouldn’t wake up. I threw it on the charger, and about 15 minutes later tried it again and it started up. Obviously, it hadn’t been sleeping, it was dead. Somehow the battery had gone from being “green” to totally dead in 3 hours, with one phone call and maybe 90 seconds of demo.

I’m curious if this was a random one-off event, or if anyone else had trouble with it last night. I’m in the DC area, live and work in solid 4G. Maybe Verizon was mucking with the towers and my 4G was going in and out and I didn’t notice? I know the last time there were 4G issues my battery really struggled.

I’ll keep the TB because 1.) I like HTC Sense and HTC phones, 2.) The camera takes way better pictures than my Incredible (though I miss the size) 3.) 4G is pretty amazing and it’s fun to make mobile networks for my friends so that their iPads run faster on my 4G hotspot than they do on their 3G. I did order the extended battery last night though, and plan to keep it handy for occasions when I won’t be able to charge throughout the day or if I get in a jam.
 
A while back someone was super skeptical about getting more that 12 hours of use and I wasn't rooted then to get a screen shot but here it is. However I am also not in a 4G coverage area.



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Off charger @ 7:00am / 9:30 - 55% remaining / 10:45 - 15% remaining / total use - droid forums app for 6 minutes, 3 text messages received, 2 text messages sent. That's it. 3-4 bars on 4g the entire time. Brightness @ 20%. Everything that has to do with sense is frozen as I'm using launcher pro. wtf? Gonna load a custom rom tonight and see if it comes around, otherwise, I don't know what I'm going to do.
 
I had the same battery issues as most of the people on this forum when I first got the phone. Battery would be dead in 5 hours. I was about to return the phone.

After doing the tweaks suggested, battery life has improved drastically. I took the phone off of the charger at 10:30pm on Sunday night. Made a couple of phone calls, went online for a bit, used pandora for a few minutes, then went to bed without charging. Didn't put it on charger and had light to moderate use the entire day. Made a few phone calls, watched a few youtube videos, sms, played games for a few minutes, and downloaded a bunch of apps. At night battery was still going. Had pandora streaming for a good 3 hours, also browsed online. It lasted for a good 27 hours! This was on the stock battery mind you. My 4g was off and I had wifi on with the brightness down to 20%.

LOVE THIS PHONE!
 
Have you gotten phone info or spare parts? Very helpful and will help find out if the battery is the issue or some rogue app

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Pistol_pete
How did you freeze anything to do with sense? I'm running launcher pro as well.

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GSXRADDICT said:
Have you gotten phone info or spare parts? Very helpful and will help find out if the battery is the issue or some rogue app

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Click to expand...

I've got phone info and found one widget that was apparently using up some battery, although I used it on my og droid for a year without any adverse effects. Pulled that into the trash, we'll see if that helps.
 
Talk about a power drain.....
So I walk downstairs to the gym just now to workout, guys see my new TB say wow cool looking phone, what is it, so I hold it up in air and say 4G TB and just when I did that the power goes out in Gym, guys doing headers off the tread mills, LMAO..I said damn...that 4G sure sucks the power down even outside the phone LOL...I could not beleive the timing.
:lifting:
 
Question..I'm running spare parts, looking under battery history then network usage....second item listed is 0. Anyone know what this is?

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GSXRADDICT said:
Z06_Mir said:
Has anyone gotten just their battery replaced by Verizon? I am sitting in class right now in Airplane mode because that's the ONLY way it won't drain 10% of battery. In 26 minutes it went down 12% with display at 1 minute of use on 1%. Now I've been in class an hour on airplane mode and haven't lost a single percent.... something syncing is eating battery like crazy.
Click to expand...

I had to remove HTC sense fb cause it wouldn't stop syncing I don't know why it didn't do it before I rooted but that shouldn't make it keep syncing

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Click to expand...

I don't plan on rooting, I have too much on apps that doesn't come back once you root (you have to start over, ya know?) plus I like Facebook.

I have FriendStream and all of its syncing disabled, including Facebook which I manually sync inside the app. I hadn't clicked on BlockBuster until yesterday when I read that if you go in, update manually and then disable updates it will help. I tried it, it didn't help or hurt. I also disabled SwiftKey today, still not helping. I have weather updating every 30 minutes and a battery life widget. that's it. I am going to Verizon to see if they will replace my battery as I seem to be taking more extreme measures than most (without rooting) and getting worse battery life.
 
shaylinlea said:
Question..I'm running spare parts, looking under battery history then network usage....second item listed is 0. Anyone know what this is?

Sent from my ADR6400L using DroidForums
Click to expand...

Any ideas? By far it's what is using my network the most.

Sent from my ADR6400L using DroidForums
 
Question: under battery history/other usage/since last unplugged - the first bar says running 100%. When I click on it, it says time spent without sleeping 100% - does this mean my phone never slows down, just runs wide open all the time, even when the screen's off?
 
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