Battery life...and then some

[plagued_by_geckos]

I just got my Eris on Saturday...at first, battery life seemed to be OK, even with my 3 year old play some apps.

I charged it this morning in the car on my way in to work (about an hour), and it was still pretty charged before I did that (I didn't check to see how much, but I think it was still a full green bar this morning)...and, I didn't use the phone while it charged. In the past 6 hours, it's gone down to 40% battery life left...I've maybe used 5-8 minutes in calls, received 18 texts (1 of which was a 43KB picture), and sent 13 texts. I played a few games od Flood-It (app), and that was about it. I did have it go a little crazy on me earlier (restarting...), had it lock up on me twice (once had to pull the battery)..............not sure what's going on, but my battery went down WAAAY too quickly today.

[dro]

Try deleting apps that you do not use, some of them may be draining battery and using resources without you knowing. Also, try turning down your screen brightness.

[mhotovec]

On some of the forums there seems to be a consensus that the battery meter needs to be trained. It's not so much that your battery is draining, it's that the meter is showing it as being drained. Also the last 15 - 20% of the battery lasts a LOT longer than the first 20%. Give it a few days to let the meter 'learn' the battery, I suspect you'll see it improving. Some folks believe it helps the meter to drain the battery as low as possible 2 or 3 times in the first few days you've had the phone. Not so much to condition the battery, but rather to let the meter learn where the 'top' and the 'bottom' of the battery are.

This all assumes of course that you've already taken the steps to make sure that battery sucking apps aren't draining you battery and that you've tweaked the phone for maximum battery life. If you haven't done that yet, you've got some more reading to do on the forums.

[Dallasguy7]

Try loading the free version of 'Advanced Task Manager'. It shows you all the processes and applications running on your Eris along with the ability to stop all those apps with a simple shake of the Eris. Pretty cool and seems to speed up the Eris after doing so.

In addition to this, turn off Bluetooth and WiFi when not in use. These will continue to seek and use battery power even when the screen is dark.

Don't worry about the GPS as this will only function when you open a GPS app.