Doing a blog write up about extending battery life

[Matth3w]

What are your secrets to success that you would like to see in the blog?

 

[geronosaurus]

Well, the ones that come to mind when I think of saving battery life are:

- Keeping brightness at it's lowest at night, 25% during the day.
- Disabling GPS and/or GPS-based services when inactive.
- A myth, perhaps truth or rumor, is that keeping your widgets count low keeps the battery life high. It also looks aesthetically pleasing rather than a clutter.
- If rooted (this one helps a lot), setting profiles to underclock your phone while sleeping.

I practice all of those, and I can get a decent 10 hours use; of course, without gameplay.

One that I've always wondered about is using the virtual keyboard more instead of the physical keyboard. I'm sure using the backlight causes some battery drainage.

 

[Matth3w]

I can't seem to get out of auto brightness because I love the nice screen. Disabling the GPS service itself doesn't do anything though, unless something is using it. I keep it on and it never shows up at all on my battery usage chart....bluetooth on the other hand, does.

 

[LT*]

My number one method of preserving my battery is by hitting the power button every time I'm done doing what ever I'm doing, I have the time out set for 1 minute, but I never let it sit that long once I'm done. If I pick up the droid say 20 times in a day, and DON'T do this, then that's 20 minutes of unnecessary screen-on time.

 

[takeshi]

Be aware of what your apps are doing. Monitor the notification bar to see if something is using the GPS receiver (and therefore chewing through the battery) when you don't think it should be.

 

[Matth3w]

Let me know what you think:

How to improve battery life...

 

[MNTNBKR]

Be aware of what your apps are doing. Monitor the notification bar to see if something is using the GPS receiver (and therefore chewing through the battery) when you don't think it should be.

I agree with ^^^

Well, the ones that come to mind when I think of saving battery life are:

- Keeping brightness at it's lowest at night, 25% during the day.
- Disabling GPS and/or GPS-based services when inactive.
- A myth, perhaps truth or rumor, is that keeping your widgets count low keeps the battery life high. It also looks aesthetically pleasing rather than a clutter.
- If rooted (this one helps a lot), setting profiles to underclock your phone while sleeping.

I practice all of those, and I can get a decent 10 hours use; of course, without gameplay.

One that I've always wondered about is using the virtual keyboard more instead of the physical keyboard. I'm sure using the backlight causes some battery drainage.

I agree with the first and the last points, though I only practice the last one. I keep my screen brightness on medium whenever it's on.

Just yesterday I decided to do a "complete battery drain" test. I got a little over 35 hours out of it, and that was with relatively high usage (compared to how I normally use it).

I have tons of widgets including 4 photo frames, news/weather, search, power, Pandora & calendar. My wi-fi is ALWAYS on as is my GPS. I use bluetooth for about an hour a day to stream Pandora into my car stereo. I'm over-clocked to 800Mhz, and I do some gaming here and there. I have no idea why my battery lasts so long, but I'm not going to complain.

edit: I forgot to mention that I have all of my sync times set to the minimum, so sync occurs like every 3 minutes or something, for gmail, facebook, twitter, etc.

 

[jsh1120]

One word: Screebl.

Combine with setting screen timeout to 15 seconds.

 

[Matth3w]

Nobody has every been able to tell me...what is the point of screebl if you lock the screen immediately after using the phone?

 

[dmo580]

Killing 3G was a huge deal for me. I push email all day long when I'm at work and I know that gobbles power. I guess it also matters because I'm on a MIlestone (GSM variant) and AT&T has weak 3G reception at some places, so the phone fights for 3G when signal is weak. That causes a hug drain on battery. I just switch on 3G when I browse/download/pandora.

Disable auto updating crap like Facebook and Twitter. I get enough notifications from those a day that it's not really worth it. Gmail unfortunately can't stop pushing overnight, but sometimes I wish it would just chill out because I'm not expecting mail all day long...

@MNTNBKR how is your GPS always on? You mean you let it turn on when it needs it, but the Droid won't turn on your GPS for no reason. If your GPS was truly on (the dish signal blinking at the top) all day long, you'd be out of battery before you get out of work.

 

[jsh1120]

Nobody has every been able to tell me...what is the point of screebl if you lock the screen immediately after using the phone?

If you do that conscientiously, Screebl doesn't help. On the other hand, I'm frequently working at my desk, looking at my phone and a phone call comes in (on my land line, sorry) or an email arrives on my computer (again, sorry.)

I simply place my phone on the desk and pick up the phone or respond to my email. The screen goes dark in a few seconds. When I need the phone again, I simply pick it up and press the power, volume, or camera button and the screen lights up with the last screen I was consulting. (I use the "Screen Mode Widget" app to bypass the lock screen.) As long as I hold the phone, the screen stays on with Screebl. Thus, I can set the screen timeout to 15 seconds without ever having it go dark while I'm using the phone.

As noted, if you train yourself to always turn off the phone when you're done and don't mind having to turn the phone on repeatedly while you're using it (or you set the screen timeout to an extended period), screebl is superfluous. As the Alzheimer's sets in at my advanced age, though, it's useful to reduce the number of different actions I have to remember.

 

[MNTNBKR]

Nobody has every been able to tell me...what is the point of screebl if you lock the screen immediately after using the phone?

I don't see much (if any) battery saving potential using Screeble, but it is nice if you do a lot of reading on the phone where you don't want to have to keep touching the screen or turning the screen back on when it times out. That said, when the text is large enough on my screen to be able to read it, I usually have to scroll before my screen ever times out. I have Screeble installed, but don't really use it.

Killing 3G was a huge deal for me. I push email all day long when I'm at work and I know that gobbles power. I guess it also matters because I'm on a MIlestone (GSM variant) and AT&T has weak 3G reception at some places, so the phone fights for 3G when signal is weak. That causes a hug drain on battery. I just switch on 3G when I browse/download/pandora.

Disable auto updating crap like Facebook and Twitter. I get enough notifications from those a day that it's not really worth it. Gmail unfortunately can't stop pushing overnight, but sometimes I wish it would just chill out because I'm not expecting mail all day long...

@MNTNBKR how is your GPS always on? You mean you let it turn on when it needs it, but the Droid won't turn on your GPS for no reason. If your GPS was truly on (the dish signal blinking at the top) all day long, you'd be out of battery before you get out of work.

GPS is ALWAYS on means that whenever my phone needs to use the GPS antenna to retrieve location based info, it can. Yea, I know it's not technically correct to say the GPS is "on" unless the symbol is flashing, but it's common terminology around here to refer to your GPS as being "on" if you have satellite location enabled.

 

[jsh1120]

I don't see much (if any) battery saving potential using Screeble, but it is nice if you do a lot of reading on the phone where you don't want to have to keep touching the screen or turning the screen back on when it times out. That said, when the text is large enough on my screen to be able to read it, I usually have to scroll before my screen ever times out. I have Screeble installed, but don't really use it.

YMMV, of course. In my case, I found it very irritating to set my timeout to 15 seconds (to save battery) and have to repeatedly refresh the screen, so I had it set at 2 minutes.

Checking my battery use suggests that Screebl significantly reduces the proportion of my battery use devoted to "display."

 

[dylanthecat]

Let me know what you think:

How to improve battery life...

Nicely written.

 

[Matth3w]

Hey, thanks a lot!