HTC Thunderbolt Battery Test from SlashGear Reveals Potentially Weak Battery Life

[dgstorm]

Some testers over at SlashGear took their shiny new HTC Thunderbolt for a "test-drive" of its battery life, and found it a bit lacking. They made it clear that this was only some preliminary real-world usage tests, and that more testing will come later. According to their experience,

"After having just charged the unit up from zero to full, Vince took the HTC ThunderBolt from Verizon out for a spin. Once one hour had passed and having done “regular tasks” like email, internet browsing, Twitter, and a little bit of Facebook, the batter displayed 70%. Note that this was without using the camera, no videos, no YouTube."

The above picture, at 70% battery life, was the result after that brief period of time. They continued to test throughout the day with what most people would consider "average to heavy" usage. After another hour and the same amount of usage, the battery life was at 50%.

Continued testing revealed,

"Finally, with an uptime of 3:34:03 and actual usage time of 2:45:59, the battery was at 8%. During this time there were no phonicalls made, no YouTube or Videos watched, no Wifi used. This amount of time was dedicated to LTE for data working with email, Twitter, Disqus, downloading the app Dungeon Defenders, and etcetera."

Obviously, this needs to be taken with a grain of salt, since this was just one HTC Thunderbolt. It is possible that their model simply came with a defective battery, or that with some OS tweaks one could get better life out of the battery.

Of course, if this ends up being the typical battery life of the TBolt, then Verizon and HTC have some improvements and optimizations of their own to "workout", or at least some splainin'.

What do you think? If there are an forum members with a TBolt already, please share your battery life experience with us.

There are more pics at the source link below, and thanks to "cereal killer" for the story tip!

Source: AndroidCommunity and SlashGear

 

[Beardface]

Unfortunately, this does not surprise me. The EVO gets miserable battery life (8 hours with little to no use), and this is practically the same phone. Even heard rumors a couple months ago this was the case and one of the reasons they delayed the release.

HTC makes a good device. Unfortunately, they have no idea how to make it not suck down battery like Kool Aid.

 

[Nukewire]

The battery life is very poor.. As soon as I got the phone yesterday I went home and charged it fully and ended up killing the battery three other times before the end of the day. I was using it pretty heavily but still the battery should perform better than that..:icon_eek:

 

[macdonaldj2]

my phone went off charge today at a little before 9am EST and I haven't made any phone calls, looked up a phone number to a hotel using google maps, and gmail once...and at 12:42 PM it's at 71%...I do notice that in my notifications there are things running and I have no clue how to stop them...I can't wait to root this so I can run SetCPU and clock the processor for when the screen is off

 

[Nukewire]

Yeah once I have root and can change the profiles for the processor and remove the crap load of bloatware on the device I'll be happy!

 

[Dusty]

Yep. I know people reading this who don't have the phone may think we're just complainers and are piling on. But the TB will knock out your battery QUICKLY. When I got my phone from the store yesterday I had to recharge it since it came out of the box at 20%. Installing everything for my initial setup knocked my battery down to 20% in under 5 hours.

This morning I unplugged my phone and drove to work (35-40 minutes)... 85%.

I ordered a spare battery and I usually keep my phone plugged in at all times anyway. Let's see how I feel after a week or so.

 

[Jaxidian]

Is there that much bloat on it?

 

[nateccnn]

Part of the problem with the battery life is the Battery Widget displays battery percentage down to the hundredth so you see it moving in one percentage increments. On my Droid OG the battery wodget only showed tenths of a percentage so it seemed like it was at 100% for almost an hour in the morning.

But reality also bites. I took my TB off the charger at 6:45 this morning. It is now 9:43. In three hours I have used it moderately. Checked email...searched the web a few times. 15 minute potty break read the DroidFoums. The battery life is at 76% now. Most days I would go home at the end of the day with my OG Droid at 60 or 70%.

I did all my syncing and app dowloads yesterday so the phone should be in a normal state today. I do know that I am having a hard time getting 3G service inside my building (never had trouble with the OG Droid). So I am thinking this phone has a weak antenna which causes the phone to work harder to maintain or search for a signal.

I also noted lastnight that the second half of the battery seems to take longer to deplete than the first half. No explanation for that. Maybe it was due to the phone finsihing the syncing or maybe because I have a better signal at home.

I still dont think the battery life is terrible. But it is worse than the OG Droid.

Nate

 

[matthewthegreat]

I love my thunderbolt but it's true the battery life is not as good as my OG Droid. I really haven't given it a fair test yet because I've been playing with A LOT since I got it but I can tell already the batt life is not great. Although I was expecting this to be the case when I bought it so I'm not surprised. Love the phone anyways.

 

[jroc]

I was gonna say could we blame the size of the battery....but its a lil bigger than the battery in the Droid 2 and just based on rated talk times the Droid 2 has 3 hours longer rated talk time..

Is it the 4G? The cpu?

 

[matthewthegreat]

I was gonna say could we blame the size of the battery....but its a lil bigger than the battery in the Droid 2 and just based on rated talk times the Droid 2 has 3 hours longer rated talk time..

Is it the 4G? The cpu?

I blame both the battery size and the massive screen.

I very happy we have removable batteries at least I can carry a extra battery if I need to.

 

[ke0kie]

I was gonna say could we blame the size of the battery....but its a lil bigger than the battery in the Droid 2 and just based on rated talk times the Droid 2 has 3 hours longer rated talk time..

Is it the 4G? The cpu?

I blame both the battery size and the massive screen.

I very happy we have removable batteries at least I can carry a extra battery if I need to.

Where is the extended battery and how much is it?

--Scott

 

[xmguy]

If you are not in an LTE coverage area. There should be a programming menu that allows the LTE to be disabled and just use 3g and 1X. Saves on battery as the unit is always looking for a LTE signal.

 

[LifeIsABeach]

What does Battery Usage say is taking up most of the battery life? Does the display suck a lot of juice? Just wonderin'...

 

[BGKris]

make sure gps is turned off when not in use. It's on by default, didn't realize until I started playing a bit more.