Tips to Help Improve Battery Life on ThunderBolt

atlrus said:
llgeg said:
FlyFishinX2 said:
No gaming here, that's what my xbox is for. I don't "need" a smartphone, I just wanted one and finally caved. :) I am average use, average texts and phone calls. The only games are the ones my 8yr old will want to play! Thanks for the positive words! It seems like there are alot of fixes to work around the battery issues.

Come on fedex, bring me my new toy... dancedroid
Click to expand...
Oh, man, I feel sorry for you, you are like a virgin that's about to get raped! (too strong for this forum?) There is no average use with this phone.
Good luck getting my 4-year-old to stop playing Angry Birds...
Click to expand...

LOL! I know, I'm afraid I'm going to get sucked in to all the apps! Yeah, my son is already asking to play angry birds!
Click to expand...
 
So overnight there was definitely a substantial improvement for me. Normally I would wake up to about 30-40% battery after 7 hours of sitting idle. This morning I had about 75 left.

Those of you claiming that the tremendous battery bleed is normal for these phones, I'm not interested in hearing it. This isn't my 1st rodeo. I've been using smartphones since the beginning. I've witnessed the huge difference custom roms can make with battery. My point is the problem with these phones is software related. Something is running that's killing these things at a extremely quick pace.

Killing a battery over 12 hours is understandable, but for those of us needing a charger after 3hrs of normal use clearly have a problem.

Sent with my Thunderbolt via DroidForums App
 
Ok here is something I don't get.

I put the expended battery in yesterday (the offical htc one, personally I think it is much more comfortable then those seidio ones...I think it is the cover and the way they contoured it)

Obviously charged it for a total of 12 hours. Was off the charger for 2 1/2 hours this morning and was at 84% left. Almost the same as the seidio 1600 amh battery!

Anyway I thought I would reboot the phone to see if it was one of those issues where it was reading the battery % wrong, like some of the other android OS's in the past. So I rebooted......

Well it was reading it wrong..... it went down to 74%!

WTF?!?! lol :icon_eek:

Anyone else have that battery and notice these things.

I will keep it going and see if it has a long stretch between number difference somewhere in the day.
 
At the end of the day if YOUR phone is bleeding battery fast the extended battery will not help you much. So if you was charging every 5-6 hours with the stock battery would 10 hours be a major improvement for a battery of that size? For me it wouldn't.

Sent with my Thunderbolt via DroidForums App
 
Check to see every IM - especially GTalk - is off. GTalk will start at startup and may happen since you have to enter your Gmail account to use the phone.

Check services to see what is running.

I had some big drain and that was it.
 
dtt255 said:
Ok here is something I don't get.

I put the expended battery in yesterday (the offical htc one, personally I think it is much more comfortable then those seidio ones...I think it is the cover and the way they contoured it)

Obviously charged it for a total of 12 hours. Was off the charger for 2 1/2 hours this morning and was at 84% left. Almost the same as the seidio 1600 amh battery!

Anyway I thought I would reboot the phone to see if it was one of those issues where it was reading the battery % wrong, like some of the other android OS's in the past. So I rebooted......

Well it was reading it wrong..... it went down to 74%!

WTF?!?! lol :icon_eek:

Anyone else have that battery and notice these things.

I will keep it going and see if it has a long stretch between number difference somewhere in the day.
Click to expand...

The battery percentage is incorrect. The first 20% drop like a falling brick, it's the next 60% that is the determining factor. You can't base your phone's battery life off of the first 20% of the battery. Example: I went on a test to drain my phone from 100% to 0% last weekend. It only took me about 1.5 hours to get to 80%. But continuing to use my phone, it lasted 11 hours before I hit about 15%. I was shooting HD video, uploading to youtube, and doing things that would be considered heavy use for me. Yet if I had calculated the battery loss in the first 20%, I'd have lost all my battery in less than 4 hours. I think that's where most of this forum's users are getting their "horrible battery life" because they see their battery % drop 10% in the first 30 mins of usage.
 
slinky said:
Check to see every IM - especially GTalk - is off. GTalk will start at startup and may happen since you have to enter your Gmail account to use the phone.

Check services to see what is running.

I had some big drain and that was it.
Click to expand...

Exactly - I used to think that because Gtalk was native it didn't use much battery but upon researching some serious drain on my OG Droid, Gtalk was the culprit. Seems like GTalk is very UNFRIENDLY to the Thunderbolt's battery life. With it off, I have significantly better battery life.
 
Question..installed the Network app, to toggle between 4g and 3g. Now it won't connect to 4g anymore..in Minneapolis with full lte coverage. Also, now frequently says can't connect to network. Any ideas?

Sent from my ADR6400L using DroidForums App
 
Yeah, just saw that post thank you though! Mine seems to be working correctly now wooohooo.

Sent from my ADR6400L using DroidForums App
 
Since some other threads got merged in here, I've noticed people talking about a few apps. I had come across these in my research when compiling the list, and will share why I do not endorse/recommend them and chose to exclude them from my list of tips:

PowerMax - all this does is turn off functions that you could do with toggle widgets, it is better to use the included HTC power control widgets or those from an app like Elixir to manage and have knowledge of what is going on with your phone's current state. This app will use battery and system resources of its own. Also, you can only use it 10 times before you have to pay for the full version. Use HTC's built in power saver function instead, it automatically turns things you don't need off when you start to run low on battery.
Startup Cleaner - all this does is give your phone a faster boot time. We already have fastboot on the TB so this is not really necessary. There is no way to unblock an app once blocked (you have to uninstall/reinstall). People have reported that it did not find all of their startup apps, and only stopped them for a few minutes. One guy reported that his internet stopped working and it did not block the preloaded apps. Others have said it blocked apps they did not select. If you suspect something is loading at startup and causing a problem, you need to monitor what is running and draining your battery yourself, and if there is a rogue app or runaway process, deal with it individually or uninstall the problematic app. I suspect this app might cause more harm than good.
Green Power - all it does is turn off mobile data and WiFi. I have both on all the time, and have not had any problems. WiFi uses less juice than 3G when in a strong WiFi area, and when you lose your WiFi signal it automatically goes back to 3G. It is better to control these things manually when you need them or don't need them with a toggle widget. This app will take some battery life and system resources of its own when running it. People have reported it locking up their data connections and wireless settings, and interfering with sync and anything that has to do with streaming.
 
BGKris said:
Chris. Is your fastboot working? My tb doesn't want to fb

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

It seems like it does fastboot when it wants to (it has a mind of its own), unless I'm missing something. I've only powered down and turned back on a handfull of times so far (when calibrating my stock battery, and then my Seidio battery). Sometimes it goes practically straight to my home screen after the TBolt intro, other times it freezes on the cloudy background for a couple of minutes before proceeding. I've tried to both check and uncheck "turn off to use some market apps" in menu/settings/power/fastboot, to see if it would fix the problem of Swype not working after a reboot (which it did not, you still need to long press the input screen, change input method, then change back, each time after a restart). I'll need to do some more testing to figure out exactly what is going on with which setting. I wonder if others have been having this same issue, and if so, if HTC plans on fixing it with an update. I have seen someone in another thread (I think it was UNC) who said it might have something to do with whether you are in a 3G area or WiFi/4G area, not sure if that's true, but it could have something to do with it.
 
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