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So I fully charged up the Pre Plus's battery, booted from cold, and put it in my bag -- and less than 24 hours later it was completely dead.
I don't think it's a defective battery, as I was using it the day before and didn't see any apparent degradation. Palm's devices have had serious issues with standby power discharge in the past, but I'm really not so sure I understand why this kind of thing is still a problem for them. Any other Pre / Pre Plus battery discharge tales?
I've had a Pre since launch with constant slowdown/hardware/battery issues. My daily routine was to hope from power station to powerstation in order to last the day. I've got plugs everywhere, and spare batteries but by 3pm I'd always hit 20%.
I finally paid Palms $30 shipping for a brand new Pre 2weeks ago in hopes they fixed thing (or would have a Pre Plus) but I got the same old model. Same 3pm dead battery and hardware slowdown.
Overall this is a nice OS but it's getting outdated and runs on subpar hardware. And I don't trust HP to make things any beter.
I finally paid Palms $30 shipping for a brand new Pre 2weeks ago in hopes they fixed thing (or would have a Pre Plus) but I got the same old model. Same 3pm dead battery and hardware slowdown.
Overall this is a nice OS but it's getting outdated and runs on subpar hardware. And I don't trust HP to make things any beter.
sidenote: typin that post was a 4% battery hit on my pre. It's 942a PST and I'm at 76% already... Oh. And the mising letters isn't because I'm illiterate. It's becase the Pre keyboard skips letters when typing fast. Touch w/ auto correct is more efficient.
Are you a Sprint, Verizon or AT&T Palm Pre user? I'm a Sprint Pre user.
Battery life for me (most days): take it off the charger around 7am when I wake up. Check emails, texts, Twitter (using Twee 2.0). Battery at around 95%. By 4pm, with lots of web use, email checking, texting, twittering, foursquare check-ins, a few 2-3 min phone calls (I don't get that many calls) battery is down to about 65%. Not much use at night (I use my iPad and MacBook Pro more).
Don't put it on the charger, wake up, battery is about 40% (wifi and bluetooth off). Similar use throughout the day, when I go to put the phone on the charger that night (day #2), it's at 10-12% or less.
This is with webOS 1.4.1
Battery life for me (most days): take it off the charger around 7am when I wake up. Check emails, texts, Twitter (using Twee 2.0). Battery at around 95%. By 4pm, with lots of web use, email checking, texting, twittering, foursquare check-ins, a few 2-3 min phone calls (I don't get that many calls) battery is down to about 65%. Not much use at night (I use my iPad and MacBook Pro more).
Don't put it on the charger, wake up, battery is about 40% (wifi and bluetooth off). Similar use throughout the day, when I go to put the phone on the charger that night (day #2), it's at 10-12% or less.
This is with webOS 1.4.1
A few things I've found that *destroy* the Pre battery, standby or not:
1) leaving wifi enabled and not being near a connection you have authentication for
2) leaving bluetooth enabled
3) leaving background GPS enabled
4) being anywhere without EVDO signal
It seems to be that the pre hunts incessantly, so if there's no wifi to be connected to, it's *constantly* searching for a new network you have creds for, same if there's no EVDO signal, or no connected bluetooth device (although leaving bluetooth on, device or not, drains the crap out of the battery). And if you leave an app open that uses GPS, your battery just falls, fast.
That said, if you turn GPS background collection off, turn off bluetooth, and are in an area with good EVDO coverage and are successfully connected to a wifi hotspot, the battery lasts a long time.
Or at least, used to until 1.4.1 :-( (Prior to 1.4.1, in the conditions above, i.e. while I sleep at home, my battery used to only drop by about 4% over 8 hours. After 1.4.1, it now drops 40-60% over the same time. Siiiigh.)
1) leaving wifi enabled and not being near a connection you have authentication for
2) leaving bluetooth enabled
3) leaving background GPS enabled
4) being anywhere without EVDO signal
It seems to be that the pre hunts incessantly, so if there's no wifi to be connected to, it's *constantly* searching for a new network you have creds for, same if there's no EVDO signal, or no connected bluetooth device (although leaving bluetooth on, device or not, drains the crap out of the battery). And if you leave an app open that uses GPS, your battery just falls, fast.
That said, if you turn GPS background collection off, turn off bluetooth, and are in an area with good EVDO coverage and are successfully connected to a wifi hotspot, the battery lasts a long time.
Or at least, used to until 1.4.1 :-( (Prior to 1.4.1, in the conditions above, i.e. while I sleep at home, my battery used to only drop by about 4% over 8 hours. After 1.4.1, it now drops 40-60% over the same time. Siiiigh.)
I rarely use Bluetooth. (my headset's battery dies too quickly) I like the stereo headphones that came with my Pre, which allow me to listen to music and make and take calls, automatically lowering the volume and pausing.
The background GPS drains the battery more when I'm roaming than when I'm on Sprint's network.
Your notes above on turning off the above is correct: battery life is really good. Even for me with 1.4.1, I saw a significant improvement over 1.3.x and a slight improvement from 1.4 to 1.4.1. Sounds like YMMV.
The background GPS drains the battery more when I'm roaming than when I'm on Sprint's network.
Your notes above on turning off the above is correct: battery life is really good. Even for me with 1.4.1, I saw a significant improvement over 1.3.x and a slight improvement from 1.4 to 1.4.1. Sounds like YMMV.
I saw *serious* battery life degradation moving into the 1.4.1 from 1.4.
That said, I also do a lot of travel on public transport, and I think being in tunnels with no cell service whatsoever drains the everliving puss out of battery. Maybe 1.4.1 searches more frequently for signals?
That said, I also do a lot of travel on public transport, and I think being in tunnels with no cell service whatsoever drains the everliving puss out of battery. Maybe 1.4.1 searches more frequently for signals?
That may be the case. I traveled a lot in roaming and no service areas last week (Northern Calif - Eureka area) and had to charge my phone a lot in the car because it would drain it pretty quickly (start with 100% in the morning, by 4pm, down to about 30%).
Oh, I actually do think it's better than it was in the past. But that's not saying a whole bunch. I love my Pre, and I still do think that WebOS is overall a better smartphone platform than iOS or Android, but they *really* need to fix battery life issues. a bigger device with a bigger battery will probably solve 80% of the problems. the Pre's battery is woefully small compared to many other phones.
I love my Pre and webOS as well, I just feel like I should be able to get a day of use from the battery which is nigh impossible for whatever reason.
My Palm Pre (Sprint) can go about 2 days (with Wifi turned off, only turning it on when I need it) with heavy use. A friend got the Palm Pre Plus (Verizon) and took it back in 3 days. He had the same issue. It would be dead in about a day - with use and just sitting overnight. I wonder if there is something with the Pre Plus that causes this.
Verizon offered to swap his phone out, but instead, he left Verizon and got an iPhone 4.
Verizon offered to swap his phone out, but instead, he left Verizon and got an iPhone 4.
Actually, one reason why I leave the wifi off most of the time is for when I check in using Foursquare. With wifi on, Foursqaure fails to find my location properly. As soon as I turn wifi off, it comes up instantly. Very bothersome when I'm checking into multiple places throughout the day. This may be a Foursqaure issue since I don't notice it when I check in via Gowalla.
Yes, I've seen similar nasty GPS-related problems with wifi enabled. It used to be (in WebOS 1.2.1 and below), that your calendar wouldn't update if wifi was enabled.
I think there's some major fail in internal Palm code related to switching between wifi and 3g (or 2g or 1g) services, especially when certain components rely on a particular network type.
I think there's some major fail in internal Palm code related to switching between wifi and 3g (or 2g or 1g) services, especially when certain components rely on a particular network type.
Wow you got almost 24 hours? I'm impressed. A day trip with no opportunity to plug in requires 2 batteries, one of them extended, and they will both be completely drained in about 12-14 hours. This is with a Sprint Pre. Thankfully I don't go outside for very long periods of time :/.
My Pre (not Plus) does the same thing, band new battery from 100% to zero 8 hours on 2G and data off..
when i do use my pre always carry two battery with me...
Palm really needs to sort it out.. i love the phone but walking about with multiple batteries and my time browsing on it, is just not right..
when i do use my pre always carry two battery with me...
Palm really needs to sort it out.. i love the phone but walking about with multiple batteries and my time browsing on it, is just not right..
I think that it's inherent of the Palm Profile. It's constantly polling Palm's servers, and I think that the Pre/Pre Plus are just not that efficient with their power use while doing that. There is no way to stop the devices from polling the Palm Profile unless you turn data off entirely. My hope is that WebOS 2.0 will include much more energy efficient use of the radios when pulling data from the cloud.
My Sprint Pre never had this problem -- I could get 24 hours and wake up and it'd be in the yellow or red range, but never dead.
Did you check the usual suspects? Low cell signal, runaway app, etc?
Did you check the usual suspects? Low cell signal, runaway app, etc?
