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Battery getting really weak after only 1 year?
I have had my EVO for just under 1 year. Ever since the Gingerbread update, I have found that it is impossible to get through a day without plugging in (even if I barely use it), with only Mail, Contacts, Calendar, and Voice set to auto-sync. Many days, I am plugging in early afternoon. Before the Gingerbread update, I was running CyanogenMod and battery life was awesome. So, I am not sure if I just forgot how bad HTC's ROM drains the battery or if the battery has decreased in capacity without my noticing since CM was good enough to cover the issue to the point I was still getting through the day. I am looking at switching to another Sprint phone in about 2 weeks and passing this on to the boss, so now I am concerned as to whether or not I should put a new battery in for him if I do. Anyone else having issues?
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I'm pretty sure it's Sense. I had a G2 which had practically the same guts as my Thunderbolt but got much better batter life. The only other differences are the radios, screen size and processor clock speed. I'm thinking that the screen size matters most followed by sense with the processor and radios being negligible.
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As DPmt stated, HTC Sense does drain battery life because of all of the nice looking widgets. Many of the widgets are data-intensive: think of the HTC Friend Stream, News, and Weather widgets. The larger screen on the HTC EVO 4G also seems to drain the battery more quickly, too. (I haven't used CyanogenMod -- I've been a Warm TwoPointTwo and Synergy user -- but I believe that it's an AOSP ROM and so I doubt many of the Sense widgets are available to you.)
That said, I've noticed that Synergy (my current ROM) burns through my battery more quickly that my older Warm TwoPointTwo ROMs used to. I attribute some of the shorter battery life to the fact that, to the best of my knowledge, HTC hasn't yet released the source code for the new Gingerbread kernels. Thus, no one has yet been able to create custom kernels, which may improve battery life for HTC EVO 4G users.
I can make it two days without recharging. Here's how:
+ I only synchronize my Facebook app and HTC News widget once every four hours.
+ I synchronize my Microsoft Exchange and Yahoo! Mail accounts once every two hours.
+ If I'm at work where, through my laptop, I have constant access to all of the information that I need anyway (Microsoft Outlook; Gmail; Yahoo! Mail; ESPN; Gizmodo; Lifehacker; etc.), I turn off my 3G/4G radios until I leave the office for lunch.
+ If I can use a Wi-Fi connection to sync my data quickly, then I'll use Wi-Fi to update my various mail accounts and news feeds before turning off my Wi-Fi radio. (I've found that the Wi-Fi radio, when you can get a strong signal, doesn't seem to drain the battery as quickly as does the 3G/4G radios.)
+ Even on my hour-long commute to and from work, I rarely turn on the 3G/4G radios. Instead, I listen to music or podcasts and will even leave my Bluetooth headset connected. The HTC Music app/widget and the Bluetooth radio don't seem to drain the battery nearly as quickly as does allowing my EVO to constantly seek a cell tower that possesses the strongest reception -- something that CDMA devices do by nature.
+ Turn down the brightness level of your display and set the timeout to a mere 15 or 30 seconds.
I know it may be a pain to turn on/off your data connection but it really can stretch your battery's life. Besides, it's another excuse to fiddle with your phone.
That said, I've noticed that Synergy (my current ROM) burns through my battery more quickly that my older Warm TwoPointTwo ROMs used to. I attribute some of the shorter battery life to the fact that, to the best of my knowledge, HTC hasn't yet released the source code for the new Gingerbread kernels. Thus, no one has yet been able to create custom kernels, which may improve battery life for HTC EVO 4G users.
I can make it two days without recharging. Here's how:
+ I only synchronize my Facebook app and HTC News widget once every four hours.
+ I synchronize my Microsoft Exchange and Yahoo! Mail accounts once every two hours.
+ If I'm at work where, through my laptop, I have constant access to all of the information that I need anyway (Microsoft Outlook; Gmail; Yahoo! Mail; ESPN; Gizmodo; Lifehacker; etc.), I turn off my 3G/4G radios until I leave the office for lunch.
+ If I can use a Wi-Fi connection to sync my data quickly, then I'll use Wi-Fi to update my various mail accounts and news feeds before turning off my Wi-Fi radio. (I've found that the Wi-Fi radio, when you can get a strong signal, doesn't seem to drain the battery as quickly as does the 3G/4G radios.)
+ Even on my hour-long commute to and from work, I rarely turn on the 3G/4G radios. Instead, I listen to music or podcasts and will even leave my Bluetooth headset connected. The HTC Music app/widget and the Bluetooth radio don't seem to drain the battery nearly as quickly as does allowing my EVO to constantly seek a cell tower that possesses the strongest reception -- something that CDMA devices do by nature.
+ Turn down the brightness level of your display and set the timeout to a mere 15 or 30 seconds.
I know it may be a pain to turn on/off your data connection but it really can stretch your battery's life. Besides, it's another excuse to fiddle with your phone.
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I forgot to mention that Sense isn't even running since I am using Launcher Pro. I don't use facebook on my phone because I don't trust them with my address book. I am using a Google Voice # as my primary #, so the app for that is running at all times. I rely heavily on text messaging, so I can't ever turn data connections all the way off. I do have screen brightness down as low as I can stand, but I do not use auto brightness because it annoys me. I have 2 Gmail accounts that sync Mail, Contacts, and Calendars, so that puts a bit of a hit on the battery, but this is the same setup I had going in CyanogenMod and it was fine. Sigh, the industry really needs to press the pause button on phone design and pool their engineers together to solve these battery issues before moving the technology forward any more.
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It's possible the combination of Sense & Gingerbread just ended up not playing well on the Evo 4G. I'm running stock on my Incredible2/S and we got the Gingerbread update a couple weeks ago and the battery life is pretty much the same.
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it's sense. even if you're using an alternate launcher. i had to get my evo replaced (i was running CM7 nightlies, with awesome battery life) and my new evo can't be rooted so it's running the stock GB rom. the battery life blows. even while using ADW as my launcher.
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