HTC G1 battery life

AlphaWord · 01-23-2009, 05:06 PM

I am bolding all the points I think people skimming might like to know. Underlined are my questions.

My husband and I got G1's about a week ago. We both love them, but have had very different experiences with the battery life. At first my battery would die very fast (12% doing nothing over 4 hours to me was a lot). Then I changed my apps around, and I found I can have my phone last 48+ hours if I am nice to it.

Nice means: (And by some peoples descriptions I guess I'm a light user).
-very low brightness - I don't like it when my phone generates shadows.
-No apps that prevent the phone from sleeping properly (what they are, I'm not ENTIRELY sure, but Power Manager definitely seems to drain battery faster - when I got rid of it I did better. Locale seems to drain battery. If you want to know how apps / usage are affecting your battery, Watts is a good app to check out. It graphs your battery usage over time.
-Not being on the phone for more than 1 hour a day.
-Not sending / recieving lots of texts/emails or having lots of notifications (>20)
-30-40 mins web browsing
-No GPS, Wifi only when accessing home network, and Wifi preffered over 3G for web-browsing etc
-1-2hrs of non-network use (games, notepad etc)

These are all estimates of what my usage was. I don't think I used vibrate much, and I was hoping to find out if anyone knew anything about vibrate vs speaker for battery usage, I guess I will have to test myself.

To tailor my apps, I used System Manager to look at my processes. If something ran when I didn't want it too, the result was (if I didn't need it) I got rid of it.

My husband, on the other hand, can barely make it through a day at work. Looking at his Watts graph, it appears that when he is in the building, and when signal is very poor, it drains battery. Neither of us have been turning off 3G, although it is something that I intend to try. I also am thinking about switching batteries with him.

Also looking at my Watts graph brings me to suspect that what's open when the phone sleeps may matter?

As for killing unwanted processes, I read up on android's memory management, and it sounds like if you have enough running that android needs to kill a service, it will kill the least salient service to the user's current activity first. Anyone know of a memory intensive, non network app, that doesn't create a persistent service?

Finally, a note to all those Android programmers - If you haven't already, PLEASE add the obvious option to kill all services related with your app.

strangefruit · 01-30-2009, 04:43 PM

*******Disclaimer: These are merely suggestions that I am offering as a workaround fix to the battery problem that you might be experiencing with your phone. I am not an employee for any company affiliated with the phone or any technology associated with the phone!*****

If you go to this site:
http://www.seidioonline.com/ProductD...ACY26TMG1%2DBK
You will be able to purchase a 2600mAh extended life battery for $55.00US. The standard battery that comes with the phone is an 1150mAh battery, so you get about a125% increase in batery life. Before you place your order, don't forget to do s google search using the following words: Seidio Coupon Codes. This should help to get a discount when placing the order.

Also, Duracell makes a product called the Power Source Mini (http://www.duracellpower.com/electro...urce-mini.aspx) that can be used as a pocket charger for the phone in addition to the extended battery mentioned above. The good thing is that if you order it through CompUSA/Tiger Direct and if you live in Illinois or Florida, you can pick it up from their warehouse and avoid the shipping charges. Sorry, I was not able to find a discount code to use to place the order fo rthis item.

By the way, they did send me another batttery for the phone, but it was another 1150mAh battery so it wouldn't have helped the problem I was having anyways. I hope that this helps everyone with their battery problem, at least until they can come up with a viable fix. I can say that although my phone is chunkier, I no longer have a dead battery by 11 am after what I consider minimal usage. Good Luck!!

OK, I forgot to mention that Seidio does ship internationally and has the following disclaimer: International customers are solely responsible for all customs duties, taxes, and brokgerage fees upon receipt of orders

I went to the Tiger Direct website and was told that you could place an international order via 1(800)800-8300 or 1(305)415-2201. The item number is X08-2018.
When ordering from Tiger Direct you can only pay one of these 3 ways: a US credit card, Wire Transfer, or Money Order from your bank. Hope that this helps.

mamaluvtai03 · 01-31-2009, 05:15 PM

My phone turns off while its charging.

flyer208 · 03-06-2009, 12:12 AM

a 2300 battery is a big help and theyre only 29.99 more or less and include a phone back to accomodate them

kurbaj95 · 04-13-2009, 03:19 PM

Well wen i checked the T-Mobile places have a separate pocket charger that u can plug it into wen its gonna die... other than that there are some apps that drain the battery, and then again there are some apps that help u conserve the battery, it just takes time and experience i guess to know what drains your battery and what doesn't.

ashleyketchum · 05-05-2009, 05:01 AM

I found another post in a different forum
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heres my feed back on the fommy 2300 battery and back cover. well im going on three days with this battery and i have to say im impressed. im a pretty heavy user and i got 49 hours before i had to plug it in. at that point i still had 29% battery life left. and i had wifi on 3g all the time alot of browsing downloading apps alot of the market ton of sms ton off email and alot of talk time. so in my opinion and usage i will suggest this is a great buy. its only 39.95. also the back only has a little hump for the battery doesnt look bad. also that little hump makes the g1 feel a like your not going to drop the phone with the keypad open.

heres the link if your interested: http://fommy.com/accessories.asp?mak...nded+Batteries
---------------------

Has any one used this battery before???

flexdream · 05-09-2009, 01:06 PM

You can get bigger batteries on eBay which double batt capacity. Power Manager was a great app for switching off gps, wifi etc. But the cupcake update has killed it.

jaystub · 07-09-2009, 03:00 PM

This battery power issue is a big problem. I personally think this was very misleading in the advertising and spec. information from Google and T-mobile. If I had known I would be charging my phone 3 times a day, I would have purchased a blackberry or Dash. So thanks google, for the bad information. Now I’m locked into a 2 year contract, stuck with a phone I have to keep plugged into a power supply to use. (most of the day).

hiiamphill · 10-13-2009, 04:57 PM

This is the only recent forum I could find regarding G1 battery life so here goes nothing.
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I recently got the G1 from a friend whom I traded my Behold with, in the past I've used the iPhone 2g and 3g (unlocked for t mobile ofcourse), Sidekick LX, Blackberry Curve, and the behold with no problems. Ive had the G1 for about 4 days and am lovinggg it. The only downside ofcourse is the battery. I havent experienced battery drainage as bad as this on any other phone ive used.

After doing a little researching I began my battery cycling/training regiment, this has helped my battery tremendously. After only the 2nd cycle I experienced incredible battery life, Ive came up with a sort of process to put the phone through in order to get the most from these battery cycles, here I will explain it.

My phone is running the latest software 1.6(Donut)
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Begin your battery cycle/training after a full normal charge, use your phone until it COMPLETELY dies out, I stress this because without it completely dying the cycle is not fully completed. The phone should die, keep on trying to turn it on until the screen turns completely blank and only the orange LED blinks to notify you the battery is nearly completely drained.

(For this step, I recommend if you are a busy person to acquire a backup phone to use while you battery cycle, it isnt necessary to let the phone charge while its off, but its definently recommended.)

Once the phone is completely drained hook it up to your wall charger. (blackberry chargers have been known to charge the phone better due to its lower voltage.) Let the phone charge undisturbed, when the phones LED turns green DO NOT UNPLUG IT YET. Let it charge for an extra two hours, this will fill any more empty space in the Li-On battery if the phone indeed mis-calibrates the battery meter and tells you its full when its really not.
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Repeat the steps above 3 or 4 more times for improved battery life, if it shows no results, I recommend purchasing an extended battery or just purchase a new G1 battery which go for about 60 dollars at a tmobile store.
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TIPS.

If you want to drain the phone quickly to increase the speed you cycle turn absolutely everything on to drain the phones quickly. A good app that KILLS your battery is Trapster. This will activate the GPS satellite on your phone and will run in the background keeping the satellite working. Turn your brightness all the way up, set your screen to never timeout, turn wifi on, almost everything that would drain your battery as fast as possible so you can get the cycles done quickly.

While you are using the phone to maximize battery life you should turn WiFi scanning OFF, even if your are not in a wifi zone the phone will consistently scan for a wifi signal thus eating away at the battery. Turn 3g off if your not in a 3g area, I turn 3g off anyways unless I need it as it also drains your battery. Brightness lower then 40% is usually good and screen timeout at 30 or 15 seconds will help also. Turn Auto sync off, bluetooth off.

This is what I have right now, hopefully we get a software update to maximize our batterys potential.

-phil.

sstmax · 10-14-2009, 03:29 AM

In addition to this, I recommend the Market app, APNdroid if you need to really prolong the battery life.