Froyo's killing my battery life!

[rap777]

Froyo Claus visited me the night of September first! I eagerly accepted the update and anticipated better battery life from Froyo along with all the other neat features. What has happened, though, is that my battery life has gone to crap! I am constantly having to turn off the bloatware (Stocks, Skype, VZ Navigator, City ID, etc. I used to have to only check for City ID which starts up every time I get a TM or call. Now these apps and other random ones are starting up constantly.
My battery was fully charged at 6pm last night and with no use whatsoever was at 70 percent by 10pm. At 5:45 this morning the phone alerted me it was at 25% and needed to be charged. By 7 am it was down to 8 percent. All this with no messages, emails,calls or voluntarily running apps.

Any ideas?

[Tmart]

Your battery life is poor because you keep killing the apps which is forcing your phone to waste CPU cycles rebooting them. This is an Android phone not a Blackberry so when an app is not in use it is stored in the RAM and doesn't use CPU cycles or battery. Please refrain from killing any apps and you will notice your battery life increase by a significant amount!

[rap777]

Thanks for that tip, Tmart. I had read that about Android in the past. However, if that is the case why did the battery go from 70% at 10pm to 25% by 5:45? I wasn't up all night killing apps and didn't have the problem with a short battery life before Froyo. Not a slam, just a question I'd like answered. Thanks.

[Tmart]

It sounds like something may be keeping your phone awake when it is trying to sleep. After it drains quickly go into the settings>about phone>battery and tell me what it says for "up time" and "awake time." The most likely cause is a rogue application that's normal operation was altered by 2.2 somehow. If your "awake time" seems like a much larger amount of time than u actually had your phone awake then you need to grab a program like system panel to find out which program is doing it and uninstall it.

If the "awake time" seems normal then I would first try a battery pull if you haven't yet, if that doesn't fix anything then you will have to back up your data and do a factory reset. If that doesn't fix it then u will have to go to a Verizon store and have them look at it.

Hopefully it's just a Rogue app! Good luck, let me know how it turns out please.

[rap777]

Thanks, Tmart. Right now they are just about equal - less than a minute's differnce. I will shift from the stock battery to the extended battery after I finish this and let it run for a while to see what happens. Is "system panel" an app I can get on the Marketplace? Hopefully if I use that program it won't tell me the culprit is a program I can't alter like City ID . I hope I don't have to go to Verizon for help as that is like tits on a boar, if you know what I mean.

Thanks for the help and hanging with me on this. I appreciate it!

[iBowToAndroid]

Your battery life is poor because you keep killing the apps which is forcing your phone to waste CPU cycles rebooting them. This is an Android phone not a Blackberry so when an app is not in use it is stored in the RAM and doesn't use CPU cycles or battery. Please refrain from killing any apps and you will notice your battery life increase by a significant amount!

+1

Personally, I've noticed that 3G murders my battery but it's fine on WiFi. So I'm not sure if it's bad signal at my house (not likely) or if it's HTC's antenna (more likely). Everyone knows about the issue with the Inc where the signal jumps around, and I hear from people all the time who have an Eris with horrible signal, who never had any issues with their old phone. Try using WiFi at home if you can..

[rap777]

Your battery life is poor because you keep killing the apps which is forcing your phone to waste CPU cycles rebooting them. This is an Android phone not a Blackberry so when an app is not in use it is stored in the RAM and doesn't use CPU cycles or battery. Please refrain from killing any apps and you will notice your battery life increase by a significant amount!

+1

Personally, I've noticed that 3G murders my battery but it's fine on WiFi. So I'm not sure if it's bad signal at my house (not likely) or if it's HTC's antenna (more likely). Everyone knows about the issue with the Inc where the signal jumps around, and I hear from people all the time who have an Eris with horrible signal, who never had any issues with their old phone. Try using WiFi at home if you can..

I didn't have any problems with 3G hurting the battery's performance before Froyo and had been using my home WiFi when at home while waiting for the OTA update. The first night running on Froyo with 3G off and WiFi on was when the battery dropped like a rock. Again, the majority of the loss of battery occurred while I was asleep so I wasn't checking ATK and killing the bloatware and the other random self-loaded apps that now self-start. The WiFi signal strength is great in my bedroom so the Inc shouldn't have had to search for it.

I removed ATK and will run the Inc "naked" and see what happens. Thanks.

[msk1277]

Im with all of you with the whole battery life issue with froyo. My batter drops 15% every half hour. It sucks. I hate to say that a friend of mine with an i*hone 3gs is getting like twice the battery life I am getting. Any other ideas on what the issue could be. I have tried all of what has been suggested..

[bjanusch]

I had serious battery problems the first few days. It turned out my Wifi was cycling out of control the entire time. Once I uninstalled all of my wifi related tools, battery went back to what I had been getting before. Adding them back one at a time I figured out that it was Robert Burger's Wifi Widget causing the problem. I went back to the stock HTC widget... haven't tried anything else yet. I think Wifi Fixer may have also been part of the problem. Froyo's wifi seems to pick Wifi back up coming out of sleep, WifiFixer may not even be needed.

[SkittlezGTI]

anyone else notice that the battery takes a lot longer to charge?

[iBowToAndroid]

anyone else notice that the battery takes a lot longer to charge?

Yep me too..

Couple other things that everyone can try..

-Set FB, email, etc. to sync as little as possible- no more than every 15-30 minutes.
-Go to Settings->Accounts & Sync and go into News and Stocks and uncheck the sync boxes. Also un-sync the weather account if you use a different weather app (WeatherBug, TWC, etc.) If you really like the clock/weather widget, you can always manually refresh the widget by pressing on the weather portion of the widget
-Also in Accounts & sync, go to your Gmail account and uncheck syncing for Contacts if you don't find yourself constantly adding new contacts- you can always do a quick manual sync. Backup Assistant is a great thing to set up because it automatically runs once a night and that's it. Also uncheck Calendar syncing if you don't use the Calendar. And also uncheck email sync if you don't really use it and only have it for the sole purpose of needing to create a Gmail account.
-Go to Settings->Wireless & networks->Mobile networks, and uncheck "Enable always-on mobile data"

[Jcat24]

hey i was just reading over this and i have the same problem with soo many apps running in the backround but i havent seen much of a decrease in the battery life. also thanks for so of the tips iBow

[SkittlezGTI]

need to start complaining about the taking longer to charge. it used to take like and hour and a half to 2 hours, and now it's 4-5 hours

[Hilly]

It sounds like something may be keeping your phone awake when it is trying to sleep. After it drains quickly go into the settings>about phone>battery and tell me what it says for "up time" and "awake time." The most likely cause is a rogue application that's normal operation was altered by 2.2 somehow. If your "awake time" seems like a much larger amount of time than u actually had your phone awake then you need to grab a program like system panel to find out which program is doing it and uninstall it.

If the "awake time" seems normal then I would first try a battery pull if you haven't yet, if that doesn't fix anything then you will have to back up your data and do a factory reset. If that doesn't fix it then u will have to go to a Verizon store and have them look at it.

Hopefully it's just a Rogue app! Good luck, let me know how it turns out please.

+1 --Slacker Radio is the one app that I have to force kill after use. I don't want to uninstall it, but lets save any discussions on other streaming audio for a different thread.

The other major impact I've found is if you charge your phone with it off....or charge it on the after it's fully charged, turn it off and charge it another 20 minutes. I had hoped they would have fixed this with 2.2 but it doesn't seem like it to me.

[palomosan]

There has been lots of reports from all over that after updating to stock Froyo users batteries were draining faster than before, a friend even emailed HTC, he actually downgraded to 2.1+root.

My suggestion is to intalled a custom rom based on froyo like Skyraider and others.
And if your rooted simply install a Kernel, Skyraiders latest has a Kernel included which will probably help your battery life.

[rap777]

I got a good answer from HTC support on this issue. The tech recommended a way to condition the battery so it "behaves" better (his words, not mine). I had been doing part of what he said to do but it seems the last step, which I did not know about, makes a big difference.
1) With the phone powered on, insert it into the charger or USB. Charge until the LED turns green.
2) Remove from the charging source and power the phone off.
3) Reinsert the charger and charge until the LED turns green again (up to here that's what I was doing).
4) Remove the phone from the power source; power it on until it is fully booted and then power it off.
5) Reinsert the charger and charge until the LED turns green again.
6) Remove the phone from the charger and use it.

I am at 89% of battery life after many calls, texts, emails and internet use since unplugging from the charger at about 9 am (nearly twelve hours ago).

I also dumped ATK.

HTH

[iBowToAndroid]

hm... Very interesting...

I knew about that method, except for steps 4-6. I'm charging now, I'll give it a try.

Thanks for the tip!

[SkittlezGTI]

they need to fix it. it's like the 1 in 2.1 means unplug, turn off and charge once until green, and the second 2 in 2.2 means do this twice. they just need to find a way to fix this. i don't want to specially charge my device.

[SkittlezGTI]

I got a good answer from HTC support on this issue. The tech recommended a way to condition the battery so it "behaves" better (his words, not mine). I had been doing part of what he said to do but it seems the last step, which I did not know about, makes a big difference.
1) With the phone powered on, insert it into the charger or USB. Charge until the LED turns green.
2) Remove from the charging source and power the phone off.
3) Reinsert the charger and charge until the LED turns green again (up to here that's what I was doing).
4) Remove the phone from the power source; power it on until it is fully booted and then power it off.
5) Reinsert the charger and charge until the LED turns green again.
6) Remove the phone from the charger and use it.

I am at 89% of battery life after many calls, texts, emails and internet use since unplugging from the charger at about 9 am (nearly twelve hours ago).

I also dumped ATK.

HTH

i'm trying this method tonight, is there anyone that has tried it and had success yes?

[leozdad]

yes i have tried "bumping" my battery and MAN what a difference, my phone has been on for 22 hrs and awake 2 hrs and i am at 79% charge. Not bad compared to before i did this procedure and i too dumped ATK