by
31. August 2011 17:55
Ok so the smartphone-to-dumbphone downgrade ended up being a mixed success and failure. I'm back to a smartphone but I'm not obsessed with it, which is nice.
I went with the HTC Inspire 4G becuase it was the only phone AT&T was willing to offer me after 3 bad Samsung Solstice II phones. I'm very happy with it but I noticed that the battery life was horrible.
Here's how I fixed that crap, baby.
How to make the Inspire 4G battery last longer:
- Found this on the Android Forums, when you restart the phone IMMEDIATELY kill the following processes (unless you're using them for something specific):
- AT&T Mark The Spot (if you have it)
- AT&T Navigator
- AT&T HotSpots
- Maps Rate Places
- *** I didn't have all of these, but I killed what was there
- Adjust your screen brighness down to about 10%. This was the single biggest factor for me. When my brightness was at 30% the screen was using about 65% of my battery. Big screen, lots of juice. (Settings > Display > Brightness). Disable Auto-Brightness.
- Set your screen timout to the lowest possibly setting: 15 Seconds. (Settings > Display > Screen Timeout)
- IF you are in an area where you have NO cell signal (says Searching...) put the phone in Airplane Mode. Searching for a tower will drain any phone quickly
- IF you are in an area where you can't get a data signal or are bouncing between EDGE and 3g or H+, disable data when you don't need it
- DO NOT INSTALL ADVANCED TASK KILLER OR OTHER TASK KILLER APPS. Android 2.2 and higher does not need them and they will actually use more juice than they will save. On top of this they can cause instability by killing necessary services.
Doing these things has been a significant change. Currently I get about 16 hours of usage and end up with about 20% battery at the end of the day.
Here's my typical usage:
- 6+ hours of music
- Auto-Syncing (at least every hour)
- Facebook
- 2 Twitter accounts
- 4 IMAP mail accounts
- Google Docs
- Google+
- Google Contacts
- GMail
- Weather (every 2 hours)
- 150+ texts and pic messages
- 5-10 pictures
- 30 minutes of talk
- Web Browsing with Opera Mini < 30 minutes
- Facebook < 1 hour
- Twitter < 1 hour
- Gaming < 30 minutes
Many people say that disabling GPS, WiFi, Data, and background apps will save battery life but in my experience those things have been insignificant.
If you want to see how your battery is being used go to Settings > About Phone > Battery > Battery Use
One last thing. Let's not pretend that a miracle is going to happen here. This phone is huge and has more power than your desktop computer did 10 years ago. It's GOING to drink battery like mad. The suggestions above should help significantly but it's not going to get you through 24 hours with 50% battery.
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