So, I was well informed from many different sources that the biggest drawback to the Thunderbolt was the horrendous battery life (people complaining in the 4 hour range). I came from a Samsung Fascinate, which would most of the time get me through the day, but just barely, and the Battery Use was almost always 70-80% screen (even at the lowest brightness). I primarily got the Thunderbolt for the possibility of 4G tethering, so the first thing I did was buy an external battery charger pack (extended battery was sold out).
Well, I've had it for a few days now and despite geeking out on the phone, tethering whenever I can, using it probably more than my Fascinate, I haven't had any issues with battery. I pulled it off charge about 8am this morning, it's currently 9:45pm, I've been using it pretty heavily all day, tethering on the train to work, using it at work, and using it the whole train ride home, and it's currently at 33% battery. 6:18:00 Awake time. Where is this horrendous battery life I heard about?
I'm not using any battery saving utilities (Juice defender etc), have it set to Auto Brightness, just letting it be on WiFi when WiFi is available. I'm using the bone stock HTC Android 2.2 that came with it, not root etc.
So far this phone has much better battery life than my Fascinate and I'm pretty impressed, especially since I believe it has a slightly smaller battery. If I check battery use today, it's 59% Display, with the next highest being 9% Cell Standby.
I haven't used it as a 4G hotspot for more than maybe 30 minutes at a time, but even then it doesn't seem to die too quickly. Am I just missing something that other people are doing that drains their batteries like crazy or is it just that I'm careful about not using stuff the indiscriminately uses 4G for no reason? (I removed all the auto updating widgets like the Friend Feed etc).
Anyone else had a similar experience?
Ummm, yah, well, it's just you...
JK... the battery is ok for me I haven't had it die on me yet but when ever I drive it goes in the charger so I'm sure that adds up.
Darthus said:
So, I was well informed from many different sources that the biggest drawback to the Thunderbolt was the horrendous battery life (people complaining in the 4 hour range). I came from a Samsung Fascinate, which would most of the time get me through the day, but just barely, and the Battery Use was almost always 70-80% screen (even at the lowest brightness). I primarily got the Thunderbolt for the possibility of 4G tethering, so the first thing I did was buy an external battery charger pack (extended battery was sold out).
Well, I've had it for a few days now and despite geeking out on the phone, tethering whenever I can, using it probably more than my Fascinate, I haven't had any issues with battery. I pulled it off charge about 8am this morning, it's currently 9:45pm, I've been using it pretty heavily all day, tethering on the train to work, using it at work, and using it the whole train ride home, and it's currently at 33% battery. 6:18:00 Awake time. Where is this horrendous battery life I heard about?
I'm not using any battery saving utilities (Juice defender etc), have it set to Auto Brightness, just letting it be on WiFi when WiFi is available. I'm using the bone stock HTC Android 2.2 that came with it, not root etc.
So far this phone has much better battery life than my Fascinate and I'm pretty impressed, especially since I believe it has a slightly smaller battery. If I check battery use today, it's 59% Display, with the next highest being 9% Cell Standby.
I haven't used it as a 4G hotspot for more than maybe 30 minutes at a time, but even then it doesn't seem to die too quickly. Am I just missing something that other people are doing that drains their batteries like crazy or is it just that I'm careful about not using stuff the indiscriminately uses 4G for no reason? (I removed all the auto updating widgets like the Friend Feed etc).
Anyone else had a similar experience?
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It's you.
Seriously though. Go to any one of the Thunderbolt forums or read any Thunderbolt review and you'll see the battery being discussed prominently. There is definitely an issue with it. Who knows what it is though..
The thing that really bothers me is the battery isnt consistently bad. Like the last two days Ive gotten 24 hours of use out of my phone. Normally that's unheard of.. but next week something will happen and it will be back to being dead within 6-8 hours with barely any use.
You are correct that this issue is oft-cited in regards to the TB. However, I think the 4 hour data points may be slightly exaggerated. I wound up buying the oem extended battery because I wasn't make it past 6.5 hours with regular use. I travel pretty far to get to work every day, switching between many towers over the course of my commute, constantly going from 4g to 3g to 1x and back. Besides the screen (which will be the biggest battery drain on any phone with a modern touchscreen) data should be your next highest drain, and the biggest variable you are capable of tweaking to change your battery performance. My 6.5 hour experience was with a pretty abusive data usage scenario, and I don't see many people inflicting much more upon the battery in actual, real-world use. That said, with the extended battery, the TB has the best battery life of any phone I have owned in the last five years, and I couldn't be happier.
I'm getting about 12 hours with pretty heavy use. Running BAMF 1.6.2 with kernel overclocked. I'm pretty happy with battery life...it's just as good as it was on my droid incredible.
I have learned thru experience that all HTC phones with 4.3 inches screens are bad at battery life. When I say bad, that's comparing it to a smaller less powerful device. But take in account all it does and to me battery is ok. I mean the HD2, and EVO when I owned them were battery hogs. But I always had a charge. Ppl want bigger and faster phones,Well there's a trade off until battery technology catches up, the bigger phones will consume more battery. Its like saying I want a better car more sporty and trendy but I don't want to pay that much. Not goin to happen.
With just 3G available to me and using everything stock...I get slightly better battery life than I did with my incredible that was on CM7. Compared to a stock incredible, much better. I'm a bit scared for when I do get 4G seeing all the posts though =)
Rooting gave me an extra 2% per hour usage. I can go 15 hours and still have 40% left on my battery. I'm happy with this battery.
Thunderbolt has better battery life than my Samsung Epic had. Stock, my battery wasnt all that great. However, changing some settings and finding a suitable kernel has helped with my battery life.
I have had the same experience. Coming from a Fascinate, the Thunderbolt is so much better on battery life. Mind you, I do not live in an LTE area. This is what I do:
- Juice Defender (Balanced settings)
- Brightness - half way
- GPS only on when I need it
- Wifi on almost 100% of the time (at home and work I use only wifi)
- Non-Rooted
I even have 100+ apps installed including leaving Google Talk and Yahoo Messenger on almost 24/7. I have about 8 or 9 widgets as well. Most that pull info.
The terrible battery life comes when the phone tries to hold a bad 4g signal drains the battery at an insane amount. If you're in strong signal expect much better battery life but because 4g is so new I expect a lot of people to be in areas with low 4g signal as Verizon has not even turned up 85-90% of the towers past 45% power.
I've had the TB for 3 days now and am coming from a rooted Eris (running xtr rom). I have noticed that with the same amount of usage I am also getting better battery life on the stock TB than I did on my Eris. I am in an area that does not have 4G so I have that turned off.
afallucco said:
The terrible battery life comes when the phone tries to hold a bad 4g signal drains the battery at an insane amount. If you're in strong signal expect much better battery life but because 4g is so new I expect a lot of people to be in areas with low 4g signal as Verizon has not even turned up 85-90% of the towers past 45% power.
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where did you get this info about the power of the towers? btw what power do they normally work at? 100W?
afallucco said:
The terrible battery life comes when the phone tries to hold a bad 4g signal drains the battery at an insane amount. If you're in strong signal expect much better battery life but because 4g is so new I expect a lot of people to be in areas with low 4g signal as Verizon has not even turned up 85-90% of the towers past 45% power.
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I'd love to see some sources backing this info up.
When I bought my TB I left the store with the extended battery in. The battery easily lasts me all day. After reading all the complaints about how bad the stock battery is I decided to try using it and I'm actually surprised by how long it lasts. I was expecting much worse. It's easily lasted me 8-12 hours with my normal everyday use. I'm going to stick to the stock battery from now on. I was getting annoyed by the heft and bulkiness of the extended battery. My phone feels so sleek with the stock one.
Yeah, I'm with the "it's just you" crowd.
Pretty bad battery life for me here in NYC (plenty of good 4G around).
Not a heavy data user (less than 20min browsing per day).
Not a lot of long calls.
Accounts update once every hour (FB, 2 email accounts).
Brightness at min.
No video playing, no music playing.
No speakerphone used.
Rooted, BAMF 1.3.2
GPS and WiFi rarely on at all.
I'm lucky, --LUCKY--, if I get like 6 hours out of a fully charged battery.
daniel178 said:
Yeah, I'm with the "it's just you" crowd.
Pretty bad battery life for me here in NYC (plenty of good 4G around).
Not a heavy data user (less than 20min browsing per day).
Not a lot of long calls.
Accounts update once every hour (FB, 2 email accounts).
Brightness at min.
No video playing, no music playing.
No speakerphone used.
Rooted, BAMF 1.3.2
GPS and WiFi rarely on at all.
I'm lucky, --LUCKY--, if I get like 6 hours out of a fully charged battery.
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Just curious, why are you still using BAMF 1.3.2?
running Bamf 1.6.1 and Imoseyon Lean Kernal set at 1.4Ghz with SetCPU on Smartass, along with ATK set to kill every 30 mins(oh I know they are the devil, yet my battery life is always better with one, so no comments about how they are bad.) I also always have 4G on, and usually fluctuate between -82 to -94dB in signal strength, and wifi is never on, as my home network is strained enough as it is. GPS is always off unless I need it.
I also use WPClock Live Wallpaper at the same time.
Yesterday I was at 18% with 2 days since last plugged in.
Of course I also calibrated my battery, after flashing Bamf 1.6.1.
I use my phone alot for facebook, angry birds, browsing the web and a crap ton of texting, I probably hit near 1000 text a month, I know that isn't what the high school brats are pulling, but still, for me, that is insane.
On my Evo 4G, with 4G off, I could hit 3 days running CM7 underclocked to 750Mhz max. That was with a bigger battery as well.
I am very exited for CM7 to go into a beta, or nightly stage, and the kinks worked out, as I am sure with 4G on I can hit near 3 days with the Thunderbolt as well.
nosympathy said:
running Bamf 1.6.1 and Imoysen Lean Kernal set at 1.4Ghz with SetCPU on Smartass, along with ATK set to kill every 30 mins(oh I know they are the devil, yet my battery life is always better with one, so no comments about how they are bad.) I also always have 4G on, and usually fluctuate between -82 to -94dB in signal strength, and wifi is never on, as my home network is strained enough as it is.
Yesterday I was at 18% with 2 days since last plugged in.
Of course I also calibrated my battery, after flashing Bamf 1.6.1.
I use my phone alot for facebook, angry birds, browsing the web and a crap ton of texting, I probably hit near 1000 text a month, I know that isn't what the high school brats are pulling, but still, for me, that is insane.
On my Evo 4G, with 4G off, I could hit 3 days running CM7 underclocked to 750Mhz max. That was with a bigger battery as well.
I am very exited for CM7 to go into a beta, or nightly stage, and the kinks worked out, as I am sure with 4G on I can hit near 3 days with the Thunderbolt as well.
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Update your sig, brah. Still says your running Tesla Coil.
Overall battery life is a lot better than my cm7 Incredible, and on mostly standby it lasted quite awhile before I had to charge it (I couldn't use it for a few days because vzw wonked up on activating my TB somehow), so it lasted almost 3 days with only occasional data use/seeing if the phone was working (I couldn't send texts or make/receive calls, but my data was working)
dbisch said:
Update your sig, brah. Still says your running Tesla Coil.
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I know, I am a lazy ass, haha.
Interesting observation, perhaps the coding Guru's can take into account. I noticed that at home where I seem to have perfect 4g signal, my battery lasts nearly 20+ hours and seems great.
My wife, who works at a hospital also noticed that at work she barely gets 6 hours and has to swap batteries constantly. Her phone also seems to always been warm and the battery info reports the same data that it always does(Blaming the screen). She's been complaining to me for a while, threatening to want to go back to the iphones and I've been trying to look for a solution.
So fast forward some time, I notice that when I go to an area with spotty service(an Office in Delaware that I occasionally visit), I'm lucky to get 6 hours of life on my phone. It also was exhibiting the same luke warming heating that my wife had been complaining about. I disabled data and got it to straggle by, but then I also experimented with wifi.
The wifi in that office is super strong and when I connected to wifi with my phone instead of having it constantly search for Edge/3G/LTE, it would just sit on wifi and never bother searching for signal.
This boosted the life from the 6 hours to 14 hours. I also recommended the same to my wife and she went from 6 hours to 18 hours(Better Wifi signal and no 4 hour train ride with spotty signal searching)
So, perhaps the radio logic is way too aggressive on these phones and if there was a way to make them just calm down and not look for 5 minutes if it doesn't find signal, perhaps they wouldn't burn themselves out.
Is there a way to reduce the radio aggressiveness? Cause quite frankly, if I don't have signal the second I walk out of the subway, I could really care less. Polling every 5 minutes is totally fine by me and it would be even better if it was configurable.
Anyways, perhaps others who are suffering with terrible battery life could experiment and see if enabling wifi extends their battery longetivity.
Cheers!
Er...I think everyone knows that WiFi increases your battery life substantially. However, user defined polling times might not be a bad idea.
Sent from my Droid Charge running Humble 1.4
I know wifi increases battery life, and and on the flipside if you don't have a strong wifi signal it will keep trying to find one... But my question is how much drain?
I drove to work in Queens from central new jersey (about an hour and a half and the battery drained about 60% with the wifi switched on. Is this the fault or do I have another problem?
Running latest humble fe
Sent from my SCH-I510 using XDA Premium App
I want to say that it drained purely because it was trying to find any signal, even if Wifi was off, I'd be willing to wager that it would have still lost that much battery life on the drive in.
All this still makes me think that if the devs could find the logic that controls the radio probing and allow it to be set based upon configurable options, our battery lives would be tremendously better.
superslow said:
I want to say that it drained purely because it was trying to find any signal, even if Wifi was off, I'd be willing to wager that it would have still lost that much battery life on the drive in.
All this still makes me think that if the devs could find the logic that controls the radio probing and allow it to be set based upon configurable options, our battery lives would be tremendously better.
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So it is reasonable to assume the wifi search drained it that much? I I doubt it was general lte/data searching -new york is pretty covered
Sent from my SCH-I510 using XDA Premium App
I am currently using a Galaxy S3 SCH-I535, stock, unrooted, and have noticed decreased battery performance over-time. I have already viewed many similar threads to try and pinpoint particular issues (wakelocks, troublesome apps, etc.). I was hoping for some perspective whether my battery life is up to snuff.
I have seen many describe their phone life with ~3+ hours of screen time with moderate usage. I use my phone intermittently throughout the work day to chat (Text messages, Hangouts), check e-mail, and browse the internet. I do not use Wi-fi, aside from when I am home in the morning or at night, and make sure to turn it off if not connected to a network. I have sync turned on, but the only accounts I have syncing are Google Now and Gmail. I have location services/GPS/Bluetooth turned off, and run in Power Saving mode with brightness at ~50% and haptic feedback turned on. My reception is subpar, usually about 2 bars and spotty 4g connections at work. I do not stream music, play games, or watch videos during typical use. No facebook, weather apps, etc. that can be culprits some times. At best, with the usage habits described, it is typical that I get 2 hours screen time over a single day (~16 hrs) before I get in the single digit battery %.
I've attached some screen shots I took of battery stats at ~50% drained (I didn't get a screen grab for it but at that battery % I had probably 1:05 to 1:15 hours of screen time). I just started using Wakelock Detector to find any problem apps - after tweaking some apps last week this has been pretty typical behavior. I have even swapped batteries with my wife's S3 to see if it was a battery problem, but did not notice a difference.
Any feedback would be greatly appreciated. Are my expectations for battery life too high? Is this typical, or am I running lower than I should be?
That is pretty good but this comment is by someone who is rooted with a custom ROM and custom kernel since I bought the phone 7 months ago. I can't really say that is the average battery life for the device.
This looks pretty normal to me. You said you had spotty 4g coverage, while your phone is coming in and out of 4g service you'll get decreased battery life. Same happens with your mobile data and Wifi signals if they aren't strong connections.
It looks like your phone is running pretty well. People getting 3+ hours of battery life are either using their phone all the time and hit that threshold in something like 8 hours, have amazing coverage, and/or have no syncing services turned on. A key to run away Wakelocks are having a high battery usage that is coming from something other than your screen, such as media and android system. Other Wakelocks you can't do too much about. There's a thread that is titled the noobs guide to Wakelocks that gives you a pretty good direction trying to isolate Wakelocks and finding fixes for them.
I routinely get about 2-3 hours of battery life in a good coverage area in 16 hours, if I'm in a spotty area my battery will drop much faster. At a friends house with worse coverage I'll be lucky to hit 2 hours. I pretty much use my phone the same way as you.
Sent from my SCH-I535 using Tapatalk 2
I've been using both AT&T and T-Mobile (StraightTalk and T-Mobile) contract free for several months now and regardless of what my signal is on the two, I always seem to get worse battery life with StraightTalk/AT&T. Has anyone else played around with using both in the same places for an extended period of time and had the same results?
I'm trying to decide which I'm going to go with and so far even though I get LTE service in less areas with T-Mobile, I'm almost tempted to stick with them just because 1) when I do have LTE service, it's a ton faster then AT&T and 2) I get much less battery drain on T-Mobile then I do with AT&T.
Even in places where I had worse reception with T-Mobile (which less face it, is very often), I still get less battery drain then when I switch to AT&T and have a much better signal. Not sure if I'm hallucinating or if anyone else has experienced the same.
For example, at the hotel I'm currently at, while on T-Mobile my signal isn't quite as good as it is with AT&T but it takes several HOURS before my battery % drops below 90%. On AT&T I have a much better signal but yet I'll be within the low 80s after 3 or so hours.
Has anyone else tried this and if so have you noticed the same thing?
battery life is dependent on how you personally use the phone, how you set it up, and, most importantly, the quality of your phone/data connection. the quality of your phone/data connection could make or brake your battery life, by 1 or 2 screen on hours. thats a huge difference.
simms22 said:
battery life is dependent on how you personally use the phone, how you set it up, and, most importantly, the quality of your phone/data connection. the quality of your phone/data connection could make or brake your battery life, by 1 or 2 screen on hours. thats a huge difference.
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Oh I realize all of that. When home and not on travel I pretty much utilize my phone at two locations. Home and Work. In both locations I used each network for about 2 weeks checking cell signals etc and using the phone the same way the entire time. During this time I've noticed one constant, my phone with AT&T always drains the battery much faster. To be honest I thought I was crazy but I double checked and ran for another couple of weeks..this time basically logging battery life with usage and connection quality. AT&T on average had a better signal but also drained the battery faster...usage was about the same through the test. So I did the same thing while basically sitting in a hotel for a few days and just letting the phone sit as I was mainly using a separate phone on Sprint. Same thing..the time I had the phone sitting there with AT&T it had almost a perfect signal but the phone drained quite a bit faster then T-Mobile with practically no utilization. Obviously I rebooted prior to each.
I realize this doesn't make any sense at all but it's something I'm noticing.
I just found your post, and I'm experiencing the exact same issue. To quote a post I just made on reddit:
I've been a T-mobile prepaid customer (the $30 5gb plan) since I've had the N5, and recently I decided to switch to Straight Talk for the better coverage (I got the AT&T compatible SIM). I've been using the Straight Talk SIM for the past week, and I've notice two very odd things:
1. Battery life is significantly worse on Straight Talk. Unfortunately I don't have any before and after screen shots, but to provide context, a typical day of usage on T-mobile would leave me with ~50% battery life at the end of the day. Now, with Straight Talk and that same usage, I'm down to 10-20%.
2. With Straight Talk, I consistently have 4-5 bars of LTE, but oftentimes when I try and load a web page, there can be about a 5 second delay before the page starts loading. Even when running the Speed Test app, when it's testing the download speed, it will sometimes completely stop mid-download for a few seconds.
Have you found any solution to the battery issue you cited in your post?
I knew I wasn't nuts!
http://bgr.com/2014/08/06/best-smartphone-battery-life-t-mobile/
ParadingLunatic said:
I knew I wasn't nuts!
http://bgr.com/2014/08/06/best-smartphone-battery-life-t-mobile/
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again, it still fits right in, its the data/phone signal quality that decides the battery life, as i wrote earlier. lowered quality = lowered battery life, period.