Battery Life Good? Any Battery Saving Tips?

[Disaster]

Someone suggested an issue with Hotmail accounts that causes the phone to continually try to synch. I had a Hotmail account and a Pre that runs 3 to 4 hours, at best, and gets very hot, despite not running any software on it (in other words it would run empty while sitting on my desk with no apps running...or at least, none that I started.)

So tonight, after charging it I removed the hotmail account. 15 minutes later it still reads 100% and is cool as a cucumber! YEEEHAAAHHHHH!!!!

If this fixes the problem it will save me a trip back to the Sprint store tomorrow for a return.

P.S. One other thing to mention. My hotmail is a very busy account and I haven't been good about maintaining it lately. There are over 3000 unread emails (advertisements mostly) in it.

[say oh shin]

today:

pulled off charger at 6:30AM

10ish gmail emails recieved with setting to check every 10? minutes
5 in text/5 out text
background services on
autolocate on

no cell phones allowed inside of the room i work in so it was hardly touched.

7PM we are looking at 36% battery left...that is borderline disgusting

turned off background services, changed gmail to only as it comes and we'll see if tomorrow is better...if not, the iphone 3gs is looking pretty effing tempting

[bubbatex]

Originally Posted by D R

Agreed, there's no reason they should be running when there are no cards and the phone is in sleep. However, I have no other explanation.

My phone was HOT when in idle/sleep, with no cards. I uninstall some apps and the phone instantly behaves - no more insane heat, and no more serious power drain when not in use.

After running it like a normal phone for about 5 hours this morning, no heat issues emerge and the phone is at 60% - which I think is acceptable.

At 1pm I reinstall some of the apps and the phone becomes a heat pack again, while draining the battery about 25% in half an hour of non-use (except to occasionally turn on the screen and check the battery level). Everything is fine again when I put it on airplane mode, and I head out for finals.

When I get back home, I take it off airplane mode and the phone instantly heats back up.

The airplane mode fix indicates the phone is either trying to locate a signal or get a GPS fix on its location. The fact that it was fine when I took off certain apps indicates to me that one may be trying to access location services 24/7.

At this point, I'm uninstalling the apps one at a time to see if one of the apps is the culprit. After that, Hotmail's going down, but as I said the phone was running just fine w/ Hotmail running earlier today.

Look at post 301 above - Hot mail might be your problem.

[D R]

Well, so much for the Apps being the issue (unless I had to restart or something silly after uninstalling). I'm removing Hotmail next to see if that takes care of it.


6:17 (29%) – Ended charge, entered airplane mode
6:26 (29%) – Pre was cool to the touch – Exited airplane mode – Wi-Fi is now on. One text was received (and replied to) prior to hitting the sleep button.
6:28 (27%) – Pre is beginning to heat up.
6:36 (24%) – Pre is hot. Deleted Fandango
6:37: (23%)
6:42 (20%) – Deleted AccuWeather
6:48 (16%) – Deleted AP Mobile
6:51 (14%) – Deleted GoodFood, Craigslist.
6:55 (12%)
6:58 (10%)
7:00 (9%) – Auto Locate was on, disabled
7:03 (7%) – No change to battery drain or heat

[D R]

Originally Posted by bubbatex

Look at post 301 above - Hot mail might be your problem.

It's the next item on my list. I noticed it was having a tough time synching earlier today - it may have been a coincidence it was behaving while I didn't have the apps installed. Go figure.

[Stay Suh]

wow...think i might remove my hotmail as well...
well i'm gonna charge it ova night to c if its better...

the temp on the battery has gotten better tho...

[YBCold]

The only thing I have noticed is if you are using the Sprint Telnav it will kill the battery fast. Hope your destination isn't too far!

I don't use hot mail but have notcied abit of heat when checking my Yahoo account. Nothing worth being conserned with IMO.

[Disaster]

Originally Posted by D R

It's the next item on my list. I noticed it was having a tough time synching earlier today - it may have been a coincidence it was behaving while I didn't have the apps installed. Go figure.

It will only act up when it tries to synch to Hotmail. Perhaps it did not try during that short time you evaluated it without the other software.

When I was going crazy trying to figure out why mine drained the battery I ran, what I thought were the hungriest apps all at once. I ran Pandora streaming, Sprint Navigation, Web browser, and a half dozen others...all at the same time. In one full hour of this insane hammering, the battery only went down 30%.

On the other hand, when I left today for the Sprint store, with nothing running (except Hotmail was installed) the phone went from 25% to shutting down in the store in less 40 minutes.

It might not just be Hotmail. Perhaps there are other email accounts that might cause the Pre synch issues but Hotmail was the offender for me.

[YBCold]

One other thing I noticed was as soon as I turned on the Bluetooth service the phone started chewing battery life and got a bit hot. I think it may be a cuplrit that Palm should really look at, especially since every Bluetooth device I have ever used bearly uses any power.

[Disaster]

Originally Posted by YBCold

One other thing I noticed was as soon as I turned on the Bluetooth service the phone started chewing battery life and got a bit hot. I think it may be a cuplrit that Palm should really look at, especially since every Bluetooth device I have ever used bearly uses any power.

Mine sucked the batteries dry with BT, GPS and Wifi turned off.

[godsidekurt]

Sometimes I wonder if the GPS is still on after throwing it off the screen...this happened on my treo 800 and drained the battery alot faster. Anyone know how you can see if the GPS is on?

[Longster]

When I first got Pre and synced with gmail only, there were no heat problem and the battery life was pretty good. After a couple of days later I thought I try adding Live and Hotmail account that uses POP. Since then it got pretty hot and battery were terrible. I think hotmail or possibly any of the POP is what causing the heat and battery drainage. I'm going to remove hotmail/live and see how that goes. will follow up tomorrow.

[Kyusaku]

Originally Posted by funka7ron

Spaz by default will refresh every 15 minutes. You can adjust this or turn it off in the Preferences, though.

Is this when there's no card? Because I have never received a notification from Spaz. I thought it only refreshes the actual card every 15 mins. Tweed doesn't need a card, it has some headless refreshing. So even if no card is active it's still polling the server.(you will get notifications of "mentions" or replies even if Tweed has no card open).

[Disaster]

Originally Posted by godsidekurt

Sometimes I wonder if the GPS is still on after throwing it off the screen...this happened on my treo 800 and drained the battery alot faster. Anyone know how you can see if the GPS is on?

Go to location services and turn it off, after you get done using it with TeleNav or whatever you used it with. Location services indicate the state of the GPS.

[vantechmag]

HOTmail IS the problem...

Some excellent members of this thread...
Re: Palm Pre Overheating and Battery Dies in 3 hours stand by - webOS Hardware - Palm Support Forums

...did finally find out (after many hours testing) that the "battery problem" was HOTMAIL who cause both the heat and drain the battery in only 3 hours - even when the email update was set to manual!!!

But the same phone did then work for over 12 hours, with Gmail active and you can get your Hotmail emails "pulled" by Gmail, too ;-)

Someone had also exactly the same problem 3 times before with OTHER phones and a HOTmail connection, that got crazy for some days...

Please inform the unhappy victims (of HOTmails draining problem) in any other forums you use to visit and help them ;-)

And I sincerely hope it wasn't a devilish attack on Palm, from Microsoft side!!?!!

[D R]

Yup, it ended up being Hotmail for me as well. It must have been a coincidence that it behaved the first five hours of this morning.

I suppose this just means I'll be doing a faster move over to gmail.

[NINnerd]

Ok, here is my test. Don't laugh at my sleeping hours. I am an insomniac who hasn't taken my meds for a few days. For real. Haha.

Note: I do not use Hotmail. And I have like, everything turned to off.

Ok:
5:30pm - Took it off the charger after letting it charge for 9 hours. It was NOT hot or anything.
4:30am (now) - Battery's at 78%. I have made about 2-3 phone calls that lasted about 15 minutes each (so talk time of 45 minutes), and have sent about 10 texts and received about 10 texts. I have looked up Twitter, which took about 1 minute. I have received, but not answered, about 5 calls. So my screen does come on, etc. I just hit the power button twice about 3/5 times. The other times, I let it hit voicemail and just turn itself off.
The rest of the time, it has sat on my desk with no activity. So basically, I would call what I have done "very light" use with tons of idleness. So in about 11 hours of this, I have lost 22% battery life. I'm not sure how I feel about this.

Remember, I come from only other "dumb" phones. I'm used to my phone getting 2.5 days of battery life from each 3 hour charge (no joke). So the Pre's battery use seems pretty excessive to me. I'm not working right now, so I can't imagine if I'm out and about. I mean, I like to talk on the phone on my lunch breaks, going to and from work, etc. Am I going to have to keep the damn thing plugged in all day at work? And what if I get a retail job and can't?

I love the phone itself, but the battery is really worrying me. You smart phone veterans, should I be worried?

[pullbangdead]

Originally Posted by NINnerd

Ok, here is my test. Don't laugh at my sleeping hours. I am an insomniac who hasn't taken my meds for a few days. For real. Haha.

Note: I do not use Hotmail. And I have like, everything turned to off.

Ok:
5:30pm - Took it off the charger after letting it charge for 9 hours. It was NOT hot or anything.
4:30am (now) - Battery's at 78%. I have made about 2-3 phone calls that lasted about 15 minutes each (so talk time of 45 minutes), and have sent about 10 texts and received about 10 texts. I have looked up Twitter, which took about 1 minute. I have received, but not answered, about 5 calls. So my screen does come on, etc. I just hit the power button twice about 3/5 times. The other times, I let it hit voicemail and just turn itself off.
The rest of the time, it has sat on my desk with no activity. So basically, I would call what I have done "very light" use with tons of idleness. So in about 11 hours of this, I have lost 22% battery life. I'm not sure how I feel about this.

Remember, I come from only other "dumb" phones. I'm used to my phone getting 2.5 days of battery life from each 3 hour charge (no joke). So the Pre's battery use seems pretty excessive to me. I'm not working right now, so I can't imagine if I'm out and about. I mean, I like to talk on the phone on my lunch breaks, going to and from work, etc. Am I going to have to keep the damn thing plugged in all day at work? And what if I get a retail job and can't?

I love the phone itself, but the battery is really worrying me. You smart phone veterans, should I be worried?

11 hours of little more than idling, using 22% of your battery, sounds fine to me, personally. I would be very happy with that.

Of course, it's really all up to you whether you think it's enough for how you want to use your phone. Your results would sound fine to me I think, as would the results of several others already posted. I'd trade you in a heartbeat.

Ideally for me, I don't want to have any concern through a whole day of usage. Right now for me, my phone wouldn't even be on anymore after 11 hours of pure idling, it just won't do that. I would personally rank your results pretty high, and fairly comparable to other good results posted so far. In order to test this, I have my screen at dimmest available, Wifi/BT/GPS all off, removed all e-mail accounts just to be safe (never had a hotmail account, which seems to be a big culprit), absolutely nothing running, and it won't run half as long as your phone seems to be able.

I'm not the worst off on here, but my phone's battery is not performing well enough for how I use my phone. Yours sounds like it would meet what I need, but mine currently just isn't doing that. Hopefully something changes soon, or somehow Sprint or someone else can take care of the issues people like me are still having. The advocate at the Sprint store just tried to give me advice on how to turn off everything I've already turned off and no other solutions, which is pretty much useless to me.

[jagerwick]

Originally Posted by NINnerd

Ok, here is my test. Don't laugh at my sleeping hours. I am an insomniac who hasn't taken my meds for a few days. For real. Haha.

Note: I do not use Hotmail. And I have like, everything turned to off.

Ok:
5:30pm - Took it off the charger after letting it charge for 9 hours. It was NOT hot or anything.
4:30am (now) - Battery's at 78%. I have made about 2-3 phone calls that lasted about 15 minutes each (so talk time of 45 minutes), and have sent about 10 texts and received about 10 texts. I have looked up Twitter, which took about 1 minute. I have received, but not answered, about 5 calls. So my screen does come on, etc. I just hit the power button twice about 3/5 times. The other times, I let it hit voicemail and just turn itself off.
The rest of the time, it has sat on my desk with no activity. So basically, I would call what I have done "very light" use with tons of idleness. So in about 11 hours of this, I have lost 22% battery life. I'm not sure how I feel about this.

Remember, I come from only other "dumb" phones. I'm used to my phone getting 2.5 days of battery life from each 3 hour charge (no joke). So the Pre's battery use seems pretty excessive to me. I'm not working right now, so I can't imagine if I'm out and about. I mean, I like to talk on the phone on my lunch breaks, going to and from work, etc. Am I going to have to keep the damn thing plugged in all day at work? And what if I get a retail job and can't?

I love the phone itself, but the battery is really worrying me. You smart phone veterans, should I be worried?

Personally, I'd be ok with that amount of battery life. I've been through winmo hell for years and experienced the joyous battery life of a curve, so i think the pre so far has pretty decent life and will probably only get better.

But, like was said, it depends if that's good for you. If you absolutely need your phone to last 2+ days on a single charge, a smartphone might not be the best choice. But if you're ok with charging it every night, you should be ok.

[Disaster]

Originally Posted by pullbangdead

11 hours of little more than idling, using 22% of your battery, sounds fine to me, personally. I would be very happy with that.

Ditto, that is pretty good performance for a smart phone.