Ultimate battery saving tips!!

[eli783]

With all smartphones, battery life per full charge is always an issue. Out of the box there are a couple of amenities that most can do without. Since becoming more battery life conscious, I've been able to go through entire work days on a single full charge! I've decided to share with wealth.

1. Turn off Palm Backup.
Palm Backup is a service that backups your contacts, tasks, calendars and memos over the air, completely free of charge. Even though its a great built-in feature, its one that is energy consuming.
For those who don't know how to navigate through the menus, follow the steps below.
1. In launcher go to the "Settings" Page.
2. Scroll down and click on Backup.
3. Slide the slider to off.

2. Turn off Location Services.
C'mon, is it really that hard to turn the location services back on when you really need them.I mean how many times do you need to order movie tickets or find the nearest gas station. All location services on the pre are power suckers. For the apps that require you to have "auto locate" or "use gps" on, just turn them on when you need to. The large majority of the day I believe most will see that they can do without.
1. In launcher go to the "Settings" Page.
2. Click on Location Services.
3. Slide everything to off.

3. Turn your screen brightness down!
The display is so vibrant with the brightness all the way up, but it sucks way too much power. I have my brightness set at about 2/8 of max. I also have my screen auto off set to 30 secs. No more steps, if you don't know how to turn the brightness of the screen down, think.

4.Wi-Fi is your friend
Sprint's 3G network is great when your on the go, but when your at the office or at home, use Wi-Fi. Uses way less energy then connecting through the internet via sprint.

5. Set your email to sync manually
Even though straight push email is superb on the Pre, push email on any platform is energy consuming. I have mine set to manual, but using this tip really depends on your needs.

6. If you have email accounts on your Pre that you can do without, break ties.
For some reason email still syncs to my Pre regardless of me changing the push to manual. More accounts simply means more time that your phone is using power getting irrelevant mail to your phone. I started with 3 and I'm down to 2, and I see a hell of a difference! Possibly considering just moving to 1.

7. Use camera flash sparingly
Not a huge power saver, but if you can go without out it, then do so.

8. Run as few apps as possible
Even though the Pre is THE best multi-tasking smartphone on the market, its a battery conscious move to close apps that you can do without.

[Walter E Kurtz]

Good list. I don't like the idea of having to "delete" backup when I turn it off, but I'll try it and see how it goes. Brightness is the only other one that'll be worth it (for me).

[bruba]

9. Don't use your phone at all. Turn the power off and the battery won't go dead at all!





But seriously. About 3., I've put the wait on 1 min (for checking websites) and trained myself to automatically turn the screen off (push power) after using it and putting it back on my desk. Saves power and doesn't ruin the user experience.

For the rest, my battery life has been pretty good with normal use. Worse than my previous phone, but I reckon I use it a lot more, since it's more usable...

[west3man]

Great list. This should make our eventual Pre-transition that much easier.

[busdriver]

I've given up trying to maximize battery life.

I paid good money on this phone so I've turned everything back on and will see if Palm can get it right.

Every day the battery life is all over the place.

[akarol]

Turning features off such as Backup and Location Services might indeed improve battery life, but will definetely ruin the user experience. Sure, you can turn those services back on when needed, but having to do so takes away from the efficiency and magic behind the phone. What makes the Pre what it is, is how readily available everything is.

[un_designer]

good tips if you're in an area that has poor/spotty coverage. but like a couple above me have said, we shouldn't be avoiding features the phone comes with to save battery life. that's what software optimization is for

one thing to note about the GPS though... it takes a while to warm up and work, so turning it on only when needed will usually result in the application requesting the GPS info not getting it in a timely manner and not work properly. i could not get sprint navigation or mCraig, and sometimes googlemaps, to work properly when i had location services set to as-needed. now everything works perfectly, and my battery life is about half a day. but, i'm also constantly online too so i don't expect my battery to last the whole day.

[wynand32]

I don't agree with everything on this list, and if you peruse the forum you'll probably find contradictory advice for some of them. For example, there are those who are convinced that keeping push email turned on results in better battery life.

For myself, I can say that I've tried just about all of these tips, and other than the ones that severely limit the usefulness of the device, such as turning GPS off, none have had an appreciable impact on my battery life. I've averaged a discharge rate of around 10%/hour pretty much no matter how I've set things.

I'm not happy with this performance, but frankly if I needed such better battery life that I needed to follow these kinds of tips, I'd buy a dumbphone.

[un_designer]

yikes, that's a huge drain. are you seeing that kind of drain when the phone is just sitting there? or when you're actually using it?

i have 5 email accounts (2 gmails, 2 yahoo, one personal, all IMAP IDLE set to as it arrives), GPS turned on, and online way too much. i do notice battery drain where the signal is sporatic: switching back and forth bet 1x and EV; wifi is present but weak/sporatic but the pre still tries to connect to the wifi rather than going with EV.

Originally Posted by wynand32

I don't agree with everything on this list, and if you peruse the forum you'll probably find contradictory advice for some of them. For example, there are those who are convinced that keeping push email turned on results in better battery life.

For myself, I can say that I've tried just about all of these tips, and other than the ones that severely limit the usefulness of the device, such as turning GPS off, none have had an appreciable impact on my battery life. I've averaged a discharge rate of around 10%/hour pretty much no matter how I've set things.

I'm not happy with this performance, but frankly if I needed such better battery life that I needed to follow these kinds of tips, I'd buy a dumbphone.

[busdriver]

My overnight battery discharge rate is all over the place.

The other night I lost 50%. Most nights average about 15%.

I'm going to try a couple of nights with Airplane Mode ON but with WiFi turned on.

[west3man]

Originally Posted by wynand32

I don't agree with everything on this list, and if you peruse the forum you'll probably find contradictory advice for some of them. For example, there are those who are convinced that keeping push email turned on results in better battery life.

For myself, I can say that I've tried just about all of these tips, and other than the ones that severely limit the usefulness of the device, such as turning GPS off, none have had an appreciable impact on my battery life. I've averaged a discharge rate of around 10%/hour pretty much no matter how I've set things.

I'm not happy with this performance, but frankly if I needed such better battery life that I needed to follow these kinds of tips, I'd buy a dumbphone.

Have you tried getting a new Pre?

[Siteoner]

JUst another more region specific tip for all the NYC people here. When you get on the train put the thing in airplane mode. Searching for signal KILLS the battery on any phone and believe me it aint gonna find a signal two stories below street level.

[osubrad04]

I have actually found that after 1.0.3 that my battery life is worse. I'm not sure what they changed... maybe more syncing in the background? I'm looking forward to 1.0.4 to see if maybe there is better battery life down the road. Am I alone after this update?

[klt0042]

Originally Posted by osubrad04

I have actually found that after 1.0.3 that my battery life is worse. I'm not sure what they changed... maybe more syncing in the background? I'm looking forward to 1.0.4 to see if maybe there is better battery life down the road. Am I alone after this update?

Nope, my battery life got worse as well.

[The_lane]

TURN GPS OFF. I was getting from OK battery life to meh battery life, 8 maybe 9 hours at the most. I unplugged it from the charger a bit before noon and after a day of fairly moderate use I'm just now at 15%. 11 o clock
WIFI: When I'm at a hotspot
Brightness: most of the way down but that's how ilike it
Email: Push
Screen: 1min for half the day then 30 secs to see how I like it

[Hook_em]

What worked for me:

I had been turning everything off (location services, gps, brightness down all the way), but I still had been getting less than desirable battery longevity.

For some reason, I had never turned off palm's backup service (suggestion 1 in this post). I could be wrong, but since I turned off the backup service, I want to go so far as to say my battery life has indeed gotten better.

I will tell you what I did with the phone while it was off the charger for 4.66 hours:

--talked on the phone for about 45 minutes via approx. 10 phonecalls
--sent approx. 10 texts
--listened to pandora for about 5 minutes
--surfed the web for about 10 minutes
--received about 5 emails

My battery only drained 33%. Now I know for some of you this does not mean much, but I am one of the unfortunate ones who would be lucky if I got 8 hours of life with this kind of 'moderate' use.

It turns out my battery was draining at just over 7% an hour, which is great for me. Hopefully those of you who had not turned off the backup service do so and experience similar if not better results

[Gordon84]

I wanted to post how I fixed my battery drain issue. I had a warm phone with about 7% drain an hour, which is of course way too much. I tried EVERYTHING, and I do mean everything, all the tips and fixes I could scrounge from the internet and this wonderful site, some tips helped a bit but really not enough. After days of fiddling I finally figured out my problem. I had two email accounts, a gmail set to push and an earthlink set to check every six hours. I figured that checking every six hours would be fine, wrong, thats where the problem was. Earthlink is POP and dosnt have an option to retrieve email as it arrives. I deleted earthlink and voila! Its been an hour and a half and im only down 2%! My advice which I do believe is worth a shot is to delete any email account that cant "push" email and see what happens. I cant believe it worked and Im thrilled. Please let me know if this helped anyone.

[osubrad04]

I guess my concern is that Palm advertises the battery life to be 300 hours of Standby. I have most options turned off & am getting no where near 24 hours of standby. I hope Palm can address this. There is absolutely no reason for such a disparity between the two numbers.

[houtx]

Originally Posted by osubrad04

I guess my concern is that Palm advertises the battery life to be 300 hours of Standby. I have most options turned off & am getting no where near 24 hours of standby. I hope Palm can address this. There is absolutely no reason for such a disparity between the two numbers.

I would imagine that the 300 hours is when there is no data service running in the background. So the stat may be true, but it's worthless (mpg when rolling down a hill, for instance).

[aznicktwit]

Originally Posted by akarol

Turning features off such as Backup and Location Services might indeed improve battery life, but will definetely ruin the user experience. Sure, you can turn those services back on when needed, but having to do so takes away from the efficiency and magic behind the phone. What makes the Pre what it is, is how readily available everything is.

I completely agree. I don't want to have remember (or take steps) to turn on geotag to take a picture, I just want the data on every picture I take. I also don't want to manually download my email, and I don't want to turn off the backup feature. Disabling all of the phones features doesn't make sense to me. I'd rather deal with having to charge it a lot.