Holy crap, the Pre's battery life is AWFUL

[Deeko]

Alright. I realize all smart phones have bad battery life. My G1 would barely make it to bedtime, if it did at all. The Pre is a whole new level...I've had it two days, yesterday it was dead by 5pm, today it just died (3pm). And this is while I'm at work and barely using it!

I realize I run a lot of stuff on my phones. I've got Exchange running, gmail with push, twitter, gchat, etc. I realize I could close those things, make my email checking time longer, turn down the brightness....but I shouldn't have to. The Touch Pro II is powering a 3.6" 800x480 screen, 3G radio, and all the same services, and it runs well over a day and a half.

Very disappointed. Also, the reception is not as good as my Curve was with Sprint. Maybe I'll return it and get the Tour...but I've heard bad things about that too!

 

[boomhower]

The Tours battery life isn't great either. With your usage it would be about the same, maybe a little better. Give your Pre at least a week before you take it back. The batteries get better after a few cycles. After a week or two I noticed a significant difference in my Tours life.

 

[ChAoTiCpInOy]

Must be the multitasking.

 

[shortylickens]

There have been many web articles explaining why the battery life is short, not to mention stuff you can do to improve it.

Isnt there an extended battery yet?

EDIT:
Yes. http://jkontherun.com/2009/07/...-pre-extended-battery/

Not to mention a fat battery if you dont mind the extra bulk.
http://www.fommy.com/view-full-page.asp?skuno=83630

 

[Deeko]

Yes I've read the articles explaining it - its no different than the reason the G1 has poor battery life, and they have the same capacity battery, so I didn't exoect it to be THIS bad. Oh well. Thanks for the tip on the extended battery, I might look into that.

 

[boomhower]

Originally posted by: ChAoTiCpInOy
Must be the multitasking.

Its the different radios that really kill it. Keeping the voice, data, GPS, and bluetooth going murders battery life. GPS seems to be particularly brutal for me.

 

[Deeko]

Yesterday was the first day I really gave the phone heavy use. I was out apartment shopping, which meant using the GPS to get around, taking a lot of pictures, and I multitasked in the car listening to Pandora while GPSing. The battery lasted 5 hours. It died while I was looking through the pictures I took at the end of the day.

That's just unacceptable - yes, it was heavy usage, but a phone should be able to operate longer than 5 hours under any circumstances. I'll be returning the Pre and I suppose picking up a Tour...or maybe just canceling Sprint altogether and sticking with T-Mobile/my G1. Meh.

 

[erwos]

Originally posted by: Deeko
Yesterday was the first day I really gave the phone heavy use. I was out apartment shopping, which meant using the GPS to get around, taking a lot of pictures, and I multitasked in the car listening to Pandora while GPSing. The battery lasted 5 hours. It died while I was looking through the pictures I took at the end of the day.

You will probably not find a phone that can handle that kind of usage for more than five hours. Buy a car charger - problem solved.

 

[Deeko]

No, problem not solved. I've used my G1, and before that my Nokie N95, just as heavily with much better battery life. 5 hours with heavy usage, 8-9 hours with virtually no usage other than email in the background is simply unacceptable for a phone. The car charger solution only works because I happened to be in a car yesterday - I live in the city, I walk a lot of places. Or maybe I'm out somewhere and I want to be able to use my phone a decent amount when there is no charger of any kind available.

All smart phones have poor battery life, especially when used heavily, you're correct - but the Pre is by far the worst I've ever had, which is a fairly lengthy history (T-Mobile SDA, T-Mobile Dash, Blackberry Curve (T-Mobile), Nokia N95, T-Mobile G1, Blackberry Curve (Sprint). If I can't leave my phone sit on my desk during the day and have it function on the way home, yea, that's a problem.

edit: For reference - my G1 has push gmail by default, I run Touchdown which gives it push Exchange access, and I have home screen widgets updating stocks, weather, twitter, and sports scores fairly regularly. On a bad day, the G1 is dead in the evening sometime (like 8-9pm). On most days, its getting close to dying by the time I go to bed. And the G1 is no battery saint - it was a downgrade in battery life from my Curve and N95 that I had previously. Note that they both have the same capacity battery.

 

[cvrefugee]

I took my phone off the charger about 15hrs ago and I have 50% left...

Wi-Fi - on
Bluetooth - on
GPS - off
Chat - off
Gmail - every 15 min
Brightness - default

I think the reason mine lasts so long is because while I'm at work I put the phone into airplane mode, so eight hours of the 15 saves the battery big time.

 

[Deeko]

Yea - and you aren't using push email which is a big drain on the battery as well.

 

[kedlav]

You're going to kill any multimedia phone when running all the radios. Face facts dude. If you're happy running a nokia and doing less stuff with more battery life, then run the nokia. If not, buy an extended battery (there are extended batteries that do not require a larger case). My Pre makes it through the day using push for gmail/exchange, GPS, etc. turned on as needed. Don't use battery-intensive apps unless you know you can charge soon. You're combining multimedia functions with a smartphone, battery life will go down. Either work intelligently or use multiple devices.

 

[Deeko]

Only one of those days combined multimedia applications. Every other day the phone sat on my desk and listened for emails until it died.

'Use a Nokia' - is that in reference to the N95? Do you think the N95 is a run-of-the-mill flip phone or something? In 2007 it was the most powerful phone on the market. And the G1 is certainly no slouch. At my last job I had a work phone - Blackberry Curve - that lasted nearly two full days without being charged (with push email running 24/7). The fact of the matter is - compared to comparable smart phones, the Pre has abysmal battery life. Every review of the phone will tell you that, and my imperical evidence showed it as well.

 

[kedlav]

Originally posted by: Deeko
Only one of those days combined multimedia applications. Every other day the phone sat on my desk and listened for emails until it died.

'Use a Nokia' - is that in reference to the N95? Do you think the N95 is a run-of-the-mill flip phone or something? In 2007 it was the most powerful phone on the market. And the G1 is certainly no slouch. At my last job I had a work phone - Blackberry Curve - that lasted nearly two full days without being charged (with push email running 24/7). The fact of the matter is - compared to comparable smart phones, the Pre has abysmal battery life. Every review of the phone will tell you that, and my imperical evidence showed it as well.

I'm not saying the battery life is great. It lasts the entire day for me. I have two accounts set up for email push as email arrives, as well as regular text messages and phone calls. I can play games like blackout, dick around on the web, and make it through the day with about 20% left. When I add GPS or bluetooth to the equation, end of day doesn't quite make it. Hence, when I start using nonbusiness multimedia functions, that is when it hits the crapper. there's extended batteries out for a reason.

N95 runs old symbian. curve runs BBOS. Both are older, and less battery intensive. Not exactly a fair comparison. While the pre suffers in comparison to the iphone's battery, that serves as the best reference point. HTC Hero is also a good reference (though its hardware is a bit slow for the software)

 

[Deeko]

Why does the age of the operating system matter? The N95 was not running exchange, just polling gmail, so you can make that claim, but the Curve had multiple push accounts. They are doing the same thing - accessing the same radios for the same functions - why is the older OS an excuse? Also - what about the G1? It runs a "modern" operating system, I had push gmail/exchange/googletalk/twitter/weather/sports applications virtually constantly using the 3G radio. It has a 528mhz processor (albeit slightly underclocked like many phones). The G1 didn't have good battery life - but it was way ahead of the Pre.

 

[Insomniator]

I'm not expert but I am surprised any of your phones even last 5 hours with every chip functioning at basically max drain. Buy a few chargers or an extended battery... think about how small the phones are and what size the battery has to be.

Until we invent the power source in Iron Man's suit, buy some chargers.

 

[Deeko]

Yea...lets stop focusing on the 5 hours on Sunday mmmkay? I expected the battery to be bad that day. How is every chip functioning at max drain when the phone is sitting on my desk, not being touched, silently receiving email? I would say if anything, a smartphone should be able to handle that....since that is the purpose of a smart phone. Yet the Pre cannot. The three full work days I had the phone, it lasted 9, 7, and 7.5 hours...sitting on my desk during the work day, generally unused other than a few stray text messages.

I realize everyone has an odd attachment to their phone and feels threatened if someone dares say something bad about it, but like it or not, the Pre DOES have abnormally poor battery life for a smartphone.

 

[pm]

Deeko, you are using the past tense when talking about your Pre. You returned it? What's you decide to get instead?

 

[Deeko]

That was a pre-emptive past tense, I was intending to return it which I did, last night. I got the Blackberry Tour. Its nice so far, it actually was able to hook into my exchange email via BIS, so I didn't need to pay the extra $20 for BES (which I don't think my company supports anyway). We'll see how it goes, I'll post up how the battery did after its first day I also may try installing a Hero rom on my G1 and sticking it out with T-Mobile a little longer....

I don't mean to sound so harsh about the Pre - the battery life ruled it out for me, but I did like the phone a lot. WebOS is awesome, its the only system I've seen that I liked as much (or maybe more) than Android.

 

[dainthomas]

Originally posted by: Deeko
That was a pre-emptive past tense, I was intending to return it which I did, last night. I got the Blackberry Tour.

Haha, I have the Tour and its battery life sucks pretty bad too. Especially if I'm using any combination of data, bluetooth, or GPS.

Be prepared to get some chargers or an extended battery.

 

[dlock13]

It seems as though the latest generation of smartphones all have terrible batteries just because they don't accommodate for the extra functionality they're putting into the phones and end up shipping it with a shit battery. I'm not saying all smartphones have this problem, but the ones they tout as being able to do several hundred things on the device with the obvious candidates here, Palm Pre, Apple iPhone, Blackberry Storm, and the G1. I'm almost 100% sure the iPhone has the best battery out of the bunch, but that's not saying much when 1/4 major smartphones have terrible battery lives.

 

[pm]

Originally posted by: dlock13
It seems as though the latest generation of smartphones all have terrible batteries just because they don't accommodate for the extra functionality they're putting into the phones and end up shipping it with a shit battery.

I don't think they all have terrible batteries. I don't have as much experience as Deeko with a variety of phones' battery lives - but I'm content with the battery life of my iPhone 3GS. Of course, more would be better, but I listen to Pandora over EDGE most of the day (and EDGE works fine for Pandora, slightly longer delay between songs, but I can handle a 1-2 second delay), and I go home and my phone still has ~30% battery life left.

I turn off WiFi and Bluetooth and 3G and the GPS when I'm not using them (I love SBSettings) and that's probably key. But why leave the GPS on when I'm not using it? I can turn it on when I need it and it's off the rest of the time. The only one that's a bit questionable is turning off 3G - the iPhone doesn't seem to like it (there's a bunch of flickering bars whenever I do it and it seems to take a minute or two to readjust to 3G). But I don't have local 3G service most of the time anyway, so I turn it off. I turn off lights at home when I'm not using them, I turn the light on my flashlights off when I'm not using them, I have no problem turning off features on my phone when I'm not using them. For my usage - which is pretty much 6+ hours of Pandora or MP3 playing during the day, no calls and a bit of checking of news and email - my iPhone is fine.

All that I ask is that a smartphone have enough battery life to get through a complete day. If it does that it's a good-enough battery. If it doesn't then the battery sucks. So I'm in agreement with Deeko - 5 hours of sitting on my desk listening to music before the battery is dead would fall into my "battery sucks" catagory. But I don't think they are all terrible. Blackberries seem to be fine, the G1 seems to be fine, and the iPhone seems to be fine - at least if you turn off the GPS and 3G when you aren't using them.

 

[dlock13]

Honestly, as far as the iPhone goes, it has an amazing battery for how many things you can do on it. My friend who is exactly like me uses his iPhone constantly. A full charge usually lasts him the whole day when he unplugs it at about 10 in the morning. He probably gets home and ends the day with about 20-30% left, and my girlfriend had an iPhone as well, and that 30% lasted probably 10 extra hours. She was in 3G on the 3G, my friend is on EDGE dipping in and out of 3G on the 3GS. So overall, they're both really damn good phones for battery.

 

[Deeko]

Originally posted by: dainthomas

Originally posted by: Deeko
That was a pre-emptive past tense, I was intending to return it which I did, last night. I got the Blackberry Tour.

Haha, I have the Tour and its battery life sucks pretty bad too. Especially if I'm using any combination of data, bluetooth, or GPS.

Be prepared to get some chargers or an extended battery.

I don't expect it to be great...like I've said, all smartphones have generally poor battery life. I just expect better than I had from the Pre....

(ps so far so good, been off the charger for 4.5 hours now, at 75%. At this rate I'm looking at 17+ hours)

 

[Deeko]

If anyone is curious, with moderate usage (about 20 minutes of GPS navigation, a few phone calls totalling ~30 minutes, on top of the standard weekday usage described above), the Tour lasted 14 hours. Not fantastic, but pretty good considering what its up against.