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How I Doubled My Android Phone's (HTC Hero) Battery Life or Just How Much Email Polling Affects Your Battery

Artem Russakovskii — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 07:47:15 +0000

It's not a secret that my Sprint HTC Hero has been having trouble keeping battery charge – by the time I came home from work, the battery level would oftentimes be at 10% or the phone would be simply dead.

One would give up and accept this futility but I had 2 reasons to keep trying to figure out why:

my co-worker's battery would consistently hold twice as much charge as mine – by the time I was at 50%, he was at 75%
a wide range of responses on Internet forums and blog posts suggested some people experienced excellent battery life, while others, like me, did not have as much luck

I received feedback from many people that the solution outlined here has helped them double their battery lives not just on their Android phones but also their Pres, Windows Mobile, and others. These people, like me, did not realize the drastic effect of the settings described here on battery life.

I thought I tried everything:

I kept WiFi and Bluetooth off when I didn't need them (I even got an app that turned WiFi on and off on schedule – Timerriffic; unfortunately until Hero gets Android 2.0 we won't see automatic Bluetooth scheduling)
I tried to use the Spare Parts app which provided insight into battery usage history. I did not, however, find out anything significant
I tried to avoid using GPS altogether – at one point Spare Parts told me GPS usage by Google Maps, Camera, and Bump were 5-6 hours each, even though I turned the GPS off. I think it's a bug in Spare Parts itself or what Android was recording but it made me paranoid.
I switched to using Handcent SMS due to the bug in default Message app (which was later fixed in the firmware upgrade).
I got a task manager (Advanced Task Manager) to see what apps are running and make sure especially heinous is eating up my resources. It would also automatically kill long running apps and certain apps I know I don't use and which I can't uninstall, such as IM, Gmail (I use Mail), and Finance.
On some days, I stopped using the phone altogether, just to see how long it would last. The result, however, was the same.

Nothing worked. Consistently, my phone would run down to 80% by the time I got to work and by about 3pm, it would be at 50%.

The Solution

Finally, a few days ago, when comparing my phone with my co-worker's, I noticed he didn't set up automatic email checking, opting in for the manual method instead. I, on the other hand, set up my email the day I got my Hero and never revisited the settings since. "How much power can downloading emails suck out?" I thought. Boy, was I wrong…

This solution is for people using the Mail app – not the Gmail app. The Gmail app uses the push method of getting emails – not pull, but doesn't suit my needs, which is why I am using the Mail app.

Turns out a LOT. I had 3 email accounts and they were checked at the following intervals:

my gmail was being checked every 5 minutes – I wanted near real-time notification but could not even fathom the consequences at the time
my beerpla.net account was hit every 15 minutes
my Plaxo work Exchange email fired every 30 minutes

In order to change these intervals, load up each email account's inbox, click Menu, find Settings, go to Send & Receive and then Set Download Frequency.

After I set each email account to check every hour instead, my battery life improved dramatically. To be fair, I watched the battery use for the last 3 days without changing my usage habits and recorded the results.

Here they are:

by the time I left for work in the morning, before the change I would oftentimes be between 85 and 90% battery. After the change, I was at 95-97%.
by lunch time, my phone would usually run down to 50-60%. After the change, the battery had 75-80% juice.
by 9-10pm, after I came back from work, I would usually need to put the phone on a charger because it was <15%. After the change, I was at least at 50%!

The Side Effect

Lately, I started to realize that having email notifications pop up this often was actually more distracting than useful. I was losing concentration and constant context switching made me less productive.

The fix for my battery problem was, incidentally, also the fix for my concentration problem.

Conclusion

Be very much aware of your email polling intervals or they will suck all the life out of your phone.

I would love to hear about your experiences with tweaking email settings and the effects those tweaks had on your battery life, as well as other dramatic Android battery saving tips. Feel free to share in the comments.

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My New Android Phone Wants Me To Do WHAT?

Artem Russakovskii — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 16:46:54 +0000

So, I just got me a new phone that I've wanted for a long time – HTC Hero running the Android OS.

It's a great phone, no doubt, but I think mine has homosexual inclinations.

Bad Android. Bad.

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HTC Hero Coming To Sprint October 11th! $179.99, Powerful, And Sexy. Here Is Why You Need To Own It

Artem Russakovskii — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 18:16:55 +0000

Well, it looks like the wait is over. I have been waiting for almost 5 years for a new phone that is good enough to make the switch from Samsung A900 (which has free tethering). Don't even get me started on the iPhone and its outrageous monopoly with AT&T. Android and the growing multitude of devices running it is, however, completely different business. Android offers unparallel freedom and I truly believe it will be the top phone OS within a few years as more and more Android phones are introduced to the market.

But where was I? I have been closely following Android news since its inception, then the introduction of the first phone – T-Mobile G1 (aka HTC Dream), followed by G2 (aka T-Mobile MyTouch 3G, HTC Magic, Google ION), the introduction of the app store (Android Market), and noticing throughout all this time that Android was still not quite there, not appealing to the masses, and not picking up speed. But then…

The Hero

I believe the market perception of Android is about to change because of the newest Android phone – HTC Hero. Thanks to Phandroid (my favorite Android blog) for the announcement.

Why

Hero has a super sexy Sense user interface. Just check out this video of the European version of Hero running Sense (the US version looks slightly different):

Hero also has:

Flash support (!) – the one from Adobe, not the one that helps taking photos. That means playing flash games, videos, etc, which iPhone does not support and is not planning to support in the near future.
First Android phone to support multitouch. It also has a trackball.
Lipophobic coating – special coating to repel fingerprint oils.
A speedy 528Mhz Qualcomm processor.
5MP camera with autofocus – 5 megapixels is a step up over most of the competition, except maybe Nokia.
GPS.
Digital compass.
MicroSD slot for expanding memory.
WiFi 802.11b/g.
Accelerometer.
Audio supported formats: MP3, AAC(AAC, AAC+, AAC-LC), AMR-NB, WAV, MIDI and Windows Media® Audio 9.
Video supported formats: MPEG-4, H.263, H.264 and Windows Media® Video 9.
And of course, it runs Android applications.

Check out this comparison between HTC Hero, MyTouch 3G, Apple iPhone 3GS, and BlackBerry Storm:

When

Hero is already released in Europe and is coming to the US to Sprint on October 11, 2009.

How Much

$179.99 after a mail-in rebate and a 2 year agreement with Sprint.

Speed/Lag Concerns

Initial reviews of the Hero reported occasional lag, especially with a lot of widgets activated on the home screens. However, it looks like the latest firmware updates may have fixed the lag issues. We will see very shortly.

The Chin

The US version of the Hero does NOT have the "chin" like the European version does. Compare the picture of the EU version (below) with the pictures of the US version (further down in the Media section).

Pictures Of The US Version

I'm extremely excited about the Hero. It is the strongest Android contender on the market. Can you feel the excitement? Go out and get yours on October 11th!

Relevant Links

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Google Phone (Android) Demo Of Streetview With Compass

Artem Russakovskii — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 00:00:04 +0000

I think this is going to be really neat: you walk around the streets of San Francisco, for example, with your Android powered phone, en route to your destination 20 blocks away.

You whip out your phone, go to Google Maps, pull up the StreetView (remember this?), which zeroes in on your location using a built-in GPS, and then changes as you move the phone around using the built-in compass.

You then virtually walk the city, looking around, without actually moving an inch (looking for the closest ATM, restaurant, etc, hint-hint?).

Without further ado, let's have a look at this video from Google's I/O Conference for a demonstration?

This video is really the 2nd part in a series but it was the most interesting one. Part 1 follows for the curious:

Visual voicemail and slide zoom touch interface from Apple, compass from Google, … from Sun? What's next? My Sprint contract is up and I am definitely looking forward to Q3 and Q4 of this year!

Edit: I found a nice related video by G4TV. Here it is:

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Sun Definitely Developing A Phone This Year

Artem Russakovskii — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 02:30:06 +0000

One thing that still springs to mind when I think of the MySQL User Conference last week is Sun's opening keynote. While talking about Sun's market penetration with open source software, Jonathan Schwartz, Sun's CEO, slipped in a short mention of the mobile market saying something along the lines of "Sun is going to be entering the mobile market later on this year". He didn't spend more than 5 seconds talking about it, moving on to the acquisition of MySQL.

Last year, Sun already made an announcement of JavaFX, a Java-based mobile platform but didn't provide any concrete timelines, so I was excited to hear the more on the subject. With Apple iPhone's advent last year and Google entering the same space later on this year with Android, Sun's addition to the game definitely won't hurt consumers. After all, competition usually leads to better products.

So when is the phone coming, Jonathan? My guess is you're going to try as hard as possible to compete with Google's second half of 2008 timeline but are you going to manage to beat it? And will it blow us away? I guess time will show.

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