gdgt

I've been suffering from short battery life from my Hero and not getting through a full day's usage with the default settings. This drove me inte experimenting a bit with the settings to make it last longer.

I would like to hear if anyone else has similar experiences and if you have found solutions to making the battery last longer.

I've summarized my own immediate tweakes that I discovered below:

- Turn off the “Always-on” mobile data connection.
- Disable Wireless network usage for positioning purposes
- Turn off “Background data” usage (but not if you use Google services!)
- Always keep Wi-Fi off when not in use – automate this with Y5 Battery Saver app
- Always keep Bluetooth off when not in use
- Avoid usage of push or very frequent email polling – configure it to sync every 15 or more minutes
- Turn off automatic Weather updates (and other data polling widgets)
- Set a reasonable update frequency for Twitter, Flicker and Facebook
- Get a fast mobile network connection to minimize data connection uptime

I also pulled a longer version together with more details at http://www.gamaze.com/blog/2009/08/improve-battery-life-
for-the-android-based-htc-hero-smart-phone/

how much improvement did you see in your battery life after doing all that?

Great tips. After some (not very scientific) testing, I think turning off the background data had the biggest effect. Mind you I had the others already turned off apart from wi-fi. Makes sense to keep the wifi and network connections switched off and just turn on when required.
Hard to quantify the increase in battery life as I charge it quite a bit. One thing I did notice is that it wasn't losing as much battery life when it wasn't being used as it did before implementing your tips.

Thanks.

Can you set the email, twit, flickr, and FB polling to happen at the same time?
Even if you set them to poll once an hour for each app, if its a different times during that hour your phone (and battery) will be doing more work.

Mugen Power is making extended batteries for Hero, they have standard sized 1550mAh battery and extended size 3200mAh battery. Check it out here:

http://www.mugen-power-batteries.com/htc/htc-hero.html

Someone found a bug with the messenger app, when you send an SMS it locks the processor into an always-on state, and drains your battery pretty fast. Download a different messenger app like ChompSMS, and you'll notice about a 2x battery life.

http://phandroid.com/2009/10/19/sprint-htc-hero-battery-
problem-fix/

Yeah, turn off the phone, take out the battery, make all your calls from payphones, and presto, great battery life! Enough of my sarcasm, riddle me this, if the problem is budgeting power intensive activities, then why do I see the battery draining while I have it plugged in and "charging"? After a 6 hour drive, phone plugged in with orange power light and charging symbol, I get out and have a 15% battery charge, ridiculous!

Ok, so if I use 110v charger, it works fine. When I try to charge in car it fades out on me. When I have it plugged in to my laptop I get a message that the current is not enough to charge and I should plug my phone into the charger. Weird!

Seidio (finest aftermarket battery maker on the planet, IMHO) is working up a 3500mAh battery for the Hero. I used to have the same problem with my BlackBerry Bold (not lasting a day on a charge), and the Seidio pack would give me up to three days without charging.
I'm going to order as soon as it's available; so far the Hero seems worth making a bit of a sacrifice to keep.

Great tips.

Just my two cents really but I've never really had an issue with the Hero battery.

Its a stock HTC Hero running the most recent update (from HTC and not a custom ROM).

I have the following items running;

Peep (Twitter) - Hourly
PUSH Email (via ActiveSync) - Continuously
Membo IM (MSN Messenger) - 3/4 of the day
Wavesecure - Continuously
Wifi Enabled
GPS Disabled
Web Browsing - 2 hours per day
Moderate phone usage.

With the above usage I will get a full days battery life, sometime I will get the low indicator come 9-10pm and an over night charge doesnt bother me.

One thing I have noticed that makes a difference is closing some of the background apps using task kill, apps like Google Maps, Google Partner Setup, PC Sync, you know the stuff you aren't using.

Thanks