How to Extend the Battery Life of your Sprint HTC Evo 4G - Battery Saving Tips, Antenna and Extended Life Batteries
Battery Power Low: Please Connect to Charger
I love my Sprint HTC Evo 4G, but after I got my Evo I found myself constantly looking looking for an outlet so my Evo could get its next power fix.
The Sprint HTC Evo 4G has many wonderful features, like a 4.3 inch screen, the ability to run multiple apps at once and of 4G, so you have enough bandwidth for all of those apps. However, there is a downside to all of these wonderful features, they drain battery life. The Android OS is a power junkie, if you don't keep an eye on it your Evo will gobble up all the power you can give to it. Add a huge screen and a 4G antenna and you have a power eating machine.
When you use your new Sprint HTC Evo 4G normally you may find that your Evo battery drains within a couple of hours. If you use your Evo heavily like to stream or record videos, your Evo may die within an hour or two.
Luckily there are some things that you can do to extend the battery life of your Sprint HTC Evo 4G.
Extending the Battery Life of your Sprint HTC Evo 4G
There are two ways to get more battery life out of your cell phone. You can either give it more battery power, so it takes longer to use it up, or you can reduce the amount of power it uses.
Giving your cell phone more power is simple, just get a bigger battery.
To reduce the amount of power your cell phone consumes you will want to take a look at how much power is spent on running applications and how much is used to light up your screen.
Check What Is Using Up Your Battery
You can check to see what is using your battery by following the steps below.
- From your Home Screen Press and Hold the Menu button on your Evo until the Menu pops up.
- Press Settings.
- Scroll down and Select About Phone.
- Press Battery.
- Select Battery Use.
The Battery Use screen will show what has been using the battery along with the percentage of battery it used. These percentages are calculated based off of the battery usage since you last unplugged your phone.
Entended Life Battery
One sure fire way to get more battery life for your cell phone is to get a larger battery for it. You can buy an Extended-Life Battery for your Cell Phone, which is designed to fit in your phone but has a longer battery life than your normal cell phone battery.
Picking out an Extended Life Battery
Not all extended life batteries are created equal. Some will hold a larger charge than others and some may even hold a smaller charge than your current cell phone battery!
So how do you know which will hold the most charge?
Batteries are rated in Milliamp Hours (mAh). If you look at your cell phones battery you should see the Milliamp Hours rating printed on it, the Origanial OEM HTC Evo Battery has a rating of 1500 mAh. When picking out an extended life battery, you will want to look for the battery with the highest Milliamp Hours rating. Since the HTC Evo 4G comes with a 1500 mAh battery you will want to look for an extended life battery that has at least 1750 mAh or 1800 mAh. For a real boost you will want to get a 3500 mAh extended life battery for your Evo, which can more than double your battery life.
Slim Extended Life Batteries
Typically the physical dimensions of an extended life batteries are larger. They just need to be bigger to hold all that extra power. Since the battery in the HTC Evo 4G is behind the back cover, you will need to use a new back cover has bump on the back to accommodate the extra space the battery needs.
The Sprint HTC Evo 4G is one of the largest cell phones on the market, so making it even larger is not something most Evo owners will want to do. Luckily there are Extended Life Batteries for the Evo 4G that are the same physical dimensions as the Origanial OEM HTC Evo Battery. These batteries can be a little more expensive, but well worth the extra money. You will want to buy a slim extended life battery for your Evo 4G, unless you want that extra bulge in your pocket even larger.
Applications Drain Your Battery
It's great that you can run multiple apps on the Google Android OS. However, this means you can have lots of apps draining down your battery.
As you install more and more apps you will notice the battery on your Evo 4G dies quicker. This is because even when you are not using those applications they may still be running in the background. I was shocked by the number of processes that were running on my Evo the first time I checked them.
You can see what processes are currently running on your HTC Evo 4G by following the steps below.
- From your Home Screen Press and Hold the Menu button on your Evo until the Menu pops up.
- Press Settings.
- Scroll down and Select Applications.
- Select Running Services.
You will now see a list of the applications currently running on your Evo, that you can scroll through as well as the memory usage of those applications.
Update on Task Killers
If you have upgraded to Android 2.2, you should uninstall your Task Killer applications. With the new OS these applications will do nothing but use up battery.
Manage Your Apps
You can manually kill (or Force Close) these applications from the running applications screen, but these applications will just re-open themselves. The better way to kill these applications is by using an app that manages them for you. These applications will kill all of these extra apps with one button.
I use Advanced Task Killer for this. I like this application manager because it will automatically kill these applications for you.
Keep Up to Date
Smartphones are evolving at a very high pace and android developement is no exeption. There are regular updates being released to offer additional functionality and fix bugs. Battery usage is a well known issue with all smart phones and something that system architechs are always working on improving, so keep your eye out for the latest Android OS updates, as many of them will help improve the battery life of your Evo.
Don't forget to update your Apps
After your have installed a new OS update make sure to update your applications as well. With Adroid 2.2 (froyo) you can also set your applications to automatically check for updates for you.
Bright 4.3 Inch Screen
It can take a lot of juice to power a 4.3 inch screen. If you find that your screen is using up a lot of your battery you can turn the brightness of your screen down and reduce the amount of time your screen stays on to get more out of your Evo's battery.
Turn Down the Brightness of your Display
You can turn down the brightness of your Sprint HTC Evo 4G's display by following the steps below.
- From your Home Screen Press and Hold the Menu Button.
- Press Settings.
- Select the Display option.
- Select the Brightness option.
- Deselect the Automatic Brightness option if it is selected.
- Move the slider down to as low as you find acceptable.
Reduce the Screen Timeout
You can reduce the Screen Timeout of your Sprint HTC Evo 4G by following the steps below.
- From your Home Screen Press and Hold the Menu Button.
- Press Settings.
- Select the Display option.
- Select the Screen Timeout option.
- Select a lower time out value.
Energy Draining Antennas
The Sprint HTC Evo 4G has a number of Antennas, and each of these antennas can drain your cell phones battery. You will be unnecessarily using up your battery to power these antennas if you are not using them.
If you are not using Bluetooth, Wifi or GPS you will want to turn these antennas off. Likewise, if you are in an area that does not have 4G service you will want to turn your 4G antenna off.
Turn Off Unused Antennas
Follow the steps below to turn on/off the Antennas on your Sprint HTC Evo 4G.
- From your Home Screen, swipe you finger from left to right to go to the Favorites and Antenna screen.
- Just click on the antenna(s) you wish to turn on or off.