AT&T Pre Plus users: How's your battery life? 47
by Dieter Bohn Tue, 01 Jun 2010 9:43 am EDT
In our AT&T Palm Pre Plus Review, we briefly touched on the battery life on the little GSM webOS wonder. Since then we've been finding that our battery life seems pretty decent. PreCentral reader Chris joined a small cast of people to email us to say that his experience with battery life is the same, which is to say pretty darn good.
Got us wondering that maybe, just maybe, the GSM variant of the Pre Plus does a slightly better job with battery life than its CDMA cousins. Even when I'm not using my extended battery for the Palm Pre, I'm getting a full day of light to medium usage. AT&T Palm Pre users: chime in!
47 Comments
happy memorial day to everyone and a special thanks to all the veterens out there.
wtf does that have to do with anything?
+1
It's the reason why you have the freedom to create a silly post like that... geesh.
hey hey hey... let's not get all patriotic now, it's just that that post had no relevance to a Pre's battery life
Everything
How's the battery live on the EVO? har har har
I don't know if this is a stab at the Evo or not... but don't believe all the battery reviews for that phone.
There was this guy at TechCrunch who polled battery awfully and said he got 4 hours of moderate usage...
Otherwise, everyone else seems to be getting through the day with more than enough juice.
Also, like 20 people voted for the battery statistics... Is that all the AT&T Pre owners on this forum? I hope not.
I bet you can find more on Palm's Facebook page randomly commenting about their phone on various Palm status updates without a clue about precentral yet.
I have no idea how the battery lives on the EVO (I had no idea batteries 'live' at all), but I've heard the battery LIFE on the EVO is pretty damn good.
He also can't spell "life."
Coming from Windows Mobile devices, I am simply amazed and how much more power efficient WIFI is on the Pre. On WM devices, WIFI uses a lot of juice. When I am home, I use WIFI on my Pre and that truly conserve battery.
I had an AT&T and Alltel(Verizon) blackberry curve at one point. Both brand new, one was a work phone the other was my personal phone. The CDMA blackberry would last a full day easily, maybe part of the next day. The GSM curve would last for 2-3 days without a charge. Just about twice the battery life from the GSM version.
Having used the Sprint Pre, the Verizon Pre plus and now the AT&T Pre Plus, I haven't noticed any significant differences all around. If anything, the AT&T Pre is slightly better.
I leave the WiFi connection on (as I come and go from my home network all day long), and I can keep a charge with reasonable use well into the early evening without a charge. A little bit of time on the Touchstone, and I have no problems making it morning to late night.
I'm currently running both a BB Tour (Verizon) and GSM Pre+ --> both seem to get more or less the same use out of a full charge. Of course, this assumes I'm being persistent enough to wait for the BB browser or to use data-centric apps on it. Now that I have the Pre+, things are much better!
Any BB user that claims to get multiple days out of their battery is likely using it for eMail and PIM only -- I found I needed to charge my BB every night from moderate data use.
So, count me as a happy (new) Pre+ user.
I have an att pre and in comparison to my 2 year iphone I will say the battery life is ok. The battery on the pre jumps down from from 100% to 90% within 15 mins of use. Once the battery gets to the 70% mark the battery stop draining so fast. Then when passing the halfway mark it jumps down again rapidly. Overall I'm not to pleased with my battery life.
This is about what I get on my Verizon Pre Plus.
I'm not surprised the battery is small and weak -- they have to skimp out on SOMETHING if they want to sell this phone at a decent price.
It's more likely a limitation of the size of the phone. Bigger phones (like most of the Android phones) have bigger batteries.
I could get about a day with the stock battery, but I went ahead and upgraded to and extended model.
I think I will get the extended battery...the stock battery is okay, but on days when I use my phone extensively, it's nice to have a bit more time without charging up
When I first got my Pre, man, the battery was dying so rapidly, I was finally living what everyone was complaining about when it was just the Sprint Pre. However, for some strange reason I'm now getting slightly better battery usage now that I've had my device for more than a week.
I purchased an extra touchstone charger -- I also have the car charger adapter, so I have a touchstone at work and at home...lol, maybe, that's the reason I'm getting better batter usage. My Pre seem to be always plugged-in and charging.
The battery life on my AT&T Pre Plus is dreadful. It will go from full to 85% with 10 or 15 minutes of web usage or gaming. If I don't throw it on the Touchstone there's no way I could make a full day. There's a very good chance mine is going back in exchange for new HTC or return and finally buy a Nexus One. WebOs is sweet, but it doesn't do me much good with a dead battery or with me using it less or purpose to save battery. I only talk about 15 min a day, but I use FB and use the web some.
If you are having trouble with battery life and you still want touchstone compatibility, I may be able to help.
http://forums.precentral.net/palm-pre-accessories/218638-sucess-modded-s...
double post
here's a couple of quick tips for battery life:
1. go into wifi app preferences, sleep settings, tap box below when phone sleeps and select turn wifi off. this means that when your phone sleeps it will not maintain an active wifi connection. if this is not turned on it is a significant battery drain
2. turn off wifi if you are not near a connection for an extended period of time. phone will constantly poll for a network
3. change duration of facebook notifications. this uses battery life as it polls the server and they are not push notifications
another big boost for battery would be to install the kernel and govnah.
agree w/ wifi but disagree w/ kernel/govnah. My sprint pre was definitely affected & my battery drained faster w/ uberkernel and govnah.
I just switched back to unixpsycho & caj 800 kernel ipk, and battery is better, performance still fast. And ipk a breeze to install w/ webos qi.
I disagree; turning Wi-Fi off when you sleep will only force the phone back onto 3G/EVDO, sucking more battery than if Wi-Fi had been left on.
Dieter, it sounded odd to say your use has been light to medium... I like to think of you as having as bad an addiction as your readers... I will just keep believing that. :)
My normal routine allows me to place it on the touchstone often, but when I recently flew to Dallas for some training it would get pretty low after a full work day. Also on the flight home it got down to 20%, but I was listening to music, and a podcast the whole two hour flight home.
I took advantage of the Radio Shack clearance and have three Touch Stones (work, home, permanent car mount). So, my Palm Pre Plus (Verizon) normally is being charged though out the day. I love the Touch Stone, and it's my second favorite feature behind the WebOS multi-tasking.
To sum it up I guess I get 8-10hrs of battery life with moderately heavy use in a day. When used strictly as a phone I get many more hours use a day.
I also leave my WiFi on as it switches between my work and home WiFi spots.
very interesting. The "I don't have an AT&T pre" crowd is slaughtering. for all the people on verizon and at&t they dont' seem to be either at precentral or buying pre's.
My AT&T Pre+ will be here sometime this week. Waiting anxiously.
I'm on my 4th battery with my July 2009 Sprint Pre. Battery life has sucked since day 1. I usually keep the phone plugged in all day since I drive 80% of the day.
If I unplug when I get up at 6am, I am getting the 20% warning by 10am.
I went to my local sprint store 3 times. Each time they would do some 45 minute dog & pony show battery test and tell me I had a faulty battery. A couple days later a new one would arrive at my house from Sprint.
I would definitely like to try the Seido 1350, not the oversized one.
I'm convinced it's just too small of a battery because of the Pre's slim design.
I think it would be more informative if we used real terms, not "I'm getting a FULL DAY of Light To Medium Usage"
My Pre comes off the charger @ 8AM as I walk out for work.
I average 2-3 short (under 5min) phone calls per hour and generally about 5 phone calls over 15 minutes per day.
I average 10 business emails per hour, and while getting the notice on my phone, I generally handle their replies via desktop computer. I might respond to 1-2 email per hour as long as it is a short reply.
Text Messaging average is about 8-10 per day. I am 40 years old, so most of my texting involves 10 word replies or less and maybe 2 or 3 volleys back and forth. This thing would never keep pace with my teenage son.
At 2PM I usually have approx 30% of battery remaining. I usually have some desk time around then and plug in, because on the odd days when I dont, there is no way I am going to make it home by 6pm.
I pray I never get stuck in the snow, because I will not be able to make many calls for help.
Just switched to the Pre+ on at&t, came over from Sprint and had a Pre with them since September; took me about a week but I have my new one setup now pretty much the as I had my last one, still use it heavely, and honestly I am not seeing any additional battery life out of this one. Still have to start lookin for a charge around lunch and if I don't top off around 5p and I'm at the office past 8p I barely make it home.
Still love it though and truly cherish webos.
I'm assuming Dieter meant "GSM Pre Plus Users... how's your battery life"? Rather than just "AT&T Users". There's a world outside your borders ya know Dieter :)
Battery life on a GSM phone will always be slightly better than it's CDMA version, no matter the phone. I have multiple spare batteries thought because I am a heavy user and I expect short battery life regardless of what device I am using.
CDMA phones will drop to analog when digital signals get weak, this taxes the battery a little more. For GSM, there is no safety net, it just waits for the signal to pick up. If you're on a call with GSM when the signal drops,....well we know what happens then. It starts saving battery.
With default settings for Wi-Fi, my AT&T Pre Plus was getting roughly 4 hours of life with constant use - web and other apps.
Even not using the phone constantly, the battery seemed to not be able to last a whole day without being topped off.
After a few days, I found the setting to turn off Wi-Fi when the phone sleeps - this made a big difference for me. Since that helped, I also just turn wi-fi off when I'm at work all day (no public wi-fi there) and with my normal usage, I can go about a day-and-a-half without charging. This includes leaving the phone on all night, with screen off.
It works pretty much like my old Palm TX does - it just lasts a lot longer when Wi-Fi is off.
I get about 4 hours with moderate usage that includes updating Twitter, watching/listening to videos, running Pandora, texting, checking email, using the media player. My Pre Plus is always in some sort of active state.
Forgetting my charger means a dead battery very soon, and that's with WiFi turned off while at work.
hey guys I have a sprint pre and before the 800 mhz patch the battery was %%"%(?#?) now is a lot better, maybe you need some like that.
This voting shows me once more that there is no sales activity on at&t with the pre plus. or the at&t users do not know anything about precentral.
otherwise we would have much more votes from at&t users.
I've solved my battery life problems on Sprint (EVDO). Just use the hashcode (##EVDO#), and switch to Hybrid Rev 0. Rev A, for me, was constantly upping my phone power and hopping from tower to tower trying to get an A signal. Rev 0 doesn't seem to do that. This has me going from fully drained overnight while at home to only draining 10-15% overnight, if that. HUGE improvement. I am in poor coverage areas near where I live and where I work.
The drawback is bandwidth. You won't get much egress, so it's not a good solution if you upload a lot of pictures and videos and such. Downloads, web browsing, streaming radio, etc, are still an acceptable data rate.
It's the damned phone radio that's killing our battery, especially when in a poor coverage area.
is better to get a solar charger and atach it to the phone than loose the data speed
you need to dust that AT&T pre but AT&T sucks any ways lol
Battery life and the lack of an Outliner app are my only complaints for my 12-month old Sprint Pre. I've never had a full day of use on it, no matter how light my usage. So, since I love to stream internet radio, I have:
- An extra battery
- A charging case for external battery charging
- A traveling charger that I use in hotels
- A touchstone charger at my desk
- A touchstone charger on my night stand
- A car charger in each of my 2 cars
I have so much invested in power management that I can't exchange the Pre for a phone that support the CarbonFin Outliner app that I desperately need :-)
ATT PPP
Went on a road trip, thus out of range of my Touchstone. BOY was it a scary trip!!! Like some of my former gas-guzzling cars, I could see the battery life slipping away. Mid-day I realized that I was plowing through battery. By the end of the day I was cutting all phone calls short, not playing the games that would have made the trip more bearable, and trying to ignore the phone in general (try not watching a train wreck). I was down to 9% (red) by the end of it all with my best on-the-road battery management. It was maddening.
For sure, start by following the advice given by Palm on extending the battery life. It helped immensely (quicker sleep time - 30 secs, wi-fi off (duh), less frequent email check, and dimmer screen).
I've got the Pre Plus from o2 in Germany. I need to charge the pre every 2 days after work. I'm using it on the way to work (~30 minutes), checking mails once per hour during the day and then using it a little bit on the way back home.
It's okay for me! Not as good as my old nokia phone, but hey, i didn't expect battery-life about 5 days..