Am I doing something wrong with my new Incredible?

[kelbell8564]

I have looked at several of the threads about battery life being pretty bad on the Dinc, and I have done what is suggested.  I have the Advance Ap Killer...go in often and kill the apps, rarely have WiFi on, don't turn on GPS unless I actually need it. My battery life is horrible.  It doesn't even last a day, I am not texting constantly during the day nor am I talking for hours on end.  When I check to see what % of battery is being used I am seeing phone idol in the double digit percentages, Android system is on a regular basis 40-55%.  I have seen an increase in this since 2.2 install, but the percentage being used by the Android system was consistantly at around 45% prior to 2.2

Any suggestions?

[AZSALUKI]

my android system is never that high? mine is typically at "standby" in the 30's, "idle" in the 30's, "android system" around 20, and then the rest are all usually under 10% each. i don't know much about all of this stuff. i'd say i'm a moderate user. i actually am using the device for 2-3 hours a day and just barely get a full day off of a full charge. my average up time is 20+ hours and awake time of right around 3 hours, before i go to bed and have to charge. once i get to 20+ hours of up time and 2-3 hours of awake time i am in the orange.

[AZSALUKI]

oh yeah....uninstall the app killer. it is useless with 2.2. you will use more resources constantly killing them off (only to have them start back up) than if you just let them sit idle in the background and end themselves. i was killing 15-24 apps evry hour or so. i finally took google's advice and uninstalled the killer. now, a day later, i have an average of 4 apps actually running (that i did not start) at any given time.

[w40d1n1]

ATK is a must have if you use apps (i.e. Internet browser) that do things (i.e load heavy flash ridden pages from a twitter bit.ly URL).  Without ATK to kill the browser, the browser will consume CPU cycles (and therefore battery life) in the background.   Those few that argue against auto task killers are really not mobile power users, mostly isolated developers with test systems that rarely see the usage us experienced users see.

[Jeff1953]

The android system should not be that high.  Maybe you have a lot of things constantly updating?

Otherwise, something is running in the backgound.  I have caught 'Maps' running in the backgound after heavy use and it wasn't showing up in ATK...this was with 2.1 though.  I also had some app..which I can't remember now that did the same.  If you go to Market and get Spare Parts, you can do a bit more investigation into what is chewing up the battery. It give you the option of seeing "Partial Wake Usage".  I also had me email server down once and my phone constantly was trying to update...that was a big drain.  If you haven't, turn it off, and then on, that would stop something like "Maps" running in the background.

[JoeBobHarris]

And so I enter the religious debate of task killers

I wonder if constantly looking at your task killer and killing apps could be the cause for the OS to have such high percentages? These are not free activities.

Re: "Those few that argue against ATK"

http://wickenden.livejournal.com/940848.html

...

"But Task Manager have been called out by Google and by the army of technically informed developers like Cyanogen Mod’s Steve Kondic, as something quite the opposite of what they claim: they are both unneeded and create more problems than they solve.  This is because Google’s android system has been designed for multi-tasking in ways that allow programs to be ready to respond to a changed environmental condition instantly (an alarm to wake you, a notification that you have arrived at your destination and so forth) as well as actually “running” and consuming resources when needed.  Additionally the android system itself is smart about how it deals with low memory conditions and is capable of completely blowing away applications in such a way that their state is remembered and can be restored when there is more memory."

...

Unplugged my phone at 11 a.m. this morning and Cell standby is at 37%, Phone idle is at 32% and Android OS is at 21%.

Just use the phone. If it starts lagging and slowing down due to low memory start worrying. Until then just use it. Oh and "shut-down" once a week or so to get a new memory footprint.

[w40d1n1]

So its bad for ATK to kill an app, but it's acceptable for the OS to kill the app but *only* after the system's resources are already constrained?!? I, a 20+ year app and systems, and recent blackberry, software developer, call **bleep** on that (obviously written by inexperienced ppl) article. Don't forget, Google once wrote that Wave was the future.

[AZSALUKI]

w40d.....why don't you just run it w/o an app killer for 2 days? if the end of the world comes, then reinstall it. but if there is no difference in performance, you can quit worrying so much about what's in the background. i don't know anything about this stuff. but this much i do know....when i was constantly killing apps, they just started right back up. now they i'm not killing them, they have ended on their own and have not started back up. with app killer=15-25 apps to be killed (EVERY time i checked...i'm talking minutes after i killed all of them)....without app killer=4-5 running in the background.

[w40d1n1]

I've been running w/o ATK for the past 12 or so hours. Last reboot was 6 hours ago. I can see 65+ procs running (Settings, Applications, Manage.., Running...) No improved use, in fact browsing (this forum no less) is slower and somewhat sluggish when scrolling up/down.

[AZSALUKI]

lol....i call **bleep**!!! seriously....if you have 65 running then something is WRONG with your device. i've NEVER had more than 25...with or without a killer. i think something is faulty with your inc???? i'd take that in and show vzn...get a replacement.