Tips to Extending HTC Evo Battery Life (And Brief Rant)

If the Evo has a flaw, it's battery life. While run time's impressive as a wireless hotspot, it's unoptimized in every other regard. MobileCrunch assembled a list of tricks to extend battery life. Combined, they'll buy you 2+ more hours.

(If you want those tips, head to MobileCrunch. I'm just here to rant a bit.)

Testing the Evo with Matt for the review, I was astounded by 4G—Apple may claim that the iPad is magical, but let me tell you, 4G on the Evo really is. AT&T's 3G may have gotten you burned at the stake once upon a time; with 4G, the mobs would have hunted down your family, your friends, your pets and charred to ash not only all of them but any object they'd ever brushed against in their entire lifetimes.

Boy I like that Evo. But why can't Google build some of these simple power management tools into the Android OS? And what is HTC/Sprint doing in not solving the issue so long as the handset is skinned with Sense anyway? (To be fair, HTC's OS tweaks are mostly superficial. This is really on Google here.)

Even Android 2.2 fails to focus on power management beyond an improved compiler, which is pretty much the equivalent of saying "it runs software faster/more efficiently, so you'll spend less time using the phone." In this regard, power management is a side effect to smart code when we really need smart code that focuses on power management.

I guess my point is, if a handful of apps and settings can buy the Evo a few hours of battery life, imagine what the minds at Google and HTC could do if they really attacked the problem.

A few days ago, I woke up to find my Evo dead after not charging it. When I'd fallen asleep, it had at least 1/3 of its battery left and was running no discernible apps.

Multiply that experience by tens of millions of phones, and it's more than a pain. It's a waste. [MobileCrunch]