For people experiencing bad battery life...

[kc.rkitek]

With all the talk flying around on battery performance, I did a little investigating and found some enlightening articles that may interest you. Mind you, these are not all for the N1 specifically, but all are for android phones with weak battery life complaints.

I find the most common issue through all of the threads, besides turning off GPS, WIFI, etc, is a problem with using the default messaging app to send SMS messages. Apparently it has some bug that keeps the phone from ever sleeping correctly, so the phone is at 100% wake time...not good for battery life.

If you replace it with ChompSMS or Handcent and disable notifications from the default messaging app (follow the instructions in one the below links), you may be able to work around the problem and improve your battery life. I don't really have any empirical data on this as I installed Handcent on day 1 with my N1, but it may be worth a try for you.

So, any of you suffering from battery issues and are using the default messaging app, read on...or do it anyway for fun. You may find some other valuable info!

HTC Hero on Sprint:
Hero by HTC:CONFIRMED: Fix for HTC Hero "Dialer"...
Hero by HTC:Source (+ fix) for Hero's poor battery...
Source of poor battery life (not let's fix it) - Android Forums

Droid Eris on Verizon:
Optimize your Droid Eris battery life (READ THIS) - Android Forums

N1:
BATTERY FIX IS HERE!!!!!

Best of luck...

[TonyHoyle]

Since Android 2.1 has the battery usage page we can make some good estimations as to what's causing drain - an app would show up fairly obviously as a problem.

Personally I'm sceptical of the SMS idea.. I'm getting excellent battery life with the normal SMS app.

[supsandroid]

idk if the battery usage page is that accurate. because it said 61% was my screen but when i turned off gps my battery life literally tripled

[kc.rkitek]

You may be absolutely correct. I'm not suggesting this will definitively fix anyone's battery issues, I just think it may be worth investigating if you are experiencing what you think is a battery performance problem. Using one of the other messaging apps could just be invoking a placebo effect; I don't really know. All I know about it this is:

1. I'm not experiencing the issue.
2. I've been using Handcent from the get-go.
3. I do not use a task killer.
4. To try it is harmless and free.

So, why not give it a go? If it does nothing and you don't like it, uninstall it!

[supsandroid]

I think hes correct with the bug. it would not list sms as the battery hog because its not using the battery, the phone not sleeping is. hence why my phone says that screen usage is at like 61% even though I set every thing to auto. worth a shot anyways!

[supsandroid]

my phone says ' up time' and has a counter, desnt say wake time

[kc.rkitek]

There isn't a "wake time" on the N1 that I can find either...using the app called Spare Parts, you can get the "time spent without sleeping". I would assume this is exactly the same thing. You get there in that app by going to Battery History>Since Last Unplugged>and click on the Running button.

[kc.rkitek]

Also, if the messaging app switch doesn't solve any issues and you did install "Spare Parts" from the market, you can use it to potentially discover any rogue apps that may be keeping your N1 100% awake.

Try this:
a) run Spare Parts.
b) click Battery History.
c) Change CPU usage to "Partial Wake Usage"
d) Check to see if any app has a large blue bar.

If you've got one, that could possibly be the culprit...

[supsandroid]

this thread or that link needs to be stickied!!

[Quantic]

This spare parts app is awesome!