Discuss Phone is DEVOURING the battery, even when off; Car mode activating for no reason! at the Evo 3D Bugs and Issues within the HTC Evo 4G Forums, Evo 3D Forums , and Evo View Forums; It started a number of days ago but I was too busy to notice. I have been turning my phone ...
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Junior Member
Phone is DEVOURING the battery, even when off; Car mode activating for no reason!
It started a number of days ago but I was too busy to notice. I have been turning my phone off when I'm not going to use it for an extended period of time, such as at work. My battery life has been going downhill ever since I got it. Two days ago, I turned my phone off as soon as I took it off the charger. It dropped 5 percent in 5 minutes, so I hit "power off". I turned it back on about a half hour later, and it was down to 75%! I checked the battery graph:
(Unfortunately I have not been able to find a screen capture program that works correctly without root, and if you have any suggestions please tell me! So I drew this up quick.)
It went down at about a 85 deg. angle for those 5 minutes, then when I had the phone turned off, it was decreasing at about a 45 deg. angle, a dead-straight line. So something has been sucking a constant amount of energy while it was off. How is this possible?

Anyway, "Android OS" was using 60% of the battery, whereas Display which was always very high was only about 10%.
I turned it off again, again it went almost straight down while it was on and at an angle down when off. I was not able to pull the battery because I had a difficult to remove case, so it went all the way down to nothing. When I got to a charger, the first thing I did was remove a few apps that I've installed recently. It didn't seem to do anything but I didn't have extensive time to test it. I let it fully charge then pulled the battery while I went to a movie. The battery didn't lose charge so that confirms it was android causing the issue.
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I thought my problems were over, but I noticed battery is still going down quickly. (I will post pictures below, taken with an old digital camera.) Tweetcaster is using 17% which is ridiculous and it has never done before. Even after force closing Tweetcaster and refreshing the battery screen it's still there.
Android OS is back down to 2% but display is higher than it has ever been before. It was at 67% earlier today and is up to 69% as I write this. It's on automatic brightness. (I really wish I could adjust the automatic brightness to just be one level less bright but still automatically adjust).

But the BIGGEST problem is this car dock mode thing (If you have never seen it, it's the "Car Panel" app). If I'm in the middle of typing something, playing a movie, doesnt matter it closes that and pops up at random. The worst part is it DESTROYS the battery. There is no option to disable the car mode as far as I can tell, and you can't uninstall it cause its a system app. From what I've read, probably pin 4 is shorting to pin 5 (ground) somehow which activates the car mode, but I don't understand why.

The best I could do was download an app called "Docknothing free" which stops the car screen from displaying, but it still runs in the background and destroys the battery. Let me explain the image. The nearly horizontal parts are screen off. The parts where it goes down almost in a straight line at 85 degrees are when car mode activates and turns the screen on without me noticing, and jagged lines going down at like 70 degrees are normal use such as twitter, texting and web browsing, etc.
I'm starting to hate this phone after 5 months. The number of weird problems is growing exponentially. I never had problems this severe with the original Evo in a year of owning. If this stuff continues, I'm pretty sure I will go for the Samsung Epic series when I'm eligible to upgrade. Or sooner. It's a shame the phone is letting me down, because while everyone else thinks 3D is a gimmick- I love it. I enjoy playing Let's Golf in 3D. I've taken great 3D photos and videos such as snow falling onto the camera lens.
Last edited by wolfmaster; 11-13-2011 at 08:00 PM.
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Senior Member
1. Battery drops after being removed from charger
Check this thread for an explanation on why the battery drops 5-10% right after being taken off the charger:
Very strange charging issue
with the link to xda:
Your battery gauge is lying to you (and it's not such a bad thing) - xda-developers
2. Car dock
You should be able to disable the auto launching of the dock mode in Settings:
Under settings select 'car dock', select 'car dock' icon, then turn off 'auto-launch'
3. TweetCaster
TweetCaster will still receive Tweets in the background after being closed. Here are some tips for extending battery life with TweetCaster:
a. Turn off Background Notifications. Tap the menu and select "Settings." Scroll down and tap "Notifications" and then uncheck the box for Background Notifications. With background notifications turned off, you will no longer be notified of new tweets after exiting TweetCaster.
b. Turn off Auto-refresh. Tap the menu and select "Settings." Scroll down and uncheck the box for Auto-refresh. With auto refresh enabled, you will need to manually refresh TweetCaster, but it will save battery life.
NOTE: When Auto-Refresh is disabled, the Notifications item in settings will be grayed out since disabling Auto-refresh automatically disables background notifications.
c. Remove the widget – If you've installed the TweetCaster widget, it will use more battery than having just the app installed.
I hope this helps. The 70% used by display is OK. When you clean TweetCaster it may go even higher, but your overall power consumption should drop.
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Junior Member
1. That explains the first 5 percent. But it does not explain why it continued going down after powering off, then absolutely plummeted down whenever I powered back on. In case I was not clear, I was turning the entire phone off, not just the screen, and it was losing battery at a constant rate. (This issue is gone but I'd like to figure out the cause in case it happens again.)
2. I read this elsewhere yesterday, but cannot find that option. There's no option called "car dock" in android settings, nor in car panel settings. Where is it??
I already have auto-launch unchecked in the app "Dock Mode" but that seems to be some sort of home-dock and has nothing to do with the car dock. Ugh, why would anyone want to use these things?
3. I had background notifications on, so tweetcaster is no longer in battery charts all the time. Thanks.
4. Display is up to 83% because tweetcaster is gone. I was misunderstanding this. They always have to add up to 100% battery usage. I thought it was using up 70% of the maximum possible battery power output. So I guess it just means it's using 70% of whatever amount of battery is being used. Confusing... Is there a way to see the actual amount (in amps or whatever) of power something (i.e. display) is using?
Last edited by wolfmaster; 11-14-2011 at 02:11 PM.
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Junior Member
Your battery life looks normal to me. You shouldn't drain it all the way however. Always get it on a charger before you hit 25% if possible.
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Junior Member
Well I still can't figure out how to disable car dock mode but it seems to be doing that less now for some reason. It has not activated car mode once today, so I've only lost 20% in 6 hours since taking it off the charger, with normal use. This is what my battery life used to be like. But I still would like to know how to disable that. I would not even use this car dock thing if I was at gunpoint. It is so stupid and pointless. I may just have to root if car mode acts up again, so I can delete the app. (I just never wanted to take the time and hassle to root. I'd need to research how to UN-root if I need to get updates, etc.)
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Senior Member
Try DockNothing Free from the market. When the Car Mode starts it allows you to select itself as the default program.
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Junior Member

Originally Posted by
pawel
Try DockNothing Free from the market. When the Car Mode starts it allows you to select itself as the default program.
You clearly didn't read my original post, so I'll repeat. Docknothing stops the screen from appearing but car mode still runs in the background and eats my battery.
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Junior Member
I too am having a lot of problems in the last few weeks with my battery not lasting more then 5.5 hrs. before that I could go at least 11.5+ hrs. I have to keep phone plugged in and the other day I went through the battery in 2-3 hrs while not using it. I've noticed that 'Android OS' is using the most of it at 50% to as high as 75%.
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