5 Steps to Better Battery Life

While there are extended batteries available to give you two to three times as much power most of the time you can extend your battery life significantly with simple conservation. Here are some simple settings you can use to make sure you have battery life at the end of the day.

  1. Turn off WiFi when you are not using it. Scanning for and staying connected to a Wireless Access Point takes a lot of juice.
  2. Turn off Bluetooth when not in use.
  3. Avoid using Vibrate. Vibrate is a physical motion that requires a lot of energy.
  4. If you send and receive a lot of text messages, turn off the ring tone for text messages.
  5. Under Start > Settings > Power Management change your settings for backlight on battery and display off to the same amount of time. 20 seconds should be a reasonable amount of idle time.

Extra Tip: If you’re not hard of hearing, turn the ring volume down on your phone. This is can be set under Start > Settings > Profiles > Highlight Normal, press Menu > Edit > change the Ring Volume to something lower (3 is plenty loud for me) and press done.

One more: Check out our other post, Better Battery Life in 5 Minutes.

Related posts:

  1. Get Better Battery Life in 5 Minutes
  2. How to Use Locale on the G1 for a Better Night’s Sleep
  3. How to Adjust Sound Profiles
  4. BoxWave’s ElectraSpan Extended Battery for the Shadow
  5. How to Hard Reset via Hardware Buttons

Friday, August 8th, 2008 General, Tips and Tricks

8 Comments to 5 Steps to Better Battery Life

d4rkwing
August 8, 2008

The replacement battery (which comes bundled with new Shadows) has no problems lasting me all day. Leaving wifi on all day with medium-heavy texting(50+) calling(1 hour) and web browsing(2 hrs), I usually have over 50% at the end of the day. Very good imo.

Fred
August 8, 2008

yea, the first thing I noticed with this new battery is that wi-fi and bluetooth don’t kill the battery nearly as fast.

Kalvindawg
August 8, 2008

I LOVE THE NEW BATTERY!! It lasts so much longer I am so stoked to finally use my phone without worrying if I should be listening to music or not cause it might go dead.

Nain
August 8, 2008

hmm i turned off bluetooth and seems the same

just another thing though, i have my phone on vibrate

everytime i get a text it vibrates or a call

so im getting text messages all da time

therefore using more power then just a regular “alert” tone correct??

clag8
August 9, 2008

Good tips. The new battery works great. Yeah it looks bulky but it’s worth it. It lasts me all day now and I’m a heavy, heavy texter.

Side note:
If you happen to get your Shadow in the pool or so (like it happened to me) no worries. Let it dry in the sun for about 2 hours (or more) and it actually works still. I’m not saying it will work for everyone but I guess I’m lucky that my Shadow is perfectly functional after being in a pool.

robbizase
August 11, 2008

Does anyone else’s center button get blazzing hot after having your wifi on for 15 mins or more? My wifi turned on can eat though my battery within 2 hrs, is that normal? Can’t wait to get my new battery! Hope this new one helps.

Sean
August 13, 2008

Yeah if you currently have a t-mobile shadow that was put out prior to the new battery being issued then t-mobile will send you a free extended life battery. you will need to contact customer support with a complaint about the battery life that you have on your current shadow and ask for an extende battery.

ts86
August 28, 2008

Thanks for the tip! After I read this, I immediately called T-mobile and had them send me a new battery. Can’t wait till it gets here!

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