In my Review of the Palm Pre, I said that the Pre’s battery gets me through a day of moderate use, but with heavy use cuts out rather quickly. If some of what I’m hearing on Twitter and in the forums is any indication, I’ve been lucky with my results.
So yes, let’s come out and say it: battery life isn’t good on the Pre and hopefully Palm will be able to alleviate it with some software fixes (we know some are in the works). In the meantime, here are some tips and tricks for improving your battery life. We’ll start with the most important, end with one tip that may surprise you, and then offer a few accessory suggestions.
A huge thanks go out to the PreCentral.net Members who have been on this case like Columbo.
It’s all after the break!
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Palm Pre Battery-Saving Tweaks
Log out of IM
The Messaging apps keeps you logged into both AIM and Google Talk even after you dismiss the card. The IM protocol on the Palm Pre is currently afflicted with a bug that makes is suck the life out of your battery. The bug is aggravated if you have a lot of buddies. For now, unless you expect you’ll be actively using it, click the green circle at the top of your buddy list and select Offline.
Turn Bluetooth off
I’ve not seen the Pre do anything particularly nefarious with Bluetooth and battery life (seems to not make much of a dent to me), but better safe than sorry.
Move your phone
I have to admit that despite my complaints about poor coverage, there are places around with slightly worse coverage (I’m in one now). The Pre drains quickly in areas of marginal coverage — so if there’s a spot in the room with better signal, it wouldn’t kill you to be sitting there. (see below for more options).
Change your Fetch Interval for Email
I still have Gmail set to "As Items Arrive" because I’m stubborn and push Gmail is too nice to give up. Still, if push email isn’t critical to you, consider setting your fetch interval (in email preferences, under your account info) to 30 minutes or a half hour. Heck, depending on how often you get email, setting your interval to "As Items Arrive" may help your battery life. It’s something you need to play around with.
Check your screen settings
Does your brightness really need to be maxed out? Do you really think the screen needs to be on for 3 minutes before it turns off?
Hotmail? May be an issue
Folks in our forums are identifying Hotmail as a particularly nasty culprit for heat and battery issues. To be fair, this one could be as much Microsoft’s bug as Palm’s. But if hotmail isn’t essential for you, shut’er down.
Turn off GPS
If you’re not using (and not fixing to use) GPS, you can head into your location preferences and turn it off. In my testing this hasn’t made a huge ding because the Pre doesn’t have GPS on all the time, but if you’re using Google Maps a lot, it could help you.
Turn ON WiFi. No, seriously
Palm told us that the Pre was very efficient at WiFi and that we might just see better battery life with WiFi on. I haven’t done extensive testing yet, but yesterday I spent all day in a spot with absolutely terrible Sprint signal. In the morning, WiFi off and the battery drained rather quickly, down to 50% in three hours of moderate use. In the afternoon I turned WiFi on and with the same usage, it managed to keep it up to 25% four hours later. Still not great, but surprisingly better!
So: poor signal but good WiFi? Turn on WiFi. No WiFi around, turn it off.
Close apps, especially 3rd party apps
Can’t hurt! In fact, you may even want to consider deleting them (Opt + Tap in your launcher). We haven’t confirmed yet, but it’s possible some 3rd party apps may be failing to close cleanly and killing battery.
Reset the device
You never know, even built-in apps sometimes behave badly on the best of platforms.
Battery-Friendly Accessories
Spare Pre battery
Don’t be tempted by your old Centro’s battery either — we don’t recommend it. Our very own PreCentral.net Accessory Store will have the official Palm Pre battery in soon, for $39.95
Touchstone
Having a Touchstone around means you can top off more conveniently, so battery life isn’t as much of an issue. Again, our pals at the still will have them in stock within a week or two and for cheap! Touchstone Charging Kit clocks in at $49.95 and the Touchstone by it’s lonesome is $39.95.
One thing to keep in mind: the Touchstone doesn’t come with a microUSB cable or a wall charger and in my testing it does not charge when you plug it into a computer — so you’ll need a wall charger to go with it. The kind folks at the store have created a Touchstone + Battery Cover + Wall Charger Bundle for $71.90 and if you’re looking for a second setup for your office, they have a Touchstone + Wall Charger Bundle for $66.40.
Travel Charger / USB Charger
Sometimes you just need to plug in – here’s a list of chargers and cables that have been tested to work with the Palm Pre.
Vehicle Charger
Yeah, having a way to charge the Pre in the car is going to be important.
Emergency Charger
I’m a gearhead, so there’s always something in my bag that needs charging. My favorite new addition to my bag is the Freedom Mobile Power Emergency Charger. It’s just a little 1800mAh battery pack that gets charged by mini-USB and charges via mini-USB. So it’s important to note that by itself it is not compatible with the Palm Pre. But I also carry a mini-USB to micro-USB adapter which, combined with the Freedom emergency charger, charges up the Pre just fine.
Signal booster
Before I get to step 4 (which involves a monthly fee and a compromise), I’m currently testing out a signal booster from our store, the Wilson Electronics SIGNALBOOST DT Dual-Band 800/1900 MHz Desktop Amplifier Kit. It’s essentially a repeater – you put an antenna outside your building and run a coaxial cable to a box in your office. Given that I have lots of bars outside my steel box of an office and none inside, it seems like a good solution. It’s expensive, however, so we’ll have a full review for you next week to help decide between this and the…
Airave
Sprint sells something called the Airave, which essentially is a miniature cell tower in your house that runs off your high speed internet. In theory, it’s the perfect solution. In practice, it works but not for everybody.
The reason I’m not putting an Airave at the top of this (at least above the Wilson solution) is that it just has too many compromises:
- it costs $5 a month to use
- it only works for 5 users
- it does not provide high speed EVDO data, only 1xRTT signal for voice calls.
- it comes with a GPS puck whose sole purpose is to make sure you’re only using the device in approved areas. (and yes, there are legitimate E911 reasons for this, but it still grates me)
It’s only $100 bucks initially, though, so despite all those compromises I may break down and get one for the office.
What are YOUR battery saving tips?
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