Let’s face it, the battery life on the HTC Evo is crap. I’d be lucky if I could make it 8 hours without my phone going dead on me. I have tried all types of apps, even ones I reviewed in the past, but they never worked well enough where I could really see a change in battery life. I finally found an obscure article about using OverclockWidget to underclock my Evo.
Now in order for it to work, you have to have a rooted phone. This can be tricky, it took me about 5 times before mine took but unrevoked.com makes it fairly painless for most people. Once you’ve been rooted, the app should start working for you.
Search for “overclockwidget” in the market and install it. Once installed, add the overclockwidget widget to one of your home screens (click and hold in a blank area or press the “+” button, select “widget”). You should now have an icon of a cpu with a number around 998 on the screen. Click the icon. Choose “advanced setting”. I changed the following settings:
Min: 768000
Max: 998400
Diff Freq Screen off: Yes
Min: 245760
Max: 245000
Update interval: 60 (seconds)
Supress notification: Yes
Use your frequencies: Yes
Autostart on boot: Yes
Click “Save” to save your settings. Basically I want the machine to run with as little processor power as possible while the screen is off. Nothing is being rendered, just checking mail or messages and seeing if anyone is trying to call me. 245000 is as low as it will let me go so that’s as good as it gets. I haven’t had any issues with it set this low. While the screen is on, it runs between 768000 and 998400 to make sure it can keep up with whatever tasks I am running. I had the setting at 512000 and 998400 but experienced delays in some apps. Sure I lost a little in battery life by doing that, but it’s worth skipping the delay. Mess with the settings yourself to see what combinations you come up with.
By using the above settings, I increased my battery life from ~8 hours to averaging 14 1/2 hours now. No other changes have been made to the system.
Note: The way I monitor my battery usage is with an app called “battery left widget”. Add it to your phone in the same way as the OverclockWidget. It will configure itself to give you an estimated time left on your phone. It usually takes around 3 days to start reporting accurate readings.
I do notice that if I’m heavily into a game or I’m on the phone a lot, the battery life still drains fairly quickly but not as bad as before. This is mainly to make sure that while the phone isn’t in use, it won’t be using up your battery just sitting there idle.
Note: The way I monitor my battery usage is with an app called “battery left widget”. Add it to your phone in the same way as the OverclockWidget. It will configure itself to give you an estimated time left on your phone.
