HTC EVO 4G :: 62 Hours / 24 Percent Battery Remaining

62 hours and 24% battery still remaining. This is after my initial period of hammering on the phone and back to my normal daily usage pattern which is like a blackberry user (some phone calls in and out, lots of email, at least a few every 30 minutes during the day and early evening). What this means for me as a blackberry user is that I can now confidently switch over from blackberry to the Evo as primary phone and get through a normal day (16 hours) without needing a mid-day charge.

Here are settings from my testing experience that I wish I had known when I first got the EVO at Google I/O:

1. Add to home sense screen:
widget: Power Control Android
widget: settings, 4G
widget: settings: Hotspot

2. Install android market apps (free):
Advanced Task Killer
Spare Parts
K-9 Mail

3. Run Advanced Task Killer (some disagree, do what you want. I'll revisit and retest this when 2.2 gets released by HTC for the EVO. I don't need sprint navigation, sprint tv, etc. to ever be running since I will use google navigation. I haven't had time to do another endurance test without using ATK and I'm not planning to do another endurance test)

Deselect things you actually want to keep running in the background, e.g.:
voice dialer
voice search
google voice
calendar
k-9 mail
gmail
....
Kill selected apps

ATK will put a notification up at each boot and remember your selections so it's easy to re-kill off all the sprint and other apps you don't normally want 'running' in the background.

4. Turn off 4G and hotspot on the main page with widgets installed.
Note: I found I don't need to disable gps or bluetooth since with streamlined apps running nothing is using them unless I want it to and I want my bluetooth to automatically pickup when I get in the car.

5. Turn screen brightness to low or medium using widget icon. this disables auto brightness but the lower screen brightness seems fine for me. When outside in the sun just click it up if needed

6. Settings Wireless and Networks, Wi-Fi Settings, <menu button> Advanced, Wi-Fi sleep policy, Never.
It's a bit counterintuitive, but I've tested it out both ways and confirmed the articles that recommend this. The phone uses dramatically less power in this state as opposed to auto sleeping wi-fi which turns on the 3G radio. Dramatic as in without keeping wi-fi alive overnight my battery went from like 70% to almost nothing during earlier tests.

7. <optional> Run the battery from a full charge to completely drained once. I'm not sure if this had an effect or not, just putting it in because I did it once before this current long runtime since charge to make sure the battery was properly profiled. It's easy to do with 4G on and watching HD youtube videos.

8. K-9 versus gmail client. I'm seeing much more cpu usage from gmail client versus K-9. I have work email on a host service that supports imap idle (rackspace). The imap idle push seems to really save on cpu usage and my work email delivers as fast to the Evo as it does to my blackberry. I like the gmail client for my personal mail but may end up switching my gmail.com to deliver via K-9 instead to really save on battery. Needs more exploring but it appears the gmail client 'push' is not as efficient as the imap idle.

9. Summary, when you want to show off your 4G Youtube HD or use the phone as a mobile hotspot, just click on the 4G and away it goes. But normally keep that radio off since you don't actually need it and it's a huge power drain. With the widget installed this becomes an easy habit.