Sprint Suggests Turning Off Roaming to Help Your EVO 4G’s Battery
Let’s address the ever-so-awkward elephant in the room: the HTC EVO 4G’s battery life could stand to be a little better. Whether it’s the hardware, software, or the battery itself, something’s not really helping in this three-pronged equation. Fortunately, Sprint feels the same and they’re offering up some tips to help you squeeze more juice out of your shiny new phone.
The most unique and interesting tip they offer is to turn off network roaming. When your phone’s radio is constantly searching for a better network when it doesn’t need to, it’s probably using more battery life than it needs to at the same time. It’s suggested that you should only be on “Automatic Roaming” when you absolutely can’t hold a signal wherever you may be on Sprint’s network.
You can find the rest of the tips straight ahead.
1. Add widgets to your HTC Sense homescreen to control the radios (Bluetooth, WiFi, 4G)
2. Use the widgets to turn off select radios when not in use. If you’re not using 4G, switch it off and fall back on 3G instead to gain better battery life.
3. Turn off network roaming. By default, roaming is turned on for the HTC EVO 4G out of the box, which means that the phone scans for the strongest CDMA/EV-DO signal. If you’ve got great Sprint coverage where you are and don’t need to roam onto one of Sprint’s partner carriers, turn off roaming so the phone doesn’t need to constantly search for the best signal.
4. Turn on automatic brightness so the screen can adjust in light and dark environments rather than having brightness turned all the way up. Alternatively, you can also set the screen brightness lower by default.
5. Turn off live wallpapers–they’re pretty, but they do use a little bit of extra processing power.
6. Carry an extra battery or plug into a car charger when you can.
[via PocketNow]