Battery life on mobile phones

1. Lower screen brightness. Go to Settings -> Sound & display -> Brightness. Slide the brightness switch to the left to lower it or check the "Automatic brightness" box to let the EVO use its sensors to adjust the screen according to the ambient light. You can also find dedicated screen brightness widgets in Android Market.

2. Turn off 4G, WiFi, GPS, and Bluetooth when you don't need them. Theeasiest way to manage these wireless radios is to use the Settings widget preinstalled on your EVO. Tap the + button on your home screen -> Widget -> Settings. Once your chosen widgets are on any of your home screens, a simple tap turns each one on/off. There are other widgets that do this in Android Market, but these are already preinstalled and they're a nice-looking set.

3. Disable WiFi and4G network notifications. Go to Settings -> Wireless & networks -> Wi-Fi settings. Uncheck the Network notification box so the EVO isn't constantly scanning and looking for open networks to tell you about. For 4G, go to Settings -> Wireless & networks -> 4G settings.

4. Disable "always on" mobile data. This is one of the biggest battery savers. Go to Settings -> Wireless & networks -> Mobilenetworks. Tap "Enable always-on mobile data" to uncheck the box. I haven't found a negative consequence of disabling this feature, as Gmail and other apps/functions still work perfectly.

5. Turn off background data. If you're not using Google services, go to Settings -> Accounts & sync and uncheck the Background data box so that applications cannot sync, send, and receive data whenever they wantto.

6. Lower the screen timeout interval. The EVO's screen can be set to automatically turn off when you don't interact with it for a predetermined amount of time: 15 seconds, 30 seconds, 1 minute, 2 minutes, 10 minutes, or never. Depending on what you're doing, a too-short interval can become annoying (especially if you didn't disable your lock screen), so choose wisely.

7. Manually turnoff the screen when not in use. Since the screen timeout function ensures that the EVO's screen will turn off (unless you have it set to "never turn off"), it can be tempting to put the phone down when you're done using it and just let the screen turn off by itself. Instead, give the power button at the top of the EVO a quick push to turn it off manually.

8. Turn off auto-sync. Go to Settings-> Accounts & sync -> Auto-sync.

9. Change auto-sync frequency (Weather, News, Stocks, Twitter, etc). If you don't want to turn off auto-sync, you can adjust how frequently data is retrieved/updated. The settings vary depending on the app (and some don't offer the setting at all), but it's generally found in the same place: Settings -> Accounts & sync. Select an account from the list and thentap "Account settings" to change the sync frequency.

10. Disable wireless network location services when not needed. Go to Settings -> Location -> Use wireless networks. Note that this (or one of the other options) needs to be enabled if you want to see and/or use your location in apps like Maps.

11. Turn off window animations. I know it's nice to look at and fun to show off, but eye candyuses extra power (albeit not very much). To turn it off, go to Settings -> Sound & display -> Animation -> No animations.

12. Don't use a live wallpaper. Live wallpapers were one of the new features in Android 2.1, so it feels like a step backward not to use them. They don't hit the battery very hard when used, but they do make a small dent. So if you're trying to improve battery life, even ifonly incrementally, use a static wallpaper instead.

13. Use a dark wallpaper. Some say that dark wallpapers are more energy efficient than light wallpapers. Others say it doesn't make any difference. Either way, there's no harm in using a dark wallpaper so you may as well do it.

14. Change WiFi sleep policy. This may sound counter-intuitive, but leaving WiFi on when the EVO isn't being used...