Well, it’s no surprise that my T-Mobile G1’s battery life suffers terribly as a consequence, so I did some homework to find out whether there were some ways to improve my situation. Aside from easing up on the old downloading, I found quite a few ideas…some more practical than others!

1. Turn off 3G whenever possible.

Wait, what? I got my G1 because it has awesome 3G and lets me surf all over the place in public, without waiting 6 years for the smallest of images to load up. No dice for me, but I guess it is a good idea.

2. Turn off automatic syncing, or just for Calendar or Contacts.

Yeah…see 1.

3. Use power saving/monitoring apps.

Download Toggle Settings from the Market.
Download Power Manager from the Market. Make sure you turn on the monitor.
Download Watts. This will let you monitor the battery life and see how these steps improve G1 life.

More like it! These applications give you a much better idea of how much juice is actually left in your G1, meaning you can save your battery for an emergency phonecall instead of just one more game (which becomes six) of PacMan.

4. Make sure you “drain” the battery 2 to 4 times completely. The battery does not have a memory, but it does need to be drained every few months.
Then recharge it until a few hours after it says that it is full then it will recalibrate itself and the battery will now “know” how much power it can really hold.

True with all mobile devices which need charging, you are supposed to kill off the battery entirely and charge from there, or it begins to falsify how much charge it really has. Anyone who has an iPhone knows what I’m talking about…
5. Switch off Bluetooth
6. Switch off GPS
7. Switch off WiFi
8. Switch off Location
9. Leave Screen Brightness set at between 0% and 25%
10. Set Screen Timeout at 1 or 2 minutes.

Okay okay, I get it! Turn off the extremities and it lasts longer. Just I like the all singing and dancing G1 instead of the hobbled version with the stuff turned off…

11. Some apps kill the battery life. Facebook, MySpace and other applications keep checking parent sites on the internet for data synchronization.

Data syncing is Battery Sucker No.1 as far as the G1 is concerned, so keep your Twitter breakfast choice updates to yourself until you get to work, perhaps?

All in all, some good ideas to get an extra spark out of the G1’s battery!

Sources: A Little More Fun / Locker Gnome