How To Fix The Battery Life On The Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10

Recently I had the Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 in my possession for about three weeks. The phone is truly outstanding as SE’s first Android device, and has some features that really shine in comparison to the competition. The design is also just so stunning, and reminds me of the Monolithic Design concept we’ve seen with Sony’s other products. However, after using the phone daily, it became obvious that there was a big problem – the battery life. The battery was draining way too quickly, even in standby mode. I tried some application management programs, and so forth, but it still seemed less than what I’d hoped for.

After reading the topic “X10 Power Usage” (16 pages and counting) at XDA Developer forums I quickly realized I wasn’t alone. The discussion within is very interesting and many culprits are identified, such as the obvious like Wi-Fi, but other oddities such as the pre-installed Moxier loading by itself. I’d noticed that too on my test version of the XPERIA X10.

There was also the matter of Data Sync within the Settings – it seems that having it update often for things such as Mail (or GMail) is making a big impact; try turning it off from Auto update. Try changing the Update frequency (Settings > Online Service Accounts > {ServiceName} > Update Automatically) of all services to Every Hour. And of course, Android programs like JuiceDefender, JuicePlotter, and Advanced Task Manager help out greatly.

I also read this helpful comment:

Using an application that stops several services on startup. I use startup auditor and disable moxier services, Timescape, face recognition…etc.

Using an application that disables the APN while the screen is off and therefore sincyng in the meanwhile. There are lots of such applications, data on demand works for me and is free.

Cycling the battery a few times from discharge to full charge. This has made truly a difference.

Using 2G most of the time rather than 3G. (I don’t have to do much, at work I’m in a dark spot with 2G coverage only).

All these measures combined, give me more than 20-30 hours of operation while at the beggining I could hadly get 8.

We also hear from twitter user RMMaurice that TaskPanel is a better alternative to Startup Auditor.

There was hope that the latest firmware version, R1FA016, that has slipped out to some around the world and pre-installed for others, would fix this, but it merely improves keyboard accuracy and other issues that were present. I found changing the keyboard style to the Android one was also helpful.

Please leave your tips in the comments.