The Palm Pre is a great device, but the battery needs a little help. Like with the iPhone, you shouldn’t expect this phone to last more than a day or two on a charge. Palm gave us these useful tips for making the Pre’s battery last longer. We tried them, and they made a big difference.
Log out of IM, especially AIM. There’s a bug in the AIM client that sucks up battery way too quickly (Palm’s fixing it) and the Google Talk presence alerts also use battery, though less than AIM. Remember, you can’t just throw the IM program’s card away; you have to click on “Sign Out” in the IM applications.
Turn on Wi-Fi. Sounds unintuitive, right? Well, the Pre doesn’t have the greatest Sprint reception of anything we’ve ever tested, and it actually has a relatively power-efficient Wi-Fi radio. When the Pre’s Wi-Fi is running, it uses Wi-Fi rather than 3G to make Internet connections. So connecting via Wi-Fi saves battery rather than wasting it.
Change your e-mail settings. By tapping on the upper left corner of the screen in the e-mail program, you can pop down a menu that lets you change e-mail preferences. For accounts where you get relatively little mail, set them to push. But for accounts where you get an e-mail every five minutes or more often, set them to check every 15 minutes. That will save battery.
With these battery tips, you’ll definitely get more than a day’s use out of each charge on the Palm Pre.
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