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Battery Life

omatix said:
So, after starting this thread and getting pretty annoyed at my battery life, I called HTC. The guy wasn't that helpful. I jumped through all the hoops, just to show that I hadn't got anything running that was going to kill the battery. I understand that he had to check a lot of things. When I got nowhere, he told me to run down my battery to zero, wait until the phone switched itself off, then charge it again. I hadn't done this since after its first charge. I agreed to do that, but got a case number, because I was sure I'd be calling back to try to get a better battery.

So, I turned on GPS navigation and Pandora and killed the battery over the course of around an hour (from 22%). I took the battery out, left it sitting out for maybe 20 mins, and recharged it overnight. I was shocked to see that it actually helped a lot - now I'm able to use my phone throughout the day (8-5) and have around 50% battery at the end of it. Nothing like the first day, when I tried to show it to some friends at 2.30PM, just to have the battery die in mid Google Goggles demonstration.
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Do you normally leave GPS off ?

I'm starting to wonder if GPS on is the culprit...
 
T-Mobile said:
I went 4 days with 12 hr battery life. Then I left my phone charge for 24 straight hours like the manual suggests (I didn't do this out of the box).

Now I'm getting a full day's charge!! One major difference is the first 5 hour drop, it's not declining near as fast with similar usage.
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I may have to try this "24hrs" charge... I can use another phone in the meantime (pop my SIM out...)

Do you have GPS turned on or off? (in the power widget bar)


cheers
 
I generally only turn gps on when I need it, if not, the phone is constantly pinging your location with gps. Everytime you do a search, etc.
 
Drained the battery all the way last night and charged it fully overnight - about 12hrs. Status gave "battery full", % was 100, all signs showing it was completely charged.

I'm going to try something today... since I'm in the office today (where I get a weak indoor sign - the building is brick/concrete with steel structure) I've decided to put the phone on Airplane mode, but left WiFi on. Brightness at 25%. GPS *ON* (I don't want to add too many variables). The few apps that have notifications on, like the native news/weather app, FB and weather channel, are set to update no sooner than 1hr or 2hr (if available). I'm going to use Pandora a bit as well, as that's what I'd normally do in a normal workday.

My gut feel is the radio while I'm inside my building, is getting a week signal, and constantly trying to locate a network and/or switch from 3G to E because the signal is so weak (this doesn't happen when I get near the exterior of the building, or outdoors - I don't have the blatant 3G problem others report).

So I'm going to try leaving the radio off completely (airplane mode), but leave WiFi on. If this proves successful in improving battery life, early signs are showing it actually might, I'll try leaving on 2G only while inside my building, and see what happens. Since there is no native 3G only, I can't really try that (as I'd rather have 3G only than 2G only as an option). Will then see how that fares. If positive, I'll go back to radio on (3G & 2G), and try with GPS OFF.


Will report back.


cheers


.
 
Hi everyone. I have my Nexus One since the day after launch and I'm having some sort of battery issue. The iPhone (my previous phone) has taught me alot about battery conservation, so I know to turn off GPS, Wifi, and even Google Sync when not in use. So...my issue...

I notice that after my battery hits 100% after a full charge and I start using it, the next percentage that it goes to is 98%, or even straight to 97% sometimes. The usage really is minimal. Besides turning off all the aforementioned antennas, I have calibrated the battery about 5 times thus far (charging to 100% and letting it run down till shutoff). I have had the unit replaced by HTC due to a faulty speaker and am getting the same issues on this second one, so it's either software or battery.

I installed Spare Parts app and followed the steps to see what app was sucking up most juice, nothing happening though. No crazy blue bars depicting anything out of the ordinary, and I even disabled the default Messaging app and installed Handcent (which is way better anyway). Because HTC has no accessories yet (read spare batteries), they have instructed me to send back this unit as DOA, get a refund, and order a brand new phone. Truthfully I'm getting tired of this online crap, sending back and forth. Waste of time.

Is anyone else experiencing what I have? Thanks much for your replies!
Allen
 
@allen099.... man, it's sounds like you and I both have similar battery struggles... otherwise, my Nexus is solid and I'm reluctant to send it back...

I was on a roll yesterday with my "experiment" (ie. turning on airplane mode, ie. turning off cell radio which in a weak signal area to avoid hunting and switching)... but seems like if I make any amount of phone calls, even if just 30min worth, battery life take a dive...

as it stands, i can only get about 12hrs of life at most.... :( I'm wondering those getting 1full day or more on a charge even make one phone call to get the battery to last that long... :confused:

i also noticed that using the music player uses more battery than using Pandora... at least that's how it seemed... is that possible??!! all I can think of is streaming is in a format that requires less processing than the .m4a files I've got on my SD card...

I've cycled yet again last night (full drain).... I'll try again today... leave GPS off entirely.... i might even just keep plugged in day and try to keep plugged in as much as possible over the next 24hrs... i have charger at home, in car and at work... so should be able to keep it plugged most of the time today...


HTC should consider opening up local repair centers in the larger cities, at least to avoid the shipping back and forth crap...
 
@dennisburton - That's exactly what I did when I opened the box. The good thing about these batteries is the technology inside is the same, therefore following the same procedure with various phones is that much easier.

Hi mi_canuck. Regarding the music player, i thought it was just me! I didn't see anyone else post about it, so I convinced myself there was no problem...but you're noticing it too? Ok..I don't think this phone is working out for Google the way they initially thought. The one queue they need to take from Apple is seeing how easy it is to get support for the iPhone, because support is one of the main things I look at when buying a product. They must have the Nexus One in a store, be it HTC or T-Mobile branded, but I don't want to wait an entire week to send my phone back, for them to refund me, and then order another phone.

But anyway, I want to love this phone. This is my first Android device, and I LOVE it...the openness is unparalleled. For a geek, being able to do anything with a mobile device is so cool...but it looks like we're not getting $530-worth of hardware. Google's making a nice buck on this phone. It got the teardown treatment and was valued at $175 to be manufactured!
 
Digitalfix said:
My experience with he droid and laptops is that you need to FULLY charge and kill a lithium battery a few times when you get it to get the full charge cycle out of the battery. My droid rarely runs out now.
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i kno this might sound noobish but what do u mean by "kill a lithium battery"
 
allen099 said:
@dennisburton - That's exactly what I did when I opened the box. The good thing about these batteries is the technology inside is the same, therefore following the same procedure with various phones is that much easier.

Hi mi_canuck. Regarding the music player, i thought it was just me! I didn't see anyone else post about it, so I convinced myself there was no problem...but you're noticing it too? Ok..I don't think this phone is working out for Google the way they initially thought. The one queue they need to take from Apple is seeing how easy it is to get support for the iPhone, because support is one of the main things I look at when buying a product. They must have the Nexus One in a store, be it HTC or T-Mobile branded, but I don't want to wait an entire week to send my phone back, for them to refund me, and then order another phone.

But anyway, I want to love this phone. This is my first Android device, and I LOVE it...the openness is unparalleled. For a geek, being able to do anything with a mobile device is so cool...but it looks like we're not getting $530-worth of hardware. Google's making a nice buck on this phone. It got the teardown treatment and was valued at $175 to be manufactured!
Click to expand...


before i send mine back, i'll wait for a the first software update to see how that improves battery life... i'm not convinced it's a hardware thing... i'm thinking software, or just some freak usage pattern i'm doing that isn't obvious, but is killing the battery sooner... i mean, it's not great, but still about even with the 3GS i had after about 6months (battery life was getting worse on it even after 6mos vs when new).

i'll keep experimenting to figure out what I AM doing to get the battery to go down... it's either a radio thing when i'm inside my building at work... or a software bug (maybe the processor isn't throttling like it's supposed to, i dunno... maybe it is afterall a hardware issue, but i can't be without it at this point ;) .... i still love it :D

anyone know if/when we can buy a replacement HTC battery? i emailed them to ask if they could just send me a replacement battery and i'd send them my original one back... We'll see what they respond with.... til then, i'll continue my battery sleuthing and trying to condition the battery...
 
you know... when i got it, it was a really cold period for here in MI, and the box and everything it in were quite cold from having sat in the FedEx truck... I'm wondering if the battery might have suffered some sort of cold induced damage while in transit ???
 
mi_canuck said:
anyone know if/when we can buy a replacement HTC battery? i emailed them to ask if they could just send me a replacement battery and i'd send them my original one back... We'll see what they respond with.... til then, i'll continue my battery sleuthing and trying to condition the battery...
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I hear ya...I love the phone too. But keep in mind there's only a 14-day return period. Otherwise you're stuck with it.

As far as the battery goes, the managers at HTC told me there aren't any batteries yet to do exchanges with. This is why they want me to send my ENTIRE phone back as DOA, leaving me with nothing to use :-/

The cold can definitely impact battery life, but it's only very short-term. Once it thaws out and warms up, and especially after a few calibration cycles, it gets back to normal.
 
omatix said:
I wouldn't be too worried if you don't have time to charge it fully.

Check here:
Charging lithium-ion batteries

To quote from it, he says:

"Lithium-ion is a very clean system and does not need priming as nickel-based batteries do. The 1st charge is no different to the 5th or the 50th charge. Stickers instructing to charge the battery for 8 hours or more for the first time may be a leftover from the nickel battery days. "
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This is partially true. To further qutoe the same article "[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]However, a full discharge/charge will reset the digital circuit of a 'smart' battery to improve the state-of-charge estimation".

A great deal depends on the quality of something called "CHARGE BALANCING" in series connected Li-Ion cells. This process is critical to maximizing the useful charge of a battery PACK consisting of multiple cells. Charge balancing methods vary, with systems widely available from a variety of IC vendors. These systems typically best optimize the pack by seeing full charge cycles, more readily identifying the individual cells that are out of balance from the rest.

So yes, a SINGLE Li-ion cell has no "memory" and requires no conditioning. However, a PACK of cells is a different matter.
[/FONT]
 
Another note- leave the charger connected as long as possible on a full pack. Many battery balancing circuits have limited current carrying capacity for the actual BALANCING current for individual cells. This means it can take hours to fully balance the pack during charging and after full charge.
 
allen099 said:
it looks like we're not getting $530-worth of hardware. Google's making a nice buck on this phone. It got the teardown treatment and was valued at $175 to be manufactured!
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There's more to costs than just the parts of the phone. Researching and development costs for features, advertising, marketing, etc., etc.

I am also having battery issues. I cannot go a day without the phone dying. I wake up at 6 AM and the battery is on its way out at about 5 PM or so. I mostly use the web browser, GTalk, and chompSMS. I also have a Twitter widget syncing every 30 minutes. Screen is at 5% brightness. GPS is on. Facebook polled every hour.

It seems like this should all be alright. My iPhone 3GS had no problem lasting a day and I even used music on it. I had email fetched every 30 minutes and Twitter every 15 minutes. That worked just fine and I lasted to about 30% at maybe 11 PM.

I think the difference is that I'm using 3G on my N1 when I only used EDGE on my 3GS. I still don't believe that accounts for the huge difference.

I'm going to substantially reduce my network services, like Twitter (1 hour intervals) and see how it goes. Maybe I'll also stop GPS but that's a shame. I shouldn't have to compromise on something like that. Constant network polling, I can understand compromising. But not GPS.

I also did not fully charge my N1 before using it. But these batteries don't need that nor do they need to be calibrated. That's old school. I might as well give it a try, however. Won't hurt.
 
Esquire1 said:
There's more to costs than just the parts of the phone. Researching and development costs for features, advertising, marketing, etc., etc.

I am also having battery issues. I cannot go a day without the phone dying. I wake up at 6 AM and the battery is on its way out at about 5 PM or so. I mostly use the web browser, GTalk, and chompSMS. I also have a Twitter widget syncing every 30 minutes. Screen is at 5% brightness. GPS is on. Facebook polled every hour.

It seems like this should all be alright. My iPhone 3GS had no problem lasting a day and I even used music on it. I had email fetched every 30 minutes and Twitter every 15 minutes. That worked just fine and I lasted to about 30% at maybe 11 PM.

I think the difference is that I'm using 3G on my N1 when I only used EDGE on my 3GS. I still don't believe that accounts for the huge difference.

I'm going to substantially reduce my network services, like Twitter (1 hour intervals) and see how it goes. Maybe I'll also stop GPS but that's a shame. I shouldn't have to compromise on something like that. Constant network polling, I can understand compromising. But not GPS.

I also did not fully charge my N1 before using it. But these batteries don't need that nor do they need to be calibrated. That's old school. I might as well give it a try, however. Won't hurt.
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I do understand the costs of R&D for a company, however you're forgetting who the company in this particular case is. Google went to HTC, gave them the specs that they want, saw some HTC prototypes, and that was it. HTC has been doing this for a lonnnnng time already. On the marketing front, it's Google. They put it up on their adsense, pay a little bit for some web banners and that's it. You're not seeing ads on TV or anywhere else. It's meant to be a phone that geeks initially adopt and then spread by word of mouth. For this company and for this phone, not much money was spent. Not even in distribution!

The batteries do need an additional calibration, and then once every 3 or 4 months. Based on your usage specs, it seems normal. If you leave a twitter client on, and especially Gtalk, they will use up a good chunk of battery, especially the former because it's always maintaining a connection via the network. GPS however is the #1 battery killer on smartphones. I'd encourage you to disable that and Wifi when not in use. On the Nexus, we have that power widget which makes those tasks pretty simple to do. Another thing that sucks up battery is the syncing that Google has with its accounts (Google Sync aka push email/contacts/calendar). If you find that you don't change your contacts or calendar too often, perhaps disable those from syncing all the time and just enable when needed. It's in Settings>Accounts & Sync. Maybe this will give you a few more hours throughout the day.
 
I get about 14 hour of use from the moment i unplug it. Full brightness, wifi, 3g, web browsing, live wallpaper, etc etc. Really 12-14 may seem bad but its all i need honestly, im hardly away from home for 14 hours and if i am its simple to adjust some things so the battery last for a wayyy long time but if im not going to be away from home for 14 hours then i definitely have full brightness and the works so i can show this phone off.
 
allen099 said:
I do understand the costs of R&D for a company, however you're forgetting who the company in this particular case is. Google went to HTC, gave them the specs that they want, saw some HTC prototypes, and that was it. HTC has been doing this for a lonnnnng time already. On the marketing front, it's Google. They put it up on their adsense, pay a little bit for some web banners and that's it. You're not seeing ads on TV or anywhere else. It's meant to be a phone that geeks initially adopt and then spread by word of mouth. For this company and for this phone, not much money was spent. Not even in distribution!
Click to expand...

Yes but you're letting the few dictate the norm in this case. By few I'm referring to the iPhone and Droid, and the tremendous marketing efforts put forth and quantities made for both phones. This is in fact not the norm and marketing for the Nexus One, while almost non existent, more closely resembles most other smartphones that still carry a full price in excess of $500. Consider as well that this phone, even with a European version, is produced in much smaller quantities than most any other HTC. There should be no foul called for Google charging $530.

Now for their customer service? That's another story... and another (try many) thread.
 
JSchu22 said:
Yes but you're letting the few dictate the norm in this case. By few I'm referring to the iPhone and Droid, and the tremendous marketing efforts put forth and quantities made for both phones. This is in fact not the norm and marketing for the Nexus One, while almost non existent, more closely resembles most other smartphones that still carry a full price in excess of $500. Consider as well that this phone, even with a European version, is produced in much smaller quantities than most any other HTC. There should be no foul called for Google charging $530.

Now for their customer service? That's another story... and another (try many) thread.
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And that's exactly it. You hit the reason why most phones are so expensive. Because companies provide customer service for free, and for at least a year per phone, that itself costs more than the electronic parts. When you pay people $10/hr (if even) x 40hr/wk x 52 weeks, you're gonna get a cost which is much, MUCH higher than the physical product. If Google would provide the support that's needed, my opinion would change. I understand this is their first hardware product to the public, but as a business, they needed to have looked at other businesses and the aspects that make them successful. As of right now, it just looks like Google thought the phone would be completely flawless. (sorry for getting off the battery topic)
 
ItsBrad said:
I get about 14 hour of use from the moment i unplug it. Full brightness, wifi, 3g, web browsing, live wallpaper, etc etc. Really 12-14 may seem bad but its all i need honestly, im hardly away from home for 14 hours and if i am its simple to adjust some things so the battery last for a wayyy long time but if im not going to be away from home for 14 hours then i definitely have full brightness and the works so i can show this phone off.
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If I got 14hrs with FULL screen brightness I'd be jumping for joy! Problem is with everyone's reports... it's totally subjective... it's like gas mileage with a car... so many factors... I wish there was some sort of objective test (maybe through an app) that would assess if a battery is kaput or if it's just usage... I'll be eager to hear back from HTC - I emailed them about my crappy battery life...

:(
 
icolorado303 said:
hey man I have had a 3gs on tmobile unlocked too and am thinking about making the switch to the nexus.... I value your opinion let me know
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I depends what you're looking to get out of the phone. What do you do on your iPhone? Do you feel like you're being restricted from something that the Android has? One thing I can tell you for sure is that in NYC, T-Mobile has some super-fast 3G. When you start moving out of it though, it's a bit spotty.
 
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