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Desire battery consumption

Hi everybody

First off all, what a nice forum this is!! It’s nice to see how people unite to clarify problems and search for solutions!

So, I’m looking for my first smartphone. I started with big selection criteria and ended up with the desire. I've read through the full forum, from beginning to end. Off coarse the battery life is important, but I don’t except that it will go on for 4 days. On the other hand, I don’t want to charge the battery every night (except if I did a full use, for a few hours with all the features). Two full days if enough for me!

So can somebody help me with these questions?

1) I’m not going to use the term ‘regular’ since it’s not objective. So I start from this point: Disable all sync (or the least possible), disable 3g & gps, wifi: 1u/day. Lets say 20 sms/day and 30min phone call/day. No other intense apps. So very basic use.
What’s the battery life I can expect after 4 weeks use?

2) Are u overall happy with the quality of sound and video of the desire?
3) in the future: will it be possible to upgrade to Gingerbread?
4) do I have to consider another smartphone, since the desire is a year old? Does htc have new plans? So I’ll better wait? (I’m not looking for a phone the size of the desire HD)

I’m almost there… J
Thanks in advance!
 
Hello Everybody.

I Got my Htc Desire for 3 weeks now and I think my Battery is already "Broken In" now.. BUT my Battery life is still Crappy. I did all the given advise, I did the battery calibration(charge full, turn off charge, turn on and turn off then charge). I turn off all the sync, wifi, gps and etc. I just charge it and finished this morning at 100% on 8:20am at is down to 78% on 10:40 am( I haven't even used the phone! it was on idle all the 2 hrs and 20 mins)

2 hrs 22min 3sec unplugged
Cell standby - 48%
Phone Idle - 48%
Android sys - 4%

Is this normal? with normal use messaging and a bit of wifi( 30mins - 1hrs) my battery would be drain before 4pm.
Any more advice to extend my battery life? or just buy a new battery?
 
22% drop in 2 hours while the phone is asleep?

definitely not normal imo, I'd guess you have a rogue app installed hogging cpu
 
I checked for rogue apps but there was none. The only suspicious app was my clarus battery widget and Multicon. Do they eat a lot of battery?
 
not sure, haven't used them...

for what it's worth, i use an app called system panel which keeps track of each apps cpu usage if i'm suspicious i've installed a dodgy app but can't figure out which one

or open the dialer and type *#*#4636#*#* (if you haven't so yet) and check if any apps are reporting a high 'partial wake usage' or CPU usage

edit: actually, now that i have a 2nd look at the stats,

Cell standby - 48%
Phone Idle - 48%
Android sys - 4%

nearly half of the battery drain is from cell standby, so in this case it seems like your phone will lose about 5% an hour while on standby looking for signal.... then another 5% an hour just sitting there... where do you live?? what result do you get in the battery stats for 'time spent without signal'? i think it will appear if you click on 'cell standby'

i still think you must have an app or something not allowing the phone to sleep, i also think the signal where you are, or the carrier, or whatever may be stuffed up.

best case scenario: it's a rogue app
meh case scenario: your battery is faulty
worst case scenario: the signal where you are is weak enough to severely drain the battery
 
The best way to check if your signal (mobile network signal or 3G signal) is draining your battery is, to put your phone in air-plane mode after fully charging it. In 12 hours it should only drop 3-5% (100 to 95).
 
Since I set my Mobile Network Settings' Network Mode to 'WCDMA only' I've noticed an improvement to my battery life compared to it being set to 'GSM / WCDMA auto'.
 
dandiaz31 said:
Any more advice to extend my battery life? or just buy a new battery?
Click to expand...

I bought two more oem batteries off of eBay.I also have an assortment of chargers. I'm pretty anal about always having use of my phone, because of family and getting rid of our land line.

Battery issues aside, I still love this phone.
 
I have implemented ALL the power-saving suggestions posted in this thread and on various forums. EVERY LAST ONE.
I tried the battery conditioning process twice.
I don not use 3G. I do not have a data plan.

Here is my power-consumption test:
1. I charge the battery to full capacity.
2. I power on hte phone, set it on the counter, I DO NOT USE IT FOR 36 HOURS.
3. After 36 hours I check the phone and THE BATTERY IS DEAD.

Battery usage shows alll power was consumed by "Cell standby" and "Phone idle".

IS THIS NORMAL? If so then someone needs to launch a class-action lawsuit for false advertizing. really feel like I've been had
 
Well is it just me or after a month or two the battery starts to run down faster? I used to manage at a push 2 days between charges but now it seems barely one?!
Desires's are great good looking phones with the drawback that you have you have them on charge more often than not! Of course to avoid battery drain keep it switched off. LOL I'm guessing this is when HTC run of the words 'under normal conditions' in their lies about battery life. I wonder how the directors of HTC get along with their own phones - Oh hang on they probably don't use them (having PA's to do the donkey work)?!

Michael
 
douchebag2020 said:
considering buying a htc desire replacement battery, just in case,
is the stuff sold on ebay (from china or hong kong) legit?

any advice?
links:
like this one for example:

1
1600mAh RECHARGEABLE LI-ION BATTERY FOR HTC DESIRE HD on eBay (end time 28-Jan-11 13:08:25 GMT)

its rather cheaper than amazon, and smth i could afford, but is this risky?
Click to expand...


If you are in the UK try 'MobileFun'. Keen prices (and no, I've nothing to do with the company)!

Michael
 
My two biggest battery thieves are:
"Cell Standby" and "Phone Idle".

I've installed automatic task killer and android assistant.
I have switched off gps, wi-fi, bluetooth, auto-sync, haptic feedback etc
The outtime is set to 30 seconds.
I've drained it and reloaded it several times.

And still my battery drains after a couple of hours (it's only a couple of months old).

What can I do?
 
Just my tuppence worth on the battery issue below. I find it a bit frustrating that there is so much fannying about to get decent battery life but hey-ho:

Using Stock Sense on 2.2, I was getting the day from a battery but not much more. Charge overnight, little bit of wifi browsing or playing music for 30 mins in the morning.
Facebook, news headlines (from only two sources) and Twitter updates every two hours, maybe 10-12 emails, 6 or 7 texts and a few minutes phone calls.
Evenings maybe another hour or two on wifi browsing.
By bed time, I could be below 20% battery power. If I wanted to use GPS/Runkeeper for an hour I would need a bit of a boost.
Not the end of the world, but not ideal either, especially if I did need the phone in an emergency.

After rooting the phone, I got a bit adventurous. Now running LeeDroid.
The biggest difference though has been buying Juice Defender - according to the JD stats, it extends battery life by 1.3 - 1.4 times normal.
And it shows. I just have Handcent, Gmail, Facebook, Plume and MyPod set on my whitelist (can be accessed anytime by Android System) and everything else getting access for 2 minutes every 15 minutes.
As a comparison, the battery meter generally drops 2-3% per hour. And thats with a bit more use as I'm not scared of running out of power now.

Proper Juice Defender does need root access, it does cost around
 
schymon said:
My two biggest battery thieves are:
"Cell Standby" and "Phone Idle".

I've installed automatic task killer and android assistant.
I have switched off gps, wi-fi, bluetooth, auto-sync, haptic feedback etc
The outtime is set to 30 seconds.
I've drained it and reloaded it several times.

And still my battery drains after a couple of hours (it's only a couple of months old).

What can I do?
Click to expand...

1 - learn what the battery stats mean
2 - uninstall task killer
3 - locate and uninstall badly coded apps.
4 - observe and understand what/how apps are using cpu
5 - make adjustments based on new knowledge/observations
6 - enjoy longer lasting battery life
 
I am getting my Desire shortly. I have read a lot about the battery life being low and also about calibrating your desire battery to make it last long.

What should I do as the first step when I get my phone? Put it in charge with the phone turned on? Or should I charge it fully and then turn on the phone? Calibration steps says you should first charge fully with the phone turned on and then turn it off and charge again until green LED comes up.
 
What should I do as the first step when I get my phone?
Click to expand...

Use it, if you can try and keep it topped-up but don't get too precious about it. For the first couple of weeks your battery life will suck (for various reasons, main one being you'll be playing with it a lot) but it gets better.

Smart phones have worse battery life than feature-phones and dumb-phones but it really isn't a hassle. I only charge mine on my commute (so in my car for about an hour and a half/day - I'm using it as a SatNav with Waze so it's in the cradle anyway) and it lasts over the weekend (if I use it heavily I do occasionally have to charge it for an hour or so). I'm not a heavy user but this is on Stock O2 Froyo.
 
douchebag2020 said:
qstn:
does HTC desire HD use same battery as regular HTC desire?
can a HTC desire HD's battery work for HTC desire and vice versa?
Click to expand...

They don't use the same battery. HD has a 1230mAh battery while Desire has a 1400 mAh. Desire HD claims to have more battery life than Desire though.
 
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