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Desire HD Battery Thread

sonesh said:
I'm sure you've all seen the thread about extending Desire Battery Life (cant remember original source, but here is the same text [HOW TO] Calibrate Desire Battery - xda-developers).

But it doesnt work, because after turning off, and putting on charge, the light goes instantly green.

I tried this again, this morning but again it went instantly to green. When I tried turning it on, it froze, so pulled out the battery. When I put it back in again...

ORANGE LIGHT

I only had time to do the following once, but I've already got an extra 15% battery left compared to the same time yesterday:

Charge, unplug, Turn off, remove battery, replace battery, charge, unplug, turn on

I'm going to do it properly tonight (3 or 4 times) because from the results of doing it once, I'm already seeing a huge improvement
Click to expand...

This works a treat. I have been using my phone all day and still have 50% usually i'd be lucky to have 25-30 and this time :D
 
I've done this a few times now, and found varying results. The first time, I only unplugged once, and got an extra 15% out of the battery.
A few days later I unplugged 3 or 4 times, but saw no improvement what so ever.

I then did it again yesterday, only unplugging once, but then turning it on and putting it back on charge (instead of leaving it off) and got a massive extra 8 hours.
 
Battery life seems fine to me...

I charge it when I go to bed, unplug it when I get up. It comes off charge at 06:00 and its now 17:30 with 60% left.

Fair amount of browsing, a little gaming, some phone calls, 2 hours listening to podcasts. I also get dodgy reception at work so this would drain the battery a lot.

I keep 3G off because I have WIFI at work and at home so I've had no need for it yet.

Only time I've run out of battery is the first day I had it when I took loads of photos, spent ages playing with it, downloading apps, uninstalling apps, and lots of HD video. Dropped to 30% after 8 hours. Also had everything set to default.

The first thing I did with the phone when I got it is turn on USB debugging, so I don't know if thats made a difference.
 
Hi, I'm getting DHD this friday and I'd like to treat the battery the right way from the very start so I could use some advices.

1. Do I do full cycles from fully charged to completely empty (phone shutting down) or do I start charging when it hits 10% or something like that?

2. Is it generally a bad thing to recharge while your battery is on something like 40-60%? I could find myself in a situation where I have 50% battery left but I know that I will need the phone for next 24 hours (in which I won't be able to charge it, and those 50% won't last long enough) so I would like to charge it from 50% to 100%.

3. How long do I leave the phone plugged in after it indicates that it's full?

4. What's the difference between charging from my PC's USB port and AC power plug?

P.S. I'm really quite used to poor battery life. I own a second-hand N95 and it drained in <12 hrs the other day when I used a lot of satellite navigation and listened to some music. Luckily, I have a car charger for it (which I'm getting for DHD as well). I mostly charge it on a daily basis (through the night), it rarely lasts for 2 days.

Thanks in advance!
 
Fio said:
Hi, I'm getting DHD this friday and I'd like to treat the battery the right way from the very start so I could use some advices.

1. Do I do full cycles from fully charged to completely empty (phone shutting down) or do I start charging when it hits 10% or something like that?

2. Is it generally a bad thing to recharge while your battery is on something like 40-60%? I could find myself in a situation where I have 50% battery left but I know that I will need the phone for next 24 hours (in which I won't be able to charge it, and those 50% won't last long enough) so I would like to charge it from 50% to 100%.

3. How long do I leave the phone plugged in after it indicates that it's full?

4. What's the difference between charging from my PC's USB port and AC power plug?

P.S. I'm really quite used to poor battery life. I own a second-hand N95 and it drained in <12 hrs the other day when I used a lot of satellite navigation and listened to some music. Luckily, I have a car charger for it (which I'm getting for DHD as well). I mostly charge it on a daily basis (through the night), it rarely lasts for 2 days.

Thanks in advance!
Click to expand...

Sorry not sure about 1. I think the answer appears to be that to begin with you need to give it a few full cycles. I just charged it when it got to critical to begin with and now I just charge it in the evening.

2. Li-ion batteries don't have a "memory", you can charge them whenever you want and it won't affect overall capacity of the battery. They do have a shelf life however, so after so many charges they tend to die. This is usually after a few years though so it's not something to worry about. The only time it really matters is if you have a laptop or something and just keep it plugged in all day every day. This will put it continuously through charge cycles and decrease the life of the battery. I doubt you'd want to keep your DHD plugged in all day every day :)

3. Un-plugg it any time after it goes green. Ever since mobile phones started using Li-ion batteries you don't need to overcharge it like you used to. The monkeys that work in mobile phone shops might tell you differently but I guess they tell you that because they feel they're covering themselves. DHD stops itself from overcharging anyway.

4. I have no idea here. I always assumed there wasn't any difference, but I've never read anything or seen any evidence that backs that up.
 
4. PC USB's ports provide different mA's (depending on age of the PC) so will charge slower depending on the PC, but most are 500mA's.

However USB charging will never be as quick as your 1000mA AC charger
 
I'd imagine that'd only be an issue if you have USB 1.0 ports. Since 2.0 was introduced in 2000, I'd say that's pretty unlikely.
 
USB 2.0 is 500mA's
USB 1.0 is 100mA's

On a side note, USB 2.0 may have been released in 2000, but I'm sure 1.0 was still being shipped out in new computers well into 2005 (if not later). I know for fact that Intel made Dual Core Processors for consumers in 2006, and today Single Core computers are still available
 
Yeah, but that's processors. There's a lot of consumer goods like cameras and storage sticks that won't run on USB 1.0, whereas there are still plenty of people who could happily use a single core processor, as all they want to do is surf the net and check emails. Also, by 2005 I think many of the computers with 1.0 had some 1.0 ports and some 2.0.

Not that any of this really matters mind... :p
 
I think its more to do with manufacturers selling cheap out of date components, at high prices, to people who don't know any better.
 
I've gotta confess to not understanding why you guys worry about how to charge it and when to charge it.

From day 1 I plugged it in an hour after playing, and now plug it in to charge it overnight and when it needs a boost if I've using it extra heavily.

I've never paid any attention to the battery (except this so called conditioning trick which seems to last until the next charge) and never have with any phone. It lasts all day.
 
I'm like yourself bonerp. Charge till the morning, and it gets me through to the evening (battery is dead by about 11pm), BUT if something outside of my daily routine occurs, for example, needing to use Google Maps for 20 minutes, or have an exceptionally long phone call, or even showing the phone off to my colleagues, my battery is dead by the time I'm driving home from work at 6pm.

I'm happy to charge it every night, but it needs to have enough extra juice in it to allow me to use additional features occasionally
 
sonesh said:
I think its more to do with manufacturers selling cheap out of date components, at high prices, to people who don't know any better.
Click to expand...

Ah yeah, fair point.

FWIW I have 40% battery at the moment (well, four bars out of ten, it's no more accurate than that). Came off charge from USB 2 days, 1 hour and 59 mins ago. I tried that calibration trick in the link Sonesh posted further up, I guess that worked. I've had wifi and 3g off unless needed, and I have used both a bit, wifi more than 3g. played a couple of short games of angry birds, sent some texts, checked my email a few times. I can't remember if I've actually had any calls in the last 2 days, but if I did it would have been short ones. I haven't been using GPS at all. I turned on auto-adjust for screen brightness this morning, as I've been meaning to do it for ages to see what it's like. Annoyingly, if you have this on and then press the brightness button on the power widget, it turns off. I thought I already had it on, but obviously not. I also spent some time taking pictures yesterday, maybe 15 minutes. All in all, I'd say that's a pretty good result :) Gonna see if I can get another 24 hours out of it.
 
I'm actually quite surprised at my DHD's battery life.

I go through phones every 3 months or so (this is my 5th this year). My aim is always to be able to get from 9am to 2am comfortably.

I'm on my 3rd day. Took it off charge around 9am.
Everything turned on by default except key vibration/sound.
Email checking 2 accounts every 10-15 min.
WiFi on, connected most of the day. 3g the rest of the time.
I usually make a few calls, send a few txts, get a lot of emails, do a fair bit of surfing. Tonight I've been trying to run the battery down by installing and testing a heap of apps.

It's been on for 16hrs and hit about 10% battery.

The biggest thing that affects battery life for me is going to an area with poor reception. Then, the battery dumps due to constantly having to resend ip packets.
 
Not the case at all! Check my post from yesterday. I've not been using it heavily, but I've certainly not been limiting myself. If I've wanted to do something with my phone, I've gone ahead and done it. I think having wifi and 3g off are helping a lot, I don't really have the need to get my emails automatically, as anyone who wants to get hold of me immediately can just call. I spend a lot of time by a computer anyway so I tend to check them on that.
 
Just turn shit off if you're not using it. I don't really see the point in automatic email updates, unless you're specifically waiting for something to come in. Also, I have my screen set to go off after 15 seconds, and if I put it down knowing I'm not gonna pick it back up again, I turn the screen off manually, rather than letting it time out.
 
Well Ive had mine long enough, fully satisfied with the battery.

Turning off mobile network and not using wifi (so basically just using it as a phone) I can get a good 2 days out of it.

If I'm in a bad reception area and using data I get a day

Generally happy :)
 
bonerp said:
turn off the auto brightness and set the screen brightness to the lowest setting you can live with. Its under menu/settings/display.

I also have a black background and dont use live wallpapers.

I've reduced my screen battery consumption from 79% to 51% by doing this. Correction its now 40%.
Click to expand...

Done the same but still on 72% Display.....HELP!
 
The total battery consumption will always be 100%. Then divided up on the different functions using it. So you cannot really rely on the percentage. The real battery drain in mAh is what is interesting.

Its quite simple math really...
 
1d 10h 51m 28s since unplugged. Out of that the display has been on for 2h 32m 7s. Battery is just under half way. No idea if that's good considering its only been used for 2hours out of that.
 
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