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Help Desire Z and battery life

C

Cmiller82

Lurker
The battery doesn't even last a day... I take it off charge at 8am, and by noon it's low. By 2pm I have to plug it in.

I'm a medium to heavy user, but my old LG Eve would make it through a whole day no problem under heavy use, and more than two days under medium use.

Has anyone had the same issue?

Under "Settings", "About Phone" and "Battery Use" it gives you a break down of what apps use the battery power and the screen is always over 80%, even when playing games on it.

I'm going to stop playing games on it and just bring my DS with me... I'll see what that does to the battery usage...

Other than that I love the phone. The browser is great, the keyboard is awesome and Android 2.2 is light years away from 1.5

P.S.
A big "F" "U" to LG for never releasing an upgrade for the Eve. Never buy an LG phone, they will leave you in the cold without upgrade support on a phone that's less than a year old.
 
Ok first, LG has been doing that for years - so that's your own fault. LG looks pretty but is actually shit, always has been, always will be.

Second, if you're playing games for hours, the processors are humming away at probably 800 MHz, the screen brightness is up, it's updating widgets, apps, etc, you're obviously going to get terrible battery life, it's like that on ANY phone, not the Desire Z in particular. I use mine heavily without gaming all day, get a full days use out of it coming home with 20%+, that's normal compared to my Milestone, Storm, and every other phone. The screen will always use the most battery.
 
I agree with GlitchZero. If your heavily gaming then of course its going to go down really fast. If the screen is using 80% of the power then why not turn the brightness down? If your indoors most of the day theres no need to have it higher than the lowest setting.
 
I have the same problem, but maybe worse. Today I didn't make any phone calls (used my other phone) surfed the web a bit (30 minutes), downloaded 3 apps over wifi and played around with my phone a bit. No games, no youtube, no music. I got about 12 hours until it totally shut off.

That's crazy. With my iPhone 3G with it's 2 year old battery I would easily get 2 days with that light of usage.

I'm considering buying this 1800mAh battery.
[HLI-DesireZSL] Buy Mugen Power 1800mAh Extended Battery for HTC DesireZ/T-Mobile G2


How can I squeeze some more life out of this phone. I'd like to get through a whole day were I can actually use my phone and not have to charge it more than once.
 
I have had my Desire Z for two weeks now and my initial impressions are that the battery lasts just as long as my Hero battery did.

I use bluetooth in the car, wi-fi at home, medium usage (email, web, sms) through the day at work, maybe an hour of gaming ... and it easily lasts all day.

I turn on bluetooth/wi-fi when I need them and turn them off when I don't. I have GPS OFF all the time (apart from when I occasionally need sat-nav).

I charge every night, always have since owning a smartphone.

cheers ;)
 
I'm having the same issue with my Desire Z. The battery barely last a day, I have to charge it every night. I'm a medium user at best.

My previous Android phone (the G1) managed to last two days. I've also noticed that my Z's keyboard doesn't always light up when I'm typing, or at least not immediately. Not sure if that's an actual glitch or just me being paranoid.
 
Aldro said:
I'm having the same issue with my Desire Z. The battery barely last a day, I have to charge it every night. I'm a medium user at best.

My previous Android phone (the G1) managed to last two days. I've also noticed that my Z's keyboard doesn't always light up when I'm typing, or at least not immediately. Not sure if that's an actual glitch or just me being paranoid.
Click to expand...

A day is the normal for the Z. I'm assuming you kept your G1 on 1.6? When I had my hero on 1.5 it could last about 2 days/2 days and a half but when it got updated to 2.1 it lasted about a day. I charge my Z every night and I'm a medium user.
 
I think the people whose batteries don't last long just love their phone too much. If you hate your phone, you would hardly ever use it and the battery will last much, much longer. :)

For the first two weeks, my battery did not last a day. On the third week, it is able to last a day. I attribute it to the fact that the first two weeks, I am playing around with the phone a lot and trying different configurations of home screens and such. I was also spending a lot of time trying to get certain things to work.

By the third week, I am no longer moving widgets around and I got it working the way I like for the most part. The time I spend customising my phone has gone down dramatically.

The other thing is that the documentation says that the battery life will increase after you had the phone for a while. It seems to be a property of these batteries. When they are brand new, they do not last as long as when you have used them a bit. Then over the long term their life degrades again.
 
Aldro said:
I've also noticed that my Z's keyboard doesn't always light up when I'm typing, or at least not immediately. Not sure if that's an actual glitch or just me being paranoid.
Click to expand...

I've noticed it too. I've noticed that it's dependent on the ambient light. If I'm outside or near a bright light it's not lit up. If I'm at home at night it will light up almost all of the time.


@Stuntman: I imagine that's at least part of the issue. But I'm still only getting 8-10 hours when I actually use my phone to make phone calls and send emails. I can get 12 when I baby it and use it sparingly.

I should note that I've got my screen brightness set at 15%, I'm using the Y5 app and bluetooth is off.
GPS is on, but having it off is a major inconvenience since it seems to take 5 minutes sometimes to get a location fix when starting gps up cold.


While on the subject of batter issues. Why the heck doesn't the built in Power Saver app show an icon in the notification bar when it's active!? It gets turned on with low battery, but stays on even after you've give the phone a full charge. And you have to go in an manually turn it off again.
 
Main thing I have found is that you have to switch off wifi, 3G and GPS when they are not in use - this is the biggest drain on the battery. with those switched off you can get at least a full day and up to 2 on one charge.
 
I bought the desire z for my gf and after fully charging it before doing anything else last night i unlocked it and put in my sim and entered telus apn settings. i then used it as a wifi hotspot for a couple hours then received and sent texts for a while then headed to bed and browsed the net for an hour or so. Before going to bed the battery was at 80% after over 4hrs heavy use. I thought it was ok for first cycle.
 
The biggest step towards an average battery of 60% after a whole days work with permanent wifi, chat, emails and listening to some music for me was switching off all those background sync stuff. htc sense, google reader, stock and all that. just switch it off.

Other thing is: when I use the phone just for emailing and chatting i set screen timeout to very short. this helps a lot with display being the biggest power consumer.

gps can stay on all the time. many people say (and I can confirm this) it won't use any energy when no app is accessing the gps module.
 
Hi all
I bought a Desire Z as well, around one week ago. Having been an iPhone User over years (always jailbroken though), I love Android and the possibilities it gives. I'm a heavy typer (Mails, Chat, Messages), so I love the hardware keyboard.
Like many others, I have an issue with the battery though. When I first used the device, I had a battery life of roughly 4 or 5 hours, even when I wasn't using the phone heavily. I thought I had a faulty battery, or even worse, defected device. Over the days (and a charging cycle every day), the life has improved. The battery monitor shows a life of roughly 20 hours when at 100%, having been idle for the last 15 minutes or so.
Still, it seems too weak. A outgoing phone call made by mistake that I hung up when still ringing took 1%. Fifteen to twenty minutes of "Angry Birds" took a shocking 15%, internet surfing (not Wifi, usually shows "E" or "H") for five to ten minutes takes another 5 to 10%.
I have disabled Facebook, Twitter and the such from automatically updating. I get my Mails through K-9, which has push for the GMail account, but not for my other POP one. I use "Executive Assistant" for my lockscreen, but that's about it. My screen is at a fixed 15% brightness.
Is this normal? Will the battery get stronger? My girlfriend bought the same device and has never had any complaints about battery, and I've read about other users in forums that said they had 3G on, Skype running, push mail etc etc and after a day of heavy use their phone still shows 50%. :(
On top of that, returning from apps is really laggy sometimes, takes seconds; sometimes building up the home screen takes up to 8 seconds. I have a clock and a battery widget on there, both supposedly "battery-friendly".
What do you guys recommend? Restore the device and check the battery life? Battery usage in the system shows no unexpected info, I seem not to have the /init bug (although I have USB debugging on, just in case)...
Thanks!
 
Keep using it normally - I found that my battery didn't "settle down" until I'd been using the handset for around two weeks. If you have the chance to run it all the way down "into the red" one time, do so then charge it back up fully. This seems to help the software (battery gauge) calibrate itself against the actual battery capacity.
 
Slug said:
Keep using it normally - I found that my battery didn't "settle down" until I'd been using the handset for around two weeks. If you have the chance to run it all the way down "into the red" one time, do so then charge it back up fully. This seems to help the software (battery gauge) calibrate itself against the actual battery capacity.
Click to expand...
Hi Slug, thanks for your reply. I guess I'll do just that. About the lag problem; I think I'll restore the device this weekend to get rid of any junk and trouble I might've caused to the device and install only what I actually need. Hopefully that'll speed up things. :)
Other than that, the Desire Z is a wonderful cell, and the more I use Android, the more I like it. So I guess my old iPhone will change its owner soon. ;-)
 
An interesting sidenote on this topic:

A leaked 1.85.73.2 firmware has appeared on XDA, apparently from an Orange RUU, that from testers' comments appears to greatly improve battery stamina. This may means that a further OTA update will roll-out to existing handsets..... or not. :confused:
 
I bought mine in Hong Kong on the way home to NZ over xmas and after playing around with it I now get 2 days out of it.

Put the android power widget on the screen and turn off gps/bluetooth/wifi/data when not needed and use the auto brightness. The display is what uses the most power as it's the older SLCD tech, not the nice new AMOLED tech, so that's what you really need to work with.

It'd be nice if you could actually configure the auto brightness as I find it auto is brighter than it needs to be, especially at night in bed when solitaire begs a few games, so I set mine low.

As stated abouve, go into accounts and turn off some of the sync stuff you don't need, especially stocks, and for mail and facebook sync change the schedules so they aren't real time, even a 5 min schedule will improve battery.

Also when I sleep I set it to airplane mode. I would normally turn off my phones at night but the alarm function obviously won't work with the phone off (unlike previous phones that would wake with an alarm).

Just updated to 2.2.1 this morning, can't believe it's taking this long to get pushed out to my phone, but maybe it's because it's the chinese version (extra symbols on the keyboard). Will be interested to see if it lasts longer.

In saying all this I have bought the htc charging cradle for my phone and use it at work during the day so never worry about it dying but it will last the weekend without a charge with just my normal phone mail and messaging.
 
Same "problem" here. When listening to music, chatting over mobile network or wifi, browsing net, using PIM software heavily - it lasts a couple of hours. So when shopping for example, often before I get home, my battery is empty already.

So I've switched from Nokia e61i. Doing the same stuff there except listening to music - I had to carry additional battery with me. So I've ordered a spare battery for Desire too. There is also another solution which some may like - enlarged battery which unfortunately enlarges the phone also:
$12.11 - 3.7V 3500mAh High Capacity Battery Pack with Back Cover for HTC Desire Z - Batteries
 
I generally get 3-4 days from my phone, but I tend to be be very agreessive with managing it and have light use to avoid excessive drain.
I use Juicedefender to regulate how things like wi-fi and background data are used (it activates them for a few minutes every couple of hours), generally turn off wi-fi, bluetooth, background sync and GPS unless I specifically need them and use another program (timerific) that allows you to switch it automatically in and out of airplane mode overnight.
 
Same problem here with the battery drained after 8 to 10 hours at work.Closed off all the not important stuff like bluetooth and gprs,installed task manager on it which closes applications that are constantly running,it's been 24 hours and the battery is still at 50 percent not bad so far. I'll see how long it will last without needing a charge.
 
Hiya all,
I get 2-days of general use out of my DZ... that's with Mobile Data on between 8am and 6pm. Can get even more out of my wife's Desire, which I calibrated... and yes the process worked on the Desire... haven't had the time to try it on the DZ... but didn't need to. 2 days a-okay for me.

However.... it wasn't always that way... it was dismal out of the box.
Here's what I found (in no particular order ;))...

  • Having Wifi or Mobile data on does affect battery life, but not seriously. So go on and use them (one at a time tho :)) but be nice and turn-off if you really don't need them. Carbon credits people :D
  • Go directly to Settings --> Accounts and Sync and turn off whatyou don't need and reduce the frequency of those you do.
    Tips: Certain apps like News allow Update when opened... great feature so use it. There's also no need to update weather every 2 hrs so reduce this.
    I have Background Data and Auto-sync always On.
  • Locations... oh locations... bad bad bad boy.
    It stops your phone from sleeping boys and girls... and nuked my battery. Suggest removing the HTC Locations widget.
    Tips: Settings --> Locations aren't all that important... I have all other than GPS ticked on.
  • Add the Android brightness widget to your home screens.. and keep it on the 1st bar. It's way bright enough other than in direct sunlight and it DOES improve battery life. Auto didn't work for me so don't suggest that.
    Tips: Screen timeout is set to 1 minute. I still have Auto rotate enabled and - don't be afraid - Animations are on. No adverse effect. Hmm... and the killer... Animated wallpapers are on... happy days ;)
  • Tip: Settings --> Power Saver is way cool... works like a charm
    Set it up and you won't regret it. I use the defaults.
  • Tip: Cleanup the Home screens... remove all unused widgets...
    They just kill the battery and chew data for no reason. Oh - use Folders - they are pretty neat... can have things nicely grouped
  • AND THE BEST FOR LAST... Partial Wake Usage... the bane of my battery... but vanquished for now. Facebook and Locations in particular killed my battery by preventing the phone from sleeping. Yep.. glug glug... So here's how to find those badly behaving apps.
    From the phone dialer enter *#*#4636#*#*
    Choose Battery History --> Other Usage --> Partial wake usage
    Check what's at the top of the list. It should generally be Android System, Dialer or UID xxxxx. If there's an app up there at #1 spot it's a potential baddy and preventing the phone from sleeping... and most likely killing your battery. Watch it... upgrade it or kill it!! I've just checked my phone and I see Maps is misbehaving with 18m 7s of wake time... bad boy.
    Tip: Another way to check for misbehaving apps.
    Settings --> Phone Info --> Battery... check the Awake time...
    Press the power button to put the phone to sleep. Wait a couple of minutes and check the Awake time again. It should not have advanced more than a few seconds.
Found all this stuff the hard way - long nights over the past 2-weeks - so hope it helps :).

Still trying to figure out what's consuming my data... :eek:

Rgds,
SD
 
Hi,
I found that the battery ran out quite quickly when I surfed the net etc using my Desirez - simple solution, I found a larger battery on ebay, only cost about a tenner and it works a treat. It's heavier and includes a different back to the one supplied with your original phone, but it makes a huge difference. When I am having a low usage day, I use the normal battery, if I am going away or likely to have a problem charging, I use the big battery. It powers up in seconds the way I wish my computer would!
 
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