Display Taking Over 70% of Battery

[Energizer Bunn]

I got a HTC Desire HD last week and the battery life has been horrific. I looked up various ways to extend it, such as turning off wi-fi and making sure that no other features are running, but the battery life is still poor. When I look at my battery usage the display seems to be consistently taking over 70% of the battery. This is despite me taking all features off my main screen, setting the background to plain black and dimming the brightness to around 15%. When using my phone sparingly (45 mins on the internet and a few texts) from being fully charged, my phone lasts around 10 hours before needing to be recharged. I understand that smart phones need to be charged a lot, but don't understand why the display is eating so much of my battery?

Am I missing something, is this the norm, or is it possible my phone is faulty?

 

[Mitchturbo]

Because the screen is 4.3 inches big its going to consume a lot of power...
More so than smaller screened smart phones... plus the fact that the DHD comes with one of the smallest batteries around...

Its the norm, don't worry and enjoy one of the most powerful Android phones out there.

 

[Energizer Bunn]

Well |I am pretty worried about it in all honesty. It's hard to enjoy it when I only get a few hours out of it. My mates say they get longer out of theirs and that their displays take up nowhere near 70% of their battery

 

[Mitchturbo]

Along as your always near a plug socket or a charging point it should be fine.
If you use it only as a phone without playing on apps it should last around two days.
The more you use your phone, the more the screen is going to be used... I sometimes find myself charging twice a day to keep up with the phones usage... Give it a few more days and your battery may improve. I found mine improved after two weeks, then got better with the buggy update... but since I'm using my phone more then ever... well yeah. It's the norm with this phone I think.
My display is usually the only thing draining my battery and its on medium brightness setting.
When it gets to 30% battery left my screen brightness goes to 20% due to playing with the power saving settings... good luck and hope you find a relaxing way to conserve the battery power...

 

[Energizer Bunn]

Can I ask what sort of percentage your display generally uses up of your battery Mitchturbo? It's just that everyone I've asked seems to think that over 70% is unusually high. I've not been playing on any games, taking videos or pictures or anything like that. Just browsing a few internet forums for 30 mins to an hour a day

 

[Mitchturbo]

Mine at the moment says 69% Display and 18% Internet.
And right now I've got less than 15% battery, must put it on charge again lol

 

[widehead]

The display sucking power is a biggie but 10 hours battery life and only 45 minutes of actual use? That seems a tad rubbish - even for the DHD.

Can you please do the following:

settings>about phone>battery>battery use> and hit display - how long has your screen been on?

plus look at the % shown for Cell standby. Is that over 10%?

 

[bidur]

i dont know why HTC was so stupid to put 1250 mAH battery in such a big phone ...

some one should call the boss and ask them to fire their chief engineer...

 

[kingdave]

My display uses around 67% of my battery and I get a full day (and sometimes upto 36 hours) out of my DHD without charging it.

Before you blame the battery have a look at some of the threads which give optimisations tricks to get more out of your battery. 6 hours doesn't sound right at all!!

 

[slarti]

Double check you're software is upto date. A recent software update absolutely trashed my battery life, it went from ~15 hours to ~6 hours.

Open the phone dial pad and enter.

*#*#CHECKIN#*#*

this will make the phone check it's home servers for any software updates.

 

[Mitchturbo]

I think I may have worked it out!

Ok its all a percentage right, out of 100...
When I looked at my battery usage this morning the display was 77% then when I used a lot of apps and messing around with maps (trying to work them out) the display was 70% to compensate with the other functions running.

We could test this by checking a before and after, and just using every god-damn app on the phone, internet ect too...

What I'm saying is, I don't think there is a problem with the display taking so much battery usage but the fact that the apps don't use up much battery power in just themselves...

Of cause by then, just touching the touch screen could be using up battery power too...

If your friends displays are showing a smaller % than yours is, it maybe due to the fact they are using more apps or spending more time surfing the web, actually using the phone.

Hope this helps put your mind at ease

 

[widehead]

Hmmm. I'm currently at 19% charge after 13 hours. Display has sucked 70% of the battery and the screen has been on for almost 3 hours. 1 hour of that was spent playing angry birds. Cell standby 7% (this was a HUGE issue before).

Aside from that I've made one call, sent about 20 texts, received and replied to 7 emails, surfed the web, downloaded 3 apps and that's about it.

Seems pretty decent to me.

 

[plskillme]

I've experienced this on my first to third week of owning my DHD, then I've tried to turn off some unnecessary shiznitz on my phone.

Try to do these if deemed necessary;
Switch from WCDMA network to GSM, use static wallpapers, turn off auto adjust for brightness of put it to a minimal level, remove unused widgets from homescreen, leave it charging overnight minimum of 8 hours at least once a week or if extra juice moments calls for the need, disable animation, use App Killer to kill lingering apps on memory cache.

 

[toppatop]

I got my DHD yesterday and it was showing display using something like 69% of the battery but now when I check battery usage it doesn't show anything. No apps come up and it doesn't even show display. Anyone know why this is?

*EDIT* My mistake I was in the right section in the settings but I wasn't clicking on the correct option.

 

[widehead]

Switch from WCDMA network to GSM

This is very good advice if you are in a poor signal area

use static wallpapers

This makes little difference

turn off auto adjust for brightness of put it to a minimal level

Ignore this. Auto is fine.

remove unused widgets from homescreen

Widgets don't use your battery unless they are running an app so, again, pointless.

leave it charging overnight minimum of 8 hours at least once a week or if extra juice moments calls for the need

Charge as and when necessary.

disable animation

Pointless. Doesn't make much difference.

use App Killer to kill lingering apps on memory cache.

This ignorant piece of advice will not only shorten your battery life but will also compromise the smooth running of Android. Task killers are not
just useless but detrimental to the performance of your phone. "Apps on memory cache" do not use up your battery. Fact.

Ensure that you have disabled synching in apps you never use - almost everything is set to synch automatically upon initial set up. Even apps you have not manually opened.

 

[Deleted User]

Just to reiterate:

If your screen has used 60%, it's 60% of how much battery has been used since you disconnected the charger, not 60% of the total available battery power.

The numbers should always add up to 100% (screen, cell standby etc.)

 

[plskillme]

Widgets don't use your battery unless they are running an app so, again, pointless.

This ignorant piece of advice will not only shorten your battery life but will also compromise the smooth running of Android. Task killers are not
just useless but detrimental to the performance of your phone. "Apps on memory cache" do not use up your battery. Fact.

Ensure that you have disabled synching in apps you never use - almost everything is set to synch automatically upon initial set up. Even apps you have not manually opened.

Those are not supposed to be called widgets if they aren't running any applications.

Explain this screenshot then;

Your hapless comments against mine stands not a point at all so next time you try to make your opinion count be sure to do your homework first. BTW, the screenie is located here if you are going to ask me of where I got it.

Only works for kids who hangs out on some place where E-mails and weather updates are taboo and considered a sin if pondered upon.

 

[widehead]

Firstly, well done on the My-Very-First-Post-On-The-Internet vibe you have going in your last entry. No, really the pretty colors do help to make your points stand out more. Like writing your resume in crayon - people notice these things.

Let's take a look at the things you took issue with....

Explain this screenshot then

The picture shows how much battery the applications are using. Not the widgets (because widgets don't consume power (duh) they control the app).

Think of a widget as a switch. Unless the app they control is running then nothing is using any battery power.

Consider the following analogy: imagine 4 houses. We'll call them A, B, C and D. All four have electric lights in each room but only houses A and B have switches to turn the lights on or off. In houses A and C the lights are continuously ON (don't touch those switches Mr and Mrs We-Live-In-House-A!). In houses B and D the lights are continuously OFF. All things being equal (aside from the presence of switches) who uses the most power? A and C use the same right? And so do B and D, right? See switches don't drain power!

According to you the widgets (switches) drain the power even if you don't use them to switch on an app!!! Hopefully you can see how nonsensical it is to "remove unused homescreen widgets" as a battery-saving method.

(Quick note: Many people rely on power management widgets to lengthen battery life. The "power dashboard" widget springs immediately to mind, as does the airplane mode widget. According to you this would be impossible as the mere presence of a widget drains the battery!)

You also highlight my mentioning of Task Killers. Anyone who knows anything about Android knows that what I say is correct, i.e. they are detrimental to both performance and battery life.

And finally, you highlight my advice to disable synch in apps you don't need or use. Let's go through this bit by bit (I know it's difficult).
1. When synching the phone will connect to the internet.
2. Connecting to the internet drains the battery.
3. Synching every hour takes its toll on battery life.
ergo
4.Disabling synch is a valid battery saving technique.

Amusingly enough you could disable auto synching and control the synch yourself using a *gasp* widget! This manual control via a widget could prolong battery life. Ah, the irony!

Thanks for your input, I had so much fun looking at the pretty colors and reading all the very funny things you wrote.

 

[Slem]

I've got a tip:

Shove your phone up your butt, do three cartwheels and seven backflips; remove your phone, put it in the spin drier for one hour; remove your phone, shove it up your butt again, walk on your hands around the room in an ever-decreasing circle until you reach the centre, sing Mary Had a Litttle Lamb while still standing on your hands; remove your phone, glare strenuously at it for two minutes; put it back up your butt, glare cheesily at yourself in a mirror for one hour; remove your phone

Your battery life should now be quadrupled, but you will need a lie down, and possibly a home-visit from your doctor.

 

[Gags111]

I got a HTC Desire HD last week and the battery life has been horrific. I looked up various ways to extend it, such as turning off wi-fi and making sure that no other features are running, but the battery life is still poor. When I look at my battery usage the display seems to be consistently taking over 70% of the battery. This is despite me taking all features off my main screen, setting the background to plain black and dimming the brightness to around 15%. When using my phone sparingly (45 mins on the internet and a few texts) from being fully charged, my phone lasts around 10 hours before needing to be recharged. I understand that smart phones need to be charged a lot, but don't understand why the display is eating so much of my battery?

Am I missing something, is this the norm, or is it possible my phone is faulty?

I got my handset the day it came out( Oct 2010) as part of an upgrade from 3(although its unbranded which was amazing considering it was from 3).

Please remember this is a Heavy duty device!!

When you first get your phone its obvious the battery will drain quickly as you are using/playing/messing around with it all the time.
Once you have tweaked/calibrated the handset you should get some decent results even after heavy use.

One of the most important things is setting debugging mode to on.
Debugging mode is usually used for developers so they can debug any issues with their software and also assists in prolonging the life of your battery.
Also i've seen the issue regarding debugging on most's posts for the HTC Desire HD.

Calibrating your battery:
a) Charge till full when powered on
b) Power off
c) Charge till full again
d) Boot into recovery wipe stats
e) Boot and continue to use as normal
f) Then put your hand on your head and turn around and say the words Charge,Charge ,Charge!!

Who knows if the above method really works, but if a lot of people are posting this method then there must be some validity to it!!

I now average 24-36hrs after doing the following:

1) Brightness 66%
2) Light Grid live wallpaper
3)20-30 calls(10 using loudspeaker)
4) sent 100 texts (5 X 20 recipients)
5)Wifi off( but on when required) Get a power bar widget from the market
6)Mobile internet off(but on when required)
7)HTC sync off(but on when required)
8)GPS off(but on when required)
9) screen set to turn off after 30 seconds
10) all seven screens used Calender, friends stream, messaging & E-mail widgets, power bars and music widgets.
11) signal for 3 in my area is awful(That also drains batteries)
12) played Games mainly Gameloft HD games for about 45 mins to 1 hour( a big battery killer)

I'm well pleased with the phone as its capable of so much. Basically its a walking computer with so many attributes.
So what i'm trying to say is USE/PLAY and most of all enjoy the phone, thats the reason we all got it in the first place!

Sorry i've got to go as i am getting a bit teary eyed!!

 

[widehead]

Who knows if the above method really works, but if a lot of people are posting this method then there must be some validity to it!!

This is idiotic.

 

[plskillme]

Firstly, well done on the My-Very-First-Post-On-The-Internet vibe you have going in your last entry. No, really the pretty colors do help to make your points stand out more. Like writing your resume in crayon - people notice these things.

I color-coded it because seeing you as a "Oh so PRO forumer" a genius that multi-quoted a single post who would get the logic of it so effortlessly but you failed on going with it's sense and logic. Use Curriculum Vitae instead of "resume" without an accented e which is in your case a r

 

[widehead]

TL|DR...

thought so....

 

[widehead]

Oh I forgot to mention that I am gravely sorry for expressing my opinion.

It's not an opinion that unused widgets drain the battery - it is a factual inaccuracy.

Nor is it an opinion that Task Killers improve battery life - they do not.

It is not an opinion that disabling auto synch in unused apps saves battery life - this is also a fact.