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Help HTC Desire battery lasts 4 hours

Entropy1024

Entropy1024

Newbie
I bought a HTC Desire on a week ago and love it. Only problem is tat the battery is dire. I found it lasts for about 4 hours then it's dead. I am not running any apps or Wi-Fi, GPS, syncing etc. I initialy put id down to me playing with the phone constantly for the 1st couple of days. However by the fith day the battery was still dying in 5 hours or sooner. I took the phone back suspecting a faulty handset or battery. Got a new phone and battery. Still have the same very poor 4 or 5 hour battery life. I have loaded 'Battery Graph' app and you can see there is almost a straight line going down losing 20% of power every hour!!!! This is even overnight when it's doing absolutely nothing. I have also loaded Advanced Task Killer and go tthat shutting down any errant apps every 30mins. Still no improvement in battery life. Any ideas what may be causing this? Neither of the batteries I have had have hologram stickers on them like my old Nokia did. Should the official batteries have hologram stickers? Any help much appreciated.
 
the battery graph can't be helping things, nor can task killer. Both are applications that constantly monitor things. Constant monitoring needs constant consumption.

4-5 hours to flat is no good at all though. If you have a new phone AND a new battery, it is less likely (but not impossible) that its a fault.

Surely its most likely to be something you are doing.

What does it say in Battery use?

Menu > Settings>About phone>Battery>Battery use?

What is your uptime now? what is your awake time now? (In settings > battery)
 
have you tried turning the screen brightness right down the screen brightness on auto doesnt work too well i set mine manually to about 20% although i am using HTC legend i belive it is the same principal.
 
I have mine on full and I don't have a flat battery in 4-5 hours.

yes it will help, but doubtful its the cause
 
I had probably my heaviest day of use this week - mp3 player on more or less all the time since waking, a lot of 3G browsing, downloading from market, quite a lot of apps running while I messed about with various settings and still managed to get about 8 hours out of it. Something doesn't sound right with your handset.
 
tanbe174 said:
Take a look here, it tells you how to save battery. 10 Ways To Increase HTC Desire Battery Time | Mr.Gadget
Click to expand...

Sorry but what a shite article, whats the point in buying a high end device and then switching everything off, you might aswell go and buy a bog standard nokia. As far as I am concerned my battery lasts me all day, with everything enabled, updating hourly etc...with push e-mail from 2 accounts.

Enjoy the device for what it does, and when your near a charger, plug the thing in!
 
Something is wrong, with normal use during the day and heavy use in the evening, I can easily get 16 hours out of it. If I didn't use it except for texting and phone calls, I imagine I could easily get 24 hours plus.

That said, 4 hours of solid websurfing on 3g would probably kill the batter.
 
try dialing on your phone *#*#4636#*#* and go to battery information check temperature, voltage and other factors and report here. then go back and go to battery history check Other usage and you can see what apps are being used most of the time, then go to partial wake usage check things there and go through all possible options to determine the cause. report what you found unusual here and we will try to help you ok?
 
Battery life that bad sounds like the phone is awake (ie screen on) constantly? Is the phone sleeping after a minute or so, or does the screen stay on all the time?
 
something i also found was that after the first week of draining and fully recharging the battery over night,the battery lasted longer each day.perhaps if you kept it a bit longer you would experience a improvement in the battery life over time like i did.
 
4-5 hours sound about right to how much I can get out of my phone if I use it intensively. That means a good couple of hours internet on 3g, general faffing about, calls and text. I think that's the general timeline for everyone no?
 
beyond said:
4-5 hours sound about right to how much I can get out of my phone if I use it intensively. That means a good couple of hours internet on 3g, general faffing about, calls and text. I think that's the general timeline for everyone no?
Click to expand...
nope, for me everything can be on (bluetooth, wifi, gps, hsdpa, background syncing,...) and i still would get at least 7-9 hours playing games, listening to the music, browsing internet...
so i dont think 4-5 hours is alright :)
 
gazcarts said:
Battery life that bad sounds like the phone is awake (ie screen on) constantly? Is the phone sleeping after a minute or so, or does the screen stay on all the time?
Click to expand...
phones screen does not have to be on for the phone not to sleep and stay awake, if some app is constantly running in the background (e.g. Navimote) even if the screen is off it will not sleep, thus, will drain the battery. so if you want check if the phone is sleeping properly you have to use ADB and use logcat command in order to see what processes are running when the phone's screen is off or on.
 
I agree entirely I am running nothing other than GSM, and all I get is 6 hours as opposed to my nokia 5800 which ran for two days with bluetooth permanently on. Am seriously thinking of taking the desire back - not fit for purpose. Will speak to HTC on Monday.
 
White background? A white background on an OLED screen uses 300% of the power of an LCD... a black/dark background will save no end of power :)
 
I was getting 4-8hrs battery life for the 1st 3 days of my Desire ownership. Was considering taking it back and then found these forums. Everyone said that it would improve over a week or so. Well, mine didn't and I was getting frustrated. Then I discovered '*#*#4636#*#*' and lo and behold, the 'Hi Yahoo" app I'd installed was running 100% of the time even when the screen was off. I uninstalled it, rebooted my phone and installed the official Yahoo Messenger app and after a full charge at 9am yesterday, I still have 30% left 12 hrs later and I've been almost constantly YM'ing and emailing until 11pm last night. Very happy now. Only have Gmail and calender syncing hourly.
 
You're not signed into Google Lattitude are you? I remember when I had my G1 the battery suddenly started running out in about 4 hours (usually got 8+ out of it) and I discovered I'd accidentally left it signed into Lattitude and it was constantly updating my location 24/7. Turned that off and everything went back to normal.
 
my last charge lasted 3 days, and i only then charged it as i was going out the next day and needed it to be on form
 
Definitely sounds like an errant app or widget, if it goes empty that quickly without being used intensively (non-stop use will empty in that timeframe, but that's normal).

Try a hard-reset, and see how it goes without installing any apps on it.
 
If you install "Spare Parts" you can get to the same info as that *#*#4636#*#* a lot easier. Looking at the partial wake usage I found that my two biggest culprits were Juice Defender and Locale. I've removed them, and now I turn stuff on and off myself. It's less geeky, but the battery lasts a lot longer.
 
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