VERY BAD battery life - HTC Desire 'not fit for purpose'

[crazy4ker]

UP 5.58

Awake 1.50

Ive navigated for 30 minutes took some photos and video of my daughter in the park and sent a few emails and texts

now stands at 56%

I'd hardly call that excessive usage but theres no way im going to get anywhere near 24 hours.

Annoying.

Ok, cheers for doing that.

So your phone is sleeping correctly. Just for your info, my phone is UP 27:03, Awake 3:13 battery level 22%. So your useage is probably comparable to mine - your 0.40% per min, mine 0.404% per min of awake time.

There are other things that you can do to reduce battery consumption, found at sites like 10 Ways To Increase HTC Desire Battery Time | Mr.Gadget you just have to balance everything for what you need.

It is a bit annoying when you consider the spec talk time of 6.5hours, but most modern smartphones are similar (the iphone is much much worse). My old HTC Tytn II could last 5 days without a recharge.

 

[Stretlow]

Ok, cheers for doing that.

So your phone is sleeping correctly. Just for your info, my phone is UP 27:03, Awake 3:13 battery level 22%. So your useage is probably comparable to mine - your 0.40% per min, mine 0.404% per min of awake time.

There are other things that you can do to reduce battery consumption, found at sites like 10 Ways To Increase HTC Desire Battery Time | Mr.Gadget you just have to balance everything for what you need.

It is a bit annoying when you consider the spec talk time of 6.5hours, but most modern smartphones are similar (the iphone is much much worse). My old HTC Tytn II could last 5 days without a recharge.

Thanks for your help mate to be honest I think ive nailed it with the screen and the weather I just cant afford to turn background sync off though as I need to see my emails as they're sent to me.

I'm at work tomorrow where i'll nail the internet so see how i go

 

[nx1977]

I cained mine today being in a building with dire signal.

As had an important call come in when the 15% warning hit (approx 28 hours after charge) I had to use the car charger, skewing my stats to show a screen shot. :x

 

[beyond]

a bit off topic here and of course this is to everyone's personal tastes but do you really need 100% (or even anything above 50%) brightness?!

maybe it's me but i keep mine at around 20-30%, anything else and i acutally find it blinding! of course this changes when i'm outside in the sun

 

[Rew]

I've had my Desire for 10 days now and I must say with every charge it has lasted longer and longer. Currently on my beast run.

1d 14h 10m and the battery still showing 20%

I can live with that

 

[Mike_M]

UPDATE: Its been about 43 hours and the battery is 25%.

Phone has always been on and so has mobile data etc......my phone seems to have leveled out at about 40% battery use a day, and happy with that at the moment.

 

[Stretlow]

Ok yesterday went pretty well.

Unplugged at 10am.

Emails text small amount of web use, 45 minute navigation

Photos and videos of my daughter in the park.

Went to bed at 11pm on 30% and decided to put my faith in my new found settings. Didnt plug it in and set the alarm.

Went off no problem with 26%. Bit of web usage this morning and finally plugged it in on 22 hours.

More than happy with the results.

 

[nx1977]

Okay, but please make sure to also post the screens indicating how long each app has been in use on the phone (just click on them in the battery screen). That will be far more useful as a benchmark than just a screen with a bunch of percentages.

Used approx 2hrs45min of net 3G/wifi use today (posting here, reading news and emails), bit of market browsing and downloading, bout 7 texts and bluetooth on for a quick call. Managed 22 hours.


Screenies - Android Screen shots - a set on Flickr

 

[tuatha]

Good stuff. Only a little bit longer than what I get. Usually in the red after about 20 hours. My wi-fi is at 20-25% though, since I leave it on most of the day.

I think that's a realistic benchmark of battery usage for others to reference too.

I'd love to see similarly detailed screens from the people claiming to get over 48 hours on their phone. Though somehow I doubt those will be forthcoming...

 

[nx1977]

My net usage is usually that for 2 days, and usually get 36 hours approx between charges. I leave weather on 3 hours, sync and background data on 24/7, email/twitter set to manual haptic feedback on.

I have noticed when doing the screen dumps that suddenly under sensor (in spare parts) android system is at 75%. Never had anything under this since getting the phone, but have updated 6 apps yesterday so guessing one of them is the culprit. Otherwise partial awake and other as well as battery drain seem normal

Any thoughts?

It'd also be interesting to compare the battery model number with those experiencing issues, as a member bought an official battery and the model number differs from the one supplied, and they report much better battery life. Perhaps a batch issue with phones older than 45 days?

 

[DannyVandal]

Maybe we can get a definitive check list together. Yesterday I took a fully charged (at 8am) Desire into London with me, tuned off Background data but didn't delete the flickr account. For most of the day I had the screen brightness down at around 30% (although in the bright sunlight I ended up having to turn it up to full a few times) and used the phone like I would my old iPhone - moderate surfing (more than usual because my Vodafone 3G stick has decided to stop working), checking emails, voice calls and texts. I also managed to charge it via USB for a total of around 30 minutes during the day. Limped home at 8.30pm suffering dire warnings about plugging the phone in for the previous hour, the last one telling me I was on 9% battery. This is not quite good enough for me on a normal working day, just over twelve hours. I have now deleted the flickr account and rebooted, working from home today so will see what happens although I have already got used to just plugging it in so will try to resist doing that.

 

[otijhuis]

I get 48+ hours easily but I just use it for calls/texting and some music listening on the way to work most of the time. I'm around computers almost all day so checking my phone for emails and such doesn't make sense for me. I use it for navigation sometimes but then I'm using the car charger anyway.

The way I use the phone the battery drops around 10-15% every 24 hours. But then again, I use it as a phone and only use the extra stuff when really needed.

 

[kopite72]

I was usually getting 10-12 hours use a day from mine which included couple of hours surfing, listening to music & making a few phone calls. Last night i have adjusted the screen timeout to 15 seconds & turned off the Auto Brightness, just got it on a low brightness which is still bright & the phone has been on for 5 hours todays with internet use, texting & listening to music for a couple of hours & my battery is still on 80% so a big improvement just by changing those 2 little things. Also WiFi is on all day as my office has free wifi

 

[ifb-online]

I've had massive improvements with Juice Defender. 12 hours to Flat before and now 30 hours with good use. Internet navi the lot running.

I have nothing to do with the people behind Juice Defender but even the free version works brilliantly. And there is an add-on (also free) that shows the battery level in graphical form over time, so you can see how well it is recharging and when it's really being drained.

I have no concerns about battery life any more. And I may well buy the premium version as this can control the wifi mode as well as optimise things for night time while you're asleep.

Ian

 

[pauljriley]

Compared to my previous phone, the G1, the Desire seems to just keep going.

My G1 towards the end was only lasting hours and spent most of the time either charging by the bed, in the car or via the laptop. That said my wifes G1 seems far more gentle on it's battery, we even swapped batteries in an attempt to prelong my battery life but mine stayed as hours, and my wifes as a day or so.

The key issue appears to be what your running on your phone, even switching GPS and WiFi off my not save too much of your battery if poorly written applications drain it instead.

As said at the start, my experience of the Desire's battery life is far more impressive, and that is without froyo, who knows we might see the day or so of operation stretch into days, and possibly threaten a week?

 

[carbonara]

I'd love to see similarly detailed screens from the people claiming to get over 48 hours on their phone. Though somehow I doubt those will be forthcoming...

Here you go Phone usage pictures by jhouse72 - Photobucket

 

[purplepixie26]

I made it to about 30 hours over yesterday and today ... its died now, but I was using the camera with flash, web, about an hour on youtube. I dont have weather widget on - just a simple touch of a button will get all my info when I need it. I use task killer - which I also kill when using it (its a running app which needs killing too) and the brightness doesnt need to be blinding when indoors. My sony ericsson struggled with a day so all in all I am happy. Its taken 3 weeks to get the battery running - so all newbies , hang in there! with some careful twiddling I think you can greatly improve the battery.

 

[SL4VE]

found a nissue with juice defender... it somehow block your internet and stops the connection. when i check the o2 setting its had "juicedefender o2.wap.co.uk" why did it have the JD bit at the start. reset settings and fine but the connection seems laggy or intermittent with JD, why?

 

[damodamo123]

Hey - check this out. My Desire is 5 days old. When I try to do what the guy says in the video (note that mine has an "applications" menu, not "programs") it doesn't work. Instead of killing HTC Sense, the program (Sense) comes back to life automatically. The screen goes white, then the HTC logo comes up, then it's business as usual.

I wonder if this indicates that my (new) Desire has something different about the software that is causing the atrocious battery life (mine is TERRIBLE!!). Perhaps HTC has changed something which has had detrimental effect?

Maybe people could test the technique in the video on their phones and see if we can find a correlation between phones that can do it and phones where the batteries 'work' - yes, I say work, because my phone is effectively useless if I walk 100m from powered USB ;-)

Cheers,


Damien

 

[Jim255]

My opinion is that there will always be a trade off between battery life, and the size of the phone. The desire has a beautiful big screen (0.2 bigger than the iPish 4 ) and that screen uses a lot of juice. The second point is that I use the phone soooo much because of all the social networking etc. and this all takes juice. So, I have invested in a desktop charger, and a spare GENUINE HTC battery. It's no bother carrying that little lump about, and comforting to know you have a whole extra charge full at your disposal. I can't see what the fuss is about.
If you want to see where your battery charge goes, install SystemPanel. It's excellent, and can give you up to a week of historical use with charge/discharge levels and when you have had a charger plugged in. Recommended.

p.s. The battery reporting seems much more realistic on HTC compared to Nokia. All my Nokia's were dead within minutes of reporting less than '25%' left!

 

[carbonara]

Hey - check this out. My Desire is 5 days old. When I try to do what the guy says in the video (note that mine has an "applications" menu, not "programs") it doesn't work. Instead of killing HTC Sense, the program (Sense) comes back to life automatically. The screen goes white, then the HTC logo comes up, then it's business as usual.

I wonder if this indicates that my (new) Desire has something different about the software that is causing the atrocious battery life (mine is TERRIBLE!!). Perhaps HTC has changed something which has had detrimental effect?

Maybe people could test the technique in the video on their phones and see if we can find a correlation between phones that can do it and phones where the batteries 'work' - yes, I say work, because my phone is effectively useless if I walk 100m from powered USB ;-)

Cheers,


Damien

Just did this on my phone and, the same as you, Sense just reloads straight away when you press the home key.

Sounds like that guy was at some kind of trade show though and probably had a pre-release model.

 

[biscuitlad]

I made it to about 30 hours over yesterday and today

Mine is nearly 4 weeks old and it does 30 hours easily. If I don't use it much, it's good for 2 days.

 

[chrisjb]

Right then, I was the one who originally posted this topic.
I ordered a new battery, as It was getting ridiculous the amount of time I was getting with the battery. The new battery (which was exactly the same) gave me approximately 50% more power!!
Im with Orange UK, called them, explained the situation and within 2 days they sent me a new one (which I have yet to use) and I will send the old one (the one that was initially shipped with the phone) back to them in the jiffy bag (freepost) provided.

So this proves that some batterries can be faulty. I would suggest, if you suspect that you're not getting as much power from your battery as you think you should, you change it.

However, I still need 2 batteries for a days (18hrs) usage - moderate to heavy usage - gps, internet etc etc

 

[chrisjb]

Mine is nearly 4 weeks old and it does 30 hours easily. If I don't use it much, it's good for 2 days.

30 hrs??
really?
And in those 30 hrs, you're using Google maps GPS, 3g+, Internet and about 3 hrs worth of calls and a couple of hours of reading files stored on the phone?

How did you condition the battery to begin with?

 

[Pryomancer]

I just got 51+ hours out of mine. That's with occassional use; a bit of internet browsing, no video or IM, checking email, updating news feeds and no music.

I'm pretty happy with it. This is the 2nd full drain and recharge it will get. I think it makes a difference. Then again I haven't got many apps installed, no programs running in the background, and wifi off, with the screen at 10% brightness (I have no problem using it even at 10% when indoors).