chrisjb

I don't about everybody else, but the battery life of the HTC desire is really not acceptable. I upgraded from an HTC Touch HD and this was'nt so good for battery life - but at least I could get a day out of it. With the Desire Im lucky if I get 6 hours!! And Im using it I belive in quite a reasonable way - i.e. normal phone call usage, using the 3G/3G+ for browsing on the internet, occasional usage with GPS and google maps, looking at files and documents on the SD card.

I'm having to take my charger if I'm going out.

Is this acceptable for a mobile phone, I don't think so.

HTC need to sort this out. Im on the UK orange network and I'm going to asking if there is some kind of firmware update that is going to resolve the problem - if not, I'm returning the phone.

Sure, its an extremely powerful device, but completely useless if it can't last a day.

In my opinion HTC brought this out to early to compete with the iphone.

Gash

Im getting about 36 hours out of mine.
Use it for heavy internet use, auto syncing with Twitter etc about 50-60 texts a day, about 20 minutes of call time and a bit of music listening.
Obviously we'd all like it to be better but i'm quite satisfied tbh.

mirrorimage

I had the same problem... I was pretty pissed off at the start, but people in this forum have been talking a good bit about the first few charges conditioning the battery.
I downloaded a few apps to monitor usage and kill unwanted programs running in the background.
I have had mine exactly a week yesterday, but have started noticing an improvement in the battery life...
I was tempted to return my desire and go for the e72, but I do really like this phone, and may invest in a second battery in the future, but for now, its lasting longer each day...
You have 14 days to return the phone, so I'd give it 10, and of its still the same, then take it back

chrisjb

36 hours!! oh my gosh - I really would be so happy with this! So Im thinking that there might be some kind of problem with my phone. Did you initially charge the battery in any special way?

thesimplesimon

You've got to give it at least a week of full charges and discharges. It really does improve a lot over that time.

stueyboy

I have an orange phone and noticed the battery life sucked the first few days and it has since got better. Now this might be due to the above conditioning effect or that I fiddle less with the phone as time goes on (unlikely) or that i have got rid of all the Orange toot by flashing with a generic ROM. I, like others have a task killer installed and have shut down all unneccessary synching but I do have push e-mail and google mail synching whenever it likes and I can easily get 24hours with a fair amount of internet usage.

Goldy

How long have you had the phone, after a few charges the battery will be conditioned, I have only had mine since yesterday been leaving wifi on most of the time, and have had 13 hours today, and still going.

Stoo

howdy peeps, i get easily 36-48 hours battery life out of mine thats with auto sync emails, facebook weather etc, 50-100 txt a day, and hours messing on the market etc

fiish

For the first time today, I have had my Desire running for more than one and a half days (about 38 hours so far) and still have about 25% of the battery remaining.

This is after putting sensible notification and updating settings for my apps and widgets, it took me some time but the effect on battery life seems to be worth the effort.

tuatha

You know, ever since I got this phone I've been hearing that you need to condition your battery... but having done a bit of reading I'm yet to see a single expert say that you need to 'condition' li-ion batteries.

In fact most say that you don't!

I think this belief is just a relic of the days when batteries actually did need to be conditioned, and it's perpetuated by the fact that battery life appears to improve after a week or so... but I reckon this is just due to the novelty wearing off and the phone being used slightly less.

I'm 100% certain that if I were to really hammer my battery today, I'd get as little usage time out of it as I did on the day I bought it.


Apparently discharging the battery fully and then charging it fully can help if your battery's circuit is misreporting the charge, but other than that I'm calling shenanigans on this whole conditioning myth.


edit: Also, check out this thread and see if you're having the same issue as these guys

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=666404

Last edited by tuatha; May 20th, 2010 at 06:03 PM.

mirrorimage

Okay,
But I'm finding it difficult to understand how my battery took a while to start lasting longer throughout the day...
As I said, i've read about conditioning the battery in these forums; wasn't too sure whether it was viable or not, but the battery has improved dramatically...

thesimplesimon

Got to disagree with you. I defiantly hammered my Desire the same every day through the first week and there defiantly was a improvement in the battery over time.

The_Hawkster

I've got nearly 27 hours out of it with 20% battery still remaining a couple of times, that's with Bluetooth and Wi-Fi always on, syncing with Weather, Facebook and Email, a few hours of music via Bluetooth, internet usage, Youtube app, a few games played such, a couple of hours of internet radio, live Aquarium wallpaper, several mesages and a phone call.

I'm personally delighted with the battery life of the Desire, I've been wanting to test how long it would last with just moderate use like just for messaging, calls and maybe music but even after nearly six weeks of use I still can't put the phone down but I'm sure I could easily reach 35hrs+ with it.

m165

My battery life seems to have got better too.
I once charged it fully from empty, and after sleeping overnight it was in the red! Hasn't happened since, even with WiFi on over night.

I charge mine every night, even if its not fully empty, but just on the orange bar. I don't know if charging it before it is empty is bad or not? But if I don't then I'll have a dead phone after a few uses in the morning!

It's not brilliant battery life, but neither was my old phone so I can cope just fine charging it every night!

Arctic-Winds

I'm happily getting a day and a half out of the battery with wifi and bluetooth on plus taking a fair few calls, text, lots of emails and I've had mine for a week now.

I've come to expect smartphones to have an average battery life of about a day after owning quite a few of Nokias. We need more advances in battery tech to be able to have phones that can last for a good 2 days with average use.

jauhari

Can you tell me what kind of update on your widgets that you mean? Can you share you setup?

dunbad

Yep have to agree with some of the others. Somehow my battery did improve. After two weeks though. Not just the first few charges. When I first got it, it was appalling. Two charges, sometimes three charges a day. Now somehow I get a full days use out of it. And i use it just as much as I did on the day i got it. This aint a myth i can assure you. Im constantly on my phone STILL. Ive never encountered an improving battery before EVER, im not saying its great, or even good, but its defiantly just acceptable enough. A full days heavy use is the min, id have to have. After I noticed the improvement, I then started looking at ways to improve performance further.and am still looking. But i think the set up i have is about as good whilst being as convieniant as realistic as most users should expect from a limited battery.

brykins

I'm really not sure about this "battery getting better after a week or so". Had mine for three weeks now, doesn't seem any different. My theory is that we *think* the battery gets better because our usage drops during that first week. We play and fiddle and can't put it down for the first few days, then we gradually use it less.

Just a theory.

marky9074

Whilst not strictly a direct comparison, when working offshore we use lithium batteries, which definately have to be conditioned before use... in fact there is a conditioning tool we have to connect to each pack before we can even use it in anger....

marky9074

And to support the thread... I was charging twice a day initially. Yes, some of this could be down to playing with it all day. But after a week when I had stopped playing I was up to a days use without recharging... now I am getting two days. Yesterday I installed the ultimate battery manager (or whatever it's called) and that seems to have eeked it out a bit more...

I now have the widget on the home page that controls the brightness, wifi, gps, sync etc... it reminds me to turn the screen down to the minimum, then turn it up if I need it.

jred7469

I never need to charge mine more than once a day and have found the battery life does improve (i've had the phone nearly a month) The way I look at is you need to charge an iphone every day and the desire is better so I don't mind :-P

tsh

After a couple of weeks, I get 12 hours idle from 50% of the battery. That leaves 50% of actual use (i.e. when it's not on my desk at work). Last week, I was having it run down completely during the day. I put the fix down to adjusting the sync times for apps, and unloading a few apps that were draining power unnecessarily (like having 3 sms apps loaded).

I am using SystemPanel to monitor the battery drain, and to see which apps are clocking up cpu time whilst not in active use (i.e. leave it for 5 hours, see which apps clock up more than a few sec. of activity).

I prefer a small phone and the option of carrying a usb charger (with 2 AA rechargables) to carrying a brick. If future software patches improve this, even better - but it's ok for now.

chrisjb

so this is my battery usage so far today. I had it charged overnight. It been unplugged for 3hrs 26 min and Im down to 55%.
Voice calls (ive been on the phone for approximately 1hr 10 min) have taken 47%, Android system 17%, Cell Standby 17%, Phone Idle 13% and Display 6%.

Does this seem normal?

Ive also just received another battery and I want to make sure that I condition it correctly - what do you recommend?
thanks

Celox

mine is perfectly fine. last atleast a day to 2 days with heavy texting

mbatson89

I've been looking at my battery usage and just want to know if this sounds roughly right as in the last week or so i've noticed considerably worsening battery life. Cell Standby and Phone idle have both used 35% (so 70% in total) of the battery since unplugged. I've lost 12% of my battery in less than 3 hours since unplugging, which doesn't sound like much but this is with the phone being left idle on my desk for >90% of that time, with the rest of the time sending the odd text and receiving about 5 emails. I have Facebook set to sync every 30 mins and twitter every hour. The only other active widget i use is the weather widget within the clock.

Does this sound right?

stueyboy

For comparison, mine has been unplugged for 5 hours and I am on 82%. Ive spent about 30 minutes onthe phone and the wifi has been on for 4 hours at least. I have push e-mail on all the time and full brightness with active wallpapers and I've done a bit of browsing and general fiddling.

I had a previous phone (3 network) with horrific battery life and it was down to the fact that it was always trying to boost the 3g signal as it was poor at my home. Could that be your issue?

chrisjb

@Stuey, thats a very good point. My signal reception at home (on orange) is very bad indeed, in fact it wont even work in some areas of the house. Im not very happy at all with the orange network coverage in London - and it was one of the reasons I was thinking of leaving them - persuaded to stay only becuase they were offering a very good tariff.

Desire D

My battery seemed to improve greatly after about five days use. Must admit I was disappointed with it before that.

Got to be worth anyone with poor battery life trying something like Advanced Task Killer just to see what is actually running in the background.

tuatha

Well if you need to condition it, then it's not a direct comparison...

The li-ion batteries in your phone have full capacity available when you buy them. It's not like the old ones where the battery needed to be primed.


Not that any of this matters, because as soon as some guy comes in and swears that his battery got better after a week, everybody will start feverishly trying to condition their batteries JUST IN CASE...

Hope springs eternal. Especially when it comes to battery life

AlastairH

That could well be the problem, I used to work on a site with next to no reception and my old 'phone (HTC Touch Diamond) would go from full charge to almost zero in the space of 5 hours.

zafonic

Can anyone tell me how i can find out the exact info on what the battery % of my phone is?

Thanks

tuatha

Zafonic - you can download Battery Time lite from the market or you can dial *#*#4636#*#* to get full battery info

Caspa

I would agree about the signal having an major effect on battery...

At the office the building has very poor reception, so much so that they actually installed 2G signal boosters in all the units, but this means that my phone is constantly switching between 2G and 3G as I sit in the middle of the room! As 3G is 'preferred' it will always try to get log onto it even when its a very poor signal...

I notice a big difference in battery drain when at home at the weekend, have full 3G signal and its drains alot slower...

stueyboy

You could try forcing the phone to use GSM only buth then your data download will be sluggish and it kind of defeats the object of most of the features of this phone. It's worrying that Orange have a poor reception in London. Do you use it in an office with a lkoad of electronic equipment as you might have created your own personal Faraday cage?

tuatha

Just to clarify here:

The Desire is rated at 390 minutes talk time.

You've used approximately 70 minutes, which is roughly 17% of the total theoretical talktime. EDIT: in fact it's 17.9%


Your phone has lost 45% charge, 47% of which was spent on phonecalls.

This means you have spent 21% of your phone's total charge on phonecalls


Keeping in mind that your talktime figure was an approximate, and that the manufacturer's talktime estimates are always a little optimistic, I'd say that's almost bang on the money. And from that we can deduce that your battery is functioning normally.

And the rest of the percentages you've put up look pretty normal to me too...

Last edited by tuatha; May 21st, 2010 at 08:47 AM.

chrisjb

Im working often from home in SE5 camberwell/Brixton area. And from here signal very low unless Im close to the balcony. Im often having problems with Orange network all over London - where you would expect excellent reception in almost all areas. (Also almost no network signal down in St.Margarets next to Richmond) and the country.
Signal is diabolical when Im taking train from London to Dorset.
i dont think its a problem unique to my HTC Desire as I also wasnt impressed with the HTC Touch HD signal reception.

uzetaab

My personal opinion is that the apparent increase to battery life that people experience is due to the battery time remaining estimations improving after the phone has had a chance to track some charge/discharge cycles. That and not using the phone quite so much because you've finished most of your tweaking of it.

For my own experience, the battery life does seem to be improving, but the true test for me will be tomorrow when I finally get my memory card. I got a note from the post office telling me to come collect a package, I can't think of any other items I'm expecting.

For the record, I never did anything special to my battery, apart from making sure it had a full charge of at least 12 hours the first time. Although it was more like 20 hours because I was playing with it while it was charging for about the first 8 hours & I was almost draining the battery faster than it could recharge.

Anyway, if you want to know more about my opinions on batteries, read the post linked in my signature.

__________________
If you are having battery issues, try reading my post about them:
Batteries explained

Last edited by uzetaab; May 21st, 2010 at 09:04 AM.

tuatha

Yeah, I mentioned in my own post, that the charge estimation is the only thing that can be affected by a full discharge and charge... and even then all it takes is one or two full cycles.

I think I even read that one of the major selling points of the li-ion battery technology was that they don't require conditioning...


I suppose when it comes down to it people will just believe whatever they like

uzetaab

Is my signature showing? It's not for me, but maybe you don't see your own signature. Anyway, if it's not working, then this is what it will be when it does:

If you are having battery issues, try reading my post about them:
Batteries explained

edit: Ah. I see. The show signature option is unchecked if you don't have a signature when you make the post. seems to work now.

Last edited by uzetaab; May 21st, 2010 at 09:06 AM.

uzetaab

Oops, sorry, I didn't make it clear that I was agreeing with you, but I was

zafonic

Cell standby on my Desire shows at 33%.

Is that higher than it should be?

tuatha

@ zafonic - it's hard to say, really. Remember this is a percentage, rather than an amount of energy used per hour, so it's entirely relative. In general, my cell standby percentage varies from about 20 up to about 35.

But again, it's all relative.



Yeah, I know... haha, guess it was me that wasn't clear.

the more battery threads I read the more exasperated I become.

furious duck

Up until 3 weeks ago I worked in an office where I could only get a 2G signal and found my battery drained very quickly. I had to set the network mode to "GSM only" otherwise I'd be out of battery before I got home. It looks like the phone uses the juice trying to find a 3G signal. No problems since moving though. I don't use mine excessively and have done all the battery optimising tasks (reducing syncing etc) but I'm usually down to 25% - 40% at the end of the day. So not fantastic but I've been charging my phones overnight for years now so it's fine for me. No idea how people are making there's last 3 days though!

kboya

oops, didnt see Tuatha's vsimilar post ^. Soz for double up, I would have deleted the whole thing, but i think the point needs reinforcing ;p

hey,

there has been an almost infinite amount of threads on battery, and these kind of stats from the system keep appearing without being thought about first. I want to use this one as an example only (this is a friendly post), and as it was by the starter of the thread.

this phone started on 100% (after charge) and at 3h 26m since unplugging is at 55%, having used 45%, which is the important part.
It have spent 1hr 10m (70mins) calling (approx one-third of the time since unplug), taking 47% of 45%, but this is a little over 21% of the total battery. The handset has an ideal talktime of 390 minutes (rarely ever achieved in practice), 6h 30m, and these stats suggest it could get over 5 hours of real-life-talktime (including signal problems, searching, wcdma-gsm-wcdma) if only used for it. There is no indication of other use, but the System and Display stats make it likely there was other usage within the 3h 26m window.

does that sound like bad battery life? 5 hours plus of real life talk-time? on a smartphone, it sounds ok to me (of course, I'd always like more!!)

the point is that these stats need to be analysed for what they are, a breakdown of battery usage by type of process, and they only account for 'what has been used' as a percentage of 'what has been used' and will therefore always add up to 100%.

hope this helps

Last edited by kboya; May 21st, 2010 at 10:57 AM.

uzetaab

Gah. I'm really sorry, I just discovered the link did not work (I'm still getting used to this forum).

this link should work:

If you are having battery issues, try reading my post about them:
Batteries explained

Caspa

Naa, its down to the ergonomics of the building - spoke to the Centre Manager when we first decided to move in and she told me how crap reception was (all networks) in the building which is why they put 2G boosters in all the units when they completed it... With regards to forcing it to use 2G, I could do that, but then I have the problem of missing calls when there is an active data connection which is alot of the time as I get push email on my Exchange account... Thats annoying, the fact that voice traffic doesnt take priority over data while on 2G - it does on an old 2G only Nokia!

I find Oranges reception to be pretty good most of the time (apart from 3G data issues - but thats a whole other thread!), the point I wanted to get across was the fact that signal strength contributes to battery performance and as mine switches between 2G and 3G depending on which end of the office I'm in (near 2G booster or near window!), I experience the heavier drain while at work...

The same can be said when using the tube, best to put it on airplane mode so it isnt constantly searching for the network...

Caspa

Yep, when on auto (2G/3G) it actually 'prefers' a 3G connection so will always (constantly) try to switch to it, thus using battery... Only solution as you realised was to set it to 2G only...

Surely it would be better for handsets 'auto' mode to be strongest signal preferred?! Why have 1 bar of 3G when you can full bars of 2G?!

Nodders

Perfectly fine here - no problems whatsoever with battery.

Casual Pete

+1

Compared to some smartphones I've had in the past the battery is excellent.

Caspa

Battery is definately excellent I would say... On 33hrs since unplugged and on 2% left... Thats with push email, calls, wifi use, BT use, lots of internet, some texts and quite a bit of signal switching while at the office yesterday...

My point before has been emphasised by the fact that I was on 25% when I got home at about 9pm last night, it only went down to 17% overnight...