Help Anyone else's battery getting worse?

[rod9669]

Had my One X for a year now, and noticed in the last couple of weeks the battery isn't lasting as long as it used to. No new apps installed, usage is less if anything - nothing obvious using the battery.

Thoughts?

 

[El Presidente]

Lithium batteries do lose charge over time. It's worse if you do full charge/discharge cycles regularly.

What are your charging habits?

 

[clio197]

I didnt do too badly out of mine the last week !!

 

[rod9669]

I use a desktop stand to charge it overnight - it's usually around the 20% mark by then. It also gets about 10 minutes at midday and about 30 minutes in the evening in a HTC car dock

 

[GuitarG20]

I use a desktop stand to charge it overnight - it's usually around the 20% mark by then. It also gets about 10 minutes at midday and about 30 minutes in the evening in a HTC car dock

I found that I could get about 10-12 hours of (fairly heavy) use out of a AT&T branded model running stock software. Does this seem consistent with the battery life you get? (if you're on at&t that is)

 

[benitorios]

Like the OP, I've been experiencing worse battery life than usual lately. At first I thought it was due to Tasker, which I recently installed, but after a factory reset and not re-installing Tasker, I found no improvement.

I see that I can lose up to 10% in 10 minutes of use, then it stabilizes, then it may drop again by another 5-10%. I used to get back home after work with 60-70% left, now I'm at 50% or less.

I did the battery test (using the HTC test function utility) and after an hour remaining battery was 91%, so the battery seems to be healthy. No idea what's causing that drain. Have GSam installed and I don't see anything out of the ordinary in terms of CPU use, wake locks, etc.

Beats me... If anyone has noticed the same and put the finger on what was amiss, it would be great if you could share!

 

[El Presidente]

Do you have signal issues? That can have a huge impact on battery life?

 

[benitorios]

Not in my case, no. GSam shows I'm at highest signal strength almost 100% of the time.

This drop in battery life was pretty sudden actually and I haven't changed my habits at all, neither did I move, etc. Early April I went geocaching for a day, listening to music over Bluetooth as I walked around, used GPS a lot, screen on for 4+ hours, and I had 20% or so left on the battery when I got home in the evening. But as of the following week and ever since, I'm struggling to get more than 3 hours screen time. Same brightness settings, no gaming, moderate connection use, sync off, etc. just like before.

It's like the battery just suddenly got bad. Didn't drop the phone, nothing.

Just weird. And as mentioned, the battery test shows 91% left after 1 hour of screen on. Must be something with an app, me thinks...

edit: I noticed a few days ago that the latest Google Search/Google Now update from early April added a "magic word" feature: basically, you say "Google" and it fires up Google Now. So I had this "ahaa" moment thinking that was the culprit. Turned that off, but no change in battery life I keep looking...

 

[GuitarG20]

I can't remember how to get in there, hopefully EP does... But there is a way to check your battery health in the test menu.

 

[benitorios]

I can't remember how to get in there, hopefully EP does... But there is a way to check your battery health in the test menu.

Yup, tried that. Battery down to 91% after the 1-hour test, which I understand is pretty good (anything above 80 or 85% is considered good). So, the battery itself seems to be healthy. There's something that makes it plunge up to 5% or 10% at a time, seemingly randomly.

BTW, I'm still on 3.14 firmware.


Edit: for those curious, you can access the battery test utility (it's a built-in HTC diagnostic function) as follows:
- first of all, charge your battery to 100%, and enable Airplane mode (actually, enable Airplane mode before charging so you don't lose battery when switching AP mode on)
- Open Phone / dialer
- dial *#*#3424#*#* (no need to press call, after the last * the utility will open)
- on the welcome screen, choose Accept
- next screen, choose More
- tick Battery Test, then choose Run
- on the next couple of screens, tap the Back button to proceed until the test starts
- leave the phone alone for an hour - don't charge, don't touch the screen, don't touch the hardware buttons

In theory, if you have anything above 80% remaining at the end of this test, your battery is in good health. I don't think that's a hard number so don't panic if it's 79%, etc. (result varies depending on ambient temperature, moon phase and menstrual cycles - i made up the last two)

 

[deltaforce]

Lithium batteries do lose charge over time. It's worse if you do full charge/discharge cycles regularly.

What are your charging habits?

I always thought that you SHOULD discharge before charging it fully. I usually let it go down to 15-10% before charging it full.
Same I do for laptops as well..

So if I understood correctly, you just charge phone every night no matter how much charge the battery is holding at that moment, right?

 

[El Presidente]

Yep, full charge/discharge cycles were needed for older battery technologies, but not for Lithium. I can't remember the last time any of my devices had a battery less than 30%.

 

[rod9669]

Quick up-date on this - just spent the week in Corfu (smug mode on ) and turned off data roaming and wi-fi because I wanted to get away from the real world for a while. Got the following results

https://www.dropbox.com/s/zog5e7f0x0x5axk/2013-05-04%2022.17.24.png

I reckon it's things like Google Now, plume etc up-dating in the background that's killing the battery - since I got home, I've had this

https://www.dropbox.com/s/a2nk405dp1dn6o3/2013-05-05 21.08.10.png

just from sending about 10 texts - the rest of the time the phone's just been sitting there.

So, on Tuesday when I go back to work I'm going to manually turn off data etc apart from when I actually need it. Will up-date again then

 

[GuitarG20]

Quick up-date on this - just spent the week in Corfu (smug mode on ) and turned off data roaming and wi-fi because I wanted to get away from the real world for a while. Got the following results

I reckon it's things like Google Now, plume etc up-dating in the background that's killing the battery - since I got home, I've had this

just from sending about 10 texts - the rest of the time the phone's just been sitting there.

So, on Tuesday when I go back to work I'm going to manually turn off data etc apart from when I actually need it. Will up-date again then

your pictures are broken when i try to look at them...

 

[rod9669]

your pictures are broken when i try to look at them...

Should be fixed as a link - I'll try again to put them in as pictures

 

[rod9669]

Quick up-date on this - just spent the week in Corfu (smug mode on ) and turned off data roaming and wi-fi because I wanted to get away from the real world for a while. Got the following results

I reckon it's things like Google Now, plume etc up-dating in the background that's killing the battery - since I got home, I've had this

just from sending about 10 texts - the rest of the time the phone's just been sitting there.

So, on Tuesday when I go back to work I'm going to manually turn off data etc apart from when I actually need it. Will up-date again then

Better?