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Help Battery since Gingerbread

stuarta

Android Enthusiast
Feb 15, 2011
412
44
Was hoping my battery was going to improve but it seems not. Here are my current stats

On battery for 40mins and 93% battery left. Then just in car for 20mins and now for 1hour and 92%. Been in work for 5 minutes and dropped to 89%.

Display - 83%
Dialer - 5%
Android System - 4%
Cell Standby - 4%
Phone Idle - 2%

Running services
Whatsapp - 7mb
Battery Indicator - 2.7mb
3G Watchdog - 2.7mb
SMS Backup+ - 8.3mb
Sugarsync - 8.3mb (only been in for a couple days and don't think effected it. will be removing)
Cspeopleservice - 3.2mb
Google services - 11mb
HTC Sense - 7.1mb
Maps - 4.6mb
Twitter - 6.8mb
Mail - 6.2mb (Don't use)
Tasker - 3.9mb (Not launched)
Touch Input - 14mb

196mb used, 359mb free

On the 93% I sent about 35 texts. Received a few while in the car and sent 2 when in office.

Seems a lot especially when compared to my partners Desire S which last night was on battery for 39hrs and had 40% left, mine was 13hours with 55% left :mad:

Any ideas anyone as to what might be hogging it.

EDIT: Oh and using Handscent for messages. Not sure if that is using up more but not showing in those reports
 
I've not had that bad a reception of gingerbread over froyo. Since getting my he two months ago I was apalled at the battery life nd have had to scour forums everywhere for tips on how to improve battery, but still ended up disappointed.
Since flashing a basic gingerbread Rom my battery life has doubled. I'm not a power user by any means, use wifi for a couple of hours a day, couple of games etc
Even so the max is two days, even when on standby. I don't understand why battey life is such an issue. I've heard tips that you should shut down running background apps, services etc. But this can only account for a certain amount of demand,as other handsets run the same apps, sense etc
So it must be a hardware issue somewhere, maybe some component that is hogging most of the battery draw, something HTC have addressed for later handsets. Might have to look at different kernels for improvements as a new radio hasn't made much difference.
 
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Looking at the figures you've quoted, it seems to me that it's clearly the display which is draining your battery. This implies that, although not many hours have elapsed since it came off charge, you've been using it very intensely. It would be interesting to know for how much of the time the battery stats indicate the display has been active. I leave my display set to auto brightness and, although I've not tested it properly, my feeling is that, in daylight, 3 - 4 hours of display usage would result in the battery being quite close to being drained. One thing I do is set the display time-out to two minutes, but then always blip the power button to turn it off as soon as I've finished whatever I'm doing. I'm also finding the more detailed battery usage report in Android 2.3 to be useful in showing what's been draining the power.
 
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Looking at the figures you've quoted, it seems to me that it's clearly the display which is draining your battery. This implies that, although not many hours have elapsed since it came off charge, you've been using it very intensely. It would be interesting to know for how much of the time the battery stats indicate the display has been active. I leave my display set to auto brightness and, although I've not tested it properly, my feeling is that, in daylight, 3 - 4 hours of display usage would result in the battery being quite close to being drained. One thing I do is set the display time-out to two minutes, but then always blip the power button to turn it off as soon as I've finished whatever I'm doing. I'm also finding the more detailed battery usage report in Android 2.3 to be useful in showing what's been draining the power.

Yep my timeout is set to 30secs and normally switch off when not using. The screen would of been active for the time that I've been texting and that's it, with it set to Auto.

What extra detailed battery usage are you mentioning in 2.3?
 
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This is my first full battery since Gingerbread arrived, and im on 30% batter after 7h 35 min

82% Display
05% Cell standby
05% Dialer
04% Phone idle
02% Voice calls

I have had auto sync turned off, Im going to run the test tomorrow and compare with Auto sync running

Its slightly better but it may just be the sync thing.
 
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This is my first full battery since Gingerbread arrived, and im on 30% batter after 7h 35 min

82% Display
05% Cell standby
05% Dialer
04% Phone idle
02% Voice calls

I have had auto sync turned off, Im going to run the test tomorrow and compare with Auto sync running

Its slightly better but it may just be the sync thing.

Sounds about the same as mine
 
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There seem to be a number of posts floating around varoius sites (e.g. Dialer using large amount of battery after update on Gingerbread - Page 7 - xda-developers ) regarding the high battery use showing by the dialler app. Since installing the gingerbread update I see the same 'issue' (currently showing 24%) but my overall battery life is pretty much the same as before. i.e. I can 24 - 30 hours with minimal use and with medium use can get through a full day. I'm assuming this is more likely just a glitch in the way battery stats are now reported.
 
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What extra detailed battery usage are you mentioning in 2.3?

I was talking about:
All apps->Settings->About phone->Battery->Battery use

The new bit is the graph at the top of the page, which can be clicked on to show a time/discharge graph with key battery draining processes shown in timelines underneath.

Also, although not new, pressing "Display" shows the time the display has been active for. At the end of the day, if the vast majority of power is being used by the display, this means that the phone itself is running efficiently. The only way, therefore, of extending time between charges is to reduce either the display brightness, or the time it is active.
 
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Right it isn't latitude and it isn't touchdown... It happened again after I fully charged the phone, turned off latitude. After 1 hour 20 minutes, it drained 3% after no use. The dialer was draining 79% of my battery.. LOL.. Looking at the graph the phone signal bar was coloured GREEN and it looks to me it is consuming the power... I am defo sure it is when the data is on as when I switch data off (i.e. at night) the power drain is back to froyo (4% after 8 hours ish).

I think i need to do some experimenting, and I am going to try to avoid a hard reset of the phone...
 
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My battery was not bad with Froyo, but is FABULOUS with Gingerbread:

2 DAYS 14 hours 35 minutes since charge and still 35% left. I expect I could get 3 days before the battery finally dies, but I won't push my luck ;)

Battery usage:


  • 23% dialer
  • 23% android system
  • 19% phone idle
  • 18% cell standby
  • 9% display
  • 5% voice calls
  • 3% wifi

I had about 20 minutes of voice calls, sent/received about 10 SMS's, many e-mails.

When I got my phone about 5 months ago I went through the recommended battery calibration routine, still running Froyo:


  1. Turn your device ON and charge the device for 8 hours or more
  2. Unplug the device and turn the phone OFF and charge for 1 hour
  3. Unplug the device turn ON wait 2 minutes and turn OFF and charge for another hour

That doubled battery life. Haven't needed to do this again after the Gingerbread update.

Here's my setup:


  • European Desire HD
  • Stock HTC battery charged with stock HTC charger
  • I have strong UMTS reception where I live & work (~90-95db on Vodafone NL)
  • I have wifi on permanently & am usually connected to wifi almost all day
  • GPS is off unless I use maps (hardly ever)
  • Bluetooth is off unless I need it (also infrequently)
  • Brightness is set manually to about 40%
  • Screen timeout is 30s but I have a habit of switching off the display with a widget before I put my phone down
  • Network mode = auto, always-on data
  • Background-sync and auto-sync are on for everything but stocks and weather
  • Mail synced every 4 hours, twitter every hour, the rest is manal or push
  • I use HTC mail w/ Gmail, HTC calendar, both HTC's and the official facebook app, HTC peep for twitter
  • No task killers/managers, live wallpapers, latitude, foursquare, whatsap or other junk. Loads of apps but very few run in the background.
  • I don't play games

Hope this helps someone. I am and always have been very happy with my Desire HD!

Cheers, - Jon -
 
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Well phone was charged last night, took off charge at 6:20 this morning, usually after I do the runs I need to do work wise I am finished by 9:30 and have 96% battery left. Since the update, I have been down to around 88%-90% after the same time. I noticed that copilot seemed to be running all the time even though it was only used the day of the update to make sure the bug had not reappeared after the froyo 2.2.1 update. As it worked and was only used for around 10mins and exited as always with the exit button, I assumed it was closed. Three days later and it is still using upwards of 50% of battery, even though it has been closed and not used since the 10mins use after the update.

So I removed the app and since then in the last 2 hours it has used 5%.

Before I removed copilot it had dropped in 3 hours to 88% now 2 hours after removing it I am down to 83%.

Have contacted copilot and await their response as to what maybe the issue.

Will fully charge the phone, and test for the rest of the day, to see if the issue has been sorted.
 
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Since loading Gingerbread on my Desire HD, the screen when it times out only dims, it does not turn off - so I have to do it manually. Am I missing a setting? Clearly if I do not switch off manually, my battery drains. Until now I have had no issues with the battery life with my level of use.

Settings -> Display -> Screen Timeout.

What's that set to?
 
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