Help HTC ONE battery discussion (usage, charging, etc.)

[EarlyMon]

It's perfectly ok to leave it on the charger overnight if you prefer. Nothing bad will happen.

I wouldn't make guesses myself for the main wakelock. The way that things are tied together, anything is possible. But everything is causal. Let's see if we can eliminate things in turn.

Having lots of stuff syncing over 3G, especially if the signal is not great, will definitely add to the power draw. It's not uncommon to see network retries, services restarting and so forth when something is thirsty for data.

 

[Tlicious1020]

Spoiler

Wow,

Firstly, thanks for all the prompt feedback guys, it is truly appreciated and it's folks like you who make the Android community so awesome!

Tlicious1020 - I did try turning off the auto brightness a couple of weeks ago but I don't like dimming the screen too much and I had set it at 50% for 2 days to test it out but I found that when using the phone, the battery life depletion was more than having auto brightness enabled. I also maintain power saver mode all the time (unchecking the brightness option though)

EarlyMon - Thanks for tips, I noticed that a lot of the search results relating to the msm_hsic wake lock were of the Nexus 4. I did the 10 second power button reboot and I'll see how that goes. At my residence, I am always on Wi-Fi but I suppose that my work location could be a reason for poor signal, I do not have Wi-Fi there. I'll pay more attention to the GSam graph for battery against phone signal and also check the stats for phone signal. But wouldn't you say that the wake lock time for "main" at over 6 hours is not normal? I am using all the home screen panels and BlinkFeed, I have Google Keep and a Weather widget running, is that why "main" is so active?

Kolio - I usually end up with 10% at around 1800h or 1900h depending on how much I use the phone. I have tried scaling back a bit but as I said the drain seems to be constant but I always manage around 2.5 - 3.5 hours of screen on time before it hits 5%. I try not to leave the phone charging overnight but I do end up doing that occasionally when I get home late. So the charge time is either overnight from 2300h/0000h or from 20000h to 2300h and I have auto enabled Night Mode in Battery Widget Reborn from 2330h to 0630h.

Is it feasible that he needs to try a factory reset and monitor what apps you add back to the phone?

And my brightness is set to around 75%-80%. I don't think 50% does this screen any justice at all. I just ensure it's not set so bright that your eyes have to adjust themselves to white backgrounds.

 

[mpanju]

Tlicious1020 - I'm going to give it a few days before I try a factory reset. I agree with a screen this gorgeous it'd be a shame to set the brightness so low. I never used the auto brightness for the Galaxy Nexus as I found it far too dim for my liking. Would you mind sharing data about your battery life? What sort of adjustments do you make to conserve battery life? Personally I'm not too sure that turning off Google Now has made much of a difference, for me anyway.

 

[okdaddio]

Please monitor your phone with "GSam Battery Monitor"

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.gsamlabs.bbm

After being left at night, hoover icon, lower left on main screen, then the title on the next screen is actually a drop-down menu, let's look for wakelocks.

Plus, we can trust the graphs.

How do I check what's keeping my Screen On/Awake at night? I downloaded the app, but am having difficulty following the instructions.

Thanks!

 

[EarlyMon]

How do I check what's keeping my Screen On/Awake at night? I downloaded the app, but am having difficulty following the instructions.

Thanks!

Certainly!

The first attached graph shows a very well-behaved phone with respect to apps and being awake. **Most feeds are off.**

Note that when the screen is off the phone is not active, other than occasional blips - that's likely my email syncing. If I zoom in more a few more insignificant blips show it awake a little more, but nothing to be concerned about.

The second graph shows the same thing but with something waking the phone constantly. In extreme cases, the awake time degrades the battery curve badly and that's when you need to care.

Charge your phone, take it off the charger, start Gsam, tap back to home, turn your screen off, let it sit for say about two hours.

Check the graphs. If there's an issue, finding it is the next step.

Lower left of the main screen is a hoover, tap it to see what's sucking power.

Title on the next page is a drop down menu.

Get the option to show time held awake.

The resulting list will be your suspects, worse ones at the top. If they aren't obvious, please share those screen shots. From there we can look at the wakelocks next as needed.

Let me know if I'm making sense or not.

 

[JimKnuckles]

I've never gotten great battery life with my HTC phones. I have just gotten an s4 for work recently. The battery life is unreal good. I like everything about the HTC one better than the s4...but the s4 battery life is so good I would consider trading just for that.

I have to charge my one 2-3 times a day.

 

[EarlyMon]

I've never gotten great battery life with my HTC phones. I have just gotten an s4 for work recently. The battery life is unreal good. I like everything about the HTC one better than the s4...but the s4 battery life is so good I would consider trading just for that.

I have to charge my one 2-3 times a day.

Hopefully a configuration issue, and hopefully Gsam can help you.

I've had great battery life on HTCs since 2011, except when facing radio issues.

 

[GuitarG20]

I've had great battery life on HTCs since 2011, except when facing radio issues.

Ditto. My HOXL (which has LTE) from last year only gets really bad battery life when I am in an area of poor cell reception, and then the top wakelock can be attributed to looking for signal

 

[learis]

I have an HTC One, not sure which version of android that runs. When I go to settings > power > usage, I am given a screen showing the percent of each app that has contributed to overall battery drain, in addition to phone idle and other system contributions.

As far as I know, there is no details whatsoever on the timeframe this represents so I'm left to guess that it's for the lifetime of the phone. Is there a way to get details for like the current day, or perhaps for the month? Does what I'm saying make sense?

 

[GuitarG20]

To the best of my knowledge, those percentages are actually the amount of power each app has used since you last unplugged your phone, or since the last time you recharged to full, not the amount it has used over the life of the phone.

 

[Tlicious1020]

Tlicious1020 - I'm going to give it a few days before I try a factory reset. I agree with a screen this gorgeous it'd be a shame to set the brightness so low. I never used the auto brightness for the Galaxy Nexus as I found it far too dim for my liking. Would you mind sharing data about your battery life? What sort of adjustments do you make to conserve battery life? Personally I'm not too sure that turning off Google Now has made much of a difference, for me anyway.

Well, my phone is not setup to sync to anything. I always go through all of my apps to ensureif they need access to data like mail, weather, stocks, news, Sprint zone, etc. That those items are setup to manually update. And when I'm in an area where I have no signal I select power saver mode. I guess I look at this phone like a sports car. It's meant to go fast all the time. You have to throttle it back depending on what you do with your phone on a daily basis.

But I don't think power saver does much good when you are actually using the phone unless you have the screen turned down. I think the key is finding the right level of screen brightness.

 

[Abdur]

Hey guys,
Just moved up from a Desire to get the one a couple days ago. I was using a custom rom on the desire (SU's rom) which let me get upwards of 2 days of battery life with medium use.

Just got the one, decided to still keep it stock for now and not root it. The battery life has been much much better than I expected, heres a screenshot of my last charge cycle, I had to take it off the charger before it hit 100, but it still held up to one day of gaming and other abuse.

Here it is:

Spoiler

I do have a couple questions though:
How many charge cycles can this battery stand? (is there an estimated amount that can be given?)

and
Is it still really bad to take the battery below ~15%?

 

[Harry2]

Some info ... "Cycle life as a function of
depth of discharge"
http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries

Harry

 

[Abdur]

Some info ... "Cycle life as a function of
depth of discharge"
How to Prolong Lithium-based Batteries - Battery University

Harry

Isnt this a Lithium Polymer battery though?

Still an amazing link, thank you.

 

[Hadron]

Isnt this a Lithium Polymer battery though?

So were the batteries the article discussed.

 

[Harry2]

Isnt this a Lithium Polymer battery though? ...

I didn't think of it, sorry ...

Wikipedia says "... Compared to the lithium-ion battery, Li-poly has a greater life cycle degradation rate."

Harry

 

[tommo47]

Extract from this site:- http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/features/item/15775_How_do_Lithium_batteries_work.php

"Is Lithium Polymer different?

The chances are that if you read this site, you've heard of Lithium Polymer (Li-Polymer) as a distinct battery type from Li-Ion batteries. The difference between them lies in the material used as the separator. Rather than an inert substance with holes covered in electrolyte, the separator is made of a micro-porous polymer covered in an electrolytic gel that also serves as a catalyst that reduces the energy barrier in the chemical reaction between cathode and anode. Therefore, Li-Polymer batteries allow for a slight increase in energy density. However, this advantage is offset by a 10% to 30% cost increase. Therefore, because the same materials are used for cathode and anode, Li-Polymer batteries follow the same chemical process as Li-Ion batteries and so are not a distinct class.

Because the solid polymer is flexible, it is possible to construct flexible batteries and batteries that can be easily formed into various shapes and sizes, even thin films. So you'll most often see Li-Poly used for batteries which are relatively thin (e.g. Nokia's 'hero' BP-4L battery used in a dozen devices) or oddly shaped (e.g. to fit round other components in a tightly packed phone).

Just as with Li-Ion batteries though, Li-Polymer batteries are slowly degrading from the day they are created, and are subject to the same harm caused by deep-discharges."

 

[chong67]

I didnt read thru all the pages but did it take forever for the battery to get charge up? I notice that yesterday.

 

[mpanju]

EarlyMon, Tlicious1020, Kolio (and all forum members!),

I've attached my battery life screens for my usage today. The usage is fairly light in comparison, I did not use it too much in the morning on the way to work as I normally do, I only clocked in around 30 mins screen on by 0900h (I pulled it off the charger at 0630h). As I was quite swamped at work I barely got a chance to touch the One (Yet it still depleted to 60% by 1400h!) and I only managed to get going when leaving work at around 1815h. Judging from the stats I'd pretty much rule out poor signal as the cause of my standby drain, the signal was for the most part good (as evidenced by the attached screen showing signal strength). So it definitely seems to be a kernel issue (and that horrid msm_hsic wake lock!)

I am going to go ahead with a factory reset but I don't expect it to resolve the issue. One thing is for sure now, there is no way I'd be able to get more than 24 hours out of this handset regardless of my usage, I think the One has pretty damn good battery life but my unit's standby seepage really degrades what would have been a truly all day lasting handset. As I have no experience or knowledge about rooting & modding phones I might as well just hope that the 4.2.2 update improves my standby time.

 

[EarlyMon]

Can you please bring up the graph for battery vs other in Gsam? Thanks!

 

[mpanju]

EarlyMon,

Sure I can, only thing is that I put the One on charge right after I posted earlier, I hope these are OK.

 

[ArmchairBear]

A friend of mine recently got the HTC One for AT&T. I got to play with it longer than I did in stores.

I checked the battery stats and it showed 17.5 hours with 60% remaining. I'm guessing my friend is just a light user. But still that is impressive to me. On my RAZR M, I'd probably only have 40% or 30% remaining. Seems like HTC One would last me 1.5 days, which should be good enough.

I was really leaning towards a big battery Moto X phone, but with all the nice extras of the HTC One and the fact that I like Sense, I'm still waffling between those two choices. Oh well, a good problem to have I suppose.

 

[EarlyMon]

Mpanju -

No, those are good.

Seems that you don't have much time where the screen is off but your phone is awake.

What's up with the wifi signal? Are you in one location? Why is that cycling on/off?

If you're in one location, and no reason for that, please get Wifi Analyzer, also free. Is the network on a crowded channel? Is the net name a router default being shared with other networks??

 

[mpanju]

Mpanju -

No, those are good.

Seems that you don't have much time where the screen is off but your phone is awake.

What's up with the wifi signal? Are you in one location? Why is that cycling on/off?

If you're in one location, and no reason for that, please get Wifi Analyzer, also free. Is the network on a crowded channel? Is the net name a router default being shared with other networks??

EarlyMon,

The location where my desk is picks up the faint WiFi from an adjacent area, the Wi-Fi is locked and so not many people are on it (Speeds are quite slow here, don't know if that makes a difference) but I end up using data when in the office. I do move around a bit, from 1130h - 1400h I was in offices that do not have Wi-Fi and as you will notice, I did not touch my phone much between 0900h and 1300h.

Even when I am at home, and I am the only user on my WiFi network, I still get a drain of 5-10% per hour on standby!

By the way, which version of WiFi analyzer do you recommend, there are quite a few in the Play Store?

 

[EarlyMon]

Check out "Wifi Analyzer"

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.farproc.wifi.analyzer

Sweep left / right for various screens.

Following shots show me, seh, on a crowded channel and a free one. Note the signal improvement.

If I had to make a prediction - either coincident to your last update, or due to a network improvement in your last update that routers you're hitting don't like, that's what changed your battery response and is the root cause of your trouble.

MSM = mobile set modem, would include wifi as I recall.