Real issue with power consumption, easily testable

[thekobk]

I don't even recommend trying this. The battery also filters and regulates the power from the charger without it you could ruin your phone. Hay once your car is started you can even remove that battery and run everything off the alternator but if you blow up the computer in the car testing this just remember I already said I don't recommend it.

 

[Wynnded]

I wonder if there are some settings that might determine if the phone runs without the battery while plugged into A/C. Something that's more of a side effect rather than something intended for the end-user.

 

[iowabowtech]

I can't attest to running a phone off the a/c cord alone but I've most definitely powered a Blackberry via USB with no battery installed.

 

[Mr.Slave]

You can also go a step lower to see if the phone will run off the power your computers USB port puts out. The USB port on computers gives out half the power that a wall charger does.

Edit: I was able to run my Moto Droid off USB power fine and my Inc. won't run off wall power alone.

 

[howarmat]

I can't attest to running a phone off the a/c cord alone but I've most definitely powered a Blackberry via USB with no battery installed.

yep, its part of the OS recovery/install steps sometimes

 

[JuniorNA]

Well that's news to me. I have a Sony Vaio Laptop and as soon as the battery pops out when the thing is plugged into the wall the laptop shuts down. Same goes for every phone I have ever used. I don't have my charger with me here at work but I will try this on my phone when i get home to see what happens when I remove the battery with the phone plugged into the wall charger.

here is the reason i know this fact. I work in the IT field, and since our clients have leased lenovo's and macbooks and they are not allowed to bring them home. (our laptop leasing price is about 50% cheaper than desktop leasing price) we don't even give them batteries. Because eventually the battery will just degrade over time if it's just kept at 100% trickle charge for months and months on end. So we keep the laptops without batteries, and they just plug them right into wall (Lenovo, mac-book, dell). And of course, we're on a backup power strip so when we lose power, the laptops are still on juice for the next hour or so. I would not recommend taking the battery out of a laptop and using it plugged right into wall without an adequate power source for backup. Of course, if you're doing this for home use, and don't care about what data you might lose, or corruption, then go ahead and plug your laptop right into the wall.

I actually have a laptop that is on my desk, and instead of a desktop i use my laptop. Since day 1, i took my laptop battery out and put it in the drawer, and never used it. The laptop stays plugged in 24 hours a day. whats the use of wasting that battery (which is now 1 year old and probably dead). I put it at 40% charge, and put it in the drawer, and every 6 months i'm "supposed" to recharge it to 40% and put it back in drawer but i never do and they seem just fine after a full charge.

Also as people mentioned here, the USB powered charge is less than the wall powered charge. Unless maybe if you have a USB powered hub? Then you are using full power to the usb connections. But I feel the charger they gave us (the usb dongle) is still not as fast as my blackberry wall charger, and it's not a rapid charger.

So here is my order from fastest charge to slowest.

standard but well known wall charger (not a no-name charger from ebay).
HTC USB Dongle charger plugged into wall (maybe the cable can slow down the charge)
USB charge in a powered hub.
Usb charger plugged into computer or laptop.

 

[JuniorNA]

Laptops can run just on the charger because they're computers. They're meant to usually run on the plug and use battery when needed. Phones are meant to run on battery and charge with the plug.

I'm sorry, i respectfully disagree. I do not think laptops were meant to run on a charger and use battery when needed. I think they were meant to use battery and charge when needed. Which is why they are portable and are laptops. If they were meant to be plugged in at all times, they would not be laptops. I'm not being rude, and if it comes off as rude, don't take it that way. I just disagree with your statement

 

[RoboCuz]

Tech support said that they pulled the battery WHILE it was on and connected to a charger and worked?

or

Tech support said they pulled the battery, connected to a charger, then turned it on and it worked?

Those are two different scenarios. I haven't tried this, but it makes sense if the battery is pulled WHILE ON and connected to a charger as a safety to prevent premature shut down and loss of data. While, the software might not let you turn on the phone when no battery is present, even connected to a charger. But this is all speculation.

He (tech) told me he pulled the battery while it was on. I have tried both with my phone, and neither works. I have a co-worker with an Incredible, and he has tried unsuccessfully to turn on the phone while it was plugged in but with no battery. He doesn't want to try to pull the battery out while it is on though

I would not be surprised if there was logic to keep you from turning on the phone with no battery, so that might be universal behavior. No idea why the other would be a variable. And some end users have seen this work, so it definitely isn't a strange setting only tech support with test phones have turned on.

 

[Ordieth]

Dont know if anyone else has seen it, but when I first got the Incredible, I really pushed a lot of the features. Turned almost everything on, and I was having a blast. Then I had to charge it. I plugged it into my USB port to charge (USB 2.0) but I got a message on the screen that I needed to use the Wall Charger because I was draining battery power faster than it could charge!

Very interesting. just thought I would contribute to the conversation. (might just be my old computer causing the issue)

 

[jlb0305]

BB Storm and centro = dead w/o battery. Centro would stay on until the display slept though. Then it would turn completely off.

never tried on other phones.

 

[MikiBee]

I am using my laptop now without a battery.. just plugged in. I always use my laptops.. all 3 of them without a battery. The batteries never last very long, less than a year most of the time, so I just pull them out. I never thought about it before but I guess I would have assumed that a phone would work the same way. I'm afraid to try it though for fear that maybe the battery buffers the energy coming into the phone. I don't want to short circuit anything.

 

[Harpu1980]

Laptops can run just on the charger because they're computers. They're meant to usually run on the plug and use battery when needed. Phones are meant to run on battery and charge with the plug.

You seem to be full of misinformation..or maybe you just make things up.

Every phone I have ever had has been able to operate with the Charger plugged in and WITHOUT a battery. This is true for every laptop I have owned as well.

I just did the test and My Incredible stayed on for about 4 seconds then powered off.

That being said I have also noticed that at time the Incredible is consuming more power than the usb charger can provide. While on a trip recently I was using my GPS Nav, Trapster, pandora, etc. I had them all running and the charger was plugged in. About 6 hours into the trip my Incredible went dead and would not start. After about 15mins the Incredible booted up and displayed 8% battery life. SO YES IN FACT THE INCREDIBLE WAS DRAWING MORE POWER THAN THE CHARGER COULD PROVED. I realized that the app called trapster (a gps mapping app with police traps etc) was the sucking up most of the juice.

For MisterMixel....your logic is flawed....and any device with a battery can draw more power than the power source/charger for that device can provide.

 

[Harpu1980]

What you're describing is impossible. If the phone were pulling more power than the charger could provide, then it would mean the net power flow of the plugged in phone would be negative and thus it would never charge.

To put it another way, if the phone needed more power than the charger could give it, that would mean that while plugged in it would STILL be pulling from the battery just to keep going. Obviously this isn't the case because while plugged in there its still enough leftover power to recharge the battery.

What you are describing as the impossible is exactly what has happened to me several times...and thats Incredible! Keep in mind that this only happens when Im running multiple apps.

 

[MisterMixelpix]

You seem to be full of misinformation..or maybe you just make things up.

Every phone I have ever had has been able to operate with the Charger plugged in and WITHOUT a battery. This is true for every laptop I have owned as well.

I just did the test and My Incredible stayed on for about 4 seconds then powered off.

That being said I have also noticed that at time the Incredible is consuming more power than the usb charger can provide. While on a trip recently I was using my GPS Nav, Trapster, pandora, etc. I had them all running and the charger was plugged in. About 6 hours into the trip my Incredible went dead and would not start. After about 15mins the Incredible booted up and displayed 8% battery life. SO YES IN FACT THE INCREDIBLE WAS DRAWING MORE POWER THAN THE CHARGER COULD PROVED. I realized that the app called trapster (a gps mapping app with police traps etc) was the sucking up most of the juice.

For MisterMixel....your logic is flawed....and any device with a battery can draw more power than the power source/charger for that device can provide.

It may be POSSIBLE, but if that's just how the device is (as the OP was insinuating) then the thing would NEVER charge. Learn to read, bud. The point of the OP was that even with nothing open, the phone could not run without the battery and thus the phone WITHOUT LOTS OF APPS GOING takes in more power than the charger provides. THAT would be impossible, because the phone would not be able to charge EVER.

Get it?

Got it??

GOOD.

 

[reflekt2099]

^ lol...

 

[RoboCuz]

So Harpu1980, you were able to get it to stay on for about 4 seconds...I am assuming that you had a few things running? This is interesting...I wonder, can you turn off a few things, and get it to stay on longer? I really think that I have some sort of hardware short or drain, and that is why mine can't run, at all, no matter what. It stayed on for less than a second, with everything I could think of turned off.

I bet this would also show up as my phone taking much longer to charge as well. Hmm...I am going to have to see about watching that....if I get a chance before my replacement comes in.

It seems to be this would be a pretty easy and useful test to be able to perform at the tech counter...have an amp meter embedded in a USB cable, and watch how much power is being pulled while the phone is running without a battery (if it is indeed suppose to be able to do that).

 

[TPR300C]

@RoboCuz, I worked for VZW and I had several tech support reps on my team and I can tell you that the tech rep doesn't even have a real phone in front of him. They use emulator that give them very limited function on what the phone can do. So I have no idea why he told you he was able to turn on the phone without the battery. The way I see it either you got a regular rep even though you chose a tech rep (this happens often because a customer service rep has to go through a few steps.of troubleshooting before getting you to tech support) or the tech rep just lied to you. I tried to run my incredible without the battery and it wouldn't turn on.

P.S. This is course if you called in instead of going into a store.

 

[RoboCuz]

So first, I don't know about turning on without power...I don't know of anyone that has been able to do that, and not sure if you can. That seems like it might be a different thing, and it wouldn't surprise me if the phone simply didn't let you.

Second, not sure if this matters, but the tech that I spoke to, I got by going through the business center (it is a work phone). Not sure if there is a different group that is equipped differently or not. I was put on hold for a bit when he did this, and his description of what he did and what the phone did was very specific...he was describing how the phone did change (lightning bolt on battery went away, led stopped lighting up yellow), so either he was being very extensive and precise in his lying, or he actually did it. I am guessing he would have done it; no reason to lie, and he volunteered to try it there.

Besides, there are other people on this forum that have said they have had success running the phone without the battery.

 

[Harpu1980]

i tried again...without any apps running and it would not stay on without the battery and just plugged into the wall.

And to "get it, got it, good." guy. ::vomit in my mouth:: for the use of that original phrase. And youre still wrong...becuase the phone would charge when the screen was dimmed or sleeping..or a dozen other ways the OS might change power usage..

 

[zemerick]

I get good battery life, and the phone dies immediately when I remove the battery. It will not turn back on without the battery. Done with the wall charger.

 

[JuniorNA]

all of this , this entire thread, has nothing to do with the battery usage, and it's consumption. With all things being equal, the simplest answer is the right one, the answer is = it's a smart phone, with a LOT of power usage, no battery rated at 1300MAH is going to last a long time. The 2150 will come out and all of these posts will be history, and a waste of time. I hope the moderators come around and delete every single one of these posts/threads about the battery. Until we have nuclear cell energy (like Arnold in T1,T2,T3,T4) or fusion energy, the battery will simply not be able to handle this phone for long periods of time. Nuf Said .

 

[LoPan12]

just thought I'd chime in, plugged into wall, pulled battery, died. pulled battery, plugged into wall, wouldn't turn on.

 

[RoboCuz]

all of this , this entire thread, has nothing to do with the battery usage, and it's consumption.

I actually agree...my questions are all geared towards consumption, which I think is actually a very different question than the other threads about battery life, btw. And I get your argument, that the phone is high-powered, etc. But I don't understand, how come some people can get it to stay on (with many things turned on), and others can't (even with stuff turned off).

Given your argument about a high-powered device, I would think it would behave consistently, no one could have it stay on. Right?

I am just trying to understand the variance in behavior...that seems odd.

 

[n9tkf]

Just a thought maybe the HTC Sense UI with Android 2.1 creates an excessive hardware drain on the Android OS? My wife has the HTC Incredible and battery life seems to be an issue. We live in a deadzone and the phone is constantly switching between no signal, 1X and 3G with one bar. Low signal strength might be the issue though. I have noticed that the Android System is at about 30 to 40 % of battery usage. This would be hard to test since the HTC Sense UI can not be turned off at the moment. Just throwing this out for comments.

 

[BetterMost]

Did you ever stop to think your charger might be defective and not the handset??