A positive thread for once about battery life

[riki1kenobi]

Okay, this thread is intended for those who actually get or want a decent battery life out of their phones. Anyone wanting to spam the thread (you know who you are ) with BS or accusations can move on - Go spam elsewhere.

First off, some pics to prove that a decent battery life CAN be had from this phone. Feel free to post up your pics or usage stats.

This first pic shows the normal battery life of my phone. I manually switch things like wifi and data on and off. When I first got my phone I was getting around 1 day of use, much like a lot of people, but after doing some digging around inside the settings and finding out which apps were munching their way through the battery and either uninstalling them or changing a few settings I now get this.




The second pic is simply a comparison test I ran to see how long I could get my phone to last before it started crying for the charger The reason for the comparison test was due to seeing the GF phone (also a Desire) when she had first got it and didnt know whether it was the phone for her or not so basically never used it. Her usage stats showed 6 days This was my findings.



The following pics were taken today, my phone still has (as of time of posting) 49% battery remaining. This is with a couple of hours internet at various times (a mixture of wifi and data). Navigation earlier today for around 20 mins. Some text messages and a 10 minute call. Oh and a few games of Sudoku while waiting for some X-Rays to be done



This one shows the time the screen has been on since last charge.



I hope this helps some people to understand that you CAN get a decent battery life from these phones and it is NOT by some black magic (or PHOTOSHOP for that matter) as some might try and claim. Why? Ignorance maybe

All this is done on an UnRooted, Unbranded and Unlocked Desire running Froyo with the latest update.

One of the first things I did was to condition the battery so that it gets a full 100% charge every time it is plugged in.

To do this is pretty simple and doesnt involve any long winded plug in, unplug, plug in, unplug, switch off malarchy.

All you need to do is charge the phone to 100% (Green light) and then remove it from the charger. IF the % drops within minutes of unplugging or IF it drops without using the phone for say 10 mins or so then the phone is NOT charging to 100% capacity.

Most fast chargers only charge up to a certain level. (Somewhere around the 80% mark although it varies between devices.) The problem I think is in the battery management software which is being told the phone is fully charged when in actual fact it is only being charged to 80 or 90% capacity.

To aleviate this I suggest you charge to 100% (Green light) then IF the drop-off occurs put it back on charge and charge to 100% again. IF it happens again repeat. I only ever have to do it once and every phone I have done this with has stayed at 100% until it is actually used (within reason, but I have charged to 100% and it was still at 100% an hour or so later).

I'm not saying this will get you 2 or 3 days out of your phone because there are still many other factors to figure into the equation. Things like radio, apps, type of use, rooted ROM etc etc. But it will get you the lost battery % you probably never thought you were missing, which could be around 20%.

This problem irks me because it is a flaw with HTC software and the company should know about it because their earlier WinMo phones suffered from it also and they denied it then

Apps wise, well this is entirely down to USER preference but in my experience it is really the major battery saving area here. I strongly recommend ditching the weather app. I found this to be one of the biggest vampire apps around. Left to its own devices it literally munches its way through the battery in NO time!

To begin with I went through the phone and stopped every single (non essential) app that was running. I then went through the ones I would use and tested them. The ones that were eating up more battery than needed were removed/replaced with apps from the market or elsewhere. I literally dont have any vampire apps on my phone and I like it better that way. MY phone is setup to suit me and NOT to suit HTC, Orange or anyone else, this is KEY!

Things like Facebook and Twitter are preferential, I dont use them at all so I have them switched off. I also dont use auto sync. I use the power control app to allow me to switch things like GPS, Wifi, BT etc on and off and I use apndroid widget to control data.

I'm sorry for such a long winded post, but I felt it is about time someone offered up a balanced viewpoint on battery life and make a small start to get away from all the negative stuff that gets banded around about an actually pretty decent phone that CAN have a decent battery life!

I hope some of what I've posted here and on other threads is helpful, especially to those that suffer from the poor battery life issue.

Regards
Riki

 

[Deleted User]

Things like Facebook and Twitter are preferential, I dont use them at all so I have them switched off. I also dont use auto sync. I use the power control app to allow me to switch things like GPS, Wifi, BT etc on and off and I use apndroid widget to control data.

The problem with what you're doing is that it's no longer a "smartphone" since you're doing half the work - it's a semi-smart phone now.

I'm not that extreme with my settings. I don't turn anything on/off and let the weather widget do it's thing every hour. I also have 3G, always on data, background sync, all enabled, as well as News and Stocks updating every few hours. The only thing I manually sync is my Gmail because I don't want it beeping at 3am when I'm asleep. I don't use WiFi much, no BT either. I'm doing alright I guess.

 

[matttye]

Still nowhere near your claimed usage:

"I had to plug in yesterday and after using the phone for over 2 hours of calls (most with BT on), a fair number of texts, around 5 hours surfing (both wifi and data), and a few hours gaming (sudoku and chess mostly) the usage stats showed 3 days 17 hours since last charge."

Your 1d 7h 9m 45s usage with 54% battery remaining, with 52m (2%) WiFi usage, 5% display, 5% maps, no phone usage at all NOWHERE NEAR matches up to your wild claims above.

But thanks for posting some more realistic (and still good) stats.

 

[mcnob]

Getting nearly 2 days out of a charge at the moment but I'm avoiding 3G usage cos of the overheating issue so that might explain why. lol

 

[widehead]

First off, can I say thanks for taking the time and effort to post these pics and enter into the debate with some clear, unambiguous stats.

There seems to be some confusion over what different groups are actually comparing when we talk about usage and battery life. For most users usage means something very clear and unambiguous: it's the time spent using the phone to do stuff. Text, call, surf, play games, watch movies, listen to music, take photos or videos, navigation etc. Raw battery life (how long you can leave a phone in standby), whilst interesting, is essentially an irrelevant statistic for most day-to-day use. Note: I'm not saying it's a totally worthless statistic but that it is not particularly helpful in this debate about how many hours usage does one get out of a full charge.

It appears that your usage (display on) is leaving you with around 40% charge after 2 and a half hours. This has occurred over 1 day and 7 hours. Am I reading that correctly? If so this totally tallies with what I (and many other users) have been saying all along. And that is this: 4-5 hours of use is going to drain your battery to a point where it will asked to be connected to a charger.

Currently I am at 1 day and 3 hours since last unplugged at 75% charge with a "display on" time of 30 mins. This is with no 3G, no wifi, no calls, no apps. Just texting.
We can read this two ways:
1) Awesome! 75% of charge left after 27 hours! Woo hoo!
or
2) Oh man! 30 mins of basic, non-smartphone use (along with 27 hours of being in standby/idle) drained my battery by 25%! Yikes!

Let's go with number 1 shall we? That way this can remain a positive thread about battery life.

UPDATE: just about to head home from work. Currently at 70%. 32 hours since unplugged. 40 mins display on. Nothing but texts. No wifi, 3G or anything else.

 

[alackman]

I, like probably most other new desire owners have looked into improving battery life. I found this forum because of it!

As has been written before, we can all discuss the ambiguous nature of language and meanings of words like "usage" and "helpfull" can be easily become varying to each one of us.

I for one have enjoyed the supportive nature of many of the posts read on here and feel I now use my phone for the better.

I understand that people who are getting amazing (comparitive) life out of their batteries posting on here in the hope to help other people improve their own battery situations.

I also understand why people are sceptical when a post suggests a massive variance between what battery life they manage companred to a lot of other peoples "usage" time. It doesnt seem like cricket!

Lets face it, people make their minds up pretty quickly about their opinons regarding definition of "usage" and this I guess leads to the implied "unfriendlyness" in past threads,

I sincerely hope this particular thread remains in the vein it was started (the title) as a positive discussion about battery life and genuine support for new and old desires owners wanting to improve their own "usage" experience, whatever that may be of their phones. can we keep it "smart"

 

[Griff_LI]

widehead has it into his/her head that 4-5 hours of constantly running a 1GHz processor shouldn't somehow take all the power out of a 1400mAH battery. It will. What riki ensures is that he/she gets the best use out of those 4-5 hours. As I've pointed-out many times before you wouldn't expect more than 4-5 hours out of many lap-tops and yet people get upset when their much-smaller phone can't out-perform one. Madness!

Over the last couple of days I've managed to nearly stop overnight charging on my phone. This is because I already charge it in the car during my 1hr+ (total time) commute every weekday. This gets me up to between 85% and full each journey (depending on traffic an prior phone-use). I do still have to overnight charge at weekends.

The two changes I've made to achieve this are.

i) Updated to Froyo - I'm not sure whether this made a difference, it didn't seem to initially but it does seem a lot less hungry now.
ii) I make sure I exit the browser. I use the stock browser - I keep meaning to try Dolphin but I never get round to it and I like the stock. To exit I go into Menu -> Windows, open a new window, close all the others, select the new one and hit Back. I found that I was leaving web-pages open that had adverts on them. The ads update and so my phone was sitting there sucking data and, more importantly, battery for absolutely no gain. (If you're reading this Google a menu-option to simply exit and clear the windows would be FABULOUS).

I leave Wifi and GPS on constantly. I use auto brightness. Email updates every 15 mins during peak (every hour off-peak). Facebook & Weather are updating. News is set to manual-update. I switch Bluetooth on in the car and hook-up a headset. At work I have no phone signal inside our Faraday-cage building so it's constantly hunting for signal, I do have Wifi, though.

To start with I was fairly happy having to charge overnight (as many have said before, it's not that much of a hardship) but now I've got a system that seems effortless (the car charger is on a Brodit holder which I want so I can use Maps, RAC traffic or other transport helpers so I'd be plugging-in anyway). I couldn't be happier with the battery-life.

 

[widehead]

widehead has it into his/her head that 4-5 hours of constantly running a 1GHz processor shouldn't somehow take all the power out of a 1400mAH battery. It will.

Whilst it is true that I expressed disappointment with the battery life (having come from a Nokia N86 8MP that lasted through days of heavy use, I have always said I get 4-5 hours (or less) out of my Desire. I was led to believe I could get more and therefore a) I spent time and effort trying to achieve this and b) worried whether I had a faulty battery.

Turns out my usage is in line with everyone else. Battery life is poor if you use the Desire as a smartphone (all the bells and whistles running) but reasonable if you disable the smart stuff and use it for basic stuff every now and again.

 

[widehead]

To start with I was fairly happy having to charge overnight (as many have said before, it's not that much of a hardship) but now I've got a system that seems effortless (the car charger is on a Brodit holder which I want so I can use Maps, RAC traffic or other transport helpers so I'd be plugging-in anyway). I couldn't be happier with the battery-life.

I'd just like to point out that in reality it's your car charger that seems to be providing the happiness.

 

[Griff_LI]

Turns out my usage is in line with everyone else. Battery life is poor if you use the Desire as a smartphone (all the bells and whistles running) but reasonable if you disable the smart stuff and use it for basic stuff every now and again.

I give up, you're quite clearly not going to get this. Running the processor costs battery - this isn't unique for the Desire. You may disagree with the design-choice HTC made to put a 1400mAH battery in. They could've gone for a bigger battery but they'd have sacrificed the slim design to do it. You can also make this sacrifice for yourself (by buying a bigger battery and rear enclosure). The consumption of the power, though, will still be governed by the laws of physics - do not expect magic.

I use my Desire as a smartphone. Along with the above I play games and browse the web regularly BUT if I do so for hours-on-end I kinda expect to have to recharge the battery. I don't, though, use it like a desktop computer or a dedicated games console because it's tiny and runs from an (even tinier) battery.

 

[tomvdp]

Raw battery life (how long you can leave a phone in standby), whilst interesting, is essentially an irrelevant statistic for most day-to-day use.

Irrelevant ?
Your definition of "raw battery life" is essentially how people use their phone. The time I am not using it for surfing, playing games, etcetera, I am still able to receive calls and sms, it checks e-mail in the background, ... It is providing me a primary service (being a phone!). And that uses battery too.

 

[riki1kenobi]

Something just occured to me reading this.....Are the people who have been calling me a liar and bullsh*ter (to name a few of the choice phrases ) seriously suggesting that I said that you could get 3 days of "continuous" use out of their phones? Please point me to the post that I actually said that

I made it perfectly clear from the very first post where someone asked me to explain my "over-exagerated/wildy disingenuous claims" of 3 days battery life that I manually switch things on and off.

This to me doesnt make the phone any less smart! But we can agree to disagree on the definition of a "smart" phone. To label it a dumb phone though is, well, (and this is NOT aimed at anyone in particular) a bit dumb really By comparison I can say I never leave the house with the lights left on, or leave the car engine running when I'm not in it. To me that is dumb as it is NOT energy efficient or smart Draw your own conclusions!

Anyhoo, I thought it was perfectly obvious what I meant.....That over a period of 3 days I can get/have got on a few occasions around 4 or 5 hours of internet, a few hours of calls and a good number of texts as well as allowing me to play a few games BEFORE it requires charging......NOTE, I have never said ALWAYS get it. This is spread out over the 3 days, like a half hour here, a few txts there at various times of the day etc. Sorry IF some folks didnt quite understand that, but all you ahd to do was ask me to clarify it

IF I used the phone continuously, as I have already stated in previous posts/threads, it would require charging in/around the day.

The only reason I posted in any of the battery threads, (although in hindsight I should have just started this thread from the gitgo ) was to help those people who are NOT hammering their phone for 5 or 6 hours at a time (Which in my opinion is the majority) get a BETTER battery life!

WHY? Because, IMHO, they seemed to be getting a poor return from the stock setup and by implementing a few changes to set their phones up to suit THEM they should see an improvement.

Ah well, hope this clears things up a bit. Dont worry I aint expecting any apologies, though I am SORRY IF I offended anyone with my tort responses to the bile I was receiving

Tooroo

 

[SUroot]

Something just occured to me reading this.....Are the people who have been calling me a liar and bullsh*ter (to name a few of the choice phrases ) seriously suggesting that I said that you could get 3 days of "continuous" use out of their phones? Please point me to the post that I actually said that

I didn't call you a liar, just so you know.

I was calling anyone who said 3 days continuous use was a liar.

I never said that you had said that, but you quoted me and pulled me out for doing so, when you did actually miss the whole "continuous use" part.

I think it is time that we all leave this obvious misunderstanding behind us.

 

[riki1kenobi]

I already apologised for that misunderstanding mate Just so you know though I wasnt actually referring to you......But thanks anyway, I'm more than happy to let it slide

 

[speedycolzalez]

I did a hard reset of my phone last night. I reinstalled and reconfigured all the apps I had before the reset.

Prior to last night the phone would consume circa 2% battery per hour sitting idly on the sofa.

Today its consumed 2% in 4 hours. That's 0.5% per hour.

So, is my phone consuming a 1/4 of the battery it did before the hard reset or is the battery information simply not that accurate?

 

[riki1kenobi]

Depends on what you did to the apps? Did you change them from always on/syncing all the time etc or was it simply a hard reset?

I reconfigured all my apps also and set them up how I wanted them to behave. You can see the results in what my battery life is like

 

[speedycolzalez]

If anything the apps are syncing more frequently since the reset as I haven't backed them off at all.

 

[andyknights]

One of the first things I did was to condition the battery so that it gets a full 100% charge every time it is plugged in.

To do this is pretty simple and doesnt involve any long winded plug in, unplug, plug in, unplug, switch off malarchy.

All you need to do is charge the phone to 100% (Green light) and then remove it from the charger. IF the % drops within minutes of unplugging or IF it drops without using the phone for say 10 mins or so then the phone is NOT charging to 100% capacity.

Most fast chargers only charge up to a certain level. (Somewhere around the 80% mark although it varies between devices.) The problem I think is in the battery management software which is being told the phone is fully charged when in actual fact it is only being charged to 80 or 90% capacity.

To aleviate this I suggest you charge to 100% (Green light) then IF the drop-off occurs put it back on charge and charge to 100% again. IF it happens again repeat. I only ever have to do it once and every phone I have done this with has stayed at 100% until it is actually used (within reason, but I have charged to 100% and it was still at 100% an hour or so later).

Hi - quick question on this - that no-one else seems to have asked so I must be a little slow - but are you saying you do this everytime you charge? i.e take it off charge, check it after a few minutes, and if it's dropped, charge it briefly again... everytime you charge? Or once you've done this ONCE, it will then fill the battery up full after each charge without replugging in?

Apols if this is a stoopid qn. Thanks muchly.

 

[widehead]

I'm now at 53%, 2 days 2 hrs and 32 mins since last charge. Display on for 1hr 5 mins.

Nothing but texts sent in this time. No wifi, 3G, etc etc etc.

Before last charge I unchecked the "always on mobile data" box in wireless/networks. Can't remember who gave this advice. Seems to have cut my standby battery drain significantly.

 

[Wardogz]

I'll post some screen shots later, but generally I get 30 hours battery life with decent usage. I think the Desire has good battery life when configured properly.

The biggest problem is leaving the phone switching between GSM/3g all day, this uses tons of battery life, it's best to leave the phone on GSM only when in a poor 3g area. I leave it on GSM only unless I need 3g.

I use always on mobile data, background data and auto sync for Facebook, Gmail and twitter. Facebook and Twitter sync every 4 hours.

I find using Gmail with push email a big save, before I used Hotmail (not push)with the HTC mail app and it used more battery life because it kept needing to connect and disconnect to receive mail.

I used to be a Task Killer fan, although I never used auto kill, I used to use the force close widget, however since unistalling task killer my battery life has improved, sometimes I get 40-50 hours with the set up I have detailed above.

Obvious ways to save battery: don't leave GPS on all day, be careful which apps you download and make sure they are not constantly using data in the background, weather apps can be particularly bad for this.

30 hours is easy for me.

 

[andyknights]

I did the battery calibration described on xda developers site and I've started just turning on data when I need/want to (shoved on a data on/off widget) and after 6hrs and 15mins, I'm only at 88%, This is easily the best I've EVER seen from my Desire, without question. Used to struggle to get a whole day out of it.

In truth, I've not "used" it as much as normal today for various reasons, but I have done some web-browing, dowloading emails, looking at news, etc but it's still the best I've seen by a long chalk. Will start to turn on some auto-sync options - but thanks very much to a lot of people on this thread (and the other threads) that have helped me get some ideas to try out some different options in order to try to maximise the battery life.

I know that there's been a bit of an issue with a few users on here, but I can see from an impartial point of view that we're all after the same thing - so it's good that we can collaborate and help each other to achieve it. I don't NEED extra battery life because I also am never too far from a charger - but knowing that I can achieve it, and knowing how to achieve it, is also hugely useful so that I can get more out of this excellent phone where/when necessary.

Thanks again.

 

[amg_1969]

Hardly used my Desire last few days, about 30 mins of calls couple of dozen texts etc, been using my Wildfire instead

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Not like this when I hammer it

Andrew

 

[Wardogz]

Hardly used my Desire last few days, about 30 mins of calls couple of dozen texts etc, been using my Wildfire instead

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Not like this when I hammer it

Andrew

What settings did you use to achieve this?

 

[chopsy]

My battery life seems to have greatly improved recently. This is probably because of different usage but I wondered whether it was to do with the type of battery charger?

During the first few weeks, due to the constant threads about battery life, I was very worried about the phone going dead so it was constantly topped up by a car, usb or mains charger.

Since I realised that its quite feasible to get a days use out of my phone I exclusively use the mains charger, the battery life seems to have improved.

I may be talking complete rubbish but with all this talk of conditioning your battery, could it be that the battery or more likely battery management system has to get used to the 'slightly' different voltages of the different chargers?

 

[widehead]

What settings did you use to achieve this?

Using the phone for 30 mins seems likely.

Disable 3G.

Disable "Always on Mobile Data".

Disable synching.

Use a different phone (Wildfire, was it?) for "a few days".

Your battery life will improve significantly.