Help Terrible Battery Life on Desire

[bullerd]

ok, I know there are loads of threads about poor battery life on the Desire with most suggestions to kill apps turn off wifi, data etc.

However, my point is this. I have push email connected all day, stock, weather and facebook widgets connected, an hour of calls and probably about 20 apps running in the background. Like this, if I use the phone as little as possible I get about a 20 hours out of the phone - I'm happy with this, its fine, I don't need to kill all that stuff.

This is the problem. When I actually use the phone, ie screen on and interacting with it - when browsing the net, looking at emails & replying, whatever, the battery drains at the rate of about 1% per minute.

In less than 2 hours of use the battery is finished!

I wondered what was going on for the first few days. One day I had 2 hours of calls, push email on loads of emails and it lasted all day.
Then other days with less calls my battery would be dead by 2 or 3pm.
Then I slowly started to realise that doing anything on the phone - using it / the screen on, would suck the battery dry.

There is no way the battery should drain that quickly. I'd say 8-10 hours of max load should be expected?

I went back to my HTC HD2 and in contrast, I set it up - 2 hours solid playing around, wifi on, downloaded 1000 emails and attachments, installed all the apps etc - it lost 20% in 2 hours doing all that. Something is wrong with the (or my) Desire?!

Another thing too, what is going on with the battery drain whilst on charge. It goes to 100% then drops down to 90% (whilst still plugged in) then starts charging again. Ok if you're lucky to unplug it at 100% but often I've grabbed it as I go to work and its at 90% despite being on charge all night. Surely that's a fault? Some people have said its supposed to be like that to protect the battery - that's rubbish - no other phone does it and how crap is it that your phone is only 90% charged after 9 hours!

Btw, I have 3 different batteries and 2 chargers so it has to be the phone or the OS

Thanks guys!

 

[Griff_LI]

Yes, there are a lot of threads about this. Almost all of them say pretty-much exactly the same thing as you do. Almost all of them have perfectly good solutions to the individual issues you have. Do some searching.

 

[bullerd]

uh, well no they dont. Most say that they get crap battery life generally, often significant drain in standby, and most responses are kill the apps, kill the wifi, kill the data connection etc when not in use.

If you read my post, I am saying that with all that stuff running and 2 hours of calls I get 20 hours which I am very happy with. I don't want or need to kill all that stuff - the battery, if the device is not used, lasts fine with it all running.

Specifically, my point is that when the phone is used ie when interacting with it (its not about battery drain in standby), anything using the screen, keyboard etc, it sucks the battery at about 1% per minute.

A load of people who are saying "help, my battery drains in 8/9/10 hours" and everyone replies "something maybe draining your battery in the background" kill the apps data etc. Maybe just maybe, that the standby background drain isn't the main cause, maybe the battery runs down at an ok rate on standby but then when they use it for 20 minutes is sucks 20% out of the battery which is a much bigger problem.

What would be useful is to know what battery drain others are getting when the phone is under heavy use. Not the full life over the day as this may be distorted by your calls and other apps you have running. Just over the period of heavy use eg "when I browse the web for an hour it drains 15%" or "it goes from 80% to 60% when replying to emails, texting, surfing for 30 mins"

 

[Griff_LI]

Try the "Let's Be Honest About The Battery Life" thread on the main board. When you're running the Desire at 100% you'll get somewhere between 4 and 8 hours of battery-life and to expect anything else is naive. Iphone's don't do it, my old Nokia wouldn't do it (although it did so little that making it work at 100% was actually quite difficult). The issue is only more obvious on the Desire because it does so much. Proper multi-tasking means that without trying very hard you can load the processor (and peripherals) to the max and that WILL drain the battery in pretty short-order.

Most people notice their phone "gets better" after a few weeks, this is for a lot of reasons. Firstly it's not so novel so they simply don't play with it as much. Partly it's because the battery has "bedded-in" and the charging software has calibrated itself with the battery. Mostly it's because they've stopped downloading shed-loads of apps and leaving them running in the background.

My big tip for saving battery when you're not using it is to make sure you back-out of the stock browser as it will keep updating the web-pages you leave open in the background. There are many, many other tips around.

The fundamentals of the physics of this device, though, is that 1400mAH does not last very long at 1GHZ. The great thing is you don't need to push the processor to make the phone do a massive amount of work.

I won't post my usage and battery-life stats (I'm not starting that whole flame-war again) but it's perfectly possible to use the Desire properly (games, web-browsing, music-playing etc. along with using it as an actual phone) and get decent battery-life. I've said before I'm no longer over-night charging mine as I find the hour-or-so I spend commuting to work covers all my usage with my in-car charger.

Learn how to use Spare Parts and System Panel to control your device and then all the battery-use will be down to things you WANT and not stuff you didn't ask for.

 

[bullerd]

So yes, 4-8 hrs at 100% is what I'd expect. So is 1% per minute - less than 2 hours for total drain normal?

I'd come from an HD2 with bigger screen, same speed processor and smaller battery and would get about 8-10 hours of constant use.

I've had Smartphones for years so I'm not expecting miracles but this is the worst battery life I've seen on any one of them.

What I really want to know from people that are interested in helping is whether my phone looks like it has an issue or if I should expect 1% per minute drain on a Desire.

 

[Griff_LI]

I told you what "normal" was.

Now, back to my original answer. If you look at ANY of the "My battery life is terrible" threads you'll get the same advice.

1) Remove any task-killer you have
2) Settings->About Phone->Battery History (what are the big-hitters)
3) Spare Parts or *#*#4636#*#* on the Phone dialler - what's your Partial Wake Usage

 

[master_yoda]

So yes, 4-8 hrs at 100% is what I'd expect. So is 1% per minute - less than 2 hours for total drain normal?

I'd come from an HD2 with bigger screen, same speed processor and smaller battery and would get about 8-10 hours of constant use.

I've had Smartphones for years so I'm not expecting miracles but this is the worst battery life I've seen on any one of them.

What I really want to know from people that are interested in helping is whether my phone looks like it has an issue or if I should expect 1% per minute drain on a Desire.

No 1% drain per minute isnt what you should expect at all.

I get around 3 minutes per 1% drain when browsing the internet, thats about 5 hrs non stop browsing.

 

[bullerd]

someone that reads and understands what I've written please!!!

 

[Griff_LI]

You've asked "Is 1% per minute normal" two people have said "no" (and one of us has tried to give you some ideas as to how to get better performance). What more do you want ? Would you prefer we just said "yes, live with it" ?

 

[master_yoda]

someone that reads and understands what I've written please!!!

I answered part of your question. I Have no idea why your batterys crap compared to mine though!

I Guess we would need to compare things like which versions of android we are both running, screen brightness settings and all the apps we have installed and running in the background to determin why mine lasts nearly 3 times longer than yours.

 

[bullerd]

Thanks, Master Yoda most appreciated. My previous message must have crossed with your first one. It wasn't directed at your response - which was exactly what I wanted. cheers