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HTC Desire HD Battery life - Comprehensive guide

I have recent become the proud owner of an HTC Desire HD.

The morning came and i heard a knock at the door. The excitment builds I charge my phone and then start to play due to fears of the old batteries 'memory' issues (I still cant get out of the habbit!). But to my dissapointment my phone didn't even last a day :(

The following points helped me alot:

1. This is very strange but seemed to really help my phone. It seems to work for some but not others. My advice - give it a chance: HTC Desire HD Battery Improvement Help - HTC Forums. When you power off take the battery out

2. Uninstall all but essential apps. Yes they are fun but do you REALLY need them. I ditched about 10 or so.

3. Get rid of widgets. They look fancy but really there is no reason to have them and it appears they use alot of power (CPU, memory and battery). The only widget I use is the clock (without the weather - seriously if I want to know the weather I'll stick my head out the window!!!)

4. Lower the brightness and turn your background to a dark colour. Turn the screen timeout to 30 seconds. 15 seconds if you really feel like it.

5. Manage your connections correctly. Find a happy median between syncing all the time and not at all. Find somewhere in between that suits you. Accounts & Sync menu will manage what syncs and how often.

6. Extended Controls (Honolulu Team) is a really good app which will help you toggle your wifi, data, GPS and syncing. This helped me massively.

7. Get a task killer. The two i use are Advance Task Killer (ReChild) and Auto Killer Memory Optimizer (AndRS Studio). The former is a good quick kill app and the latter gives a more detailed look at what is running in the background. You can set Advance Task Killer to kill all tasks when the screen goes off which is a nice feature.

I am running an Exchange email account with push mail and callendar and Gmail syncing mail only. I have Wifi and GPS off. I have made two short calls and I have been using the internet and market.

I am currently at 11 hours since unplug at 100% and I am left with 55% but I am sure I could get more without a data connection running constantly.

I was running 3g watchdog (or something like that?!) and that ate my battery like nothing else.

Any further ideas please let me know.

Also any feedback would be great.

Good luck
 
Sorry, but I think they are all tips that have been discussed before.

Don't get me wrong, they all help considerably, except the Task Killer (this can be a massive drain if it keeps closing frequently used apps like Messages, only for you to reopen it 5 minutes later).

Also, turning off 3G and sticking to 2G is the biggest helper
 
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Guys,
I have been using DHD for almost 2 weeks now and I know the battery isn't great but its not awful.
I am getting a full day worth battery with syncing on, lowest brightness display, 1 widget (clock WITH weather) and listening to almost 1-2 hrs of music.
I have noticed one thing, annoyingly if I don't listen to music then I have got a battery life of ALMOST 40hours with everything else on.
But if I listen to music, I get just a day worths.
 
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Hello,

I also have a Desire HD and been busy with the battery consuming/saving thing a lot! I've tried a lot of things and already also dropped a lot of things (apps & settings). Right now I can't really say the exact amount of Juice, but let say it's about 12 hours.
The situation is also that I'm trying out a lot on my phone (I have it since december) so it's all new and a lot to discover.
But I'm searching further and further to improve the battery. My goal is 24 hours of comfortable use including some texting and calling + some social apps and internet..

Tip: a very handy & extreme customizable app is called JuiceDefender. I'm running the beta right now, check it out!

Bottom line: it will be probably a trade-off between usage/screen and battery life.
 
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Sorry, but I think they are all tips that have been discussed before.

Don't get me wrong, they all help considerably, except the Task Killer (this can be a massive drain if it keeps closing frequently used apps like Messages, only for you to reopen it 5 minutes later).

Also, turning off 3G and sticking to 2G is the biggest helper

Thank you.

The thought behind the post was, as the name suggests, to put together a comprehensive guide.

These ideas were gathered from all over the place. I haven't seen everything in one place so wanted to bring it all together.

I hope everyone benefits from this.
 
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Don't complain about the DHDs battery UNTIL you have had it running for 2 weeks, with a half dozen complete discharges. After that amount of time and discharging the battery will perform a lot better than 'the day you got it'.

Currently, my DHD running a stock rom with no silly mods lasts 3 days on general use, 18-24 hours on hard use, btw I'm ALWAYS connected to my WIFI.

Cheers,
Sombre.
 
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Don't complain about the DHDs battery UNTIL you have had it running for 2 weeks, with a half dozen complete discharges. After that amount of time and discharging the battery will perform a lot better than 'the day you got it'.

Currently, my DHD running a stock rom with no silly mods lasts 3 days on general use, 18-24 hours on hard use, btw I'm ALWAYS connected to my WIFI.

Cheers,
Sombre.

So it is best to let the battery run low (like say below 10%)?

Pep
 
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So it is best to let the battery run low (like say below 10%)?

Pep

Personally, for the first week I'd let it run flat before charging. Even then, wait a few minutes, turn the phone back on and let it run flat again. I know Li-Ion supposedly do not have a memory, but they need to 'learn' how to charge fully.

Here's a quick guide that works wonders for the folks at TechTime:

Old HTC Desire Trick for HTC DHD, To also help with Battery Life you can do these steps exactly: 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 Your battery life should almost double, we have tested this on our devices and other agents have seen a major difference as well.

For the first few days my DHD was running flat very fast. I let it run flat, turned it back on and let it run flat again before charging. I did this for the first week to 10 days. Now my DHD lasts 2-3 days on normal use and 12+ hours on heavy use (PocketLegends, browsing, constant Wi-Fi connection (I pretty much am playing with the phone all the time, I have no life).

If I can find the guide that explains how Li-Ion actually DO have a memory (or at least need to be taught how to charge fully) I'll post it (or a link) here.

Cheers,
Sombre.
 
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As I understand it, what you're describing as training the battery is actually training your phone.

There's a guide on xda that explains it better than I can, but essentially your phone isn't always accurate when the LED turns green. If you measure the voltage of the battery, it keeps on accepting charge for a while after the LED said it was done.

Once the battery stops accepting charge, you can delete the battery stats (if you're rooted) and the phone will know where 100% charge really is. After that the phone should accurately reflect the batteries charge.
 
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Hello,
What did you do yo improve your battery life?

A few things that definitely helped:
- Turn screen brightness down to 25% or less. You likely won't need any brighter.
- Turn auto-sync off on stuff that you don't need it for. Otherwise, make it so that it updates less often, or only when you open things.
- Disable "Always on mobile data". It's not necessary and will drain your battery.
-Have the screen set to turn off after every 15-30 seconds, it will keep the display usage down.

Just a few things I've done to keep my battery life high, it usually lasts about 40 hours before I NEED to charge it (10-20%).
Also, I had a Battery Scanner, under that exact name, which was killing my battery, once I removed it, it went back to having the battery time I just stated.

Hope that helps a little! :)
 
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Just to confirm my above remarks;

Followed the charging ritual, on 8hrs, off, 1 hr, 2 min off etc.

Installed Juice defender

Put the power control widget on to easily adjust screen brightness

Installed memory booster lite with task killer

Result; First day 14 hrs uptime with normal use

Overnight charge when it expired

second day, 14 hr uptime, 50% battery left when off at night (Not charged overnight)

Third day, so far total 26 hr uptime, battery still showing 50%, lighter
use today than yesterday

Not sure how much each contributed to this change round, as for first 3 months of phone I was getting maximum than 6-8 hours max uptime before battery expired.
 
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My account sync and display is eating up heaps of battery. I usually turn off the account sync when im not using it but if there something I can do to reduce the display consumption??? I tried the auto brightness but it doesnt seem to work.

All you can do is turn the brightness level down. I turn auto-brightness OFF and have a toggle on the front screen that switches from a low value to 100% (for home and outside). Ensure your proximity sensor works (so the display is OFF when the phone is against your ear). Oh, and don't have the screen on unless you have to..... The last comment may not be that useful but there is very little you can do to stop the screen hogging all that power.

Dave
 
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