9hr Battery on SMS and gTalk??

[Rainbow Snake]

At the end of every day, I'm running home to plug my HTC Desire to charge before it goes flat. Whenever I'm going to spend the night somewhere I always need to take my charger even if the phone is fully charged.

This is exasperating, and I find it hard to consider relying on the phone when it's like this. I've had the phone for a few weeks now, so if things were going to settle down, I'd have expected it already.

Pretty much all I use the phone for is SMS and Google Talk. Is Talk known to be a big battery drainer? Since I like the idea of it being a smartphone, I do have Weather, Facebook, Flickr, set on a 2-3 hour refresh. I have News set to Manual.

GPS is off. Since I'm at a computer all day, I use that for surfing the web, not the phone. I'd like to use more apps on the phone, but I don't dare waste the battery since when it goes flat no one can contact me.

I don't use an AppKiller. Actually I have "Advanced App Killer" but it seems kinda pointless when it just lists every app installed even if I never use them.

Any suggestions for things I should try?

 

[packabacca]

Turn off WiFi that helped me a lot, also don"t use live wallpaper

 

[matttye]

What kind of background colour does GTalk have? If it's white or near white - white backgrounds are really heavy battery drainers on devices with OLED screens.

If possible, change the background colour to black - or dark - and you should see a noticeable improvement with battery life.

I take my phone off charge at 7am. Have facebook/twitter set to update every hour. I get a few emails throughout the day. Weather updates every 3 hours. Lots of texting. WiFi off/bluetooth off/GPS off/network on. Black background. When I get home at 5:30pm (ish) I have 5-6 bars left.

 

[Rainbow Snake]

Turn off WiFi that helped me a lot, also don"t use live wallpaper

Oh forgot to say, I don't use live wallpaper (just the standard rainbow one).

I have WiFi's automatically on when I'm at home or work, and otherwise 3G. I figure that should be kinda standard for a smartphone ;-)

 

[Rainbow Snake]

What kind of background colour does GTalk have? If it's white or near white - white backgrounds are really heavy battery drainers on devices with OLED screens.

If possible, change the background colour to black - or dark - and you should see a noticeable improvement with battery life.

Hmmm was about to say that it was black, but indeed the main background of the actual chat sessions is white ... and is apparently unchangeable.

I'd been wondering if Google Chat was a killer because it kept polling/updating messages and statuses, but this sounds a more direct explanation. Drat.

I've been running Google Chat since I got the phone, I've kept Chat off today and my battery is very much better.

Hmm perhaps there's another Google Chat app...

 

[Rainbow Snake]

What kind of background colour does GTalk have? If it's white or near white - white backgrounds are really heavy battery drainers on devices with OLED screens.

Looking around it seems that most apps/web pages have white backgrounds. Even the Market has an unchangeable white background!

 

[matttye]

Looking around it seems that most apps/web pages have white backgrounds. Even the Market has an unchangeable white background!

Yeah, I'm hoping future Android updates will come with options to make the interface more OLED-friendly.

A black background on an OLED uses roughly 40% of the power of an LED screen, but a white one uses roughly 300%

 

[lookseehear]

Hmmm was about to say that it was black, but indeed the main background of the actual chat sessions is white ... and is apparently unchangeable.

I'd been wondering if Google Chat was a killer because it kept polling/updating messages and statuses, but this sounds a more direct explanation. Drat.

I've been running Google Chat since I got the phone, I've kept Chat off today and my battery is very much better.

Hmm perhaps there's another Google Chat app...

I have also had google chat running pretty much constantly since I got my phone and I have no issues with battery life.

You could try a different client but I'm not sure it would make much difference as Gchat seems pretty lightweight.

Are you in an area of good signal? If it's constantly trying to get a signal or even switching between 3g and gprs that can drain battery.

 

[Rainbow Snake]

I have also had google chat running pretty much constantly since I got my phone and I have no issues with battery life.

Hmmm that's good to know ... though do you mean you have it running in the background or are you texting heaps? (no I'm not a teenager!)
My original theory about gTalk being a drain by being always online is pretty much undermined by sometimes having it running overnight with little charge used. Perhaps it really is the white background.

Are you in an area of good signal? If it's constantly trying to get a signal or even switching between 3g and gprs that can drain battery.

Most of my day I'm either in my work or home wifi. When out and about it seems to be pretty well connected. I am in inner city.

I really hope it doesn't turn out to be dependent on what apps I run. Even sudoku apps are mainly white.

 

[lookseehear]

Mainly just running in the background with the odd conversation, I don't tend to use it loads so I couldn't tell you whether it's a battery hog when it's open.

I wouldn't worry too much about the white screen, it's inevitable that most screens will be white (web pages, IM windows etc). It might just be that your battery is taking slightly longer to settle than some others.

 

[grainysand]

WiFi drains battery less than 3G.

How's your brightness setting? I'd recommend SetCPU, but if you're not rooted...

 

[matttye]

Mainly just running in the background with the odd conversation, I don't tend to use it loads so I couldn't tell you whether it's a battery hog when it's open.

I wouldn't worry too much about the white screen, it's inevitable that most screens will be white (web pages, IM windows etc). It might just be that your battery is taking slightly longer to settle than some others.

The white background issue is very much something to worry about.

Let me give you an example:

My battery stats report that my display has used 8% of the battery. During the 5 hours and 38 minutes since my phone came off charge, it has been awake for an hour and 21 minutes. And that's just with me using black backgrounds, which use about 6 times less power than white screens.

Now, if I was constantly chatting and my awake time was similar to my uptime (say, 5 hours and 24 minutes, which is 4 times the 1 hour and 21 minutes mine has been awake for), the screen would be using 32% of the battery. Or if I was using a white background, a lot more than that.

This is the reason some apps in the marketplace come with "OLED friendly" or words to that effect. A train times app I have lists "Simple Black Design to save battery" as one of its features.

 

[lookseehear]

I'm not denying that a white background uses a lot more battery than a black one, more just saying I wouldn't let that change what sites or apps I use, although if there are AMOLED friendly versions then I'd probably take a look

 

[yurikg]

Having experienced a similarly poor battery life as some, I was very pleased today when someone on the XDA forums discovered that having a Flickr account syncing causes the phone to stay awake and drain the battery, even when the screen is off.

To fix it, you have to go to Settings, Accout & sync, Flickr, Remove account. Then turn phone off and on and it should be fixed.

See below for more:
Partially solved: Potential cause for excessive battery usage - xda-developers

 

[Rainbow Snake]

This is the reason some apps in the marketplace come with "OLED friendly" or words to that effect. A train times app I have lists "Simple Black Design to save battery" as one of its features.

Seems a shame I have to resort to special programmes and hacks to get my HTC Desire to function properly. Disappointed.

Even the HTC SMS app "Messages" has a white background on all of its screens!!! So both of these standard apps are *intended* to be avoided on the HTC Desire? (by the device makers?)

having a Flickr account syncing causes the phone to stay awake and drain the battery, even when the screen is off.

That's odd. I have Flickr account syncing on, and don't get significant battery drain from that. Then again ... perhaps if my friends constantly updated their photographs ... I guess if Flickr sync doesn't have anything to do it won't drain much ...

 

[matttye]

Seems a shame I have to resort to special programmes and hacks to get my HTC Desire to function properly. Disappointed.

Even the HTC SMS app "Messages" has a white background on all of its screens!!! So both of these standard apps are *intended* to be avoided on the HTC Desire? (by the device makers?)

I think GTalk is an Android app, not HTC!

And the SMS app is fine because it's not intended to stay on your screen for hours. Receive a text, open the app, reply, close. Takes a few minutes at most.

OLED uses a lot less power than LED for darker colours, but more for bright/white.. so it kinda balances out. I get adequate battery life with the black/blue wallpaper included on the Desire and I use the SMS app a lot.

 

[pil0t]

Can you write down your Wake times and Up times?

My battery after 10days (about 9x of charging) is:

UP time: 27h
Wake time: 4h


I consider that very bad.
Backlight is set to automatic and 30seconds turn of display, Wifi OFF, GPS OFF, Mail pickup (manual), weather update on 3h and using GSM signal (not 3G).

 

[Rainbow Snake]

Well, I've had a play with my brightness, which didn't seem too bright but turned out to be (by default) set to max, and I found I could reduce it to almost nothing with still decent legibility in all but most bright sunlight.

I've no idea what "auto" does - can't seem to find info on that, and even if I did, I'm not sure I'd trust it to work.

But anyway this has boosted my battery life sufficiently so I don't need to keep worrying about it expiring. (Still needs to go on charger every day though)

@pil0t, I've no idea what "up times" and "wake times" are, but mine are

Up time: 155
Wake time: 66

 

[Ghâshûl]

Uptime = time since you turned on your phone
Wake time = how much of that time has it been 'active'