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VERY BAD battery life - HTC Desire 'not fit for purpose'

Is battery life with the HTC Desire Acceptable?


  • Total voters
    475
  • Poll closed .

chrisjb

Newbie
Apr 26, 2010
19
0
I don't about everybody else, but the battery life of the HTC desire is really not acceptable. I upgraded from an HTC Touch HD and this was'nt so good for battery life - but at least I could get a day out of it. With the Desire Im lucky if I get 6 hours!! And Im using it I belive in quite a reasonable way - i.e. normal phone call usage, using the 3G/3G+ for browsing on the internet, occasional usage with GPS and google maps, looking at files and documents on the SD card.

I'm having to take my charger if I'm going out.

Is this acceptable for a mobile phone, I don't think so.

HTC need to sort this out. Im on the UK orange network and I'm going to asking if there is some kind of firmware update that is going to resolve the problem - if not, I'm returning the phone.

Sure, its an extremely powerful device, but completely useless if it can't last a day.

In my opinion HTC brought this out to early to compete with the iphone.
 
I had the same problem... I was pretty pissed off at the start, but people in this forum have been talking a good bit about the first few charges conditioning the battery.
I downloaded a few apps to monitor usage and kill unwanted programs running in the background.
I have had mine exactly a week yesterday, but have started noticing an improvement in the battery life...
I was tempted to return my desire and go for the e72, but I do really like this phone, and may invest in a second battery in the future, but for now, its lasting longer each day...
You have 14 days to return the phone, so I'd give it 10, and of its still the same, then take it back
 
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I have an orange phone and noticed the battery life sucked the first few days and it has since got better. Now this might be due to the above conditioning effect or that I fiddle less with the phone as time goes on (unlikely) or that i have got rid of all the Orange toot by flashing with a generic ROM. I, like others have a task killer installed and have shut down all unneccessary synching but I do have push e-mail and google mail synching whenever it likes and I can easily get 24hours with a fair amount of internet usage.
 
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You know, ever since I got this phone I've been hearing that you need to condition your battery... but having done a bit of reading I'm yet to see a single expert say that you need to 'condition' li-ion batteries.

In fact most say that you don't!

I think this belief is just a relic of the days when batteries actually did need to be conditioned, and it's perpetuated by the fact that battery life appears to improve after a week or so... but I reckon this is just due to the novelty wearing off and the phone being used slightly less.

I'm 100% certain that if I were to really hammer my battery today, I'd get as little usage time out of it as I did on the day I bought it.


Apparently discharging the battery fully and then charging it fully can help if your battery's circuit is misreporting the charge, but other than that I'm calling shenanigans on this whole conditioning myth.


edit: Also, check out this thread and see if you're having the same issue as these guys

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=666404
 
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You know, ever since I got this phone I've been hearing that you need to condition your battery... but having done a bit of reading I'm yet to see a single expert say that you need to 'condition' li-ion batteries.

In fact most say that you don't!

I think this belief is just a relic of the days when batteries actually did need to be conditioned, and it's perpetuated by the fact that battery life appears to improve after a week or so... but I reckon this is just due to the novelty wearing off and the phone being used slightly less.

I'm 100% certain that if I were to really hammer my battery today, I'd get as little usage time out of it as I did on the day I bought it.


Apparently discharging the battery fully and then charging it fully can help if your battery's circuit is misreporting the charge, but other than that I'm calling shenanigans on this whole conditioning myth.


edit: Also, check out this thread and see if you're having the same issue as these guys

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

Got to disagree with you. I defiantly hammered my Desire the same every day through the first week and there defiantly was a improvement in the battery over time.
 
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I've got nearly 27 hours out of it with 20% battery still remaining a couple of times, that's with Bluetooth and Wi-Fi always on, syncing with Weather, Facebook and Email, a few hours of music via Bluetooth, internet usage, Youtube app, a few games played such, a couple of hours of internet radio, live Aquarium wallpaper, several mesages and a phone call.

I'm personally delighted with the battery life of the Desire, I've been wanting to test how long it would last with just moderate use like just for messaging, calls and maybe music but even after nearly six weeks of use I still can't put the phone down but I'm sure I could easily reach 35hrs+ with it.
 
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My battery life seems to have got better too.
I once charged it fully from empty, and after sleeping overnight it was in the red! Hasn't happened since, even with WiFi on over night.

I charge mine every night, even if its not fully empty, but just on the orange bar. I don't know if charging it before it is empty is bad or not? But if I don't then I'll have a dead phone after a few uses in the morning!

It's not brilliant battery life, but neither was my old phone so I can cope just fine charging it every night!
 
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I'm happily getting a day and a half out of the battery with wifi and bluetooth on plus taking a fair few calls, text, lots of emails and I've had mine for a week now.

I've come to expect smartphones to have an average battery life of about a day after owning quite a few of Nokias. We need more advances in battery tech to be able to have phones that can last for a good 2 days with average use.
 
Upvote 0
For the first time today, I have had my Desire running for more than one and a half days (about 38 hours so far) and still have about 25% of the battery remaining.

This is after putting sensible notification and updating settings for my apps and widgets, it took me some time but the effect on battery life seems to be worth the effort.

Can you tell me what kind of update on your widgets that you mean? Can you share you setup?
 
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Yep have to agree with some of the others. Somehow my battery did improve. After two weeks though. Not just the first few charges. When I first got it, it was appalling. Two charges, sometimes three charges a day. Now somehow I get a full days use out of it. And i use it just as much as I did on the day i got it. This aint a myth i can assure you. Im constantly on my phone STILL. Ive never encountered an improving battery before EVER, im not saying its great, or even good, but its defiantly just acceptable enough. A full days heavy use is the min, id have to have. After I noticed the improvement, I then started looking at ways to improve performance further.and am still looking. But i think the set up i have is about as good whilst being as convieniant as realistic as most users should expect from a limited battery.
 
Upvote 0
You know, ever since I got this phone I've been hearing that you need to condition your battery... but having done a bit of reading I'm yet to see a single expert say that you need to 'condition' li-ion batteries.

In fact most say that you don't!

I think this belief is just a relic of the days when batteries actually did need to be conditioned, and it's perpetuated by the fact that battery life appears to improve after a week or so... but I reckon this is just due to the novelty wearing off and the phone being used slightly less.

I'm 100% certain that if I were to really hammer my battery today, I'd get as little usage time out of it as I did on the day I bought it.


Apparently discharging the battery fully and then charging it fully can help if your battery's circuit is misreporting the charge, but other than that I'm calling shenanigans on this whole conditioning myth.


edit: Also, check out this thread and see if you're having the same issue as these guys

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


Whilst not strictly a direct comparison, when working offshore we use lithium batteries, which definately have to be conditioned before use... in fact there is a conditioning tool we have to connect to each pack before we can even use it in anger....
 
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And to support the thread... I was charging twice a day initially. Yes, some of this could be down to playing with it all day. But after a week when I had stopped playing I was up to a days use without recharging... now I am getting two days. Yesterday I installed the ultimate battery manager (or whatever it's called) and that seems to have eeked it out a bit more...

I now have the widget on the home page that controls the brightness, wifi, gps, sync etc... it reminds me to turn the screen down to the minimum, then turn it up if I need it.
 
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After a couple of weeks, I get 12 hours idle from 50% of the battery. That leaves 50% of actual use (i.e. when it's not on my desk at work). Last week, I was having it run down completely during the day. I put the fix down to adjusting the sync times for apps, and unloading a few apps that were draining power unnecessarily (like having 3 sms apps loaded).

I am using SystemPanel to monitor the battery drain, and to see which apps are clocking up cpu time whilst not in active use (i.e. leave it for 5 hours, see which apps clock up more than a few sec. of activity).

I prefer a small phone and the option of carrying a usb charger (with 2 AA rechargables) to carrying a brick. If future software patches improve this, even better - but it's ok for now.
 
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so this is my battery usage so far today. I had it charged overnight. It been unplugged for 3hrs 26 min and Im down to 55%.
Voice calls (ive been on the phone for approximately 1hr 10 min) have taken 47%, Android system 17%, Cell Standby 17%, Phone Idle 13% and Display 6%.

Does this seem normal?

Ive also just received another battery and I want to make sure that I condition it correctly - what do you recommend?
thanks
 
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I've been looking at my battery usage and just want to know if this sounds roughly right as in the last week or so i've noticed considerably worsening battery life. Cell Standby and Phone idle have both used 35% (so 70% in total) of the battery since unplugged. I've lost 12% of my battery in less than 3 hours since unplugging, which doesn't sound like much but this is with the phone being left idle on my desk for >90% of that time, with the rest of the time sending the odd text and receiving about 5 emails. I have Facebook set to sync every 30 mins and twitter every hour. The only other active widget i use is the weather widget within the clock.

Does this sound right?
 
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