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

[stueyboy]

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%.

For comparison, mine has been unplugged for 5 hours and I am on 82%. Ive spent about 30 minutes onthe phone and the wifi has been on for 4 hours at least. I have push e-mail on all the time and full brightness with active wallpapers and I've done a bit of browsing and general fiddling.

I had a previous phone (3 network) with horrific battery life and it was down to the fact that it was always trying to boost the 3g signal as it was poor at my home. Could that be your issue?

 

[chrisjb]

@Stuey, thats a very good point. My signal reception at home (on orange) is very bad indeed, in fact it wont even work in some areas of the house. Im not very happy at all with the orange network coverage in London - and it was one of the reasons I was thinking of leaving them - persuaded to stay only becuase they were offering a very good tariff.

 

[Desire D]

My battery seemed to improve greatly after about five days use. Must admit I was disappointed with it before that.

Got to be worth anyone with poor battery life trying something like Advanced Task Killer just to see what is actually running in the background.

 

[tuatha]

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....

Well if you need to condition it, then it's not a direct comparison...

The li-ion batteries in your phone have full capacity available when you buy them. It's not like the old ones where the battery needed to be primed.


Not that any of this matters, because as soon as some guy comes in and swears that his battery got better after a week, everybody will start feverishly trying to condition their batteries JUST IN CASE...

Hope springs eternal. Especially when it comes to battery life

 

[AlastairH]

@Stuey, thats a very good point. My signal reception at home (on orange) is very bad indeed, in fact it wont even work in some areas of the house. Im not very happy at all with the orange network coverage in London - and it was one of the reasons I was thinking of leaving them - persuaded to stay only becuase they were offering a very good tariff.

That could well be the problem, I used to work on a site with next to no reception and my old 'phone (HTC Touch Diamond) would go from full charge to almost zero in the space of 5 hours.

 

[zafonic]

Can anyone tell me how i can find out the exact info on what the battery % of my phone is?

Thanks

 

[tuatha]

Zafonic - you can download Battery Time lite from the market or you can dial *#*#4636#*#* to get full battery info

 

[Caspa]

I would agree about the signal having an major effect on battery...

At the office the building has very poor reception, so much so that they actually installed 2G signal boosters in all the units, but this means that my phone is constantly switching between 2G and 3G as I sit in the middle of the room! As 3G is 'preferred' it will always try to get log onto it even when its a very poor signal...

I notice a big difference in battery drain when at home at the weekend, have full 3G signal and its drains alot slower...

 

[stueyboy]

You could try forcing the phone to use GSM only buth then your data download will be sluggish and it kind of defeats the object of most of the features of this phone. It's worrying that Orange have a poor reception in London. Do you use it in an office with a lkoad of electronic equipment as you might have created your own personal Faraday cage?

 

[tuatha]

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

Just to clarify here:

The Desire is rated at 390 minutes talk time.

You've used approximately 70 minutes, which is roughly 17% of the total theoretical talktime. EDIT: in fact it's 17.9%


Your phone has lost 45% charge, 47% of which was spent on phonecalls.

This means you have spent 21% of your phone's total charge on phonecalls


Keeping in mind that your talktime figure was an approximate, and that the manufacturer's talktime estimates are always a little optimistic, I'd say that's almost bang on the money. And from that we can deduce that your battery is functioning normally.

And the rest of the percentages you've put up look pretty normal to me too...

 

[chrisjb]

You could try forcing the phone to use GSM only buth then your data download will be sluggish and it kind of defeats the object of most of the features of this phone. It's worrying that Orange have a poor reception in London. Do you use it in an office with a lkoad of electronic equipment as you might have created your own personal Faraday cage?

Im working often from home in SE5 camberwell/Brixton area. And from here signal very low unless Im close to the balcony. Im often having problems with Orange network all over London - where you would expect excellent reception in almost all areas. (Also almost no network signal down in St.Margarets next to Richmond) and the country.
Signal is diabolical when Im taking train from London to Dorset.
i dont think its a problem unique to my HTC Desire as I also wasnt impressed with the HTC Touch HD signal reception.

 

[uzetaab]

My personal opinion is that the apparent increase to battery life that people experience is due to the battery time remaining estimations improving after the phone has had a chance to track some charge/discharge cycles. That and not using the phone quite so much because you've finished most of your tweaking of it.

For my own experience, the battery life does seem to be improving, but the true test for me will be tomorrow when I finally get my memory card. I got a note from the post office telling me to come collect a package, I can't think of any other items I'm expecting.

For the record, I never did anything special to my battery, apart from making sure it had a full charge of at least 12 hours the first time. Although it was more like 20 hours because I was playing with it while it was charging for about the first 8 hours & I was almost draining the battery faster than it could recharge.

Anyway, if you want to know more about my opinions on batteries, read the post linked in my signature.

 

[tuatha]

My personal opinion is that the apparent increase to battery life that people experience is due to the battery time remaining estimations improving after the phone has had a chance to track some charge/discharge cycles. That and not using the phone quite so much because you've finished most of your tweaking of it.

Yeah, I mentioned in my own post, that the charge estimation is the only thing that can be affected by a full discharge and charge... and even then all it takes is one or two full cycles.

I think I even read that one of the major selling points of the li-ion battery technology was that they don't require conditioning...


I suppose when it comes down to it people will just believe whatever they like

 

[uzetaab]

Is my signature showing? It's not for me, but maybe you don't see your own signature. Anyway, if it's not working, then this is what it will be when it does:

If you are having battery issues, try reading my post about them:
Batteries explained

edit: Ah. I see. The show signature option is unchecked if you don't have a signature when you make the post. seems to work now.

 

[uzetaab]

Yeah, I mentioned in my own post, that the charge estimation is the only thing that can be affected by a full discharge and charge... and even then all it takes is one or two full cycles.

I think I even read that one of the major selling points of the li-ion battery technology was that they don't require conditioning...


I suppose when it comes down to it people will just believe whatever they like

Oops, sorry, I didn't make it clear that I was agreeing with you, but I was

 

[zafonic]

Cell standby on my Desire shows at 33%.

Is that higher than it should be?

 

[tuatha]

@ zafonic - it's hard to say, really. Remember this is a percentage, rather than an amount of energy used per hour, so it's entirely relative. In general, my cell standby percentage varies from about 20 up to about 35.

But again, it's all relative.

Oops, sorry, I didn't make it clear that I was agreeing with you, but I was

Yeah, I know... haha, guess it was me that wasn't clear.

the more battery threads I read the more exasperated I become.

 

[furious duck]

Im working often from home in SE5 camberwell/Brixton area. And from here signal very low unless Im close to the balcony. Im often having problems with Orange network all over London - where you would expect excellent reception in almost all areas. (Also almost no network signal down in St.Margarets next to Richmond) and the country.
Signal is diabolical when Im taking train from London to Dorset.
i dont think its a problem unique to my HTC Desire as I also wasnt impressed with the HTC Touch HD signal reception.

Up until 3 weeks ago I worked in an office where I could only get a 2G signal and found my battery drained very quickly. I had to set the network mode to "GSM only" otherwise I'd be out of battery before I got home. It looks like the phone uses the juice trying to find a 3G signal. No problems since moving though. I don't use mine excessively and have done all the battery optimising tasks (reducing syncing etc) but I'm usually down to 25% - 40% at the end of the day. So not fantastic but I've been charging my phones overnight for years now so it's fine for me. No idea how people are making there's last 3 days though!

 

[kboya]

oops, didnt see Tuatha's vsimilar post ^. Soz for double up, I would have deleted the whole thing, but i think the point needs reinforcing ;p

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

hey,

there has been an almost infinite amount of threads on battery, and these kind of stats from the system keep appearing without being thought about first. I want to use this one as an example only (this is a friendly post), and as it was by the starter of the thread.

this phone started on 100% (after charge) and at 3h 26m since unplugging is at 55%, having used 45%, which is the important part.
It have spent 1hr 10m (70mins) calling (approx one-third of the time since unplug), taking 47% of 45%, but this is a little over 21% of the total battery. The handset has an ideal talktime of 390 minutes (rarely ever achieved in practice), 6h 30m, and these stats suggest it could get over 5 hours of real-life-talktime (including signal problems, searching, wcdma-gsm-wcdma) if only used for it. There is no indication of other use, but the System and Display stats make it likely there was other usage within the 3h 26m window.

does that sound like bad battery life? 5 hours plus of real life talk-time? on a smartphone, it sounds ok to me (of course, I'd always like more!!)

the point is that these stats need to be analysed for what they are, a breakdown of battery usage by type of process, and they only account for 'what has been used' as a percentage of 'what has been used' and will therefore always add up to 100%.

hope this helps

 

[uzetaab]

Gah. I'm really sorry, I just discovered the link did not work (I'm still getting used to this forum).

this link should work:

If you are having battery issues, try reading my post about them:
Batteries explained
http://androidforums.com/77857-batteries-explained.html#post729637

 

[Caspa]

You could try forcing the phone to use GSM only buth then your data download will be sluggish and it kind of defeats the object of most of the features of this phone. It's worrying that Orange have a poor reception in London. Do you use it in an office with a lkoad of electronic equipment as you might have created your own personal Faraday cage?

Naa, its down to the ergonomics of the building - spoke to the Centre Manager when we first decided to move in and she told me how crap reception was (all networks) in the building which is why they put 2G boosters in all the units when they completed it... With regards to forcing it to use 2G, I could do that, but then I have the problem of missing calls when there is an active data connection which is alot of the time as I get push email on my Exchange account... Thats annoying, the fact that voice traffic doesnt take priority over data while on 2G - it does on an old 2G only Nokia!

I find Oranges reception to be pretty good most of the time (apart from 3G data issues - but thats a whole other thread!), the point I wanted to get across was the fact that signal strength contributes to battery performance and as mine switches between 2G and 3G depending on which end of the office I'm in (near 2G booster or near window!), I experience the heavier drain while at work...

The same can be said when using the tube, best to put it on airplane mode so it isnt constantly searching for the network...

 

[Caspa]

Up until 3 weeks ago I worked in an office where I could only get a 2G signal and found my battery drained very quickly. I had to set the network mode to "GSM only" otherwise I'd be out of battery before I got home. It looks like the phone uses the juice trying to find a 3G signal. No problems since moving though. I don't use mine excessively and have done all the battery optimising tasks (reducing syncing etc) but I'm usually down to 25% - 40% at the end of the day. So not fantastic but I've been charging my phones overnight for years now so it's fine for me. No idea how people are making there's last 3 days though!

Yep, when on auto (2G/3G) it actually 'prefers' a 3G connection so will always (constantly) try to switch to it, thus using battery... Only solution as you realised was to set it to 2G only...

Surely it would be better for handsets 'auto' mode to be strongest signal preferred?! Why have 1 bar of 3G when you can full bars of 2G?!

 

[Nodders]

Perfectly fine here - no problems whatsoever with battery.

 

[Casual Pete]

Perfectly fine here - no problems whatsoever with battery.

+1

Compared to some smartphones I've had in the past the battery is excellent.

 

[Caspa]

Battery is definately excellent I would say... On 33hrs since unplugged and on 2% left... Thats with push email, calls, wifi use, BT use, lots of internet, some texts and quite a bit of signal switching while at the office yesterday...

My point before has been emphasised by the fact that I was on 25% when I got home at about 9pm last night, it only went down to 17% overnight...