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Battery drain - something on the SD Card is causing this too

Spacemonkey

Member
Sep 17, 2009
52
0
Right, I've been trying to figure out this battery drain/awake time issue and the switch to Handcent hasn't fixed it for me. But I'm starting to unravel something that might be the cause.

Long story cut short - have spent a week or so messing around with factory resets, Handcent switch, shutting down apps, clearing cache, etc, and nothing has prevented my Hero's battery from lasting more than 1/2 day with minimal use - which is unnacceptable.

So last night I switched SD cards. For the last few weeks I've been running a Sandisk 6gb - it's over half full mostly with MP3s, plus the usual stuff. And I wanted to see if switching to my original factory SD Card would make a difference. And oh boy, with a full charge it was sleeping properly and using only 1% of battery per hour when idling, as opposed to 10%. Had a play with the browser and default music player and still the Hero behaves exactly as it should. Awake time this morning is 16%.

So now I'm thinking there must be something written to the SD Card (on my other card at least) that is causing the phone to either not sleep, or simply use power in the background.

It might take some time to figure what exactly, but at least I can have some confidence taken my phone out into the real world again.

FTR, after yesterday's reset, I'm running default apps + Power Manager + MyBackup + Astro file manager + Handcent. I'm going to run it like this for a couple of days and if it performs the same, then I'll format my other 6gb card, switch to that, and start adding apps.

Not sure if this is relevant only to UK Hero's? I'm on a CPW phone with Yodafone.

What do you guys reckon?

SM
 
I should also add that since switching cards, the following are also working reliably:

- Facebook login - Hero used to log me out all the time, so contact pics would rever to default, etc. Login has stayed on since last night.
- Screen timeout- Hero used to revert to 15 secs or 1 minute regardless of what I set it to. It now stays on 10 minutes which is my preference.

Although everything's running sweet, I'm not going to get carried away. But it's weird that so far the phone has been on for 7 hours (with browswer and MP3 action this morning) and the battery is on 88%.
 
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Another thing to add: my gf (who bought her Hero at the same time as me), is also having the battery problem, even though her phone has an Awake Time of usually around 15-30%.

She's still using the default SMS, plus browser, calls, gmail and MixZing for music (with the factory SD card). She's also running the original ROM (pre 2.73).

I'm not going to start messing around with her's yet, but there certainly seems to be something written to her SD card that is causing the same battery issue.

BTW, mine still won't connect to my PC so I can't upgrade to 2.73. Therefore I think these phone also suffer with a hardware (or software) issue relating to this. I mean, two months of ownership and it won't connect to any PC or laptop with any of our cables - that's a joke.
 
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For what it's worth, here are the apps that both me and the gf were running while having this battery problem:

Android lightsaber
Beebplayer
Droidlive
Fartdroid
Last.fm
MixZing player
Movie finder
Movies
Weatherbug

I reckon one of these is definitely messing up the card and therefore the battery. Either that, or one of the native apps or widgets.

Don't think I'll bother listing the othe 30+ apps I was running - not yet anyway.

Does anyone else think they have an issue with any of the above?
 
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CUT
BTW, mine still won't connect to my PC so I can't upgrade to 2.73. Therefore I think these phone also suffer with a hardware (or software) issue relating to this. I mean, two months of ownership and it won't connect to any PC or laptop with any of our cables - that's a joke.

Indeed, it's a joke.
Time to send it straight to HTC factory.

BTW that's kinda strange, you're able to mount the SD card and synchronize Exchange (as seen from other posts) but you can't have HTC sync working properly?
What's the specific error, what happens? a driver-related issue or HTCsync simply can't see the phone?
 
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Indeed, it's a joke.
Time to send it straight to HTC factory.

BTW that's kinda strange, you're able to mount the SD card and synchronize Exchange (as seen from other posts) but you can't have HTC sync working properly?
What's the specific error, what happens? a driver-related issue or HTCsync simply can't see the phone?

Exchange sync is done over the air, as is gmail, etc.

My problem now is with connecting the Hero to a PC. Neither machine recognises the other or does anything. All that happens is the charging light appears on the Hero.

All I want to do is sync MP3s, remove photos, and re-upgrade to 2.73. But I can't do any of these.

Doesn't make any difference if the PC has any Hero drivers or sync sw installed. It just suddenly stopped working. And it's not like I'm going to go out and buy loads of replica cables in the hope one is going to work. No, there must be a know fault with this.

Am gonna call HTC and CPW to get this sorted.

SM
 
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Ive done the Handscent thing and kill the other stuff mentioned and I had one day with great battery life, today and most days this week, awake time never got above 20% and yet in about 1 hour of total awake time I was down to just three little bars of battery. One phone call, a few email checks, and lost about 70% battery? i have let it fully drain and fully charge for about two weeks now, battery just seems to get worse. Unplug it about 6:15 am and now by 3:30 or so I have to charge it, I hate to see what a two or three phone call day will be like. I am going to have to have something done or will have to return the phone. I have landline phones at home and work, this is no better than a land line phone right now unless I am making one to two phone calls.

Love the phone, but battery issues are inexcusable. I too have a new larger SD card in mine, maybe it would be worth going back to the old one, but I have had one or two days of good charge with this new one?

any ideas are welcomed
 
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Right, it's been a week or so since I swapped cards and I'd say 50% of the time the battery works as it should, and the other 50% it drains at 10%/hour, i.e lasts no more than 1/2 day even when idle or asleep.

Still can't find a pattern to this, e.g. yesterday the battery worked brilliantly from 7am til midnight - still had about 40% left. Put it on charge and sent it to sleep. Disconnected it at 2am on full charge, and wake up at 7am and it's already on 72%. WTF is that all about?

Turns out the awake time is back to 99%. But I haven't actually opened any apps to make that happen.

IMO, the battery problem is either:

1) faulty hardware - either manuf defect or bad batch = HTC responsibility
2) faulty OS = HTC and Google's responsibility
3) faulty app(s) = Google's responsibility (if app is available via Market)
4) faulty 3rd party app = but in the case of my gf's phone, she's running only Market apps and her battery is crap.

Bored of this now. Phone can't be trusted when out n about. TBH wish I hadn't upgraded to it, especially as I have the PC connection problem too. HTC and Google had better start listening to their customers.

SM
 
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...
IMO, the battery problem is either:

1) faulty hardware - either manuf defect or bad batch = HTC responsibility
2) faulty OS = HTC and Google's responsibility
3) faulty app(s) = Google's responsibility (if app is available via Market)
4) faulty 3rd party app = but in the case of my gf's phone, she's running only Market apps and her battery is crap.

From my perspective that's disappointing too, since I'm not experiencing battery issues at all and it's frustrating to see someone who's not fully appreciating this little piece of hardware.
Just two words on my setup and habits using the Hero.

-EU Hero (not Sprint) originale Cupcake 1.5, 2.73 updated.

-Sandisk 8 GB SD card, class 6

-Handcent client for SMS

-TaskPanel for periodic killing of tasks, you can see it here.

Please note: In Task Panel X, "WANTED" apps has the same meaning as in the Far West, if you put an app in the Wanted list you'll have it killed every 15 minutes when memory is lower than a specific threshold.
Furthermore, I kill some tasks from its list when I've been using many of them in the past minutes, before putting the phone to sleep (eg. Browser, Gmail, 3rd part apps not in list)

- Automatic Task Killer (here) another task killer that works only when the screen turns off.Once again you have to create a list of "wanted" apps (..that you want to be killed)

With an average to intense use of Wifi (HSDPA) my battery lasts an entire day and there's at least a 30-40% power left.

Note that I switch off every wireless connection when I don't need it (BT,GPS,WiFi,Data)

I wouldn't be surprised if your issue comes from a single app which drains up the battery.
Try to kill everything before putting it to sleep, note if not killing an app makes the battery drain too high.

Maybe wait for 2.0 or 2.1 Android Eclaire update before giving up.

Hope you solve your problem somehow.

-EU Hero (not Sprint) originale Cupcake 1.5, 2.73 updated.

-Sandisk 8 GB SD card, class 6

-Handcent client for SMS

-TaskPanel for periodic killing of tasks, you can see it here.

EDIT:
Well, I see you're already using Taskpanel, sorry but I just got up and have a little hangover..
Anyway, the point of killing everything before putting it to sleep is a starter.
Then you won't blame the hardware, if anything.
 
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I wouldn't be surprised if your issue comes from a single app which drains up the battery.
Try to kill everything before putting it to sleep, note if not killing an app makes the battery drain too high.

Maybe wait for 2.0 or 2.1 Android Eclaire update before giving up.

Hope you solve your problem somehow.



EDIT:
Well, I see you're already using Taskpanel, sorry but I just got up and have a little hangover..
Anyway, the point of killing everything before putting it to sleep is a starter.
Then you won't blame the hardware, if anything.

This is what I'm trying to figure out.

Since this morning (5hrs ago), I've not touched any apps except Budgetdroid and the available memory keeps going down - currently at 45mb. Awake time still at 99%. So ... even after killing all backgrounds apps, the phone still finds a way to stay constantly awake and drain memory. Strangely, the battery is down to 48%, which means its holding its charge better than average - approx 5%/hour with minimal use.
 
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Have been running Adv Task Killer, TaskPanel and NetMeter for a few days now, trying to figure out a patten that causes battery issues.

Seemed to be working well most of the time until middle of last week when battery went rubbish for no reason. Decided to swap back to my other SD card (my own 6gb Sandisk one) and it's been excellent with the exception of a day or so.

For the last couple of days, I've been killing all apps once I've finished with them and using ATK to "allow" on the following to run on an ongoing basis;

Settings
NetMeter - very useful
Messages
Power Manager
Calendar
Mail
Handcent
Google Mail
Task Panel
Adv Task Killer (Free)

This is giving me excellent battery (20-30 hours) and awake time of 20-50%.

I'm going to keep with this for another couple of days, then I'm going to be away til Sat which means I'll be using various apps more heavily - so perhaps I can expect to see the battery issue return - in which case I'll hopefully be able to find the offending app.

SM

PS when I first installed TaskPanel I was able to add some apps to the Wanted List - now I can't seem to do that. Anyone know how to do this?

Cheers
 
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I've also removed a load of widgets lately, including weather, calendar and mail - just to see if these kill power.

So I'm now left with the clock on the main home screen, favourite contacts on another, and bookmarks on another, plus loads of app shortcuts. Sync to Exchange is "when items arrive", sync to gmail is on as normal. Sync with Facebook is 24hrs, FLickr if off, and Twitter is off. Am also no longer running Twidroid.
 
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Seems I've been lucky in this respect. On a full charge, I can use the phone all day - 10 - 20 calls, e-mails, texts, wi-fi on about 30min @ work. When I get home, I still have 30-40% left. Get in bed a browse for another 90min or so. Still have roughly 10-15% left. Then put on charge for next day.
 
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Hi,
Your post is interesting, I had exactly the same problem, I narrowed it down to something on the card as I reformatted and my phone went from being awake 100% of the time to 20% average. I think it may be down to two videos I had on the card that the phone couldnt play. I'm still testing, so I will let you know.

Regards
Kneedown :)
 
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