[Big D5]

Originally Posted by Palladium

Since we are discussing background and qualifications, I have been writing software for and using PPC's since the days of Pocket PC 2000 (for the newbies, that is what WinMo used to be called 8 years ago). And design Online Monitoring systems (hardware and software) for process control equipment.

I have used more different devices that I can count. While this is my first move to the combination device platform. I well understand the power issues involved in these type of devices.

The power consumption of the PPC side of this device is similar to stand alone PDAs, In fact it is much better than the early XScale processor based devices. And as a PDA with all of the radios off power managment/usage on this device is as good as any PDA that I have written software for.

Where I part with the opinions of others on this board is in the issue of power consumption by the radios.

I have measured for better than a week and a half what I consider as excessive power draw by these radios. The radios on the Touch Pro have a maximum rated output of 0.29 watts of energy. However, the device draws 2+ watts of power to generate the 0.29 W of transmitted signal. By comparison, typical microwave (celluar) transmitters run between 50 and 75% efficent. This one is 13% efficent.

Regardless of whether these issues result in heating etc. It drains the battery much faster than it could (and should). My position and point since day 1 has been that work needs to be done to improve the efficiencies of these radios. If these radios worked as efficiently as what I have seen on the Qualcomm datasheets, We would be seeing 4-5 times the talk time with the same battery.

This is not something than can simply be done by tweeking the Radio parameters. This requires a more detailed look at the radio software to solve, something that no one here or at XDA can do, it requires acess to the source code and thus HTC.

Nice post very well stated, now let me ask you some questions with your expertise you might be able to answer. All the Sprint PDA's that I have had have the same battery issues could the radio draw be related to EVDO? I have had PDA's since it was called just plain Windows CE those devices had great battery life even my last non converged devise the E-100 would go days between charges with the addition of the radio on these devices battery power really took a hit. HTC seams to have these devices figured out could the battery issues with all windows mobile converged devices be radio related and be being caused by the carrier added software that controls the radio I.E. not an HTC issue at all? I know its not just EVDO my Nephew has a Tilt GSM device and the battery on that device is right in line with all the outers. Have the makers of these devices set a battery usage verses all other aspects bench mark to hold? Why is the radio draw such a point of interest in your eyes when even the GSM devices have the same base line battery issues? If the battery issue you are tracking is the route cause of bad battery life in the Sprint TP why do all the other similar devices have the same problem?