i know why battery life sucks so much!

[cappy]

Originally Posted by marcjen

Today I decided to get a baseline for minimal use of the phone.

Using Juicy's 2.2 for Sprint, I unplugged my phone from the Diamond Wall Plug at 7:20am this morning. Used phone, text, email only when needed. Didn't use anything else. No Bluetooth.

At 5:20pm my battery is at 15%. 10 Hours of minimal use, uses 85% of the battery.

Tomorrow I plan to use BT for the morning during drive times and maintain the minimal use. Probably 3 or 4 hours worth of BT being ON, probably only 10min of talk time.

We'll see.

I started at 100% at 6:40 am. Its now 6:47 pm and battery remains at 71%. No Bluetooth, 6 phone calls about an hour in total duration, a couple of checks to weather, and not much else. I did have the GPS locator on, though I did not use GPS today. And I turned off the Airave first thing this morning to see what effect signal strength would have on discharge.

The more that I read of other users experiences, the more it becomes clear that many variables are in play. I see 10% per hour discharge with Bluetooth on. A user on SU said that he saw no noticeable difference when he turned off Bluetooth.

My phone does not get hot, while many others appear to have a significant overheating problem. I turned off my Airave this morning, expecting that it was the reason why the device does not get hot and I also expected that a weaker signal (3 bars) would increase the discharge. There has been no noticeable increase in discharge caused by a weaker signal. And during the calls, the device did not get hot at all. If fact, I just picked it up and it is stone cold. Go figure.

I am ready to conclude that build quality varies from phone to phone. According to the NuePower software, my device draws between 75Ma to 85Ma when idle, whether connected to the Airave or not. As soon as Bluetooth is turned on, the draw goes up to between 160Ma and 211Ma at idle. I have seen others report much higher rates of discharge. It could be differences in the software that is running on different devices, but I am leaning towards hardware build differences or perhaps differences in battery quality or the quality of the battery connection.

I suppose that the only way to isolate the differences among devices is to have many identical devices side by side - same software, same signal, etc. Only Sprint or HTC can do that.

If I were seeing the poor battery life that you describe, I think I would make a single call and see how long it lasts before the battery goes dead. If it cannot go 4.5 hours as HTC and Sprint claim, I would take it back again and again until I get one that does. I have not had to try that, but based upon my battery experiences thus far, I think I would get 4.5 hours.

[gsvnet]

Originally Posted by cappy

If I were seeing the poor battery life that you describe, I think I would make a single call and see how long it lasts before the battery goes dead. If it cannot go 4.5 hours as HTC and Sprint claim, I would take it back again and again until I get one that does. I have not had to try that, but based upon my battery experiences thus far, I think I would get 4.5 hours.

That's an interesting idea, but do you think it will actually be possible to hold out a call for that long on the network? Also keep in mind this test would be need to be done with good coverage, as I'm sure that 4.5 hours figure is pretty much a best case scenario.

I should also mention that my Diamond really doesn't get that hot. Sometimes it does when using it while its charging, but not too often. My Mogul did about the same, so no change for me.

I see good battery life but this is only in a good coverage area throughout most of the day (if that matters).

[cappy]

Originally Posted by gsvnet

That's an interesting idea, but do you think it will actually be possible to hold out a call for that long on the network? Also keep in mind this test would be need to be done with good coverage, as I'm sure that 4.5 hours figure is pretty much a best case scenario.

I should also mention that my Diamond really doesn't get that hot. Sometimes it does when using it while its charging, but not too often. My Mogul did about the same, so no change for me.

I see good battery life but this is only in a good coverage area throughout most of the day (if that matters).

Fortunately, I have never had the pleasure of being on a phone call for 4.5 hours, so I can't be sure. But even if there is some arbitrary network time limit, several consecutive call would sufficiently prove the point. Signal strength would have some impact.

[golfman32]

I have a Telus HTC Touch Diamond.

I am using stock ROM and am having battery issues as well.

I have GPS turned off (this is a battery drain), have bluetooth on and only turn data on when needed (I do not have weather app set to update automatically). I also have screen set to low for backlight and have settings to have backlight turned off at 2 min of non use.

I use data about 3 hours per day, do not have push email turned on and am at 15% to 20% battery life after 8 hours.

My EVDO signal is 2 to 3 bars most of the time since I am indoors at my office.

My concern is that the carriers and HTC keep saying there is no battery issue, Apple did the same thing until their 2.1 ROM and that increased battery life by 40% for iPhone 3G users.

I do also feel the device getting hot, I am still trying to understand what is really draining the battery, is it the interface, other software is does HTC use crappy batteries.

I had same issue with HTC Touch, after I purchased a Sendio 1500 Ma battery for Touch, I could get 8 hours of data with push email on and bluetooth on and still have battery to spare.

I have suggested to HTC numerous times that can not be so blind as to blow this issue of and the device battery life is fine.

If you think of this issue for someone who is deploying this type of device (more likely the PRO model) in a business, business people will not put up with less than a business day on a battery charge using push email and likely making 1 to 2 hours of phone calls.

I am guessing either the carriers and HTC are not getting enough calls complaining or are aware of this issue and just are not providing the information to front line people in customer service, I hope it is the latter and HTC engineering are working on resolution.

In my case, Telus Mobility has a Loyality & Retention team that called me to follow up on the device, they ended up providing a credit of $10/month for remaining months on my contract.

I hope HTC has a new ROM or someone creates a cooked ROM that improves the battery life.

[SprintTouch08]

sdd

Originally Posted by cappy

I started at 100% at 6:40 am. Its now 6:47 pm and battery remains at 71%. No Bluetooth, 6 phone calls about an hour in total duration, a couple of checks to weather, and not much else. I did have the GPS locator on, though I did not use GPS today. And I turned off the Airave first thing this morning to see what effect signal strength would have on discharge.

The more that I read of other users experiences, the more it becomes clear that many variables are in play. I see 10% per hour discharge with Bluetooth on. A user on SU said that he saw no noticeable difference when he turned off Bluetooth.

My phone does not get hot, while many others appear to have a significant overheating problem. I turned off my Airave this morning, expecting that it was the reason why the device does not get hot and I also expected that a weaker signal (3 bars) would increase the discharge. There has been no noticeable increase in discharge caused by a weaker signal. And during the calls, the device did not get hot at all. If fact, I just picked it up and it is stone cold. Go figure.

I am ready to conclude that build quality varies from phone to phone. According to the NuePower software, my device draws between 75Ma to 85Ma when idle, whether connected to the Airave or not. As soon as Bluetooth is turned on, the draw goes up to between 160Ma and 211Ma at idle. I have seen others report much higher rates of discharge. It could be differences in the software that is running on different devices, but I am leaning towards hardware build differences or perhaps differences in battery quality or the quality of the battery connection.

I suppose that the only way to isolate the differences among devices is to have many identical devices side by side - same software, same signal, etc. Only Sprint or HTC can do that.

If I were seeing the poor battery life that you describe, I think I would make a single call and see how long it lasts before the battery goes dead. If it cannot go 4.5 hours as HTC and Sprint claim, I would take it back again and again until I get one that does. I have not had to try that, but based upon my battery experiences thus far, I think I would get 4.5 hours.

i have similar results. phone off the charger at 8am, push email active as items arrive from 9am-5pm another account every 4 hours and the push goes to every 4 hours too after 5pm. its now 10pm, so 14 hours off that charger with a 45 min call and still have 40% left. id say thats pretty good battery life IMO. i cant understand how some people like us are having decent battery life and others report 10% drain every 15 or 30 min thats far from normal draw. maybe people are having unrealistic expectations of the battery. Its similar to the Touch's life. if you have a 4.2 hour talktime battery (from sprint.com) then every hour on the phone you lose 25% or every 12 min call you lose 5% by the math. Same goes for browsing, average 5% every 12 min. so yes if you browse the web for 30 min and a 30 min phone call in a day youve blown 25% of you battery right there, stanby and checking email takes battery life too. so 50% left after that usage and 8 hours in standby will leave you with maybe 50%. using gps will eat battery, wifi will even more. it all adds up and i dont think people realize this fact.

i see a ton of people saying well i want to have push email and web search and use bluetooth and gps and still make calls and my battery last a full day- its simply not going to happen its the nature of the device. Its not different than any other PPC with a similar sized battery like the original Touch. The treos, mogul, and 6700 all had bigger batteries so of course they last a little longer, its an unfair conparison.

[cappy]

Perhaps we are two of the fortunate who received phones that are operating as designed. At first I thought that it was, as you say, unrealistic expectations. But I have read so many reports from users whose device seems to be performing below specs, that I am beginning to believe that there must be differences in the hardware performance of some of these phones.

As I said above, I think that the ultimate test is to see how long a single phone call lasts. If it does not go 4+ hours before the battery dies (good signal strength assumed), then there is something wrong with the hardware. This test would eliminate the subjectivity and guesswork of closing a program here and tweaking the registry there. Since our phones appear to be capable of meeting the specs specified by HTC, so should everyone's phone.

It is 10:30 pm and my phone shows 69% battery remaining. As I said in a post 3 hours ago, I started at 6:40 am with 100%. There is no reason why others should not expect similar performance.

[bigdaddie]

Originally Posted by cappy

It is 10:30 pm and my phone shows 69% battery remaining. As I said in a post 3 hours ago, I started at 6:40 am with 100%. There is no reason why others should not expect similar performance.

Cappy,
Using Voice Command, what does the signal strength indicate with your Airave? Mine says usually 10 - 30%. I do notice though that in a call the bars go way up.

[mabmarc]

Originally Posted by SprintTouch08

sdd
i have similar results. phone off the charger at 8am, push email active as items arrive from 9am-5pm another account every 4 hours and the push goes to every 4 hours too after 5pm. its now 10pm, so 14 hours off that charger with a 45 min call and still have 40% left. id say thats pretty good battery life IMO.

I agree with you 100%! That is excellent battery life. I got up this morning and removed the phone from the charger at 6:22am. Went to work listened to an audio book on the drive in (20 minutes local not streamed book) arrived at work around 8:00am. Battery was at 90%. I did a hard reset. I setup activesync to get my contacts back and set it to sync every 1 hour. I turned off weather and beaming. Surfed the web at lunch for 15 minutes. Had 53 minutes of phone calls. Installed Nuetools to see the battery in 1% increments. 13 text messages. So no push email all day and other than the 53 minutes of talk not much else.

So after less than 10 hours at 4:16pm I have 19% battery left.

Currently Running at:
voltage 3.698 V
Discharge 175 mA
Charge 0 mA
Temp 30 C

Do you want to trade phones?

If I run push email throughout the day my battery would be severely worse. I have had the phone for 2 weeks now and the battery is not improving. It may be getting worse.

If I had 40% left over after 14 hours that would be an awesome improvement, especially if I was able to use push email for 8 hours like you.

Do I have a hardware problem is the question? It seems like it.

[cappy]

Originally Posted by mabmarc

I agree with you 100%! That is excellent battery life. I got up this morning and removed the phone from the charger at 6:22am. Went to work listened to an audio book on the drive in (20 minutes local not streamed book) arrived at work around 8:00am. Battery was at 90%. I did a hard reset. I setup activesync to get my contacts back and set it to sync every 1 hour. I turned off weather and beaming. Surfed the web at lunch for 15 minutes. Had 53 minutes of phone calls. Installed Nuetools to see the battery in 1% increments. 13 text messages. So no push email all day and other than the 53 minutes of talk not much else.

So after less than 10 hours at 4:16pm I have 19% battery left.

I am becoming convinced that there are differences in build quality (or battery quality) from phone to phone. I have one of the good ones. Looking at your usage, I have tried to estimate what I could expect.


Estimated discharge if it were my phone
10% - audio book taken as a given. I have no way to check
5% - 15 minutes surfing. what I would expect on my phone
20% - my estimate of 53 min of talk time on my phone
5% - text messaging / emails - my rough guess. This might be worth verifying It could be a bigger drain if data connection stays active.
15% - general phone discharge in 10 hours - I lose 1%-2% per hour.
55% Total discharge

If it were my phone, with your usage, I would expect to have 45% battery remaining. If I had left Bluetooth on during that whole time, I would be down to 0%. Bluetooth on costs me 8%-10% per hour in discharge.

During the 39 hours since my last charge I have used 1 hour of talk time, checked weather several times, checked the clock 15 or 20 times and looked at my Settings a few times. Airave off, Bluetooth off, GPS locator on but no GPS used. Signal 1 to 3 bars. I currently have 58% remaining on my battery.

Maybe this will give you some clues on where to look.

[bigdaddie]

Originally Posted by cappy

I am ready to conclude that build quality varies from phone to phone. According to the NuePower software, my device draws between 75Ma to 85Ma when idle, whether connected to the Airave or not. As soon as Bluetooth is turned on, the draw goes up to between 160Ma and 211Ma at idle.

Here's my results from nueBattery also with an Airave:

1) Phone in Airplane Mode (radios off) screen completely dimed = 148mA
2) Display set where I can read it / AP mode = 193mA
3) Radio on, Internet Connection on, BT off = 193mA
4) As per 3) with BT on = 225mA

So if you're getting only 75 - 85mA of draw, WOW. That's like 1340 / 85 = 15.7 hours of standby. Mine is more like 1340 / 193 = 7. Now that sucks! I did just notice that ActiveSync causes about 100mA of draw. Make sure to shut that down! I'm letting ABC TaskManager run to see what the average draw is. I'll post my results.

RESULTS:

Battery was all over everywhere from about 50mA to 400mA. My guess is using 30min timescale was way too big and reflected the polling of the battery. Swithced to 2 min timescale and the average use is just under 100mA with backlight on and about 50mA with the backlight off.