i know why battery life sucks so much!

[the7thson]

Originally Posted by c0wb0ycliche

I think there most certainly is an issue with battery drain, however, I have some more, abstract ideas about why this happening.

I really think it has to do with usage.

I see some of these posts where people mention they made a few quick calls, maybe sent a few texts, and had push e-mail. And their phone lasted all day.

My Diamond doesn't last very long. At all. By around 2-4 PM it's getting dead if I don't plug it in.

However, my usage is hardly what I'd call usual.

I am usually on Opera/YouTube/Sprint TV for around 2 hours in the morning. While doing this I usually receive and send a large amount of text messages. After this, when I leave work, I usually am on the phone for at least half an hour. The rest of the day has maybe half a dozen phone calls, and maybe 100 or so incoming and outgoing text messages. I'll check my e-mail manually maybe 3 or 4 times. Sometimes I'll have IM running in the background. I would say before the end of the day (midnight usually?) I have used the internet for around 3 hours, been on the phone for at least 2 hours, and sent and recieved at least 100 messages and another maybe 20 instant messages. And played Teeter for 10 minutes. GPS is maybe every three days for usually only 20 minutes. Oh and about 30 minutes a day of using it to listen to music.

So. I would consider myself a pretty heavy user.

And while I wish my phone wouldn't be dead by the afternoon, I don't see how it couldn't be with how much I use it.

My question is this... are people on here using it like I am, and still having a good charge by end/mid day?

And are the people whose batteries are sucking using their phone all crazy like I am?

I should also point out my phone get pretty hot. Not like, OUCH hot, but a little hot.

Hope this maybe helps the discussion!

With that much usage, I'm amazed that you can make it till 2-4pm! I think you're getting pretty good battery life, you're likely in a great coverage area.

[the7thson]

Originally Posted by executor485

I have tried a number of tweaks on my device and the strangest thing is that I cannot get an accurate or constant battery life measurement. I work in the same office, spend the same amount of time in the same spots, try saving battery life by not doing much with it, and try to drain the battery by playing games and using opera, and still cannot get constant results.
Example, yesterday I played around on the phone quite a bit, probably 2 hours of games, some youtube for 10 min, bout 20 text messages, listened to sirius for 4 min, surfed the web for about 20 min, and made 4 phone calls probably totalling to about 45 min. The battery lasted from 545AM to 10PM and still had 1 bar left! But the day prior to that the battery died at 7PM with VERY LIGHT usage (about 20 texts and maybe 20 min of gaming or so, most of the time it was on standby) Oh, forgot to mention that I have email checking every 30 min as well, for both scenario's, and probalby received about 5 emails both days.
This is a constant theme with this phone for me though. I cannot replicate battery life from one day to another regardless of what I do. Its completely sparadic for me.

Hmm that seems really weird. You were in the exact same areas on both days for the same amount of time each day? If yes, then that's pretty strange.. FWIW, there are other people in Juicy's ROM thread that are also reporting inconsistencies in battery life. Some, including Juicy himself have had the phone just shut itself off at 40% remaining battery even.. All sorts of weird battery behavior everywhere

[kidmet]

Originally Posted by the7thson

Hmm that seems really weird. You were in the exact same areas on both days for the same amount of time each day? If yes, then that's pretty strange.. FWIW, there are other people in Juicy's ROM thread that are also reporting inconsistencies in battery life. Some, including Juicy himself have had the phone just shut itself off at 40% remaining battery even.. All sorts of weird battery behavior everywhere

I cannot for the life of me understand why companies don't beta with nerds like us. (Skyfire is doing the right thing) They'll easily find the problems quickly as I have noticed those that stretch their PPC the furthest, also have the most complaints (or suggestions as I like to call them).

[executor485]

Originally Posted by the7thson

Hmm that seems really weird. You were in the exact same areas on both days for the same amount of time each day? If yes, then that's pretty strange.. FWIW, there are other people in Juicy's ROM thread that are also reporting inconsistencies in battery life. Some, including Juicy himself have had the phone just shut itself off at 40% remaining battery even.. All sorts of weird battery behavior everywhere

Yes, its very strange indeed. I have not been able to get the same battery life to show any trends in the 3 weeks I've owned it. I do notice that the battery life is MUCH better now than it was when i first got it though, burned through the battery in about 2 hours the first day, 4 hours the next, completely wierd the first week I had it. Never experienced that with my old phones.

Other than the battery life this phone is pretty good bang for the buck.

[cappy]

Something curious has just occurred on my Diamond that may shed some light on the wide swings in battery life that many have observed. For anyone who has read some of my posts, the battery on my device has performed very well - I mean very well. I can get 2-3 days, depending on usage. So far, I have not used the device very much. Just fooling with the settings and observing battery discharge. A few phone calls and little Internet access each day. I use the Airave and signal is optimal. I have been able to predict my battery usage with accuracy.

I use Homescreen Plus to monitor the discharge readings and it also shows processor activity. Until today, the processor activity ALWAYS went back to 1% at rest. For example, when making a phone call or accessing the Internet, CPU activity will go from 1% to 30% or 40% or 100% for short periods. That is normal and expected. It would always return to 1%. The mA discharge rate also went up during the activity, as expected and then back down. However, I just received two phone calls that lasted about 45 minutes. After these calls, the CPU activity never went back to 1%. It stayed at 3% or higher. The mA discharge rate did not go back to normal, but stayed 60mA higher than it should have been. Bottom line is that the 60mA additional discharge rate is equivalent to 600mA in 10 hours - 600mA/1340mA=44.7% additional battery discharge. All else being equal, if usage would indicate an 80% battery level after 10 hours, this unexplained additional drain would leave the battery at 80%-44.7%=35.3%.

I did everything that I could think of to bring the processor back down to 1%. Started applications and closed them, made sure that nothing was running in the Task Manager, changed settings, toggled Flight Mode. NOTHING WORKED except a soft reset.

Something caused my CPU to remain active when it should have been at rest and continue discharging at 60mA higher than normal. That has not happened before. Whether it is specifically related to the phone application, Win 6.1 or hardware related who knows. But if this is the reason that battery life varies widely for different devices or the same device at different times, a few adjustments and tweaks will not solve the problem. By observing the CPU and discharge readings periodically I can soft reset when necessary. But that is sure no long term solution.

[sjh858]

Cappy, I really think your on to something there. Inconsistencies sound like the variable would lie within' cpu usage when the phone should be idle. You should forward that to someone at HTC or Sprint (or your carrier) so somebody is aware of that. It sounds like the golden ticket!

[the7thson]

Originally Posted by cappy

Something curious has just occurred on my Diamond that may shed some light on the wide swings in battery life that many have observed. For anyone who has read some of my posts, the battery on my device has performed very well - I mean very well. I can get 2-3 days, depending on usage. So far, I have not used the device very much. Just fooling with the settings and observing battery discharge. A few phone calls and little Internet access each day. I use the Airave and signal is optimal. I have been able to predict my battery usage with accuracy.

I use Homescreen Plus to monitor the discharge readings and it also shows processor activity. Until today, the processor activity ALWAYS went back to 1% at rest. For example, when making a phone call or accessing the Internet, CPU activity will go from 1% to 30% or 40% or 100% for short periods. That is normal and expected. It would always return to 1%. The mA discharge rate also went up during the activity, as expected and then back down. However, I just received two phone calls that lasted about 45 minutes. After these calls, the CPU activity never went back to 1%. It stayed at 3% or higher. The mA discharge rate did not go back to normal, but stayed 60mA higher than it should have been. Bottom line is that the 60mA additional discharge rate is equivalent to 600mA in 10 hours - 600mA/1340mA=44.7% additional battery discharge. All else being equal, if usage would indicate an 80% battery level after 10 hours, this unexplained additional drain would leave the battery at 80%-44.7%=35.3%.

I did everything that I could think of to bring the processor back down to 1%. Started applications and closed them, made sure that nothing was running in the Task Manager, changed settings, toggled Flight Mode. NOTHING WORKED except a soft reset.

Something caused my CPU to remain active when it should have been at rest and continue discharging at 60mA higher than normal. That has not happened before. Whether it is specifically related to the phone application, Win 6.1 or hardware related who knows. But if this is the reason that battery life varies widely for different devices or the same device at different times, a few adjustments and tweaks will not solve the problem. By observing the CPU and discharge readings periodically I can soft reset when necessary. But that is sure no long term solution.

Great info! What are you using to monitor your CPU usage? We should probably all look at our own usage and see if it's staying higher.

[iggy]

Has anyone tried this to see if it closes the problem apps/services:

http://forum.xda-developers.com/show....php?p=2136914, I don't have a diamond yet (arriving at Bell in a week) but I know this helped with my Apache's battery life.

[cappy]

Originally Posted by the7thson

Great info! What are you using to monitor your CPU usage? We should probably all look at our own usage and see if it's staying higher.

I have NuePower installed for the 1% battery display. The readings that I have reported are from Homescreen Plus, which is a plugin that I use in conjuction with SecondToday. Homescreen Plus reports -100Ma than NuePower. Both Homescreen Plus and SecondToday are by the same vendor. If you are interested, the link to the site is http://www.chi-tai.info/cs_wm_tools_im_cs.htm. I find this combination of the SecondToday and Homescreen Plus convenient and Homescreen reports CPU usage, battery status, and discharge rate, among other things, on one easily accessible screen.

Having more than one person watching for the same thing might reveal more. What I described could have been an anomoly, but I do not think so. As far as reporting to Sprint or HTC, I will explore that. But as kidmet said above, you would think that HTC would have someone reading these pages. It is free troubleshooting.

[tg1.0]

It's good to see progress being made on this issue. However, I think it may be worth mentioning again that the power meter reading is a calculated value, not based on any physical measurement. It is based on the CPU usage, screen brightness, and what hardware the device thinks is on and off.

Using this value and the mAh rating of your battery, you can get an estimate of how long your battery should last under the current conditions. But there are a number of reasons why this estimate could be off:

• Your hardware is physically defective and draws more power than it is supposed to.
• Your battery is defective and its real mAh capacity is lower than rated.
• The power meter calculation ignores something significant.
• Your system has a software issue where it doesn't properly turn off hardware, but thinks that it is off and reflects this in the power meter reading.

There are most likely multiple reasons why people get poor battery life, some of which may be very complicated and hard to pinpoint. (My issue involving having a password is a good example.) cappy may have also discovered something important.