i know why battery life sucks so much!

[kidmet]

Originally Posted by cappy

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.

This is a shot in the dark, but I wonder if the CPU usage stays up after a long convo for something that cools the phone. I know people have had trouble with phones heating up. Hmmmm.... It's gotta be something running in the background that is needed. As an engineer in the defense industry, I know there are a lot of tests done before electronics are labeled as "complete" that measure exactly what you measure (CPU usage, battery usage, etc...).

[cappy]

Originally Posted by kidmet

This is a shot in the dark, but I wonder if the CPU usage stays up after a long convo for something that cools the phone. I know people have had trouble with phones heating up. Hmmmm.... It's gotta be something running in the background that is needed. As an engineer in the defense industry, I know there are a lot of tests done before electronics are labeled as "complete" that measure exactly what you measure (CPU usage, battery usage, etc...).

I can only said that I have been curious about others that have reported overheating, so I have been checking my own device when it has been in use for a while. I did that during and after the 45 minutes of calls today. There was no noticeable warming, let alone overheating. My device, thus far, just does not have that problem. If there is something that is running to prevent overheating, it is not triggered by the heat itself. At least not on my device this morning.

[cappy]

Originally Posted by 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.

No argument from me tg1.0. Your are right. What I have found though is that the mA discharges rates, while maybe not accurate in absolute terms, have been precisely consistent on my phone over a week or more. Others have reported the same mA discharge rate under the same conditions. Turn off everything except Phone radio and I get the same reading today as I did two days ago. Turn on BT. Same reading each time. So I am looking for inconsistencies like the one that popped up today. If the inconsistency can be reproduced, there is a better chance that the problem can be isolated and corrected or avoided.

[kkohlmann]

Originally Posted by cappy

I have had the Diamond for a week now, and the Touch before that. Rather than measure battery life in hours or days, I measure my expected battery life by how each function on the phone drains the battery. For both the Diamond and the Touch, Bluetooth has been the greatest drain for me. With Bluetooth on (no calls, data, Wifi), I can expect an 8%-10% loss in battery per hour. In 8 hours, my battery is at 20%-30%. When Bluetooth is off (again, no calls, data, Wifi), I see a drain of 1%-2% per hour. In 24 hours, remaining battery will be 55%-60%. So I keep Bluetooth off unless I need it.

Phone calls drain about 20% per hour for me. 4.5 hours of phone calls means a 90% drain, plus the 1%-2% per hour mentioned above should leave a remaining battery at 1%-6%. That is about what HTC estimates. If I have Bluetooth on the whole time (whether I am actually using the Headset), add 10% to the 20% for the phone calls or 30% per hour of talk time. So the battery will only last a little over 3 hours.

I can expect a drain similar to the phone call drain when I use the Internet, about 20% per hour. Though I have not used Wifi yet, my guess is that it would be similar to the Bluetooth battery drain.

I have several programs installed, but only run them as needed and they do not seem to drain the battery appreciably, unless they are performing a task constantly. For example, WMP or Sprint TV each will provide a constant drain when playing because it is a constant load on the processor. But having the Calculator program open, or a settings dialog, etc. does not provide a constant drain so I do not worry about closing these types of programs.

This is the stock ROM with a few tweaks using Advanced Config and Diamond tweaks (just what they recommend in the defaults). I keep the light sensor active and usually turn the data connection off when it is not needed. I use the Second Today screen (you can do a Google search) and nueChem's Battery tools. They are always running. The GPS location setting is always On.

There is one big caveat. The estimates above are using the Airave, which provides a strong signal and keeps the radio from working too hard. Prior to the Airave, with my Touch, I did find much poorer battery life because I only got 1-3 bars. So the Airave is a good be1nchmark and the estimates will vary, depending upon signal strength.

Bottom line. In 8 hours with Bluetooth off and 2 hours of phone calls and/or data, I should have a battery level of 100%-(20%x2)-(2%x16) = 44% remaining. Say between 40-50% battery remaining at the end of 8 hours. At the end of 24 hours, same 2 hours in phone calls/data, the remaining battery should be 50%-(1%-2%x16) = 18%-32% remaining. With Bluetooth on, you can do the math. Battery life will be much less.

I love the phone and am quite satisfied with the battery life. HTC says about 4.5 hours of talk time and I find this to be accurate. I consider talk time and data time roughly equivalent. If you use 4.5 hours of talk time and/or data time, the battery will last 4.5 hours. But under normal use for me (about 2 hours of phone/data), using only Bluetooth as needed, I can expect at least 30 hours. About the same as the Touch.

My experience. Hope it helps.

I'm somewhat new to these forums, but I was wondering, based on your formula's which make sense, would it be difficult for NueChem to work into his program a results that would show how much power is actually left to use. Like you have "1 day, 4 hours and 3 mins remaining" or something. I have also wanted to get an idea of how long my phone had before it died, I know it will be a moving target dependent upon hardware usage. I just think it would be much better than what information is out there now. If you think it's a good idea or anyone else for that matter... maybe we should start a new thread?

Thanks,

Ken

[tg1.0]

Originally Posted by cappy

No argument from me tg1.0. Your are right. What I have found though is that the mA discharges rates, while maybe not accurate in absolute terms, have been precisely consistent on my phone over a week or more. Others have reported the same mA discharge rate under the same conditions. Turn off everything except Phone radio and I get the same reading today as I did two days ago. Turn on BT. Same reading each time. So I am looking for inconsistencies like the one that popped up today. If the inconsistency can be reproduced, there is a better chance that the problem can be isolated and corrected or avoided.

Yes. The power meter can definitely be a good tool, but it is important to understand what it really is: a software calculation based on information that the system has about its hardware state. I have determined that the power meter can be wrong at times. An actual power/current meter between the battery and the device would be better.

[iggy]

Has it been clarified whether the battery issue is with the CDMA or GSM version??

[cappy]

Originally Posted by kkohlmann

I'm somewhat new to these forums, but I was wondering, based on your formula's which make sense, would it be difficult for NueChem to work into his program a results that would show how much power is actually left to use. Like you have "1 day, 4 hours and 3 mins remaining" or something. I have also wanted to get an idea of how long my phone had before it died, I know it will be a moving target dependent upon hardware usage. I just think it would be much better than what information is out there now. If you think it's a good idea or anyone else for that matter... maybe we should start a new thread?

Thanks,

Ken

That would be good to know too.

I was thinking along these lines. If it can be determined that certain settings or combinations of settings produce a consistent mA discharge rate reading, software could monitor this reading. A pop-up or some kind of alert would be triggered if the readings become inconsistent with the current settings. For example, it has been reported by 5 people here that their mA discharge rate is 57mA when the Phone radio is on, the Data Connection is on but not transmitting, and BT is on but not paired. With NuChem's skills, he could watch the mA discharge under these settings. If the reading goes to 117mA for a period of time as it did for me this morning, some type of alert would be triggered. Also, this could apply to CPU usage. You could get fancy from there. Once the alert is triggered, there would be a chance to correct the problem, before your battery is drained at the end of the day. In my case, I was manually monitoring. When I saw the inconsistent reading, I soft reset to correct it and avoided a suprise at the end of the day.

To my knowledge the information reported in this thread applies to CDMA Diamonds.

[kidmet]

Originally Posted by cappy

That would be good to know too.

I was thinking along these lines. If it can be determined that certain settings or combinations of settings produce a consistent mA discharge rate reading, software could monitor this reading. A pop-up or some kind of alert would be triggered if the readings become inconsistent with the current settings. For example, it has been reported by 5 people here that their mA discharge rate is 57mA when the Phone radio is on, the Data Connection is on but not transmitting, and BT is on but not paired. With NuChem's skills, he could watch the mA discharge under these settings. If the reading goes to 117mA for a period of time as it did for me this morning, some type of alert would be triggered. Also, this could apply to CPU usage. You could get fancy from there. Once the alert is triggered, there would be a chance to correct the problem, before your battery is drained at the end of the day. In my case, I was manually monitoring. When I saw the inconsistent reading, I soft reset to correct it and avoided a suprise at the end of the day.

To my knowledge the information reported in this thread applies to CDMA Diamonds.

Beyond these calculations, there are also outside affects on batteries. IE temperature, static charges, etc...

[Dreading]

Originally Posted by cappy

The heating issue is an unknown. My device does not heat up. It has been charging for an hour as I write this and it is not even warm. There are some smart people on this forum who appear to have the technical expertise to evaluate this heating issue. Perhaps they will evaluate the problem more closely and draw some conclusions. It may be defective hardware or a defective battery or weak signal or something else. Who knows? Though it is a problem that is widely reported, it is not universal.

Thanks again for your attention to this issue. I'm not having the heating when charging. Rather, I'm starting to notice that my battery drain/heating is not too bad unless I have phone calls lasting 10 minutes or more. At around the 10 minute mark, the phone heats up significantly and thats when the battery drain starts going down like crazy.

[cappy]

Originally Posted by kidmet

Beyond these calculations, there are also outside affects on batteries. IE temperature, static charges, etc...

Good point. I think that we could all live with educated 'guesstimates' if the predictor can at least alert us to a gross battery drain that is going on beneath that gorgeous VGA screen. Then we may be able to stop it before the battery level goes from 95% to 30% in 2 hours.