A little tough Love about battery issues.

[GoodThings2Life]

The different hardware is the point... GSM wouldn't help us with CDMA radio issues which is the claim.

[lipidfats]

Originally Posted by Sponge14

My phone is almost stock with the exception of the battery meter upgrade to show %, and a few programs installed to memory. I used GoodThings2Life's Sprint ROM cleanup so most of the extra stuff should be gone.

Alright, so since you are having such dramatic idle battery results in comparison to me and because I was curious myself, I thought I'd give you the benefit of the doubt by timing/testing it for at least 2.5 hours (took 2 idle hrs for your phone to drop to 70%).
As before, my battery readout after 2.5 idle hrs said 90%. I left my phone pretty much idle (i did check to see the percentage every 10-20 minutes tho). During this time, I received two texts and I had to ignore a phone call (called my friend back from a landline). I also have two email accounts that are set to retrieve mail every 2 hrs. I have the 10% readout fix installed and have NOT installed any tweaks on my device yet (I like to wait a few months for the kinks to get worked out by the great peeps here). So, as I stated earlier... your complaint may just be specific to your device. I agree battery life sucks, but it's not unrealistic to what we have under the hood and for me it's not draining like yours seems to be.
You may want to start a poll asking people to vote on what percentage their readout says after their phone's idle for 2 hrs (after a full charge of course and in 10% increments because not everybody has the 1% installed). If you do, make sure people w/ 1% increment readouts round their results up or down. I hope you resolve your issues, LateR.

[GoodThings2Life]

One of the first things I do is after installing my own cleanup package is to make sure that my email accounts are setup for only 25KB of the message, no attachments, and only a frequency of 30 minutes or longer for the sync frequency. I disable push, because well, I'm not so important that waiting a few minutes for an email is going to kill me, and well, there's always a manual sync if I'm expecting something.

[PocketPcUser]

Originally Posted by GoodThings2Life

The different hardware is the point... GSM wouldn't help us with CDMA radio issues which is the claim.

Heh, well, I won't pretend to know the difference in the more technical stuff, but I would still think there was something that could be gained from it, besides just the OEM's and Windows Mobile related files.

[slypher]

i definitely agree with those that say the radio drains more than it should. If you want to do a fun experiment, dust off that ol 6700. Charge it up to 100%, then turn off all the radios. You will get weeks out of it before it dies (no usage of course), compared to barely a day with just the phone radio on. At the end of the day, i am pretty sure that we all knew what to expect from a PPC phone and the TP delivers an adequate experience (at least from my perspective). -s

[Baffles]

Originally Posted by lipidfats

You may want to start a poll asking people to vote on what percentage their readout says after their phone's idle for 2 hrs (after a full charge of course and in 10% increments because not everybody has the 1% installed). If you do, make sure people w/ 1% increment readouts round their results up or down. I hope you resolve your issues, LateR.

Battery percentages mean nothing. They are purely guesses based on battery calibration as to how much power is left. A more accurate way to measure power usage is to look at the actual power consumption of the device, and there are apps out there to do this. Also, current signal levels will factor hugely into this.

[lipidfats]

Thanks those kind of apps sound informative, but I'm not looking to get too scientific about it.. i'll leave that to r&d. I would dl them and participate if anyone wanted to try an experiment though.
But even if the percentages are estimates, they generally tell you how much is left after it's been used, no? I don't think they mean nothing. I guess you don't have a battery indicator on the upper corner of your screen then huh? I think I'd feel like I was playing russian roulette if I didn't have some sort of indicator lol
Here's how I see it, if someone's percentage reads much lower after the same amount of time and the unequal drop rate continues... then their phone is going to end up powering down much sooner. Kinda tells that their battery/phone is not performing as it should. It's been 5 hours since my last charge and I'm at 80% while sponge's battery was at 70% after 2 hrs... though it might not be a precise measurement, it'll tell him if somethings worth investigating. It doesn't have to be a poll on percentages, it could be how you suggested... but if he's still the minority in either of the results then he could very well have a problem with his specific battery/phone. Either way, if a poll is done, everyone that participates should be under equal circumstances as much as possible.... in a place of decent reception (i probably should have asked sponge that right off the bat), idle state, full charge, no battery tweaks, phone used for at least a week or two, same percentage reading addons, etc. I don't need to go around starting a poll cause I'm happy with my battery life, but someone who's willing to go into depth and set parameters might want to set it up. I think some sort of group testing would be beneficial for those that are questioning their TouchPros...

[Edwood]

Poor reception, particularly EVDO makes for really bad battery life. Editing the registry to allow "Mode of Operation" option in Phone settings allows for 1X only mode which saves battery life tremendously.

As for the charging issue, it's not due to heat with my Touch Pro. I monitored battery charge and discharge rates with NuepowerCPL, and from the very start, with a room temperature battery and phone, the charging rate drops below the discharge rate when using full EVDO or when in a call. Don't believe me, install NuepowerCPL and Try it out sometime.

My Touch Pro does not get overly hot like others have complained. Perhaps it's because I have an Airave at home and it does not have to boost the radio power much for cell phone use. But the charging issue is still there. For Tethering it's not an issue because there is plenty of idle time when surfing for the charge rate to be higher than the discharge rate.

-Ed

[kevm14]

Originally Posted by PocketPcUser

If you are going on a long trip, don't turn it on and off every few minutes, as this will actually increase usage, and take longer. Instead, if you will be on the same road for at least 45 minutes, then just turn off the GPS (Don't just power off your device, as GPS probably still is in a lower power mode, still using some battery power.) and then turn off the device. Also, if you are not using your bluetooth, turn it off. It uses power even if you turn off your screen/via the power button.
Another tip is to keep your device cool during the GPS usage, or talk time. This might help the device charge and not overheat.

You realize that taken out of context (i.e. apply it to something other than the TP) this sounds flat ridiculous, right? You realize you are giving tips to conserve battery power and/or reduce heat generation for a device that is plugged in. Where else in the entire electronics industry is this even the least bit acceptable?

Originally Posted by esqueue

BUT, how hard would it have been for them to have the device run off of the Charger instead of the battery? 1a is the biggest I've seen but maybe it should have been bigger. When the device overheats, simply stop charging and run off the charger so no drain occurs.

We can all agree that this is a great device but we still can't ignore something with such a simple fix. Again I am speaking for those who get this problem.

Agreed, it should do this out of the box no matter what, but DO NOT let HTC off the hook that easily. The excessive heat and battery drain comes from the terrible inefficiency of one or more of the radio units. Some don't have the problem. Tools are readily available to gather data on power usage on a given phone. I wish more people would participate, especially the people who claim to have no problem.

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.

Haha, life before WinMo? No way! Actually of all the PDAs I've owned (not many) none of them had WM installed out of the box. And only 1 was really suited to WM2003, though did run much better on it as it had an Xscale that had just come out and PPC2002 was not optimized for it.

And might as well mention that I have an EE degree.

Originally Posted by Sponge14

#2 can be solved by replacing existing batteries with at least a 1500mah battery, or releasing an extended life battery in the US for a decent price.

That is a really poor solution. You probably won't get the power density necessary to get over 1500mAh within the same dimensions. What is that, 10% improvement? When people's phone's are heating up, not charging, dying in the middle of the day, etc, do you really think 10% more battery life will do anything really useful? To go back to a car analogy I made earlier, it would be like taking the car with half the plug wires missing that gets under 10mpg and "solving" the problem by putting in a 10% larger gas tank.

Originally Posted by blackwatch

http://news-service.stanford.edu/new...re-010908.html

Maybe 3-5 years the battery life will be a thing of the past, and we wont have to follow the ABC's of batteries.

Always
Be
Charging

Honestly? I think that would just create a new breed of inefficient phones. They could charge a lot less for the product, get the performance they want, and still have similar life to what we have now. These phones need to get to the battery life of regular cell phones before we can say we have made progress. Then again, put that technology in a regular cell phone and it'll last for a month.

Originally Posted by GoodThings2Life

Carry extra batteries if your usage requires it. Keep a cradle on your desk and set your phone on it when not in use at the office. Or go out and buy that precious Instinct or iPhone or Storm or whatever gets the job done. But let me tell you this-- even my colleagues with iPhone 3G's sit around at their desks with their phones connected to a charger all day. At least we have the option to swap our battery out if we want!

If only simply putting the phone on a charger solved all the problems. Are you even paying attention?

Originally Posted by GoodThings2Life

By the way, speaking of the battery meter upgrade to show 1% increments... did you catch all the warnings about it not necessarily being accurate right? That is, just because it reports 72% (as an example) it could very well be +/- 5% ... and this is especially true in the upper 15%.

How does the battery life system work? Does it seem linear? Given that Li-Ion batteries should be capable of monitoring their current throughput, I don't see why, in late 2008, a simple voltage based battery life system is common. I have an older Dell laptop (ca. 2002). There is a battery utility that I use to monitor the performance of my batteries. The battery itself is in charge (punny) of monitoring its own rated capacity, present capacity and present remaining power. So when it has a fresh charge, it knows its rated capacity, and as the laptop uses energy, it keeps track of every electron, essentially counting down. When charging, it counts up. As the cells age, the rated capacity is not the true capacity and it will recalibrate itself (a full discharge is the most direct way to accomplish this) with the new, reduced capacity. Makes me wonder if all Li-Ion batteries are actually capable of this, with all the smarts and safety features they have (by necessity).

Originally Posted by lipidfats

You may want to start a poll asking people to vote on what percentage their readout says after their phone's idle for 2 hrs (after a full charge of course and in 10% increments because not everybody has the 1% installed). If you do, make sure people w/ 1% increment readouts round their results up or down. I hope you resolve your issues, LateR.

Didn't someone right in this thread state that the 1% increment mod is specifically least accurate at the top 10-15%? You are setting up for possibly the least consistent test possible.

Originally Posted by Edwood

My Touch Pro does not get overly hot like others have complained. Perhaps it's because I have an Airave at home and it does not have to boost the radio power much for cell phone use. But the charging issue is still there. For Tethering it's not an issue because there is plenty of idle time when surfing for the charge rate to be higher than the discharge rate.

Are you using the factory AC charger?

[GoodThings2Life]

Originally Posted by kevm14

If only simply putting the phone on a charger solved all the problems. Are you even paying attention?

Kevm, it's not recommended to start off with your first 14 posts here being an arrogant prick and accusing people of being incompetent and not paying attention as you just have with everyone here.

Nobody is contesting the fact that if you have a faulty device, that you need to replace it. Nobody is suggesting letting HTC off the hook either. We're suggesting that you use common sense and rational judgment.

If your unit is genuinely defective, replace it. If it just doesn't meet your personal expectations, then either you made a bad investment and need to change up while you're within your 30 days to do so, OR your expectations were faulty and you need to adapt regardless of what that adaptation is.

As I and others have said, HTC will release an update. Just because it's not done yesterday doesn't mean it's not coming, that they are unaware, or that they don't care.

Voicing concern over an issue is one thing, and in fact it's appropriate to do so. Being obnoxious and making demands while accusing people of incompetence is another, and it's a poor method of achieving your goals.