A little tough Love about battery issues.

[GoodThings2Life]

Palladium, I definitely agree.

In fact, I'd say your speculation is right on target-- just look at the Diamond/Touch Pro family, regardless of network, and it's obvious that they're sharing a lot of the same base and design work this time. In fact, it's almost like HTC is going out of their way to keep things more consistent this time around.

I would bet that once they get all the products launched on all the carriers, the first firmware revisions we'll see will be carrier-specific bug fixes and we'll see some solid radio improvements. What I'm curious to see, however, is whether the Alltel or Verizon releases bring a solid radio improvement with them.

[Sponge14]

Originally Posted by lipidfats

After I take it off of external power, it usually takes me a couple hours before I ever touch the pro (Although I quickly check voicemail/text/email). My battery is always at 90% when I check the phone after those couple hours. Keep in mind that my battery meter uses 10% increments, so I'm not sure what the exact percentage is but it's no where close to the 70% you're claiming. So is there a problem? Yes, but perhaps it's just your phone. You must have some serious apps running on startup or something else must be affecting it. I'll check again tomorrow morning, but i'm 90% positive that my battery will be at 90%

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.

[GoodThings2Life]

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.

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%.

Anyway, new Simpsons on, so I'm outta here!

[Baffles]

As I've said, I find the battery life itself acceptable, even bordering on good. The part I find unacceptable is that the phone cannot run directly off the charger, regardless of whether the battery is charging or not.

[mrrogers1]

Originally Posted by GoodThings2Life

Palladium, I definitely agree.

In fact, I'd say your speculation is right on target-- just look at the Diamond/Touch Pro family, regardless of network, and it's obvious that they're sharing a lot of the same base and design work this time. In fact, it's almost like HTC is going out of their way to keep things more consistent this time around.

I would bet that once they get all the products launched on all the carriers, the first firmware revisions we'll see will be carrier-specific bug fixes and we'll see some solid radio improvements. What I'm curious to see, however, is whether the Alltel or Verizon releases bring a solid radio improvement with them.

I haven't looked (because I don't really care so much) but is the Alltel phone going to be as cripled as the Verizon phone? If so, they'll probably see better battery life off the bat... Me, I'll keep my double the Ram and battery consumption.

[Baffles]

The ram doesn't take that much more power.

[rransburgh]

I agree that the battery life is acceptable. However, the fact that my phone will die while I'm talking when it is plugged into the wall is NOT acceptable. There is no reason why an AC connection shouldn't be able to run this device. If it overheats it should quit charging and use power from the cable until it cools. It is a design flaw but isn't enough to make me give up an otherwise great phone.

[Palladium]

Originally Posted by GoodThings2Life

Palladium, I definitely agree.

In fact, I'd say your speculation is right on target-- just look at the Diamond/Touch Pro family, regardless of network, and it's obvious that they're sharing a lot of the same base and design work this time. In fact, it's almost like HTC is going out of their way to keep things more consistent this time around.

I would bet that once they get all the products launched on all the carriers, the first firmware revisions we'll see will be carrier-specific bug fixes and we'll see some solid radio improvements. What I'm curious to see, however, is whether the Alltel or Verizon releases bring a solid radio improvement with them.

That is my hope, and also the reason that I have been providing data instead of simply an opinion. I deal a lot with Taiwanese and Chinese manufacturers and the one thing I have learned is they are reticent to change anything without solid data and documentation. So I will continue to use this wonderful device and send further observations to the Support people in hopes they can pinpoint the bugs for this (and if my suspicions are correct) future devices.

[Big D5]

Originally Posted by Palladium

Based on what I have done this weekend (since I use my phone for work this is the first opportunity to COMPLETELY DISABLE all of the radios (airplane mode) and just use the Touch Pro as a PDA) Here is what I see. After a full charge Friday Night, I have not charged it. and still have 46% battery left as of 7pm EDT Sunday. That is with 8 hours of solid PDA use with the screen on (debugging a new app) and at least 3 hours in Power Mode D2 (unattended, Screen off but processor at full power).

That leads me to believe that the issues lie in the radio. My power usage diagnostics also show that during normal usage the power draw on the Battery is about 160mA, however whenever on a data or phone call the current draw jumps to over 500 mA.

So yes I beleive that the issues lie in the EVDO and phone Radios. From my understanding of the Qualcomm MSM platform, the radios are implemented using a separate ARM6 processor to generate the digital transmission signal for the integrated CDMA or GSM transmission hardware. The actual transmission hardware is slightly different based on flavor (and essentially the same as any standard GSM or CDMA phone), but what drives that hardware is primarily software based.

The basic software to drive the transmitter is very similar regardless of CDMA or GSM and will have to be tweeked for each carrier. Since all of the recent HTC devices have been based on essentially the same MSM platform, If I were doing the software development I would reuse the same code libraries from generation to generation (with any bug or required hardware changes). (This next statement is solely speculation) So IF a bug entered in the early implementation for the chipset, it is likely to have made it through subsequent generations since in general most users will accept battery life as what it is and not ask why it is what it is.

However, with the systems I have had to design, I have always had to ask why I am using a given amount of power and what can be done to reduce it even further. So this is something I am used to analyzing with the software/hardware systems that I work on and why it just seemed natural for me to focus in on what was drawing the power.

I think I covered all of the questions that I can speak to....

So the problem is in the ARM6 processor drivers and started in its infancy there fore have nothing to do with carrier specific additions. I thought for sure that this would be something Sprint screwed up it usually is. This being the case we know how good HTC is with these devices I would thing that HTC would have already fixed this if it was possible. There are plenty of other devices that don't use the Quailcom chip set and they have the same type of battery issues which leads me to believe that this is a universal issue not just a Quailcom HTC issue. Could it be that the radios GSM or CDMA just uses a lot of power no matter what device it is? I appreciate you knowledge and hard work in testing this, I hope that there is something that can be done but I am skeptical. The bottom line and root of the discussion is, is this a defect or just the way it is? IMHO it is not a defect, we will have to learn to live with it for now.

[mrrogers1]

Originally Posted by Baffles

The ram doesn't take that much more power.

I'm just saying "better", don't know how much better.