A little tough Love about battery issues.

[GoodThings2Life]

Originally Posted by kevm14

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).

I don't use the driver, because of the admitted inaccuracy of it, so I'm not going to speculate on how it operates. I made the statement, because of the provider's own admission that it is inaccurate in those circumstances.

You're right on your description of Li-Ion batteries, but that's kind of irrelevant if the driver polling the battery is inaccurate.

[GoodThings2Life]

Originally Posted by kevm14

Are you using the factory AC charger?

Not to speak for the user you're asking, but I always use stock equipment or Seidio equipment, since I know they are a trusted provider. I have had no issues with the device under these conditions.

[kevm14]

Originally Posted by GoodThings2Life

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.

What I got from your post was "obviously you idiots should know enough to charge your phone during the day!" If this is not what you meant, then I apologize.

I see these types of issues everywhere in the consumer electronics industry. The more expensive, the more prevalent. The real problem is, sometimes a user is totally off on their expectations, and sometimes there is a real problem and everyone plays the bury-their-heads-in-the-sand game. The challenge is identifying which camp is right, for every single issue. What annoys me is when I get the feeling that certain people will, by default, stick to the latter role, even after being presented with technical arguments and evidence. Admittedly, sticking to the former role is also a problem. Every problem should be approached from a neutral stand point, and no early conclusions until a technical analysis is done, which INCLUDES taking into account manufacturing variation (either parts OR labor). That is what is happening right now.

[cbunting]

Ok , here's my 2 minute BF:

How can battery life get ANY poorer?
I would hate to be an "off-the-shelf" buyer that didn't do any of the tweaks necessary to improve battery life. I'm sure the sprint stores are getting tons of these returned... if you don't know how to tweak it, the phone would die so quickly it would make you think it was defective.

So, now even with all the tweaks, my screen set to shut off 5 seconds, and nothing running, this POS drains the battery so severely, I can't even keep it on for a full day.

Let's give you today for example... I woke up at pulled off charger at 7:30... got a 2 minute phone call, drove to appt. got 2 more phone calls, ~ 5 minutes in length total... that's under 10 minutes of talking... and the battery is at 80%

meanwhile, on a 5 minute call, the radio is heating up like a space heater...

My question is... HOW did HTC and sprint release something that clearly has this major flaw??? Did they not USE the phone?

I mean, this is typical for HTC, they usually release something and rely on their users to beta test it, and deal with their typical horrific build quality and consistancy...

I can't deal with this POS anymore, there is no update by EOW, I have to return it... I can't spend my life on the charger.

[kevm14]

Originally Posted by GoodThings2Life

Not to speak for the user you're asking, but I always use stock equipment or Seidio equipment, since I know they are a trusted provider. I have had no issues with the device under these conditions.

I asked because I've seen people admit they are using either a generic USB cable or possibly an old charger from another phone that puts out considerably less than the full amp that the stock TP charger does. I am very surprised he has the charging issue WITHOUT excessive heat. I assume a diagnosis of his radio power consumption would reveal no abnormal drain, but maybe that's a bad assumption.

[GoodThings2Life]

Originally Posted by kevm14

What I got from your post was "obviously you idiots should know enough to charge your phone during the day!"

I apologize if that's the impression you got from the post. That is not the intent. My suggestion is that people should plan to do so, especially if they're new to the PPC scene and are used to more talk time from their traditional flip-phones and such.

Originally Posted by kevm14

I asked because I've seen people admit they are using either a generic USB cable or possibly an old charger from another phone that puts out considerably less than the full amp that the stock TP charger does. I am very surprised he has the charging issue WITHOUT excessive heat. I assume a diagnosis of his radio power consumption would reveal no abnormal drain, but maybe that's a bad assumption.

Agreed. The Motorola chargers are especially guilty of this, since theirs are often pinned for their own devices and their phones often refuse to charge at all on non-Motorola cables.

[Palladium]

Originally Posted by PocketPcUser

Big D5
Palladium

Maybe you two can comment on this:

I wonder, does anyone have the HD ROM/Radio decomplied/dumped, yet? Take a look at these specs:

Stand-by Up to 450 h
Talk time Up to 6 h 30 min

Maybe they fixed the issue in this device? This device is using the exact same chipset, and the display is larger. Even though the device is without the keyboard, it is obviously not connected, since some people can reproduce an issue without using their phone.

I'd suggest taking a look in that Radio, and ROM, and see what differences there are, set aside from the newer build of TouchFlo3D, and the drivers and Windows Mobile files being for WVGA.

I have not seen a ripped radio rom off the HD, and I am not sure how much help it would be as it is driving a different transmitter chipset.

Originally Posted by Big D5

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.

One interesting thing to note is that the Qualcomm RFT6150 is one of the most popular CDMA Trasmitter chips used in a plethora of low to high range LG and Sanyo devices as well as the HTC devices since the release of the MSM7200 platform in '05. So if it were just the transmitter device, I would expect heat and battery issues with those phones (LG and Sanyo) as well, (I did a quick google search and didn't come up with much there). I was finally able to put my hands on an application sheet for the MSM7501A.

I may have been a bit off base on blaming it entirely on the modem (and the radio ARM Processor). One thing I learned from the MSM 7200 and MSM7500 data sheets is that they both use the PM7500 power managment module. This module controls all aspects of battery and power managment for the entire phone (including charging and thermal managment). Although the information I have found on it is limited, It may very well be an issue with it.

I have made a couple of inquires on configuration/programing of the PM7500 and will chime in when I get the information. But it is quite interesting that many of the issues that are common compaints for this and previous devices are all controlled by the PM7500. Below is a list from the Qualcomm site of what the device controls. (hope that this hasn't muddied the water too much...)

Output Voltage Regulation:


Boost Regulator 5V 600mA 4 Buck Regulator : 500mA Programmable 4 LDO : 300mA Programmable 10 LDO : 150 mA Programmable 4 LDO : 50mA Programmable
User Interface/Drivers:


Vibrator Driver Keypad Backlight Driver LCD Backlight Driver General-Purpose LED Driver Flash Driver 500mA Stereo Speaker Amplifier (500mW/channel) Video Amplifier Integrated MIC_BIAS
Input Power Management:


Charger: Constant Current, Constant Voltage, Trickle, USB Charger Removal Detection BATFET Control Battery Alarms Coin Cell Backup Voltage
General Housekeeping:


Housekeeping ADC - Mux and Scaling Sleep Clock TCXO Buck/Boost Clock Generator Real Time Clock
IC Interfaces:


Power On Circuits Temp Control SBI + SSBI
Trim Cell Interrupt manager SIM/R-UIM Level Translator MPP (Multi-Purpose Pin) USB OTG Transceiver

[slopokdave]

Great post to the OP, I fully agree. I came from an 800w also.

[frejos]

I just thought I'd weigh in from another perspective, I left Sprint (HTC Mogul) and switched to ATT (HTC Fuze which is basically the GSM version of the TP).

I've been extremely impressed with my battery life. In fact, I've decreased my charge cycles from 1-2 times (I had two batteries) a day on Sprint Mogul to once every two days with my ATT Fuze.

I'm not a heavy user, but I do have it checking 4 email accounts every 5 minutes all the time, and ran for several hours on with WiFi on at home. It is wierd going to bed and not plugging it in.

I've attributed the change to moving to the Fuze (TP) but it sounds like it might be more of the change from Sprint (CDMA) to ATT (GSM) making a big difference.

[slopokdave]

Originally Posted by frejos

I just thought I'd weigh in from another perspective, I left Sprint (HTC Mogul) and switched to ATT (HTC Fuze which is basically the GSM version of the TP).

I've been extremely impressed with my battery life. In fact, I've decreased my charge cycles from 1-2 times (I had two batteries) a day on Sprint Mogul to once every two days with my ATT Fuze.

I'm not a heavy user, but I do have it checking 4 email accounts every 5 minutes all the time, and ran for several hours on with WiFi on at home. It is wierd going to bed and not plugging it in.

I've attributed the change to moving to the Fuze (TP) but it sounds like it might be more of the change from Sprint (CDMA) to ATT (GSM) making a big difference.

Now, I said 2 posts up I agree with the OP, and I also am very satisfied with my battery life for what I get but......... going more than 1 day without charging and checking 4 accounts every 5 minutes all day AND using wifi for several hours??????????? I call shenanigans.

edit: UNLESS you did nothing else all day. lol.