Database Users

Battery Drain on XDA II

Hi,
I have a very recently purchased XDA II.
I was under the impression that the battery time was considerably improved.
Although I have turned down the backlight brightness when on battery power, it still starts to loose power when I receive or send a SMS for example.
Is this normal or do I have a duff battery ?
Steve

try turning off bluetooth when you dont use it
it's suppose to be a batt hog

Yup,
done that. I only have BT on when I am actually using my headset.
Any other idea's
Steve

when does it auto turn off ?
when does the backlight turn off ?
are there any SD cards connected seem to recall that they eat batt aswell

I've had mine a week, have the same power drain problem. After charging it all last night I managed to use it as a PDA for a total of 40 mins over a 6 hour period today before the battery drained. No phone calls were made, Bluetooth disconnected (I do have a 256 MB card installed, but I don't know if this has anything to do with it), furthermore the backlight is set to the default setting and the auto power off set to 1 min. In any case I would expect to get more than 40 mins use of the PDA, the specification states upto 15 hours.
I took the unit back to the store, they say that this is a rare problem (yeah right :roll: ), they gave me a new battery which I am now recharging, hopefully this will work.

mmmm, it's very strange.
I am doing a test now. I have a imate with the official imate upgrade. I have a gps sysonchip bt. One and half hours ago i connected the imate with the gps and i started a demo of 500 km. Now the battery is at 75%.....Maybe de last upgrade solved this problem.... :shock:

You should get far better performance than this.
Three things that can drain the power:
Communications/Peripherals - IR, bluetooth, SDIO wireless LAN etc. Disable all of them unless you're actually using them.
Processor hungry programs - check if you have anything running in the background that could prevent the device switching to full sleep mode.
Lack of radio signal - if you're out of contact with a base station, the device tries to connect at full power every 30s - a big battery drain, so if you know you're out of contact, turn off the radio.
However, even with everything running, I'd expect a running time way above 40mins, so it sounds like you have a hardware problem with your device. I easily get 3h full brightness, full processing (ie watching a movie or playing a game) with radio on.

Turn IR off?
Is there anyway to actually turn the IR off on the XDA II?

Just the Start-Settings-Connections-Beam-Receive all incoming beams checkbox.

tried the new battery today, same procedure as yesterday (no bluetooth etc), had a slightly better performance today from the new battery, managed to get roughly an hours actual use out of the PDA (games etc) over a period of... 10 hours, ooh atleast it lasted the working day so must be better... however still no way near the 15 hours PDA work time as stated on the box!
However something I have noticed is that every now and then (after switching off the unit and just leaving it on the desk) the screen comes to life displaying a running program, (just how do you turn off the media player? I now realise it isnt with the "X"). Anyway why does it "power" back up? I wonder if this has anything to do with my power problem, that perhaps it has switched back on whilst in my pocket (BTW I have set the buttons so that they do not switch the PDA on accidently)
So, I'm recharging again, (I think I might take the MMC card out see if tht makes a difference). I expect something better for my EUR 500, what is the point of being able to go online anywhere if you have to be plugged into the mains! If I can't get the damn thing to work satisfactoraily by next week then it is going back to the shop, despite it being a Gucci shiny piece of kit!

@MoistVelvet: Actually, it;s not so much the device itself but the operating systems that is the cause of a few quirks. Luckily, a lot has been written on this forum and other forums on websites such as www.ppcw.net. A lot can been improved by limiting the number of programs that can be found in the \windows\startup folder of the XDA II. I'd suggest you have a look around in the various topics. I ended up honing my XDA II to a point where I am actually very very satisfied with it's performance ...

Can someone repost the items in the windows start up folder than can be deleted and what they do on the XDA II.
I was surprised at the amount of apps in there, but dont know what I can safely delete.
Steve

Wiz,
thanks for the tip, I'll have a look around.
Well the batery did last longer yesterday, managed to get through a whole workig day before it ran out, so the jury is still out!
Realised perhaps one of the reasons why the unit would switch itself on, whilst at work I have a very low signal, so every minute or two the signal strength would go up and switch the screen on. I have set to auto switch off after 1 min, but I wonder if there is there a way to stop it from switching on?

Hm, my experience is quite different. I use it throughout the day with around 15 phone calls, at least 2 GPRS synchronisations, some other usage of contacts, calendar and email and when I get home it's still around 60 percent - the most drain appears to happen on the way back home when I use the BT headset...
When your uses so much more power you may like to check what kind of programs you use. First idea is to have a critical look at fancy today plugins... my worst experience was with Battery Pack, the best way to empty your battery :lol:
Maybe you like to use UpTime plugin (http://ae.inc.ru/uptime_t.html) which really tells you how much you actually use the PocketPC and which doesn't do anythings while it's switched off...

MoistVelvet said:
Wiz,
Realised perhaps one of the reasons why the unit would switch itself on, whilst at work I have a very low signal, so every minute or two the signal strength would go up and switch the screen on.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Actually, the reason it periodically switches on is the O2 Homezone application. Whenever your phone changes to a new base station (which can happen even if you don't move), the stupid Homezone app turns the phone on. This is a known issue, and the only known remedy is to disable the app completely (remove from Autostart folder, soft reset phone).
Cheers
Daniel

Hi
I have an xdaII, which i load loads and loads of things onto. I did find that the battery was draining quite quickly. eg. charge it all night, just leaving it running in the day with hardly any use would drain the battery by about 90 percent! Bluetooth was off etc.
One time, the thing drained completely, and it needed a hardboot. Im going to send it back shortly for investigation/repairs.
However, since it hardbooted, i have not installed a thing. And i am finding that the battery is lasting a lot longer. I managed to go 3 days, of average usage, (few incoming/outgoing calls), without charging the battery!
This makes me think some apps must cause the battery to drain. I had battery app installed (that runs in today screen). I had fonix voicedial installed. I had quite a few games installed.
I think some software was causing the battery consumption,.. possibly battery pack.

re
I have previously had problems with battery drain, due to apps running in the background.
I also found specific apps like the battery pack, LAN sdio, bluetooth and the camera app, would drain the battery quickly.
Although you can manage closing apps down through settings/system/memory/running programmes I found the app Gigatask http://gigatask.com/ a simpler way to manage tasks.
There are others, but I found this suitable for my needs.
Now when I close an app I know it's closed and not running in the background draining the battery.
I still charge daily, habit now when I get home from work, but I have no worries about battery drain, and it rarely goes lower than 65% for a normal days use.
Cheers, Shire

turning infrared beam recieve off will help a little
:wink:

Auto Power Not Working

Hi There
Great device but for some reason after installing BT Tools and SPB GPRS Monitor the turn off after so many minutes fails to work.
The setting are correct and I've even used the same settings for both the BT Tools battery profiles but it doesn't work. The backlight goes off just like it should but the unit never powers down. As a result I'm unwittingly chewing through battery power unless I manually press the power button.
Has anyone ever experienced this? If so do you know why? Many thanks in advance.
Update: I have since removed BT Tools and the auto-power off is functioning properly again. Any and all advice will be appreciated.

mmm maybe this is the same problem i am having?
I get messages SMS at 6am every morning (scheduled from work) most mornings when I pick my phone up, it is off and the message is there, some mornings even though when I went to bed the battery was full the phone is dead (backup battery and all) I presume the phone is waking up when the SMS comes in and not shutting down so the battery runs completely dead. Although the blue light on the top of the phone is falshing....
I also run BT Tools and will try uninstalling it and waiting a week or two to see if the problem goes away. It doesn't happen every day by the way it seems to happen maybe every 10 days or so......
OHHH BTW I don't have GPRS Monitor installed, just BT Tools!

You dont put it on charge overnight?

I do, but I find that if I leave it on the entire day I only get 3.5 hours of use out of it and then it needs to re-charge. So it needs to turn off when idle.

cruisin-thru said:
You dont put it on charge overnight?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I do sometimes but not always especially if it is already 100% (or close to it), it is still an issue IMHO, having to leave the phone plugged in when fully charged isn't a perfect solution and generally I thought not the best for the battery in the long term!!!!
Besides the same thing could happen during the day, if you dont hear the SMS come in and the phone is in the case clipped to your belt and its switched on for an hour, when it need not be on at all!!!!
Don't get me wrong I love the functionality BT Tools provides, it is a fantastic program, I would just like to know how common this problem is? I will also try and contact the author and see if they know of this problem?
Hardest part is that it doesn't happen every time, only sometimes, just makes it harder for the author to track down the cause, from personal experience I hate tracking down these sorts of problems!!!

XDA Exec almost drains its battery overnight.

I got an XDA Exec a couple of days ago to replace my XDA IIi.
Although the battery had its full 8 hour initial charge, I am having a problem whereby the battery is almost draining itself overnight. Two nights ago it went from 100% to 8% battery overnight. Last night (a short night for me, 2am to 6am), it went from 95% to 42%.
WiFi is OFF. BlueTooth is OFF. There are no programs running (that I know of). It's NOT waking up at midnight and then failing to switch off.
Any ideas before I return it to O2 as defective?

can only comment on mine.
if I'm at work I turn off the phone function as I get no signal and it constantly looking for a signal hammers the battery.
have you set your exec to turn off after so many min's ?
have you set you back light to a low setting.
I would expect to have to charge it every day.

Make sure you have used the Power Save options and also make sure you did not start the Camera app by accident as I found on my Exec this will drain the battery. Before you go to sleep do a soft reset and then see what happens to the battery (the soft reset will make sure all apps are closed).

If it cant get signal then it'll keep searching and drain the battery.
If you leave it connected to GPRS it uses alot of battery.
Check to see if its switching between GSM and UTMS because there is a weak UTMS signal in the room. I have this problem if i leave it on my bedside table, but if it put it on my desk, just a little higher up, it has enough UTMS signal to not switch between the two.
If its a case of not having enough signal then you'll either need to leave it plugged in over night or turn on flight mode.
HTH.
JAmes

Remember that just cos you close a program it doesn't mean it's not running anymore. Check in start-settings-system-memory-running programs to see what's running in the background. I find that if Internet expolrer is running (even if it's not visible) it absolutely kills the battery. The same goes for IM/chat programs but I bet it's Internet explorer...

ps - not sure how experienced you are - to exit a program from the place I describe above - click on the program and press stop.

I had this exact problem when I upgraded to the latest ROM version. Try updating the Radio ROM to version 1.06 (its available on this forum somewhere). This fixed my problem and I'm sure it will fix yours as well.

graybo said:
I had this exact problem when I upgraded to the latest ROM version. Try updating the Radio ROM to version 1.06 (its available on this forum somewhere). This fixed my problem and I'm sure it will fix yours as well.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I agree ... this issue started with 1.08 and higher

Fast Battery Drain over night

Hi guys,
I have a problem with my Jade. I've charged it last evening and I've barely used it. When I've went to bed it was 96% charged (ARIELbattery) and 10 minutes used.
This morning, when I've woke up, The battery was 33% and and the phone was 34 minutes usage time.
Something is wrong. Since there were no bluetooth, no wifi, no anything activated. And for sure, nobody played with the phone during the night.
This is not the first time when I see this behavior, but is the first time when the decrease is so big.
I suspect an app, but I do not know which of them. How can I see it?
Do you have other suggestions?
thanks!

There are some possible reasons:
Some SD-Cards seem to drain battery, so you can take it out for a test.
Some additional software is told to drain battery. Did you install something?
It is also helpful to switch to "flight-mode" over night. This normally reduces battery drain to nearly zero, if no additional consumers exist.

Hi,
Yes I've installed some software, like gAlarm, S2U2, icontact,ThumbCal, Skype, etc but last night none of them was started.
What can I do with the SD Card?! I need the SD-Card. Which card does not drain battery and which does?
I cannot turn off the phone over night.

Some clues here in this forum
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=514556&highlight=battery

I've read those before posting, but there was no answer to my problem. I have 67% drop of battery in 8 hours without touching the phone.

This is most likely that your device goes to screenoff or unattended power state instead of sleep. Your power settings might be corrupted. To change that go to your power settings advanced tab and change everything there (checkboxes and sliders), press ok and then change them back as they were, press ok. I'd suggest to keep the device turning off in one minute while on battery and none of the checkboxes for cord powered mode. There is a really freaky thing that even if you get your device to sleep with power button it will go back to screenoff mode after time specified by the turn off device slider while on battery IF you don't have that turn-off-while-on-battery checkbox checked there.

darfri said:
even if you get your device to sleep with power button it will go back to screenoff mode after time specified by the turn off device slider while on battery IF you don't have that turn-off-while-on-battery checkbox checked there.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the answer. But I do not really understand what you are saying here.
My power settings are: 30sec for Screen Light and 1 min for Device (on battery).
None of the check boxes is set for the case when the device is powered.

It could also be due to the battery defect. After some time the battery could lose its storage ability (because of the defect), despite the mAH stated.
As a comparison, my battery is nearly one year old. On full charge, overnight drawdown (on sleep mode) is about 2%-3% .

ungureanub said:
Hi,
Yes I've installed some software, like gAlarm, S2U2, icontact,ThumbCal, Skype, etc but last night none of them was started.
What can I do with the SD Card?! I need the SD-Card. Which card does not drain battery and which does?
I cannot turn off the phone over night.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have no own experiences with this programs but Skype for example needs permanent connection to internet when activated (be care of the background job!). This uses data connection and this drains battery. I can not quantify this in %. In addition Skype does not allow the system to switch to deep sleep because it needs permanent connection!

None of the app was started. I just have Skype installed, but it was not used.

Uninstall S2U2 !!!!!

nicodbgh said:
Uninstall S2U2 !!!!!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I found some German threads that discuss a problem with this software and battery life. Some loose 10% over night others 50%. I think you should try to uninstall (and afterwards soft-reset!) for a night and see what happens.
Please keep us informed.

First of all, I've disabled the 3G. Now it only gsm with gprs. Since I've done this it seems the battery drop is ... super ok. If yesterday morning I've had 33%, this morning I've had 20%, so 13% drop in 24h, and the phone was used normally as before.
last night the S2U2 was not started.
I will wait until the battery level reaches 10% an I will do a full charge.
I will keep you informed. Thanks to all for advices!

Some clues here too ...
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=471365&highlight=battery+3g&page=2

Hi,
So now, 2 weeks later... after setting my Jade to GSM only (no 3G) I get 7-8 days of normal usage. As I said, before I always had to charge it the third day.
Normally, i get -28mAh drain in standby. When the screen is on around -130mAh (for wake up) and then -70mAh. In a gsm call i get around -250mAh.
I did not switch the phone back to 3G yet, but I will and I will see again the battery drain.
PS: the values were provided by Mobadi.

i believe i have S2U2 installed... and my phones fine!
i have the overloaded rom... and battery life seems great only needs charging every 3 or so days and i do use it quite alot!

so...
after some time of testing and re-testing I still have, from time to time, the behavior that during night I see a massive drop in battery level and an increase of the usage time.
I do not know what is going on, but I suspect that some app is waking up the device to do some work (without turning on the screen), and the Jade cannot go to sleep anymore for a while.
I've notice the same behavior on a HTC Diamond 2.
Since none of the app I have installed on my Jade are installed on my friends Diamond2, I have no idea what app could do that.
If anybody has any idea, feel free .... I am idea-less!

I've made myself a little application to log the current values of the power data. So, I've saw that my phone wakes up each hour by himself, without turning on the screen, does some work (cca -70mA) and after 30sec goes back to sleep.
Any ideea about this?

Battery running out over night

Hey
My battery is emty every morning, and phone turned off. That is if the battery is under approx. 70-80% in the evening. Is it just a bad battery?
Anybody seen this problem before.
Hex3

Do you turn on the "Microsoft Direct Push" ?
When this feature is turned on, I also appeared that you have encountered a similar situation, but only consumes 40-50%

where can i check that, cant find it!! I have spb 3
Hex3

Look at your "Comm Manager"-"Microsoft Direct Push"

Found it. No its set to off, so thats not it. Maybe ill try a hardreset!
But thanks for the help
Hex3

hello
i have the same problem for 2 or 3 months now and i did not find a solution.
i bought a new battery but it did not help.
did you found a solution?
marbon

There is always a solution
Your device must have enabled the "turn off device" timeout (aka suspend timeout)
Don't let your device check your emails too often (once an hour is more than enough).
Use Advanced Config to enable GPRS disconnection timeout.
Don't let TF3D check for webpages updates too often.
Don't let RSS reader check for updates too often.
If your device has Wifi turned on all night, check if it turns off while your device is in suspend mode.
And of course, carefully choose applications that run in background - some of them may prevent your device from going to suspend mode.
(suspend mode is the most power-saving mode)

no, havent found the solution yet

Hex3 said:
no, havent found the solution yet
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Simply put your phone on charge and leave it like that for as long as you possibly can for as much of the time as you can.
Do not run a discharge cycle. Do not try to 'condition' the battery and as soon as you can recharge from an available power outlet.
I get 1.5 days from this and I would suggest that you should get the same.

78michel said:
What happen if you switch off your smartphone ( be carefull ....not suspend mode!)? Is the battery still draining?
Have you check the current delivered by your battery during your ''night stand by''?
The objective is to check if there is any extra leakage current in the main circuit board.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It should not be draining when it's off, it's should actually go up (happend to me).

Hi, i have had my TD2 for nearly 2 weeks and last night i had a similar issue, however my phone was not turned off it was in sleep mode.
Charged battery to full at around 5 p.m went and stayed at my girlfriends and when i woke up this morning the battery was dead, came home plugged in the charger and got no charging light.....oh dear i thought.
So i removed the battery and the sim blew on the contacts etc to remove any possible dust put it back together and now i get a charging light and all seems to be charging ok.
The only thing i did different yesterday was that i went on google maps for the first time and selected the use gps option so it was seeking satellites, when i exited google maps i made sure it was not running in the background.
Im just wondering wether it was still using power to search for sattelites as in my information screen in power it says i have had 8 hours standby and 10 hours 52 mins device usage and i know that is not the case.
To the OP >> Maybe check in your google maps to see if you have use gps selected?

I had same problem after I flashed my phone with new radio 4.48.25.13, after that I used some other raido rom and the problem was gone.

I had the same thing happen, but only once, it was after I was using a gps app in the evening, I had problems with it, it locked up and I terminated it instead of closing it, I assume the gps stayed on and drained the battery in short order.

Hi, no i have not turned the GPS in google maps on, so thats not it. Still trying some different things to narrow it down. Its not every night now, so maybe i have been lucky.....

Same story here...
In my case even worst. I got my TD2 last friday morning. The same afternoon I inserted a new microsd card with zorro-gps installed. The day after, while I was driving with the gps turned on, the phone died. I've thought it was running out of battery, but when i plugged the charger in, I could not see the red led turn on. So I had to remove and reinsert the battery in order to see the led work properly...
Unfortunately from that point the phone is not working properly anymore. While in use it dies and I cannot restart unless I remove and reinsert the battery. The problem is that this happens every 10 minutes...
I'm trying to contact the HTC support, but they are very elusive. They asked for my phone number and they said will call me back...
Did you guys try to change the batteries and see what happen?

No, didnt change the battery. Because its not every night i dont think the battery is the problem. And further more, it began about a month ago ( td2 is approx. 3 month)
FedeR1 maybe you should try hard reset!

Hex3 said:
where can i check that, cant find it!! I have spb 3
Hex3
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you are talking about Spb mobile shell 3.0.1 then this is a reason of the power drain.
See http://www.spbclub.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=24616
Regards,
Stepan

Thank you Stephen, spb mobile shell is out, now we have to wait and see.

Hex3 said:
No, didnt change the battery. Because its not every night i dont think the battery is the problem. And further more, it began about a month ago ( td2 is approx. 3 month)
FedeR1 maybe you should try hard reset!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've already tried with hard reset... nothing
btw when I restart the phon I got the message "a problem occurred with cprog.exe" any idea?

Manila 2.5 is possible. please test it with manila 2.1.
PDA x-trem's V2.2 is best