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:

Short battery life on HTC, is this what you are seeing?

I've read a few posts on HTC Wizard battery life and I'm trying to quantify what I'm seeing (which is hard given varying conditions under which the device can be used and what features are active but I'll attempt that here). I'd really like to hear what other pepole are experiencing under similar conditoins.
I’m getting about two days worth of battery life before the unit is warning that the device needs to be recharged. Here’s what I’ve done with it over the past 2 days:
· 47 minutes time spent using the phone. I get the full 4 signal bars just about everywhere I go, including and the office and at home. I have not used the speakerphone at all.
· About 1 hour of PDA use
· Bluetooth and WiFi have been off. There was no GPRS use during this time.
· The screen brightness is set to the lowest level possible, one setting above the backlight being completely off.
· When on battery power, the backlight automatically shuts itself off after 30 seconds and the device turns itself off completely after one minute.
· I’m running Windows Mobile 5.0
The battery currently reads 18% after 2 days.
Is this in line with what other people are seeing?

I used to drain my wizard to about 50-60% in one day (from morning to evening), when I still let it go to standby, so that seems about right. It goes down a bit faster now because I always leave it on (just let the backlight go off of course) so agile messenger will stay online...
I'm pretty sure this battery life is pretty good for a pda phone though, you can't compare this to a regular phone.
I always connect it to the charger at night so it's no problem for me, and I bring a very small usb cable (like 15 cm) when I don't sleep at home. Usually there's an opportunity to connect the wizard to a computer somewhere so it'll charge, the computer doesn't need to recognize the wizard for that.

I need to charge my Wizard evry night, if it's friday with party etc alot of calls i need to have my samsung d600 with me becuase the qtek goes empty around 23.oo :/

Just done a typical "intensive" day, and I'm really pleased of that thing. Here's what I've done:
~50 min on the phone
~2h30 MP3 playing with TCPMP, LCD off of course
~30min e-mail and internet through wireless
obviously a bit more PDA use, cause uptime meter says 4h39 :wink:
I still have 54% battery at the moment.
Useful to mention, forgot to turn off wireless after browsing, so it stayed on for like 1hr with device off, and that still drains juice.
Backlight is set at the middle.
Once again, my BA would be dead by now. I had ~4h PDA use at standard clock settings, 2hr with wireless on. The Wizard just doubles both these figures. I definitely understand why they've dropped that guzzling XScale... wish there could be an optimised version of TCPMP soon though, video playback is the only thing where i see a real difference in speed, haven't managed to have a video playing smooth without hangups yet.
Skype doesn't run well, but it didn't either with the BA without overclocking it at the maximum it would hold, giving a stunning 1h30 battery life (with wireless on obviously). The device was really hot while doing this, and the standard charger would not give enough current even to power the device, battery was still going down when connected. Had to use a 2A Axim adapter to charge while skyping :shock:
So definitively a GREAT improvement.

I used my MDA Vario the other day and it went down to 18% in approx 4 1/2 hours.
Screen was at max brightness and on for the whole time,
Tom Tom running.
Bluetooth on
About what I'd expect. I don't think my Treo 650 would be much better in similar circumstances.

I just updated the other thread about the battery that up till now its been fine but two days ago the dreaded issue started with me too
I've just lost 20% in 3 hours without doing anything (its been off since)

AKU2 rom gives a definite improvement, I can have 85% left after a day of normal use.

meschle said:
AKU2 rom gives a definite improvement, I can have 85% left after a day of normal use.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Which AKU2 rom. T mobile hasn't released one for my phone yet, to my knowledge.

The qtek rom, many vario users are using this rom out of frustration for t-mobile not releasing theirs.

meschle said:
The qtek rom, many vario users are using this rom out of frustration for t-mobile not releasing theirs.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks

Hey if you upgrade the ROM you should run some tests before installing any applications. It would be a definite advantage to make sure it's not some buggy app that's causing your battery drain.

agreed... I think that is my issue too that it could be a memory leak somewhere in one of the programs
can only put it down to registrywizard, uptime, or resco, the latter i doubt very much though

I upgraded my vario to the newest imate rom and would totally recommend doing so.. my battery life is about double what it used to be now (may have installed something dodgy that was draining it though)
Its also much faster in operation and seems to be a lot more stable too (I suffered a lot from the random reboot problem previously)

what did you upgrade from?
and what rom version are you running? the ones on the ftp for kjam are numbered a bit strange and can be confusing

The numbers are confusing for me as a noob to WM5/wizard.
What is the difference between the Qtek & the Imate roms?

kilrah said:
... Useful to mention, forgot to turn off wireless after browsing, so it stayed on for like 1hr with device off, and that still drains juice.
Backlight is set at the middle. ...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
WiFi doesn't drain battery when the device is turned off, cause the WiFi module will also be turned off automatically - just test it: leave WiFi on and press the power button - after a few hours look at the effect on the battery... :wink:
I usually recharge my Vario every 3-4 days. Although I don't use WiFi and I also don't make many long calls I usually use GPRS always on to receive my mails. I also use BT quite often to listen to music over my A2DP headset - maybe one hour per day on average...
So there must be something wrong with the devices of some of the people posting here... :!:

When does the internet connection disconnect?

I feel like at one point, my internet connection used to disconnect when I was done with an application that used it. That doesn't happen anymore. Now it just stays on for hours draining my battery. What do I do?

You can press and hold the END (Red Phone) button for about 3-5 seconds.

davidbessler said:
I feel like at one point, my internet connection used to disconnect when I was done with an application that used it. That doesn't happen anymore. Now it just stays on for hours draining my battery. What do I do?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Same here. It just keeps going till I tell it now. Quick way to kill the battery. I'm installed the Qtek rom over the T-Mobile UK one the phone came with so I'm wondering if there's a setting missing.

Sorry, but you are a wrong: to leave GPRS always on doesn't drain the battery noticeably - I recently turned it on 24/7 for push email and there is no effect on the battery life at all (in case you don't use the GPRS connection a lot - I usually just transfer around 10 mails per day, each around 1-2kb...)
So there is definitely no need to worry...

Good to know, I'll just leave it running then!

HTC Touch = BAD Battery Life (Help)

I've had my HTC Touch on CDMA/Bell Canada for about half a year now. I love the phone but the battery life just sucks. I can't get through a full day without having to plug in. Where I work and where I live the CDMA signal is weak. My phone is constantly flipping back and forth between X1 and EVDO and voice calls are not very reliable.
I know things like Push mail, GPS...and other data agressive applications will drain the battery, however even when I turn everything off except for the phone itself I can't get through a fully day.
I suspect my phone is constantly busy trying to maintain a connection to the cell network. Does anyone have any tips on how I could help get better battery life?
Leon.

lbloo said:
I've had my HTC Touch on CDMA/Bell Canada for about half a year now. I love the phone but the battery life just sucks. I can't get through a full day without having to plug in. Where I work and where I live the CDMA signal is weak. My phone is constantly flipping back and forth between X1 and EVDO and voice calls are not very reliable.
I know things like Push mail, GPS...and other data agressive applications will drain the battery, however even when I turn everything off except for the phone itself I can't get through a fully day.
I suspect my phone is constantly busy trying to maintain a connection to the cell network. Does anyone have any tips on how I could help get better battery life?
Leon.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It is very hard to provide you with any help when we really don't know what you have installed and running on your phone. Some plugins can drain your battery while they are running - EG - WeatherPanel - Try not to let this program keep running if you have it installed - especially with animated weather icons. Reduce the brightness of your display screen if you can manage that. Make sure that your display is shutting off as well. Keeping the display on will surely drain your battery. Set it to shut off after so many seconds of inactivity. Take a look at your task manager to make sure that you don't have many programs running in the background - and set your task manager to actualy close programs when you tap on the x as it is default setting to just minimize your apps and not close them. If they are all running in the backgroung, you will surely see battery drain.

With a bare bones configuration my battery would last around 10 hours before I had to plug in. All I had running was basically my phone and some light web surfing.
I've since loaded up my phone with a apps/plug-ins and my battery last about 5 hours now sometimes less. I am running some apps which do things in the background:
-Weather Panel, no animated graphics (Auto update every 6 hours)
-HTC HUB (Auto update every 6 hours)
-Push Email (Zimbra mail, looks like Exchange)
-Pull Email (Gmail) every 30 minutes
Even if I can get all these applications to be much less power hungry, I'll get at most 10 hours. I'm hoping to get multiple days of battery life, not just hours.
While on holiday I turned off the phone, went into Flight mode for a week, but still used GPS on occassion. My batteries then lasted days!
Thanks for your suggestions about those apps.

I can almost go more than half a day, which is enough to get me from my house, to work (or wherever I go), and back home. I'm thinking I should get a spare charger for my office though.
But I have running:
FlexMail, with 2 IMAP accounts, and Live account
Palringo or Live Messenger (depends which ROM I'm using !)
Some Opera browsing
Occasional GPS
Some MP3's
And the obvious phone calls
Ohh, and when I get bored, some Kevtris!

I leave work at 4pm, and when I arive at work the following day at 7am, I'm usually at 20% battery life, and that's with it being plugged in via usb for at least 3-5 hours during the evening. Barebones flash, with SPB Mobile Shell 2.0, and that's about it. It's a bummer, having to stay close to a usb port or wall outlet.
I did notice, my normal power consumption is 150-250mAH, however when I plug in to usb, it jumps to 400-500mAH, sometimes higher. That is with activesync or without, doesn't seem to make a difference.

Well, I don't know about Zimbra, but I know the SEVEN push service absolutely *destroyed* my battery life. I just set my phone to check my Gmail every 5 min, and it's good enough for me, with much better battery life.
That said, your problem is your location. Your phone will burn a lot of juice if you work in a basement or dead zone trying to find towers. There's not really anything you can do about it, other than turn off the phone radio when you know you're going to be out of range, but of course, that defeats the purpose of having a cell phone.
Get a new job, get a 2nd battery, or plug it in at work. Smart phones don't have great battery life to begin with, and if you are getting a weak signal, you are just out of luck.
[EDIT]
Or, you can try one of those Sprint base stations. You may not be able to set one up at work, but you can at least do it at home. Should help some.

I got an extended battery (Seidio 2000 mAh) and my phone lasts for more than 24 hours now, probably 2 days if i let it go without a charge long enough.
Like right now I have had a bunch of phone calls, done a bunch of texting, played some kevtris and my phone has a lot of stuff installed on it. It's been off the charger since 9:30AM and its 4:40PM now and the battery is at 81%.
Before I got the extended battery my phone would probably be at less than 50% at this point in time. The extended battery does make the phone A BIT bulkier, but its really not that big of a difference to me.

does your wifi drain your battery a lot too?

hi all,
i don't use 3g nor the data network so i don't know what my phone would be like if i used them..
but i seem to be having problems with wifi..
1) after i press the 'wifi icon' on quick settings menu on home screen, it won't connect (preset, with WEP and all).
And ONLY if I go to settings-wireless control does it connect to the appropriate wifi network...
2) I use wifi to go on the internet and browse the web or check e-mails and etc.. after i unplug it, turn on wifi, battery goes down to like 95% after 2~3 mins of internet... and maybe down to like 70~65 after 30 mins?
Is this normal? It's not, right???
Actually, I feel that my wifi's gotten worse since I upgraded from R1FA014 (Rogers x10a) to R2BA020 (Generic UK x10i, no root)....
Anyone know how to fix this???
Oh btw, my bluetooth connection is perfect..
I listen to my music on mediascape using mw600 for hours and my battery would only drop like 1~5%...
let me know if anyone has solutions to this
thanks!!

I use my Wi-Fi for about about 3 hours a day, and the battery def drains faster, but not noticeably so. I mean in that time, I'm browsing and checking emails and stuff, but I don't lose more than like 20% of battery in those 3 hours...

my phone did the weirdest thing today lol
after i watched a show it went from 93 to 68 amdthen i turned off the screen for an hour or so and when i turned it back on to listen to music it was at 71!!!
k i wasnt hallucinating from the heat or anything... so wonder why that happened??
Sent from my X10i using XDA App

That would happen on my old phone a lot...If I played music or video through the loudspeaker, the battery would drop by like 50% in a couple of minutes, but as soon as I turned off the speaker, the battery would jump back up to where it was. On the other hand my old phone was an SE W810 from like 5 years ago, so I'm not sure how relevant that is...

I have to say, since I went from the ...016 to the ...023, although the battery in general is MUCH improved, I thought immediately it was much worse when wifi's on. I just have to remember to either turn off wifi, or plug it in to charge.

Ungruntled said:
I have to say, since I went from the ...016 to the ...023, although the battery in general is MUCH improved, I thought immediately it was much worse when wifi's on. I just have to remember to either turn off wifi, or plug it in to charge.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
yeah.. that's my problem...
right now i have it running 18hrs with 50% battery left ..
but as soon as i do anything with wifi, it just goes down like there's no bottom...
also i hate having to keep going to setting - wifi setting to get it to connect to my wifi..
i click the icon on the quick menu but it doesn't connect to the actual wifi, it will only reconnect after i turn it off and on if i go to the wifi setting ughhhhh

I've noticed its worse at times running wifi.. Right now it's 430pm and wifi has been on since 9am. So 7 1/2 hours with... 46% charge remaining.
Sent from my X10i using Tapatalk

As long as I leave mine set to sleep when screen is off I have minimal drain with the 20 update on x10a. I see well over 1d usage regularly. (Almost never see 2d though)
I also leave GPS on fulltime since it seems to make 0 difference unless it's called for by a program.