Database Users

New Prophet Restarts after 45% battery life

Hi I was in Hong Kong and I bought the O2 XDA NEo the problem is that everytime I hit around 45% the shuts off, if I try to turn it on it will go to the windows splash screen and go into a restart loop but if I charge my phone it won't happen. Is something wrong with the phone or the battery is diffective?

How long does your phone last on a battery? And what are you using with that (e.g. when you always have bluetooth and wifi enabled the battery won't last as long as when you don't have those enabled).
Because it could be your battery is faulty, or the chip on the battery is faulty (from which the % is read).
If your phone, fully charged, lasts for a few days (3,4,5 depending on what you do) it doesn't seem the battery would be faulty but the readout is not that good.
Have read things before about phones shutting down when it says there is still 20% battery left or something which might just be a mis-reading. When I use the battery of my old magician the readout seems to be fine although when I use the battery that came with the prophet I saw it shutdown once at 10% (though I never make that, because it's always charged before that point ).

its actually gotten worst now it will shut down at around 60% and will go into a restart loop if I try turning it on

hmm, something is not right (doh). I recommend you bring the device back for servicing.
However, if you have a battery laying around from a magician or another prophet try it with that one and see what happens. At least you can rule out the battery/device. But otherwise you can leave the tech-guys to that

I did order a new battery from ebay but its not here yet so I can't rule it out and as for repair it will be kind of hard since I bought it in Hong Kong while on a vacation and now I'm back to canada.

so I finally got the battery from ebay the 45% shut off problem is gone but now I have new problems, I notice with this battery the neo runs slower which dont' make sense and for some reason it won't charge when the neo is off only when on, also it won't charge pass 89% so the light on top is never green??. The first thing I did when I got this battery is fully discharge it until the phone shut off and recharged it while its on because it won't charge when it's off? any ideas or did I get another defective battery??

Hmm.. that's weird. Did you upgrade it with another rom perhaps (e.g. AKU 3.2 or something). Because those roms sometimes have troubles with charging.
But the phone should be charging allright when you turn it off (well, make it go in standby that is). Or do you completely turn the device off?
Can't imagine you have 2 faulty batteries though :/ Maybe there is something wrong with the device? Hard to tell...

completely turned off and I'm using 2.3 rom LvsW_Edition

great I tried flashing to the dopod rom got an error and stuck at the 3 colour screen i think its the bootloader what do i do now?

erm... well you could try the 2.20 qtek rom which seems to be working well for quite some people (found here).
Although you have to make sure you read that thread good and use the ROMUpdateUtility_NoID.exe (found on ftp) to upgrade (or you download RUU-Prophet-G4-AKU2.2-2.20-2.47.21-Jester-r1.exe and take the ROMUpdateUtility_NoID.exe from that using WinRAR, but it's wasting bandwidth a bit ).
Update instructions:
1: With the qtek 2.20 rom you need to extract the zip and the exe file in the zip with WinRAR.
2: Then there is one folder called 'OutputFile' and a folder called 'RUU_TOOLS'.
Inside the RUU_TOOLS there are some other folder (prophet -> WWE), when you go through them and in the WWE folder you see a bunch of files (readme.doc, enterbootloader.exe etc etc).
You need to copy ROMUpdateUtility_NoID.exe to the WWE folder with all the files. And you also need to copy the 'nk.nbf' file to the WWE folder (from the 'OutputFile' folder).
3: And then you need to put your phone in bootloader mode and run ROMUpdateUtility_NoID.exe to upgrade, which should work nicely then.
Hope that was a good and clear explaination

I just reflashed the rom with LvsW_Edition and it brought my phone back to life but I still have the 89% problem but thanks for your help anyways

Well, I have no idea what could be wrong.
My phone charges when it's turned off, so I guess it must be a phone problem :/ Maybe a charger problem, but that seems unlikely.

well I don't know what happened I guess after the 2nd discharge the phone is stuck at 98% charge now not 89% I dont' think it's the phone or the charger since the old battery that dies at 50% charges with the phone on or off, I'll keep discharging this battery maybe it will eventually bring it to 100% full charge

I had enough with this battery its completely unusable with this battery in my phone it slows down so much that navigation is impossible, I have to reset the damn thing every time. I was reading on a post here regarding a 1800mah capacity battery for the prophet so I bought that on eBay and sending this garbage back.

Question: Has ANYONE figured out a...

...definitive solution to the overheating (and subsequent crap battery life) issue with the Tytn/Hermes/8525?
This seems to be one of the most prevalent hardware-related problems I've encountered after perusal of numerous boards.
Charging, it heats up. Duh. Fine. Disconnect, put it in my breast pocket after it cools down, twiddle my thumbs. During this whole time, for purposes of this test, EVERYTHING is switched off: phone radio, wifi, bt, push, and as many of the background processes as I can kill without having the phone hang on me.
You'd think the symptoms would be the same every time. But nooooo...this thing has a mind of its own. Sometimes it'll be 5 mins before I start feeling the heat, sometimes 40. It's totally unpredictable. I've tried every way I can find to extend the battery life with no luck; this is getting retarded.
So: Battery life drops drastically once the thing starts heating up. But not before. From 3PM to 4PM today, battery life was at 100% and did not move. Sweeeet! I thought...too soon. Got that warm and fuzzy feeling - then it's in free fall. 10% down in 45mins, another 20% by 5:30, dead as a doornail by 8PM. That's exactly FIVE hours of "standby" with ZERO activity. Screen was turned on maybe 4 times just to check battery status. 200 hours of standby?? Sure, in a deep freezer packed with dry ice...
Installed Batti: if anyone with close to normal (advertised?) battery life has also installed it, could you tell me what your temperatures are like? When I'm charging, I'm at 35.6C. My voltage is at 4.213V - this might be the problem since the battery is listed as a 3.7V 1500mAH. Also, I removed the charger for about 30 seconds after Batti said it was charged, then reinserted it. It took about 30 minutes to tell me again that it was full - all the while listing the "Percent" as 100%. Gah!
Anyway - back to the reason I've posted:
1) Is this a phone issue, tweak/registry/software issue, or a good old fashioned battery issue? I've got another battery coming in shortly but it's nothing special, not sure of the brand, just want to compare it to this one - which is a Seidio.
2) If anyone else has had this problem and solved it, please let me know what you did.
3) This phone is for sale if anyone wants it and knows how to fix it. Other than the 5 hours of battery life, the phone is perfect.
Thanks all!

The only time I've ever had this problem was when I installed the very first Palringo mobile beta, and it continuously polled the Palringo servers whenever it was connected... I had a battery life of about an hour and a half!
I can only suggest you have some poorly-written app on your device which is polling some piece of hardware or using (or trying to use!) the data connection, subsequently failing and looping round to try again and again.
I'm not using Batti (using the BatteryStatus Today Screen plugin), but it shows temps - I'm charging my device at the moment and it shows ~41 degrees celcius. When I unplug the charger, I have about 70mW usage and when I tap to turn the backlight back on it roughly doubles (backlight on its lowest setting). Using roughly 40-45mA just idling, I have push mail turned on and ActiveSync is syncing probably every 5/10 minutes or so (can't remember the interval).
I get about a day's worth of usage including regular phone usage, data usage, then locking the device (including turning the backlight off) when it's just on the desk or in my pocket (less if I have BT turned on all the time, obviously). All I can think of is that you have some app on there which is either interacting with something else or causing the problem itself.

@slidizzy:
what is the manufacturer name on the battery?
There are threads around about certain manufacturer brands (there are a couple of different brands) and their performance..
i had a dynatec and it was crappy.. took it back and got a sanyo battery and all was good...

Possible solution - Same geographic location
Hi. I seemed to have the same problem recently. I think my radio was the new 1.54.00.10. I have two batteries and each one was killed in 6 to 8 hours.
I first downgraded the radio to 1.51.00.10 and it seemed a little bit better, but upon upgrading to 1.54.70.00, it seemed to have gone away. My OS is Pandora's 7.1 w/ 3.62.
With 1.51.00.10, I was able to get over a day's worth of life on one charge in 3G/H mode. It seems this 1.54.70.00 is giving me more life, but I'm still testing.
Maybe give this a try, upgrading to 1.54.70.00 and a 3.62 os. No problems for me so far and it seems like it's a keeper!
Hope this helps!
Quakie

Soft reset when it starts getting warm, soft reset after charging if it is warm when on the charger.
My 8525 used to have this problem, but it went away on its own. However, soft resets when the device felt warm did solve the problem when it was occurring. Note that my phone is no longer warm while charging, either.
A lot of people try various radio upgrades/downgrades and ROM changes to fix this, but I think that's on the wrong track as I've never seen anyone report that doing these things made any difference. However, if you're not using WM6, I recommend at least making that change.
Other than that, hit the reset button if it starts to feel warm for no reason and after charging, and you should be fine.
My guess on this is that there is some kind of problem where the device thinks it is plugged in when it isn't, and then it over stresses the battery causing the heat and fast battery drain.

My experience
I am on Rogers in Canada, the same company that owns Fido, and I wonder if there is a problem with their network/ActiveSync/3G/units compatibility.
carrier: Rogers wireless (Canada)
device: branded HTC TyTN WM 5
ROM: 1.34.631.14
Radio: 1.42.00.00
Recently activated Push Email and connecting to exchange server via Activesync. Push requires an "always-on" data connection. It seemed to have been working fine for about 2 days, then suddenly my unit started to heat up significantly, (luckily no screen warp), and my battery would drain from 100% to 0% in 5 hours (if I was lucky). Unsatisifed with Rogers suggestion that replacing the unit with a refurbished unit was the way to go... I continued my research and experimentation and 48 hours later here is whatI came upwith so far:
1) Hard Reset - did not help the situation
2) Soft Reset when heating up - did not help the situation
3) Most frequently associated activity - ActiveSync on with 3G Data Connecton enabled and server directed to exchange server... no difference depending on how often I had the mobile device ping the exchange server. The heat and battery drain occurred while the TyTN was in hibernation (dead unit in the AM when I awoke).
4) Battery drain modifiers - worsens with worsening heat, worsens and acclerates if you remain in an area of low signal (less than 2 bars showing)
Best solution(s)/explanation(s) to date:
1) 3G is a battery killer - it uses a lower intenisty signal, and it generally draws heavier on the battery and hardware when using the network
2) In Phone settings, switching your Band to GSM (2G) fixes the device into one band (does not allow automatic switching and constant detection of best signal). Unless you are a real Power User and rely heavily on every ounce of speed that can be squeezed out of 3G there is no noticeable difference.
3) I have switched off the "receive allincoming beams" for the Ir interface to conserve every mV of power in my battery.
4) Since the switch (a few hours now) I have had no heat issues and the voltage has remained stable with ActiveSync on and mild websurfing to download a couple of CABs... granted it is minimal usage as it is 2:30AM but I think this may be the trick (on Rogers with a TyTN anyways)
I'll keep an eye on this and do some more analysis on the battery... Any input readily welcomed...
M

sounds like you simply need to buy a new battery.

It's not a tumoh!
Doesn't seem to be battery...
I recently tweaked reg with some battery hacks, locked it into 2G and all has been well. Holding a charge with the data connection engaged 24/7 - drops to about 65% charge over 24h, having to charge only every 2nd/3rd day...
M

Help - Battery Drain excessive

*jump to ashtricks for immediate problems without reading software/ROM changes.
I know this is going to be made especially difficult with all the different software/combo's that can be loaded, but I have to post this up and see if any one else has seen this and if it might be hardware or software.
I have a HERMS 100 (8525). I first got the phone in April with WM5 (don't know which build they might have been on then) and which ever Radio was coming on them then. My battery would usually last 2 days with my avg use.
This has been the case threw upgrades until the last 2-3 months. I upgraded From one version of WM6 to VP3G's 2.X build of WM6 and I upgraded the radio to which ever version was the newest at that time (maybe 1.47 or 1.50). I Noticed a sudden drop in battery life, but the phone pretty much always made it a full day even with high use, so I didn't think much of it. I did notice about this time that sometimes the phone would alarm me and say it had 20% battery remaining, but if I rebooted the phone it would say 80 or 90% power remaining when it came back on and work fine the rest of the day.
The following has been over the last month. I upgraded to VP3G's 3.0 and again later to 3.6 and again to 3.62. I noticed the battery continued to degrade throughout this time. So I upgraded the radio to 1.54. The battery continued to go down hill at an even rate, but I noticed something else, the battery would not take very long to charge, but was dying faster and faster.
Well I started tracking and experimenting. Starting last week (no change in software or ROM's for the last 2 or 3 weeks) the battery would rarely make it through the day even when the phone was not in use any during the day (Granted I get no cell service at my desk at work, but I never have even back when the phone would last 2 days searching for signal). Most days last week it wouldn't make it 5 hours from being unplugged even when the phone wasn't in use. I decided to run the battery all the way down to where it wouldn't even turn the phone on anymore as I had heard sometimes you needed to do that after a rom upgrade. It did not help, but I noticed that the phone said the battery was fully charged within 2 hours from being completely dead.
*
Today was the worst, I unplugged it after being plugged in all night. Unplugged it at 6:45am. I did not use the phone, it just stayed in standby (I hadn't even taken it out of standby any today. I am at work with no service (When I say no service, I don't mean sometimes it finds something, I mean no cell service from any carrier makes it past 10 feet of the front doors entering the building and I am about 150 feet from the closest wall to the outside). I grab the phone at around 10:30am to check on a meeting notice, clicked on the phone to wake up and the battery alarm alerted and the battery said I only had 20% power remaining. In 5 minutes of doing what I was doing the battery had gone down to 10% remaining (so the phone went from lost 90% of it's power, never being used in less then 4 hours). I went back to my desk, plugged the phone back in and within an hour I noticed the amber light on the front that I relate it to telling me it's charging had turned green, I unplugged it and checked it and the battery said it was full 100%. Could the battery really charge that fast?
*
I know this would be easier if I could remember what radio and what version of WM5 came on this phone and loaded it back on and I am in the middle of downgrading the radio since I had ran WM6 with no battery issues separate from WM5 until I did that one upgrade with the radio. I guess I am curious if this could be a hardware (phone or battery) where it's not charging fully or if this seems to be a software issue.
I know all the factors that can be involved make this hard, but thanks for any responses you guys can give.

ok, how about this one, Is my battery screwed? I notice while I am using the phone the battery gets really hot. Today it did the same thing of all of a sudden saying I had 10% power after only using it for 5 mintues, rebooted the phone and now I am back to 70%.

Hi,
There's a lot on here about this problem. Have you read the wiki?
Some solutions you might try:
- turn wifi off.
- turn off all beams
- put in the fake server trick.
- search to see if you have any software that continuously polls the battery or is seeking an exchange server
- ensure all your apps fully close rather than minimise
- invest in a new battery.
WB

Thanks, I have gone through the wiki Continuasly since I got the phone in April, but with all the stuff out there, I could have easily missed something.
- turn wifi off - Never turn it on
- turn off all beams - Beaming disabled
- put in the fake server trick - Have to research that one
- search to see if you have any software that continuously polls the battery or is seeking an exchange server - have to check, don't have exchange server setup. I do have it checking emails every 15 minutes, but I never had any issues with that setting and the battery lasting a couple of days
- ensure all your apps fully close rather than minimise - X button set to close not minimize and I often check it to see whats running.
- invest in a new battery. - Will be doing that next. Just waiting to see what case I might get for Christmas.
Thanks again, I will research those other items.

I had a similar problem where the stock battery would only ever last for ~7-8 hours - even on standby. I got an extended life 3000mAh battery and that managed to last for about 14 hours.
I had a talk to HTC and they agreed to warranty claim it. I'm still waiting for it back... It was sent back to them on 14/11, and I'm still waiting.

Stop your device checking for emails for a few days and ses what happens. Definitely install the fake server trick. Activesync continuosly trying to do its dirty work can be a pain in the arsenal, at times.
Let us know how you get on.
WB

wacky.banana said:
Stop your device checking for emails for a few days and ses what happens. Definitely install the fake server trick. Activesync continuosly trying to do its dirty work can be a pain in the arsenal, at times.
Let us know how you get on.
WB
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well I turned off email checks last night and disabled the radio this morning so it wouldn't search for signal when coming to work and set the phone on my desk. I never used it this morning, just had it sitting on my desk in standby, until about 4 hours after I took it off the charger and the phone buzzed me and when I checked the phone the battery said 0% remaining and the phone cut off a few seconds later (now I am sure if I would have turned it back on the battery would say something like 70%, but I didn't do that this time). I left the phone off and plugged it into the computer to charge, the LED on the front come on amber for about 20 minutes then went to green. I turned the phone on and it says 100%. I don't see how the battery went from 0 to 100 in a matter of 20 minutes.
I did a lot of searching the last couple of days and phone issues from email to bad manufactured batteries (which I happen to have the brand someone suggested as a bad one), I also saw people pointing out do the fake server trick, yet I can't find a single time where anyone said what the trick is or how to do it. Not even in the WIKI where the trick was mentioned as a possible fix (or google for that matter, just the same words first posted in a thread here about it).
So, how do you do this server trick?
I plan to get a new battery after Christmas at any rate.

Check this thread:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=338421&highlight=fake+server+trick
I was having the same battery drain problem (less than 8 hrs on a full charge), I did the fake server and turned off auto day light saving time checking the clock settings, I now get 12 - 15 hrs on a full charge.
I'm running vp3G's 3.62.3 AT&T ROM with radio 1.54.07.00

Thanks! I was just finishing flashing a new ROM when I saw this. I did the fake server trick, but this rom doesn't have the Dya Light Savings time option where the instructions say it should be. Maybe that's all removed by this rom. TIme will tell.
Thanks again.

@ Firehawkns
hey buddy!!
I am using a JasJam for the last 2 months. i dont know if my reply is useful to you or not. As far as battery life is concerned am impressed with mine. Am using TNT's latest ROM and my radio version is 1.54.07.00. I use my phone all day with couple of calls that last about 2-3 min each. But every night I get calls from my gf, to whom I talk for 3 hours straight(mostly starting from 11pm to 2 am) and every day I put my phone to charge after I finish the call. So after finishing the call I still have 50% of battery. Moreover our call starts right after I leave work at 11pm so by the time I reach home which is around 11.30pm my phone connects to wifi too. So all the time am on the call as well as an active wifi connection.
So as per my experience the battery life is cool. So try TNT ROM!!!

Interestingly enough, now I've got my phone back from the warranty claim, it's only drawing 81mA with backlight on, no wifi or BT. Before sending it back, it was drawing ~180mA with backlight on, no wifi or BT.
This will just about double the battery life that I get in theory...
Install BatteryStatus on your device and see what it tells you.

That is a cool program.
First off I really hope it isn't the phone, for one it's my third one from Cingular since the first two died within 2 weeks (back in may), second it's got one big gash down the corner where it came out of the holder and hit the road one day. I think that would be just enough reason for them to not do anything with it.
Anyway, I am going to replace the battery because I can't figure out why the phone is doing things like saying it has 20% batt remaing, then I reboot and it goes to 70%. I am hoping this is a battery issue. So far the phone has been unplugged for a tad less then one hour, has not been used and the battery meter is on 90%.
Battery Status is a kick butt program and I plan to do some searching today to see if people have benchmarked there ratings/draw. I notice mine jumps randomly. With wifi, BT, all programs all terminated, backlight on the lowest it will go and radio has one bar 3g sometimes, two bars Edge sometimes, but didn't change during watching this list below, but the MA does this every 5 second refresh:
111--190----125-----109----250----210-----140----135----226---111---etc.
I am currently running a barebones fresh flash WM6 rom with nothing installed except Cingulars media net/ISP settings, radio is 1.47.10. Going to try 1.50 today I think.
I turned the radio off just now and the MA went down (expected) to 84 and is jumping between that and 104. The battery has dropped to 80% since I listed 90 above. The phone has now been unplugged for right at an hour. Also it might be interesting to note that the little battery percent/bar icon on the "Battery Status" software once in a while will display -1% like it is right now, the phones battery display says 80% and when I tap the battery icon on battery status it jumps to 80%.
Anyway, I am just listing points since this thread is here, I know I need to replace the battery first before any additional insight can be brought forward.
Thanks everyone.

Hmm.. On my Schaps 4.22full, radio 1.54.00 on good reception (on Finnish network) I get around 30 mA with GSM and 3G when idling(no wifi, no bluetooth, no beam, backlight around halfway). With airplane mode on I get around 28 mA. Tried with backlight dimmest and the drain was 15mA on GSM network.
Usually I put the 3G off so the battery would last longer.
The phone takes more power when searching the network so it would be a good idea trying to switch the phone part off at your office.

Well, looks like it was indeed the battery. Over the last week the phone would randomly shut off (about 4 times a day), the battery would be at 10% within 4 hours even if the phone hadn't been used, and while using the phone you could almost watch the battery go from 90% to 30% within a 5 minute talk time, reboot the phone and it would be back at 80%.
Put in the new battery yesterday after charging over night and the phone not only didn't shut off at any point, but I had 60% power remaining by the end of the day (with some data and voice use).
The old battery was a Dynapack from China, that I had read on here is prone to defects.
Thanks for the help everyone, wish I would have gotten a new batt sooner.

HERM100 (ATT 8525) - Sudden Battery Drain, 3G turning on without user interaction.

I recently acquired an AT&T Tilt for myself and an 8525 (HERM100) for my wife. Since getting the 8525 there were issues with the battery being depleted quicker than one would generally expect - the battery going from 100% to 0% in less than 3 hours with most of the time spent in an idle state.
I figured it might be a software issue and decided to look for a ROM that is reasonably power efficient. Using the WM6.1 BENCHMARKS thread I decided on loading PDACornerPro V27 RBSN 3G. Additionally I disabled 3G connectivity as we don't have data plans for the devices and have no need to run the more power hungry radios. I also diabled all the device's data connections using Modaco NoData so nothing would be triggered inadvertanly. I also ran the Battlog utility to get a record of general power consumption; idling w/ the screen dimmed/off at about 30ma, while running application it would top out at about 170ma. I was satisfied with this improvement as with 'normal' usage the phone could easily last the majority of the day without needing a charge (which was the goal), so I gave the device back to my wife to use again. The device was left idle for the remainder of the night, by morning it was dead. I checked the battlog utility's log and found that shortly after leaving the device to idle for the night it's power consumption jumped up to around 470ma, depleting the battery very quickly.
I verified that 3G was still off and that there were no unnecessary processes or applicaitons running in the background. No matter what I did the power consumption remained around 360 - 470ma. I finally decided to give it a rest and I pulled the battery from the 8525 and left it alone for about an hour (gave me some time to relax from the fustration). When I returned I reinstalled the battery and powered up the device, I checked Comm Manager and found 3G on again; I turned it off and I checked the Battlog utility and found that the power usage levels returned to the aformentioned 30 - 170ma. The following day this happened again - same jump in to the 400+ma range and after having the battery out for ~20 minutes power usage returned to normal; the only difference this time was that 3G had not inadvertanly been reinabled.
Any ideas on what would trigger the dramitic increase in power usage (an how one might prevent it) and why letting the phone sit in a powerless state for ~20 minutes would correct it?
Recap of the device:
ATT 8525 (HERM100)
ROM: PDACornerPro V27 RBSN 3G
Radio: 1.54.07.00 (Stock)
SPL: Olipro 2.30
Battery: HERM160 (3.7VDC, 1300mAh) & HERM161 (3.7VDC, 1350mAh) *tested with both batteries, same results.
Thanks for any insight you can provide. Attached is a zip with Battlog's log file of the first occurence of this problem in text format as well as in an xls file.

Ideas from a non expert
Well, i did experience something similliar with a touch pro. Suddenly battery consumption increases like hell. I believe it happens, when changing cells of your provider. E.g. the device switches between GPRS and 3G back and force, because you are just in between. So, maybe this activates the SIM card - which would consume more power - I guess. I am not an expert for this. But I could observe sudden massive power drains when moving in a train or even in my flat, where one side is more GPRS and the other more 3G. You can watch e.g. by using http://www.commmgrpro.com/. There is a "save battery" mode. Ok. But this are just my non techie thoughts. Pls. post, if you got a solution.

Hey I have exactly the same problem as you do. I just recently bought this phone on ebay, and I charged it full and left it idle for 2 days. I come back and the battery is completely drained. Also, the 3g icon keeps showing up. All I hope for is that this isnt a hardware problem.

Same for me battery drains far too quick, maybe the batteries are slowly dieing, i have seen the other more powerful batteries what last a lot longer, i think my option is to ebay for a battery of twice the power. There is just so much going on with all the tech on the pda's i suppose these batteries just can't hack it. Like i say short life length on them.

Battery Drain Issue - ROM/Radio/Battery Agnostic

Hey guys,
I'm having a bad battery drain problem with my Touch HD. The phone will drain itself in less than 6hrs, even if it is sitting on a table with all radios turned off, freshly hard-reset, doing absolutely nothing.
Initially I thought it may be an issue with the ROM I was using, but flashing an original HTC ROM didn't help. I thought the radio may be the cause (even though it wasn't in use), but flashing different radios didn't help. I considered the SPL might be the problem, so I reflashed a stock one, didn't help.
I've even tried brand new batteries, but they all drain out like you wouldn't believe. It doesn't matter whether there is a SIM or microSD card in it or not, drain is the same.
What I have noticed is the bottom half of the back gets slightly warm, just sitting on a table doing nothing. This is not something I noticed before this problem began.
Can anyone suggest a solution? Or is it simply defective...

Switch to flight mode and see if drain persists. If it does, then some software must be preventing the device from going to sleep mode.
If you are confident there's no such software installed, might as well be a hardware issue...
If no drain when in flight mode, then you may have wi-fi/BT/wireless connections always on causing this.

I'm almost 100% certain, since it does it on several different ROMs (including stock ones), several different radios, all with the phone in flight mode, all straight after a hard reset. Even so, it shouldn't do it simply connected to the 3G network, an Xperia X1 connected to the same network sitting next to it doesn't experience anywhere near the drain of this thing.

Looks very much like a battery issue..
However have you tried charging it from wall socket rather than USB (USB seems to incompletely charge HD - though it may say 100% battery actually charges up to ~70% only).

spoilt battery?

I had this problem after using videocall only a week after getting the device (this was about 4 weeks ago)
The steps i took (which i got from here) was once the battery went down to 10% I turned off the phone and charged it to full from the power point (not via usb). Then I did the htc troubleshoot test (http://www.htc.com/www/faqs.aspx?p_id=179&cat=80&id=85780) and it seemed fine form then on. But in the tips section in here, its good to discharge and recharge your phone the first week or two you get it, I'm still doing it