Database Users

My wizard battery only lasts half a day now?!

Hi, my batter has been working great since Christmas, but now for some reason won't last more than a fwe hours without saying battery low. I have my gprs check email every 5 minutes, but it has always been that way and I have been gettnig a good 2 days out of my phone before.
Now i take it off of the charger in the morning and then around lunch the batter is low already...
Is my batter just toast?
Should I get another?
THANKS!
T

Just a question, but have you been overclocking your TI OMAP processor? Maybe there's a correlation?

contaygious said:
Hi, my batter has been working great since Christmas, but now for some reason won't last more than a fwe hours without saying battery low. I have my gprs check email every 5 minutes, but it has always been that way and I have been gettnig a good 2 days out of my phone before.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Mine is brand new (tmobile MDA) and when I enabled 802.11g I noticed a dramatic drop in battery life. I think for the sake of the battery I will only enable that as needed.
I wonder also if you are in the same proximity to the mobile towers, if you are on a border between coverage you will see a drop in battery life becuase it is transmitting more frequently to register with the mobile network.
To try to see if its your battery or something you are using, and while this may be incredibly difficult with a mobile, especially a mobile/pda that you use frequently, you may want to see about turning off features to see if that helps. Turn off wifi and see if that helps, turn off bluetooth and see about that, etc. Once you rule them out as the major culprit ...
While I highly doubt this may be the case, it is a possiblity, and worth looking into, especially if you noticed a sudden drop in battery life as opposed to a gradual diminishment. You may have some rogue software that is sending out more data via a wireless device than you desire. A worm, trojan, whatever. There are anti-virus packages available, I dont know how good any of them are, http://www.freecabs.de has some, some of the big commercial guys make some. Again I dont think its that becuase of the rules of probability, however it is possible and some have been known to exist in the wild for a few years now.

T,
I had the same thing with my c500, now I know they are two entirely different phones but after I flashed the device it was as good as new in terms of battery life.
It may be worth a try before you go and buy a new battery.
Marc

I have the same problem.
Not overclocking, no anti-virus, just regular phone use and my battery does not last a day!!
I keep it on charger most of the day to avoid shut-down.

me too
I've the same problem and I've an other big problem, when I turn off my Vario, it's dont't start on power botton (i must extract and insert a battery turn on the telephone).
We can make a test if anyone have a HTC diagnostic software (see service manual.pdf)

Check your today screen.
I too had the same issue. Mainly, PhoneDashboard was causing the battery drop. Along with any today elements that poll your hardware to display the amount of battery, memory and storage. Those all drain your battery.
To check whether it's really a today screen issue or not. Charge your battery to it's full 100%, remove ALL today screen elements, then use your mobile normally and keep checking the battery level drain rate.
Hope this was useful.

Mine dies, 100% when leave work, some usage and then dead in the morning.
I only have Pocketbreeze and a few plug ins installed.
There is NO wireless /bluetooth in that time.

KINetics said:
Just a question, but have you been overclocking your TI OMAP processor? Maybe there's a correlation?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
nope.
I have not been using wifi at all lately either
I have spb today stuff but have had them since I first got my wizard. really, I have not changed anything....

some programs "eat up" battery life. Investigate by doing a HARD reset, then do not install ANY software for two days. I bet you will see your normal battery life ;-)

I took all today programs off
100% at 5.30
32% at 7.30
This is O2 Mini Rom without all the 02 crap.
I will investigate further. Hard reset here we come!!

Last night my battery was 100% at 5.30 after a hard reset, no o2 software installed and very light usage.
This morning at 7.35 it was 50% which is good I guess???
Suggestions as to whether it is the battery?

byronsp said:
Last night my battery was 100% at 5.30 after a hard reset, no o2 software installed and very light usage.
This morning at 7.35 it was 50% which is good I guess???
Suggestions as to whether it is the battery?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Still not good enough, should hold for 3 days if you do not use it. Get a battery replacement.
Typically I charge every other day, little phone talks however.

PhoneDashboard was causing the battery drop
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ah, I run this. Is it bad? I've turned off all the scrolling updates etc - did you find that helped?

Got a battery replacement but still after no real use dropped to 50% in only 13 hours.
Any other ideas?

mine works for about 5 days normal usage with this options:
- phone on
- bt off
- wifi off
- automatically receive IrDa incoming... (Connections ->beam...)
so the wifi on my batt only last for a few hours, but when you disable wifi and the irda incoming you should have more batt. life

Thanks I will give this a try and have taken out irDA.
However my figures were with Bluetooth and Wireless off as well

I have noticed that with wifi on (and particularly if I'm using it) the battery drops at a frightening rate. Whereas with wifi disabled (which it's been for most of today - first day since I've had the XDA that I've been busy working and so haven't been 'fiddling' with it at all ) the battery still seems to be sitting happily at 80% after around 8 hours.
Funny, I thought that if the phone was suspended, the wifi would be inactive, so the battery wouldn't drop. Appears that's not the case...

Do u have Spb Pocket Plus installed? this program sucked my battery flat in 1 day. I removed it and now its up 2 or 4 days depending on how long i have wifi on. Checking email every 5 min also reduces battery life allot.
goodluck

No pocket plus... My today screen just has phmtray, resco today, taskplus, and the pocketmusic plugin...

Does CPUScaler underclocker save battery life?

I have Battery Status 1.04 beta on my 8125..I set the CPU Scaler to underclock to 112mhz when idle (original is 195mhz). It seems to be doing that, but idle battery life so far doesn't look any better, in fact maybe worse. Is CPUScaler not meant to be used like that?

Comit said:
I have Battery Status 1.04 beta on my 8125..I set the CPU Scaler to underclock to 112mhz when idle (original is 195mhz). It seems to be doing that, but idle battery life so far doesn't look any better, in fact maybe worse. Is CPUScaler not meant to be used like that?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
it does / will / or is supposed to help by slowing down your processor when it isn't actively being used. But 112 seems really low to me. I've heard that some people find their phones won't wake back up when it drops too low (I think 123Mhz is what I've read people use but lower than that caused problems). Personally I set mine to 143 for the min.
If you are running WM6, there just seems to be more power drain. Also depends on what radio you are running (some are better than others) and if you leave WiFI and/or bluetooth turned on all the time.
Also I've read that some apps will cause more power draw due to them running. With BatteryStatus when your phone is idle, does the CPU % go down to 1 - 3%? If so, you should be ok. But if it stays higher, then something is running and that adds to more power draw.
There is also a thread in the Wizard WM6 forum on people finding that playing with the extended rom seems to impact on power draw if you've done a hard reset or similar (they are finding that by going back to an official rom like TMo 2.26 and then reinstalling the custom rom that doesn't have an extended rom the power draw seems to go away).
Hope some of that helps...

Haven't had any missed calls AFAIK, been running it like this for a couple days now. My ROM is Faria's AKU 3.3, which is pretty good might I add.
Idle CPU utilization stays at 1%
The extended ROM theory is interesting, maybe thats whats doing it. My last ROM didn't have anything like that and seemd to have better idle battery life.

If the phone is at idle, what does it matter where it's clocked? When the phone is active, the battery will be drained regardless of clock speed. I have my 8125 set at 192MHz, nd have no problem re-charging the battery.

Average Battery Life on T-mobile Wing

I was just wondering what is the average time of battery life on your wing..mines is currently about 10 hours idle but while im using it that goes down to about 5 or 4 i just wanted to know what is the average before i call t-mobile and ask for a new battery.

A few of us here have been having problems with the battery actually. When I first got the phone, I left it clean and stock. I would do a lot of texting, make a couple phone calls, and play a few games here and there. From 7am to 1am, I would go from 100% to about 54% (18 hours of usage). Now, if I leave my phone idle for 2 hours, my battery drops down from 100% to 80%... I can't even go a full day without needing to charge the darn thing. 200 hour idle time my arse!
But personally, I don't think it's a problem with the battery... The phone is doing something in the background which is causing a massive battery drain. Right now, I'm testing my phone to see if I still suffer the same drain while in flight mode. I'll post the results HERE in about an hour from now.

The longest the battery can last is 1 week...
On a full charge, you can talk for 5 hours...
the more features you use, the more power it'll consume.. if you do a lot of internet browsing, I believe I saw GPRS Data connections use more power then WiFi.. so use wifi when available ...
also, be sure to regularly check your phone's task manager before setting it aside for long periods of time... sometimes it can be hard to notice the camera, text/mms, calender, Internet Explorer, Windows Media Player, are all running in the background while you're at the home screen...
My wing usually lasts me from unplug at 8am until plugin at midnight... power usage always varies a lot as... as you can tell.. the data connections use a lot of power... and if wifi isn't available, it uses at least 30% more power doing a GPRS Transfer -- based on the initial information i've read about the issue.

BBM-Lee said:
The longest the battery can last is 1 week...
On a full charge, you can talk for 5 hours...
the more features you use, the more power it'll consume.. if you do a lot of internet browsing, I believe I saw GPRS Data connections use more power then WiFi.. so use wifi when available ...
also, be sure to regularly check your phone's task manager before setting it aside for long periods of time... sometimes it can be hard to notice the camera, text/mms, calender, Internet Explorer, Windows Media Player, are all running in the background while you're at the home screen...
My wing usually lasts me from unplug at 8am until plugin at midnight... power usage always varies a lot as... as you can tell.. the data connections use a lot of power... and if wifi isn't available, it uses at least 30% more power doing a GPRS Transfer -- based on the initial information i've read about the issue.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I noticed Bluetooth and WiFi taking more battery than GPRS

As long as I plug it in while I am at work to a USB cable, I don't seem to have any battery problems. I use GPRS and SMS constantly.

I spend the whole day on the phone ... between texting and I receive all my work email directly to my phone... so I'm on it various times during the hour... and it seems the battery drain is huge.
all I have done is turn the screen brightness down whenever I'm not using it, and have the dynamic overclocking on, so the processor goes down whenever its not in use ... but I still think the battery drain on the wing is ridiculous.

Well david, overclocking doesnt help
Im clocked at 247mhz, i can make it last about 24 hours using it here and there. calls about once a hour for 5 min or less, texting through the day, and occasional wifi use. at stock clock speeds, it lasted about a day and a half, but it all depends how much you use it

At 1st i thought the battery darin was rediculous as well but when u think about it when u use it the battery goes down about 8 times as fast( depensing on what ur actually doing w/ it.
Now i charge it at night and go to school with fully loaded battery 6AM, i text all the time and when i get home its around 85% 2:30PM, use it occasionally and at the end of the day after at least 3 hours of talk time its on around 30-20% i could last w/o charging it but i charge it overnight to full, with NORMAL use and not talking for about 4 hours per day so far its lasted 4 days for me. could have made it to 6 but i wanted to showoof my new phone to my friend
so battery life is not that bad just depends how much u use it, Also if ur listening to music just turn off the screen and thats a REAL battery saver. also press the power button when on the phone and etc.

Wing Battery Drain
I have improved my Wing battery drain by doing the following...
- Turn off the automatic weather update on the Today Plug-in
- Check my emails manually (do send receive when I am ready to read)
- Suspend device when not in use - need to use device lock app.
- Update ROM to PDA Viet v 14 (thanks to easy instructions from David)
With the new ROM and the device locked - even the accidental press of any of the face buttons (when phone is in pocket) turns the device back on - even though the screen remains locked (due the Device lock app). Is there any way to suspend the device completely so can only be turned on by hitting the power button only? I would still want to receive / answer calls etc. without having to hit the power button....

Go to settings, Lock ... and there is an option to lock all buttons except the power button when device is powered down.

I am trying to fix my sisters Wing (I have a Wizard). I have tried disabling background programs, as well as setting things to be more gentle on power usage, and still she loses battery like crazy. I know the Wizard had some battery drain issues with certain WM6 cooked roms, and a cab fix helped. Does anyone have a cab fix for the Wing? Also, reading in this forum section, it seems that the Wing doesn't always disable background programs. Would you suggest a third party task manager to "pick up the slack" or does it not matter, due to the nature of the winged beast?
I appreciate any suggestions. While I am new to the Herald, I am "old hat" on the Wizard, so I do have a general understanding of how the HTC devices work.
Thank you in advance.

I have read a lot of bad stuff about battery life with every rom except the OME t-mo. I had the PDA viet and battery life was terrible, With the stock rom it is at least 4x longer.

hello ive the same problem with the last 4 wings ive and ever since ive switch from the stock Tmo OS and upgraded to the TouchFlo OS, Ive noticed a huge differnce with the battery life even overclocked
If your will to taking the risk ide say go for it, i jus started messing around with rom and i got say its a big improvment from the original wing which i was ready to throw against a wall!!

I have Touch Flo on my Wing, and if I charge it to capacity I usually only need to do so it every other day so long as I don't play any NES games on it. I keep the wifi off if I'm not using it of course. I have it dynamically stepping the CPU in a range from 100mhz to 234mhz. It really seems to help extend the battery for me, while still giving it the tiny extra kick it needs to run nes and sms games.
My wife has the official wm6 rom on hers, but is also dynamically overclocked as mine is. She needs to charge hers nightly, BUT she also plays solitaire and bubble breaker daily.
Overall it's on par for battery life with my prior motorola phone, which I never used for anything but regular phone calls. With that in mind I'm not necessarily impressed, but am definitely content with it.

I've had HORRIBLE battery life and AWESOME battery life, all within the same week. lol
There was a problem I had at one time, where filesys.exe would take over all the CPU and kill my battery.
Here's what I do, though.
Dynamic overclocking/underclocking
Turn off GPRS when not in use
Disable Push Mail
Turn off WIFI and Bluetooth
Turn the screen brightness down
Turn off the screen altogether, even when on a call, unless you need to see what's on it
There's a few tweaks out there that deal with enabling the power saving features on L2TP and stuff...

First post here-
I've had my wing about a week now and have a question concerning battery usage.
It has always been my understanding that batteries will develop a "memory" if you charge and recharge them under their full charge capacity.
i.e. if you use it down to 60% and then charge it to 100% it will remember that and not use the full original 100% charge. obviously over time not just from a single "half charge" like that.
So since every time you connect it to USB to sync it begins the charging process, won't that wear down the battery and make it develop such a memory?
Is their anyway to connect to to the PC without having it charge?
I have always preferred to have any mobile device drain it's battery to nearly empty before recharging to try and minimize the memory effect.
Thanks

InfidelSerf said:
First post here-
I've had my wing about a week now and have a question concerning battery usage.
It has always been my understanding that batteries will develop a "memory" if you charge and recharge them under their full charge capacity.
i.e. if you use it down to 60% and then charge it to 100% it will remember that and not use the full original 100% charge. obviously over time not just from a single "half charge" like that.
So since every time you connect it to USB to sync it begins the charging process, won't that wear down the battery and make it develop such a memory?
Is their anyway to connect to to the PC without having it charge?
I have always preferred to have any mobile device drain it's battery to nearly empty before recharging to try and minimize the memory effect.
Thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Today's lithium ion batteries do not develop this like older rechargable batteries. You can plug your phone in at any time without worrying about losing battery capacity!

Thank chris30_2001, good to know.
oh and it's ALWAYS lupus

I listen to Streaming Radio with my Wing at work all day. I get approximately 4 hours of listening time before I have to swap out with another fully charged battery.
I use PBar to shut off the screen while listening.

I'm running the touch rom without the actual touch. I can't remember which one it is. I spend at least an hour a day gaming (text twist, random solitaires) on it. I usually hit up the web a few times a day for 10 minutes a shot. I use it as an ebook reader. I send txts constantly. I talk about half an hour a day. All this leaves me with about 30% - 50% of my battery by day's end. Now, if I turn on bluetooth all day it will end up around 18%. Wifi is such an evil power hog I never turn it on, EDGE is fast enough for me. I charge my every night under my pillow (it's my alarm too). Battery life has been the same since I got it about 6 months ago.
Edited to add: I also do some dynamic underclocking for things that don't need a huge amount of power, like my budget program, etc.

idle process

Hi, i've noticed that my hd heats up really a lot, and at the same time i realised that in task manager a so called "idle process" it's allways at +80% from processor speed.
Do you think it's sometinh to do to the fact that the device it's allways hot (even wen in standby) and the batery drains relatively fast and also the fact that it takes ages to charge. I've allready sent it on repair and received it today with stock rom 1.56, but the problem remains spite they've said that everything was ok...
I've flash the Dutty's V3.3 XT and on the task manager i've noticed that idle process... it makes me wonder...

Don't wonder.
The idle process isn't doing anything. It is certainly not the cause of battery drain or heat.
It's actually not even a process, just a "counter" telling you how much of the processor is doing nothing.
If you look at the task manager in your own computer, you'll see that it also has an "idle process". It's the same thing.
For more information regarding the idle process just google "Idle process" and you'll get a ton (actually about 409,000 ) hits...
brgds
Royan

You can use an application that can monitor current drawn from the battery to see if you have an issue. There are many apps that can be used - i use phone alarm from pocketmax.net that acts as a profile switcher, but has many additional functions including power monitoring and battery temperature.
Typical values that i see are as follows
Idle (no apps running) radio on, wi fi off, screen set at level 2 --> around 84 - 100mA
While browsing the internet via wifi, this typically increase to around 170mA
While browsing internet via 3G this can increase upto 350 - 500mA peek.
The touch HD can get very warm when in use.
Hope this helps

Your not the only one mate, my phone has just started getting stupidly hot and running down the battery stupidly quick and taking ages to charge!
See here,
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=512224
I'm going to call up orange today and see what they say!
Cheers
Jake

ardsar said:
The touch HD can get very warm when in use.
Hope this helps
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The thing is, its getting very warm with NO USE. It can run the entire battery flat in less than 12 hours with NO USE.
Jake

jake_tenfloors said:
The thing is, its getting very warm with NO USE. It can run the entire battery flat in less than 12 hours with NO USE.
Jake
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Might be a faulty battery?
Seen this one: http://www.htc.com/www/faqs.aspx?p_id=179&cat=0&id=85780 ?
brgds
Royan

Royan said:
Might be a faulty battery?
Seen this one: http://www.htc.com/www/faqs.aspx?p_id=179&cat=0&id=85780 ?
brgds
Royan
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeh i've seen that, going to do it tonight!
Jake

I have a clue on the battery problem

Ok... I was big into kernels, processes, everything on my N1 so I am quite familiar with tracking battery life by different means. I can provide the following information:
At 11:20pm, my phone was at 100% and had moderate signal and was connected to WiFi - full strength.
At 5:50am, my phone was at 83% battery with NO USAGE, not even the screen turned on once.
My Battery Use had the Android System at the top of the usage with ~30% usage. The CPU Usage was over 1h 30m!
The above is extremely odd since I didn't touch the phone. My N1 would've been <2 min.
In the Battery History CPU Usage section, SUSPEND was the only item with red and it was roughly 15% full.
The SUSPEND function, I believe, is the controller that suspends the functions of the phone so it can go to sleep. It should never use this much battery.
There are tons of packages in the Battery Use screen, which is weird. Some of the ones are: Settings Storage, RilFactoryApp, com.sec.android.app.lcdtest, AllShare, Error, Checkin Service, BluetoothTest, Perso, BrcmBluetoothServices, Com.samsung.InputEventApp, Sync Feeds, Settings, Factory Test, Network Location, VPN Services, Android System, WlanTest
A lot of these items (and more) show up in Advanced Task Manager, and they never existed on my N1.
I believe that destroying these services via ATM greatly improves battery life (even though generally it isn't needed in Android). After killing them all and keeping an eye on it, only 2 or 3 have respawned and my CPU usage is <1m which proportionally is much lower than the former experience.
Anyone have any ideas or input?

I've been trying to figure this out also...each battery had its on date on it..my first battery was june 21...my current one is june 28...my 6/28 battery also had a little qr barcode on it....
The 6/21 battery was pretty awful...today I'll be using my 6/28 battery for the first time...it was charged at 39% and 10 hours later overnight...it only lost 10% and is at 29% now...i must say that's pretty good because I was certain it would be dead in the morning. I'm gonna test it the next couple of days and see how it holds up....our issues may be as simple as getting the right production of batteries...wouldn't that be a relief? Lol
Or....i could just be crazy
Sent from my Samsung Vibrant using XDA App

My only battery weirdness is that I turned off autobrightness and cranked the brightness and my battery life dramatically improved. Would get home form work and have 30%, now I have something like 50%...
No clue why unless using the light sensor or making the adjustments uses more juice than it should.

popypopy said:
My only battery weirdness is that I turned off autobrightness and cranked the brightness and my battery life dramatically improved. Would get home form work and have 30%, now I have something like 50%...
No clue why unless using the light sensor or making the adjustments uses more juice than it should.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This isn't relevant to these problems though as I'm talking about standby time.

Oh and my android system is only at 3%
Sent from my Samsung Vibrant using XDA App

Anyone else have any ideas?

good idea
I think it is a good idea to track running tasks.
Let us create a list of tasks for stock apps and the most often used off the market ones. Then everybody could decide for herself what apps to run. Being able to compare function and price (here battery drainage) is a great thing. The list might contain:
name of the app | the name as appeared in task managers | function | typical power drainage (high, moderate, low, or how many hours will battery last if only the app were running)
I think, the top post could be moderated as needed appropriately.

I don't know, but my battery life is pretty bad. Today I had the phone connected to my laptop via USB, and my laptop connected to the wall. I was using the phone and my battery percentage was STILL going down, even though it was plugged in!
Sent from my Samsung Vibrant using XDA App

ArcticWolf91 said:
I don't know, but my battery life is pretty bad. Today I had the phone connected to my laptop via USB, and my laptop connected to the wall. I was using the phone and my battery percentage was STILL going down, even though it was plugged in!
Sent from my Samsung Vibrant using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well USB will always charge slow...

hah2110 said:
Well USB will always charge slow...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Always plug the phone into the wall if you can. The USB from the laptop doesn't charge at the same rate.
I kill all my running apps that I don't need with ATM, then rid all unnecessary widgets, turn the brightness off of auto and on the lowest setting you prefer, turn off GSP, turn off Wifi, turn off Bluetooth and noticed a huge improvement.

iunlock said:
Always plug the phone into the wall if you can. The USB from the laptop doesn't charge at the same rate.
I kill all my running apps that I don't need with ATM, then rid all unnecessary widgets, turn the brightness off of auto and on the lowest setting you prefer, turn off GSP, turn off Wifi, turn off Bluetooth and noticed a huge improvement.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Now you just need to reduce screen size by 80%, get rid of the touch interface and you have a Nokia 6110. I guaranty 7 days until the battery drains.
Some other ways to deal with battery life are:
a. Get a second battery.
b. Charge the damn thing once in a while.
That way, you can actually enjoy the smartphone and think less about killing processes and *****ing how bad the battery life is on forums.

I just rooted my Vibrant the other day and installed setCPU. I set the max to 800 and the min to 200 using the conservative setting and i noticed much better battery life the very next day. Having a 1ghz processor is awesome but it seems that default settings for this phone probably has it running at the rate possibly when the screen is off also.

al74 said:
Now you just need to reduce screen size by 80%, get rid of the touch interface and you have a Nokia 6110. I guaranty 7 days until the battery drains.
Some other ways to deal with battery life are:
a. Get a second battery.
b. Charge the damn thing once in a while.
That way, you can actually enjoy the smartphone and think less about killing processes and *****ing how bad the battery life is on forums.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'd have to go with this. Just some common sense will go along way. If you dont absolutely need the GPS, bluetooth, or WiFi turn them off (the phone even gives you a widget for it...). Even with the brightness at 0% its still darn bright.
Sure it requires a bit more input from the user but its still a darn good device.

popypopy said:
My only battery weirdness is that I turned off autobrightness and cranked the brightness and my battery life dramatically improved. Would get home form work and have 30%, now I have something like 50%...
No clue why unless using the light sensor or making the adjustments uses more juice than it should.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thats what i did and my battery life improved alot.