Automatic Radio On/Off for Better Battery Life? - Mogul, XV6800 General

Is there a program or MortScript out there that will turn off the radio more often for better battery life? Where I work there is basically zero reception and if I don't manually turn off the radio I only get a few hours of battery life but elsewhere the phone will last for a day or two. Is there anything that will improve this?
I considered writing a MortScript app to do this but I don't really know how to go about it and figured there must be some kind of app out there already...

How about Phonealarm.
It could turn the radio off / on when you tap an icon, or it could be based on a timer.

I have phoneAlarm installed but don't really know how to do anything advanced with it. If you know how to set it up properly that would be great if you could let me know. (Avoids having yet another program running in the background.)
Today I wrote a MortScript file that appears to work ok. It uses a 3rd party command line app (can't remember what it was at the moment) to turn the radio on (if off), then it waits 10 seconds to give the phone time to connect to the towers, checks the signal level, if it's too low it turns off the phone and waits 10 minutes before turning the radio back on and checking the signal level again. Then the whole process just infinitely repeats itself. If the signal is ok it just leaves the phone on.

FYI if you get service roaming, you might want to switch your phone to roam only in these times. I get much better battery life when I do that in these circumstances...

Related

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:

Extremely Bad Battery Life on the XDAII when the PDA is off

Hello,
I was wondering if anyone else is having the same problems.
When I go to bed I turn the PDA off. The phone is still on.
When I wake about 7 hours later I find the battery is at 60%.
What's the deal? I thought it was supposed to have 150 hour standby life.
I do find something else quite weird. When I turn the PDA off the screen turns off and it all seems fine. I have the button lock turned on so no other buttons will work. After a couple of minutes, if I move the volume slider up or down the PDA will beep. Then if I press any of the buttons such as "Record" "Camera" and "Calander" Nothign seems to happen.
But when I turn the PDA on the "Recoard" "Camera" and "Calander" applications will load.
It is kinda of like it isn't turning off the PDA at all.
Anyone know what I'm doing wrong or how to fix it?
Thanks
Cam
if grps is only and bluetooth is on and maybe messenger and or icq is on it drain the batt
GPRS and Bluetooth are both on but GPRS is not connected. And Bluetooth is not connecting to anything.
I don't use messanger.
Would that still be draining the battery that much?
Cam
Cyeoh,
Unfortunately, I know exactly what you are going through. Your phone is entering a mode called 'resuming', it’s a low power state that does not turn on the display, etc, but will respond to hardkeys, volume slider, etc......
I'm guessing your XDA2 goes into 'resume' while trying to find a GSM signal, (are you in a weak area). This is my problem, you can read about it here...
http://www.pocketpcpassion.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=38598
As a test, you should turn off the phone, (flight mode) for one night and compare the battery in the morning, (I'm willing to bet is almost the same as when you left it). Alternately install an app that monitors cpu usage, (like the one in the above link), and you probably will see a similar pattern to mine.
The registry solution does help, but causes problems with Bluetooth, (at least it did on my device, nothing a soft reset didn’t fix, but it was VERY annoying)….
If it is your GSM phone, you might want to try using another GSM SIM card from another provider, (maybe a friends) and see if you get better results. When I switched to a better provider I got an increase of 10% on the battery, (not great but something!)
Thank You very much.
That does answer a lot. I do have very bad reception at home. I guess this may mean I need to leave it charging over night. However I do find the XDA does charge very quickly which mean in the time it takes me to get ready for work it is back up to 93%.
I will put it into Flight mode tonight to see what happens.
It's still a little bit ****ty and it seems to be because of software. Hopefully they will fix it in the next ROM update.
Thanks
Cam
How did you go with your test last night cyeoh, did your battery last a little longer?
I'm intrested to know as when I charge my battery over night in the morning its still is not on 100% untill I do a soft reset or disable and enable flight mode then it pops up to 100% and stops charging... yet a nother feature of some software I've installed or the ROM version at the moment!!!

GPS and battery life on the G1

Hi !
I found following Post and think this might be interresting for you,....
http://elfurl.com/i9why
GPS and battery life on the G1
Lots of users/developers assume that if you enable the GPS you will drain your battery more quickly than if you don’t. While this may be true on the iPhone, on the G1 it is actually not true.
Your GPS is simply a radio receiver (k band). On some devices the radio needs to be enabled to get a ‘fix’, but on the G1 the k band radio is ALWAYS on. The G1 uses the radio for several phone features instead of using another band. As a result regardless of whether or not you have your GPS on the radio that receives the sat signals is on - the battery life of your phone won’t be different. This is great news for developers.
There is an open source project that provides a service that location dependant applications can use to ‘pre-fetch’ location data so that it is ALWAYS available regardless of whether or not you can get an immediate GPS fix. It also fixes another problem - the time it takes the GPS to obtain a fix (30-60 seconds). Whenever you use ShopSavvy to scan an item we need to figure out where you are to give you a local price. Even if you can get a GPS fix when you scan a barcode, we might not be able to get the GPS coordinates before we provide the pricing results - as a result you won’t get local results. By prefetching your location regularly we can use the last known result which is likely very close to your current location.
Anyway, turn on the GPS!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
On my UK RC8 it specifically warns that turning on GPS satellites requires more battery.
aliburns said:
On my UK RC8 it specifically warns that turning on GPS satellites requires more battery.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
As do RC33 and ADP builds. While Big In Japan makes an interesting argument I'd like to see either some good evidence or Google engineers input before leaving it on all the time.
How about the fact that even when it is "on", it is not actually "on" unless you see the icon in the notification bar.
lbcoder said:
How about the fact that even when it is "on", it is not actually "on" unless you see the icon in the notification bar.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That automatically doesn't tell me it's not actively sync'ing with a satellite and burning juice. Along those same lines do any of the battery monitoring apps on the Market actually work? As in, do they give you reliable battery draw levels over a period of time?
uberingram said:
That automatically doesn't tell me it's not actively sync'ing with a satellite and burning juice. Along those same lines do any of the battery monitoring apps on the Market actually work? As in, do they give you reliable battery draw levels over a period of time?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Watts seems to work rather well. It also tells you what is causing the battery to drain as it reads the Android log files.
Your GPS is simply a radio receiver (k band).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, the K band is 20 - 40 GHz, but GPS (the non-military L1 frequency) is at 1575,42 MHz.
The other parts of the blog post sound similarly 'imaginary' to me.
Battery Drain G1
Guys,I own a T Mobile G1 Android 1.6 Phone and recently I’m facing some problems. The problem that appeared recently is with the battery drain. before some days ago the battery of my G1 lasted up to 4-5 days, without using Wireless, GPS, and Bluetooth. If I used the mentioned services normally the battery lasted up to two days. But recently the battery is draining too fast. Within 4 hours the battery goes down less then 15% even I do not use any mentioned services. I keep my phone on standby, without talking a single minute with the phone, not using any service etc, and again it goes down very quick. I took some measures according to HTC instructions how to save the battery but again it does not function. I uninstalled all applications and reset the phone to factory setting by again same thing. Then I searched on the Google some instructions, I tried also that one’s but again it does not function. I always used HTC charger that came with the phone but again same problem. What is the strangest thing that after some days the battery gets back and works perfectly for two weeks, which means I use the phone normally without charging 4-5 days. As I operate very well with the smartphones, Pocket PC’s etc I start analyzing G1 and monitoring very closely why the battery goes down, I monitored for a long time the query under the :About Phone-Battery use- and I see there that Andorid OS is using the battery from 76% up to 85%. Now it came to my mind that something is keeping engaged or it keeps running the Andorid OS always on. Then I suspected that thre my be any virus on my phone, but I installed form Market Flexilis/lookout antivirus application, but there was no virus and again the battery goes very quickly down. As I said after sometime the system returns to normal and the battery lasts for 4-5 days, and when I check the information under Phone,Battery use, I see that the Andorid OS is spending only 6% of the battery. Comparing with the previous description it is a huge difference. According to my opinion there is a small problem with any file which keeps always running to much the Andorid OS. Can you please give me any instruction why Andorid OS is spending that much the battery? Or give me any instruction how to prevent this operation that keeps Android OS to much engaged? or is there any programming mistake?, is there any need for update?, do I need to root my phone as it is not rooted? The reason why I’m thinking that there is a technical problem is because sometimes the system gets back to normal and sometimes it goes out of normal running. I appreciate a lot if you could help me to resolve the mentioned problem.

Battery live

Hi
Yesterday arrived my dev phone 1 and I am very hapy with it bu battery level is at 20% at 18:00. Is this normal?. I dont want to switch the band to 2g. I keep gmail synched with direct push but google talk not. anyone with same prpoblem?
Thanks
yeah, the standard battery in the G1 is ****ing terrible
not a lot you can do except buying an extended battery (which is a very good idea! )
The only thing I have found to extend my battery Life has been discussed previously a few times on these boards...
1. Turn off Wifi, when not in use. (Toggle WiFi from the Market is Great)
2. Turn off GPS, when not in use. (Toggle GPS from the Market also great)
3. Turn down the screen brightness.
4. (not sure if this makes a big difference) But sometimes if I do not need my feeds or background running apps throughout the day I will restart my phone, or run through a few applications that are not pulling web cache. This way you dont have auto update feedreaders in the background running. It seems like it works for me, but that could very well be wishful thinking. Also turning of things like Twitroid update etc...
Hope that helps.
recasper said:
The only thing I have found to extend my battery Life has been discussed previously a few times on these boards...
1. Turn off Wifi, when not in use. (Toggle WiFi from the Market is Great)
2. Turn off GPS, when not in use. (Toggle GPS from the Market also great)
3. Turn down the screen brightness.
4. (not sure if this makes a big difference) But sometimes if I do not need my feeds or background running apps throughout the day I will restart my phone, or run through a few applications that are not pulling web cache. This way you dont have auto update feedreaders in the background running. It seems like it works for me, but that could very well be wishful thinking. Also turning of things like Twitroid update etc...
Hope that helps.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i do #4 as well, it seems to help, since i have root i just go into terminal and type su [enter] reboot [enter] and when it turns back on its usually doing bettery with the battery
as for opening programs, would advanced task manager serve the same purpose (closing apps that arnt needed and using memory, because if its using memory isnt it in some way using battery power?)
Thanks.
I am porting CommMgrPro to Android (Similar to Locale but much more powerfull). In this way I will switch to 2G, turn Wifi off, disable connections, etc, etc, etc automatically depending on my location/weekday/hour.
Greetings
Dani
Hi All
I have a brand new G1 and, like you, I was suprised by the short battery life.
I also thought about selling the phone but apart from that problem I like it very much.
I noticed that the permanent 3g wireless connection was the real draining battery application.
So the solution I found now is: to disable the permanent connection. I downloaded APNdroid application from the market and I use it everytime I need to toggle connection on and off.
I also tried to leave the WIFI on and i saw that it does not consume much battery.
I did not tried with the GPS.
I am using a good tool to toggle and to fine check the battery level: Useful switchers
I can now say I am pretty satisfied with the phone.
Greeting
Lollo
lollonet said:
Hi All
I have a brand new G1 and, like you, I was suprised by the short battery life.
I also thought about selling the phone but apart from that problem I like it very much.
I noticed that the permanent 3g wireless connection was the real draining battery application.
So the solution I found now is: to disable the permanent connection. I downloaded APNdroid application from the market and I use it everytime I need to toggle connection on and off.
I also tried to leave the WIFI on and i saw that it does not consume much battery.
I did not tried with the GPS.
I am using a good tool to toggle and to fine check the battery level: Useful switchers
I can now say I am pretty satisfied with the phone.
Greeting
Lollo
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes. It was the same problem there was in HTC Hermes/TyNT and TouchPro/Diamond. I created bandswitch in the past and will create two little toggles to switch 3g/2g with and without time limit....
Conditioning
Try Conditioning the Battery...
I have gps on, 2g, brightness at 50% and screen timeout at 30 secs, everything syncing and I get around 5 or 6 hours of use...just like the company says I should.
Run your battery completely dead...
Charge your phone for around 8-12 hours...
Repeat for about 6 days...
You should see improved battery life.
I have 3g, wifi, bluetooth, brightness at 50% and screen timeout at 30 secs, everything syncing with 1-2 hours of music/video with 30 SMS, about 20 mins of calls......I am now getting about 8hrs on the new ones from HTC (the 04).
Interesting Battery
Well now that I have had a week of use I have noticed that the (old) "02" batteries would last about 4-5hrs and go until 1% before turning off, with a slow count down. The (new) "04" batteries stay at a high number (about 6-7hrs) until they get to 15% and within a few mins turn-off....as I recall I saw postings of 'quick' count downs, so I wonder if you either get a slow drain down with about 4hrs of use OR about 6 hrs of use with the last 15% a very quick shutdown....I'll keep monitoring these new HTC batteries to see if it was just one of those "weekend" things or if this is the trade off...was caught off guard as I had been getting 30 mins or so when I had 15% left and the G1 would stay on until 1%..."teach an old dog new tricks".....

Terrible battery life

Hi -
I've had my HTC HD2 a few days and although I'm happy with it's features, I'm really frustrated by the poor battery life. The first day I used it the battery was dead within under 12 hours from me starting to use it, and at the start it was fully charged. On this first day I did have email and weather etc on auto check though.
So last night I disabled weather, set email to manual checking and disabled a few other things, but did leave HSDPA and 3G on. There was a slight improvement today but not much, the battery lasted the full 12 hours, but with only 2% remaining.
Both days I don't think my usage was very high. I'd maybe had 10 minutes of phone calls, sent around 10 text messages, listened to 45 minutes of music, checked one or two websites, and played games on the phone for about 15 minutes. Imagine how it would be when I need to make several calls in a day.
I have searched the forum for tips on improving battery life but the main suggestions seem to say that I should disable HSDPA and 3G but one of the main functions of the phone is internet usage and I don't see why I should how to switch to manually putting these settings on and off each time I want to use the internet, just so I can get a longer battery life - the battery should be able to cope with moderate usage!
Does anyone have any further suggestions?
Thank you
Look for an application called 'Bandswitch', it can disconnect idle connections. THis way 3G won't be enabled when you don't need it, should save some battery.
Disable automatic screen brightness and set it to something like 30%.
Disable location services and stuff.
Give the battery some cycles to reach full potential.
But of course, gaming, internetting and listening to music will drain the battery faster. It lasts about 2 days for me with moderate use (some internet, some playing around, etc) which is pretty fair imo.
dagrim1 said:
Look for an application called 'Bandswitch', it can disconnect idle connections. THis way 3G won't be enabled when you don't need it, should save some battery.
Disable automatic screen brightness and set it to something like 30%.
Disable location services and stuff.
Give the battery some cycles to reach full potential.
But of course, gaming, internetting and listening to music will drain the battery faster. It lasts about 2 days for me with moderate use (some internet, some playing around, etc) which is pretty fair imo.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'll give that a try. So will it automatically enable it when I start browsing the internet or something?
I already changed the screen brightness and disabled location services though. That didn't seem to make a big difference.
And how much difference does giving the battery some cycles make?
Thanks.
dagrim1 said:
Look for an application called 'Bandswitch', it can disconnect idle connections. THis way 3G won't be enabled when you don't need it, should save some battery.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sorry, but it doesn't work that way
Bandswitch can definitely do 2 things- it can disconnect idle connections, which will reconnect when needed, but this won't switch the transport between 3G and GSM, and has little effect on battery life
Or it can be used to manually change between 3G and GSM, using whichever is selected for its current transport and then autodisconnecting if required. It is the action of switching to GSM which has the most impact on battery life, but there is no way to switch automatically between to 2 as it needs a phone radio off/on to execute the switch.
Poor 3G signal conditions will hammer the battery because the phone will continually hunt for the strongest signal and switch constantly between modes. If your 3G signal is less than 2 bars I'd suggest switching it to GSM until you are in a stronger signal area. Do this by going to Phone/Menu/ then scroll down to Band and from there switch between Auto and GSM. If that makes a difference then you could install a small utility to make the switch easier to access.
seems very odd, mine was fully charged around 11pm last night, have sent around 20 texts, 20 mins calls, had wifi on, done some browsing, abit of sat nav and its on 68% 20 hours later.
I get at least 24 hours with moderate use. Most of the time i get around 30 hours.
I have weather and peep updating automatically + email retrieval at every hour.
When I first got mine it was lasting less than 12 hours too.
Now I'm on ROM 1.61 and have the following settings:
HSDPA disabled
Weather update every 3 hours
Twitter updates ever 1 hours (though it actually only updates when I scroll to the Peep tab)
Facebook auto updates - Off
Stock auto updates - off
Bluetooth and Wifi off unless needed.
Screen brightness - 30%
Haptic feeback, Vibration - off
Push Email - On
I'm getting over 24 hours of life out of a full charge now. I have got the push email set to manual updates only during off-peak hours ie when I'm sleeping. During the night the charge drops around 1% per hour. It was at 47% when I went to sleep last night and was 40% when I woke 7 hours later. This seems to be typical overnight drop for me.
Over my first few days of tinkering and setting up I found the battery drain to be massive. Once you settle down to regular usage it is a lot lot better.
However, just to be careful, I do now have a desk cradle at work so I can charge my phone if I have to.
Prior to my most recent hard-reset I found that if I left the phone in stand-by over night, with it checking for email every 5 minutes, and weather every 15 minutes, the battery would go from 100% to zero in less than nine hours. And that's without using it at all! As an experiment I tried turning off everything that could possibly be using the data connection, and turning off 3G, so nothing was running at all except the phone in 2G mode listening for calls and texts. It still burned 20% of the battery overnight in stand-by.
Since doing a hard reset, if I repeat the second experiment then I find that overnight battery drain is now only 4% - so clearly some piece of software that I had installed prior to the reset was hammering the battery even in stand-by. Quite what it was, I'm not sure yet. (My current prime suspects are the task manager and 1% battery status icons).
If you're having battery drain issues then I suggest doing a hard-reset and then not installing anything remotely controversial for a day or two to see if that sorts out the drain. If it does, then you can start reinstalling things gradually to see what difference each one makes.
NeilM said:
Sorry, but it doesn't work that way
Bandswitch can definitely do 2 things- it can disconnect idle connections, which will reconnect when needed, but this won't switch the transport between 3G and GSM, and has little effect on battery life
Or it can be used to manually change between 3G and GSM, using whichever is selected for its current transport and then autodisconnecting if required. It is the action of switching to GSM which has the most impact on battery life, but there is no way to switch automatically between to 2 as it needs a phone radio off/on to execute the switch.
Poor 3G signal conditions will hammer the battery because the phone will continually hunt for the strongest signal and switch constantly between modes. If your 3G signal is less than 2 bars I'd suggest switching it to GSM until you are in a stronger signal area. Do this by going to Phone/Menu/ then scroll down to Band and from there switch between Auto and GSM. If that makes a difference then you could install a small utility to make the switch easier to access.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Oh, I misunderstood it then... thank you for clearing that up!
It's very interesting, to see the number of people who have battery draining problems. I have the french SFR ROM 1.44 and since the beginning found my battery life satisfying (I didn't expect long life, as my wife has to charge her iPhone every night).
My battery lasts in heavy use 24h (though it can go down to 18h when using internet by 3G/HSPDA for long period like 1h or more) and under "normal" daily use (checking e-mail regularly, 20 min phone calls, sending some SMS, 30 mins internet, 45 mins playing around / listening some music) around 1.5 days.
My settings are:
3G/HSDPA enabled
Weather update every 6 hours
Stock auto updates - every 8 hours
Bluetooth and Wifi off unless needed
Screen brightness - auto
Haptic feeback, Vibration - off
E-mail check: every 2 hours (POP3)
Faulty batteries? I think not....
Whilst I'm a master of google searching, I get worse results using the search facility on this forum than just using intuition.
Anyway, I just wanted to add my comments on battery life after owning a stock 1.43 phone from Vodafone UK. I was getting less than 8 hours life with everything on auto and making just a couple of shortish phone calls and a couple of quick browses. The rest of the time I was in standby and I thought that my phone was one of the worst out there. I had also installed Skype which I had running in the background which sometimes causes the phone not to go into auto-standby even though it would dim normally. I also noticed that I was in a very weak signal area and that my phone was constantly switching between 2G/3G/H which I understand can consume a lot of power. Also, I had stopped using wi-fi to see if that helped.
After reading a million threads, I decided to conduct an experiment last night. Usually if I charge the phone before going to sleep for 8 hours it is down to 70% when I wake up having been left in standby. So last night I disabled everything. Turned off 3G, data connections, My Location, Weather update, Stocks Update, FaceBook login, e-mail updates, Skype, bluetooth, wifi. In fact absolutely everything I could find that could be turned off except the basic 2G phone itself.
Guess what, I wake up 8 hours later... 96%.
16 hours later.... 81% with very light use.
Now I'm going to have to spend many days playing around with different settings to see which apps or functions are gobbling the power. I have a nasty feeling that the weak signal is half the problem
So cheer up! It's not ideal, but this is a brand new, smartfone with bugs - not a Nokia 6110. Higher capacity batteries and ROM updates will come. In the meantime you just have to figure out what is sucking up the juice on your HD2 and disable these functions if you don't need them or when you are not using them.
Good luck and enjoy it! The coolest phone around...
Rickster
Donations appreciated (That incompetent government and those reckless banks put me out of busines...)
Hello everyone,
like the majority of the owners of HD2, in order to optimise the duration of accumulator charge, I use Band connection control programs , to pass in 3G only when it is necessary. Thus, I have:
- phoneAlarm: to force the 2G mode the night, and also for differ quiet mode if I am in meeting, etc…. In particular, in the case which interests me there, I force the 2G the night and asks to pass to 2G the morning.
- WMlonglife (version for HD2): which normally loads himself to make the effective switch 2G towards 3G or 3G+ if an application program requiring it is launched, and otherwise to remain in 2G. It should be noted that WMlonglife has two applis, one for the configuration, and to make manually changes 2G 3G, WMbandswitch.
- recently, I tested Bandswitch v2.8
I meet the following phenomena, and I would like to know if others also have them, and/or if there are parameters to change so that it goes better.
Point A: Already some question about the icons of the bar of state in top.
There are always two icons side by side. Tell me if I interpret them well.
one with a letter: G= GSM, E= Edge, 3G = 3G, H = 3G+
This letter tellsonly that this kind of network is available, but it does not say that one is actually connected there. Is it well that?
To know in which mode one is actually connected, it is another icon, on its line, with the 1 to 4 bars of reception and a small letter, which should be looked at.
This small letter, it is “H " ==> connected in 3G+, “3G” ==> connected in 3G, “E” ==> connected in Edge
and finally a simple antenna, which I imagine wants to say that one is just connected in 2G, no data connection
Is what all that is correct?
Is there another mean of knowing in real-time the current mode of connexion (and thus mode of conso of the accumulator)?
Point B, use of Phonealarm:
like said in introduction, I force the 2G (mode GSM/GPRS) during the night, and to 6:00 of the morning, I pass it in mode “house” where I put “Car”, by also putting the pin number at it, because it seems that for this transition, one needs the pin number (is it the radio cycle on-off?)
There, the first thing, they is that every morning, when I unlock it I find myself with the screen for input of the pin number, where it is enough to make cancel (because the code already entered via PA and even already connected). Moreover, if one tries to enter a pin number, then he refuses the input.
on the other hand, at this time, the telephone seems to remain in Edge icon “E”, and does not pass in H. On the other hand, so there I reset, then he will connect to H with the boot
Have you also this history of pin number?
For hangs, it is as if WMlonglife did not take the hand to force a 3G mode or 3G+….
this brings me to the point C
Point C: WMbandswitch… after a software reset, my Tel. is connected automatically towards the 3G network (or 3G+) of orange. On the other hand the morning (after to automatic wake up through PA), it remains in E. When I test action manually a passage in 3G with WMbandswitch, it does not change anything. I tested with radio operator chip on Samsung, or Qualcomm (WCDMA). similar behavior….
To check out, I then loaded and installed Bandswitch 2.8, and tried to change into 3G, and there I see appearing the letter H. so, there is a difference with WMlonglife, which would seem to show that WMlonglife does not manage to make the switch towards 3G.
Which radio chip put in WMlonglife?
Have you to it even thing?
Poind D: use of bandswitch 2.8 (on xda): I tested. Hard to know if that is interfaced well with all the remainder. Of your experiment, which one would you advise? It does not have the system of “whitelist” like WMlonglife…
Here is, in synthesis, to summarise my questions
- Has: major significance of the icons
- B: phonealarm and switch of the 3G mode (after a forcing in 2G the night)
- C: WMbandswitch, and configuration/use for HD2
- D: alternative to WMlonglife?
For info, with normal use of browsing, email and phone, I drop of about 50% battery for 24h, that is not so bad, but I 'd like to make sure about the Bandswitch thing...
Thank you in advance for all…
vdelab

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