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horrible and i mean horrible battery life..

so im running dutty no. 3 final rom with directpush enabled as items arrive.. now im constantly in H and my battery only lasts 2.5hrs in H mode.. compared to the hermes this is HORRIBLE! any one have any ideas? i know H means highspeed pda.. so im wondering if thats why.. i kno the hermes switched back between 3g/H..H only when downloading but the tilt seems to be H non-stop.. whats going on?

I am still on the stock rom and mine lasts 20-24 hours on average.

Well, you answered your own question. You're using DirectPush, which forces a constant data connection. You're using HSDPA, which is a notorious power hog when transferring data, and you're now using it constantly.
If DirectPush is that important to you (i.e., if you get mail so often that you might as well be in constant communication with the e-mail server, or if the mail is so important that you have to have it now), you'll need to find a way to switch off HSDPA in favor of EDGE or GPRS.
There's really no other option.

i like to feel important thats why i use direct push.. the job doesnt require it.. but they do require to check at least once a hour during normal business hours lol. i suppose to could set it to check every hr... shucks. why would it last all day on my hermes but under 3hrs on my tilt?

I've never got more than 35 hours battery life, with gprs (UMTS disabled), pushemail, and 1-2 hours of music playback...
The battery life is VERY BAD, my wizard's time was about 50-60 hours with same use...

SuperRob said:
Well, you answered your own question. You're using DirectPush, which forces a constant data connection. You're using HSDPA, which is a notorious power hog when transferring data, and you're now using it constantly.
If DirectPush is that important to you (i.e., if you get mail so often that you might as well be in constant communication with the e-mail server, or if the mail is so important that you have to have it now), you'll need to find a way to switch off HSDPA in favor of EDGE or GPRS.
There's really no other option.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I installed Duttys Comm Mgr with a 3g on off switch and when I am not surfing the web I am on edge. It has helped dramatically with my battery life. My job requires "as items arrive" Direct Push. I can go a whole day without charging on Edge.

3G was recently enabled in my area and I do not get more than 7hrs of batt life with DirectPush active. Before with EDGE I was good for the whole day (>12hrs).
HSDPA is the problem not DirectPush.

Twenty4 said:
I am still on the stock rom and mine lasts 20-24 hours on average.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
can you give a little more detail on your settings with 3g off hdspa off bluetooth on and moderate usage of wifi (less than 20mins a day) and only about 30min of calls i only get between 14-16 hours, any info on how to get the extra battery life would be apreciated

I have 3G, direct push, bluetooth on all day and my Tilt outlasts my TyTN by about 30%. I generally charge every other day with normal use.

well....post ur rom maybe? are u in 3G or H all the time? im constantly in H and havent seen the 3G icon at all..

jakeypoo said:
why would it last all day on my hermes but under 3hrs on my tilt?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
When did AT&T enable HSDPA in your area? It's relatively recent to many metro areas, so it's entirely possible that the Hermes was on Edge 24x7 and what you're seeing is the additional drain of HSDPA and not the change in platform.
But if you're only getting 2.5 hours, there's something else going on. You've an app that's keeping it from going to sleep, you get e-mails every 5 minutes or so, or your battery is bad to begin with.

Sleuth255 said:
I have 3G, direct push, bluetooth on all day and my Tilt outlasts my TyTN by about 30%. I generally charge every other day with normal use.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sleuth your running your own cooked ROM for your Tilt aren't you? I loved your ROMS when I had my Hermes.
-McMex

people seem to forget that the mechanism for mobile data is the same as for voice - when you are talking, the phone is just digitising your voice and sending it over the wireless link. Nobody seriously expects 18 hour talk time out of a pocket sized phone, so why do we seem to expect 18 hours of heavy duty data on-line time.
Ok - I know that is a bit simplistic - when you are talking, the data transfer is continuous whereas for ordinary web browsing etc. it is short bursts - but if you are running something which is holding your data link active a lot of the time, you are incurring a similar battery drain to talking - the Kaiser is rated for just over three hours talk time - don't expect 18 hours of push email! And don't forget that the battery drain is simply for running the transmitter in your phone, not for sending the data - sending one byte will consume as much battery as sending a hundred or more - once it decides to send a packet, it is committed to burning charge even if the packet only has one byte in it...
Martin

Just an observation...
I live in the DFW area and my battery life is not up to par with the 8525. I traveled yesterday to a EDGE only area and I noticed a dramatic increase in battery life. Are they related? I dunno at this point, just an interesting observation.

mcmexican said:
Sleuth your running your own cooked ROM for your Tilt aren't you? I loved your ROMS when I had my Hermes.
-McMex
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
v1.0 Sleuth General Availability for Kaiser is very close....

jakeypoo said:
well....post ur rom maybe? are u in 3G or H all the time? im constantly in H and havent seen the 3G icon at all..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That is for sure your issue. The data connection is not only live, but is being used constantly. Turn off direct push and see if it reverts back to 3G. If so, make sure you are not set to use MediaNet as your primary network. Also, be sure to uninstall the hidden proxy (look for the cab that does this in the Cabs thread).
With direct push enabled, my 3G icon only changes to an H when mail is actually coming in.

On my Nokia N95, constant HSDPA connection too chews through the battery as opposed to "plain" 3G; that is, the Kaiser isn't an exception either... It's the best to fall back to GPRS (EDGE) whenever possible.

PerfAlbion said:
When did AT&T enable HSDPA in your area? It's relatively recent to many metro areas, so it's entirely possible that the Hermes was on Edge 24x7 and what you're seeing is the additional drain of HSDPA and not the change in platform.
But if you're only getting 2.5 hours, there's something else going on. You've an app that's keeping it from going to sleep, you get e-mails every 5 minutes or so, or your battery is bad to begin with.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
well on my hermes i had 3G ever since i got it.. but it only went to H when downloading.. so ive had my tilt for 2-3 days now and its always in H.. i know H causes more drain then 3G standby and by far G/E ..funny this is.. i disabled htc home and battery isnt to bad... bout 3% drain every 3mins when connected to H and idle internet connection.

Sleuth255 said:
That is for sure your issue. The data connection is not only live, but is being used constantly. Turn off direct push and see if it reverts back to 3G. If so, make sure you are not set to use MediaNet as your primary network. Also, be sure to uninstall the hidden proxy (look for the cab that does this in the Cabs thread).
With direct push enabled, my 3G icon only changes to an H when mail is actually coming in.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
ive turned off direct push and it still remains H.. ill try disabling the proxy. good call.. will post my results

ok disabled the proxy, turned off push, still have a big H but no more tiny H on the signal bars which means its not connected to the internet but when i soft reset it automatically reconnects.. whats the deal here lol.
ok forgot i had kaiser tweak set to always on.. fixed that, but now im still displaying H havent seen a 3G icon yet.. whats going on lol

WiFi is too weak

This is my first experience with a Windows Mobile device.
I just installed L26 WM 6.1 Professional WWE V6a ROM (CE OS 5.2.19170 (Build 19170.1.0.0)), which comes with R 1.58.26.20 radio.
What I notice is that the WiFi reception of my Kaiser is too weak. In spots where laptops show weak signal, but still connect reliably, this thing cannot connect al all. At home, where it detects a strong signal, it drops the connection avery hour, or so and the only way to reconnect is to turn off - turn on the WiFi.
If this normal for these devices, or I am having some kind of problem. If you think I have a problem - any suggestions how to fix it?

Yeah it's common. The Tilt doesn't have a dedicated antenna like your laptop does. Most of them have an antenna routed around your LCD screen.

Can something be done to improve the WiFi reception? Some registry thack?

Go to WiFi power mode and select "Best performance" did the trick for me though the already power hungry tilt will get oven more hungry :-(

There is a setting that can adjust the amount of battery life consumed by the WiFi. I'm not sure if its related to the bandwith it uses or the extent to which it tries to find a signal. I tried it out in the hospital and the connection strength didn't change from the lowest->highest setting.
I'm sure there is something to be done on the software side though.

I set the WiFi power mode to "Best Performance". I don't notice improvement in the strenght of signal. But now the battery dosn't last even 8 hours in sleep mode. I leave my Tilt fully charged in the evening and in the morning it is dead.

juliank said:
I set the WiFi power mode to "Best Performance". I don't notice improvement in the strenght of signal. But now the battery dosn't last even 8 hours in sleep mode. I leave my Tilt fully charged in the evening and in the morning it is dead.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Disable the wifi when not in use.

May I ask what you WiFi while you sleep - LOL
Switch services OFF when not needed (as the poster before said).
OT:
If you want superb battery live for example use 3G only "when needed" (internet, wireless modem). Install Chi-Tai's battery status tool and enable the the feature to see how much power is drawn from the battery. You will be amazed how much you can conserve by setting things up right even by changing the order of program load at startup... My idle comes down to 53-72 mA and I have not drainage problem anymore (at least for now :-()

WIFI very poor
I gave off my HTC P3600(Trinity) and purchased a TyTN II(Kaisar) in the hope of getting better options, particularly on WIFI. I was disappointed and I think Trinity is even better in handling WIFI. TyTN II could hardly detect a WIFI signal and when it does it always drop off. Has anyone had a similar problem and got a solution? Please share and help!!!!!

WiFi on Kaiser AT&T Tilt is weak
My Kaiser / AT&T Tilt has poor WiFi reception, even when on Best Performance.
My former Hermes 8525 was somewhat better. I am on this forum looking for a cure, like you.

Wow, Shocking! A Device with out a dedicated antenna doesn't get as good of reception as a Laptop.

H, 3G or E

There used to be a mod that kept the phone on E always (for battery saving purposes) until data was required or being used, then it would switch to H automatically. Does that exist for the Tilt? I had it on my old 8525....
thanks

ld-runner said:
There used to be a mod that kept the phone on E always (for battery saving purposes) until data was required or being used, then it would switch to H automatically. Does that exist for the Tilt? I had it on my old 8525....
thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Perhaps I mis-understand what you mean but here goes... I am not aware of such a mod.
The handset can be operated in GSM (2G) or UMTS (3G). Potentially faster data connection speeds are available (at possibly higher battery drain) when you use the 3G mode (if available to you) - in this case when a 3G connection is available it may be possible to use the HSDPA data connection (automatically demanded by your hanset only when data is required) but that depends upon: whether you have that service available from your providers masts, whether they have enabled for you it and also whether your handset has the HSDPA setting enabled.
On the other hand only GPRS or EDGE (see wiki here) may be available when a 2G/GSM connection is available. EDGE is basically an enhanced version of GPRS but does not match HSDPA speeds.
So you are mixing the EDGE data indication "E" with the HSDPA indication of "H". The only way your handset can go from EDGE to HSDPA (or vice versa) is if your signal received changes to provide HSDPA from EDGE (perhaps as you change location).
Of course you can disable both 3G and seperatly HSDPA - then you are left with either G or E (use the comm manager and/or the various tweakers).
Beware - some ROMS are incorrectly showing the H instead of 3G when no data connection is active and this is a known problem.
Probably too much detail but may help .
Regards

tony.wheeler said:
Of course you can disable both 3G and seperatly HSDPA - then you are left with either G or E (use the comm manager and/or the various tweakers).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
He needs a program to switch between those modes automatically instead of manually though the comm manager, when he enables/disables a data connection..

VirgilWoods said:
He needs a program to switch between those modes automatically instead of manually though the comm manager, when he enables/disables a data connection..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
yeah, that is right.

You know what I do. I use Kaiser Tweak or AdvancedConfig to tell it to Disconnect my 3G connection after 3 minutes. Then When a program needs Data it connects to The 3G network, than when It doesn't need it it disconnects after 3 minutes. Phone still works otherwise. And My battery lives for days.

ld-runner said:
yeah, that is right.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Let's see if I get this..
You want to run the handset in 2G (GSM) mode for normal voice comms but when you want data you want to switch to 3G (UMTS) so that HSDPA can be used?
I personally haven't seen anything that can do that automatically and understand the problem is that to change from one band to another actually requires a cycle off of the actual phone. There are plenty of programs out there that cycle the phone mode - perhaps you should put this requirement to Dani who has developed a Comm Manager Pro program - his software does this cycling of modes but based upon time and place (for instance) rather than the trigger that you want which is when a data connection is required. Try looking at this http://www.commmgrpro.com/ and asking Dani who is always on this site with the Hermes forum here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=299070
Good luck .

Gotta be careful forcing the phone to Edge/HSDPA. Particularly if you force it to HSDPA.
I took a 2 hour road trip today and it took me coming back to figure out why my phone wasn't even getting a signal; it was forced to 3G. I set it to Auto in BandSwitch and it had a signal immediately.
Whoops!

speaking of road trips and HSDPA...
i took a trip today with my wife to Washington and had perfect signal the entire time.. until my battery died of course.
but HSDPA all the way..
i live in Jersey and have travelled to the NYC, the UK and Puerto Rico and have yet to get bad reception...with my old blackberry... im damn near posivtive i woulda had lag

JimmyMcGee said:
You know what I do. I use Kaiser Tweak or AdvancedConfig to tell it to Disconnect my 3G connection after 3 minutes. Then When a program needs Data it connects to The 3G network, than when It doesn't need it it disconnects after 3 minutes. Phone still works otherwise. And My battery lives for days.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
How come I have been to stupidd to figure this one out myself????? I was soo curious how folks were getting great batterylife....
Damn back to school I am.

JimmyMcGee said:
You know what I do. I use Kaiser Tweak or AdvancedConfig to tell it to Disconnect my 3G connection after 3 minutes. Then When a program needs Data it connects to The 3G network, than when It doesn't need it it disconnects after 3 minutes. Phone still works otherwise. And My battery lives for days.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i manually control my data connection through comm manager. i always have 3g off too on comm manager. However, my battery sucks ass and it doesn't last longer than 18hrs with normal use. However, my backlight is at full blast because i can't see the screen outdoors if i don't have it set to 100%. Wish i could see the screen outside during the day and i wish the battery life lasted longer.

redbandana said:
i manually control my data connection through comm manager. i always have 3g off too on comm manager. However, my battery sucks ass and it doesn't last longer than 18hrs with normal use. However, my backlight is at full blast because i can't see the screen outdoors if i don't have it set to 100%. Wish i could see the screen outside during the day and i wish the battery life lasted longer.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I usually cup my hand to act as a shade around the screen. I can see the screen well enough at the 3rd lowest setting.

JimmyMcGee said:
You know what I do. I use Kaiser Tweak or AdvancedConfig to tell it to Disconnect my 3G connection after 3 minutes. Then When a program needs Data it connects to The 3G network, than when It doesn't need it it disconnects after 3 minutes. Phone still works otherwise. And My battery lives for days.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Have you noticed any kind of lag in your device when using the AdvancedConfig auto disconnect feature? I "feel" that when I have this feature turned on the device lags a bit. So instead I have the long press end key mapped to terminate data connection and I end up having to hit that so many times during the day.

Hello
This is sort of on the same lines. I use the com manager built into the custom rom im using ( L26_Kaiser_Diamond_V9 ) and throttling back from a 3G/HSDPA connection to the Edge signal. Ive noticed a huge difference battery life. Before i would only get about 4-5 hours standby because I had an application running that kept the HSDPA active previously. If you use a messenger service like IM+ I strongly suggest upgrading to a rom like L26 that has the ability built right into its com manager. It more than doubled my battery life with 0 cost to messaging performance. If i have to hop onto the net or tether, its a simple button switch to re-enable 3g

Battery life?

Dear all,
With a small 900mAh battery, What is the real world usage time? I mean making up to 2 hours of calls per day does it last at least 12hours before the need to recharge battery and this is assuming that 3G is on all the time. Thanks.

French network technical support say 60 hours with GPS on !!!!
I think it's joke.

Well, I've been watching the battery life on mine for a couple of days now in a reasonably scientific way and here are the early rather speculative results:
With just GPRS and nothing else on and very light use the battery drops from 100% to 80% very fast - less than an hour of light use.
Leaving it running on these settings will run it down to about 20% by the end of the working day - the drain seems to ease off aftert he first sharp drop
Powering up wifi and music for short time doesn't seem to make much difference.
Turning 3G on also doesn't seem to make the difference you would expect either.
So basically I would feel the need to take a charger with me if I left the house for the day, which will probably mean that I have to send the thing back. I've seen the coolsmartphone video review and mine isn't performing anything like that one - I would say I am loosing charge at about twice the rate.
Now the only issues that could be at work here is that I live in a lousy reception area. But could this really make such a difference?
What I would find really useful is a list of other tweaks you can make to cut power use so I can try them out. But at the end of the day it's looking like too many compromises would be needed to make this thing practical for me.

Reception would make a reasonable difference if normal network messages are being sent/received (general scans of BCCH channels, authentication with the network) - i.e. the radio isnt being used for data/voice, and only to keep registered to the network. But during those times the rest of the phone would also be in low power mode, so i would say an absolute max of 5 to 10%.
It would make a significant difference if you are transmiting data/making calls in a low reception area. I would say easily upto 20%.
It sounds to me like if you plan to use the phone much at all during the day you need a second battery. Then that turns into the hassle of how to charge the second battery every night, and i bet the desktop stand can't charge a second battery

My conclusions exactly. Impractical to say the least.
The puzzle then is why my last phone, a Nokia E51 with a 1050 mAh battery, under the same conditions, managed to last 2-3 days?
Is WM6 really that much of a power grabber compared to S60?

moonlanding said:
My conclusions exactly. Impractical to say the least.
The puzzle then is why my last phone, a Nokia E51 with a 1050 mAh battery, under the same conditions, managed to last 2-3 days?
Is WM6 really that much of a power grabber compared to S60?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Short answer - yes.
There's all these power saving features in new app processors like being able to leave the screen on while powering down the main CPU. You can use an interupt from the radio to wake up the processor etc.
Windows doesnt support half of these features, thats why find windows phones save all their power by turning the screen off. Other phones with screens just as big are alot less regimental about turning the screen off at any opertunity.
I was involved in a project once to design a smartphone and it was a really surprising how much difference there was between the windows version they suplied and an ARM version of linux.

I have HTC Touch Crouse and i have problems with battery (GPRS always on and Bluetooth) ... now with Diamond i have VERY BIG Problem. Battery Keeps less than one day ...

The experiment continues.
Disabling "GPRS auto attach" in Advanced Configuration Tool has made a big difference - still 90% after 6 hours now.
Now this is a surprise to me because I thought that you did this when you set the network seek to GSM only and not hunt for 3G. Or maybe I'm getting my GPRSs and GSMs mixed up...
Next step - leave this setting in place and turn push back on. Watch this space.

GSM digitises your voice and slots it into a time divided channel on a frequency, and marks it as voice. On the network side, it converts this back to voice and sends it on the PSTN network (for a landline call).
GPRS takes data you want to send and inserts it directly in the same time divided channel and marks it as data. On the network side the network transfers this onto the internet (or other network) through the GGSN (its essentially a router).
So GSM and GPRS use the same technology. Setting the phone to GSM only, just stops it connecting to 3g networks.
Anyway, when you turn your phone on, the tower tells it its capabilities eg GPRS. This give you a GPRS available icon. When you actually want to send data, you need to 'attach'. This is like logging into the network.
To do that you need to open a data channel and send your login details.
Normal phones will do that i.e. attach, and then go idle. The network will only log them off if they move to a new cell and do not reauthenticate.
Anyway, if you are not attached:
- When you send data, the phone will need to attach first (milliseconds delay) - unoticable.
- You will NOT have an IP address so incoming data can not reach you.
If you use pop3 with regular pull of email, it'll make less difference the more frequently you pull your email - because every time you do, the phone will attach.
If you use PUSH email, it'll make no difference because you have to remain attached (have an ip address) for push to work.
I'm sure most people didn't care to know all that but i'm sure some did!

Wow. Thanks. Impressive.
Let me try to summarise. With auto attach off the phone isn't trying to attach to the 3G network all the time which saves power. But it is also disconnected from GPRS and data networks. However this won't affect push email because it will attach when it needs to, ie when the network tells it that there is mail or I send something out. Is this right?
What about internet? Will the phone automatically attach to the data netowrks when I fire up Opera? Presumably to attach to 3G I will need to reset to automatically seek WCDMA.

moonlanding said:
Wow. Thanks. Impressive.
Let me try to summarise. With auto attach off the phone isn't trying to attach to the 3G network all the time which saves power. But it is also disconnected from GPRS and data networks. However this won't affect push email because it will attach when it needs to, ie when the network tells it that there is mail or I send something out. Is this right?
What about internet? Will the phone automatically attach to the data netowrks when I fire up Opera? Presumably to attach to 3G I will need to reset to automatically seek WCDMA.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You're still a bit confused i think. Ok on a phone you have voice or data. Data covers mail, internet, weather updates etc etc, voice covers phone calls.
There are two distinct protocols here, and we need to talk about them diferently...
GSM:
With GSM calls are sent over 1 timeslot and singalled as voice.
To make a call you need to have a signal, that takes a very short few messages which are sent every 20 minutes or so, or if you move around between towers. The Radio in the phone can do this all by itself without waking the phone up.
If you want to send ANY data (emails, internet, anything) you need to use GPRS. GPRS uses the same channels but inserts data into them instead of voice. Before you can send or receive any data you need to 'login' to the network. To login you need to actually open the channel and make a connection. Logging in is called 'ataching'. When you attach you get an IP address and the network can send stuff to you and u can send stuff to the network. Attaching needs to wake up the phone.
Once attached the phone can go into a sleep mode saving power, but any data send or received will wake up the phone.
UMTS/3G
UMTS is different in that everything is sent code divided. There is no 'login' or attach as such. In this mode all your voice gets converted to data and sent across.
---
With auto attach on:
If you use 3G mode, every time you switch between a 3G and GPRS area the phone will atach (GPRS) again, this will drain power.
Every time you move out of GPRS and come back into GPRS the phone will attach, even if you have nothing to send.
With autoattach off:
The phone will only attach if it has something to send AND is on GPRS (no 3G available or 3g turned off)
The upside is that you save power when you move between cells. The downside is that you can't receive any data from the network untill you decide to attach.
For push email for example you would never end up detaching as it would hold the connection open.
Anyway i hope that clear, but i'm quite sleepy so it might not make any sense lol

That makes sense to me. When I get my Touch Diamond, I'm definitely turning 'GPRS auto attach' off, because I don't think I need it on.

someone1234 that`s really useful info.I guess autoattach off is the best option for me too. WHEN the phone arrives.

Thanks again senior1234. I'm getting there. But this is more complex that I thought so I've gone back and checked what really makes a difference to the battery life.
The big difference for me is having the phone band set to GSM only (phone, options). Disabling auto attach makes a difference but not as much as I thought. I had changed both of them at the same time, thinking that they were more or less the same thing. Sorry folks. Very unscientific.
But if you feel like trying these bear in mind that I don't move between cells very much and have awful reception. I'll leave it to others to explain whether this is important.

HTC told me that with the screen on full brightness and phone turned on the GPS would only last about 2 hours befre the battery died, looks like we'll need the extended battery or several normal ones!

moonlanding said:
Thanks again senior1234. I'm getting there. But this is more complex that I thought so I've gone back and checked what really makes a difference to the battery life.
The big difference for me is having the phone band set to GSM only (phone, options). Disabling auto attach makes a difference but not as much as I thought. I had changed both of them at the same time, thinking that they were more or less the same thing. Sorry folks. Very unscientific.
But if you feel like trying these bear in mind that I don't move between cells very much and have awful reception. I'll leave it to others to explain whether this is important.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
GSM will use alot less power, so that is whats definatly making the difference
Why? Well.. GSM uses time division, which means the phones in an area take turns 'speaks'/'listening' with the tower. This ensures that no two phones are talking at the same time, and the tower can 'hear' what was sent. Because of this the power the phone transmits with can be controlled to be just high enough for the tower to listen, but not too high as to waste battery.
The down side of this scheme is that even if a phone has nothing to 'say', the other phones will wait in case it does. This means you're wasting bandwidth - or time that could be used by another phone to send data. Bottom line, data throughput is slower!
With 3G, all phones can talk at the same time. The data they send is tagged with a code, so that the data doesnt get mixed up. The advantage here is no time is wasted waiting for phones that may have nothing to send. The down side is that you need to be 'talking' loud enough to 'talk' over other people sending. This is why the data rate over 3G drops off really rapidly as you move away from the tower.
The disadvantages are a phone far from the tower using 3G will use more power than one using GSM because its having to 'talk' louder to get over other phones 'talking'.
Also, signals that get lost because they were drowned out by other phones have to be retransmited, which doesnt happen with GSM as much.
Yeah 3G or CDMA based channel access methods are a real power hog!
As for Auto attach you would expect it to only make a real difference if you have programs holding channels open.
With regards to low reception, it will make a significant difference because power disipation is not linear. Like all radiation it follows the inverse square law. For every meter distance the power drops of by a square of the distance.

Don't forget, when comparing uptime with other phones, with the diamond you have 4x the amount of pixels. VGA (640 x 480) devices will always chew up more Battery that QVGA (320 x 240) . This is one of the main reasons that HTC and the others delayed shipping VGA devices until now.
If you want longer battery life, you are going to have to stop using the display so often.
There is no way a vga machine can compete with a qvga machine on battery life... when all other factors are equal.

I think if you discount 3G, the battery is a little too small for the phone. With 3G its wholy inadequate.
The screen does make a huge difference, but these screens are more efficient, and HTC have used every opertunity to turn the screen off - a bit excessivly if you look at how fast it turns off when you make a call.
I don't understand why they don't use the iphone method of turning it off when the light sensor shows its dark (in a call).. i.e. the earpiece is next to your head!

moonlanding said:
The experiment continues.
Disabling "GPRS auto attach" in Advanced Configuration Tool has made a big difference - still 90% after 6 hours now.
Now this is a surprise to me because I thought that you did this when you set the network seek to GSM only and not hunt for 3G. Or maybe I'm getting my GPRSs and GSMs mixed up...
Next step - leave this setting in place and turn push back on. Watch this space.
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I've disabled gprs auto attach and set my band to GSM. When i connect to net with opera will it still turn on 3G etc?

nokmond said:
I've disabled gprs auto attach and set my band to GSM. When i connect to net with opera will it still turn on 3G etc?
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good question.
i only use my phone for normal phone stuff ans sometimes for some internet browsing.
should i turn anything on or off?

Always on hspda?

Is there a way to force the phone to always be on hspda?
Normally it would switch back to umts after like 2 seconds after being done transferring data.
I read a lot of comics, and switching between comics takes a few seconds every time because it needs to switch from umts to hspda. When it for some reason already is using hspda it loads the next comic in a second. So it can save quite some time if you read comics a lot.
Also will it significantly drain more battery? I will of course set it back to standard when I don't use my phone.
Thanks in advance.

No you can't. It's the network that switches you over, not the phone.

Rusty! said:
No you can't. It's the network that switches you over, not the phone.
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Okay. Thanks for the quick and helpful answer.

is there a way to force a faster switch from umts to hsdpa?
when i hit a link in my browser i notice that it takes 3-10 seconds before umts switches to hsdpa.

The only thing you could do is have something constantly using the data connection so it never drops back to basic 3G.

You can set your phone to only use an hsdpa/umts connection by dialing *#*#4636#*#* and chosing WCDMA Only in the Phone Info section.
Edit: whoops didn't really read the OP. this doesnt help

Rusty! said:
The only thing you could do is have something constantly using the data connection so it never drops back to basic 3G.
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You're right, I guess running a ping command from a terminal client will do just that. Atm I'm on gprs only since I'm home, but it seems to keep the data connection busy while it runs in the background.

To the battery thing: yes, it'll drain the battery much faster.