HTC models with GPS: abnormal battery drainage in standby - Tilt, TyTN II, MDA Vario III General

This thread refers to cases where the HTC Kaiser (and probably other HTC phone models with the same built-in GPS chip, such as Polaris) sucks the battery empty within a single day, particularly during standby, particularly if all features of the phone are DISABLED, or after low usage. Another symptom may be a phone which unexpectedly did not come back to life, but operated normally after recharging. Yet another symptom is unusually short battery life through normal use. Note, this thread is not about limited battery endurance due to heavy usage.
*** Battery drain FAQ ***
How can I see whether my Kaiser is affected?
- A large percentage of HTC phones with Qualcomm chipset and internal GPS seems to suffer from the bug described here, some appear to be robust enough, likely depending on chip revisions. If you never ever use GPS, you are probably out of risk. If you use GPS at least occasionally, you should have a look at your phone, and closely. It is possible that an otherwise normal to heavy use of the phone conceals a basic, added current consumption which is what we are talking about here. In such a situation you may have got used to a certain battery endurance, which may be much higher under normal circumstances. So far I observed currents between 28 and 78 mA, depending on DUT and OS. Some users reported currents in excess of 100mA. Note, this added current does nothing for you, except accelerate your battery drain!
How to check this?
- Check the true standby current (see the following description). That simple.
How to measure the standby current?
- Clean up: switch all phone features off (GPS, Phone, Bluetooth, Media Player, really everything). Terminate all applications, use Task Manager to verify this. Make sure no processor intensive background tasks are running (standard installations should meet this requirement). Do NOT soft reset at this point!
- Put the phone in standby, and wait approx. 10 seconds. The phone needs a while to complete entering the standby though it appears to be off immediately.
- Now measure the current. Best and fastest way of doing it would be to have a current meter connected between your battery and your phone which gives you realtime readouts. Second to that is a suitable battery tool, such as "BatteryStatus", but you have to get used to the delayed current display (see post #4 for details). Using the software battery gauge, you should wait an additional 20 seconds or so to allow for the current capture, then reactivate from standby and take the lowest possible current readout.
- If the phone is in a good condition, the standby current must be in the range 1..3 mA, roughly. If you see a repeatable current well in excess of 20mA, your phone is in the BAD condition !!
- Another simple method is to leave the cleaned up phone in standby overnight. Next morning, soft reset your phone because the phone may have lost track of the battery capacity. Check whether the capacity dropped dramatically. And also check whether the phone feels warm to the touch.
How to reproduce the problem?
- Activate GPS until you get a fix. Probably receiving the first NMEA strings is good enough, but I have not verified this. GPSTest, HTC's GPS Tool or any navigation software does the job.
- Deactivate GPS. Just to be safe, terminate the GPS software, too.
- Check the standby current.
- The fault does not pop up always, so you may have to repeat these steps several times until it appears. The phones I tested usually catch fever after only one or two tries, but it is possible that you need to cycle through this procedure 5 or 10 times. Which is in the nature of intermittent bugs.
How to reset this nasty condition?
- Fault recovery is possible by continued on/off cycling of the GPS unit, similar to what provoked this fault.
- Activating the cellphone unit does also seem to cause the phone to return to a low consumption, but maybe not in all cases.
- Try to soft reset your phone, or to cycle the power to the phone (long press of the power button).
- If you really cannot get rid of the problem, back up your phone data, then execute a hard reset. BEFORE restoring the phone, load a battery gauge software and see whether the consumption is gone. If yes, some application is likely to cause your headaches.
After performing one of the above steps you may repeat the described current measurement, to confirm that the standby current is back in the normal range.
***********************
Original text:
I have reason to believe that all Kaiser models are prone to the "excessive standby current consumption" problem. I tried it on two original "VPA compact V" by Vodafone (= HTC Kaiser), using the original WM6, ROM 1.56.162.5, Radio 1.27.12.11. I gave a **** on warranty now, stepped up through HardSPL to "Duttys_Official_WM6.1_Rom_5.2.19716_UC.zip", Radio 1.64.08.21. The results are all the same: an excessive current consumption which can vary between 25 and 75 mA. Interestingly, the current is always the same in a specific setup, but varies between phones and operating systems. In the latest case, the same phone took 28mA under WM6, went up to 78mA under WM61. Consequence being, the battery will be sucked empty within a day or so, without obvious reason. The only mitigation is a reset, or a complete switch-off.
There is no application which could cause the current consumption, at least none I installed. It does not even matter which GPS application you used. The only active processes are (according to TaskManager, latest WM6.1 version, ".exe" omitted for the sake of ease): filesys, device, biotouch, gwes, shell32, cprog, services, quickdial, connmgr, mediahubmini, taskmgr, htcactionscreen, sapsettings, aplauncher, quickmenu, nk. I repeat: ALL applications properly terminated, ALL internal units are OFF (WLAN, Bluetooth, Phone, GPRS, GPS, Camera, Media Player etc. - really NOTHING).
Before anybody prematurely states that these findings can not be reproduced: the problem is unlikely to appear if you switch on the GPS for a couple of NMEA strings, then off again (though it did already). If need be, you have to leave it on for a while, play a bit, walk around a bit and so on. Take your time testing it _thoroughly_, really. I cannot tell when the fault actually appears, and it may not come up immediately because it seems somewhat sporadic in nature - but take my word, it will, I observed this issue for a long enough time. I can only repeat myself: I am sure there is something wrong with the power management in the GPS driver.
Anybody, feel free to contribute, but PLEASE avoid funny statements like "you have to shut down all programs", "WLAN can take up lots of energy" and so on. And before you express doubts just because there are not quite many people out there who come to the same conclusions, think again. Without going into details, most users are simply not in the position to come to the correct conclusions.
BusterTyTN

OK, making it sticky; depending on the feedback, I (or other mods) may unstick it in the future.

How do you measure current while in standby? When it's running, I can see current usage in the battery monitor of AE Button plus. Just after wake up from standby, it shows 16ma. A few seconds later it jumps to 385ma and then settles at 140ma.
I'm using 3.02.DKv0.0 6.1 Lite Rom from akadonny.

@ Menneisyys: thanx!
@ tdusen:
there's two ways of doing it. First, I do not know whether "AE Button plus" works in a similar way, but "BatteryStatus" (also included in Dutty's newest WM61 release) has some seconds of a delay in the current display. I assume this is because of an averaging process running in the background which collects current samples over a certain period of time, or soemthing to this effect. Anyway; you have to keep your in standby for at least 10..20 seconds, then reactivate the PDA. If it's still showing a high current, tip on the current/power display a few times, in most cases this helps getting the low standby current. You simply have to try to catch the lowest reading, right after reactivation from standby. If everything is OK, you will get a current reading of a few mA, maximum (in most cases 1..3 mA), assuming you shut every feature of your phone off.
The other way is also the verification of the "BatteryStatus" method. I built a current shunt test probe and measured the battery current directly. Attached is a screenshot taken with my digital scope, which shows typical results (see above -- moved to post #1).
In your case - just to be safe, give your PDA a soft reset, and leave everything off. Check your current reading. If it's still at 16mA as you wrote, I wouldn't bother. Later you may fire up a GPS application like GPSTest, the HTC GPSTool, Tomtom, OziExplorerCE or whatever, and play with it for a while. Running a circle or two around your house should do it. Switch GPS off again, make sure all tasks have ended (if you want to make it perfect). Repeat checking the current as described above. It is also possible that you have to redo the test one or two times until the problem appears. You will see!
BusterTyTN

Addendum to the previous post: explanation of the screenshot.
The vertical center is zero current, discharge currents are going down. To the very left you see the PDA coming out of a soft reset, then I switched it into standby (the short flat line right before the 200sec division, ~0..1mA). Directly at the 200sec division I reactivated the phone, started GPSTest, waited until GPS was all up and running, stopped GPS and terminated the program. I also checked that no other applications were running at that time. After a little while the current settled to a discharge current of approx. 48 mA (the wide track in the center; the exact level can vary between devices). It continues drawing this amount of current until the battery is empty, or until you soft reset the device. I did the latter to the right of the screenshot, which shows another boot sequence followed by a standby, which in turn returned to a very low current consumption.

Also give a try to acbTaskMan - it's a very nice meter tool, see my related articles

I don't know anything about current measurement, but my kaiser usually lasts 2-3 days of intensive use (1-2 hours calls/day + some GPRS data + bluetooth always on + GPS once a week) and it seems quite OK for such device.

Rumcajs_tr said:
I don't know anything about current measurement, but my kaiser usually lasts 2-3 days of intensive use (1-2 hours calls/day + some GPRS data + bluetooth always on + GPS once a week) and it seems quite OK for such device.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Seriously thats gr8... What ROM / Radio are you using??

Rumcajs_tr said:
I don't know anything about current measurement, but my kaiser usually lasts 2-3 days of intensive use (1-2 hours calls/day + some GPRS data + bluetooth always on + GPS once a week) and it seems quite OK for such device.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's intensive????????
How about 5-6 HOURS of calls a day
4-5 HOURS a day of HSDPA
checking emails every 15 minutes on 3 email accounts
sending emails 60-75 times a day
WI-FI 1-2 hours a day
150 SMS/Texts a day
10-20 MMS a day
and then a few misc. apps ran.
To me, my usage is not really intensive, but I do have to have a car charger and a couple of wall chargers because I can run a battery dead in about 5 hours.

i played doom for 30 minutes starting at 100% battery, and the battery was at 75% afterwards. i had to charge it for about 30+ minutes to get it back up.
On a daily basis, i will go to school, leave my phone in my pocket on standby, then by the end of school its at about 80%. i did nothing all day and it dropped 20%.
I would agree, 5-6 hours is probably the max i can get out of it.

BusterTyTN said:
...
I have reason to believe that all Kaiser models are prone to the "excessive standby current consumption" problem.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
At least two devices work nicely as far as battey power is concerned.
I still enjoy more than 10 days standby with phone switched on.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=1652208#post1652208
I hope you'll find a solution.
Regards,
V
T-Mobile Germany
VARIO III rom 1.56.111.4
radio 1.27.12.11

When my phone is on, but not running any active apps, it consumes about 145 mA - 150 mA with nothing but my phone on and backlight lower 3rd bar.
I've read some others guys on the forum have a power consumption of about 100 mA with higher backlight settings.

indeed excessive consumption
I must confirm the OP's finding. Though I assume it is simply related to the Radio used (see comparison in another thread where est. time of usage went from 227 to +400 minutes)
When I used my stock rom with radio 1.27, I wouls still have 40-50% cap using all day Blutooth on, no 3G, still GPS enabled for 3 hours.
When I falshed to DCS 1.7 and changed radio to 1.64, power consumption doubled, draining the battery at incredible speed (full chare morning, less than 10% in late afternoon)
I had to disable BT radio and set backlight low to let me go through the end of the day.
Looking forward to read a solution here.

With stock orange radio and rom, my device would last circa 36 hrs with very light usage and about 6/7 hours with heavy usage.
With Dutty V3 and orange stock radio (1.27) I got very similar, maybe slightly faster drain.
I have today flashed dutty 6.1 and a 1.64 radio and will monitor battery usage tomorrow.

There's a lot of anecdotal information here...
To get this to baseline information I suggest the following starting point:
1. Device (Kaiser, tilt, etc)
2. Which battery are you using (brand, mAh rating, etc)
3. Which Rom and radio version
4. What application are you using to measure current draw? (Great spot for a recommendation or a .CAB file)
5. Provide typical usage description and corresponding battery life
6. At what point do you charge the battery (i.e. top off every night, charge whenever power's available, recharge only when battery hits low level (i.e. 10%)
To effectively analyze the data, there needs to be a consistent method of capture.

Be careful not to mix up the problems here!!!
1. I assume you will not be confronted with this problem when you never use GPS at all, though you should not treat this as a final statement - has to be investigated further. So far I have not found any increased standby consumption if I did not touch GPS (well, at least after the last soft reset).
2. I am not talking about short battery uptime under heavy use, either. For instance, if you have GPS permanently on, you can suck the battery empty within 4~5 hours, max.. However, it is well possible that a suspiciously short uptime is somewhat concealed by an overall heavy use of the phone. To figure this out, you simply have to check the standby current consumption of a suspicious phone, with all its features (temporarily) disabled, as described earlier.
3. Note, this problem is all about current consumption during standby !

@ Liquidsilver:
"anecdotal information", sure. Please read again, particularly the start of the thread which will answer most of your questions. Add the thread "TyTN II / Kaiser issue: GPS & battery drain" for the remaining ones.
Please try to understand. You can get the phone into a condition where it sucks the battery dead empty within 24 hours give or take, during standby, all features of the phone OFF. ZERO usage. PROVEN, some 10 times, on different Kaiser's, using different OS's.

@ Stay0Puft:
if your battery capacity does not drop much overnight, you may look at an issue other than the one described here.

I would like to add my observation to high battery drain. Normally on my stock Kaiser rom that I used for about 4 months, normal overnight drain is 4% with radio in standby and BT On, WiFi Off. I use GPS with iGuidance almost daily and seldom soft reset.
I have witnessed extremely high power drain only a few times and they were always involved somehow with WiFi. If I have WiFi On and forget to turn it off and just put the phone in standby or let it auto power off, I have found the phone hot to the touch and dead or close to dead in only a couple of hours. The phone is usually locked up and non responsive at this point, needing a soft reset. I haven't found what causes this, it's been at home on my wireless LAN but with no active application, WiFi was simply on. I make it a point to keep WiFi Off when not actively needed and never have issues in many months of use.
If you haven't checked this out, I'd be curious to see what the current meter would show. At some point I'll drag out the scope and make a shunt as well, just no time these days...

AT&T Tilt...
I used to get 2-3 days with mediocre usage when i first bought it... and now i'm lucky if it lasts an entire day... I cannot trust it with my morning alarm anymore... I dont think its the ROM, because i even tried flashing AT&T Tilt rom back on and even the minor update on HTC... but still no luck... I think i need like a calibrator program...

Related

TyTN II / Kaiser issue: GPS & battery drain

Hello all,
it seems there is more to complain about than this video driver nightmare. I'm adding two issues in separate threads. This one deals with the GPS module and resulting battery drain. I observed it right after installing the first GPS software and searched for help nearly everywhere, and I found some more hints pointing at short battery uptimes after GPS was used. Here's how it works:
- access the GPS port (GPS software, "OziExplorer" or the like)
- stop the access
- end all software tasks
- put device into standby
- Due to an additional current draw of approx. 50mA the battery will be empty within a day --- in standby. The GPS unit does _NOT_ return into a low power state, no matter how much time passed.
- Only a complete power-off or pressing the soft reset button ends this condition.
Installing a battery monitor software (BatteryStatus) confirmed an additional current draw of approx. 50mA after the mentioned GPS port access.
I found a promising registry entry HKLM/System/CurrentControlSet/GPS Intermediate Driver/Drivers/SleepOnNoData but again it does not seem to have the least of an effect (default is 1000).
HTC support claimed "they know of no issues in conjunction with the Kaiser" - well at that point I was not even able to put my question. Which somehow tells me how serious these guys take their customers .
BusterTyTN
One thing I forgot: knowing that the GPS does not turn off, I use to apply a soft reset whenever I used a GPS software. Voilá, several days runtime until I have to recharge!
this confirms my suspicion...
now and then it happend that the battery of my tytn was empty in the morning. I never really proved that it happend after using gps, and looked for a thread here....well, here it is...
Others must have made the same observation.....
Today I succeeded submitting a bug report to HTC, at last... built a test setup, made measurements with a digital scope, documented everything. The problem can always be reproduced. There is a smooth, steady state current consumption of nearly 50mA after the GPS has been used, without any software running in the background. Until you soft reset the device.
I will let you know as soon as I have news on this one. Whoever can reproduce this, please add a note to this thread. This power management issue is getting more and more interesting.
BusterTyTN
Hm i must check that in my klaaiser last days i was always instaling something so manu soft restes have been made i'll test it now.
I can confirm that GPS activation seems to drain battery more.
I have installed the latest dutty rom, and have not installed tom tom.
So far I have had the phone on for 28 hours, and still have 40% of the battery.
Previously battery would die after 12 hours.
I am not sure now I want to install Tomtom.... ;-)
But I know I will not be able to resist....
what should my kaisers power usage be at on average, mine seems very high at an average of 250mW?
Good idea. Let's take typical power measurements and state them here. I will come back with some more values later on. I do not have my scope measurements within reach, and I am going to complete the picture with the help of "BatteryStatus". Here's what comes right out of my memory:
In standby, no background software, no communications etc.: next to nothing, 0 to 1mA / 0..3mW
Active, still no software or communications, just the "today" screen, brightness at the second lowest setting: ~180mW
BusterTyTN
I'm using the Garmin software for gps, and I don't seem to have te battery drain problem. with Garmin xt running 220 - 280 ma. Once I shut down Garmin xt it slowly drops, taking from 3 to 5 minutes, back to a normal 60 -70 ma. (1 -3 ma in standby.)
Good luck sorting this out.
Typical power data
Nakel, negative proof is just as good as positive. Well possible that there is a dependency on the ROM type / branding / OEM configuration, so maybe you're so kind to add the brand / type / ROM # of your device. And perhaps you can try GPSTest and check the battery current in standby again - just to exclude nasty side effects.
My device is the "Vodafone VPA compact V", ROM Version 1.56.162.5, Radio 1.27.12.11. No updates so far. Here comes its power consumption data, taken using "BatteryStatus". I observed the power display for a few minutes in each situation and tried to catch the lowest readouts. The individual sections were activated one by one. Sorry I forgot to check the current increase at full brightness, but I think that is of secondary interest here.
1. Pstby = 0..3mW (reference for the following)
2. Pon = 155..180 mW (reference, set to lowest brightness, no task running, didnt touch screen nor buttons)
3. Pon+20mW = 175..200 mW GSM phone logged in, no calls
4. Pon+5..10mW = 160..190 mW BT on, no link
5. Pon+130..400mW = 280..560 mW WLAN, no data transfers
6. Pon+850mW = 1000 mW GPS on, SW running (OziExplorer or GPSTest), with & w/o GPS fix
7. Pon+200mW = 340 mW On, after GPS access. Same situation as 2. otherwise.
8. Pstby+180 mW = 180mW standby, after GPS access. Same situation as 1.
9. Pon+380mW = 540 mW Mediaplayer running, 0%Volume
10. Pon+530mW = 680 mW 5% volume, internal speaker
11. Pon+260mW = 410 mW, 5% volume, display completely off
Scope readouts show very little battery current ripple (clean DC) in situations 1. and 8. Significant ripple in all other modes.
BusterTyTN
I've used both Pocket Streets and Fugawi and found that, if I use the "stop" or "close" GPS option in those applications, the GPS shuts down and I have no battery drain issue.
I think you're looking at a problem with an anti-social application rather than a Kaiser issue.
I'm running the stock AT&T ROM, but have upgraded the radio to 1.27.12.17
You have to make sure you close the GPS application and not just minimize it. If you minimize the GPS app that you are running the GPS will continue to stay on, draining the battery.
BusterTyTN said:
Nakel, negative proof is just as good as positive. Well possible that there is a dependency on the ROM type / branding / OEM configuration, so maybe you're so kind to add the brand / type / ROM # of your device.
BusterTyTN
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
AT&T Tilt
I'm using the standard At&T ROM without the added AT&T bloatware.
R 127.12.11
G 22.45.88.07H
D 1.57.00.00
Hopefully that will help solve the problem. Wish I could be of more help...
ray6 said:
You have to make sure you close the GPS application and not just minimize it. If you minimize the GPS app that you are running the GPS will continue to stay on, draining the battery.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Both of the applications I mentioned have features that specifically start and stop the GPS. They do not have to be closed to avoid battery drain issues.
I'll go ahead and add my numbers:
Before GPS:
Standby: <1mA
On and Active: ~85mA
GPS turned on (GPS Utilities): ~250mA Steady (450mA peak)
After terminating GPS software:
On and Active: ~80mA
Standby: <1mA
Running Alex's WM6.1 Beta 1 ROM, AT&T Tilt
Well I already saw quite a number of complaints out there, regarding quickly drained batteries, in similar circumstances. The problem is definitely there, I only have to find out the prone devices and/or the affected versions.
So anybody who can reproduce these findings, please contribute here, and do not forget your version numbers.
Thank you all
BusterTyTN
Dead battery after 6 hours of minimal use, i am not sure if it's the GPS's fault but i will do further testing
R 1.27.12.11
G 22.45.88.07H
D 1.56.00.00
I think I already wrote that in another thread on the same subject...
any road,
I had battery drain issues just twice: those times the phone completely drained the battery in a few hours... possibly more or less the 6 hours even dhob187 experienced.
I just re-charged the phone and had no more problems. I dunno why that happened but as it is not a common behaviour I'm not that worried.
In my experience I had no problems with GPS-battery relationship.
Rom: 1.56.408.5
Radio: 1.27.12.11
Protocol: 22.45.88.07H
According to MSDN the intermediate driver 'counts' the number of open connections to it. After all programs have closed their connection the driver shuts the gps down. When an program 'forgets' to close it's connection the driver doesn't shut down the driver. Could be an good idea to write an little program to check the status of the driver (with IOCTL_SERVICE_STATUS?) and/or start and stop the driver (IOCTL_SERVICE_START / IOCTL_SERVICE_STOP)
All i can tell is that the new Dutty rom Wm6.1 Beta1 is the best for your Batt. live !!!!
It's the best so far...
See my sig

High Battery Drain - I think I have got it

I think it is the phone in the Kaiser that drains the battery.
NOTE that this is NOT about using the built in funtions too much, please read the conditions of this test.
First of all, I am not a typical Kaiser user - the sim card I am using at the moment doesn't support 3G or any fancy functions - just domestic calls and sms!
I think it has been some weeks where I had this problem, but I am not really sure. But here is what I did to test, read it closely:
Kaiser is started from cold last evening, no apps started, nothing running. It has been charged to 100%, and before going to bed, I disable the only thing I have running - the phone! No bluetooth, wireless, nothing at all. I press the power button briefly to put the phone to sleep, right after pulling the charger plug.
All night, the phone is sitting in flight mode, without charger, and in the morning I wake it up and check the battery. 100% it says. Then I turn the phone on (3G is selected off, I have the modified version of comm manager where 3G is included). I check the battery again, 100%, and then mobile signal strength, there are 4 bars, plenty of signal. Then I briefly press the power button to turn off the display.
Time is 0800, phone is on, display off, and I leave it on the table in the same place where the mobile signal was 4 bars. I remove the battery cover, just to be able to monitor the battery temperature during this test. Room temperature is regulated to 23 deg C, and the phone is not exposed to sunlight.
This is what happened:
Phone on glass table, no bag, battery cover removed, 23 deg constant temp, no sunlight
0800: 100% Phone is turned on via Comm Manager, 3G deactivated
0815: 96% slightly warm battery, can just barely feel the battery is a little warmer around the middle, but it is definately warm from battery.
0930: 83% battery still warm
1007: 78% warm battery
1105: 68% still warm - checking the phone signal, still 4 bars
1312: Green light flashes like every other second, but I cannot turn the phone on. Not even sliding the keyboard open wakes it up. I remove the battery and then put it back in place, and turn on the phone.
1313: The phone has booted, battery is now 16%! That is why it did not want to wake up again ...
I connect the charger, checking SMS and phone list. No calls or messages.
So, from 0800 to 1313, just over 5 hours, the phone went from 100% to 16%, with NO USE AT ALL except the phone in standby. Compare that to being all night in the same state, EXCEPT with the phone off.
If it is not something with the phone itself, it MUST be something related pretty close to it.
Some users only have "normal" battery problems because they use the phone with too many functions. As this is obviously NOT the problem here, spare these comments (your phone is OK then). This s... is serious!
------------------------
I urge others who have battery frain problems on the Kaiser to do the same test. Most should be able to do this on - say - a saturday evening (the following day should be one where you don't need your phone too much, and where you don't expect people to call or text you too much).
BATTERY DRAIN TEST:
1. Make sure phone is charged to 100%
2. Reboot and don't start any apps
3. Check no apps running, kill any that started by themselves
4. Turn off everything in comm manager (flight mode, basically)
5. Power off the display, and leave overnight, CHARGER DISCONNECTED.
6. When you get up in the morning, turn it on (should still be in standby with display off)
7. Check battery level and note the time and the phone signal strenght
8. Turn on the phone in the comm manager, nothing else
9. Press the power button briefly to bring turn the screen off
10. Every hour or so, note turn the display on and note the battery level and confirm that the phone signal is still OK
Mine lasted just about 5 hours like this, how long does YOUR Kaiser last???
---------------
Mods, I think this one is important enough for a sticky, please.
Until the problem is resolved, at least.
Thank you
LGB said:
Mods, I think this one is important enough for a sticky, please.
Until the problem is resolved, at least.
Thank you
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
LGB,
from your description I do not see why you are pointing at the phone, of all things. Maybe you just installed an application which keeps your phone from getting some rest in standby.
During my tests as shown in the thread "HTC models with GPS? Excessive standby battery drain CONFIRMED - FAQ added" I used two different OS (WM6 and WM6.1). In both cases I did not install anything except for a GPS tool (tried HTC's GPSTool, Chartcross GPSTest and OziExplorer, to exclude potential application specific trouble) which was sufficient to reproduce the problem. I do not know whether you went that far, but I am afraid you have to follow the same procedure. Before doing so you can try to locate an unusual process running in the background, using TaskManager (one which can show you the processes as well). There may be an "Anti social application", as someone else has put it.
If you find out the exact circumstances, I will be happy to add this to the first page of the abovementioned sticky thread. To me this all seems too much related to each other. It is well possible that the HTC has several sensible spots concerning standby current consumption, and of course I would like to see the complete picture. Best result being one common reason... lets try to nail down this sucker.
BusterTyTN
More than often I go to university and leave Kaiser only with the phone function (GSM, no 3G), no apps running, except for HTC Home Plugin and Pocket Contacts. If nothing happens, like receiving/sending SMS or phone calls, after about 7 hours its at 92/94%. And my carrier doesn't have a good signal there.
LGB said:
Mods, I think this one is important enough for a sticky, please.
Until the problem is resolved, at least.
Thank you
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
ever thought it might be your radio version?
Just a thought guys, but isn't it better to also state some detailed information like :
- ROM version
- Radio version
- SN of battery (there could be a bad batch of batteries around)
- Name of provider
Here's my details, but I haven't got this problem (I can easily run 1 week with battery with quite a lot of Wifi use) :
- ROM : Dutty 6.1 WWE
- Radio : 1.64.06.04
- SN of battery : DCOX17BM003309
- Name of Provider Orange NL
Why don`t you just try a full backup, format yer phone and do the test again?
Doing such test with alot installed is no point.
For my part: My Kaiser is brand new and I am impressed by the batterylife. None of my kaiser-equipped friends have this problem eighter.
Start your phone from scrach. I`m sure the problem will dissappear.
If not it should be under warranty and you should get a replacement.
No phones gets drained by itself while in standby, and if it does its something wrong with it.
speedme said:
Just a thought guys, but isn't it better to also state some detailed information like :
- ROM version
- Radio version
- SN of battery (there could be a bad batch of batteries around)
- Name of provider
Here's my details, but I haven't got this problem (I can easily run 1 week with battery with quite a lot of Wifi use) :
- ROM : Dutty 6.1 WWE
- Radio : 1.64.06.04
- SN of battery : DCOX17BM003309
- Name of Provider Orange NL
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
1 WEEK! hmmmm something smells fishy..............
I have been experiencing a lot more battery drain since using radio version: 1.64.08.21 from 1.27.12.11. But my previous radio version does not work for Sleuth's WM6.1 V3.0. Do you think having a bigger pool size can contribute to power drain also?
LGB said:
I think it is the phone in the Kaiser that drains the battery.
Phone on glass table, no bag, battery cover removed, 23 deg constant temp, no sunlight
0800: 100% Phone is turned on via Comm Manager, 3G deactivated
0815: 96% slightly warm battery, can just barely feel the battery is a little warmer around the middle, but it is definately warm from battery.
0930: 83% battery still warm
1007: 78% warm battery
1105: 68% still warm - checking the phone signal, still 4 bars
1312: Green light flashes like every other second, but I cannot turn the phone on. Not even sliding the keyboard open wakes it up. I remove the battery and then put it back in place, and turn on the phone.
1313: The phone has booted, battery is now 16%! That is why it did not want to wake up again ...
I connect the charger, checking SMS and phone list. No calls or messages.
So, from 0800 to 1313, just over 5 hours, the phone went from 100% to 16%, with NO USE AT ALL except the phone in standby. Compare that to being all night in the same state, EXCEPT with the phone off.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Install Batterystatus and tell us what mA power drain your getting.
Battery drain of this magnitude could be a short circuit, causing the heat. Get a replacement if under warranty.
rgds
stuart
I have my Tytn II for 2 months now, but I'm still waiting on my service provider switch, and as it is locked I can't use phone function yet.
BUT, even without phone and with normal daily usage (some gaming, some WiFi, calendar, etc.) I have to recharge every other day. Furthermore I'm experiencing massive battery drain even at standby mode (guess it runs out 20% overnight, doing absolutely nothing!). I always check my task manager and clear any running programs.. I run Batti, which is the only program that's always running I can think of..
jym04 said:
More than often I go to university and leave Kaiser only with the phone function (GSM, no 3G), no apps running, except for HTC Home Plugin and Pocket Contacts. If nothing happens, like receiving/sending SMS or phone calls, after about 7 hours its at 92/94%. And my carrier doesn't have a good signal there.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is how it USED to be for me ... I don't know when, but at a certain stage, that CHANGED. Now, I can get 5 hours only, like that. When I check TASK MANAGER, all I have running are these two apps:
SMS / MMS
Comm Manager
ROM 1.56.403.4 09/19/07
Radio version: 1.27.12.11
Protocol version: 22.45.88.07H
Advanced configuration tool v 1.1 by Schap's:
OS: Microsoft Windows CE 5.2.1620 (Info says build 18125.0.4.2)
.NET Compact Framework: 2.0.7045.0
Glyph cache: 8192
File system cache: Auto
File system filter cache: 0
Phone: Everything is ticked, meaning Show video dialer, SIM contacts, Band page, PIN2 page, Time Zones page, TTY page, ENABLE DTMF support, EDGE Icon, HSDPA icon, Disable SMS sent notification
GPRS/3G disconnect and timer ticked, connection always on is NOT ticked, Disconnect GPRS/3G after 600 seconds (but I haven't used either for a long time now)
Com manager has button 10 as 3G so I can disconnect it
SYSTEM INFO says:
Windows Mobile 6.0 (WinCE 5.02)
Program memory 38% (38.07/101.4MB)
Storage memory 65% (87.65/135.5MB)
Memory card 89% (5.06/5.7GB)
I also have the tweaks2k2 net installed, could I have changed something by mistake?
But WHY is it that when the phone is off, I get normal battery life, with phone ON it goes down fast, even with no use?
I did a new test this morning, this is what I did:
Phone charged 100% in the evening. Flight mode all night with screen off. In the morning it was 99%, and this is what I did:
0648:99% GPS on (GPSTuner, very basic GPS program, just to keep it alive), lowest setting on the display. GPS came on pretty quick, and I kept poking the display now and then to keep it out of standby
0728:66% (GPS and display still on, behind shielded windoes so DOP only between 5 and 25, GPS working to try to hold position!)
0827:29%
0910:10% 3xbeep, battery warning
So, with the display on lowest setting but constantly on and GPS running also, I got 2:22 from 99% to 10%, no other items enabled (no phone, bluetooth, wireless etc)
...
my batt
i have had my tilt since late dec? its been dropped lots of times ( yah i know its bad) i have upgraded to the new att fw( just realy havent looked @ new roms)
i did flash a new splash screen i got a good umts signel where i live. if i charge my phone adn then go home and go to sleep with maybe a few apps running when i wake up @ night( i work nights) my phone normally is around 85 to 90% on the batt. my batt sn is 5fga279v007664
r=1.27.14.09
g= 22.45.8807h
d=1.62.00.00
idk about yall i do lots of txtin adn web access adn i normally go to sleep around 12ish pm then wake up around 7 or 8 pm and my phone normally will last 2ish days
Discovered today that even though comm manager said 3g off if I went into connections and opened up hsdpa it was on. Was wondering why my battery was draining so damn fast. Not quite at your speed but quickly.
If I was you I would grab abcpowermeter and also SKTOOLS and use them, they will show drain and the FULL list of procs running and which ones are chewing up the cpu.
hmm lemme try seeing if it lasts abit longer when its on gsm only..im going to have to wait till tue because i work in a call center and the gsm interference irritates the crap outta me and my customers.
ok this post seems to be nothing but n00bs posting which is not a bad thing! thank you for coming out and posting! The radio is a HUGE factor!! probably the biggest one of them all, the new Niki radios seem to be doing the best as far as battery goes these days! Also make sure if your going to be doing battery tests its after a HARD RESET! no apps installed period, I know batti is a big drain on the battery even though its a small app lol.... My kaiser will last about 35 hours with MY use now everyones use is different so there is no perfect judge of battery use, even the battery test apps have a % that it is off by and veryone uses there phone different, But if your only getting 5-6 hours something is wrong or you ARE a heavy user sorry to say! remember the radio is the key to battery use here folks and also the apps you have installed!
ALSO- HSDPA is a battery drain as is UTMS to is you can go EDGE only and you will be ahocked at how much longer it lasts
Programs
austinsnyc said:
ok this post seems to be nothing but n00bs posting which is not a bad thing! thank you for coming out and posting! The radio is a HUGE factor!! probably the biggest one of them all, the new Niki radios seem to be doing the best as far as battery goes these days! Also make sure if your going to be doing battery tests its after a HARD RESET! no apps installed period, I know batti is a big drain on the battery even though its a small app lol.... My kaiser will last about 35 hours with MY use now everyones use is different so there is no perfect judge of battery use, even the battery test apps have a % that it is off by and veryone uses there phone different, But if your only getting 5-6 hours something is wrong or you ARE a heavy user sorry to say! remember the radio is the key to battery use here folks and also the apps you have installed!
ALSO- HSDPA is a battery drain as is UTMS to is you can go EDGE only and you will be ahocked at how much longer it lasts
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It is obviously because of a program or programs installed that drain the Batt.
austinsnyc said:
ok this post seems to be nothing but n00bs posting which is not a bad thing! thank you for coming out and posting! The radio is a HUGE factor!! probably the biggest one of them all, the new Niki radios seem to be doing the best as far as battery goes these days! Also make sure if your going to be doing battery tests its after a HARD RESET! no apps installed period, I know batti is a big drain on the battery even though its a small app lol.... My kaiser will last about 35 hours with MY use now everyones use is different so there is no perfect judge of battery use, even the battery test apps have a % that it is off by and veryone uses there phone different, But if your only getting 5-6 hours something is wrong or you ARE a heavy user sorry to say! remember the radio is the key to battery use here folks and also the apps you have installed!
ALSO- HSDPA is a battery drain as is UTMS to is you can go EDGE only and you will be ahocked at how much longer it lasts
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i know umts/hsdpa do have an major effect on batt life....on my old 8125 it would last 3-4 days and but at that time i did not have the data plan i just had unlimeted txtin....and i would use the phone alot in in the morning and alot after school. i also did use wifi alot b4 and after school but none the less it still would last 3-4 days. when i got the tilt i was dissapointed with the life of my of the tilt and even now it still lasts about 2ish days with the oem batt.
Sorry but my TyTN II does not discharge like that at all.
This has definitely go something to do with rom version, service provider etc etc.
I charge my TyTN II to 100% at around 20h00. By 08h00 the next morning my phone is on 94% with nothing disabled except bluetooth, which I then switch on when I drive off.
There are some apps like Cyberon Voice command and Windows Mobile Voice Command which I have since removed, which do consume enormous amounts of power even on standby.
My TyTN II details:
ROM version: 1.56.421.1
ROM Date: 26th October 2007
Radio Version: 1.27.15.32
Protocol Version: 22.51.88.13H
Service Provider/Network: Vodacom South Africa
i use edge only, new niki radio, push activated, 60-70mins of voice a day, 50-60 txts a day and i can get to 2.5+ days with 4% left, screen brightness is the 3rd notch from left.

[APP] [Lesser Dev-Phase] Battery Monitor Graph App **UPDATED 25.03.09**

Yo
heres a brutally simple battery monitor software thingy that graphs your usage and battery level - top graph is mAh usage (15000ms refresh (os updates info every 30 secs)) and bottom graph is battery life (60000ms refresh)
i wrote this thing to monitor my batt usage cause my bat life is utter crap, barely lasts 8 hours with my level of use/cellular climate, which sucks its just a straight up .exe, just copy to where-ever and run it
this version here is so pre-alpha-uber-dev-debug-build its not funny but i thought id put it up for you lot anyway as i have found it useful just to glance at from time to time - there are no user controls, i spazzed this out in a hurry but i intend to improve on it and implement any features you lot might think useful.
best i can get out of my raph with screen on with celluar, gprs and bt ad2p connected is -63mAh - whats the best you can get?
just tryin to put smt back into the community <3
p.s. this is a debug build (i kept getting microsoft error reporting crap on the emulator, so i dunno how itll go on other devices)
p.p.s. i take no responsibility if this bricks your device, sleeps with your wife, sets your house on fire or kills your cat etc etc (but it works ok on my raph
***UPDATED 25.03.09***
SEE POST #9 IN THIS THREAD BELOW
going to try this out soon, loving the simple graph
now i can see whats happening when 40% of my battery dies overnight as i sleep >:O
works good, any way of making it show the current time on the x-axis? or able to scroll left and rigth to see what happened earlier?
and whats the bottom graph for?
07accordEX said:
any way of making it show the current time on the x-axis? or able to scroll left and right to see what happened earlier?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
both of these features are on the todo list (which ill put up when i get a moment)
and whats the bottom graph for?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
read the initial post.
the top graph shows the past hour of activity (ish, its actually more like 57.5 mins), the bottom graph shows the past 8 hours (ish, more like 7.7hrs).
no data is collected when the device is asleep - and the graph doesnt get updated during these times, so you only see 'active' use in the graphs - i plan to implement some sort of visual cue system to signify times of sleep and also to keep the temporal coherency of the graph more contiguous (lol, e.g. a graphed minute will be 8 pixels wide no matter what).
i believe its impossible to collect data while the device is asleep as afaik when the processor goes to sleep the only part of it that functions is the bit that listens for interrupts (from i.e. the phone management cpu, etc) (and maybe a timer (for alarms etc?)) - if im wrong on these details please enlighten me.
fusi
Nice app I would love to see it becoming more mature, will probably end up with my standard equipment, thanks 12
12aon said:
Nice app I would love to see it becoming more mature, will probably end up with my standard equipment, thanks 12
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
thanks, watch this space should have something new up by the weekend
This opens up a blank white page on my phone. Did I do something wrong?
behrouz said:
This opens up a blank white page on my phone. Did I do something wrong?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
the graphs dont refresh as soon as you open the app - youll hve to wait for the first update (15 and 60seconds) before anything is rendered - this will be fixed soon.
ok, a bit later than advertised but here is an updated version - fixed most things, still working on scrolling through the history - will add more features in coming days (colour customisation, toggling graph display, scrolling through history, exporting graphs as images, user customisable update intervals, etc)
btw ive added in support for unattended mode - this keeps the cpu alive when the device is asleep - i dont recommend keeping this on unless you are trying to debug unexplained power drain in standby - unattended mode keeps my raph ticking along at -21mAh, when im pretty sure true idle for this handset is more like -4mAh. so yah, not recommended to leave it on
im pretty sure there arent bugs but if you find one please let me know!
enjoy
fusi
fusi said:
ok, a bit later than advertised but here is an updated version - fixed most things, still working on scrolling through the history - will add more features in coming days (colour customisation, toggling graph display, scrolling through history, exporting graphs as images, user customisable update intervals, etc)
btw ive added in support for unattended mode - this keeps the cpu alive when the device is asleep - i dont recommend keeping this on unless you are trying to debug unexplained power drain in standby - unattended mode keeps my raph ticking along at -21mAh, when im pretty sure true idle for this handset is more like -4mAh. so yah, not recommended to leave it on
im pretty sure there arent bugs but if you find one please let me know!
enjoy
fusi
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm curious to know what you think the power consumption caused by this program is. Like you, I get about 21mA drain with the phone screen off - but I'm getting that with your old version. I use S2U2 with the "but only blank screen" option and turned off standby in Windows power management so I think that's effectively putting the phone in unattended mode. Normally (without your program running) I see pretty modest battery drain with the phone in unattended mode. Just off the top of my head I'd say that 5-15% battery drain per hour would be about what I'm used to with zero usage - phone just sitting in my pocket or on a desk in "unattended mode" but just now while running your older EXE my phone went from 65% to about 40% in under an hour while "unattended" (locked, screen off). Looking at the graph for that time period I see a consistent 21mA drain. If 21mAh=25% capacity, I'm in trouble. I know my battery isn't that far out of whack because I get what I'd consider (based on reading other's experiences) pretty normal life out of it. Maybe the drain characteristics for that "portion" of the battery are a little different - I'm not sure whether the capacity is judged solely on capacity minus drain or it figures voltage levels in as well...?
To be clear, I'm basing my sense of normal battery consumption on nothing more than "took it off the charger in the morning, didn't use it all day at work and have ~50% when I get home 9 or ten hours later" so it's anecdotal at best.
I'll keep playing - I love this tool. Maybe I'll be a little more scientific about my testing and see if I'm imagining things.
Hi thanks for posting
if your just turning the screen off, i dont think thats unattended mode, unattended mode actually powers down non essential parts of the device.
if unattended mode is off in the program and your phone goes into standby, it wont consume any battery as when the phone goes into standby everything is shutdown and the cpu pretty much stops functioning (apart from a very small part) - but this also means the historical data and graphs dont get updated . if unattended mode is on and your phone hits that standby timeout, it wont go into standby but unattended mode instead where it just turns off a lot of the non-essential stuff, like voltage to the sd card, the screen, etc - but it keeps the cpu running and the operating system pumping its messages.
i think a chunk of that 21mAh is going to be the operating system - but not all of it - currently the program registers 2 timers with the os, one has a 15second timeout and the other has a 60 second timeout. timers do drain battery, as the cpu keeps having to go 'is it time yet? is it time yet?' ad infinitum.
btw, when i said 'true idle' in my prev post i meant that that is the current used in true standby.
one way to calculate how much current its drawing is to leave your phone running it for 24hours (airplane mode on etc) and see how much its depleted over that time, then do it again without it running. using that information you can figure out how much current its using - i havent done this yet, i cant put the thing down for 5 minutes let alone 24 hours
im currently working on a system that doesnt use timers, it might work, might not if it does i hope to see that 21mAh reduce, but i dont imagine itll go down by that much. there are however loads of optimisations that can be done, and im investigating them atm.
im no battery scientist but as far as battery capacity, i think li-ion batteries judge their capacity by their voltage, from something like 3v up to 4.2v (0% -> 100% [wiki link below]) - i could be wrong on that though.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_ion_battery <-- this is a good informative read.
i dont think the battery is very capacious tbh - any amount of drain and it seems to go down very fast - i think the saving grace of the device is that is consumes minimal power when in standby - on days where im constantly using it heavily, im practically tethered to a power outlet as the battery just drains far too fast - i think the manufacters banked on the assumption that users would mostly have the phone in standby mode for most of the day. i usually use it for music while im at work and have putty sessions open etc, so its always on - i barely get 8 hours use without a charge .
ive noticed with my battery that even though the drain is constant (i.e. 21mAh or 63mAh) the charge level of the battery does not decrease linearly - e.g. ive noticed my phone suddenly start going down and lose 10% in 5 minutes before, and then the charge level would level out and stay at the same capacity for like 10 minutes before starting to go down again - this to me seems a little funny, as if the circuitry reporting the capacity isnt quite accurate - i think there a many factors, including battery temperature, the drain on the battery in mAh (i think a spike of higher drain may cause the battery do the nose-dive-then-level-out thing) - but i also think that the battery just doesnt deplete linearly, it seems to always have lumps and bumps in the graph, no matter how smooth the drain is.
glad you like the app ill be posting an update to it in a week or so.
peace
fusi
I'm not sure what exactly S2U2's "but only blank screen" does, but it leaves me with a 21 mA draw, so it can't be much different from unattended mode. I haven't tried to monitor it in that mode with (for example) an active Wifi connection or a program accessing the SD card to see if that changes things, but as it is it seems to be running the same things your set is.
The only reason I think the capacity calculation must not run off of only the voltage is that it has a definite "learning" capability. I think it must be doing some more complex things behind the scenes in terms of monitoring consumption and recalibrating periodically based on charge and discharge rates. I know I've seen it sit at 99% charging for a (very) disproportionately long time. The only good explanation for that is that it wasn't perfectly calibrated and the battery is still accepting charge at a higher rate than an almost full battery would. I've seen the same behavior in a lot of charge monitoring systems as they "learn" the characteristics of a battery. I guess it could be basing that purely on voltage, but I doubt it. While connected to a charge, the system will report a substantially higher voltage than it will as soon as the charging voltage is disconnected.
I don't know, I'm just kind of thinking aloud here. It would be great if there were a way to poll the power consumption without affecting the power consumption - sort of a Heisenberg's uncertainty problem... I'd really like to know what the power consumption is in unattended mode as well as true standby. Even if you do the 24 hour test you have to assume a lot of things about the battery's initial condition and the accuracy of the meter to arrive at a consumption number (and, like you, I'll never have a day I don't want to putter around with this phone). I suppose if you were really into it you could stick an ammeter between the battery and phone and control for the added loss
It's definitely true that the discharge isn't linear, even given a constant discharge rate. This has to be an artifact of including battery voltage in the capacity calculation. If it was using purely capacity minus usage the relationship would have to be linear.
Anyways, keep up the good work. I love stuff like this, just from an academic standpoint. Practically speaking I'm pretty much tethered to my chargers, too...
hyachts said:
I'm not sure what exactly S2U2's "but only blank screen" does, but it leaves me with a 21 mA draw, so it can't be much different from unattended mode.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's exactly the case, this setting causes your device to run in unattended mode (backlight off, audio off, wi-fi off, ...)
hyachts said:
I think it must be doing some more complex things behind the scenes in terms of monitoring consumption and recalibrating periodically based on charge and discharge rates. I guess it could be basing that purely on voltage, but I doubt it. While connected to a charge, the system will report a substantially higher voltage than it will as soon as the charging voltage is disconnected.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Microsoft's reference battery driver for PXA270 CPU is calculating battery percentage based on voltage exclusively. HTC's custom driver for Qualcomm cores seems to have some kind of more advanced logic behind it, but it doesn't work well/smooth.
hyachts said:
I don't know, I'm just kind of thinking aloud here. It would be great if there were a way to poll the power consumption without affecting the power consumption - sort of a Heisenberg's uncertainty problem... I'd really like to know what the power consumption is in unattended mode as well as true standby.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Not without external tools, it should be possible to hook up an external multimeter to the battery directly to measure the voltage accurately in standby. Using the battery driver information you can only evaluate it and the evaluation is likely to be pretty rough.
Attached are some charts from my Touch HD...
The battery level graph seems to follow consumption graph very closely.
You can barely notice the resemblance with the voltage graph though.
These charts depict my device's utilization over 2 days, assuming 0 mah consumption when in standby. This assumption is apparently not accurate, as the battery capacity is 1350 mah and only about 1000 mah were utilized. Out of these 48 hours the device was in standby for about 40 hours, so my estimated standby utilization is -350mah/40h => -8.75mah. This doesn't sound reasonable, as according to manufacturers specs, the device is capable of 450h of standby, with 1350mah battery standby consumption should be -1350mah/450h => -3.375mah. I would agree with fusi, that taking manufacturer's estimation errors it should be safe to assume standby consupmption is around -4mah.
40*-4mah=160mah, so I have about -190mah remaining unaccounted for. I blame measurement accuracy for this... IMO, with this degree of inaccuracy, standby consumption can not be accurately estimated and has to be assumed based on manufacturers specs only.
I'm running more tests to reconfirm these observations, but I doubt the results will be extremely different.
For your reference, I get -69mah on Touch HD when idling with minimal backlight level and -27mah in suspended mode.

Crazy Battery Indicator

Hi,
I know there's a lot of talking around about power consumption and it is not my intention to open another thread about it: just an information to share.. Even if Diamond2 will not be remembered as a world champion in powersaving (I can remeber only Artemis being one), I am experiencing an additional bug that could make think that the battery life is shorter than real! When fully charged, battery level goes down quite quickly(talking about hours) but at 3% the device is able to run for at least another 40 minutes of hard work (wifi+fullscreen youtube). This may be caused by a wrong battery calibration, I let it discharge completely but seems not to work. This "hidden" extra charge is certainly a positive thing but it is disappointing to notice that HTC newer devices can have a such banal problem. It's the third htc phone I buy,never experienced it before, and its not now I'm gonna start behaving like a maniac always concentrated on how i charge my phone just to workaround their bugs.
EDIT: Sometimes after 3 consecutive softresets I get 3 different battery levels, not bad eh? I could play the lottery with those numbers
I spent most of the day yesterday outside skating. Had GMaps running the whole time with GPS and HSDP connection at all times, + a twitter client which refreshes every.. 5 minutes or so.. Also halfway through enabled G-Watch with Geocaching..
Every 10 mins or so was checking the screen (yeah, cheap alternative for a GPS Navigator ). Some photos and videos were also made on the way
By the end of the day, the phone started complaining about the battery (20% ?) and I turned off GMaps, G-Watch and the twitter client. Some 15 minutes later I got the very low batt notification (10%, right?) and I forced the data connection off (forgot about it the first time ^^ )
Now.. After that I still had to connect to GMaps + Data + GPS to check the route back home ^^
After about 1 hour maybe, I reached home.. and it was still alive.. I was pretty impressed with the battery life, but now that you say it, it is weird that it lives for SO long at low batt levels.. I'd love to find a solution. For now I'll try to do a couple of full discharges to try and calibrate it =/
Very glad to hear that Diamond2 is capable of such battery performances! (not mine at the moment). Anyway,if I'm not wrong, you confirm a strange battery indicator behaviour..we'll see

Battery and no signal

Hi all, I just got my HTC Pure over the weekend and I had a question from those with more experiecne.
First I know (or I think) that the battery life will improve over the next week or so as the battery gets used and charged. Today however was an issue. The phone came off the charger this morning at 100% and then went to work. While at work there is absolutely no signal in the building. (never has been) The only time it was on the network was a 1 hour lunch, and then light internet use for approx 25 minutes this evening. That is all, no calls, nothing, and it had 19% battery left in only 12 hours off the charger.
Again, I am sure that it will improve, but the question is ... does being off the network (GSM) drain the battery faster? Does the phone use a lot of charge "searching" for signal?
I am sure that there are a lot of things that I could do to extend battery life, as a work around (no bluetooth, plug it in to the USB on the computer at work, turn off 3g etc) but I was just curious if someone in the know on how the network and battery use go together if the dead zone is the biggest problem.
Thanks
Not exactly scientific results, but before att put decent coverage in my neighborhood, the battery seemed to drain a lot faster. I guess turning it off would help, but down to 19% that quick just seems ridiculous
cmstackar said:
Not exactly scientific results, but before att put decent coverage in my neighborhood, the battery seemed to drain a lot faster. I guess turning it off would help, but down to 19% that quick just seems ridiculous
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Funny enough it is my wifes first smart phone. I was just looking at it to change some things to better suit her needs. When I opened the task manager I discovered that a) the programs would only minimize when the X button was pushed, not close and b) windows Live messenger was loaded. I would guess that even though she was not signed in on live messenger it could have killed the battery. Gonna make a couple of tweaks to ensure that it does not fire up again, and see what it looks like tomorrow.
So today was better, but she seems to have had intermittent service. Her media net indicates that it was connected all afternoon. She burned through 40% battery in the AM and only 18% in the afternoon.
I would imagine that the location services for the weather on the sense home screen as well as possibly push email running out of control searching for the signal. I will turn things off 1 at a time until I find out what is driving the battery loss.
Is there any software to monitor battery use and what was using the battery? There is in android.
O.k. continue to have issues with this phone.
Tested last night. Charged to 100% and then light use. Approx 10% down after 3 hours.
Set commmanagerpro to turn off the data and phone radio during the hours my wife is at work. She called today and the screen is showing that the phone radio is off, but it has lost 90% in less than 4 hours. She also said it is hot.
Maybe her purse is somehow turning the screen on? Would the screen being on without any radios cause the phone to plow through battery?
I am gonna try a battery monitoring app and see if it will tell me anything. Its freekin weird.
What radio version are you running?
You may want to consider flashing to a different Radio ROM.
try to see if there are any TSR, residente program, active, maybe be the the problem...
as far as radio versions the 4.49.25.91, for my exprience run far...
you can try to swcht to other radio version...
I am using the AT&T stock radio. I flashed to the energy ROM, but the battery issue is so extreme that I doubt that the radio or the ROM are the driving factor.
She does have 3 magnets in her purse. 2 magnetic catches on her side pockets and 1 on her wallet. While I could not reproduce the device turning on by itself from the magnets, that does not mean that it is not.
The other thing is that there was some warning on the screen about the GPS signal. I imagine that is a side effect of turning off the radios, but maybe not. Is the GPS always on normally? Would a GPS pop up cause the screen to stay on for possibly 3 hours.
This afternoons test will be having her leave her phone in her jacket pocket rather than her purse. We will see how it goes.
saunet_ptg said:
try to see if there are any TSR, residente program, active, maybe be the the problem...
as far as radio versions the 4.49.25.91, for my exprience run far...
you can try to swcht to other radio version...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I will look at that radio. I doubt its a program since I had no problems with it at home last night. It has to be environmental. My money is on the purse, but we will see. I'll post later and let you know what we came up with.
There was a few days ago where she lost 60% of her battery in the morning but only 12% after lunch, so that convinces me that it should be something that we can identify and work around.
Energy's ROM may have included the radio.
I had horrible luck with .91 and flashed back to .17.
Symptoms of a bad radio are rapid battery drain and device heating up.
Also, if the device heats up, it will no longer charge until the battery cools down.
If you have AGPS enabled, that was likely your error message when you turned off the radio.
A couple of pointers;
Make sure you monitor which programs are running as you may just be minimizing instead of closing.
Check your power settings and make sure to turn off screen after X minutes
make sure all updates (weather, e-mail, stocks, etc) are set to every hour.
Bruce Inman said:
Energy's ROM may have included the radio.
I had horrible luck with .91 and flashed back to .17.
Symptoms of a bad radio are rapid battery drain and device heating up.
Also, if the device heats up, it will no longer charge until the battery cools down.
If you have AGPS enabled, that was likely your error message when you turned off the radio.
A couple of pointers;
Make sure you monitor which programs are running as you may just be minimizing instead of closing.
Check your power settings and make sure to turn off screen after X minutes
make sure all updates (weather, e-mail, stocks, etc) are set to every hour.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you for your advise. The biggest area of opportunity from your list for me is the Radio I think.
The rapid discharge of the battery due to a bad flash, would that be location specific? The rapid drain only seems to happen in a spot where she has no signal (thus the reason I programed it to turn off the radio in those hours)
The running program should no be an issue. To prevent that, as a matter of standard setup for my phones, they have a small script that soft resets them every morning a 4am, so that they are fresh and clean for the start of the day.
As for updates, I have adjusted everything that I can, and some did not have any effect (mostly because the radio was off, can't save much more than that).
I do leave the bluetooth on all day. That should not be draining the battery in 3.5 hours though. I have read a lot of the battery life threads and many of the ideas would cripple the phone, and I am not going there. Sure maybe I don't need weather updated every 30 minutes, but I want me email when it comes in, not once every few hours. I also don't want to have to push 20 buttons each time I want to make the internet work. Its this kind of usability that sells iPhones... I hate them, but they really do just work... and my wife wants a phone that you don't need to be an expert to use.
boufa said:
Thank you for your advise. The biggest area of opportunity from your list for me is the Radio I think.
The rapid discharge of the battery due to a bad flash, would that be location specific? The rapid drain only seems to happen in a spot where she has no signal (thus the reason I programed it to turn off the radio in those hours).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Do you know how to view your radio version? Its listed on the bottom of your phone when you reset, the 3 numbers that display, R is the radio version.
You can go to the radio thread and flash another version, just keep testing different versions until you get one that works well. Radio ROMs will not overwrite your data.
Radio's are definitely location specific in regards to region and carrier.
Borderline coverage is a major battery killer, but you're disabling the radio, which should resolve that issue...
G-Profile is a nice app that allows you to set what type of connection and when.
Bruce Inman said:
Energy's ROM may have included the radio.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Mine didn't and I used the May 1st update. Still Stock.
If no signal is happening in the building, I would think it's the various things continuously trying to run, like Email, GPS etc. Constant failed attempts to update your phone's apps would definitely drag the battery down in a hurry. I have my email set to 3 hrs. updates along with weather updates. Nothing I do is so important at this point in my life that faster than 3 hr. responses are required. I also don't use things like Tweeter and FaceBook so those aren't constantly eating my battery. I get about 1.5 to 2.0 days from my battery currently.
Here is the current (no pun intended) testing results...
This AM 3.5 hours used 100% of the battery (in the purse)
This PM 4 hours used 21% of the battery (in the jacket pocket)
Gonna try to leave the phone outside of the purse all day friday and see what the results are. Then see how it works around the house on saturday, in a standard limited use type scenerio. Then Sunday put it into the purse and see if it becomes an issue again.
If all of this works out that the purse it the problem, then I will start tweaking it out, and changing radio's etc to get the max I can out of the battery.
boufa said:
Here is the current (no pun intended) testing results...
This AM 3.5 hours used 100% of the battery (in the purse)
This PM 4 hours used 21% of the battery (in the jacket pocket)
Gonna try to leave the phone outside of the purse all day friday and see what the results are. Then see how it works around the house on saturday, in a standard limited use type scenerio. Then Sunday put it into the purse and see if it becomes an issue again.
If all of this works out that the purse it the problem, then I will start tweaking it out, and changing radio's etc to get the max I can out of the battery.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So today we left it out of the purse. Here is what we got...
On the table next to the computer, so confirmed that the screen is NOT activating at all. Phone radio off, data off.
AM... used 40% in 4 hours.
Better, but still not good. Gonna try to ensure that the email is set for longer, currently it is set for 10 minutes, and then try to turn off a-gps and the regular gps and make sure that those things are not killing the battery. Then flash a new radio. We'll see how that works next week.
First, test it and watch it over normal, with signal, average 4 hours at home this weekend. I think it will do great... meaning that it is the purse, or the environment that is causing the problem.
I don't know if anyone is following my personal drama, but maybe it will come up in a search some day and help someone.
Here is the saturday update.
Took the phone off charge at 2am and looked at it at 11 am this morning. Used only 2% in those 9 hours. So it is definitely NOT a defective device, or battery. (it actually charges up in only a couple of hours)
So looking into the profile schedule manager that I installed, turns out it has not been running. So the whole purse/no purse thing may be horse hockey still. Monday I will be setting it manually to airplane mode to verify that it holds a charge, then finding a new program to do the scheduling. (looking into phonealarm)
If the radio was on, at full power searching for a signal, it would only last approx 4 - 5 hours at best. So it makes sense that this is what is happening.

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