Related
I have had a Tilt since November, and the battery life is terrible in my opinion. With both wifi and bluetooth disabled i frequently am running out of power after 8 hours of use. Is this typical? I probably talk no more than 30 min a day. I do have HDSPA in my area and am having MS Exchange and Yahoo pushed to my phone. In my experience of smartphones this one has the worst battery life of any of them. LEaving the phone on and not charging over night gives you a dead phone the next morning. ANy suggestions on how to extend battery life? I frequently check the task manager to clear out any running apps that might slow down or drain the device.
My other complaint is about the camera ability. Why put a camera on the phone that is totally unusable? It takes sometimes almost 10 secs from the time you push the button till you get a shot. THe performance definitely varies depending on what other programs are running. i have the latest .cabs installed from this site, but they do not seem to help.
Also I have noticed a plethora of dropped calls as well as calls that do not go through when dialed. Is this symptomatic of ATT's spotty network in my area (college station/bryan, TX)? Or is there something that i can do about this?
Is there a firmware flash i can do to improve any of these following issues?Thanks
freddyg said:
I have had a Tilt since November, and the battery life is terrible in my opinion. With both wifi and bluetooth disabled i frequently am running out of power after 8 hours of use. Is this typical? I probably talk no more than 30 min a day. I do have HDSPA in my area and am having MS Exchange and Yahoo pushed to my phone. In my experience of smartphones this one has the worst battery life of any of them. LEaving the phone on and not charging over night gives you a dead phone the next morning. ANy suggestions on how to extend battery life? I frequently check the task manager to clear out any running apps that might slow down or drain the device.
My other complaint is about the camera ability. Why put a camera on the phone that is totally unusable? It takes sometimes almost 10 secs from the time you push the button till you get a shot. THe performance definitely varies depending on what other programs are running. i have the latest .cabs installed from this site, but they do not seem to help.
Also I have noticed a plethora of dropped calls as well as calls that do not go through when dialed. Is this symptomatic of ATT's spotty network in my area (college station/bryan, TX)? Or is there something that i can do about this?
Is there a firmware flash i can do to improve any of these following issues?Thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
All of these have been discussed to death. Search and read the wiki. Upgrade your ROM and radio and see if that helps!
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...
I cannot find a decent explanation of some of the power management options available for my Diamond and so I wondered if an expert would mind explaining what the following are, what they do and how much power we might expect to save by enabling them in the power management section of advanced config:
AsyncMac1
PPTP1
L2TP1
I dont want to compromise the ease of going online, my IMAP email polling or my push email through ActiveSync, but of course I am keen to extend battery life.
In addition, I have found that during my 1 hour commute undergroud each day, my battery goes down by about 20%! However, the next hour (in my office), battery usage drops by only around 5-10% depending on usage. Does anyone have any specific advise to help with this? On the underground, the device goes to sleep as well as I am not using it.
Thanks in advance.
The Jones said:
In addition, I have found that during my 1 hour commute undergroud each day, my battery goes down by about 20%! However, the next hour (in my office), battery usage drops by only around 5-10% depending on usage. Does anyone have any specific advise to help with this? On the underground, the device goes to sleep as well as I am not using it.
Thanks in advance.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
that's normal. using yr phone in a place where the reception is not good will drain yr battery faster.
i can add (there is a relation) that the level of radiation that any phone is emitting it is also higher when reception it is not strong enough. i've seen it demonstrated yesterday. entering in yr car double the level of radiation, in an elevator the radiation increases 10 folds! yr phone tries to connect and that's energy consuming and radiation emitting (electromagnetic).
KukurikU said:
that's normal. using yr phone in a place where the reception is not good will drain yr battery faster.
i can add (there is a relation) that the level of radiation that any phone is emitting it is also higher when reception it is not strong enough. i've seen it demonstrated yesterday. entering in yr car double the level of radiation, in an elevator the radiation increases 10 folds! yr phone tries to connect and that's energy consuming and radiation emitting (electromagnetic).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for that. Now I am not sure if I should try and solve this problem or throw away my phone and save the radiation
But just in case I choose to keep using it, is there anything I can do to mitigate this rapid power loss at all? Is there a setting which will stop the phone from trying too hard in these circumstances?
Check this out:
http://www.wikihow.com/Make-Your-Cell-Phone-Battery-Last-Longer
The Jones said:
Thanks for that. Now I am not sure if I should try and solve this problem or throw away my phone and save the radiation
But just in case I choose to keep using it, is there anything I can do to mitigate this rapid power loss at all? Is there a setting which will stop the phone from trying too hard in these circumstances?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
don't save the radiation!
the ministry of health in my country just issue a general warning regarding the danger of prolonged/heavy use of mobile phones. it is strongly recommended to use the phone only in open spaces and with headphones. they even warn the mobile phone users not to sleep with their phone close by. the phone is constantly emitting electromagnetic radiations.
i guess that you bought yr phone not too long ago. i know it sounds strange but after a few cycles yr battery's life is going to improve and i am not the only one to observe it.
don't stop the charging when the battery icon is full. i learned using a wall charger with LED (red for charging, green for charged) that after diamond's icon said 100% the charging continues for at least 30 minutes more (the led was not fully green but was blinking red-green).
from my experience u can use all power management option from shap's advanced configuration without loosing yr connectivity. i can not tell u what those option are but after using all i can tell that diamond's battery life improved.
I have tried using all the power saving options in advanced config tool, but when I restarted my device, I lost connectivity. I couldnt connect to anything. So I set them back to disabled, soft reset the phone and all is well again.
Any idea what that could be?
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.
Hi
Can see a number of threads about short battery life, none quite match mine:
When I got the phone about 6 months ago I took it abroad with me in the first few weeks. Battery life with normal usage was about 24 to 36 hours with fair use.
Dropped the phone, back came off, battery fell out and gold contacts got damaged.
Ordered replacement OE battery from Amazon. Looks identical to original. Battery life as before, for about the first two weeks. Then got worse and worse until down to about 4 hours. Sent it back, replaced. Replacement is going the same way.
Haven't done anything with the ROM, it's all as it originally was, albeit I've installed more apps since it was new.
Battery meter thing built into the phone (in Settings) shows nothing remarkable.
What is odd, and coincidental: if I leave the phone next to me in the house, it won't always pick up emails on ActiveSync (Exchange) unless I activate it (e.g. bring it out of power down mode). At which point you can see it's dropped Wi-Fi. The icon has gone. A second or two later it reconnects (though not before it's used some 3G data - 3G is OK upstairs, barely a signal downstairs as we live at the bottom of a hill so often drops to "G") and then brings down the emails.
This means it churns through 500MB+ of data over its own 3G connection in a month even if I don't take it out of the house, and even when Wi-Fi is available to it, it chooses not to use it. Wi-Fi reception is pretty poor, compared with e.g. our laptop (that shows excellent strength downstairs, phone shows one bar). It did not do this when I first got it. Curiously my old HTC phone did this too, it struggled to switch properly between its own 3G and Wi-Fi and just got stuck on one or the other. We are in a weak signal area.
Are these things related?
Has the phone become faulty? (Bearing in mind battery life much better with the original one)
Is it just a duff batch of batteries and I should send the battery back for a refund, and get one somewhere else?
Thanks
Mark
Typical behavior for a counterfeit battery but the other symptoms suggest that something got damaged and is stressing the battery. Try re flashing the phone. A sudden loss of power could potentially damage some system files.
Thanks rogem_kk - can I just clarify, when you say "reflashing the phone" do you mean resetting it back to its original state (I'm guessing there's a key sequence you press, I can look in the manual to find that out) or completely reloading the OS?
As regards "sudden loss of power" sadly this happens quite often, because the phone crashes now and again and I have to take the battery off the back and put it back in again. The Android OS seems able to be completely taken down by a failing application (I think Flash movies on web pages are the main culprits) quite readily but I'd got very used to that since my last phone was a Windows Mobile one (the old one not the new one) which had the stability of a damp cardboard box in a strong wind.
I mean wiping it clean and installing the ROM from scratch. Factory reset only removes your data and does not restore/replace system files.
Now may be a great time to flash a custom rom, if it all goes well then do a back up with Nitrality app or similar, while you're at it try out a modem i9000 ZSJPG, you can flash it separately via ClockWorkMod, doubled my battery usage with it, great reception & coverage, that way if you at least get a genuine SGS battery you'll get the most from it.
If you're unsure of flashing you'll need to get reading in the rom section, not too hard to learn.
Many thanks.
Down to 3 hours idle time now - it drops by the day.
Have emailed Samsung on the off-chance they can identify a counterfeit battery from the serial number, so I'll see what they say. Could make for an interesting exchange with Amazon (direct, not via a reseller or third party).
Argos appear to be the "official" resellers for Samsung products in our area but they don't actually sell batteries. As otherwise I'd be tempted to buy one there on the basis that it ought to be genuine, and compare. But haven't rebuilt the phone yet, waiting to see what Samsung come back with.
Hmmm...
"Problems like this, although seemingly severe, can occur when the
Android software on your phone becomes out of date. You can update the
software by simply downloading our Samsung Kies programme. Follow the
link below and choose option ‘save’. Then for safe installation of the
drivers, once save is complete, turn your computer off for a few minutes
and reboot the PC. Once fully loaded again, without opening any
applications on the computer, simply connect your phone to the PC with
the USB lead, and your phone should be automatically set you finish the
installation of Kies. When Kies loads and finds your device, you should
be offered an update that will iron out these issues.
If you require any further assistance, please contact Samsung again and
we will be more than happy to help."
I had one of those so called 'original batties' it was a load of rubbish. Still using original one but its no holding charge for as well after a year of use. Maybe time for a real replacement...
dtmark said:
Hi
Dropped the phone, back came off, battery fell out and gold contacts got damaged.
What is odd, and coincidental: if I leave the phone next to me in the house, it won't always pick up emails on ActiveSync (Exchange) unless I activate it (e.g. bring it out of power down mode). At which point you can see it's dropped Wi-Fi. The icon has gone. A second or two later it reconnects (though not before it's used some 3G data - 3G is OK upstairs, barely a signal downstairs as we live at the bottom of a hill so often drops to "G") and then brings down the emails.
This means it churns through 500MB+ of data over its own 3G connection in a month even if I don't take it out of the house, and even when Wi-Fi is available to it, it chooses not to use it. Wi-Fi reception is pretty poor, compared with e.g. our laptop (that shows excellent strength downstairs, phone shows one bar). It did not do this when I first got it. Curiously my old HTC phone did this too, it struggled to switch properly between its own 3G and Wi-Fi and just got stuck on one or the other. We are in a weak signal area.
Are these things related?
Has the phone become faulty? (Bearing in mind battery life much better with the original one)
Is it just a duff batch of batteries and I should send the battery back for a refund, and get one somewhere else?
Thanks
Mark
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Forgive the curtness of the email, am at work typing one handed while chowing down lunch
First point - you dropped your phone. I know that the new battery went okay for a while but is it possible that the phone itself may have been damaged?
Secondly, Email on Activesync over 3g will absolutely smash the hell out of your battery. Especially if you have push email going. Is it on push or is it set to check every so-and-so amount of time? Too short a period will kill the battery. The "Stock" email app that comes with Gingerbread 2.3.3 or lower seems to be just a big hog over push (for me at least). I also recommend changing the email "Amount To Sync" to a shorter number of days and set the amount of data to a lower value than stock (ie, "Headers Only" or 50k or something) so you download attachments on **your** terms.
Thirdly, you state you're in a poor reception area. This will most definitely affect the battery as the phone on a low signal or zero signal will waste battery trying to reconnect to the tower. Check your "Cell Standby" and see how muck time without connection you have. If it's anything above nothing, it's draining your battery. I recommend flashing a new modem (you'll need to investigate which one is good for your region/country/carrier) through ODIN (or Heimdall). Be careful when doing this and make sure you read up on the hows and what-to-do and what-not-to-do before you do - there is a (small) chance of you killing your phone and I do *not* want you to come back onto this thread and say it blew up (I want you to say "YAY THANKS WOGFELLA" ) Doing this voids your warranty so only do it if you either don't care or you really really want to fix your issue (and by default you don't care)
Fourthly, your wifi coming on and off - go to your Wifi settings, press your menu button and click ... advanced? Can't recall exactly (on ICS now). From there you can set your "Wifi Sleep Policy" to either "Never" or the other option that I can't recall. The default is set to turn the Wifi off when screen is off which of course means you lose your Wifi connection. **For your Email issue, try this first.**
Fifthly, your Wifi signal being weak in your display does not *always* equate to an actual poor connection. Sammy does many great things, but he does mess about a bit with icons and funny business. Check step four above and if you get bad Wifi reception when the phone is off (or while using it) then try messing about with your Router settings and also with the settings on your phone (take notes before doing so, I'm just throwing you ideas here....don't come back to me and ask me how to reset your router settings either!!!)
If that doesn't help then try flashing a custom kernel (kernel controls the Wifi). As above, doing this will void your warranty.
Sixthly, you say that everything was hunky dory and then went haywire. I reckon there may be an app doing funky things.
Try installing CPUSpy from the market and check to ensure your phone is going into decently long periods of "Deep Sleep"
Also, try installing the below app from this thread.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1179809
You're looking for high "Wakelocks" which will impact on your phone being awake instead of...well, asleep...when the screen goes off. Awake phone = cpu processing (even if it's not doing anything) = battery drain. Use Chamonix's recommendations on what is classed as a high amount of wakelock.
Facebook 1.7 for example, keeps the phone awake while checking notifications that just plain ain't there. For me, once I wiped this app, I regained about an extra 2-4 hours per day in use.
Seventhly, look over this thread:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=939752
Has a heap of tips that helped me (before I got sick of stock Sammy and jumped to CM7 and then ICS)
Eighthly, and this is one that probably doesn't need to be said - cycle your battery and (controversial) bump charge. I mean, let the battery drain fully. Take the battery out for 5 mins. Put it back in and see if it turns on, and if it does repeat. Then fully charge to 100% and then unplug and plug back in. If your phone is already rooted then you can also wipe Battery Stats from Recovery.
Lastly - have you tried factory resetting your phone? It may wipe whatever it is that's making your phone freak out (if not the email) and you can start again. If you find that the battery goes bananas again after installing that app, you've found your issue.
So...to sum up:
Check your phone contacts.
Check your Wifi sleep policy.
Check your Email update rate.
Check the length of time you have the sync set for,
and the amount of data per email downloading.
Check to see if you are going into deep sleep.
Check to see if there are any apps holding wakelock (and bugger them off)
More extreme:
Factory reset.
Mess with your router settings if your wifi signal is still weak.
Very Extreme.
Flash Modem
Flash Kernel.
One thing not specified: What version Android are you running? SGS comes from Eclair up to (once Cyanogen and TeamHackSung get it rolling properly) Ice Cream Sandwich.
Hopefully *SOMETHING* in the above helps you.
Good luck!
Thanks for taking the time.
Sorted out the Wi-Fi sleep issue, CPU Spy showed the phone was going into deep sleep when idle, so no "smoking gun" discovered with that.
Reset phone, and set it back up again with basic email and no new installed apps. Have left it on default (minimal) donwload settings. Had already got rid of Facebook.
Battery life is better. Have begun reinstalling a few apps now and keeping an eye on it.
Will report back - thanks again all.
dtmark said:
Thanks for taking the time.
Sorted out the Wi-Fi sleep issue, CPU Spy showed the phone was going into deep sleep when idle, so no "smoking gun" discovered with that.
Reset phone, and set it back up again with basic email and no new installed apps. Have left it on default (minimal) donwload settings. Had already got rid of Facebook.
Battery life is better. Have begun reinstalling a few apps now and keeping an eye on it.
Will report back - thanks again all.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No dramas - just be careful as CPU Spy will show length of time in deep sleep but a high proportion of wakelocks won't really be detected and those wakelocks are the ones that smash your battery when sitting "idle"
As you have reset then I think you need to let your battery calibrate first (let it drain fully and recharge fully a few times and that's all you can do if you haven't rooted your phone)
.. one more update..
Battery life is better, but not much better. It still won't last a day without charge even with very light use, 7 hours is about the maximum. I'm certain it used to be better than that when I got it e.g. it survived a whole day on holiday using email and maps quite a bit.
Have changed to 3 from O2 but will have to revert back as 3 doesn't get a signal at all downstairs in some parts of the house. Does mean the phone is going on and off network a lot at the moment.
I reverted to Samsung to tell them their link didn't work and they have sent a link to an authorised dealer for parts if I wanted to buy another battery. I'm all for buying the real thing which is why I bought an (apparently) OE one from Amazon which was about £16 not the £5 that some were.
However this is, er, forty four pounds for a tiny little battery.
http://www.4mysamsung.co.uk/cgi-bin/product.pl?PID=2986318&brand=&model=galaxy s&part=
They also sent links to repair centres.
Now I plugged it into charge earlier, and even after 8 hours, it was dead. Plugged it in again - beeps once as normal - nothing on the display - still not charging. Take battery out, put back in, repeat. Charging now.
Might make you wonder if that part of the phone got damaged e.g. the "socket" where the mini USB thing/charger goes in, but, it's always worked before. It doesn't for instance fail to detect if I plug into the PC and it's never done this before either.
Given how much the battery is and the fact it might be getting to the point of dying altogether I wonder whether to just get a quote for repair and go that way for certainty.
One might have thought it's as simple as: take the thing somewhere and have the battery tested to prove one way or the other.. but I'm really not sure where would do that other than the repair place.
I'd be prepared to try replacing the OS as suggested, but it does remain the fact that the thing worked better when I first got it and even after a complete reset it's still playing up so I feel a sort of mental paralysis over what's best to do now
I'll have a look at the wakelocks thing next when it charges again. If it charges