Develop Bugs

Battery Life on IIs

Hey what have you guys n' gals been getting off your XDA IIs for battery life. I am away from home just for one night this week, and have forgotten my charger (Must get a sync n charge...but where!!!!) I'm only using PDA functions and Duality Email....and battery is already at 83%
Will it last 48hrs!!!!! We'll wait and see!
Celtic

Figures quoted from sourceo2.com
Standby/PDA/Recover/Talk: 168/17/72/4
Obviously using it as a PDA does use more battery life.

With my phone 'off' (well pda bit off) and WiFi off, over a 12 hour period of inactivity I'll use maybe 5% of battery, so when it comes to bed time your battery use will reduce.
if you're away from chargers I'd advise keeping wifi off, it's the battery eater portion of the functionality. a little light GPRSing shouldnt hurt if you need email, bluetooth isnt a big issue, but if you need to last 48hrs, dont touch the WiFi :twisted:
Also I have noticed that my battery goes from 100-95% REALLY quick (like 10 mins with only BT on), but then takes maybe 30 minutes of wifi browsing to use a similar 5% in the 50% range!?!? non-linear battery consumption maybe? Might be just mine.

sazoo said:
Also I have noticed that my battery goes from 100-95% REALLY quick (like 10 mins with only BT on), but then takes maybe 30 minutes of wifi browsing to use a similar 5% in the 50% range!?!? non-linear battery consumption maybe? Might be just mine.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've noticed the same but, conversely, when charging, it takes longer to charge the last five percent than the rest. So, I put it down to the Battery monitor API. These things are never 100% accurate.
As for battery life, two days from normal useage and three and a bit days if I'm careful. I have no problems going for a long weekend and not taking the charger as long as I have no plans to use it intensively.
I find reading an ebook with mobipocket also kills the battery at about 10% for every hour and nearly treble that if I'm listening to music at the same time.

1 Day, its usually down to < 30% come time to goto bed. But then, it gets well used.

So, the question has to be asked..... Who has the charger by the bed?
/me raises hand.
Sync cradle is at work... which charges too.

PDA2K Extended batterys
Thought you guys would find this site interesting ENJOY.... :lol:
http://etxquc.simplyonline.com/searchpage.cfm?category=PDAO2&exp=BAT,PDA&stype=cat

Battery Life on XDA
If you turn ON flight mode you will find battery life will improve but you will not receive "always on emails".I've got a feeling the phone wont work either (i don't use mine as a phone so not sure).I know when you turn flight mode off again you will have to enter PIN no.
I used this method when I was in hospital for a night and they would not let me charge my XDA.

yeah : flight mode = turning off the phone part
I have a brodit cradle in the car , charges it extra while commuting

As default when you get the phone, it will ask for a pin number. This can be disabled though through the software!
Flight mode will of course save battery - like said - its not using the phone functions which are probably the most battery draining.

I have to use my charger twice a day but i do cain it as my job is so ****ing boring! i hope to god someone invents a....
Solar panel charger
so i can go campin in wales on ma scooter and not need to sneak my phone into the pubs wall plugs all the time

I have a brand new M2000.
I took it off charge at 08:00 this morning.
I got to work at 09:30 and started using it.
I had bluetooth on with headset and I was using wifi on and off.
I started getting low battery warnings at 15:00.
That is very poor

I have BT on and can run from Thursday night through till Sunday without a problem. Though I do get worried about making calls on the Sunday. If anyone has a description of how to convert an XDA car cable to XDAIIs I would be gratefull.

battery life on dash

hey, just wondering what everybody's experience with the battery life has been? for some reason, my dash completely ran out of battery yesterday afternoon (i charge it every night, bluetooth was never on, wifi was used a few times during the day). i'm wondering if this is normal, and i need to get a new battery, or just a fluke.
i guess the main thing i'm geting at, is can you use the dash (wifi periodically throughout day), and have it last you all day? i'm used to nokia's, where the battery lasts for 2-3 days. thanks
omar

I charge my dash every day more times, due to the fact that I offen use wifi on it, so I think its normal to gharge it more times a day when you use the wifi on it.

hi
i bought the dash in the usa and experienced exactly the same. i had to charge it every day.
now i am back in germany and i must say, that the battery life doubled at least. i can survive a weekend without charging. even with bluetooth or wifi usage. i even leave bluetooth turned on constantly because i am having a bt headset in the car which connects automatically.
i thing, that it is the bad coverage which leads to that poor battery life.

thanks guys, and wow, i didnt think that the carrier played such a huge role in battery life!

My expereince
I can usually go 2-3 days without a charge. Anything more than that, and I start getting the nasty warnings that the power monster is coming to eat all my data.
I don't have much loaded on my unit that I could not replace quickly (All my contacts are brought in from Outlook via DirectPush) so if it crashes, it's not a deal breaker for me.

same here can use if for approximately 2-3 days depending on usage. overall i am happy with the batter life. i use my device quite a lot.
music, videos, wifi
cudo

Battery drain WM6.1 while PDA is off.

Hi All,
Ever since i've upgraded to WM6.1 on my HX4700 I get a battery drain while PDA is off. Charged the battery to 100% and during the night (~11 hours) the battery has only 70% charge left. With WM2003SE it would be ~99% or so.
Does anybody know if this is normal for WM6.1 or that my battery is dying? Battery is about 2 to 3 years old.
GPS, WiFI, BT all is off.
Any way of measuring if the batt still OK? When idle i have about 200mA drain.
Any good replacement batteries available, price/quality ?
Thanks in advance!

I'd say your batter is on the way out, there should be practically zero [less than 1% of total capacity per day] drain at room tempreture and even less the colder it gets.
Getting 2-3 years out of a battery is pretty good.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_Ion_Battery#Guidelines_for_prolonging_Li-ion_battery_life

you should have a look on the processes runing in Background. Per example SK-Tools or the integrated Taskmanager can show you how much cpu-usage a process causes. It should be around 0-2% when no program is started in Background. If there is a higher cpu-usage something is wrong. Perhaps some Software that doesn´t fit to WM6.1
I had a Ipaq H6340 and after 5years of daily usage the battery was still able to hold on for 5days(with some usage). So the HP batterys are not as bad as many other batterys put in some devices.
Regards

Puzom said:
Hi All,
Ever since i've upgraded to WM6.1 on my HX4700 I get a battery drain while PDA is off. Charged the battery to 100% and during the night (~11 hours) the battery has only 70% charge left. With WM2003SE it would be ~99% or so.
Does anybody know if this is normal for WM6.1 or that my battery is dying? Battery is about 2 to 3 years old.
GPS, WiFI, BT all is off.
Any way of measuring if the batt still OK? When idle i have about 200mA drain.
Any good replacement batteries available, price/quality ?
Thanks in advance!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Try to recalibrate your battery, you can found it in the Wiki, I have my original battery since Aug 05 and with an extensive use (WI-FI, bluetooth, a lot of calls and internet) it last for 28hours form 100% till recharge
Hope this helps
Cheers

y17dt said:
you should have a look on the processes runing in Background. Per example SK-Tools or the integrated Taskmanager can show you how much cpu-usage a process causes. It should be around 0-2% when no program is started in Background. If there is a higher cpu-usage something is wrong. Perhaps some Software that doesn´t fit to WM6.1
I had a Ipaq H6340 and after 5years of daily usage the battery was still able to hold on for 5days(with some usage). So the HP batterys are not as bad as many other batterys put in some devices.
Regards
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I come from a different device camp (Loox) but you may be experiencing the same issue that our community has with the WM5, WM6 and WM6.1 (much the same MS code as your HP) ? The culprit is probably ActiveSync on the PPC. It seems to come alive for notifications or "silent" alarms/tasks or appointments set by the Calendar application. It then leaves the device on for as long as the time before switch off on battery power is reached! I agree that soemthing like SK-Tools should detect it, but you have to be around to see it. It is amazing how much power is taken by these events.
Worth checking? The Loox solution was to create a dummy or Fake server in ActiveSync and make sure it only ever wakes under manual control not automatically and to make the on time with no activity on battery very short.
You might also like to try the freeware acbPowerMeter application? A search on this site or Google will find it. It shows you current consumption in any PPC device when on battery. It is quite revealing and you can find out just what current is taken by each setting (e.g. scrren brightness) and application. I have had it installed on 3 generations of PDAs including an old HP Jornada.

Thanks for the replies!
desolateone
Wondering if the batt is bad as yesterday it ran about 7 hours from 100% to 2%, pda was on and idle.
y17dt
CPU usage is only 0-2% or so when idle. Don't have much running in the background. Notestoday and Wisbar Advance 3.
orb3000
I did a recharge last night after letting it drain to 2%. So let's see if that did the recalibration. Read on other topics that indeed after installing WM6.1 it's best to drain the bad and recharge as it needs to calibrate again.
fingerstoo
When the PDA is on and idle, it consumes about 180mA with now and again a peak around 400mA, so nothing big.
Will check the activesync out as maybe that is what is activated when PDA is off. Yet via SK tools I set AS auto connect to OFF.
Thanks!

desolateone said:
I'd say your batter is on the way out, there should be practically zero [less than 1% of total capacity per day] drain at room tempreture and even less the colder it gets.
Getting 2-3 years out of a battery is pretty good.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_Ion_Battery#Guidelines_for_prolonging_Li-ion_battery_life
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
unless you have the mogul/titan

Hi,
Seems to be fixed now that I drained the batt to 2% and recharged it to 100%.
Overnight the drain was 1% only
Cheers!

Battery re-calibration??

This started on suiller's ROM guide, but I feel it's really OT so I should take it outside.
I've had battery issue ever since I got the Diamond. With moderate use (maybe ~15-20min of call per day, email check every 30 min, moderate web browsing) the battery level can drop by ~ 15-20% per hour on average. This means the battery would only last 5-6 hours without charging, which is not good enough to last through a day.
I first looked at whether the phone has any serious battery drain application, and it doesn't. With BatteryStatus I see the battery drain is ~ 100-150mA with GSM on, BT on. When I'm downloading email, or browsing the web, it does go up to 200 ~ 300mA briefly, but that is only when it's transmitting / receiving data. In standby mode with screen off it drains less than 50mA. These numbers seem pretty typical from my experience.
And here's the weird thing - on a typical day, when I wake up, and take the phone off the charger, it can drop from 100% to 93% within 30 min. On the way to work, when I would browse the web lightly, it can easily drop from 93% to 80-85% within an hour. That's pretty bad battery life.
Yet there are instances when I've been browsing the web, or playing MP3, or using YouTube for a good 10-15 min, but the battery level would not drop.
I figure maybe the battery needs to be re-calibrated, so I decided to discharge the battery and recharge it. I know this doesn't help improve the battery life of LiIon batteries, but I was trying to recalibrate it.
What happened, when I was discharging the battery, was I found the battery drop was very quick from 100% down to ~ 50%. From that point on, the battery drop is much slower.
And from 50% to 25% the battery seems to last forever. The most interesting thing is with the battery down to 15%, I did a lot of 3G web browsing, listening to MP3's, turn wifi on, and that 15% of battery lasted a good 3.5 hrs with heavy use until it's so low the phone stopped working.
The whole discharging process ended up taking 10 hours, and that's with HEAVY use for the last 3-4 hours too. That's actually acceptable for battery life (not great, but at least it'll last me through a day outside with moderate use) and obviously doesn't jive with the 15-20% drop per hour when I'm operating in the 50-100% full range.
When I'm charging the battery, I also noticed the level went up from 0% to 70% very quickly ... pretty much over 40 min. BatteryStatus shows it's being charged at +600-700mA.
As the battery gets full, the charging is much slower ... BatteryStatus shows it is charging by ~ 100-200mA only.
With the battery level up to 99%, it took almost forever to finally get up to 100%. I think it took at least 20 min.
So after a full discharge - recharge, I used my phone as normal this morning to see if it's been calibrated, but nope. It still drops from 100 to 93% within minutes of doing virtually nothing, and easily drop to 80% after an hour ride to work.
Does your battery perform the same way? Should I replace my battery? Or is there a way to properly calibrate the battery?
btw location and reception has nothing to do with it. I have good to excellent reception throughout this test.

I'm having the same problem but not with every rom (don't know wich ones, tested almost every rom hero) So is this a piece of software wich shows the live that doesn't work ?? or is it the battery ? As i can see it it's depending on rom thus it's not hardware
But hey I'm n00b

i've noticed that a soft reset or power up will use 3-7% of battery depending on the weather (what else could it be )
don't have the ability to discharge but i agree that in many cases the battery usage drops drastically & there is no reasonable cause
hope someone can figure this out!

From 4pda.ru
http://4pda.ru/forum/index.php?showtopic=85754&st=100&p=2338080&#entry2338080
1. discharge the battery completely (by playing video, audio, etc.)
2. Remove the battery and wait about 1min then place it back (do not power on the phone)
3. Full Charge the phone, wait when LEDs stop blinking (do not power on the phone)
4. When fully charged - remove the battery (do not power on the phone)
5. Wait about 1min then place the battery to the phone and now you can power it on.
If battery is more or less OK it will re-calibrate.
I hope it will help!

STM123 said:
From 4pda.ru
http://4pda.ru/forum/index.php?showtopic=85754&st=100&p=2338080&#entry2338080
1. discharge the battery completely (by playing video, audio, etc.)
2. Remove the battery and wait about 1min then place it back (do not power on the phone)
3. Full Charge the phone, wait when LEDs stop blinking (do not power on the phone)
4. When fully charged - remove the battery (do not power on the phone)
5. Wait about 1min then place the battery to the phone and now you can power it on.
If battery is more or less OK it will re-calibrate.
I hope it will help!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks. I tried those steps yesterday and my phone is pretty much behaving the exact same way after the battery cycle.
After all the steps, the battery shows it's 100%. I unplug it, and it drops to 97% within MINUTES literally. Now I plug it back in, and it takes forever to get from 97% back to 100% (> 1hour)
I think it may be a battery problem and not a calibration problem. The drain averages ~ 120-150mA when phone on, screen on, no data, and below 100mA with phone on in standby mode. That seems pretty typical? I'd think the battery should last longer than 8 hours (till it completely dies) in that case.
Where do you guys suggest I buy a new battery for the Diamond (other than HTC directly)? I bought one from DealExtreme but the battery runs ~ 10C hotter than normal all the times ... I don't think I want that as my primary battery.

If you get through a full day with moderate-heavy use on your battery, I say that is normal and good battery life on a Diamond. So, why bother that the percentage is not proportional? I would not get a new battery for this since the problem is only in the reported percentage, not the battery life itself.
I've had plenty of cars that went from full to half tank on the meter significantly faster than from half to almost empty. You know about it and adapt to it, simply.

Hello !
I'm understand you, i have a ELF (Touch P3450), and a Diamond, the same problem appear for the two phones!
Every Morning, when i disconnect from charge my diamond, my level battery go to 93% in 10mns without reasons (One sms, no 3G, no Wifi etc).
My battery go down to 50~70% around 14H (2H pm), and stays at this level for many hours (4-5hours ~), i think it's not a problem with our battery, but a dysfunction of the sensor battery, which shows wrong data =/
By the way, that problem doesn't appear every day, for example, today my battery has that level : 83% (15h43), so today it has a good level.
Since i have flash that ROM : http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=521941, with radio 1.13.25.24, i have less less issues with my battery, it's more stable!
That's all, hope that helps you.

Ok guys, I've made a few discoveries that I figure I could share with everybody. Maybe you'll find it useful.
Last week I went on a trip and turned off the data connection while I was out of the country. Instead of letting the roaming charges kill me, I was relying on wifi to check emails and browse the web.
I ended up checking emails just as often, because where I worked had wifi AP.
Now, I could usually get 8, maybe 9 hrs out of my battery with moderate use before it's completely empty previously. So I was very surprised to find that with a similar usage pattern, but using wifi instead of EDGE/GPRS I still had 30-50% battery left at the end of 8-9 hours day everyday during the trip. I know data uses a lot of battery, but I always thought wifi drains even more, so that's quite a stunning discovery.
Now, I don't think it was due to wifi draining less than GPRS/EDGE (can't be true), so it must be something else. In trying to figure out what made the difference, I did a bunch of tests after the trip, and this is what I find-
1. Data channel dis-connection / re-connection is BAD
I used to always set my phone to auto-disconnect data channel (EDGE/GPRS) after 5 min of inactivity, in an attempt to save battery. What I found, was keeping the data channel open does NOT actually drain more battery than leaving it off at all. Transmitting data drains battery, but not leaving the channel open. However, disconnecting it, and re-connecting it all the times actually drains quite a bit of battery. I set my phone to check email every 30 minutes, and then there's also the odd weather forecast that needs data channel. In a 9 hrs day, that means channel disconnection + reconnection of about 40 times.
The last couple days I have left my data connection ON all the times, and I actually get more hours out of my battery. My battery used to drop ~ 10-15% per hour with moderate use. By keeping the channel on all the times it's been kept to under 10% per hour!!! I've only tested it for a couple days. I'll report more on it once I get to test it for longer, but the idea that 'keeping data connection off when you're not using it to save battery" seems to be a complete myth. The opposite actually saves battery!!!! And as a bonus, I don't even have to wait for the data channel to connect when I need it!!
2. Recycling the radio is VERY BAD
Everybody knows 3G is a real battery killer. However, similar to EDGE/GPRS, keeping the 3G channel open does NOT drain any more battery than turning it off, or turning on EDGE/GPRS channel. When the data channel is idling, it doesn't matter whether it's on EDGE, GPRS, 3G, or even completely turned off, the battery drain is close to zero in all cases.
Now, you do see a 1.5 - 2 times battery drain with 3G compared to EDGE/GPRS, so I've always turned 3G on only for web browsing or watching YouTube, and use GPRS / EDGE for regular emails update. The thing is though, if you're not transmitting much data (which you won't for regular email update), the difference in battery drain is minimal. SWITCHING between 2G and 3G though, requires a radio power cycle (turn off then back on to switch frequency) and THAT drains a lot of battery!!!
So if you're often switching between 3G and 2G, and you only transmit little data in 2G mode, you might actually be better off keeping it in 3G all the times instead of forcing the radio to power-cycle all the times.
I've tried keeping it in 3G all day long and I noticed minimal increase in battery drain. However, there might be another reason you want to consider - RADIATION. 3G not only drains more battery than 2G, it also transmits at a stronger power than 2G and as a result create more radiation. For that reason, I'm still keeping my phone to 2G for email updates and what not, and switch to 3G only for web browsing. For radiation you may try this thread if you want to read more about it.
3. VGA screen is a REAL battery killer
I do quite a bit of reading on my phone (ebook, on-line magazines etc) and reading ebook was never a battery concern in my days with the Touch (QVGA screen).
That's why I was quite surprised on the Diamond, reading the ebook for 1 hour, with EVERYTHING else turned off (GSM, EDGE, GPRS, 3G, BT, wifi), my battery level went down by 12% in ~1 hour.
The VGA screen drains a lot more battery than the QVGA screen. Now, if you need to use the phone you need to use the screen, there isn't much of a choice. It does make sense, however, that if you're using the screen for a while (like reading ebook) switching from a high brightness level to a lower brightness level.
Oh, and the auto-adjust brightness thing? That doesn't help you save battery at all. This is because it polls the light sensor every 2 sec (default value, but you can change it) and adjust screen brightness accordingly. This mechanism drains battery in itself, and in most cases end up using more battery than keeping the brightness constant at a low to medium level.
The auto-adjust thing is cool, and in theory it sounds like it can save you battery, but unless you constantly set the brightness to max even when you're in a dark environment, disable the auto-adjust and just set it to a constant 50-60% instead.
These are the few things I've noticed and I'm still trying things out, but over the last 2 days I've seen a significant drop in battery drain. I would be lucky to go through a 8-9 hrs day with moderate to heavy use before, the first 2 days I tried this I still had 60% battery left after 5 hrs of moderate use. The Diamond is very weak on battery life so every bit helps! I hope these tips are useful to you!

Thanks for your share

number16 said:
When I'm charging the battery, I also noticed the level went up from 0% to 70% very quickly ... pretty much over 40 min. BatteryStatus shows it's being charged at +600-700mA.
As the battery gets full, the charging is much slower ... BatteryStatus shows it is charging by ~ 100-200mA only.
With the battery level up to 99%, it took almost forever to finally get up to 100%. I think it took at least 20 min.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's exactly what the charging process is supposed to do.
Read more here:
The charge time of most chargers is about 3 hours...
Increasing the charge current does not shorten the charge time by much. Although the voltage peak is reached quicker with higher charge current, the topping charge will take longer.
Some chargers claim to fast-charge a lithium-ion battery in one hour or less. Such a charger eliminates stage 2 and goes directly to 'ready' once the voltage threshold is reached at the end of stage 1. The charge level at this point is about 70%. The topping charge typically takes twice as long as the initial charge.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
source:batteryuniversity (dot) com

[Q] Battery meter

Is it just me or is there no battery meter on the lock screen that indicates what percent the battery is charging when the phone is plugged in? I remember seeing one on my first Incredible, but it seems that with the new Sense on the I2, the meter is gone.
Is there a way to get it back?

http://www.appbrain.com/app/alarm-clock-plus★/com.vp.alarmClockPlusDock
get this its amazing. so customizable.

Thanks, but I'm looking for a way to have it show up on the lock screen. I'm not sure why this new version of Sense doesn't have it.

I use the circular battery indicator which displays the current battery % in your notification bar; it can be seen from the lock screen.
I find it accurate and more informative than the standard battery indicator.

No battery threads for the I2? Can you comment on battery life? About how long are you getting on a normal usage cycle. 8 hours, 12 hours, 24 hours? Are you configured for max battery life?

I've been using the Lightwell live wallpaper, which shows the battery level quite large on the lock screen as well as on all the home screens. I get more use out of it on the lock screen though. Lightwell is a really light weight live wallpaper, does not eat batteries.
larsdennert said:
No battery threads for the I2? Can you comment on battery life? About how long are you getting on a normal usage cycle. 8 hours, 12 hours, 24 hours? Are you configured for max battery life?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I am a really heavy user, especially on my work days. I have developed the habit with my old device (Eris) to have it on the charger at home and at the office. I will say the Eris would not come close to surviving a full work day, whereas I'm fairly confident the I2 would.
My commute alone consumes around 20% battery each way (40% round trip), with each way lasting 40-60 minutes (80 to 120 minutes round trip) depending on traffic. The usage during this time involves media playback (music or podcast), maps (uses GPS and 3G radio), and bluetooth (how I play through my car stereo). I don't like having a tangle of wires in my car so this is without car charging and audio cable. This leaves me with 50-60% to survive the rest of the day if I don't plug it in.
On my off days, I don't have all of this going on for long periods of time. I've survived an off day completely untethered to power without going below 50%.
As always, your mileage may vary. I live in an area where coverage is good so network bouncing isn't that big of a problem (this can eat batteries). I also generally use apps with lightweight services (background processes), which can be a pain to find and you don't always end up with apps with all of the features you want this way.