Tmobile Dash CRASH Poll - HTC Excalibur

Im still in the process of choosing between the dash and the curve 8320 for tmobile...and so far im leaning more towards the dash but i see so many complaints about how windows mobile crashes like 5 times a day and its so slow that its worth getting another phone over
so ive decided to take a poll from the users to help me decide
Also ive seen lots of previous owners of the dash complaining about how the Screen broke VERY easily...are they just haters or is this true...? and how much do spare screens cost?

My opinion:
My Windows never crash - NEVER. I make everyting to crash it - Install unofficial ROMS every week, install many many programs, games, etc, edit registry to find what key for what is, end so on .
Good display
Good Radio
Good Wi-Fi
When you hit the phone to wall or to floor its normal to crash .
First problem is the battery - 2 days battery life with normal usage of wi-fi(20-30 min per day), gaming (15-20 min per day) and talking (20-30 min per day). If you use wi-fi more often, the battery will be uncharged very soon.
My phone is new but some guys here tells that the battery life become dramaticaly short after 8-9 mounths of usage - something like 6-7hours. But when this happen you just buy another battery fo 15 bugs - end of story.
Second problem is audio jack. If you don't have headset for mini USB jack, you must buy adapter for 3.5mm audio jack - someting like 10-15 bugs

Mine never "crashed" either.
The only thing that happened to me was installing some software locked it up and I had to hard reset.
If you like to tinker, and are a geek, and like lots of software, get the Dash.
If you are a pencil pusher, get the Curve.
Whatever you do, DON'T get the Shadow. You have never seen bad battery life
until you get that phone.

I have heard people talk bad about the dash. I have had my dash for about a year and a half. I just replaced the battery because it had gotten to the point where it was useless, but after reading more about battery life of the battery this was as expected. I got a desk charger for 12 and a second battery and now I have two batteries for use and I can do pretty much anything I want. As far as crashing my dash has only had to be hard reset once for a real problem and other than that it was by choice. The one time it was hard reset it was my fault as well. It hung in a reboot loop after installing some flaky software. If you want a phone that just works get the dash and get an extra battery.
galley

i had the curve 8320 and honestly its a smooth running os but it is soooo boring plus sude for the curve it is way lighter han dash but dash is so customizable any winmo phone nut my preference is dash have had mine for ove a year and a half and loving it

Mine used to lock up once in a while when I was on WM5, but it's never crashed (other than some battery related shutdowns before I replaced it) since I upgraded to WM6 and then WM6.1. With 6.1 I haven't had to reboot it once yet.

galley3175 said:
I have heard people talk bad about the dash. I have had my dash for about a year and a half. I just replaced the battery because it had gotten to the point where it was useless, but after reading more about battery life of the battery this was as expected. I got a desk charger for 12 and a second battery and now I have two batteries for use and I can do pretty much anything I want. As far as crashing my dash has only had to be hard reset once for a real problem and other than that it was by choice. The one time it was hard reset it was my fault as well. It hung in a reboot loop after installing some flaky software. If you want a phone that just works get the dash and get an extra battery.
galley
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What is real new battery price?
Where can i read about battery? . Can I do something to use one battery longer, how to make battery life longer?

littleclown said:
What is real new battery price?
Where can i read about battery? . Can I do something to use one battery longer, how to make battery life longer?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Try puting your battery in the freezer..... of course it wouldn't do you any good in there now would it?

Battery info
This is by far the best article on battery life I have found...that doesn't make it great just a good article:
http://batteryuniversity.com/parttwo-34.htm
As far as Batteries how much:
http://www.cellphoneshop.net
I got two batteries and a desk charger sent to me by fed ex in 24 hours or so for 43 dollars. Desk Charger was 6 dollars shipping was the big item at 17.00, but I didn't have to use fed ex. The two batteries are 12.99. I did this last week and the stuff was sent to me via fed ex. I placed the order it shipped first thing the next morning and i had it about mid day on the third day. It came from Hong Kong.
Galley

Related

Best ROM for Tmo Dash?

I just reflashed my wife's Dash with Kavana's wm6.1 and it looks great, runs well, but the battery dies in less than a day. Is there a better radio I could flash on there to increase the battery life? Or something else, a different rom maybe? I've tried clocking it down to 150 or less, and that is dreadfully slow.
Thanks
i have rickys rom version 14 and i get two to three days of battery life depending on usage. two days is with heavy use of e mail, text, phone, and internet. three days is with normal use of all thoes mentioned before. how long have you have the phone and do you only charge when it is low?
Your batter is just dead... assuming you're not receiving 500 emails a day through Activesync or she doesn't yap on the phone all day with wi-fi and BT turned on
The phone is about a year old. It gets charged randomly, but most of the time only when it is low, because it is low all the time. It really shouldn't matter though how often or when you charge though, Li-Ion batteries shouldn't have a "memory" effect should they?
the rom that you are using, is it WM6.1?
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=380927
This is a little dated, but it talks about a few different version of Ricky's ROM. Some are like v5 some are variations of Kavana, I've searched but can't find a good thread on Ricky's ROM.
i have the same issue. ive had my s620 since january, charge it once a day (if it makes it that long) and i dont talk that much. Im running 6.1 (kavana) and have it clocked at 240mhz. i am always messing with the phone. i do a lot of texting, moderate email, some irc, browse the web etc.... mostly using wifi. so i know why my battery doesn't last. i have come to accept it and will be ordering the 2200mah battery off ebay shortly. that way, from what i hear, it will atleast double the length of the charge....then i can keep the stock battery as a spare. i think thats the easiest solution. costs like $20
Okay, it's 6:13pm and I had my phone of the charger since 7:30 am. I still got 68% left and had a couple short conversations and one that was just under 1 hour long. A bunch of emails a couple SMSs and overclocked to 240MHz.
I would say you got a dead/old battery. Just get a new one, i'm just not sure if you can trust the batteries on eBay. Can you?
i have yet to read a bad experience with the specific one im looking at. its $20....ill try it. if it doesnt last for days on a single charge, oh well, its still cheaper than an oem and im pretty positive it was last *atleast* as long. guess we'll see. ill report back and tell ya how it goes
I do believe there is some issues with the batteries, like certain ones just aren't as robust (maybe like some people say the LCD's can vary?) My wife and I got a dash each at the same time back in February. I flashed mine almost right away, hers has the stock tmobile firmware, but even doing that, I use mine WAY more than she ever does, and my battery lasts longer, we traded and it did end up being the battery. The local tmobile store was willing to switch it out with another one and it's better, but still not as good.
I'll be flashing hers soon I believe and we'll see if that makes a difference.
video chat on t-mobile dash
Hello
Is there is a software where you can do a video chat with msn or yahoo messenger on t-mobile dash. Thank you
the problem has nothing to do with the ROM, i was having the same problem before i found out that the battery life of the Li-Ion Battery is about 10 months. constant charging and over charging kills the batter and i was getting about 2 hours of batter life before it would die on me. all i did was buy a new battery, good as new

What's your battery life like? (WM6 & WM6.1 welcome)

I'm curious to know what other people experience in terms of battery life. I've just put a fresh 1500mAh battery into my phone, and I've flashed it with two ROMs in as many days.
I got average battery life out of the first ROM I tried (Schap's v4.31 Full), but I'm currently running with CRC's Release 13.3 Stable (Build 20270) and I can - literally - see the battery life ebb away in front of my eyes. From the moment I unplugged it, the battery went down to 99%, 98%, 97%... slowed down at 94%, but it's carried on going down.
The phone's only been unplugged for about 3 hours, with moderate usage (occasional use, installing a couple of apps, a lot of time just sitting by my computer) and already the battery is at 79% (one minute ago it was at 80%).
I can monitor the power consumption with BatteryStatus and it does seem to be using more power than you'd expect just idling - 43mA with the phone idle, bluetooth turned on and paired to my headset and the backlight on. With the backlight off completely, it's still using between 25mA and 50mA! Is this to be expected, or is something sucking the battery power up?
Is WM6.1 just a thirstier OS than WM6, or is CRC's ROM particularly resource intensive? I have done a little tweaking, but mostly doing things like turning power management ON (to lower SD card power usage) and installing a couple of extra apps (none of which are currently loaded in the background).
If people have a particular ROM which has very good battery life, please let me know - I'm interested to see what people are using and what kind of battery life everybody is getting.
Cheers
Christopher
Battery
Where did you get a 1500MAH battery for a herm? i could only find 1350!!!
I'm using Black Satin. 6.1pro but it doesn't have anything fancy, like manilla 2d or stuff its really basic. With 3g turned OFF! the phone doesn't overheat. As soon as the phone gets a little hot the battery just drains for some reason. I believe that the 3d card when its turned on it must not have signal everywhere and as soon as the connection is broken if you step outside of the coverage area it tries to find the signal and BOOM! your phone is dead! battery just drains.
on the average day ill take it off the charger around 8am. and just leaving it on standby not doing anything its usually dead around 5pm...
And this is the Black satin rom so far out of all the roms i tried it has been the best for power consumption. There is a guide on the "Best" tested roms in the stickie... its a great starting point. Some of the top rated roms didnt work for me cause i needed to install some 3rd party software for work ... and they didnt work, im guessing cause there was some stuff that was stripped out.
it is not only about the rom. it is also about the battery you purchased.
I have an old original battery which is about 4 years old. I also have a cheap brand new battery I purchased from china. The 4 year old battery holds more power than the cheap brand new one. I found that the new batteries are not properly initialized, or that there is something wrong with how they report the remaining power. My new battery drops down to 60% percent very fast. Then it hangs there for a long time and then starts going down very fast again. In standby it gives me 2-3 days. With wifi turned on, I get about 20-30 minutes. The original battery gives me a couple hours even with wifi turned on.
what you say makes sense, when i called HTC about this overheating / Battery issue they told me that they didn't specifically make batteries. After reading a bunch of posts there seems to be different models from different countries of the hermes. After looking deeper into the battery issue there are also different manufacturer of batteries from different countries also. The thing is HTC can not tell you EXACTLY which on you need cause each operator has different standards for the phone some even modify the phone from HTC... When i called Expansys which was where HTC recommended i purchase the battery from they had 2 models. 1 that was 1300mah and 1350mah. I Opted for the "House" brand instead of the other one which was cheaper in price ... I guess this is the reason. Like memory when it is made in JAPAN its quality is not the same as KOREA.
I agree with regards to the battery quality. That's why I only buy Cameron Sino 1500mAh batteries for my Hermes (I buy them from Morpeth Mobiles here in the UK, they also sell on eBay and I'm sure they'd ship international if you wanted to buy from them).
They handled a recent return excellently and I've been very happy with their service.
The nice thing about the 1500mAh batteries is that they fit inside the case without a replacement back cover...
I know that using 3G can suck the life out of our phones given the awful chipset (using it on GPRS only or in 3G with a very strong signal will always yield better results) but at the moment I'm not sure if it's a problem with this particular battery or with the ROM itself - I have two others with which I can do some comparisons, so I will be doing that later. However, the battery life today has been awful. I got home earlier, and less than 12 hours after being unplugged, my phone was down to 18% battery. Just awful, the worst battery life I've ever seen from my phone. I'm not sure whether it's the fact it's Windows Mobile 6.1 or whether it's a problem with this particular battery or the way the ROM has been cooked... I'll have to do some more experiments, but I know for sure that something's not right!
The roms Also do play a part i beleive, some use up more memory and have processes running.. this uses power. Its the same as a LAPTOP. The LT will not last forever.
But im really dissapointed with the Hermes. i had NON touch screen HTC's . s640 and S621 and they used to go for days on end without charging...
i herd some back feedback on these touch screen phones also ... about the life... but every time also the 3g would murder the battery life!
Although on balance, I still don't think our phone does that badly... You realise that it's almost on-par with the more recent technology, particularly when you hear some of the battery life horror stories from iPhone users, who are dismayed that they can't get more than 12-15 hours' use out of their beloved phone when they attempt to do anything vaguely like USE it (push email, multimedia etc)...
The saga continues.
I may just buy a petrol generator on a small trolley and attach the whole thing to my belt. Now THAT's ultra portability. I could use my phone on 3G for days!
I picked up my Hermes from another xda member a week and a half ago. I flashed to CRC's stable 13.3, added HTC Home and a few other extras, nothing real system heavy or anything. Battery life was abysmal with bluetooth and 3g turned OFF, 3 email accounts syncing every 30 min, on the original 1350mah battery - I was lucky to last half a day.
I ordered a 3000mah extended battery, it arrived yesterday, I let it drain completely. It's fully charged and running now. I have bluetooth and 3g on, and my email accounts are syncing every 10 minutes. I will monitor the battery life over the next few days and report.
I too have noticed the battery meter being very eratic in CRC's stable rom for both batteries. I'm not sure if this is a battery issue or a rom issue. I may try turning 3g off as some have suggested and see if that yields better results.
My previous phone for 8 months was a Motorola Q9H, so I'm not exactly a noob to the winmo world. With the q's extended battery and bluetooth/3g on I was getting a good day and a half to two days with a rather large amount of data use in there. Honestly, as much as I love the upgrade to winmo pro, if the extended battery doesn't do the trick I'll be back to the moto for the remainder of my contract and the Hermes is going on ebay. Anyone with any suggestions or tips would be appreciated.
Thanks
Yep i just installed CRCs Release 13.3 Stable... Looks nice, but i think you are right .... im stuck with this clunker for now cause i need it for work but im waiting on a Touch diamond... As soon as my company can afford it! LOLOLOL
Let us know about the 3000ma bat... Is that the one with the HUGE back door that sticks out?
I seen that online and though to myself.... WTF the phone is already too big!!!
What's your battery life like
I have an HTC TyTN that originally had Windows Mobile 5. I flashed to the rom to 6.1 pro and also noted a significant power drain that I didn't have with 5.0 or 6.0. My thoughts are that moving from 5.0 to 6.1 is much like going from Windows XP to Vista. The power demands are greater. At least that's my hunch.
Roms RULE!
Well i tried all these roms ... The Manilla roms look GREAT the touchflo is really cool!!!! But dam the phone doesnt have enuff ram or juice... So what happens if you get all kinds of bugs ect...
But if you try some of the other 6.1 roms like Black Satin or CRC which dont have touch flo ... the bat is not soo bad... The lite verisons of the roms can also be nice .... But they lack support for other software.
i prefer the classic Windows with the home cause you can use the Screen Lock feature ... specially for the HTC Herm ... i always had it in the pounch then all of a sudden i would pull it out and IE was open!!! or i was calling someone LOLOL that sucks!
i have tried lots of roms that were developed here on xda.
the best battery life was using k's final wm6.0. it was unbeatable.
the other thing is that it also depends on the type of storage version of the rom itself. the big storage roms eat your battery for breakfast but you get better performance.
if you have more today plugins they also eat up the battery
you also should, before flashing your new rom, flash the original rom. after that you flash the normal rom.
you can also check the processes running in the backgroung, maybe there is something left over that occupies the processor.
3g is a big drainer especially if you get to an area where the signal is weak and dissapears. then the phone constantly tries to find the 3g and your battery drains quickly. normaly, when i don't go online as much, i keep 3g swiched off.
now i'am using the new wm6.5 beta and i get more than one full day of battery life of normal usage. phone, mail, internet...
godofthesms said:
Yep i just installed CRCs Release 13.3 Stable... Looks nice, but i think you are right .... im stuck with this clunker for now cause i need it for work but im waiting on a Touch diamond... As soon as my company can afford it! LOLOLOL
Let us know about the 3000ma bat... Is that the one with the HUGE back door that sticks out?
I seen that online and though to myself.... WTF the phone is already too big!!!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yea the extended battery turns the Hermes into a tank. It does have a nice feel to it in your hand though, and my Body Glove universal case ($15 walmart) actually fits, although its snug.
If the battery doesn't give me the life I'm looking for from CRC's 6.1, I am considering flashing to the stripped down version of ATT's 6.0 rom, or perhaps trying out the new 6.5 hybrid build from josh. Who knows, maybe CRC's rom is just a battery suck (which I can't imagine it is, it's pretty stripped down/light weight). I guess we will see after a few days here.
NICE!
i would like to try 6.5 .... but i cant seem to find any links with screen shots... If it has any sort of Touch flo ... Forget it ...
Do you have a link to 6.5 WWE?
Interesting about the comments re: big storage eating battery, and interesting also that other people using the same ROM as I am currently are also experiencing battery life problems.
I just swapped out the battery in my device - from the brand new 1500mAh battery to the older (identical) 1500mAh battery, freshly charged. As soon as I got to the Today screen, the battery was already down to 97% - and just sitting on my knee ticking over, it's already gone down to 94%. 93% now!
This is ridiculous. The battery life in WM6.0 is the same (just as bad? ) as the original WM5 ROM I had on it, it's mad to think that a simple point release of an Operating System can cause such a massive difference to battery life.
However, this ROM may have Big Storage enabled, so that could be sucking the battery life out of the poor thing. Does anybody have any pointers or links to previous discussiong about how (or why) Big Storage drains the battery more than a regular ROM?
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=461680
the best 65 ROM so far and with relatively good battery life.
i had the same problem with the battery life and came to realize that NO rom is good enough in thus area.
i guess that is a small price to pay for free OS
i would also recommend you to try the original ROM for your country or WWE and check his battery life for a few days - you will soon find out that the more application you will install you'll get more processes that are running in the background = less battery life.
if you can live with the default WM - you wull get the best battery life.
Hehe, unfortunately the ROM which came with my phone was from my phone provider - T-Mobile UK - and it is awful! Broken Bluetooth, huge lag on the phone because of all the preinstalled crap, almost no free device memory, slow to respond generally... All of these new ROMs I've flashed make my device feel so quick again! It's amazing what a small change can do.
Has anybody cooked a WM6 ROM without the honeycomb Today screen interface? And is it totally impossible to go back to WM6/6.1 after you flash 6.5?
pickiki said:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=461680
the best 65 ROM so far and with relatively good battery life.
i had the same problem with the battery life and came to realize that NO rom is good enough in thus area.
i guess that is a small price to pay for free OS
i would also recommend you to try the original ROM for your country or WWE and check his battery life for a few days - you will soon find out that the more application you will install you'll get more processes that are running in the background = less battery life.
if you can live with the default WM - you wull get the best battery life.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Has anyone tried this EVIL rom? 6.5? It saus dont synch with VISTA... i have vista...
Going for it
IM going for the 6.5 RIGHT now!!!!
Stay Tooooooooooooooned!
Problems problems problems!
Oh **** my phone is screwed! LOLOL
Installed 6.5 evil v10.. hehe works YEH! but when i connect to my Windows box "Vista" the phone freezes! i gotta hard boot!
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOT GOOOOOOOOOOOOOD

Battery issues

Ok, this is just plain frustrating and I have no clue about what to do.
The lifetime on my phone is dropping ridiculously fast. I replaced the original batery (that used to get ran down pretty quickly, about half a day, without using the phone much) with a spare battery a friend gave me (it's from a different model, but a minor modification it fit perfectly. For a while, it worked somewhat more decently (although should I have used the phone, I'd lose about 1% for every 30-45 seconds of usage). But for a couple of days, it started wearing down a lot quicker as well.
For instance, just charging the phone and then leaving it without actually touching it on the desk will leave it at 88% battery life within about 30 minutes.
I've checked the processes to see if there's anything out of the ordinary, but everything seems fine. I'm thinking maybe the battery may have gotten damaged in the meantime since it wasn't the designated model for this phone, but I'm having serious doubts.
Also, I've ordered a new battery which should ship any day now. Hopefully it will solve the issue, although I'm considering getting a new phone.
Any ideas?
Also, the old Asus that I used to have (WM 6.0, standard keyboard) still has an amazing battery life, at least compared to the HTC (it can do about 3-4 days in standby, and 2 days with normal usage. Also, it's able to run for 12 hours while playing music and occasional web browsing. I can barely squeeze two hours of usage from my HTC)
mtranda said:
Ok, this is just plain frustrating and I have no clue about what to do.
The lifetime on my phone is dropping ridiculously fast. I replaced the original batery (that used to get ran down pretty quickly, about half a day, without using the phone much) with a spare battery a friend gave me (it's from a different model, but a minor modification it fit perfectly. For a while, it worked somewhat more decently (although should I have used the phone, I'd lose about 1% for every 30-45 seconds of usage). But for a couple of days, it started wearing down a lot quicker as well.
For instance, just charging the phone and then leaving it without actually touching it on the desk will leave it at 88% battery life within about 30 minutes.
I've checked the processes to see if there's anything out of the ordinary, but everything seems fine. I'm thinking maybe the battery may have gotten damaged in the meantime since it wasn't the designated model for this phone, but I'm having serious doubts.
Also, I've ordered a new battery which should ship any day now. Hopefully it will solve the issue, although I'm considering getting a new phone.
Any ideas?
Also, the old Asus that I used to have (WM 6.0, standard keyboard) still has an amazing battery life, at least compared to the HTC (it can do about 3-4 days in standby, and 2 days with normal usage. Also, it's able to run for 12 hours while playing music and occasional web browsing. I can barely squeeze two hours of usage from my HTC)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Maybe you should get a new and proper battery to your device, maybe your fix does not work anymore. Also you can damage the excalibur motherboard if your messing with different volts from batteries design for other phones.
Well, the battery voltage is the same. So is the pin layout (well, that was pretty self implied). Both batteries are manufactured for HTC phones.
I guess I'll find out when my new battery arrives. However, my phone has been acting weirder and weirder. SD card issues, now the battery... And on top of that, I wonder if the two issues are related.
Edit: also, will the charger output make much of a difference? Say I use a 500 mA charger or a 1000 mA one.
Issue solved. Apparently it was from the SDHC patch I had installed a few days before. Removing the patch did not solve the issue (also, the patch disabled my WIFI) so I proceeded to reinstall WM on my phone. Now it runs fine, with regular battery drain.
I think the patch may have not allowed the CPU to enter idle mode. I can't think of any other explanation.
nah its definitely ur battery. i had the same problem, its that ur battert has degraded and it has become unable to withstand its charge. just call ur phone carrier and tell them. the should send u a free battery.
Source
-experience lol
mtranda said:
Well, the battery voltage is the same. So is the pin layout (well, that was pretty self implied). Both batteries are manufactured for HTC phones.
I guess I'll find out when my new battery arrives. However, my phone has been acting weirder and weirder. SD card issues, now the battery... And on top of that, I wonder if the two issues are related.
Edit: also, will the charger output make much of a difference? Say I use a 500 mA charger or a 1000 mA one.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I know some HTC batteries are the same voltage, but why do you think they make different ones especifically for every model eventhough they have the same voltage.
Just to let you know and regarding the output charger; I did a little experiment once, with motorola chargers (V3) since you can charge your dash with them but I tried to charge the exact phone (motorola) with the original HTC output charger.....and it didn't charge at all.
After months of using the motorola charger I started to realize my battery was not working well in my excalibur and in a period of 4 months my battery didn't hold a charge for more than 3 hours. I bought a new one and I strictly used the orginal HTC charger.
My battery is 9 months old now and works like charm (2 days + hours) with the latest ookba 3vo rom.

Desire HD battery issues??

Hi Guys,
I actually have a HD7m but my dad quite liked the 4.3 inch screen and was now asking me to buy a similar handset. We went out and he was quite impressed with the Desire HD.
But the catch, when I researched online, I found out the battery issue on practically every thread and community.
Now my problem: He is an old man and can get cranky at times. Currently owes a Nokia C6 and is pissed with the touch screen. So is it wise to buy him Desire HD even with the bad battery life?
Or worse case scenario, I swap my HD7 for his Desire HD????
Should I go for it or should can you guys suggest something else equally fluid??
It doesn't have battery issues once calibrated. I have 1-5mA battery drain on standby, that's even when running MSN and CallerID2Voice App in the background. And I can still get hours out of it when using it. Just recharge it every-night. I doubt your dad will be a smartphone addicted guy.
FirefighterDown said:
It doesn't have battery issues once calibrated. I have 1-5mA battery drain on standby, that's even when running MSN and CallerID2Voice App in the background. And I can still get hours out of it when using it. Just recharge it every-night. I doubt your dad will be a smartphone addicted guy.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hey,
Thanx...no he isn't a smart phone addicted guy. But the battery was so obvious an issue, I had to ask the experts here. Also, what exactly do you mean by 'calibrated'?
I mean, I have been an Android user before, but not quite sure what calibration is ?
He is a simple user with checking some mails everyday, music and some websites may be...thats about it, HTC Sense and all makes no difference to him actually...
If its battery life your after, buy a Johns Phone, you get 3 weeks between charges.
After you battery has been "run in" and calibrated you will get at least a day with light usage. Remember this is a powerful smartphone.
circleofomega said:
Hey,
Thanx...no he isn't a smart phone addicted guy. But the battery was so obvious an issue, I had to ask the experts here. Also, what exactly do you mean by 'calibrated'?
I mean, I have been an Android user before, but not quite sure what calibration is ?
He is a simple user with checking some mails everyday, music and some websites may be...thats about it, HTC Sense and all makes no difference to him actually...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The battery calibration concerns only those who are using a custom rom. (here's a short article with app that does it for you if you're interested). I wouldn't recommend the DHD for my own father. Whatever you do to it you'll almost always have to charge it overnight, with stock rom it could be even twice a day. This isn't a problem for smartphone enthusiasts, but for oldschool people (like my father) who think phones should last a week without charging this can be quite off-putting. The DHD is also starting to get kinda old already, so you might wanna take a look at some newer phones. A good alternative could be the Desire S, as it has almost the same features with a slightly better battery.
And to those who can't admit that the DHD has bad battery life I just have to say that the out-of-the-box battery life could and should be a lot better. To get it lasting as it should takes a bit of effort which shouldn't be required from a normal user.
Hawks556 said:
The battery calibration concerns only those who are using a custom rom. (here's a short article with app that does it for you if you're interested). I wouldn't recommend the DHD for my own father. Whatever you do to it you'll almost always have to charge it overnight, with stock rom it could be even twice a day. This isn't a problem for smartphone enthusiasts, but for oldschool people (like my father) who think phones should last a week without charging this can be quite off-putting. The DHD is also starting to get kinda old already, so you might wanna take a look at some newer phones. A good alternative could be the Desire S, as it has almost the same features with a slightly better battery.
And to those who can't admit that the DHD has bad battery life I just have to say that the out-of-the-box battery life could and should be a lot better. To get it lasting as it should takes a bit of effort which shouldn't be required from a normal user.
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Click to collapse
Thanx so much...that was really helpful...albeit your explanation on battery life, I just wanted to add that he was in love with the 4.3 inch screen...and only HD7 is the other device with that screen size...So I think Desire S is also a good option...let me check with him...
Again, Thanx!
depend on what you consider a good battery life, some may say getting a day is good enough, but some define good as atleast 2 days.
Hawks556 said:
And to those who can't admit that the DHD has bad battery life I just have to say that the out-of-the-box battery life could and should be a lot better. To get it lasting as it should takes a bit of effort which shouldn't be required from a normal user.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Absolutely right. I'm tired of hearing people evangelising that the DHD's battery is fine. It patently is not. Even when you severly rein back the device's features (features which HTC flaunted to get us all hooked), one ends up with 25-30% at the day's end.... And if you have a 'heavy' day of calls/browsing etc, you'll have to top up to get through the day.
But I still regard HTC as just about the best of a bad bunch...
Ok, sorry to hijack this thread a little.
The battery is fine, there are no issues with the battery. Your problem with the battery is that its small. Before you bought the phone did you not look into the battery capacity? I did, I knew it was smaller than the Desire's battery. Out-of-the-box it will act like any other lithium-ion battery that is just out-of-the-box. That "bit of effort" , what, plugging in your charger when it requires a charge.
These guides to correctly charge lithium-ion batteries are largely mumbo jumbo (charge to 100%, turn off, charge again for 250,000 hours, turn on, drain battery, rinse & repeat). Just charge it overnight, when your asleep.
Any smartphone with comparable usage will last around the same time and require a daily charge. If you want a phone that will last days between charges, don't buy a smartphone.
If you turn off all the bells & whistles, use 2G only and use it only for calls & sms', just like a regular phone. It will last days between charges.
If you want a powerful smartphone with a large screen, and lots of features, your battery is going to pay for it.
andyharney said:
Ok, sorry to hijack this thread a little.
Before you bought the phone did you not look into the battery capacity? I did, I knew it was smaller than the Desire's battery. Out-of-the-box it will act like any other lithium-ion battery that is just out-of-the-box. That "bit of effort" , what, plugging in your charger when it requires a charge.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm not sure anybody on this forum expects days of use between charges - we're not daft. What I expect is to not have power-saving mode kick in by late afternoon when I'm nowhere near a charger, and I've not used the thing particularly heavily.
It's not right to conclude that others didn't read up on the battery before purchasing. You have no basis for drawing such conclusions.
HTC marketed the DHD on the basis that it's architecture was such that it didn't need a higher-capacity battery to do its job. Based on the fact that I'd had pretty good experiences with my previous HTCs, I saw no reason to doubt this.
In any case, just because you don't mind charging your phone part-way through a day, doesn't mean that everybody else should be happy with that.
I don't Say ! ^^
baste07 said:
depend on what you consider a good battery life, some may say getting a day is good enough, but some define good as atleast 2 days.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's why I said that there are "oldschool people" (like my father) who think the battery should last a week. I don't mind charging the phone every night, but there are people who can't cope with such a "short" battery life. That's why the battery life of the DHD should be taken under consideration when buying a new phone.
andyharney said:
Ok, sorry to hijack this thread a little.
The battery is fine, there are no issues with the battery. Your problem with the battery is that its small. Before you bought the phone did you not look into the battery capacity? I did, I knew it was smaller than the Desire's battery. Out-of-the-box it will act like any other lithium-ion battery that is just out-of-the-box. That "bit of effort" , what, plugging in your charger when it requires a charge.
Any smartphone with comparable usage will last around the same time and require a daily charge. If you want a phone that will last days between charges, don't buy a smartphone.
If you turn off all the bells & whistles, use 2G only and use it only for calls & sms', just like a regular phone. It will last days between charges.
If you want a powerful smartphone with a large screen, and lots of features, your battery is going to pay for it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I didn't mean that the battery was bad quality or anything, just that it is a bit too small for such a powerful phone. And yes I was aware of the battery capacity and I don't mind, but again there are people that require more from their phones.
And the instructions to close connections when you're not using them and turning down the screen brightness etc. are plain stupid. I bought a smartphone so that I can get my email whenever and wherever and to enjoy the big screen and not so that I can receive emails only when I choose to and so that I have to squint to see something from the screen when the brightness is set to the lowest. This is just a couple of the features I need ofcourse, but for me it's important to always receive emails instantly and not only when I can afford to spend some battery on internet connection.
When I was still running stock rom I could barely get through a day at work (8 hours). I had mobile network on the whole time and the screen brightness set at about 50% (which I think should be used at 100% all the time to really enjoy the screen) I talked for about half an hour during the days, sent 10 texts and listened to music/played/surfed on the internet for about 3 hours in all. When I got home I had to charge it. This ofcourse is everything one could need, but there are smartphones with better battery life.
Now of ofcourse when I have a custom rom that's tweaked and everything there's no problem with battery life, but that shouldn't be necessary to do and it's quite a lot to ask just so you can have a decent battery life. That's why I was talking about out-of-the-box battery life.
Hawks556 said:
That's why I said that there are "oldschool people" (like my father) who think the battery should last a week. I don't mind charging the phone every night, but there are people who can't cope with such a "short" battery life. That's why the battery life of the DHD should be taken under consideration when buying a new phone.
I didn't mean that the battery was bad quality or anything, just that it is a bit too small for such a powerful phone. And yes I was aware of the battery capacity and I don't mind, but again there are people that require more from their phones.
And the instructions to close connections when you're not using them and turning down the screen brightness etc. are plain stupid. I bought a smartphone so that I can get my email whenever and wherever and to enjoy the big screen and not so that I can receive emails only when I choose to and so that I have to squint to see something from the screen when the brightness is set to the lowest. This is just a couple of the features I need ofcourse, but for me it's important to always receive emails instantly and not only when I can afford to spend some battery on internet connection.
When I was still running stock rom I could barely get through a day at work (8 hours). I had mobile network on the whole time and the screen brightness set at about 50% (which I think should be used at 100% all the time to really enjoy the screen) I talked for about half an hour during the days, sent 10 texts and listened to music/played/surfed on the internet for about 3 hours in all. When I got home I had to charge it. This ofcourse is everything one could need, but there are smartphones with better battery life.
Now of ofcourse when I have a custom rom that's tweaked and everything there's no problem with battery life, but that shouldn't be necessary to do and it's quite a lot to ask just so you can have a decent battery life. That's why I was talking about out-of-the-box battery life.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you want to receive emails and text, I find that GSM is fine for that. If you want to go internet browsing, just switch on to 3G.
Smartphones these days have basically a different definition of battery life to the old nokia symbian and similar phones of old. Those could go up to a week. Smartphones on the other hand are considered awesome if they can last 3.
I do have to say ultimately I think HTC sold the battery life a bit short on the DHD. 1230mah I think is really just making way for all the other top-of-the-line features that it had when it came out.
HTC have released a great number of variants of this phone now, all with better iterations of design and also with bigger batteries because of this.
1400-1500mah (or even above) I think is really what you need with a 4.3" display phone. 1230 would be far more acceptable for a <4" display. Although it can be made quite livable for a day or two with an excellent custom rom, I don't really think it's enough for a basic consumer using the standard rom. That and the speaker/audio out are the two biggest pitfalls of the DHD imo.
Sensation is now HTC's newest 4.3" phone which has a good 1500mah battery. I hope Sense 3.0 doesn't wear it down too fast!
Ultimate thoughts: Although it's a great phone, I think it's a power user's phone more than anything. You will definitely only get the best out of it by customising to it's best potential, which is also when you get acceptable battery life. If you don't, it really does seem a waste.
Hawks556 said:
When I was still running stock rom I could barely get through a day at work (8 hours). I had mobile network on the whole time and the screen brightness set at about 50% (which I think should be used at 100% all the time to really enjoy the screen) I talked for about half an hour during the days, sent 10 texts and listened to music/played/surfed on the internet for about 3 hours in all. When I got home I had to charge it. This ofcourse is everything one could need, but there are smartphones with better battery life.
Now of ofcourse when I have a custom rom that's tweaked and everything there's no problem with battery life
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
+1
I had the same sort of expectancy out of the battery using it moderately during a day at work out of the box. However with custom ROM installed I have found the battery to last easily the whole day with the same usage and probably have approx 40 - 50% left after 15hrs on battery.
just my 2c
andyharney said:
Ok, sorry to hijack this thread a little.
The battery is fine, there are no issues with the battery. Your problem with the battery is that its small. Before you bought the phone did you not look into the battery capacity? I did, I knew it was smaller than the Desire's battery. Out-of-the-box it will act like any other lithium-ion battery that is just out-of-the-box. That "bit of effort" , what, plugging in your charger when it requires a charge.
These guides to correctly charge lithium-ion batteries are largely mumbo jumbo (charge to 100%, turn off, charge again for 250,000 hours, turn on, drain battery, rinse & repeat). Just charge it overnight, when your asleep.
Any smartphone with comparable usage will last around the same time and require a daily charge. If you want a phone that will last days between charges, don't buy a smartphone.
If you turn off all the bells & whistles, use 2G only and use it only for calls & sms', just like a regular phone. It will last days between charges.
If you want a powerful smartphone with a large screen, and lots of features, your battery is going to pay for it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I am extremely sorry but I disagree with u completely. You are talking as if you buy an expensive car but dont drive it too much as it eats a lot of fuel. If you want to just drive around, why dont you just get yourself a mopet. The point is, i have bought an expensive car TO DRIVE it around. If I buy a smartphone and not use its SMART features, why am I buying it for??? If I practically shut all the reasons why I bought this phone, WHY the hell am I buying it??
There is an old saying that comes to mind that it takes guts to stay in the minority. If the battery is flawed, ACCEPT it.
Anyways, I have got my answer. Thanx for your reply nonetheless.
As everyone says depends on usage.
For one thing i went from 80mA down to 8mA just by updating the radio which came stock.
Now with a different rom and kernel I get -1mA on standby, juicedefender is also a nice app. The battery life depends on your setup though, I easily get 2 days of moderate use/music/games/calls etc.
jpinky said:
As everyone says depends on usage.
For one thing i went from 80mA down to 8mA just by updating the radio which came stock.
Now with a different rom and kernel I get -1mA on standby, juicedefender is also a nice app. The battery life depends on your setup though, I easily get 2 days of moderate use/music/games/calls etc.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hey thanx man...But was just wondering, with very moderate usage, will it still be over in no time?
Also, the other thing worrying me is the memory card issue...I cant afford to lose one card after another once I buy an expensive phone, u know what I mean...
The battery life is acceptable with moderate use on stock rom, if you're a power user you will have to stay close to a charger
There's no memory card issue from the DHD's part, it's just the crappy "freebie" sdcard (samsung?) which comes with the phone that stops working. The people who are complaining that the DHD breaks sdcards are those who buy cheap, bad quality sdcards or get a warranty replacement for the original one, which will be just as bad. The solution to this is to buy a better quality microsd card (costs about 15€) if the original stops working. Mine's still working great though.
Hawks556 said:
The battery life is acceptable with moderate use on stock rom, if you're a power user you will have to stay close to a charger
There's no memory card issue from the DHD's part, it's just the crappy "freebie" sdcard (samsung?) which comes with the phone that stops working. The people who are complaining that the DHD breaks sdcards are those who buy cheap, bad quality sdcards or get a warranty replacement for the original one, which will be just as bad. The solution to this is to buy a better quality microsd card (costs about 15€) if the original stops working. Mine's still working great though.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
After receiving a replacement 'new' phone, and having problems with my SD Card from the very second it switched on, I complained to HTC about the issue and the man on the end of the phone admitted around 500,000 phones that had been dispatched has been shipped with KNOWN issues & SD Card incapabilities. If you went out today and bought a brand spanking new card, in theory the phone WOULD NOT and the SD Card WOULD NOT fail.
mjt said:
I'm not sure anybody on this forum expects days of use between charges - we're not daft. What I expect is to not have power-saving mode kick in by late afternoon when I'm nowhere near a charger, and I've not used the thing particularly heavily.
It's not right to conclude that others didn't read up on the battery before purchasing. You have no basis for drawing such conclusions.
HTC marketed the DHD on the basis that it's architecture was such that it didn't need a higher-capacity battery to do its job. Based on the fact that I'd had pretty good experiences with my previous HTCs, I saw no reason to doubt this.
In any case, just because you don't mind charging your phone part-way through a day, doesn't mean that everybody else should be happy with that.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't mean to hijack you here mate, but you assume/claim that:
'HTC marketed the DHD on the basis that it's architecture was such that it didn't need a higher-capacity battery to do its job.'
Well I take it that you assume this on the basis that Leprechauns are real and are roaming New York city as we speak? If HTC were doing any market research at all, they would realize that even devices with smaller screens have a bigger battery than the one they have put into the DhD, including the Desire Z & Desire's batteries?
I remember when I was looking at reviews for the original Desire, as I fancied one, the main complaints were the battery life, and the fact people only got a day's charge on it. So I thought fair do's, big screen, big price to pay? If HTC had done any research, they would have realized that people wanted better battery life, a better quality screen, better sound quality?
You want to know what the real reason is behind HTC putting a small battery inside the Device? Well it's the fact that the entire thing was rushed, and I mean rushed? There's evidence of this in the build quality, the software, the placing of different things within the phone and also the bad batch issues HTC experienced.
The HD was leaked in September/October, it was released by November, this is not normal for any device that becomes 'leaked'. HTC used a bad screen, imported most of the software from the original Desire, obviously making edits to make it Sense 2.0, but you can clearly see they didn't change everything? If you set the Android Pattern Lock Screen, you can see that it doesn't fill the whole screen, the IME is the standard HTC one with some arrows slapped in at the bottom? They didn't even change the size of the keyboard?, this is more evident if you use the IME in landscape mode, its hard.
What sort of company places an Antenna in the Battery Cover? It's true, remove your Battery Cover and you'll loose all signal? Pretty risky move for HTC, seeing as the Battery Cover is VERY easy to 'accidently' break, and frankly your screwed then right? It's like they designed the phone, forgot the Antenna, then quickly though 'Where the f*** is this going?' and decided to place it there? In my opinion, and a few others, they did this with the battery, they made the device too thin, and in reality they just couldn't fit everything in. The Desire S which is slightly thicker, packs a brilliant battery. Problem solved.
The build quality of the phone, is not one of a £500 price tag. Some parts of the phone squeak whereas others just do not feel adequate to the pricing of the device. There again we live in a world where no matter how much you pay, something always seems to be wrong.
Sorry if I have offended any HTC lovers, all attacks on my and opinions against me are welcome, don't get me wrong, I love my phone and I can cope with charging the battery every night. Chao.

[Q] Terrible Battery Life - Hardware Fault?

I've had my new desire z about 2 weeks now, and am utterly dissapointed by a frankly dreadful battery life.
It's my second DZ, given the original was nicked, but (kicks self) wasn't insured, so was purchased from a supplier that shipped my phone from Hong Kong (I live in UK, and the new phone is an identical model, except for a slight difference in key layout - A2727 I think is model number)
The original phone would give me over two days life with very low use, which i considered to be fair for a decent smart phone.
The new phone barely gives me 10 hours with no use. I've done a couple of tests - unplugged it at 2am, but 8am it's at 30% or lower. This was done with all data connections turned off.
If i leave the new phone to go dead then that's it - it won't charge. The only way i've found to get juice back into the battery is to hold it in my old touch-pro 2 until it's charged enough to charge from the desire.
Last night was the clincher. I've gone out with some friends to the pub. I had a conversation over it, and checked my battery life - 42%. As a last dith effort i factory reset the phone at that point to rule out a mischevious app, and checked - 39%
Within 2 hours, and with no use at all that was down at 8%. In order to avoid the charge issue i cut my losses and turned it off at that point. Once home (oh, about 4 hours later maybe) I was unable to turn it back on. I then left it plugged in overnight, and was still unable to turn it on this morning until i'd done my cross-phone charging trick.
I'm now entirely convinced there's some form of hardware issue at fault here, so i'm wondering if anyone else has had the same problem with this phone before? I see lots of thread regarding poor battery life, but most seem to be solved by turning data off or some rouge app, neither of which are an issue in this case. Also, any hints for making my life easier when I phone HTC tomorrow? I've read elsewhere their support might not be all it should be.
Thanks in advance for any help! I've ready to pull my hair out as what is a fantastic phone otherwise has been completely ruined by this battery issue.
I think you should get a new battery to rule out that the battery itself isn't a problem. I had similar issues with my G1 a while back and it solved a lot of wierd, seemingly unrelated problems. Batteries are pretty cheap online, $15 or so and some are free shipping.
The way that I figured out my battery was toast was by comparing it to other batteries. it had a bulge in the center where it should have been flat. Fingers crossed it isn't hardware.
had already tried a diff battery (did you know you can chew a corner off a touch pro 2 battery and make it fit??) Which i know worked fine in the old nicked dz and imo as i was getting same issue ruled out battery problem.
anyway... phone has now been returned and i'm waiting 2-3 weeks to get it repaired under warranty (though am hoping for complete replacement obviously)
Chewing on batteries has got to get you extra xda brownie points. I'll remember that
Sent from my T-Mobile G2 using XDA App
I'd like to think there was some techincal or engineering skill in there somewhere.
but it was mostly "Well, apart form this nugget of plastic they're the same shape..."
I'm having the exact same problem... When you take you shutdown to recharge a dead battery, does it sometimes try to turn back on? I left my apartment like 30m ago with 100% battery, and I'm at 84% and declining. There's nothing running. And I've replaced the battery, same issue.
I think I might just RMA this one.. seems like an engineering issues.
Edit: I'm the 40 seconds it took me to type this, battery dropped to 82%.
Wanted to bump this post. I've since wiped / reloaded and wiped battery stats. It's still jacked. I think it's an internal electrical thing. Reason is: I'll power down to take the battery out. When I put the other one in, it'll turn back on. Or if I power down to charge, it'll turn back on - plugged in or not. I don't want to deal with the RMA process again, but I think it's my only choice. I've taken two phone calls this AM @ 100%, and it's at 96% now. Drives me insane. Ugh... I'll call TMO. Anyone know if the replacements are still rootable?
So... I had my phone replaced, and it's still doing the horrid battery thing. Flashed CM 7.1 RC3 or w/e the latest is, cycled one battery - and it drops like a stone. I have two chargers (one at work, one at home) and they both charge the phone up to 100%. But it's still losing battery life quicker than I'd like. I used to be able to get a good 18 hours out of this phone. Even with a new battery and a new phone, it's acting up. I'll try to flash an older ROM and see if it's the same thing. I updated to #130 nightly from 7/10. We'll see how it lasts today. But I do remember I had horrible luck with CM's ROM's on my G1. Battery would just drain for no reason. The main process taking up the most battery life is "Cell standby" so I changed to the latest radio - and it still drops. OP - have you figured out your problem? I've removed a ton of apps, and it's still messing up. I listen to music for... 45m in the AM, and I get down to 54%. I've formatted my SD Card as well.. it's driving me insane.
I just flashed CM 7.1 a few days ago and while the ROM is great, it does seem to be a litter harder on my battery than 6.1 was. With light/moderate usage yesterday, I got about 16 hours and that was running the battery almost completely dead. With heavy usage, I get about 10 hours and need a bump charge in the afternoon.
You might want to look into getting a Mugen 1800mah battery. You can get them on Ebay from 35-40 dollars. The seller 'nakedcellphone' is based out of Southern California and another user has confirmed ordering from them and getting a legitimate battery (lots of fakes on Ebay). Either that, or carry a charger with you...
Have you tried using Watchdog to see if there are any 'rogue' apps that are causing the drain by running in the background? What about going to spare parts > battery history > Partial Wake usage? There it will show apps that are draining your battery when you're not 'actively' using your phone. For me, the Android System is the highest drain in that menu. Good luck! Hope some of this helps!
I just checked spare parts, and there's nothing too odd in there. Just my music app. And I've changed that too - thought Winamp was killing me. I'll check Watchdog. This is a brand new OEM battery along with an RMA'd G2. It has to be the OS / Radio or something. I've stripped like every non-essential app too.

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