Develop Bugs

Battery draining issues

Hi everyone,
I bought my new Desire two days ago, and im noticing a really fast battery drain.
I had a Hero before, and although it had a smaller battery, i would charge it every two days.
When i check tha battery usage, i can see big percentages in cell standby, phone idle and android system. (Its where the percentages should be really low imo..) Things like display, bluetooth etc that were supposed to drain more my phone's battery have much lower percentages..
Maybe all this comes from the snapdragon cpu??
I also have 3g off, always on mobile switched off and brigthness to a really low level (although i think amoled displays dont drain the battery that much)
My battery will last one day the MOST..
I know that the new battery has to be charged a few times before it has its full potential, but i think that somehow battery is getting drained..any tips???
Thanks,
T.

I to have this same issue if anyone has any ideas on this would be great
Sent from my HTC Desire using the XDA mobile appication powered by Tapatalk

You just need to relax
My Desire couldn't get through even one day of usage when I first got it. Several things contributed to this:
1. The battery is not fully conditioned
2. The device is new so I want to play with it all the time. I'd turn it on randomly for no reason whatsoever.
3. I use several widgets that requires updating just because of the novelty (ie, Friendstream, News, Twitter, Stocks, Weather)
Now, I go through about 60-70% charge per day which is fine by me. The only things that have changed is this:
1. The battery has gone though several recharge cycles
2. I only turn on my device when I really want to do something on it.
3. I no longer keep many of the widgets that requires updating and for those that I do keep, I make it update less often.
Eg, Updating your weather every hour is not necessary. Every 3 or 6 hours makes more sense.
Eg. Rather than having your Twitter or Friendstream widget on your homescreen, why not just have a shortcut that goes directly to the application and then set it to sync on launch? It's better than having your widget update when you're not even looking.

Also get an app like battery indicator to give you a numeric readout of your battery life left. My android battery indicator was in the red yesterday and complaining I had to recharge, but battery indicator said I had 12% left and I got 30mins more constant music playing out of it before I got to work and it was still on 5%.

when the battery is running low - you get a button to show battery usage stats.. can you get these through some of the widgets or a comparable app from the market?

almost every update is set to to once a day, or every six or eight hours...so i dont think that the updates drain the battery that much..
its just weird that the most battery usage comes from call standby, phone idle, or android system..

mine was the same, i found its due to sense & all the background updates. currently running helix2 homescreen & now I only go thru abt 50% battery each day & that includes 2 hrs of music each morning.
Sent from my HTC Desire using the XDA mobile application powered by Tapatalk

alright i know this seems stupid but remove all your task killers, i got rid of mine this morning and my battery has been fine normally by now i would have plugged my phone in for a juice up, but not today i had bluetooth on by accident all morning and by the end of the morning it was still at 70% yes i know it sounds stupid but it actually helps

There many interesting suggestions posted here and like most i've been absolutely hammering the battery on my handset simply because its a new and highly entertaining/useful device.
Here's some of my findings...
The battery/app usage screen can be quickly accessed by pressing the menu button on the home screen, selecting settings and "about phone". It helped me nail down some of apps causing excessive drain.
Much like the iphone and any other high powered smart phone, high screen brightness, wireless LAN, bluetooth, 3G and the GPS receiver all take its toll on the battery. One of the biggest drainers is the GPS receiver so use it sparingly, I initially had it on permanently for some of the maps functions but the battery was lasting about half a day! Sadly i've noticed the radio is also a bit of drainer, which is a shame because it makes a nice alternative to MP3 playback.
Data updates and notifications again much like the iPhone have a surprising impact on battery life so set them to manual or long intervals.
In summary, learn as quickly as possible to get the most out of your smart phone by balancing out the hardware and software options.
As a sidenote, I was previously an iPhone fan but this handset has really changed my opinion of how a smartphone should really be. The combination of excellent hardware, an OS thats clearly designed from the ground up for mobile use and an ever growing (open) software base, will in the long term win over Apple's over analy retentive ethos! Top marks also to HTC for their sense UI and application suite, it works on top of Android almost as if it was always part of the OS itself and I just love the integration of social networking features....leaves the iPhone in the dust!

I have noticed that Turning off the Data Connection helps a lot.
Last night I turned data off, before I plugged my phone in for charging. In the morning the battery was showing MAX power. Where normally in the morning would be 97%, because charging stops once the battery is full.
I am still experimenting with all the Apps & Widgets that turn data access ON/OFF, but my conclusions so far, just get a simple widget from the market, and keep data connection off, until you need it.
There is an app that turns data connection off once the screen goes off, but if you download something or wait for something to load and the screen goes off, data will also be switched off which is not what you need.

A positive battery story....

I let my phone discharge fully till it turned itself off!
Charged it for 4 or 5 hours.
Now I used it to make 3 short calls (5mins each) and send 10 or so texts, and surf for about 5 minutes, use google sjy mpas for 5minutes, showcase some video to some friends 2mins, general messing 10mins altogether.
Phone is up 40hours now (since charge) and still at 80%. I am very impressed.
I put it to airplane mode between 12am and 7am though as I don't like to be woken by drunk friends texts at 2am etc. (it happens sometimes).
I think those of us (me included) who slated the battery life originally didn't relaise we were using the phone non-stop pretty much for the entire day, trying out all the features on it. I doubt the first week of use will be "typical use" for ANY user
Happy Days

My battery on day one seems fine, 12.5 hours running so far, screen at 100%, everything on automatic syncing (and I mean everything, Weather, Twitter, FB, Gmail etc), continuous WiFi connection throughout, plenty of "first day" playing around and still sitting at something like 20%. With a few more charges and more typical use will last a day just fine, which is all I ask, since I always charge my phones overnight...

When i got my phone i let it run out as it had half power, i overcharged it a few hours then let it die, then i do the same again but not overcharge it and let it die. Now i charge it when i need to but i seem to be getting 3 days worth with usage out of it and i use gps, web and have things on auto. Seems to be much better than when i first had it as the battery didnt even last a day but now its past 2 days.
I assume with newer firmwares etc this will improve

My battery life seems to get worse. I charged it fully ... it has been on for 6 hours and I have put 3g on for a while (1hour max and i barely have used it) and my battery is already 60% ... is that poor?? This is my second phone as well!!!

mcgon1979 said:
I let my phone discharge fully till it turned itself off!
Charged it for 4 or 5 hours.
Now I used it to make 3 short calls (5mins each) and send 10 or so texts, and surf for about 5 minutes, use google sjy mpas for 5minutes, showcase some video to some friends 2mins, general messing 10mins altogether.
Phone is up 40hours now (since charge) and still at 80%. I am very impressed.
I put it to airplane mode between 12am and 7am though as I don't like to be woken by drunk friends texts at 2am etc. (it happens sometimes).
I think those of us (me included) who slated the battery life originally didn't relaise we were using the phone non-stop pretty much for the entire day, trying out all the features on it. I doubt the first week of use will be "typical use" for ANY user
Happy Days
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I thought a full charge only required 3 hours..?

Anyone having surprisingly short battery life go into the phone keypad and dial in *#*#4636#*#*, when you key in that last * you will be taken to a testing menu (I've added a contact with this number and when in the dialer I can long press on the number as select edit number before calling to take me to this screen)
In this menu there are options to see phone and battery information as well as usage statistics for apps. The best battery option is "battery history" this shows you what apps are using your battery for various things such as network and processor usage. You can see this data for since you last rebooted your phone, unplugged it or for the whole life of the phone.
The first important part is "other usage", "running" shows you the percentage of the time your phone has been awake and doing stuff, "screen on" is the percentage of time your screen has been on, the difference between these two is when your phone has the screen is turned off but the phone is still working such as when syncing. Ideally you want these two percentages to be as close together as possible but it depends on how much syncing you have going on automatically in the background. If your running percentage is at or near 100% then an app is keeping your phone awake and using battery.
Next we have "partial awake use", this is what as been running in the background when you have the screen turned off and any apps that process or sync in the background would be listed here, the longer the bar, the bigger the drain on your battery. On my phone now the biggest bar by far is android system but it is still only small.
With "sensor usage" this is what has been using your sensors, games that use the sensors will feature heavily here.
"Gps usage" is again pretty self explanatory, whatever has been using gps.
"Network usage" was a real eye opener for me, I found out that an app was downloading megs of data all day and dwarfed all the other bars and was the reason for my bad battery life. Here the blue part of the bar is download and the red part is upload.
And lastly "cpu usage" on mine these are all practically non-existent but if anything is using massive amounts of processing it will show up here.
I only found out about this the other day but it has helped my battery life substantially, I used to take it off charge in the morning and be down to around 60% by lunch time, now I'm at 98%. I did this by uninstalling any apps that used too much battery and that I didn't really use very much as well as the vampire apps that were running and syncing continuously in the background, I also reduced the frequency at which some of my services such as stocks, email and weather synced, and used it on a low brightness when possible.
This is my first android device and I can now happily use it without the fear of running out of battery before the days end

Wow, thanks andybut85, that was a very informative post!

If you download Spare Parts from the Market it gives you access to the same info - instead of 'dialing' to test mode.

andybut85 said:
Next we have "partial awake use", this is what as been running in the background when you have the screen turned off and any apps that process or sync in the background would be listed here, the longer the bar, the bigger the drain on your battery. On my phone now the biggest bar by far is android system but it is still only small.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
My biggest is "Calendar" (54mins from Boot, compared to 1min for Andriod System!)
What Calendar could this be? Im syncing from Google Calendar, so will it be that? If so, wouldnt my email syncing show up as constantly on too?
Or could it be some other App that is making it run constantly?
Any help gratefully received.

myk202020 said:
My biggest is "Calendar" (54mins from Boot, compared to 1min for Andriod System!)
What Calendar could this be? Im syncing from Google Calendar, so will it be that? If so, wouldnt my email syncing show up as constantly on too?
Or could it be some other App that is making it run constantly?
Any help gratefully received.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Have a look for "Total in all time" with mine the calendar is roughly half that of android system, it could be that recently your calendar has had to sync for a long time, this could be a one off or if it's still high for the total time it could be a deeper problem. You could also try rebooting and seeing if it occurs again.

Have a look for "Total in all time" with mine the calendar is roughly half that of android system, it could be that recently your calendar has had to sync for a long time, this could be a one off or if it's still high for the total time it could be a deeper problem. You could also try rebooting and seeing if it occurs again.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Calendar: 1day 7hrs
Android: 5hours
I'm thinking some app I've put on yesterday is not letting it sleep. will uninstall stuff one by one and see how it goes.
Sent from my HTC Desire using the XDA mobile application powered by Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

I'm still having problems with battery drain.
My Desire will not last a day
Installed Juiceplotter to find out when and why my battery drops so fast.
See attached image.
The battery drains very fast when i USE the phone, so when the screen is on. (20% in one hour)
I have two push email account activated, one with the HTC Exchange, and one with TouchDown.
But that doesn't explain the drops when phone is active.
Anyone else having this kind of batterydrain ?

I have positive "story" about battery too. Im on second charging. Saturday at 1:00 Im unplug it from charger and now 34h later Im on 7/10 battery.
Im make few calls(cca. 10 calls long 1-3min), few times(cca. 3-5x) check emails accounts(4 pop3 email accountes), quick test sygic navigation, little search on market(install calendar widget and some other app), and play few levels of Teeter...
3G is turned ON
GPS, WIFI is turned OFF
Also automatic sync is for most things disabled or setup to sync 1x per day...

Hmm Can't say I'm impressed by my battery life... it dropped 20% overnight..
I''ll keep an eye out on what's running and see if i can fine tune, but turning things off seems to be a bit pointless as it is made for use not just sit on a desk being pretty.
regards
Kef

i got great battery life at home over the weekend connected to my wi-fi network.. i have a feeling its the crappy edge reception in my office thats eating into battery life during the week..

micks_address said:
i got great battery life at home over the weekend connected to my wi-fi network.. i have a feeling its the crappy edge reception in my office thats eating into battery life during the week..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
yep, that sounds highly plausible. Bad or weak connections to the network (especially mobile internet connections) will really drain a battery as the phone needs to use more power to maintain adequate connection strength.
you can check your signal strength in the "settings / network strength" section. I notice in good 3G areas my connection is -95dBm or higher. At work (which is in some sort of black spot in Dublin) I only get EDGE connection and my signal strength is about -80 to -85dBm. I bet this makes a big difference to battery life, especially if I try browsing or data connection.

my signal strength at work is -91 dbm...
i'm guessing bigger numbers are worse?
mcgon1979 said:
yep, that sounds highly plausible. Bad or weak connections to the network (especially mobile internet connections) will really drain a battery as the phone needs to use more power to maintain adequate connection strength.
you can check your signal strength in the "settings / network strength" section. I notice in good 3G areas my connection is -95dBm or higher. At work (which is in some sort of black spot in Dublin) I only get EDGE connection and my signal strength is about -80 to -85dBm. I bet this makes a big difference to battery life, especially if I try browsing or data connection.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

spare parts showed me that "media" was using the network a lot, bowever i cant work out what this corresponds to, it says DRM protected content storage, download manager and media storage. shows as having downloaded several megs
i use spotify for music, anyone any ides what these could be?
thanks

only guess but i'd say its spotify.. i have used servcies like that in the past on my pc.. and they sometimes have a lot of downloading going on that you dont even ask for!... worth checking out..
kinkade said:
spare parts showed me that "media" was using the network a lot, bowever i cant work out what this corresponds to, it says DRM protected content storage, download manager and media storage. shows as having downloaded several megs
i use spotify for music, anyone any ides what these could be?
thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

micks_address said:
only guess but i'd say its spotify.. i have used servcies like that in the past on my pc.. and they sometimes have a lot of downloading going on that you dont even ask for!... worth checking out..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
yes it could be, but spotify also comes up as a separate user of resources and i tested it since unplugging when spotify wasnt running and "media" still comes up as the biggest user.
makes me think that its not spotify

How can I check what ate my battery in the past 3 hours?

My battery life has been great with the current set-up, but in the past 3 hours something screwy happened. I basically went to a function and I turned off BT, Wi-Fi, Mobile Data and GPS. Only thing on was the cellular network and I swear I didn't use it for more than 5 minutes. The battery was at 98% before leaving, now in those 3 hours it came down to 50%. What the crap? The only thing I did was to play Super KO Boxing 2 before leaving for about 5 minutes(It still shows its battery usage as 20% but no option to force close, so I am presuming it isn't running). I did open Maps and HTC Locations(Sense 2.0) for 2 minutes but I closed it because I didn't need it anymore, I also disabled GPS right after that. Now after all of this(game and gps stuff) I had 98% battery. Yet 48% of my battery went into thin air just like that, my battery use is Display: ~40%, SKOB : ~20%, Voice calls: ~15%(About 3 minutes), Cell standby ~2%, Wi-Fi ~4-5% or something like that. These are from memory since I turned it off and kept it for charging.
Any ideas what screwed things up?

Edit: Just noticed you are already familiar with the battery %age lcations.

From what you describe, it sounds as though there were some apps running in the background, slowly om nom nom'ing your battery. I daresay there are a few apps on the Android Market and elsewhere that can tell you what services are running at any given time, so you could get one of those.
If you're after ensuring maximum battery life, however, your best bet is to shut down the Desire, then fire it up again. That way, you can be sure there are no background services to drain charge. Couple that with lowering the screen brightness and display idle timeout (not to mention upgrading to Android 2.2), you should be able to go at least a couple of days on standby.

Sounds like one of your apps is keeping your device awake. I'd suggest getting app monitor like SystemPanel and run the monitoring for a few hours to see which app is consuming the battery.
And get WatchDog. It will notify you if there's any app that use the CPU more than 20%. You can set the percentage yourself btw.

All right, I'll be formatting the phone and flashing the RCMixHD v8 ROM(Was using v7) and then see what happens. i can bet my life that it was either HTC Locations or Google Maps screwing things up.

HTC Desire Battery Life

I have a question regarding my battery life. Yesterday night at 10:00 pm i played +/- 40 minutes on games like Angry Birds and used my 3G connection for about 10 minutes. My battery dropped from 100% to 61%. When i didnt use my phone (just idle mode) @ 11:46 pm i wanted to check how much battery i had left today in the morning (10:00 am) ..... it whas completely dead 0% .... i have this phone since august but if i knew the battery life whas so crap i would have picked another device.
Is there a way to improve it ??? since i read in diffrent topics people can use their desire for 2 days without a recharge.
- Not rooted
- Froyo 2.2

The HTC Desire is a smartphone running powerful mobile OS and a lot of additional gadgets like GPS, ...
So comparing battery life is impossible.
You can get a battery life of a mobile phone/week if you use it like a mobile phone: No GPS, no data, no playing games, no surfing, just occasional talking. So the battery life is normal and good, compared to mobile phones.
But normally you use it like a smartphone, thus you use it daily, play some games, ... which results in a battery life of a few hours (navigation) up to two or three days (moderate use), with an average battery life of a day (heavy use).
However, one thing for sure: Something is wrong with your phone.
This dosen't mean something is broken, rather you use an app/setting, which causes the battery drain, so you did something wrong, you're the failure, not the device!
Playing a game drains the battery fast. The display is on, probably max. brightness and the CPU and GPU is working like hell. It also gets warm, so you can feel the increased power consumption.
In sleep mode however, it should consume much less than it did for you. Maybe 2% each hour.
So to find what app you've installed or what app you keep in the background running, install a program like Android System Info and take a look at the task list, CPU load should be around 10% if you wait a few seconds and do nothing.
Take a look at the running services (android settings, applications, ...) and check if you really need all of them or if an app is active which you don't use. Then don't force close it, only idiots do this, rather open the app and deactivate the service (like automatic updating)
Next option: Test the battery life again. Maybe an app crashed and caused the increased power draw and now everything is working fine again and battery life is normal again. Then it's impossible to find a culprit with Android System Info.
Also tell us what settings you've activated: GPS/Wifi/Data/BT/...

This is happening because, some process not letting your device to sleep..!!
All you need to do is type *#*#4636#*#*
and check the battery history ,you'll get to know which process is using your battery, and remove that application.

UpSpin said:
The HTC Desire is a smartphone running powerful mobile OS and a lot of additional gadgets like GPS, ...
So comparing battery life is impossible.
You can get a battery life of a mobile phone/week if you use it like a mobile phone: No GPS, no data, no playing games, no surfing, just occasional talking. So the battery life is normal and good, compared to mobile phones.
But normally you use it like a smartphone, thus you use it daily, play some games, ... which results in a battery life of a few hours (navigation) up to two or three days (moderate use), with an average battery life of a day (heavy use).
However, one thing for sure: Something is wrong with your phone.
This dosen't mean something is broken, rather you use an app/setting, which causes the battery drain, so you did something wrong, you're the failure, not the device!
Playing a game drains the battery fast. The display is on, probably max. brightness and the CPU and GPU is working like hell. It also gets warm, so you can feel the increased power consumption.
In sleep mode however, it should consume much less than it did for you. Maybe 2% each hour.
So to find what app you've installed or what app you keep in the background running, install a program like Android System Info and take a look at the task list, CPU load should be around 10% if you wait a few seconds and do nothing.
Take a look at the running services (android settings, applications, ...) and check if you really need all of them or if an app is active which you don't use. Then don't force close it, only idiots do this, rather open the app and deactivate the service (like automatic updating)
Next option: Test the battery life again. Maybe an app crashed and caused the increased power draw and now everything is working fine again and battery life is normal again. Then it's impossible to find a culprit with Android System Info.
Also tell us what settings you've activated: GPS/Wifi/Data/BT/...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Brightness is already said to medium, i also turned of those life wallpapers and it still drains like ****. When i look at the battery status it says battery life is good. Maybe a application that is running i dont know, ill try to find it out. So far i have a few apps installed which i rarely use.
harish.awe said:
This is happening because, some process not letting your device to sleep..!!
All you need to do is type *#*#4636#*#*
and check the battery history ,you'll get to know which process is using your battery, and remove that application.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks will check it out and see what it does now in idle mode.
Idle mode 01:28 pm starts now, will post results in a few hours.
Edit: It's 02:00 pm here and i already lost 4% battery, its 96% now , i did *#*#4636#*#* and checked battery status and it seems wifi is in full use 99.7%. I will turn this off but what about the 3G connection
Edit2: It's 2:24 pm here and the battery status is 92% now, i reveived +/- 4 emails in that time. I checked the status in battery indicator pro and this is what it says
Android system 37%
Mobile Stand-by 22%
Phone inactive 15%
Wi-Fi 15%
view 11%
nothing else......i am really lost now.

Is my battery damaged/broken ? .... how can i reset/callibrate the battery ? or should i contact the shop where i got this phone from for a new battery ?

don't worry, lots of people are having bad battery lifes, and angry bird drain your battery really quickly, so it is quite normal, especially on AMOLED desires.

h3llb3nd4 said:
don't worry, lots of people are having bad battery lifes, and angry bird drain your battery really quickly, so it is quite normal, especially on AMOLED desires.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah i have AMOLED
PS: After 30 minutes without touching it the battery is still 92%.

you could install setcpu and set profiles to save battry life

Might try that.....but after 1 hour the battery is still 92%.....i guess wifi drained my stuff down all the way as i am pretty sure i turned that thing of last time.
i will do some more tests later....
Edit: After 1 and half hour the battery is still 92%, guess the stock rom isnt that bad .

MichelN said:
Edit2: It's 2:24 pm here and the battery status is 92% now, i reveived +/- 4 emails in that time. I checked the status in battery indicator pro and this is what it says
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Its not 5:09 pm here and the battery is now 91% (idle, not touched)....guess wifi what the bad thing on my phone.

Tested the battery last night and must say i am happy with the results
10:00 pm yesterday the battery whas 60%, today i looked back @ 11:24 am and the battery just dropped with 10% (3G is on), i didn't touch the phone since then.
Stock Rom / Froyo 2.2
The battery drain came from wifi

I wrote HTC about the battery and they just sent me a brand new one So now I have 2 batteries and I think I'm happy DD

You can check your battery usage with a widget called "currentwidget" (search for it on this forum)
Usually on SBY with radio ON my phone drains from 3 to 4 Ma and 2ma in plane mode. (sounds good with a 1400mah battery)
In heavy usage, it can go anything from 150 to 500ma (ie: playing game with wifi ON)!!
For nice graphics, try to install "battery snap" too.

From HTC themself:
“To also help with Battery Life you can do these steps exactly:
1) Turn your device ON and Charge the device for 8 hours or more
2) Unplug the device and Turn the phone OFF and charge for 1 hour
3) Unplug the device Turn ON wait 2 minutes and Turn OFF and charge for another hour Your battery life should almost double, we have tested this on our devices and other agents have seen a major difference as well“
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
also found this on a swedish website (i useed google translate, to lazy to manually translate it)
A known problem with the new update of the HTC Desire to Android 2.2 Froyo is battery life. How users have experienced the change is highly variable. Several said that battery life has improved, some even talk about a major improvement. The others have had problems that the phone charges from a fully charged battery several times in one day. If you have experienced such problems, there are measures, some simple, others more complicated and time consuming. Below I list things you can try, the lightest at the top.
# 1 Look what it's drawing power. Go to Settings> About phone> Battery> Battery usage or enter * # * # 4636 # * # * on the keypad and look around a bit. Is there anything that seems abnormal, or any program that seems to be the culprit, uninstall simply the application and see if that helps. While you can uninstall applications you believe is in the background and drag the cream from the phone's battery. Some applications may slip into the "Android System" in your battery history.
# 2 Uninstall system control and task killers. Advanced Task Killer and similar programs do more harm than they help. It is unfortunately only to realize this and stop using them. Android is an OS made for having many applications driving on the background. The operating system puts himself applications you do not use the idle to conserve battery power. Different programs that measure your performance on the phone, for example, Task Panel never sets in idle and therefore system resources continuously. If you have such software installed it may be time to consider uninstalling it. More on why the task killers and Android do not go hand in hand in to read this article by Android developer Dianne Hack Born.
# 3 Clean your home screen. It can be a good idea to try if it helps to clean up your Home screens from various widgets.
# 4 Do a soft reset. Discharge the battery completely (not that the phone is turned off), turn off the phone manually, remove the battery and reinsert it, restart your phone and put it on charge. This may have some effect and provide an improved battery life. Such a restoration known as a soft reset and should be tested before you do a master reset (hard reset).
# 5 Do a "hard reset". Have you done all the methods above are still not noticed any major difference? Then it's time to do a master reset of the OS. HTC have said they for some users might went wrong during the update to Froyo causing poor battery life, and when it is easiest to do a reset to get to grips with the problem. Although Android automatically sync contacts in the "cloud" so it might be a good idea to make a backup of your contacts (Contacts> Menu> Import / Export). Note that when you do a hard reset resets the entire phone, including messages, settings, themes, installed applications, etc. These are not the contents of your SD card. There are two methods to restore your phone, do a google search on "hard reset desire," so there are many simple guides. After restoration, the idea not to install any applications you had installed before. Install the programs one at a time and not too many at once.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

[Q] Cell Standby/Phone Idle battery woes

The battery on my Evo has been plummeting recently. A while ago I could make 36 hours easy, and now I am lucky to get 12. The reason it seems is cell standby/phone idle, according to battery info. Over the course of last night I went from 85% to 28% while I just slept, and according to battery info these two things are responsible for that.
I'm not sure what they are or how to decrease, however. I read that NV and PRI 1.90 was causing problems for a lot of people so I tried downgrading to 1.77 as suggested, but I have no idea where to find the information to see if I successfully downgraded. I am running CM7 nightly build 23, I have wiped battery stats once and I am currently waiting for the phone to die before charging it again, but this has been going on for quite a few days over numerous roms and battery wipes. If I put my phone into airplane mode, the battery is hardly touched overnight. During the day I need my phone on however and the battery drains just as fast, whether I am using it or not.
Any suggestions?
ps. under accounts and sync the only thing I have set to sync is email by push, I receive only a few emails a day and a couple at night so I don't think that would be the problem. Facebook is also set to sync contacts, but only find status updates and the like when I refresh manually. Twitter, and my google account in there but both of those are set to sync manually.

Have you checked your partial wake lock in spare parts?

teh roxxorz said:
Have you checked your partial wake lock in spare parts?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have never used spare parts in my life so bear with me; but when opening it now all I see is device info including battery history, battery info and usage stats, and general options which all have to do with animations, font size, haptic feedback, or compatability mode. I don't see anything that talks about wake lock in here

You click battery history, then on the first tab, click partial wake lock, and on the second, you can click since last boot.

teh roxxorz said:
You click battery history, then on the first tab, click partial wake lock, and on the second, you can click since last boot.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
thanks! under partial wake usage since last boot, it's hardly nothing.
Android system is by far the winner with almost 11 minutes of usage, email is next at just under 2 minutes, facebook at about 1.5 minutes, and a couple other things (dialer, sms, google voice, google services) all coming in between 5 and 30 seconds.

Hmm...are you in a bad signal area or leave your radios [3G,wifi, 4G] on all the time?

I suppose I have 3g on. I never leave wifi or 4g on and my signal is between -85 and-96, according to battery info my time without signal is 0%

Well you should turn your 3G off when not using it, that'll definitely save your battery.

I will try that in the future, but it still does not explain why I am getting 1/3 the battery life I used to while doing much more to conserve battery. Could it have to do with my pri and prl and such? Maybe I need to update profile and such, like it's not looking for the right towers? I don't know much of anything about how polling and service works.

What's your wake time vs. your up time?
It sounds like you have something staying awake.
Have you gone to menu>setting>About Phone>software information to see if your PRI version & NV have been downgraded?
What kernel are you using?
Are you using RA or Clockmod for recovery?

countryfried said:
What's your wake time vs. your up time?
It sounds like you have something staying awake.
Have you gone to menu>setting>About Phone>software information to see if your PRI version & NV have been downgraded?
What kernel are you using?
Are you using RA or Clockmod for recovery?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm not sure how to check wake time vs up time, but it would likely be useless right now, as I nandroid backup, flashed a sense rom, updated my prl and profile, checked to make sure i did downgrade pri/nv and then went back to cm7, so any battery info it is going to give me right now will be inaccurate while I wait for it to charge/discharge again over the course of the night. It does still have my previous information though since it was a nandroid backup and I've had it plugged in entirely since then.
I did succesfully downgrade to 1.77 PRI
kernel is savagedzen 0.2.1 cfs havs wimax GB (2.6.37.4)
RA for recovery.
I also uninstalled a few programs including facebook and twitter in case there was anything like that interfering with my services. I still use Go contacts and Go sms however, but I have unchecked any options with them to have facebook integration. If you could tell me how to check up/wake I can check that tomorrow morning when I wake up to see and go against whatever I had. Currently I'm just trying a few things out before tonight to see if anything had helped. An idle phone sitting on my window sill for 8 hours should not drain the battery THAT much, so something is off.

Go back into men>settings>about phone>battery (you can check it now)
If your up time and awake time are the same, you have a program that's stuck in wake. I also use a program called "system panel" that will show me live time which programs are using the most resources. OR you can use "Battery Monitor".
If you have wifi at home I would suggest you set up your phone to connect to wifi and shut your 3g off. I use a program called "Y5-battery saver". It automatically connects me to wifi at home and disconnects and switches to 3g when I'm away from the house.

attached is a screen grab of the graph from battery info
if needed:
cell standby says time on 15h 44m 47s (same as time listed on battery)
phone idle says 14h 46m 58s
(these 2 items used 47% and 44% respectively
thanks for the wifi tip, i used it on sense a lot but with most aosp roms it causes problems unless you set it to never sleep, and i didnt know what that affect it had on battery so i usually just turned it on when necessary or when in a low-signal area like school.

That doesn't seem that bad for ~14hrs on battery.

my problem is that it's while I'm sleeping. I used to get 36 hours of battery before getting to 15% and being told to plug in, and now I used it a little last night, went to bed and woke up to it being at 28% and was told soon after to plug it in. I just dont remember sleeping destroying battery life like that in the past. granted 15 hours isnt that bad, but when 10 of the 15 hours the phone is just sitting there it worries me because if I were to go through a normal day, where I charge it at night and use it during the day, there is just about 0% chance that I'll be able to make it through the day without plugging it in sometime in the middle.

teh roxxorz said:
That doesn't seem that bad for ~14hrs on battery.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
yeah, that's not bad. You're still at 87%? LOL. Maybe I need to switch to AOSP ROM!

I'm Back to 87%, I've been on the charger all day, hence the battery graph raise. the dramatic raise was from when I flashed the sense rom to update my profile/prl. (obviously it wasn't monitoring during that time and when i came back and started monitoring again the battery was much higher)
it actually died after ~15 hours, with 10 of those 15 hours having doing nothing. I got systempanel to see if it gives me any more info and the main reason i use aosp is because of the terrific backlight handling. I like it to be super dim while inside and bright outside, and find on sense roms the auto backlight is too bright under normal conditions. I should be getting much better battery life than this. I'll try again tonight with the battery being monitored to see whats up and I'll try going into airplane mode tomorrow to see what that does at night for comparisons sake. hopefully there is just some program using lots of data that I don't know about. i'd love a quick fix lol

It's almost as if there's an Evo "battery curse"!!!!!! It has been HELL finding a ROM that I love that has great battery life. I really liked Myn's but for some reason I could NEVER find a kernel that would give me great battery life. I'm currently using ultrablakk 3 by King's and love the interface, just trying to find the right kernel myself. I think I'll do a nand and try an AOSP for a change. Vaelpak looks stable. Good luck with the battery life issues!

I'm using an unrevoked-rooted evo and at 10% wake time, it lasts for about 15 hours unplugged. That is why I usually keep it plugged in whenever possible. I have task killer and do not synch anything except for weather and news. I do have 3G running all the time as well. I wouldn't do that if it weren't for the email checks (4 accounts checking every 30 min). If the 3G could be automated to turn on during the checks, that would save more battery life, but I don't know of anything to do that yet.