Develop Bugs

Battery Consumption Questions

Hi guys,
I have to say, compared to my HTC Hero and Modaco 3.2 rom, the battery life on the Desire seems pretty poor to say the least.
Do you have any tips? I know there are mixed views on task killers but whats the general consensus? Seems like every app that gets opened, seems to stay open forever or atleast open in the background on this thing. Is that good or bad?
Does the Gmail app which is push based I believe consume less battery than say the HTC Mail app used to sync about every half an hour?
Have you discovered any particular HTC apps that drain more battery than normal?
I've already disabled Facebook and Friendstream completely, use seperate apps for those.
It just feels like the battery eats away even when the phone is just sat there with the screen off, sure I have 3G on but Twicca is the only thing set to update every half an hour in the background and the Gmail app on push no doubt.
Any tips?

pretty sure if u slightly decrease the brightness of the screen and stop all data connections unless you want to run them will help the battery life

disable live wallpapers
disable auto updates
disable 3G (just for the sake of trying)
decrease the brightness or make it auto (dont put it to the max)
put plain black wallpaper as background (trust me it consumes 40% less than the colored wallpaper, again, do it just for the sake of trying)
try this for one day and see if you get anything different

I have the brightness set really low, don't use live wallpapers.
I would disable 3G but that kind of defeats the purpose of having twitter updates and stuff, one of the main features of the phone.
Just checked and Twicca is only set to update once an hour, this is really weird.

Arthur Hucksake said:
I have the brightness set really low, don't use live wallpapers.
I would disable 3G but that kind of defeats the purpose of having twitter updates and stuff, one of the main features of the phone.
Just checked and Twicca is only set to update once an hour, this is really weird.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I saw somewhere that you can see what app is draining your battery life in the notification bar, just open the notifications bar and go to battery, and see if you find anything related there

I have the phone for 3 days and I'm still in the stage where I play with it all the time.
Day 1: fully charged at 1PM, used the phone pretty much non-stop till 10PM and finally plugged it in with 3% left;
Day 2: unplugged the phone at 8AM, had it in stand-by for couple hours, then used it non-stop for 2 hours, then 4 more hours of stand-by, then it 2 hours continous use. The rest was more or less stand-by. Plugged it in at 10PM with around 10% left.
Day3: used it quite a bit on and off during the day, still have 34% left.
I don't do any fancy power saving, though I don't like apps updating themselves, except for mail. However, I use WiFi when I can and I listen to podcasts whenever I walk/drive somewhere.
It's a bit too early to draw conclusions, but at this point I'd say that Desire's battery life is much better than G1's (I had 1600 mAh battery).
Of course it all depends on particular use case. Also, maybe the network is spotty in your area - that might drain a lot of battery.

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.

Battery life too short? Watch this from Google developer!!!

Hi,
If you want to know how long your battery life will last when:
- Idle on 2G/EDGE
- Idle on 3G
- Idle on WiFi
- Browsing on EDGE/3G/WiFi
- etc.
What cost battery life the most?
You will learn that "waking up app for doing nothing" will cost you heavily on battery life.
Things like checking email while you have no new email, checking weather while you got the same result, or getting data online while you are not connected to the network.
And so on ...
Sit tight and watch this:
http://code.google.com/events/io/2009/sessions/CodingLifeBatteryLife.html
This special session from Google IO in the past CupCake era explained in detail, with measurements about almost every aspects of the phone that drain the battery.
Interesting enough that IDLE on 2G vs IDLE on 3G will cost you almost the same. And browsing in 3G is more efficient. So, in this respect, I think it is not necessary to set to 2G as most people said for auto-syncing.
At home, use WiFi, because it is more efficient for web browsing.
Choosing and planning your sync and widget will make big different on battery life!
Watch it your-self and share your thought.

i've just removed advanced task killer app, and seriously battery lif is like amazing normally by now i would be at around 50% i'm at 70% and have been using it more like 2 phone calls i normally don't make any and a tiny bit of browsing but that certainly improved it

slaming said:
i've just removed advanced task killer app, and seriously battery lif is like amazing normally by now i would be at around 50% i'm at 70% and have been using it more like 2 phone calls i normally don't make any and a tiny bit of browsing but that certainly improved it
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So your saying advanced task killer is draining battery? Even when its not running ni the background. It can kill itself along with killing apps, so it shoul dnot constitute ANY drain on the battery when not running in the background.

Here what I experienced:
First of all, my phone settings:
- WiFi OFF (on when needed)
- Mobile network OFF (on when needed)
- Always on OFF
- Background data ON
- Auto sync OFF
- GPS OFF
- Bluetooth OFF
- 10% brightness (yes, my eyes is happy with that, seriously!)
- Using HTC "black" wallpaper
One day, I played around with killing tasks, not brutally killing, but just some of them like RADIO, MARKET, etc. Selectively killing.
Then I watched my battery usage, it drain quite a bit like 3% after 1 or 2 hours. I meant, it was really different compared to the other day when I did not touch task killer.
Today, I unplugged at 8:00 AM ... 100%
Now, 15:00 ... still 98% (after 7 hours!).
During that time, I played around a bit with Market via WiFi and SMS, no phone call.
Seriously, I got different result when using and not using task killer.
Try it yourself
mcgon1979 said:
So your saying advanced task killer is draining battery? Even when its not running ni the background. It can kill itself along with killing apps, so it shoul dnot constitute ANY drain on the battery when not running in the background.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

mcgon1979 said:
So your saying advanced task killer is draining battery? Even when its not running ni the background. It can kill itself along with killing apps, so it shoul dnot constitute ANY drain on the battery when not running in the background.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
yep plus i'd normally i don't have bluetooth and i forgot to turn it off today afer using my blutooth headphones, and still at 70% yeasterday it would have been dead by now and i didn't even use task killer to kill apps. maybe advanced task killer stops apps being killed by the android system.

mcgon1979 said:
So your saying advanced task killer is draining battery? Even when its not running ni the background. It can kill itself along with killing apps, so it shoul dnot constitute ANY drain on the battery when not running in the background.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I find this one a strange (what seems to be) fallacy when coming to Android 2.x. When I got my Desire, the first thing I got was a task killer. Then, a widget to let me know hom much RAM I have left. When it got low, I used the TK to do it's job and free up some RAM.
But the permeating fallacy seems to be that a TK is needed. But it seems people are finding out, time and time again that it's not. And as people here are finding, it's detrimental. And after not using my TK for a while, I found out that though the RAM can get low, Android will do it's thing in the background and I never notice low RAM in my daily operation.
Some people on another forum put me onto some info sources that explained why TKs can make your battery life shorter. In short, they can kill tasks which have scripts that will respawn, thus causing higher CPU usage and draining battery a little bit quicker.
There were other reasons but I can't remember them right now. People should really let people know and educate them (including some popular websites like AndroidCentral.com that I like) that it's not necesary and actually a waste. (Though I use mine for doing things like file management, installing and uninstalling, but not task killing.)
I watched most of that video that was kindly posted. And if I get this correctly (please correct me if I haven't), when I'm in wifi range, I'd be better off leaving that on to do data transfer as there is a negligable passive battery consumption over 3G and 2G, but a saving when transfering data which grows as the data transfer grows.
But then wifi should be turned off when leaving the wifi area, as like 3G, it drains the battery to have it searching.
Since I'll be in a wifi zone for most of tomorrow, I'm curious if I can get through a full day with wifi left on...

what makes me wonder is if i go to the market, search for something then i go to browser for couple minutes and then go back to the home screen, will the market and browser use the 3g/h/g in the background?
sorry if the answer for this is in the video but do not have time to watch it right now.

It's been said many times that Task killers are not necessary on Android phones and that their use will almost always result in worse battery life and reduced performance.
I used to have two HTC Heros and proved pretty conclusively that the above was true by running a task killer on one but having the same apps. on both. I even reversed things in case the battery was better on one of the devices.
You will never convince some people though. It they want worse battery life and performance surely that is their choice.
I know I will never again put a task killer on an Android device.

Desire battery observations

I know you guys might be tired of these threads but I thought I might as well post this.
My desire is fairly new(Less than a week) and so far its been good apart from(What I though) battery life. i've been trying to improve it and I think I might have "some" progress.
Currently I'm running DeFrost 4.9 with HAVS @ 1137(4.9a) kernel with the very latest radio, I also use only 2G networks(No 3G here). I got two Gmail accounts but only one has sync(The other one is merely for Google checkout CC purchases), I got one Facebook account set to sync every hour as well as LP Facebook widget also set to sync every hour. I also got FancyWidget syncing weather every 3 hours. Apart from these I got Nimbuzz running 24/7 in background. The battery is calibrated and yesterday I did a complete discharge/recharge.
Now I plugged it off the charger 2 hours ago, it was at 100 according to spare parts. The brightness is at 2%. I did some lite browsing, browsed a bit with Tapatalk Pro and 40 minutes ago went to a market nearby. During my trip to market I had Google Navigation turned on navigating me(During both, the trip to the market and return). Now while making this post the battery is at 81%. Does it sound right?

Dragooon123 said:
I know you guys might be tired of these threads but I thought I might as well post this.
My desire is fairly new(Less than a week) and so far its been good apart from(What I though) battery life. i've been trying to improve it and I think I might have "some" progress.
Currently I'm running DeFrost 4.9 with HAVS @ 1137(4.9a) kernel with the very latest radio, I also use only 2G networks(No 3G here). I got two Gmail accounts but only one has sync(The other one is merely for Google checkout CC purchases), I got one Facebook account set to sync every hour as well as LP Facebook widget also set to sync every hour. I also got FancyWidget syncing weather every 3 hours. Apart from these I got Nimbuzz running 24/7 in background. The battery is calibrated and yesterday I did a complete discharge/recharge.
Now I plugged it off the charger 2 hours ago, it was at 100 according to spare parts. The brightness is at 2%. I did some lite browsing, browsed a bit with Tapatalk Pro and 40 minutes ago went to a market nearby. During my trip to market I had Google Navigation turned on navigating me(During both, the trip to the market and return). Now while making this post the battery is at 81%. Does it sound right?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
How much time the display was on? How much time was the GPS on?

Be careful, don't be happy before time. I did the recalibration too, and found that my phone would turn itself off at ~20% remaining battery.

venkig said:
How much time the display was on? How much time was the GPS on?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
During the navigation, about 5 minutes for display, 40 minutes GPS during which I went into a building for 10 minutes and it probably lost signal then.
Sent from my HTC Desire using Tapatalk

OK, this ain't good. I slept at around 2 AM with 29% battery life. In the morning(10:30 AM) it was dead(0% battery).

Dragooon123 said:
OK, this ain't good. I slept at around 2 AM with 29% battery life. In the morning(10:30 AM) it was dead(0% battery).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sound about right. 8.5 hours with your facebook and other syncs. I don't see any problems at all. Mine does this too.

Dragooon123 said:
OK, this ain't good. I slept at around 2 AM with 29% battery life. In the morning(10:30 AM) it was dead(0% battery).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
First, in the night put the phone in airplane mode (I dont think u need to check ur facebook )
Second, check if u have useless programs that are using cpu in background, if is this the case UNINSTALL that program and CONTACT the developer. We dont need to kill those kinds of app, we just have to UNINSTALL if an app doesn't work properly, untill the developer will fix it. If all people will do like me, the market will full of great apps

I don't think I have any useless stuff running in the background. All I got are 2 widgets(Facebook and Twitter) syncing every 1 hour and 3 hours respectively, one Fancy Widget fetching weather and Gmail push for one account. Is their a way I can check all the services running in the BG?
EDIT : Forgot to mention Nimbuzz running 24/7.

ljesh said:
Be careful, don't be happy before time. I did the recalibration too, and found that my phone would turn itself off at ~20% remaining battery.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Agree... before I used to see 1% but after "calibration" now it shuts down itself at 8~9%
Sent from my HTC Desire using XDA App

Dragooon123 said:
OK, this ain't good. I slept at around 2 AM with 29% battery life. In the morning(10:30 AM) it was dead(0% battery).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I won't rehash all of what has been heavily discussed by now in much greater depth, like in the FroYo Battery Usage thread. But auto sync with such social applications and you set yourself up for low battery runtime to begin with. Especially with a constant polling IM and/or battery widget running too. Don't expect much.
Anyway, I don't use them but weather, stocks, 5 mail accounts and news is set to auto-sync every 15 minutes and WiFi is always running if available. Last discharge as soon as I connected charger ended at:
http://bit.ly/c6R59G
http://bit.ly/bmM9oN
http://bit.ly/cMlnun
http://bit.ly/akPvr7
I slept twice for 7-8 hours each on that charge and it includes all of my daily usage including listening to 127 minutes of MP3 via headphones with the screen off.
[images appear greeny due to a screenshot application bug when manual colour calibration is done]
-----------------------------------
- HTC Desire via XDA App -

Hmm Wi-Fi + Nimbuzz really screws up the battery . Last night I turned off the Wi-Fi and slept for 8 hours. I had 46% battery before and in the morning I had 40%. I also have disabled Auto-sync for Twitter/Facebook widget and Facebook app. Now the only running services I got are Gmail push, FancyWidget weather and Nimbuzz.
th3 said:
I won't rehash all of what has been heavily discussed by now in much greater depth, like in the FroYo Battery Usage thread. But auto sync with such social applications and you set yourself up for low battery runtime to begin with. Especially with a constant polling IM and/or battery widget running too. Don't expect much.
Anyway, I don't use them but weather, stocks, 5 mail accounts and news is set to auto-sync every 15 minutes and WiFi is always running if available. Last discharge as soon as I connected charger ended at:
http://bit.ly/c6R59G
http://bit.ly/bmM9oN
http://bit.ly/cMlnun
http://bit.ly/akPvr7
I slept twice for 7-8 hours each on that charge and it includes all of my daily usage including listening to 127 minutes of MP3 via headphones with the screen off.
[images appear greeny due to a screenshot application bug when manual colour calibration is done]
-----------------------------------
- HTC Desire via XDA App -
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
How did you manage to get such good battery life? Your phone lasted for over a 32 hours period which included 6 hours of display. And that too with stocks and News syncing every 15 minutes. Does Nimbuzz really screw you that much?

th3 said:
I won't rehash all of what has been heavily discussed by now in much greater depth, like in the FroYo Battery Usage thread. But auto sync with such social applications and you set yourself up for low battery runtime to begin with. Especially with a constant polling IM and/or battery widget running too. Don't expect much.
Anyway, I don't use them but weather, stocks, 5 mail accounts and news is set to auto-sync every 15 minutes and WiFi is always running if available. Last discharge as soon as I connected charger ended at:
http://bit.ly/c6R59G
http://bit.ly/bmM9oN
http://bit.ly/cMlnun
http://bit.ly/akPvr7
I slept twice for 7-8 hours each on that charge and it includes all of my daily usage including listening to 127 minutes of MP3 via headphones with the screen off.
[images appear greeny due to a screenshot application bug when manual colour calibration is done]
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well now datz some good battery. Which ROM are you using? Which Radio are you using?
I don't have any account/social networking syncing. Don't use wifi more than 20 mins a day. Brightness 20%. NO GPS. No Bluetooth. No stupid application sucking battery's power. If my screen is off I lose about 3-4% for a period of 5 hours, so no app sucking the battery in the sleep mode.
If i use EDGE when the battery is Full for about an hour I get battery drain of 20%
Would love to know more details on which ROM, Radio and your settings.

OK. There's not much I can say except what other guys who know better than me said here http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=743172
It's all usage/config/settings dependent. There's no secret sauce. Some setups and usages last shorter than others, yet further, some drastically shorter.
Firstly, I don't change something working well nor move from a setup until I've worked with it the best I could. The ROM I use daily is HTC 2.2 with root. The radio is some old one that worked perfect for me: 32.43.00.32U_5.09.00.20. I can give you some details so you can characterize the battery performance on mine better.
- H.264 sub 2.5Mbps 800*480 video playback at 18% brightness lasts 5.5-6.5h with about 15% remaining. This has been repeated more than 50 times since March.
- My average runtime used to be 13-18h since March but I knew something was wrong and drawing more juice than necessary. I kept looking (mainly at the logs). It took me months to figure out it was a few things including my build.prop WiFi/cell settings, A2SD+, my GMail install, battery widgets, eBuddy, Titanium Backup, Chrome2Phone, Pure Calendar/Grid widgets and my 3G baseband reception. Some app versions were buggy and constantly polling and returning random errors in the background. I had to eliminate them one by one.
I rectified such problems entirely and removed all the unnecessary apps installed which I rarely used. I had to revert back to FroYos A2SD with the install location mod. That took me to todays battery runtime which I'm very happy with. Chrome2Phone for instance could stay installed and be disconnected when not in use to avoid the large background drain it caused.
- I run personalized colour calibration with lowered overall luminance but more red and green with less blue sub-pixel luminance. Very near D6500 whites. I also keep most apps and my homescreens dark when and where possible. I disable button LEDs through a widget when not required (much).
- 24-39h is the norm for me in typical usage. Among much else that always includes a few short calls, some YouTube, some StreetView, some TapeMachine (audio record), some Scan2PDF, some Aldiko, some Chrome2Phone and Fox2Phone, some Tapatalk browsing, some XDA app browsing, some Quick App Clean Cache, some SpringPad, some Adobe PDF, max 15mins of MP3 playback, heavy net and NewsRoom browsing, 150-250 emails and messages and constant sync with what I listed priorly. Always 2G though, and whenever I reach areas I know have bad or no reception (causing high drain) that I'll be staying at for more than 10mins, I disable cell (frequently). I've nurtured the habit of putting the phone in standby after every use too.
- 6-9.5h display on aggregate is the norm for me. I use lowest brightness possible or 18% typically. 50% in very bright, direct summer sunlight. Just now the battery ran out after 26 hours with 9.2h display on, 13.5h cell on and 22h WiFi on.
- I have apps I consider junk removed: Facebook, Footprints, etc. The lot. So no sync or auto running for them or their widgets in the background. I also removed the base GMail because logs showed me it carried on running sync all the time even when not set to. I forced the latest GMail APK in and it has no such problems. I removed all battery widgets installed except one since they drain heavily.
- Heavy usage like GPS, lengthy calls, video recording and playback cuts the runtime down drastically which should be conspicuous. I can drain the battery fully in 5h with everything max and running.
-----------------------------------
- HTC Desire via XDA App -

venkig said:
[...]
If my screen is off I lose about 3-4% for a period of 5 hours, so no app sucking the battery in the sleep mode.[...]
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
In contrast, I lose 1-2% over 8-10hours in standby, maximum, with WiFi on. Usually 1%.
-----------------------------------
- HTC Desire via XDA App -

Thats some damn battery life you have there. You are on a Sense ROM? Do you actually use Sense? If so you're either exaggerating or I'm a total fool(I'd prefer the latter).
I've been trying to fine tune the battery, currently I'm using DeFroST 4.9 with SVS 998Mhz @ 1275mv kernel with 17_2 radio. Re-calibrated the battery yesterday and compiled a custom wi-fi module containing fixes for sleep disconnection today morning.
I left it at night around 3 AM with 99% battery, turned off the Wi-Fi/EDGE but kept mobile on. In the morning(Around 9:30AM) I was at around 91%. Gave it a quick charge to 100 till around 11:15 AM. Disconnected it and from 11:20 to about 11:40/45 AM I had quite a heavy chat session over Nimbuzz with my friend. My battery went from 100 to 94% in that time. After that I pretty much left it, picked it up to check a mail once or twice and sent a few messages over Nimbuzz. It is 1:40AM now and I'm down to 89%. All of this was over Wi-Fi, GPS off, Bluetooth off, no tethering no nothing. I got no Facebook/Twitter auto-sync. Only FancyWidget(every 3 hours) and Gmail Push. Brightness is at 2%(Although even then it is a bit bright, maybe it is just me).
I am using Extended control widget to see the power percentage.

th3 said:
OK. There's not much I can say except what other guys who know better than me said here http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=743172
It's all usage/config/settings dependent. There's no secret sauce. Some setups and usages last shorter than others, yet further, some drastically shorter.
Firstly, I don't change something working well nor move from a setup until I've worked with it the best I could. The ROM I use daily is HTC 2.2 with root. The radio is some old one that worked perfect for me: 32.43.00.32U_5.09.00.20. I can give you some details so you can characterize the battery performance on mine better.
- H.264 sub 2.5Mbps 800*480 video playback at 18% brightness lasts 5.5-6.5h with about 15% remaining. This has been repeated more than 50 times since March.
- My average runtime used to be 13-18h since March but I knew something was wrong and drawing more juice than necessary. I kept looking (mainly at the logs). It took me months to figure out it was a few things including my build.prop WiFi/cell settings, A2SD+, my GMail install, battery widgets, eBuddy, Titanium Backup, Chrome2Phone, Pure Calendar/Grid widgets and my 3G baseband reception. Some app versions were buggy and constantly polling and returning random errors in the background. I had to eliminate them one by one.
I rectified such problems entirely and removed all the unnecessary apps installed which I rarely used. I had to revert back to FroYos A2SD with the install location mod. That took me to todays battery runtime which I'm very happy with. Chrome2Phone for instance could stay installed and be disconnected when not in use to avoid the large background drain it caused.
- I run personalized colour calibration with lowered overall luminance but more red and green with less blue sub-pixel luminance. Very near D6500 whites. I also keep most apps and my homescreens dark when and where possible. I disable button LEDs through a widget when not required (much).
- 24-39h is the norm for me in typical usage. Among much else that always includes a few short calls, some YouTube, some StreetView, some TapeMachine (audio record), some Scan2PDF, some Aldiko, some Chrome2Phone and Fox2Phone, some Tapatalk browsing, some XDA app browsing, some Quick App Clean Cache, some SpringPad, some Adobe PDF, max 15mins of MP3 playback, heavy net and NewsRoom browsing, 150-250 emails and messages and constant sync with what I listed priorly. Always 2G though, and whenever I reach areas I know have bad or no reception (causing high drain) that I'll be staying at for more than 10mins, I disable cell (frequently). I've nurtured the habit of putting the phone in standby after every use too.
- 6-9.5h display on aggregate is the norm for me. I use lowest brightness possible or 18% typically. 50% in very bright, direct summer sunlight. Just now the battery ran out after 26 hours with 9.2h display on, 13.5h cell on and 22h WiFi on.
- I have apps I consider junk removed: Facebook, Footprints, etc. The lot. So no sync or auto running for them or their widgets in the background. I also removed the base GMail because logs showed me it carried on running sync all the time even when not set to. I forced the latest GMail APK in and it has no such problems. I removed all battery widgets installed except one since they drain heavily.
- Heavy usage like GPS, lengthy calls, video recording and playback cuts the runtime down drastically which should be conspicuous. I can drain the battery fully in 5h with everything max and running.
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- HTC Desire via XDA App -
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Whoa ! Amazing post there. This should keep me occupied for quite some time to figure out what the heck is going on with my battery. The battery life what you are getting is really good and that is what everybody should get provided they figure out what the heck is sucking their battery that bad. Lotsa things and apps you have said drains the battery is on my phone and I haven't even started looking at logs in detail. Itz been only couple of weeks since I have this phone so I'll defn start looking into this issue.
Few questions
1. What issues did you have with your build.prop?
2. What battery widget are your currently using ?
3. You have mentioned A2SD+ also is a battery drain, was it a particular ROM's implementation of A2SD+ or older version of A2SD+ or A2SD+ in general causes battery drain ? Would be great if you could link us to the location mod

OK, It is 7:05 PM now and I am down to 70%. Nimbuzz was on all the time along with Wi-Fi(Although I don't know what happened but it switched to EDGE as if it lost Wi-Fi connectivity, Wi-Fi wasn't disabled, just disconnected). And I pretty much haven't touched it since 1:40 PM. Not as good as I hoped, but still kind of decent.
And my Wi-Fi strength isn't that great either, it is either 1 or 2 bar out of 4.

Well, I haven't done any such kernel modifications intentionally. Never had any need to either. 14.5h since last charge now, cell on 5h, WiFi on 12.5h, display on 2h and 76% remaining (actually, those stats were collected and written an hour back). The Desire display has been verified to consume at least 70% of the total device power when the screen is on. So you can't get more hours with display on if it didn't run as such.
It's HTCs ROM so of course it is using Sense. I can't do without most HTC added goods in Sense. Let alone the Mail, Bookmarks, Calendar, Stocks, Copy/Paste, Lookup, Clock, Gallery and Camera apps and widgets. The widgets I depend on work well only on the HTC ROMs I've tried. The missed Sense goodness combined with the bugs and problems I had on AOSP ROMs were extremely problematic so I moved back. Even my video recording and native playback is much better on this ROM.
To be frank, you've hardly had the phone so you'll learn much more yet. And it comes through search->reading->experimenting first. 1-2 weeks is too little for even figuring out most of the basics, unless you're moving from a similar phone and OS. For one, you'll need to actually read the linked thread to see what many observed and experienced. It took me and many others 6 months to learn things and get to this stage. Every other day I was testing and monitoring. But be aware that you can't, for instance, have the exact same setup and usage as me to have the same resultant battery life.
Had you read the linked thread you'd also be aware by now that bugs were filed for inaccurate % readings by Androids Battery Usage section. However, its time tracking was reliable in my testing.
- On your typical full discharge, how much time and % is listed under Display on?
- And for cell?
- Which A2SD are you using?
- Static wallpaper/color?
- Animation settings?
- Location on?
- Network location errors in logcat?
- Cell network chosen auto or manual?
- Did you mention all the widgets on all homescreens?
- OSMonitor/CurrentWidget values in idle screen on and idle screen off?
I use EC and SwitchPro widgets too but their battery widgets (like you mentioned) are known as ones with high consistent drain. The EC dev also corroborated this in its thread under the Themes section.
The 'idle' drops you get don't make sense to me unless there's fundamental hardware/software activity you haven't properly monitored and logged. Even kernel and I/O usage in the background. You'd be surprised at the difference one buggy underlying feature can make.
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- HTC Desire via XDA App -

If you're actually asking those questions, here goes. Note, I am at 66% and the time is 8:56PM. And after this I'm gonna nandroid this ROM and try SuperVillainHD just for the kicks. Also, can it be that since the phone is relatively new, the battery is not up to its full potential?
Q1, 2) Battery usage is :
Display: 35% (35m 37s)
Wi-Fi: 20% (9h 44m 22s)
Cell standby : 15% (9h 44m 22s)
Phone idle: 14% (9h 9m 42s)
Android system: 6% (CPU Total: 9m 35s, CPU Foreground: 27s, Data sent: 7.82KB, Date received: 11.38KB)
Nimbuzz: 4% (CPU Total: 6m 46s, CPU Foreground: 2m 54s, Data sent: 298KB, Data received: 851KB)
Android OS: 3% (4m 1s)
Voice calls: 2% (45s)
Q3) I'm using DeFroST ROM with A2SD+
Q4) Yes, I'm using a static wallpaper
Q5) Animations is set to : All animations
Q6) GPS is disabled, if that is what you mean.
Q7) How can I check this and what would it show?
Q8) Didn't touch this, so I'm presuming Auto.
Q9) I'm not sure, so here goes. I got a Twitter widget, Facebook widget, both are set for manual syncing. Got FancyWidget syncing every 3 hours and several harmless icons. I got 3 bars of Extended Control widget and a google search widget
Q10) I don't have those, are they available in market? Do they consume battery?

venkig said:
1. What issues did you have with your build.prop?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'll have to open the file for that to check exactly the changes I made. I didn't really follow anyone, just went off my own understanding and intuition. If I try to access the dir or open the file whilst the phone is not in Recovery, it'll force a reboot so I'll give more details later on this when I'm near a PC.
2. What battery widget are your currently using ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Just this: http://bit.ly/cNQUVd
3. You have mentioned A2SD+ also is a battery drain, was it a particular ROM's implementation of A2SD+ or older version of A2SD+ or A2SD+ in general causes battery drain ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
FroYos A2SD was nice but I needed much more space and was trying A2SD+ with various ROMs as well as manual use on HTC ROMs. Endless problems such as very remarked, consistent sluggishness in basic functioning, total boot and app load slowness, including high, persistent background CPU and IO loads and very poor SD card transfers over USB and WiFi made me sack it. I lost a class 4 16GB Kingston SD card with errors inside 2 months. I transfer 2-4GB in/out daily and many transfers started failing. Widgets bugged out frequently when you needed them most and had to be all re-setup. Video record and playback became dis-able. The phone became useless except as a toy. That's not what I bought it for but as a helpful companion. I eliminated everything in question. It was simply the SD card [over]use compared to internal memory. This: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=7025105
Would be great if you could link us to the location mod
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I simply typed the command through adb but:
http://www.androidpit.com/en/androi...deandroid.modil/Mod-Install-Location-For-Root
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=778738
Even though I used this, I still have select applications not on the SD card upon learning that they worked far more consistently and properly with lower power and CPU usage when using internal memory. Trial, observant monitoring, and error.
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- HTC Desire via XDA App -

[Q] Seidio 3000mAh Battery

I've had this battery for several months now and I'm just now starting to wonder why my battery life is so abysmal as compared to others with it. It'll probably last around 18-20 hours a day with about a half hour of music playing through Winamp, JuiceDefender, Lookout, and Tasker running constantly, an 100-800 core clock, and low brightness.
Somehow, I think I should be getting better battery life. It has been similar to this regardless of what ROM I use.
Do you all think it's the battery or just the phone?
Obviously, I'm unable to return it. I would just like to know what others think.

Kanojo said:
I've had this battery for several months now and I'm just now starting to wonder why my battery life is so abysmal as compared to others with it. It'll probably last around 18-20 hours a day with about a half hour of music playing through Winamp, JuiceDefender, Lookout, and Tasker running constantly, an 100-800 core clock, and low brightness.
Somehow, I think I should be getting better battery life. It has been similar to this regardless of what ROM I use.
Do you all think it's the battery or just the phone?
Obviously, I'm unable to return it. I would just like to know what others think.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
POSSIBLE ISSUES:
(Answering these yourself should help pin point the problem just by re-reading your own answers)
- How "old" is the battery?
- What are your min/max CPU frequencies?
- What services are running in the background?
- Did you have this problem on the stock battery?
- What app do you mainly use?
- Does that app drain battery?

Kanojo said:
It'll probably last around 18-20 hours a day with about a half hour of music playing through Winamp, JuiceDefender, Lookout, and Tasker running constantly, an 100-800 core clock, and low brightness.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
With optimal settings and unnecessary ram hogging apps removed, you should be able to get more hours than that on the original battery half the size.
JuiceDefender should be unnecessary and I found it to inhibit me more than it proved useful.
Lookout is neat, and I do like it, but as I don't see a huge need for it I don't have it installed.
My personal favorite task killer is Advanced Task Killer which I use to cleanup my phone before locking it, you know, close the various apps I just opened . However, I have disallowed it from auto-killing, as this has proved detrimental and in vain when services killed generally immediately restart themselves and consume less battery than the auto killing program attempting to kill them.
A good check on certain apps is to go to Manage Applications under Settings and check your running apps. About 1-2 minutes after a good task kill, check to see which apps have restarted. If any you recognize are running that you didn't start, you may consider removing them. Especially anything that tries to access location services.
Edit: Almost forgot, I don't use any widgets except for Task Killer and Power Control. All others drained more battery than I cared for, and this I tested extensively.