Am i right in thinking the main culprit for wasting battery is 3G? when i use WIFI and am at home, the phones goes easy 2 days and im watching youtube, playing angry bird, chatting on gtalk.
with 3G, lucky to get a full day, normally dies towards the end,
so how come 3G kills the battery so hard is there a remedy to it lol
thanks
3g could be trouble when you have weak or unstable signal. In normal cases wifi uses more juice.
for me, 3g doubles the consumption compared to wifi. (t-mobile uk)
Similar issues here on 3 in the UK using official HTC unbranded ROM with radio 32.44.00.32U_5.09.05.30_2. I can get well over a day with as much use as I wanton WiFi but if I switch it off and move to 3G (HSDPA) I completely flatten a battery in anywhere from 3 to 8 hours, sometimes with minimal actual usage!
Sent from my HTC Desire using XDA App
yh on t-mob too, it could be the signal as iv read weak signals can drain battery, its strange, normally its wifi that drains the battery, but i have it on all day , dont have any inactivity settings on, its full blast all day and the battery stays 70-80% by round 1am when i sleep,
3g, it will be around 20% at that time, it is a strange one
While idle 3G uses more power than WiFi.
While active WiFi uses more power than 3G.
While that may like it seem like WiFi can use more when actively using it. It also finishes quicker and goes back to idling. Which uses less power in the end.
Both use more if the reception/signal is weak, as it's constantly trying to (re)connect.
I have been using Htc Desire + Motorola Milestone + samsung galaxy s these few days. It seems that my Desire, although lowest usage used up battery faster than milestone and galaxy, even in sleep mode! ( As for background syncing, milestone and galaxy used instant while desire is set to sync every 4hrs)
Is there anyway to at least increase the battery life?
In the first tow weeks the battery will not preform optimal, it needs a couple of charges before it operates as it should. Also if it seems that the battery drains to fast even in sleep mode, install current widget, set it to refresh every 5 minutes and to write a log. Normally the phone should use 5 to 10 mA on average during normal 3g standby (everything that allows push is set to push) and not more than 1 mA in flight mode. If your consumption is substantially higher than this you have either some very bad sync settings or there is a app running/syncing in the background when it should not be doing that. To check this dial *#*#4636#*#* and go to the battery usage and check the partial wake time.
Also are you using a task killer or does your Desire have worse mobile connection that the other phones (different network)?
To answer your question, yes there is something you can do to increase the battery life. There are different apps that help safe battery life, you can underclock and/or undervolt the cpu, swiching form 3g to 2g when no heavy internet is required, using as much a possible dark colors (only for amoled i believe) or lowering the background light.
But all this won't matter much if there is a background process which prevents the phone from sleeping.
TheGhost1233 said:
In the first tow weeks the battery will not preform optimal, it needs a couple of charges before it operates as it should. Also if it seems that the battery drains to fast even in sleep mode, install current widget, set it to refresh every 5 minutes and to write a log. Normally the phone should use 5 to 10 mA on average during normal 3g standby (everything that allows push is set to push) and not more than 1 mA in flight mode. If your consumption is substantially higher than this you have either some very bad sync settings or there is a app running/syncing in the background when it should not be doing that. To check this dial *#*#4636#*#* and go to the battery usage and check the partial wake time.
Also are you using a task killer or does your Desire have worse mobile connection that the other phones (different network)?
To answer your question, yes there is something you can do to increase the battery life. There are different apps that help safe battery life, you can underclock and/or undervolt the cpu, swiching form 3g to 2g when no heavy internet is required, using as much a possible dark colors (only for amoled i believe) or lowering the background light.
But all this won't matter much if there is a background process which prevents the phone from sleeping.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i have been using desire since june, its just that i use all 3 together recently and discover its's much battery draining. I seen the battery usage, and i saw radio cell is the highest standing at 80% while motorola milestone is around around 3%
magickiller9 said:
i have been using desire since june, its just that i use all 3 together recently and discover its's much battery draining. I seen the battery usage, and i saw radio cell is the highest standing at 80% while motorola milestone is around around 3%
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ofc it also depends on the roms you have on them and the radios, it'hard to tell...what have you got on your desire?
Thats not nice, my total cell standby and phone idle times total about 80% of the battery usage and i get 2 days out of one charge and if i don't play with it a lot and only use it as a phone( ) i got 3 days for one charge.
Oh one more thing, I got an S-LCD unit with a snow wallpaper.
vnvman said:
Ofc it also depends on the roms you have on them and the radios, it'hard to tell...what have you got on your desire?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I using the office Rom given by HTC
Sent from my HTC Desire using XDA App
Friend has a new Desire Z (bell, unlocked). Using it on AT&T network.
When at a house, and we use WiFI (30Mbps DL, 25Mbps UL), the speeds are VERY inconsistent. With my iPhone 4 using speedtest.net, it shows up as 20/15 each time. (WiFi is a little slower than the modem).
With the Desire Z, we get 15/10 (which is fine/acceptable). Then 3 minutes later we do it, we get 5/2. Without even moving the phone or touching the modem connection (not downloading anything on the computer), the connection just gets slower. Then it might be fast or slow, basically it's a toss-up.
The first time we noticed the issue is because when we are outside, we get HSPA speeds of 2.5/1.0, then randomly decreases to 0.1/0.05. HUGE difference. And VERY inconsistent. He is using a microSIM from iPhone 4, with an adapter, so we figured maybe the SIM card is getting loose at certain points? However, the WiFi is also inconsistent in addition to the HSPA, so it's probably not that.
What should I do? Is this the situation where I have to flash a new radio or something? (Please suggest others if I am wrong).
Thanks!
---
Also, his battery is kinda weak. The battery health is apparently clean/healthy. He came from an iPhone 4, where he would have 3G, WiFi, and GPS on at night but not actually using them. Wake up, and 3% battery loss, maybe 5. WITHOUT using them, just having them on.
Now, with the Desire Z, we have the WiFi + 3G on, but NOT the GPS. He is losing 20%-25% in 8 hours without even using the phone.
Information about battery shows a high Cell standby (25%) and Phone idle (25%) percentage. When going into Spare Parts > Partial Wake usage, we didn't find anything really fishy. BUT we had rebooted so perhaps some info may have been lossed. Should he just go to sleep tonight and report the Partial Wake Usage statistics again?
We have a feeling it may be some apps refreshing at night.. But he clears all the apps with Advanced Task Manager except for like Facebook (2 hour interval refresh), GMail, and Google Voice.
I highly doubt a 20% battery decrease overnight is normal.. My mom's Atrix only loses about 5% overnight, with the same parameters I gave before.
I thought it may be a bad battery, BUT the phone idle + cell standby are abnormally high.
Thanks!
Does anyone have an answer? I was wondering this
I have been running CM 6 since November and just recently flashed CM 7. On both ROMs, Cell Standby and Phone Idle have been very high on my list of things that are 'draining' the battery.
For example, today Cell Standby shows as 37% and Phone Idle as 30% for me.
In fact, its very rare that these two things aren't at the top of the list of things that are using the battery for me.... I've seen cell standby as high as 47% before.
I can't speak for the drainage overnight. Definitely doesn't sound normal to me, but my phone is usually on the charger overnight (have enough trouble making it through the day with the stock battery).
Have you tried using Watchdog to monitor CPU usage of apps that run in the background? You could set the notification threshold very low and see what it spits out... Good luck!
gbarayah, thanks for the post, that was helpful.
If anyone can help with the inconsistent data speeds, that'd be very helpful.
And any additional info on the battery would be great too. I recently calibrated it, and will post any additional stats.
Damn it, I forgot to try Watchdog. However, I re-calibrated the battery, let it die, charged it up, let it die, charged it up. I followed the instructions to the letter and all that.
It was at 100% when I went to sleep. Woke up 8 hours later, 74%.
Settings > Battery shows nothing high 40% for cell standby and phone idle. Everything else (Facebook, etc.) REALLY low.
Then I went to Spare Parts > Battery Usage, Partial wake usage, everything incredibly low as well..
I will try Watchdog, but could it just be a bad battery? Or maybe should I try a different ROM?
Thanks!
Not sure if 26% drain over 8 hours is normal or not... Maybe someone else can shed some light on that. My phone is usually on the charger overnight.
The only other thing I can think of that would drain the battery is if you have a bad/weak cell signal in your area. I've experienced that with some job sites where my cell signal is very bad and my battery suffers excessive drain from trying to get a better signal or connect to 3G coming from Edge.
On my week old desire Z running virtuous unity sense3.0 rom and streamlined kernal i very rarely see phone idle and radio burning battery lik you say. Radio occasionaly gets high but only wen in bad coverage areas other than thats its ok.
Battery is still rubbish though due to fact even on 2nd lowest brightness setting screen seems to burn 80%-90% battery
Just checked: phone idle:2%
Cell stanby:8%
Screen (lowest setting):70%
Not this isnt a great example as its taken over a short period of havy use but it still reflects the relative proportion of the battery draining elements in question.
Also a question, if you have a live wallpaper set where is its battery drain shown? Screen, or launcher?
Not sure what to say about the high variable speeds.
Sticking to just GSM(2G) rather than AUTO will in some cases increase the signal and battery life at the expense of slower connection speeds. As mentioned when the phone struggles to get signal the battery gets drained alot faster.
Lower the refresh intervals of all the apps to the maximum period of time or a reasonable amount like 12 hours for FB for Sense, HTC Sense and Weather and 4 hours or Never (to make it on-demand) for Facebook.
Setting the Wi-fi sleep policy to "Never when connected" may make it on-demand too - when an app needs to update Wi-fi gets turned on again
If they have "Use wireless networks" checked to allow the clock-weathers mini-widget to update then they should try removing said clock and re-adding it, but search for the city when doing so. It'll provide them with a general outlook for their entire city and not force it to download and update the information for wherever they are whilst out and about. E.g if you were in London and went from Westminster to Peckham, it may update as you pass through each borough.
Live wallpapers and masses of widgets that need to constantly update are nice and everything but they can also drain the battery.
Think of these suggestions as ways to cycle the battery as well as save it.
I can't think of anything else to add.
I'm using Cyanogenmod 7 and it's pretty damn good. What do you think is the best ROM with Gingerbread if it's more lightweight and easier on the battery? (I honestly don't think the ROM accounts for the 25% battery loss but we'll see)
MIUI or mexiDroid for me?
By the way, could it just be a bad battery? I was thinking about picking one of these up:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=940263
$8 and people said it's okay.. What do you think?
Thanks, and I JUST calibrated recently, so once again I will leave phone off overnight and report.
-----------------------
As for the network issues, I FIGURED IT OUT!!!
I believe it was the Speedtest app itself that was messed up. Like I said earlier, I don't have live wallpapers (just info) on, and also NO GPS unless using Navigation.
Well, Speedtest was connecting to WICHITA, KANSAS. I AM IN NEW JERSEY. WTH??!!
Anyway, so I'm going to keep GPS (satellites) on, it connects to NJ, and Voila, GREAT SPEEDS!
HSPA about 3.5/1.0 DL/UL
HOORAY! Network problem fixed!!!
Only issue is battery still D:
Honestly, I think it may be a bad battery. Partial wake usage doesn't show any app going nuts.. Every refresh interval is like 4 hours. And I use Advanced Task Killer to kill all apps before going to bed. I downloaded "Watchdog," let's see
gyromanx55 said:
Friend has a new Desire Z (bell, unlocked). Using it on AT&T network.
When at a house, and we use WiFI (30Mbps DL, 25Mbps UL), the speeds are VERY inconsistent. With my iPhone 4 using speedtest.net, it shows up as 20/15 each time. (WiFi is a little slower than the modem).
With the Desire Z, we get 15/10 (which is fine/acceptable). Then 3 minutes later we do it, we get 5/2. Without even moving the phone or touching the modem connection (not downloading anything on the computer), the connection just gets slower. Then it might be fast or slow, basically it's a toss-up.
The first time we noticed the issue is because when we are outside, we get HSPA speeds of 2.5/1.0, then randomly decreases to 0.1/0.05. HUGE difference. And VERY inconsistent. He is using a microSIM from iPhone 4, with an adapter, so we figured maybe the SIM card is getting loose at certain points? However, the WiFi is also inconsistent in addition to the HSPA, so it's probably not that.
What should I do? Is this the situation where I have to flash a new radio or something? (Please suggest others if I am wrong).
Thanks!
---
Also, his battery is kinda weak. The battery health is apparently clean/healthy. He came from an iPhone 4, where he would have 3G, WiFi, and GPS on at night but not actually using them. Wake up, and 3% battery loss, maybe 5. WITHOUT using them, just having them on.
Now, with the Desire Z, we have the WiFi + 3G on, but NOT the GPS. He is losing 20%-25% in 8 hours without even using the phone.
Information about battery shows a high Cell standby (25%) and Phone idle (25%) percentage. When going into Spare Parts > Partial Wake usage, we didn't find anything really fishy. BUT we had rebooted so perhaps some info may have been lossed. Should he just go to sleep tonight and report the Partial Wake Usage statistics again?
We have a feeling it may be some apps refreshing at night.. But he clears all the apps with Advanced Task Manager except for like Facebook (2 hour interval refresh), GMail, and Google Voice.
I highly doubt a 20% battery decrease overnight is normal.. My mom's Atrix only loses about 5% overnight, with the same parameters I gave before.
I thought it may be a bad battery, BUT the phone idle + cell standby are abnormally high.
Thanks!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
well... can't be that odd. Mine are
cell standby: 8%
Phone idle 6%
display 51% (highest)
dialer 11%
wifi 10%
....
about conn. speed. I haven't used speedtest yet but downloading speed on the phone is slower than on PC remarkably using the same internet connection
barclays said:
well... can't be that odd. Mine are
cell standby: 8%
Phone idle 6%
display 51% (highest)
dialer 11%
wifi 10%
....
about conn. speed. I haven't used speedtest yet but downloading speed on the phone is slower than on PC remarkably using the same internet connection
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
WiFi will always be slower than wired connection, probably about 50% if not more.
Also, what setting do you have your display on and how much would you say you use your phone/have the screen on and how often do you talk (hrs/day)
noneabove said:
WiFi will always be slower than wired connection, probably about 50% if not more.
Also, what setting do you have your display on and how much would you say you use your phone/have the screen on and how often do you talk (hrs/day)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have auto brightness but I stay in office and not turn it on much (have to work though ) so the display isn't on much (when i said HIGHEST, it means highest in the list )
I have to phone connected to wifi all day but rarely use it
Mainly use the phone to text and talk less and 1/hr/day
Just try left the phone unused (stand by - airplane mode) for one day, drop about 20% or so
Its seems like its getting a little better.. only lost 10% overnight. Guess its calibrating
Sent from my HTC Desire Z using XDA Premium App
Hey guys, recently my arc's batt is very quite fast. So i went and check out the battery use and i found out that cell standby used up about 20-30% of my batt. It happened out of a sudden as previously it only used up a few percent. May i know what is cell radio and how can i prevent it from using up my precious batt? Thanks a lot=)
The Cell Radio is what takes care of all the network communications as far as i know..
How to bring battery usage down i don't know though..
leolion38 said:
Hey guys, recently my arc's batt is very quite fast. So i went and check out the battery use and i found out that cell standby used up about 20-30% of my batt. It happened out of a sudden as previously it only used up a few percent. May i know what is cell radio and how can i prevent it from using up my precious batt? Thanks a lot=)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Do you have a bad network coverage in your area, or do you stay in rooms/buildings with low network coverage? If there's no network available, your phone will search for network continiously, draining the battery.
If so, put your phone in aircraft mode if you don't have network connection. I think you can still turn on WiFi after that if necessary.
I checked the battery usage graph. And my phone signal bar is green with occasional white. (hope u know what am i talking about) And when i click on the cell standby icon, it is stated that time withhout a signal is 0% Any idea what is happening?
I get AMAZING battery life when I'm on wifi but terrible battery when I'm not. I send/receive about 300 texts a day easily and so I have the screen on frequently. I also use web a lot. On wifi my battery will last about 20-24 hours probably. Currently I'm at 67% on 6 hours. Without wifi, I will get about 8-10 hours with the same kind of usage.
I just want to know why there is such a large discrepancy. Im in NYC so my signal is pretty strong.
I used to think it was the screen that used up so much of my battery life but now I'm thinking it's the radio.
I'm on Juggernaut. If anyone has a suggestion I'm all for it. Should I try a different kernel? If so, which one?
Sent from my SGH-T989 using XDA
Jugs with dark x kernel works very well with me i use faux clock to clock it at 1.7 and 384 gettin 16-17 hours of battery life with lots if texting and browsing hope it works
Sent from my SGH-T989 using xda premium
So when you use your phone, do you not expect the battery life to go down? It can't stay at 100% after everything your doing..
I recommend Juice Defender. It turns off data when your screen is off. Sounds like you're getting a lot of screen off drain.
cashyftw said:
So when you use your phone, do you not expect the battery life to go down? It can't stay at 100% after everything your doing..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I do expect it to go down. Hence I thought it was normal until I noticed a huge difference in battery between being on 4g v. wifi and getting double the battery life while doing the same things.
I'm just wondering why the 4g takes that much more than my wifi and if a kernel would be an issue
Sent from my SGH-T989 using XDA
disturkis4u said:
I do expect it to go down. Hence I thought it was normal until I noticed a huge difference in battery between being on 4g v. wifi and getting double the battery life while doing the same things.
I'm just wondering why the 4g takes that much more than my wifi and if a kernel would be an issue
Sent from my SGH-T989 using XDA
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The simplest explanation that I can come up with is twofold.
First 4G requires a MIMO type of connection, even on T-Mobile. So for the really high speed connection it actually uses more than 1 antenna and powering more than one antenna takes up more power.
The second part is that 4G connections are not as prevalent as 3G connections so your phone has to search for the closest 4G network more often to maintain the fastest connection and the network searching takes up even more data then than the MIMO style connection the phone uses for 4G.
The combination of these two will drain your battery much faster than a single antenna connection to your home wi-fi that does not have to pass as many syn/ack packets to maintain the connection as the 4G network and thus uses less energy.
(MIMO stands for multiple in, multiple out which means it uses more than one antenna for incoming and outgoing transmissions)
(Wirless-N is MIMO based as well but does need to use as many "discovery or syn/ack packets" to maintain the connection)
I second juice defender. You can configure it to turn off data while the screen is off which will not effect your ability to receive phone calls or text messages.
Sent from my SGH-T989 using XDA