Hi everyone,
just came across this interesting Wiki guide. It explains how to make a cell phone battery last longer between charges, and how to prolong the overall life of the battery. To many of you, it will already be common knowledge, but there are still alot of interesting pointers mentioned.
For example, it states that lithium-ion batteries should be charged for about 5-6 hours and we should ignore the phone telling you that the battery is full... it states that this is normal but is not accurate if the battery is not initialized. It goes on to say that we should NOT fully discharge a lithium-ion battery, because unlike Ni-Cd batteries, a lithium-ion batteries life is shortened every time you fully discharge them. Instead, charge them when the battery meter shows one bar left. Lithium-ion batteries, like most rechargeable batteries have a set amount of chargers in them.
Please share your findings, opinions, and any further tests you have carried out to improve battery performance for your Desire.
Thanks.
Battery Saving Tips:
There are loads of "tweaks" you can make to imporve battery life span:
1. Lower screen brightness. Go to Settings -> Sound & display -> Brightness. Slide the brightness switch to the left to lower it or check the "Automatic brightness" box to let the phone use its sensors to adjust the screen according to the ambient light. You can also find dedicated screen brightness widgets in Android Market.
2. Turn off 3G, WiFi, GPS, and Bluetooth when you don't need them. The easiest way to manage these wireless radios is to use the Settings widget preinstalled on your phone. Tap the + button on your home screen -> Widget -> Settings. Once your chosen widgets are on any of your home screens, a simple tap turns each one on/off. You can also use "Power Control" widget found in home screen -> Widget -> Power Control. There are other widgets that do this in Android Market (e.g. SwitchPro), but these are already preinstalled and they're a nice-looking set.
3. Disable WiFi and 3G network notifications. Go to Settings -> Wireless & networks -> Wi-Fi settings. Uncheck the Network notification box so your phone isn't constantly scanning and looking for open networks to tell you about. For 3G, go to Settings -> Wireless & networks -> Mobile Networks.
4. Disable "always on" mobile data. This is one of the biggest battery savers. Go to Settings -> Wireless & networks -> Mobile networks. Tap "Enable always-on mobile data" to uncheck the box. I haven't found a negative consequence of disabling this feature, as Gmail and other apps/functions still work perfectly.
5. Turn off background data. If you're not using Google services, go to Settings -> Accounts & sync and uncheck the Background data box so that applications cannot sync, send, and receive data whenever they want to.
6. Lower the screen timeout interval. The phone's screen can be set to automatically turn off when you don't interact with it for a predetermined amount of time: 15 seconds, 30 seconds, 1 minute, 2 minutes, 10 minutes, or never. Depending on what you're doing, a too-short interval can become annoying (especially if you didn't disable your lock screen), so choose wisely.
7. Manually turn off the screen when not in use. Since the screen timeout function ensures that the phone's screen will turn off (unless you have it set to "never turn off"), it can be tempting to put the phone down when you're done using it and just let the screen turn off by itself. Instead, give the power button at the top of the phone a quick push to turn it off manually.
8. Turn off auto-sync. Go to Settings -> Accounts & sync -> Auto-sync.
9. Change auto-sync frequency (Weather, News, Stocks, Twitter, etc). If you don't want to turn off auto-sync, you can adjust how frequently data is retrieved/updated. The settings vary depending on the app (and some don't offer the setting at all), but it's generally found in the same place: Settings -> Accounts & sync. Select an account from the list and then tap "Account settings" to change the sync frequency.
10. Disable wireless network location services when not needed. Go to Settings -> Location -> Use wireless networks. Note that this (or one of the other options) needs to be enabled if you want to see and/or use your location in apps like Maps.
11. Turn off window animations. To turn it off, go to Settings -> Sound & display -> Animation -> No animations.
12. Don't use a live wallpaper. Use a static wallpaper instead.
13. Use a dark wallpaper. Some say that dark wallpapers are more energy efficient than light wallpapers. Others say it doesn't make any difference. Either way, there's no harm in using a dark wallpaper so you may as well do it.
14. Change WiFi sleep policy. This may sound counter-intuitive, but leaving WiFi on when the phone isn't being used and the screen is off is actually better than letting it sleep. When WiFi sleeps, 3G wakes up to sync, get email, and retrieve other data. 3G will eat up more battery than WiFi, so go to Settings -> Wireless & networks -> Wi-Fi Settings. Press the Menu button and tap Advanced, then Wi-Fi sleep policy. Choose "Never" from the pop-up menu.
15. Monitor your running services (or consider using a task killer). Just because Android 2.1 is supposed to an intelligent operating system that will manage your running apps for you doesn't mean it will always do things the way you want them to be done.
You can take matters into your own hands by going to Settings -> Applications -> Running services, where you can view what your phone is doing and manually stop certain activities. You can also download a third-party task killer from Android Market and kill selected apps to free up some resources and potentially save some power. Task killers are a polarizing topic in the Android community, so tread lightly when looking for recommendations or asking for help with them.
16. Choose your home screen widgets carefully. Widgets that need access to the internet to update information (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, Engadget, Slacker Radio, Weather, Stocks, News, Mail) can suck up a lot of juice if not managed well, so choose them carefully and set their sync/update frequencies to a reasonable interval.
17. Disable notification lights. This may not be practical if you're someone who really needs/wants to know when something happens on your phone when you're not looking, but for everyone else, feel free to turn off those notifications. Go to Settings -> Sound & display -> Notification flash and uncheck all the boxes.
18. Turn off phone vibration. If the ringer is on, why do you need the phone to vibrate? You're already in a loud environment that drowns out the ring; answering the call won't quiet your surroundings so you can hear what the person at the end of the line is saying.
And if your phone is set to silent, then an incoming call should be silent. Yes, the buzzing vibration may not be disruptive as your ringtone, but people still hear it.
So go to Settings -> Sound & display -> Phone vibrate and turn it off.
19. Turn off audible touch tones. In Settings -> Sound & display, uncheck Audible selection and turn off Audible touch tones.
20. Turn off haptic feedback. Once you get the hang of typing on the phone's on-screen keyboard, you can turn off the haptic feedback that was turned on by default. Go to Settings -> Language & keyboard -> Touch Input -> Text input -> Vibrate when typing.
You can disable haptics in other areas of the system by going to Settings -> Sound & display -> Haptic feedback.
I just plug mine into the USB of my computer (which is on most of the time) when I'm at home. Apart from that I use my phone how I want to. If battery life becomes unbearable I'll get a spare battery.
Not too sure about the 5h charge. It doesn't make sense. First once the battery is full, its full. It depends on how this is measured, but usually when max voltage has been reached, the 100% is shown.
The charger of the Desire is 1A, while the battery is 1.4A. If its actually charging at 1A, a -completely- empty battery is fully charged after around 1.5 hours. Even if it were charging at a lousy 0.5A, battery should be fully charged after 3 hours.
So no idea where that figure comes from (perhaps very very low amp charging on other cellphones ).
And most important tips are indeed no full discharge, and (kinda hard to do) keeping the battery cool. Most important factors on battery life.
Removing Nimbuzz upped by Battery life by about 300%, not worrying about it any more now.
I read some article said the lithium-ion battery is based on the time of your recharging. That means the the total one full recharge is under counting. Say you used your battery from 100% to 50% and recharge it to 100% for the first day. two days later your battery goes to 50% again and you rechage it to 100% again. That is the total one full recharge. each lithium-ion battery can go over 2000 full recharging(I am not so sure it is the number). so it is nothing to do with the time you charging your battery.
badgerz said:
Removing Nimbuzz upped by Battery life by about 300%, not worrying about it any more now.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
what is nimbuz?
Raminder1992 said:
what is nimbuz?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Looking on the market, it is an IM/Skype combo thing... I reckon his battery life improved vastly as he set it to constantly stay signed in/syncing every 15 minutes which will completely kill any battery performance...
Can't make it through the day on a single charge, and to make matters worse, where my iPhone used to climb 50% in less than an hour, the desire charges at a glacial pace. Screw froyo, do something about the battery life, HTC.
Vlad_M said:
Can't make it through the day on a single charge, and to make matters worse, where my iPhone used to climb 50% in less than an hour, the desire charges at a glacial pace. Screw froyo, do something about the battery life, HTC.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
so you're using froyo and your desire can't make it through a day?
I think he means he thinks HTC should concentrate on sorting the battery life and not on pushing out Froyo.
But tbh with heavy use my Desire lasts around 24 hours to maybe 36 tops on a full charge and also charges quickly through mains (not throught usb on pc that's slow).
I think he has a bad battery or is using a crap rom. Or has brightness on full, wifi on all day and bluetooth too.
I think "heavy usage" is a relative term. My wife and I both have the same phone, and are experiencing the same problems, so I don't think it's a case of a bad battery. My brightness is on auto, yes, wifi is on all the time however isn't this the point - so that the phone can use wifi for data when in a know network?
The phone is not rooted, therefore using the stock ROM.
Vlad_M said:
I think "heavy usage" is a relative term. My wife and I both have the same phone, and are experiencing the same problems, so I don't think it's a case of a bad battery. My brightness is on auto, yes, wifi is on all the time however isn't this the point - so that the phone can use wifi for data when in a know network?
The phone is not rooted, therefore using the stock ROM.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
*#*#4636#*#* in Phone, goto Battery History, then select Partial Wake Usage in the top drop down box, if anything is going above a very tiny blue bar, check it out.
Android system has quite a significant blue bar representing it. Now what?
Vlad_M said:
Android system has quite a significant blue bar representing it. Now what?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There are loads of "tweaks" you can make to improve battery life of your handset... you can try the following and it should make a huge difference for you, and result in longer battery life span:
1. Lower screen brightness. Go to Settings -> Sound & display -> Brightness. Slide the brightness switch to the left to lower it or check the "Automatic brightness" box to let the phone use its sensors to adjust the screen according to the ambient light. You can also find dedicated screen brightness widgets in Android Market.
2. Turn off 3G, WiFi, GPS, and Bluetooth when you don't need them. The easiest way to manage these wireless radios is to use the Settings widget preinstalled on your phone. Tap the + button on your home screen -> Widget -> Settings. Once your chosen widgets are on any of your home screens, a simple tap turns each one on/off. You can also use "Power Control" widget found in home screen -> Widget -> Power Control. There are other widgets that do this in Android Market (e.g. SwitchPro), but these are already preinstalled and they're a nice-looking set.
3. Disable WiFi and 3G network notifications. Go to Settings -> Wireless & networks -> Wi-Fi settings. Uncheck the Network notification box so your phone isn't constantly scanning and looking for open networks to tell you about. For 3G, go to Settings -> Wireless & networks -> Mobile Networks.
4. Disable "always on" mobile data. This is one of the biggest battery savers. Go to Settings -> Wireless & networks -> Mobile networks. Tap "Enable always-on mobile data" to uncheck the box. I haven't found a negative consequence of disabling this feature, as Gmail and other apps/functions still work perfectly.
5. Turn off background data. If you're not using Google services, go to Settings -> Accounts & sync and uncheck the Background data box so that applications cannot sync, send, and receive data whenever they want to.
6. Lower the screen timeout interval. The phone's screen can be set to automatically turn off when you don't interact with it for a predetermined amount of time: 15 seconds, 30 seconds, 1 minute, 2 minutes, 10 minutes, or never. Depending on what you're doing, a too-short interval can become annoying (especially if you didn't disable your lock screen), so choose wisely.
7. Manually turn off the screen when not in use. Since the screen timeout function ensures that the phone's screen will turn off (unless you have it set to "never turn off"), it can be tempting to put the phone down when you're done using it and just let the screen turn off by itself. Instead, give the power button at the top of the phone a quick push to turn it off manually.
8. Turn off auto-sync. Go to Settings -> Accounts & sync -> Auto-sync.
9. Change auto-sync frequency (Weather, News, Stocks, Twitter, etc). If you don't want to turn off auto-sync, you can adjust how frequently data is retrieved/updated. The settings vary depending on the app (and some don't offer the setting at all), but it's generally found in the same place: Settings -> Accounts & sync. Select an account from the list and then tap "Account settings" to change the sync frequency.
10. Disable wireless network location services when not needed. Go to Settings -> Location -> Use wireless networks. Note that this (or one of the other options) needs to be enabled if you want to see and/or use your location in apps like Maps.
11. Turn off window animations. To turn it off, go to Settings -> Sound & display -> Animation -> No animations.
12. Don't use a live wallpaper. Use a static wallpaper instead.
13. Use a dark wallpaper. Some say that dark wallpapers are more energy efficient than light wallpapers. Others say it doesn't make any difference. Either way, there's no harm in using a dark wallpaper so you may as well do it.
14. Change WiFi sleep policy. This may sound counter-intuitive, but leaving WiFi on when the phone isn't being used and the screen is off is actually better than letting it sleep. When WiFi sleeps, 3G wakes up to sync, get email, and retrieve other data. 3G will eat up more battery than WiFi, so go to Settings -> Wireless & networks -> Wi-Fi Settings. Press the Menu button and tap Advanced, then Wi-Fi sleep policy. Choose "Never" from the pop-up menu.
15. Monitor your running services (or consider using a task killer). Just because Android 2.1 is supposed to an intelligent operating system that will manage your running apps for you doesn't mean it will always do things the way you want them to be done.
You can take matters into your own hands by going to Settings -> Applications -> Running services, where you can view what your phone is doing and manually stop certain activities. You can also download a third-party task killer from Android Market and kill selected apps to free up some resources and potentially save some power. Task killers are a polarizing topic in the Android community, so tread lightly when looking for recommendations or asking for help with them.
16. Choose your home screen widgets carefully. Widgets that need access to the internet to update information (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, Engadget, Slacker Radio, Weather, Stocks, News, Mail) can suck up a lot of juice if not managed well, so choose them carefully and set their sync/update frequencies to a reasonable interval.
17. Disable notification lights. This may not be practical if you're someone who really needs/wants to know when something happens on your phone when you're not looking, but for everyone else, feel free to turn off those notifications. Go to Settings -> Sound & display -> Notification flash and uncheck all the boxes.
18. Turn off phone vibration. If the ringer is on, why do you need the phone to vibrate? You're already in a loud environment that drowns out the ring; answering the call won't quiet your surroundings so you can hear what the person at the end of the line is saying.
And if your phone is set to silent, then an incoming call should be silent. Yes, the buzzing vibration may not be disruptive as your ringtone, but people still hear it.
So go to Settings -> Sound & display -> Phone vibrate and turn it off.
19. Turn off audible touch tones. In Settings -> Sound & display, uncheck Audible selection and turn off Audible touch tones.
20. Turn off haptic feedback. Once you get the hang of typing on the phone's on-screen keyboard, you can turn off the haptic feedback that was turned on by default. Go to Settings -> Language & keyboard -> Touch Input -> Text input -> Vibrate when typing.
You can disable haptics in other areas of the system by going to Settings -> Sound & display -> Haptic feedback.
Hi,
Had major battery problems before.
It seemed media was always running and draining battery.
This weekend i bought a new microsSD card an that somehow solved all my issues.
Migt be that something on my sd card was causing the power drain.
Try formating the sd card with pc and the insert it again in phone.
Peculiar. I have a perfectly standard Desire, nothing modified and get a day easily. I do have Juice Defender enabled (easy mode)
Sometimes I am just wondering ... We need to turn off so much in order to get decent battery life
I am watching the new iPhone 4 announcement ... it has much better hardware and very good battery life (10 hours video playing!).
MasDroid said:
4. Disable "always on" mobile data. This is one of the biggest battery savers. Go to Settings -> Wireless & networks -> Mobile networks. Tap "Enable always-on mobile data" to uncheck the box. I haven't found a negative consequence of disabling this feature, as Gmail and other apps/functions still work perfectly.
5. Turn off background data. If you're not using Google services, go to Settings -> Accounts & sync and uncheck the Background data box so that applications cannot sync, send, and receive data whenever they want to.
.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So with these two off, my Exchange and Gmail will still sync?
Vlad_M said:
So with these two off, my Exchange and Gmail will still sync?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, disabling the Background Data will affect the auto sync to Google.
I think Im seeing light at the end of the tunnel...
I hated the batterylife when I first got the Desire. I disabled everything, no live wallpapers, no automatic updates, only couple widgets etc. I barely managed one day.
NOW after several weeks of usage, guess what. I am using automatic brightness, live wallpapers (starfield), News widget and Friends stream updating every hour, GMAIL. I surf some, read emails, play game or two, bit of GPS and Copilot, calls and txts... and I get through about two days!
I think the battery gets better with time!
On the South African forums where we discussed the phone everyone complains that it starts off bad, but after about a week the battery life is much much better....I am but 5 days in, and it's better, but let's see how much it improves.
MasDroid said:
Yes, disabling the Background Data will affect the auto sync to Google.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Can you elaborate on that? What is auto sync to Google if not gmail?
Vlad_M said:
Can you elaborate on that? What is auto sync to Google if not gmail?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, if you have an unlimited data plan, then you might as well leave auto-sync and background data on.
Autosyncing allows for push e-mail with gmail.
If you try switching off auto-sync and background data, it means that you will not get the notifications in real-time from Facebook, for example, and on the drag down menu, and other similar things.
I have tried turning off background data, and not noticed any ill effects... I still get my push gmail etc....
EDIT: actually, turning off Background Data will stop push email happening as there's no data connection, or a periodic pull of email happening again, because of no background connection.
I guess it's a bit of a tradeoff really - connectivity vs battery life.
so far i have to say the battery is far worse than the HD2 with a good rom and radio but maybe its somthing to do with the fact this is new to me and i am playing more
The above statements read very contradictory.
Vlad_M said:
The above statements read very contradictory.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
over all with both phones running with same kind of stuff updating the HD2 useing xanny's evo rom 2.2 with radio 2.11 eats far less battery than the desire even though the HD2 has a 1240 mah battery and desire a 1400 mah but the my desire is new so i playing lots more but i am quite sure at the moment on even terms the HD2 set up i have will last far longer on one charge than my stock desire.
gogol said:
I am watching the new iPhone 4 announcement ... it has much better hardware and very good battery life (10 hours video playing!).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Apple says the iPhone 4 is rated at 7 hours of 3G talk.
HTC says the Desire is rated at 6.5 hours of 3G talk.
Not much of a difference in paper.
Still, let's see how thing will go in practical use.
In every day life, I know many people that charge their iPhone (3GS) 2 times every day. Now that sucks even more.
This is my only major niggle with this phone. I use it to track my cycling (speed & pace on screen) and it turns off halfway to work. This morning I used it in the car with Maps open and the traffic layer on (no need for Navigation, just wanted traffic info) and that again turned off after 10 minutes.
I know apps can set it so the screen stays on, but even Googles own Maps app doesn't do it.
Anyone else find this annoying?
Go to Settings, scroll to section 'SYSTEM'. Select 'Developer Options'. Tick 'Stay Awake' - screen should never turn off when charging. Probably won't help when you are cycling, but screen will stay on when on charge.
saquib said:
Go to Settings, scroll to section 'SYSTEM'. Select 'Developer Options'. Tick 'Stay Awake' - screen should never turn off when charging. Probably won't help when you are cycling, but screen will stay on when on charge.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
cheers, but when I need it on it's not charging (in car and on bike)
mmace said:
This is my only major niggle with this phone. I use it to track my cycling (speed & pace on screen) and it turns off halfway to work. This morning I used it in the car with Maps open and the traffic layer on (no need for Navigation, just wanted traffic info) and that again turned off after 10 minutes.
I know apps can set it so the screen stays on, but even Googles own Maps app doesn't do it.
Anyone else find this annoying?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You could try some of the apps in the Android market such as Screen Timeout Widget or AnyScreenTimeout.
Not sure if these are compatible with Ice Cream Sandwich, but they'd be worth a shot. There's others there as well you could try out.
Here's a fix... Use the "always on" toggle in the app Extended Controls. I have just tried this and it works for me
grizlore said:
Here's a fix... Use the "always on" toggle in the app Extended Controls. I have just tried this and it works for me
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This also works for me.
I would like to leave a coarse location-based app running in foreground. Is there a way to somehow disable the GPS from running? Having GPS on constantly would destroy the battery life. In the past (Oreo and before), I could solely use Wifi/Cell to provide coarse location in battery-saving mode, but this no longer seems possible in Android 9.0 Pie.
Anyone have a solution? I'd hate to have to switch back to Oreo.
Samsung Galaxy S9+ rooted with magisk. So if there's some module that can shut-off the GPS radio while leaving wifi/tower location enabled I would be interested.
Thanks!
fyi...
The old battery saving option seems to be there.
On the Pixel phones you can enable it via "developer options" -> "featured flag"
Samsung decided to ditch this feature flag, why i don't know.
But with tasker and my unrooted S9 i could enable the battery saving mode.
Although you can't verify i think it works.
As i use Life360 which triggers the GPS when opened and haven't seen the GPS icon since i toggled to battery saving mode.
So as lomg as it works i'm happy.
Task:
Location Mode - > Mode: battery Saving
V6-Maniac said:
fyi...
The old battery saving option seems to be there.
On the Pixel phones you can enable it via "developer options" -> "featured flag"
Samsung decided to ditch this feature flag, why i don't know.
But with tasker and my unrooted S9 i could enable the battery saving mode.
Although you can't verify i think it works.
As i use Life360 which triggers the GPS when opened and haven't seen the GPS icon since i toggled to battery saving mode.
So as lomg as it works i'm happy.
Task:
Location Mode - > Mode: battery Saving
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Can you please explane by steps, never used Tasker Im quiet lost I coudn't find the steps you mentionned, thx a lot !
It aint that hard.
At the moment no time to make a guide.
1. Install tasker app from playstore
2. Give Tasker as described in their thread via ADB write privilege.
3. Create a task on action "Location mode" and let it do battery saving.
V6-Maniac said:
It aint that hard.
At the moment no time to make a guide.
1. Install tasker app from playstore
2. Give Tasker as described in their thread via ADB write privilege.
3. Create a task on action "Location mode" and let it do battery saving.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you