HTC Desire HD and Battery Life

Thomasofmel

I have had the HDH for a week now - it seems that the battery is draining quite fast, i.e. I took the phone off charge this morning at 6am - and now at 10.30am I have app 50% battery life left - 44% has been used by Android OS. I have made phone calls and used some apps

Atomic Pineapple

Wi-Fi left on? Screen left unnecessarily bright? Background data left on? Using a Task Killer or some other long running background service that you haven't turned off? GPS or bluetooth left turned on?

Thomasofmel

Brightness at 10%, but had WiFi and bluetooth on - switched off now. Still amazing how fast it drains. And I am using Task Killer all the time...

Atomic Pineapple

Thomasofmel wrote: »

Brightness at 10%, but had WiFi and bluetooth on - switched off now. Still amazing how fast it drains. And I am using Task Killer all the time...

Task killer is doing nothing on 2.2 Froyo only draining your battery, Wi-Fi and bluetooth being on would also be a huge drain.

mickoneill30

Maybe some task is running and using data?

Last week I had a HD in a drawer. I wasn't ready to switch over from my old phone so I left it there for a few days.
I took it off charge on Tuesday at 9AM. I was messing around with it on Tuesday and left WiFi on that night. I turned WiFi off on Wednesday morning. The battery was at 26% on Friday morning.

There was a SIM in it so it was connected to Vodafone at all times.
Most of the time WiFi was off.
Bluetooth / GPS / Mobile data was off all the time.

Anyway the point is that when the phone is doing nothing the standby time is pretty good.
Once I started using it I'm getting about at least a day.

Edit: I know people don't like Task Killers so don't want to get into a debate. I've no understanding of how an app can be running for a few days and not use any battery.

I've just checked my running Task List and there are a pile of apps running that I haven't used in days. I'd guess that if I set a Task Killer to check every couple of hours or once a day for some of those tasks it'd save more battery than it'd use. Or if you're more disciplined (and nobody is) you can go through the running task list every so often to close them manually.

Thomasofmel

Need to charge the phone almost twice a day as I need email etc to be on (exchange email) - this will probably drain the battery as well. Its a great phone and I really love it - battery life is crap though.

MGMTea

Give it a few more days, Took a while for my desire but I have email, weather, wfi etc constantly on in the background and the battery is fantastic

DaSchmo

Thomasofmel wrote: »

I have had the HDH for a week now - it seems that the battery is draining quite fast, i.e. I took the phone off charge this morning at 6am - and now at 10.30am I have app 50% battery life left - 44% has been used by Android OS. I have made phone calls and used some apps

Do you notice any lag OP? The fact that Android OS seems to be the main culprit looks a bit suspect to me - it would almost always be the display that should be draining most of the battery on this phone unless it has been left on standby the whole time.

The battery on my DHD was shocking initially, some of this is to be expected with a new smartphone as it takes up to 2 weeks for the battery to realise its full potential.

The main source, however, of the battery drain was a rougue Android process which kept running in the background. This is a known issue with 2.2/DHD and can be fixed very simply

Menu/settings/applications/development/now turn on Usb debugging

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=826507

bogman

Thomasofmel wrote: »

Brightness at 10%, but had WiFi and bluetooth on - switched off now. Still amazing how fast it drains. And I am using Task Killer all the time...

Like DaSchmo said turn on Usb debugging and remove Task killer, ive had the battery lasting over 3 days, ran Trapster yesterday for about 90mins with the gps switched on

21 hrs since charged last and 22% battery left

Display 35%
Trapster 29%
Voice Calls 18%
Cell Standby 8%
Phone Idle 6%
Wi-Fi 2%
Android System 2%

BeeDI

DaSchmo wrote: »

Do you notice any lag OP? The fact that Android OS seems to be the main culprit looks a bit suspect to me - it would almost always be the display that should be draining most of the battery on this phone unless it has been left on standby the whole time.

The battery on my DHD was shocking initially, some of this is to be expected with a new smartphone as it takes up to 2 weeks for the battery to realise its full potential.

The main source, however, of the battery drain was a rougue Android process which kept running in the background. This is a known issue with 2.2/DHD and can be fixed very simply

Menu/settings/applications/development/now turn on Usb debugging

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=826507

I'm a light user by any means, but I really struggle to get a full day from my battery. I have it 6 months now, so new battery is not the issue.

Biggest drain on my battery is
Cell standby 40% ish
Phone idle 40% ish
Android system 15% ish
Balance is display, dialer, etc,.

Any tips how to tackle the cell standby and phone idle modes, to minimise the drain?

B

Star Lord

BeeDI wrote: »

I'm a light user by any means, but I really struggle to get a full day from my battery. I have it 6 months now, so new battery is not the issue.

Biggest drain on my battery is
Cell standby 40% ish
Phone idle 40% ish
Android system 15% ish
Balance is display, dialer, etc,.

Any tips how to tackle the cell standby and phone idle modes, to minimise the drain?

B

The Desire HD isn't out 6 months yet. This thread is about the Desire HD battery life, not the Desire.

Thomasofmel

bogman wrote: »

Like DaSchmo said turn on Usb debugging and remove Task killer, ive had the battery lasting over 3 days, ran Trapster yesterday for about 90mins with the gps switched on

21 hrs since charged last and 22% battery left

Display 35%
Trapster 29%
Voice Calls 18%
Cell Standby 8%
Phone Idle 6%
Wi-Fi 2%
Android System 2%

10% Battery after 8 hours since last charge:
Android OS 52%
Display 20%
Calls 10%
Foursquare 7%
Cell standby 4%
Phone idle 3%
Android system 2%
Calendar 2%

Thomasofmel

DaSchmo wrote: »

Do you notice any lag OP?

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=826507

Yes, sometimes have to wait 5-10 secs that some applications respond.

DaSchmo

Thomasofmel wrote: »

Yes, sometimes have to wait 5-10 secs that some applications respond.

I'd be very surprised if it isnt that rogue process issue so - that is the known issue that causes both the lag and battery life issues. Re-booting the phone (by taking the battery out) usually temporarily fixes it but as above, do this and the problem will go away and your battery life should be normal.

Menu/settings/applications/development/now turn on Usb debugging

Provided you are using the phone normally (i.e not 5hrs of Angry Birds per day etc) it should last the whole day if you have been charging it for a week.

Thomasofmel

I turned ON USB debugging and the phone is on charging at the moment, so I'll let you know later in the week if the battery gets any better.

And the Angry Bird is a very tempting option, and I might have played it yesterday for 30 minutes

Thomasofmel

DaSchmo wrote: »

I'd be very surprised if it isnt that rogue process issue so - that is the known issue that causes both the lag and battery life issues. Re-booting the phone (by taking the battery out) usually temporarily fixes it but as above, do this and the problem will go away and your battery life should be normal.

Menu/settings/applications/development/now turn on Usb debugging

Provided you are using the phone normally (i.e not 5hrs of Angry Birds per day etc) it should last the whole day if you have been charging it for a week.

Phone charged - USB debugging turned on - and the Android OS has disappeared and battery is not draining as fast anymore. Seems to have fixed the problem. The following days will hopefully prove this. Thanks again DaSchmo

Thomasofmel

Since the phone was charged - 4.5 hours ago - I have been on several apps, games, internet, you name it and still have 85% battery left. Amazing, and the speed of phone is amazing - like a different phone. Great tip. Cheers

bogman

Good stuff Thomas, the HD is a great phone, just needs a bit of tweaking, keep an eye on ur SMS messages, mine got deleted for no apparent reason a week ago

Fisher Calhoun

Thomasofmel wrote: »

Since the phone was charged - 4.5 hours ago - I have been on several apps, games, internet, you name it and still have 85% battery left. Amazing, and the speed of phone is amazing - like a different phone. Great tip. Cheers

I had this problem too after my first full charge. The phone was ridiculously slow and had the same symptoms as yours. Thankfully, I had been following threads here and knew in advance about USB debugging. Turned it on and it sorted it all out.

I'm finding that the screen is the biggest battery drainer on my HD. Typically about ~60-65% of the usage is the screen. I've had it about a week now and have been breaking in the battery (full charge, full discharge). Last full charge was Saturday night and I got both Sunday and Monday out of it. That said, I had the screen on the lowest brightness setting, however, I did use some apps, send texts, check facebook/twitter and a few websites and make the odd call.

Nothing too intensive, though, that would require continuous screen over a long period (like Sat Nav) and I've been careful about turning GPS/WiFi/3G on and off as needed. Still, happy enough, though.

Edit: I also had it on Airplane mode last night so I could save battery and have my alarms go. I've setup one of my Home screens with all those toggles etc!

ixoy

My battery seemed to drop around 10% in a 90-minute window today. I've got WiFi turned off, 3G off, GPS off, brightness down to 0%, display timeout after 15 seconds... There's no lag so it doesn't look like the inet issue above.

I've had the phone nearly two weeks now and, after an initial charge, it lasted nearly 3 days on idle. Today's the first day I've noticed severe degredation in the battery life. Any ideas?

Fisher Calhoun

ixoy wrote: »

My battery seemed to drop around 10% in a 90-minute window today. I've got WiFi turned off, 3G off, GPS off, brightness down to 0%, display timeout after 15 seconds... There's no lag so it doesn't look like the inet issue above.

I've had the phone nearly two weeks now and, after an initial charge, it lasted nearly 3 days on idle. Today's the first day I've noticed severe degredation in the battery life. Any ideas?

Try downloading Watchtower and seeing what processes are eating up your CPU cycles? You can also see the Battery usage stats from the Settings > About Phone > Battery > Battery use.

ixoy

Fisher Calhoun wrote: »

Try downloading Watchtower and seeing what processes are eating up your CPU cycles? You can also see the Battery usage stats from the Settings > About Phone > Battery > Battery use.

Yeah, I've been checking the battery usage and it's primarily been on Display (65%).
I've been using MiniInfo to track the battery power and I've seen the CPU appears to hover around 20% when nearly everything is at a minimum. I wouldn't have thought that excessively high.

With everything now at its lowest, it's dropped from about 31% to 27% in 3 hours. Not sure how good or bad that is - would have thought it should be doing better.

I'll see if WatchTower makes a difference.