68 replies to this topic

[vii_voo]

LessThanSte, on Sep 11 2008, 20:59, said:

Having used my diamond now for about 3 weeks, it seems to have settled at around 3 days of battery life, though i usually charge it every other night.

I run wifi ALL the time (except when it sleeping, obviously) as its handy at home to check the latest scores or facebook or whatever (also handy when delivering at work to use someone elses internet (there is always 1 unencrypted network in every estate it seems)). The screen is on auto, though if anything its turned down a little. I make a resonable amount of calls (maybe 5 minutes a day) and send a decent amount of msgs.

So its not really that bad. I probably could get more but its better than the old phone i had that needed charging every night!

May I ask what was your old phone? I have mine (MDA Compact IV) for 2 weeks and never got close to 2 days battery life with moderate usage. Leaving bluetooth on drained it very quickly. Have since returned it. Apart from battery life an excellent phone, perfect size.

[LessThanSte]

vii_voo, on Sep 11 2008, 21:35, said:

May I ask what was your old phone? I have mine (MDA Compact IV) for 2 weeks and never got close to 2 days battery life with moderate usage. Leaving bluetooth on drained it very quickly. Have since returned it. Apart from battery life an excellent phone, perfect size.

Truth be told i havnt even turned bluetooth on yet, must try that. I got it on about 20th August or so. Il turn it on and let you know!

[LessThanSte]

LessThanSte, on Sep 11 2008, 21:42, said:

Truth be told i havnt even turned bluetooth on yet, must try that. I got it on about 20th August or so. Il turn it on and let you know!

Oh, and the old phone was my sisters old LG Chocolate (only used it since my Jam went south a few months back!) and boy is it a pain in the arse!!

[jimbouk]

five mins calls a day is not average usage. That is very low usage.

[LessThanSte]

jimbouk, on Sep 11 2008, 23:43, said:

five mins calls a day is not average usage. That is very low usage.

Its an average

Some days its considerably more.

Anyway, ive been watching videos on youtube most of the evening, done a fair bit of browsing, sent a few messages and recieved 2 calls. Since vii voo's post i turned bluetooth on aswell. When i turned it on i was on 40% battery, it hasnt yet dropped below 30% in 2 hours of, i guess, resonably heavy usage (internet n stuff!)

[Dr Who]

Anyone any comment on how the battery life is on the Compact IV? The bread knife makes 3-4 hours of calls a day and will check her email (and then forget to close the data connection). If it won't last from 7am until 10pm with that usage pattern, without me having to tweak the heck out of it or give her advanced instructions which she simply will not do (she gets a glazed look as soon as reach "You have to.........."). She loves her techno but it must simply work.

[vii_voo]

Dr Who, on Sep 12 2008, 09:31, said:

Anyone any comment on how the battery life is on the Compact IV? The bread knife makes 3-4 hours of calls a day and will check her email (and then forget to close the data connection). If it won't last from 7am until 10pm with that usage pattern, without me having to tweak the heck out of it or give her advanced instructions which she simply will not do (she gets a glazed look as soon as reach "You have to.........."). She loves her techno but it must simply work.

I returned my due to poor battery life, no other reason. Had to charge it every night with moderate usage. Have since spoke n to T-Mobile and they claim to have fixed heat problem which was affecting battery life. Tempted to get one again, but waiting to see how much Vario IV is on upgrade. But also heard battery life not so good on that either.

[Dr Who]

vii_voo, on Sep 12 2008, 22:58, said:

I returned my due to poor battery life, no other reason. Had to charge it every night with moderate usage. Have since spoke n to T-Mobile and they claim to have fixed heat problem which was affecting battery life. Tempted to get one again, but waiting to see how much Vario IV is on upgrade. But also heard battery life not so good on that either.

Thanks vi-voo. I was hoping the Vario IV would be the answer with its bigger battery, but from what you are saying perhaps not.

[julius3000]

I have a 300 min pro month plan, combined with 90 sms (I consume only 40-60 smses) and an unlimited data plan. I get 300 min of phone call, so in totall I'm calling 600 minutes pro month. Thats 20 min a day.

Further on, I use the GPS function a lot, with TomTom and or GPS tracking programs. Sometimes combined with music played on my headset. I play games and do use the internet frequently.

The mail client is setup to check my imap mail account every 30 minutes. It then checks 3-4 folders.

When it is in standby, it will only last for 1-1,5 days. The first day I had to charge it like 3 times! Now I'm used to it to charge it whenever possible. I also have an extra 900 mAh and an extra 1800 mAh accu's (both non HTC). When I can't charge it, I have to change accu's. I always have a spare one with me.

The accu lasts only 3,5 hours using GPS (TomTom 6/7 or tracking) and/or listening to music (128 kbit wma files played via de TF3D skin or the Windows Media Player.)

The phone is running on the original 1.93 NLD HTC rom now for one month. Before that it runned on the original 1.37 NLD and 1.35 NLD ROM's.

Is this batterylife normal or should I concern?

[SSR]

I think 3-4 hours while running TomTom sounds right.

[andybarker]

Neil5459, on Sep 11 2008, 06:20, said:

Activesync is designed to be 'always on' due to the connection model used in WM5 onwards.  There have been major discussions about how to stop it, but whatever you do, it will try and restart

It is a very small process though, and has marginal effect on battery life.

I've never had ActiveSync auto load all the time except with the Diamond (had two other HTC devices with WM5 and WM6).
I found there is a setting in the Advanced Config program (can be downloaded from various sites) under Data Connections called "GPRS auto attach".  If you disable that, it won't automatically try to start up with a data connection and ActiveSync.

[xanadu]

Bluetooth, GPS and Wi-Fi are the biggest drain on the battery. It's best to use external power when using these.

I get about 2 days from my Diamond battery with light use, and it's on for 24hrs/day.

Currently using Swift V7 ROM and Radio .05

[julius3000]

Light use? But I don't understand? You buy a fully optioned phone to just show it to everyone and not use it? I bought it to use it. I use TomTom, GPS tracking, internet, mail, photocamera, games, agenda, notes, music, radio, shared internet, etc etc. And of course making calls and sending sms-es.

I think it's a lot of money for a fully optioned phone you only use for a little bit of phoning and smsing...

[Confucious]

Biggest drain is 3G / HSDPA - lots of use will drain my athena battery in a couple of hours!

[Neil5459]

Confucious, on Sep 21 2008, 22:43, said:

Biggest drain is 3G / HSDPA - lots of use will drain my athena battery in a couple of hours!

They seem to have fixed that with the latest ROMs, or possibly with the increasing coverage of 3G/HSDPA.

I'm with Orange, and now find I can get an HSDPA up into the Essex/Cambridgeshire borders, from London, with a few notable blind spots. My Diamond with radio fro .05 onwards shows no difference in battery use between GSM and 3G.

Thinking about it, my Athena is also showing much less variability, so I presume it must be the better 3G coverage


@Julius: 4 hours of GPS usage without being connected to a power supply would be considered heavy usage. Even dedicated PND's would struggle to get more than 6-8 hours and they have much bigger batteries.  As most Say Nav usage is for turn by turn navigation, or vehicle tracking, the makers assume you would be using a car adapter to maintain power.

@Dr Who: Likewise- 3-4 hours of calls per day is very heavy usage, without the data elements. No compact phone could be expected to fulfill all the PDA functions and cope with that level of usage without running down quickly.

[captainsensible]

vii_voo, on Sep 12 2008, 22:58, said:

I returned my due to poor battery life, no other reason. Had to charge it every night with moderate usage. Have since spoke n to T-Mobile and they claim to have fixed heat problem which was affecting battery life. Tempted to get one again, but waiting to see how much Vario IV is on upgrade. But also heard battery life not so good on that either.

What T-Mobile 'claim' to have done and what they have actually done are two wildly different things...

The new Compact IV's still get very hot, like all the other ones do.

[xanadu]

julius3000, on Sep 21 2008, 22:40, said:

Light use? But I don't understand? You buy a fully optioned phone to just show it to everyone and not use it? I bought it to use it. I use TomTom, GPS tracking, internet, mail, photocamera, games, agenda, notes, music, radio, shared internet, etc etc. And of course making calls and sending sms-es.

I think it's a lot of money for a fully optioned phone you only use for a little bit of phoning and smsing...

If you want long battery life, then don't buy a Diamond. It's as simple as that.

I didn't buy a Diamond. It comes free with my job.  

[julius3000]

xanadu, on Sep 24 2008, 22:28, said:

If you want long battery life, then don't buy a Diamond. It's as simple as that.

I didn't buy a Diamond. It comes free with my job.  

Long story, but I got it for free

After I heard the iPhone 3G suffered with same problems I wasn't interested in that one anymore

[wildcardspv]

As well as the obvious stuff like closing unused apps and keeping wifi/BT etc off unless using them, try this too - it may sound daft/obvious, but doesn't seem to have been covered in previous posts, and helps for me and everyone else I know with a Diamond.

After locking the device and the screen dimming, the screen will not go completely dark if pressure is applied to it (test using your thumb), so before putting it into its case, wait for the screen to go completely dark as the case can (and 99% of the time does) supply sufficient pressure to the screen to keep the screen on, which uses considerably more power. I know we shouldn't have to do this, but it does help, and is'nt too much of a pain.

If you forget to do this, you may get lucky and find that the screen turns off in the case anyway (which is very, very rare) so in order to aid this try the following:
if you feel inside your case for where the 'ribbon' (which forms the base of the case) is attached, you should notice that at one side it sticks out a bit, but at the other side it is pretty much flush with the case - always make sure your screen is to the flush side, as the other 'sticky-out' side applies more pressure to the screen and is pretty much guaranteed to keep the screen on.

Doing this, I've gone from about 12 hours of life to more like between 24-36 hours, without changing my usage. Definitely worth it in my opinion.

I hope this helps you a bit more  

EDIT - Actually I should have said after locking the device, just press the power button to switch the screen of rather than waiting for it to happen 30/40 secs later - much more convenient!!

Edited by wildcardspv, 26 September 2008 - 08:04 PM.

[Metoo]

wildcardspv, on Sep 26 2008, 17:32, said:

EDIT - Actually I should have said after locking the device, just press the power button to switch the screen of rather than waiting for it to happen 30/40 secs later - much more convenient!!

I use S2U2 which locks automatically on power off or backlight timeout. I've got into the habit of pressing the power button as soon as I'm done using the phone. Auto lock, mimimum on time = maximum battery. Mind you, even with that, and 3G off, my compact IV still doesn't make it through the day. Reminds me of the form-over-function of early Samsungs. But at least they gave you two batteries and a spare charger...