Vario III Battery Life & Slowness problems

[Guest mcwarre]

What are others experiences of the battery life? I have just upgraded from a K-Jam and the Vario III seems to have very poor battery life. For example, the drive home from work (150 miles) normally leaves a fully charged K-Jam with about 65% battery left; on the Vario III it had 38% less (using external bluetooth GPS not in-built one. When it uses wifi I can virtually see the power level falling. I am aware of killing all apps etc and not a noobie so I would like to think that I know what I am doing. I am considering sending it back it is that poor.

It also seems very slow when opening apps (the app seems to open in the centre then maximises). I have over 100MB storage left and use SK Tools to kill things. When TomTom runs it lags behind position much more than on the K-Jam (no=w circa 100m). It is confusing me. Any ideas (apart from hard reset)?

[Guest nlhall]

What are others experiences of the battery life? I have just upgraded from a K-Jam and the Vario III seems to have very poor battery life. For example, the drive home from work (150 miles) normally leaves a fully charged K-Jam with about 65% battery left; on the Vario III it had 38% less (using external bluetooth GPS not in-built one. When it uses wifi I can virtually see the power level falling. I am aware of killing all apps etc and not a noobie so I would like to think that I know what I am doing. I am considering sending it back it is that poor.

It also seems very slow when opening apps (the app seems to open in the centre then maximises). I have over 100MB storage left and use SK Tools to kill things. When TomTom runs it lags behind position much more than on the K-Jam (no=w circa 100m). It is confusing me. Any ideas (apart from hard reset)?

The speed of mine seems fine, but the battery life is dreadful!, After a full nights charge, it barely makes it through till 9pm, with probs 10min max calls, 20 or so txt's, few hrs Internet and maybe 30min of GPS.

I've just got off the phone with CS about it, they say it could be a duff handset so my options are:

1. I am still in my 7day cool off so I can send my phone back and then get a new contract

2. In the first 28 days I can do a straight exchange of the phone like for like

I have gone for the first option as I was currently in a dispute with them over the web £5 off deal and I have been told that I will get at least the same deal I currently have, e.g. same handset price etc, but with the current web discount offer. and by the time I get the packaging to send the phone back it will be the end of next week (due to the postal strikes) and by then it should be on the website and who knows, after a few charging cycles the phone might sort its self out and I wont need to do any of this

Edited October 5, 2007 by nlhall

[Guest Phil Lee]

The speed of mine seems fine, but the battery life is dreadful!, After a full nights charge, it barely makes it through till 9pm, with probs 10min max calls, 20 or so txt's, few hrs Internet and maybe 30min of GPS.

That's your problem. 3.5G internet is particularly draining on a device. Are you actively surfing or just using it for push email?

[Guest nlhall]

That's your problem. 3.5G internet is particularly draining on a device. Are you actively surfing or just using it for push email?

I have it poll my gmail account once an hr and prob activaly surf for an hr or so in total through the day.

I have a pac-man game i found and i have notices if i play that for 5-10 mins the battery goes down by about 5%, which seems very wrong...

[Guest georgie.charles]

I've also upgraded from a K-JAM and I'd say early signs are that battery life is if anything a little better.

[Guest Nick Le Lievre]

I have it poll my gmail account once an hr and prob activaly surf for an hr or so in total through the day.

I have a pac-man game i found and i have notices if i play that for 5-10 mins the battery goes down by about 5%, which seems very wrong...

I find the battery life to be OK. I get about 4.5 - 5.5 days out of every charge. I leave the phone on standby and recieve maybe 1 call per week lasting a minute or two. I rarely send/recieve texts. I use the Internet via GPRS for 15 minutes 3 times a week (this brings the battery down about 1% every 2 minutes) and make <1min GPRS connections to check my email maybe 4-5 times a day.

With the usage you describe I think the battery is working OK... using the Internet for 1 hour would drain it 40% and using the GPS for 30mins would drain it 20% thats 60% right there + another 7% standby time during the day and those 10min calls would use another 8% thats 75% so far... I could see how you could easily get to down 10% remaining with your usage... I think you expect too much from the battery.

Battery technology hasn't improved much over the years.

[Guest nlhall]

I find the battery life to be OK. I get about 4.5 - 5.5 days out of every charge. I leave the phone on standby and recieve maybe 1 call per week lasting a minute or two. I rarely send/recieve texts. I use the Internet via GPRS for 15 minutes 3 times a week (this brings the battery down about 1% every 2 minutes) and make <1min GPRS connections to check my email maybe 4-5 times a day.

With the usage you describe I think the battery is working OK... using the Internet for 1 hour would drain it 40% and using the GPS for 30mins would drain it 20% thats 60% right there + another 7% standby time during the day and those 10min calls would use another 8% thats 75% so far... I could see how you could easily get to down 10% remaining with your usage... I think you expect too much from the battery.

Battery technology hasn't improved much over the years.

Thanks for that, I know the Internet hammers the battery, but this morning by about 11am the battery was down to about 75% and I hadn't really used it at all up to that point. I dont use it much over the weekends, so I'll give it a good charge tonight and see how it gets on with "light" usage...

The thing is, my old Wizard could happily keep up with my needs for a few days, I know its not 3.5 or even 3G and i had a Bluetooth GPS, but I would like to think that the phone could get me from at least 8am till 11pm with out needing a charge. anyway, we'll see how it gets on at the weekend.

[Guest Nick Le Lievre]

Thanks for that, I know the Internet hammers the battery, but this morning by about 11am the battery was down to about 75% and I hadn't really used it at all up to that point.

With my phone on standby and no wifi/data connections enabled my phone will use up to 20% a day (thats with no talk time). From a 100% charge at 8am > 11am it should only have gone down about 2.5% assuming you didn't touch it. Maybe you have something running which is using the battery.

[Guest nlhall]

Maybe you have something running which is using the battery.

Thought of that one, so just done a hard reset... but i do always use that "Xbutton" to kill off running apps.

[Guest mcwarre]

@ georgie.charles

Really? My battery seems to be much, much worse than K-Jam and I am not hammering it with anything. Hard reset doesn't seem to help either. Probably gonna send it back as I can't/shouldn't have to live with this at this stage. I am unsure as to whether it is worth the money to replace my K-Jam but there seems little else out there on the market worthwhile... Decisions, decisions, got to make a decision by Monday or else I am outside of the 7 day return period.

Anyone know what T-Mobile will do on the cost front - I expect to be billed for data/calls made but a refund of everything else.

Cheers

[Guest varioIII-lover]

i cane the hell out of it, facebook, music, 3g hdps always on, push email, vibrate, ringtones etc .. and it does the job for me the whole day quite heavy use, a few calls too ..

does the job .. maybe a few charging cycles will sort it.

no probs here for battery life .. love the thing.

v3-lurve

[Guest varioIII-lover]

something i don't like ..

.. when you are charging .. you can't listen to music on the handsfree ..

any workaround, 3rd party solution?

xx v3L

[Guest the_ape]

Both of mine where initialy crappy battery, now both are fine, and with Push Mail and a few phone calls it will last 2 and a half days or so..... If I turn on 3G (I usualy set it to 2G, and escelate it to 3G when I need it) permanently it gets about a day and a half.... Oh I use the Satnav with TomTom (for speedcameras) on the way to and from work.... helps avoid traffic jams as well....

[Guest sc0user_75]

Vario III Lover I only realised last night when charging the phone that it was not possible to charge the phone AND listen to music as the headphone socket is the same as the charger socket.

This has to be bad thinking from HTC, right???

[Guest varioIII-lover]

yea scouser, me too .. that patently sucks dry ass.

very very bad thinking from htc. should have bundled a separate audio jack and usb for charging/sync ..

it's not a true multimedia device without an audio in/out .. look at pocket pc's ..

bad naughty HTC ..

let's hope they resolve it with a usb splitter to charge and give an audio jack at the same time ..

(bad HTC) ..

v3-L

[Guest mcwarre]

Look here for an adapter that allows you to charge and use 3.5mm headsets.

I will try and force it to use 2.5G only and see the difference in battery life. Anyone know of or able to write a little programe to allow you to toggle between 2.5G-3G-2.5G???

[Guest hicks]

I don't have any problems listening to music while charging the phone. Obviously you can't use wired headphones while charging it, it would need to be bluetooth headphones.

[Guest varioIII-lover]

never been lured into bluetooth headset/headphones ..

what's the signal like against your head?

is it the same as a mobile phone ie radiation?

x vr-L

[Guest varioIII-lover]

btw thanks for the nod on the multi socket, was just about to ask if there is nething like this out there and voila ..

respect,

vr-L

[Guest fusi]

something i don't like ..

.. when you are charging .. you can't listen to music on the handsfree ..

any workaround, 3rd party solution?

xx v3L

stereo bluetooth headset <3

[Guest mcwarre]

What is the quality like of the headsets? Does it eat the battery life?

[Guest the_ape]

Look here for an adapter that allows you to charge and use 3.5mm headsets.

I will try and force it to use 2.5G only and see the difference in battery life. Anyone know of or able to write a little programe to allow you to toggle between 2.5G-3G-2.5G???

Here ya go chap, replacement comm manager, has the 3G icon in there, to switch 3G on, just launch comm manager as you usually would (i've set mine to push and hold, that's usualy reserved for Record).... and click it on or off..

Failing that you can use CommManager Pro.

Kaiser.CommManager.10Button.3GCAB.cab

[Guest DJ_Enigma]

My Vario III currently seems slower than my XDA Mini S.

I don't know why.

What can I do to sort it?

The only time it is much quicker is booting up.

I hope it's not damaged cause when I got it the box was trashed.

Cheers,

DJ

[Guest lozzd]

DJ, compared to my Mini S this thing is like light speed. It would be a shame if you got a duff one because it sucks sending stuff back. Do a hard reset and try again, if it's still slow I'd get it looked in to.

[Guest predo1]

I've noticed that reducing screen backlight to lets say 60% rather than 100% significantly decreases power consumption.

From what I can see in battery status (power consumption indicator) even by 1/3.

I'm still testing how this relates to longer battery life in practice but it seems to improve things a bit.

In standby my vario (260mhz) sits at 90-100 mA while on full backlight vario III was ~150 mA and on 60% it is ~100-110 mA which is significantly less dont you think?