Battery life?

[KA Kueh]

Dear all,

With a small 900mAh battery, What is the real world usage time? I mean making up to 2 hours of calls per day does it last at least 12hours before the need to recharge battery and this is assuming that 3G is on all the time. Thanks.

[franck2218]

French network technical support say 60 hours with GPS on !!!!

I think it's joke.

[moonlanding]

Well, I've been watching the battery life on mine for a couple of days now in a reasonably scientific way and here are the early rather speculative results:


With just GPRS and nothing else on and very light use the battery drops from 100% to 80% very fast - less than an hour of light use.

Leaving it running on these settings will run it down to about 20% by the end of the working day - the drain seems to ease off aftert he first sharp drop

Powering up wifi and music for short time doesn't seem to make much difference.

Turning 3G on also doesn't seem to make the difference you would expect either.


So basically I would feel the need to take a charger with me if I left the house for the day, which will probably mean that I have to send the thing back. I've seen the coolsmartphone video review and mine isn't performing anything like that one - I would say I am loosing charge at about twice the rate.

Now the only issues that could be at work here is that I live in a lousy reception area. But could this really make such a difference?

What I would find really useful is a list of other tweaks you can make to cut power use so I can try them out. But at the end of the day it's looking like too many compromises would be needed to make this thing practical for me.

[someone1234]

Reception would make a reasonable difference if normal network messages are being sent/received (general scans of BCCH channels, authentication with the network) - i.e. the radio isnt being used for data/voice, and only to keep registered to the network. But during those times the rest of the phone would also be in low power mode, so i would say an absolute max of 5 to 10%.

It would make a significant difference if you are transmiting data/making calls in a low reception area. I would say easily upto 20%.

It sounds to me like if you plan to use the phone much at all during the day you need a second battery. Then that turns into the hassle of how to charge the second battery every night, and i bet the desktop stand can't charge a second battery :(

[moonlanding]

My conclusions exactly. Impractical to say the least.

The puzzle then is why my last phone, a Nokia E51 with a 1050 mAh battery, under the same conditions, managed to last 2-3 days?

Is WM6 really that much of a power grabber compared to S60?

[someone1234]

My conclusions exactly. Impractical to say the least.

The puzzle then is why my last phone, a Nokia E51 with a 1050 mAh battery, under the same conditions, managed to last 2-3 days?

Is WM6 really that much of a power grabber compared to S60?

Short answer - yes.

There's all these power saving features in new app processors like being able to leave the screen on while powering down the main CPU. You can use an interupt from the radio to wake up the processor etc.

Windows doesnt support half of these features, thats why find windows phones save all their power by turning the screen off. Other phones with screens just as big are alot less regimental about turning the screen off at any opertunity.

I was involved in a project once to design a smartphone and it was a really surprising how much difference there was between the windows version they suplied and an ARM version of linux.

[John_A]

I have HTC Touch Crouse and i have problems with battery (GPRS always on and Bluetooth) ... now with Diamond i have VERY BIG Problem. Battery Keeps less than one day ...

[moonlanding]

The experiment continues.

Disabling "GPRS auto attach" in Advanced Configuration Tool has made a big difference - still 90% after 6 hours now.

Now this is a surprise to me because I thought that you did this when you set the network seek to GSM only and not hunt for 3G. Or maybe I'm getting my GPRSs and GSMs mixed up...

Next step - leave this setting in place and turn push back on. Watch this space.

[someone1234]

GSM digitises your voice and slots it into a time divided channel on a frequency, and marks it as voice. On the network side, it converts this back to voice and sends it on the PSTN network (for a landline call).

GPRS takes data you want to send and inserts it directly in the same time divided channel and marks it as data. On the network side the network transfers this onto the internet (or other network) through the GGSN (its essentially a router).

So GSM and GPRS use the same technology. Setting the phone to GSM only, just stops it connecting to 3g networks.

Anyway, when you turn your phone on, the tower tells it its capabilities eg GPRS. This give you a GPRS available icon. When you actually want to send data, you need to 'attach'. This is like logging into the network.
To do that you need to open a data channel and send your login details.

Normal phones will do that i.e. attach, and then go idle. The network will only log them off if they move to a new cell and do not reauthenticate.

Anyway, if you are not attached:

- When you send data, the phone will need to attach first (milliseconds delay) - unoticable.
- You will NOT have an IP address so incoming data can not reach you.

If you use pop3 with regular pull of email, it'll make less difference the more frequently you pull your email - because every time you do, the phone will attach.
If you use PUSH email, it'll make no difference because you have to remain attached (have an ip address) for push to work.

I'm sure most people didn't care to know all that but i'm sure some did!

[moonlanding]

Wow. Thanks. Impressive.

Let me try to summarise. With auto attach off the phone isn't trying to attach to the 3G network all the time which saves power. But it is also disconnected from GPRS and data networks. However this won't affect push email because it will attach when it needs to, ie when the network tells it that there is mail or I send something out. Is this right?

What about internet? Will the phone automatically attach to the data netowrks when I fire up Opera? Presumably to attach to 3G I will need to reset to automatically seek WCDMA.

[someone1234]

Wow. Thanks. Impressive.

Let me try to summarise. With auto attach off the phone isn't trying to attach to the 3G network all the time which saves power. But it is also disconnected from GPRS and data networks. However this won't affect push email because it will attach when it needs to, ie when the network tells it that there is mail or I send something out. Is this right?

What about internet? Will the phone automatically attach to the data netowrks when I fire up Opera? Presumably to attach to 3G I will need to reset to automatically seek WCDMA.

You're still a bit confused i think. Ok on a phone you have voice or data. Data covers mail, internet, weather updates etc etc, voice covers phone calls.

There are two distinct protocols here, and we need to talk about them diferently...

GSM:

With GSM calls are sent over 1 timeslot and singalled as voice.
To make a call you need to have a signal, that takes a very short few messages which are sent every 20 minutes or so, or if you move around between towers. The Radio in the phone can do this all by itself without waking the phone up.

If you want to send ANY data (emails, internet, anything) you need to use GPRS. GPRS uses the same channels but inserts data into them instead of voice. Before you can send or receive any data you need to 'login' to the network. To login you need to actually open the channel and make a connection. Logging in is called 'ataching'. When you attach you get an IP address and the network can send stuff to you and u can send stuff to the network. Attaching needs to wake up the phone.
Once attached the phone can go into a sleep mode saving power, but any data send or received will wake up the phone.

UMTS/3G

UMTS is different in that everything is sent code divided. There is no 'login' or attach as such. In this mode all your voice gets converted to data and sent across.

---

With auto attach on:
If you use 3G mode, every time you switch between a 3G and GPRS area the phone will atach (GPRS) again, this will drain power.
Every time you move out of GPRS and come back into GPRS the phone will attach, even if you have nothing to send.

With autoattach off:
The phone will only attach if it has something to send AND is on GPRS (no 3G available or 3g turned off)
The upside is that you save power when you move between cells. The downside is that you can't receive any data from the network untill you decide to attach.
For push email for example you would never end up detaching as it would hold the connection open.

Anyway i hope that clear, but i'm quite sleepy so it might not make any sense lol

[Dark Fire]

That makes sense to me. When I get my Touch Diamond, I'm definitely turning 'GPRS auto attach' off, because I don't think I need it on.

[chribruu]

someone1234 that`s really useful info.I guess autoattach off is the best option for me too. WHEN the phone arrives.

[moonlanding]

Thanks again senior1234. I'm getting there. But this is more complex that I thought so I've gone back and checked what really makes a difference to the battery life.

The big difference for me is having the phone band set to GSM only (phone, options). Disabling auto attach makes a difference but not as much as I thought. I had changed both of them at the same time, thinking that they were more or less the same thing. Sorry folks. Very unscientific.

But if you feel like trying these bear in mind that I don't move between cells very much and have awful reception. I'll leave it to others to explain whether this is important.

[dazza9075]

HTC told me that with the screen on full brightness and phone turned on the GPS would only last about 2 hours befre the battery died, looks like we'll need the extended battery or several normal ones!

[someone1234]

Thanks again senior1234. I'm getting there. But this is more complex that I thought so I've gone back and checked what really makes a difference to the battery life.

The big difference for me is having the phone band set to GSM only (phone, options). Disabling auto attach makes a difference but not as much as I thought. I had changed both of them at the same time, thinking that they were more or less the same thing. Sorry folks. Very unscientific.

But if you feel like trying these bear in mind that I don't move between cells very much and have awful reception. I'll leave it to others to explain whether this is important.

GSM will use alot less power, so that is whats definatly making the difference

Why? Well.. GSM uses time division, which means the phones in an area take turns 'speaks'/'listening' with the tower. This ensures that no two phones are talking at the same time, and the tower can 'hear' what was sent. Because of this the power the phone transmits with can be controlled to be just high enough for the tower to listen, but not too high as to waste battery.

The down side of this scheme is that even if a phone has nothing to 'say', the other phones will wait in case it does. This means you're wasting bandwidth - or time that could be used by another phone to send data. Bottom line, data throughput is slower!

With 3G, all phones can talk at the same time. The data they send is tagged with a code, so that the data doesnt get mixed up. The advantage here is no time is wasted waiting for phones that may have nothing to send. The down side is that you need to be 'talking' loud enough to 'talk' over other people sending. This is why the data rate over 3G drops off really rapidly as you move away from the tower.
The disadvantages are a phone far from the tower using 3G will use more power than one using GSM because its having to 'talk' louder to get over other phones 'talking'.
Also, signals that get lost because they were drowned out by other phones have to be retransmited, which doesnt happen with GSM as much.

Yeah 3G or CDMA based channel access methods are a real power hog!

As for Auto attach you would expect it to only make a real difference if you have programs holding channels open.

With regards to low reception, it will make a significant difference because power disipation is not linear. Like all radiation it follows the inverse square law. For every meter distance the power drops of by a square of the distance.

[jellyme]

Don't forget, when comparing uptime with other phones, with the diamond you have 4x the amount of pixels. VGA (640 x 480) devices will always chew up more Battery that QVGA (320 x 240) . This is one of the main reasons that HTC and the others delayed shipping VGA devices until now.

If you want longer battery life, you are going to have to stop using the display so often.

There is no way a vga machine can compete with a qvga machine on battery life... when all other factors are equal.

[someone1234]

I think if you discount 3G, the battery is a little too small for the phone. With 3G its wholy inadequate.

The screen does make a huge difference, but these screens are more efficient, and HTC have used every opertunity to turn the screen off - a bit excessivly if you look at how fast it turns off when you make a call.

I don't understand why they don't use the iphone method of turning it off when the light sensor shows its dark (in a call).. i.e. the earpiece is next to your head!

[nokmond]

The experiment continues.

Disabling "GPRS auto attach" in Advanced Configuration Tool has made a big difference - still 90% after 6 hours now.

Now this is a surprise to me because I thought that you did this when you set the network seek to GSM only and not hunt for 3G. Or maybe I'm getting my GPRSs and GSMs mixed up...

Next step - leave this setting in place and turn push back on. Watch this space.

I've disabled gprs auto attach and set my band to GSM. When i connect to net with opera will it still turn on 3G etc?

[sandervanzijl]

I've disabled gprs auto attach and set my band to GSM. When i connect to net with opera will it still turn on 3G etc?

good question.
i only use my phone for normal phone stuff ans sometimes for some internet browsing.

should i turn anything on or off?

[Win_XP]

I've disabled gprs auto attach and set my band to GSM. When i connect to net with opera will it still turn on 3G etc?

Yes, it will be turned on when connects to the internet :)

[someone1234]

I've disabled gprs auto attach and set my band to GSM. When i connect to net with opera will it still turn on 3G etc?

It'll turn on GPRS automatically, not 3G.

[nokmond]

I had to turn it back to auto - was way slower when set to gsm. Still trying to get the battery to last more than 4/5 hours!

[someone1234]

I had to turn it back to auto - was way slower when set to gsm. Still trying to get the battery to last more than 4/5 hours!

GSM will mean it'll use GPRS for web etc, which will be alot slower of course! So you would have to switch it to 3G to get fast data. But it will use alot less battery. If you use the web alot it could get anoying to have to keep switching it over.

[danielherrero]

Did someone test bandswitch on Diamond? Does it switch the band correctly from 2g to 3g and viceversa?
Dani

[jordy123]

Could somebody be kind enough to tell me how to switch off the "GPRS auto attach" function? I have AdvancedConfiguration but I can't seem to find how to put it off... i've putted my band to GSM. I have this thing for 2 days and i love it, but the battery runs out pretty fast... :( please help !

[webvan]

they have tests 1.5 hours battery life with GPS guidance on gpspassion compared to 3.5 on Kaiser apparently, not good ! I'm not surprised very low here too !

[jason1980]

If I've disabled gprs auto attach, will i still be able to send/ receive MMS from my friends? Will i still be on GSM/3G network?

[muflon_]

is the way to set this in registry editor? (without advanced config application)

[Spawn12]

If I've disabled gprs auto attach, will i still be able to send/ receive MMS from my friends? Will i still be on GSM/3G network?


Yes you still will be able to send and receive sms/mms. As for being on GSM/3G??..that all depends if you have set it to auto or you have set it to GSM in the connections menu.

[knights191]

are there any alternatives for e.g. bandswitch ?

it doesnt work correctly with my phone (not a diamond..) still was facinated by the whole battery talk..

[Riel]

So there is no 'tool' for turning the whole data thing off, and only switching it to 3g/umts the moment i start surfing of check the mail?

[knights191]

You can turn off data traffic on your phone, using Schaps Advanced Configuration tool... and HTC Phones are compatibel with Bandswitcher..so I thought you could, if you would have a HTC.

If I read this thread correctly.. having a (non data) 3G connection (only voice) has more power consumption than a (non data, voice) GPRS connection ?

[Kassad]

are there any alternatives for e.g. bandswitch ?

it doesnt work correctly with my phone (not a diamond..) still was facinated by the whole battery talk..

In Schap's Advanced Configuration is an option to include a 3G button in the comm manager, wich, as you would guess, turns 3G on and off. So you can use GSM for calls and SMS and save the battery and turn to 3G when a faster data connection is needed, very handy indeed.

[floxika]

i tried to find how to change the band to GSM..
i did some search it said (go to Settings - Connections - Band Switch),
but i cant find it there, also cant find using advanced config.
does it mean mine already on GSM?
any way to change it using RegEditor? or any way to make sure mine on GSM?

thanks for the help

[Kassad]

i tried to find how to change the band to GSM..
i did some search it said (go to Settings - Connections - Band Switch),
but i cant find it there, also cant find using advanced config.
does it mean mine already on GSM?
any way to change it using RegEditor? or any way to make sure mine on GSM?

thanks for the help

Go to Settings > Phone > Band.
Do you use the Advanced Config 2.x or 1.x? Because you need the 2.x ;-)

[floxika]

i use advanced tool 2.0.2.
i have enabled the show band page with advanced tool.
now i can see the band page when i go to setting-phone-band.
but the select your network type and select your GSM/UMTS band..
both of that is empty .. nothing inside..

do i miss anything..???

[Yzord]

It'll turn on GPRS automatically, not 3G.

Thats not right, mine is turning on on 3G and HSDPA.

[Joh@n]

Thats not right, mine is turning on on 3G and HSDPA.
Because your band is set to auto and not GSM only mode.

[knights191]

I can tapp the disconnect (data) connection within my today screen.. but when I disconnect I am still connected to a 3G connection (next to my signal strengt i see 3G) and I would like to have GPRS signal when not using any data and would like to see my band switch to automatic (thats 3g/'hsdpa) when trying to build up a data connection

GPRS signal cost less battery then a (idle or non data) 3g connection for just being 'online' right ?

with other words, I would like to see my phone using low battery usage.

suggestions ?

already made sure, then data connections are closed within 3 minuten with schaps config tool (2.1.0.0 or something)