Short battery life, all of a sudden

[clickmichelle]

First off, Yes, I've searched, googled, and read other threads.

I've had my Inspire for about 2 months now, and I love it. Never had a battery issue, unless usage was really heavy.

A few days ago, I went to make a call in the middle of the afternoon and had 18% battery remaining. Nothing was out of the ordinary, and I had been using the phone less than usual. I've been watching since then and it has gotten worse. I was at full charge at about 6:30 this morning, and before 1 PM the phone switched into Power Save mode. I just got the 15% warning while grabbing the following information with 8 h 27 m 39 s on battery.

Up time is 41:05:00
Awake time is 30:19:41

Dialer 28%
Display 24%
Wifi 14%
Cell Standby 13%
Phone idle 11%
HTC sense 5%
----------------------------
= 95%

Any ideas, or should I go in for warranty help (or battery shopping)?

 

[TCF]

That is called short battery life. It occurs on the Inspire. Nothing is wrong.

 

[clickmichelle]

Happening overnight, after weeks of performance as expected? I find that hard to attribute to your general "short battery life." But thanks anyway.

 

[pazzo02]

Display is almost always the biggest battery drain. Since you say the dialer is showing up as the biggest, I would investigate that more. Keep in mind that dialer is a misleading name because data use falls under it also.

 

[lilme08]

I am noticing the same thing with my inspire. Almost charging twice a day. Not including over night. My supervisor have the same phone and she is experiencing the same issue. My co worker have the captivate and she is having the issue.

 

[clickmichelle]

I'm working from home today instead of the office, and not having any issue whatsoever with the battery. It's about 40% after 8 h 42 m 6 s, with Display accounting for 66% of that.

I've been using it much more heavily than I typically do when working in the office. It seems that there is something about the office that is behind this issue.

I'm wondering if the radio signal is tied in to Dialer somehow? I work in a high-rise, and the signal tends to be patchy.

Thanks ~

 

[pazzo02]

I'm wondering if the radio signal is tied in to Dialer somehow? I work in a high-rise, and the signal tends to be patchy.

Thanks ~

Bingo! A poor signal will definitely drain your battery quicker. You might try adjusting your sync settings (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) to longer intervals, or even to manual.

 

[Tigger76]

FWIW, Twice I've had the dialer process on my Inspire use up more battery than the display. Both times I had the same experience with the battery life suddenly dropping greatly compared to normal usage. Both times I had to power off completely, let the phone set for a minute (or pull the battery) and then power back on (I tried killing the process, but it didn't seem to work). I think some of us may have an issue with the dialer process getting stuck in a loop occasionally.

***edited*** And yes, signal strength can be a big issue as well. If there are any issues with the tower near your office, your battery will likely drain much faster too.

 

[Bombinadam1403]

AT&T reset my phone the other day...Again... And told me there was nothing wrong with my phone. I've been connecting to Wifi a lot lately and having the same issues. I had the last 3 days off and they reset my phone on Friday... I'd take my phone off charge about 9AM and by 3, I'd be at about 35%.

Tonight they're just now realizing there's an issue with my phone.

Glad I'm not the only one.

 

[waeggles]

I have recently been having similar issues with my Desire HD (Telus). A couple of issues:
- I find battery life very erratic. Some days I will have 60% when I get home from work, other days it will be in the red... This is with no difference in usage patterns.
- The screen is amazing, but also a battery hog. I have to use it on a very low brightness setting almost all the time...
- Almost every morning for some reason I have to kill the Maps process because I get a warning about it over-using the CPU.

I think this is becoming an issue with how they actually make the phones now... Smaller, thinner = smaller batteries. That combined with faster cpus, more apps, more graphics is a very bad combination. It makes me miss my BB to be honest. It would do most of the things I wanted and last me a week on battery...

 

[mrputz]

I have had the same issues with my Inspire 4g. Had the phone since July, and battery performance was not acceptable. Got the GB update sometime in Aug or Sept and battery issues went away until just the last 3 or 4 days. But they're even worse than previous. Full charge before going to bed, and wake up in morning with 20% or less....obviously I didn't even use the phone! It just steadily drains for no apparent reason, and it's frustrating! Could it really be that the battery is just no good after 5-6 months?? It appears the display is the #1 battery drain with dialer being down the list a ways. Any answers?

 

[rapjr72]

I had this problem for a while myself, after having excellent battery life. And yes, it was all of a sudden. I must have been messing around with some settings.
Try this: 1) press MENU < SETTINGS < WIRELESS AND NETWORKS < WI-FI SETTINGS
2) press MENU, a menu will pop-up at the bottom of your screen
3) press ADVANCED
4) Make sure that Best Wi-Fi Performance is NOT checked
Then just back out of the menus and you're done.


Another thing that helped my battery life, which is completely un-related to the above is this....
1) Let your phone run the battery down until it shuts itself off.
2) Turn back on and let run down til off again
3) Plug your phone in to a wall charger and household outlet , (Don't charge via USB on computer.)
4) Charge for 2 hours after indicator lights GREEN and Image on screen says 100%
5) Unplug the phone from charger and turn on, wait 2-6 minutes, then turn off again.
6) Plug phone back into charger and charge until Indicator lights GREEN and Image on phone says 100%
7) Unplug, turn on, and use as normal.

You should now notice that your battery indicator actually says 100% AFTER you unplug phone from charger and that it will stay between the 90%-100% mark longer than it had in the past.

If you can, once a month let the phone drain til it shuts itself off and recharge to 100% while off.
And yes, poor signal strength can and usually does cause the battery to drain much quicker, as others have already stated.

Hope this helps someone out there.

 

[cyanogen-man]

ally live a quarter mile from an at&t tower ik its at&t BC there's at&t all over the gate and I get crazy signals everything from full to none even when no storm and its not the radio BC my moms phone dose the same as well as my sisters it will wreak havoc on the battery life but when I went to cyanogen the first nite I did an experiment at work I managed to get 10 hours of wifi and music streaming while I was at work screen was off for the most part but still yet wow!!! But alot of back ground apps drain it if you want to kill back ground app settings. Accounts sync unchecked back ground data trust me you wont be able to use the market while its checked but huge battery saver

 

[Way South Austin]

I had a problem with battery drain, also, that suddenly showed up one day. My wife's phone started doing the same thing at the same time. In all the time we'd had our phones, battery life was great, considering the amount of usage newer smart phones get -data, text, graphics, calls, etc.

We had changed nothing, and even went to the AT&T store to find out if an update had suddenly turned on something like a perpetual GPS, some sort of missile defense laser, microwave nut-roaster, whatever. The AT&T kids did not have a high enough nerd-geek rating, so they were about as helpful as a case of herpes. One tried upping the paranoid setting for the App-Killer app, but it did nothing.

One pattern I noticed is that the battery didn't drain when we travelled, like to the north end of town, or to Houston.

Then I found what was our problem, and may apply to others: for some reason, when trying to tap into my home WiFi, it would link up, acquire an IP address, then drop the connection (still with full signal). It would then seek WiFi, connect, acquire, drop....lather, rinse, repeat. It was going into a closed cycle of trying to seek out WiFi. So, while the phone was on my hip, or on the table, it was constantly going through that cycle, day and night, 24/7, as long as it was in range of my home WiFi system.

Yes, I have my phone set to automatically seek a WiFi connection, but that had not been a problem for the previous 1-plus years of owning the phone. What solved the problem was completely shutting down my phone AND my home WiFi system, then rebooting everything.

The problem was solved.

It did it a second time a month-or-so ago: both phones, battery drain. I watched both phones go into that WiFi cycle again -sure enough, both phones would get a signal, hook up, immediately drop it, then start over.

I shut down the systems again, and the problem was gone.

Your mileage may vary.