HTC HD2 battery problems?

[Matt]

If you have been following our coverage of the HTC HD2 you'll probably know that I've mentioned the battery life of the HTC HD2 on more than one occasion. The first review handset that we looked at was a pre-release unit and I initially had problems with poor battery life. After a few days the battery did seem to improve so I put the lack of stamina down to the fact that it was a review unit that may not have been so well looked after and that the pre-release ROM may not have been optimised.

However, James now has a full retail version of the HTC HD2 and is experiencing poor battery life and we've had a few comments on the forum from new HD2 owners saying that they are getting usage times measured in hours, one reader getting just a few hours of battery life when playing MP3's despite having the screen turned OFF!

That said, we have also heard from others that they have no problems with their battery life and that they are getting a few days usage without having to recharge.

SO, if you are an HTC HD2 owner we want to hear from you! Please use the forum link below and come and tell us what your experiences are, good or bad!

We shall be getting another HD2 in a week or so and will test that out too!

 

Posted by: Matt

[ Post Tags: HTC HD2, battery problems, windows mobile, smartphone, tracyandmatt.co.uk ]

[paul-lemonidis]

The initial retail version of this phone is noting short of appalling and I am seriously considering sending it back to VF.

The battery life is appalling! I played some MP3's for about 10 minutes and watched in horror as the battery went from 100% to 87% in about 5 minutes. Granted I did have some light fuunctions on but even so!!! Calls actually drain the phone less than playing an MP3 at low volume by a significantly noticeable margin?!

Additionally, I don't like the Sense UI. Now whilst that may be a personal preference I would not expect MP3's to constantly lock up the phone when played from anywhere else. If I go to file explorer and double click an MP3 file, after a long pause (30-60 seconds, even after a hard rest by the way!) it will play the file for a few minutes, less than five, and then the whole phone starts crawling and the music stops completely for several seconds! It then just contstantly stutters and the phone constantly slows down to a crawl. When I eventually get to task manager though, it shows 0% CPU and only about 2-3 MB of memory!? I suspect that Sense UI uses a different media player and this can stream music from my 8 GB memory card just fine where the Windows Media Player cannot. Windows media player does show a buffering message when it stutters but never rises above 0%. It just disappears for the second or two while it plays before hanging the whole phone again. The only flaw with that logic is this the same card with the same content was fine in my TYTN II with Windows 6.1 and 6.5 (multiple versions of the latter!).

It gets even worse due to HTC playing around with the basic UI as well as superimposing their own! If you disable the Sense UI and go back to the normal Windows 6.5 screen, the messaging plugin has had the SMS option removed. Thus when you recieve a new text it is not even displayed to be clicked on!! Why upon why is the question that comes to mind as this worked in 6, 6.1 and all other versions of 6.5!!

Better still! HTC for some stupid reason had to remove the owner information shortcut and this actually breaks my Ageye G-Alarm for which I have paid money as this used for the licensing! Whilst there is a workaround why would anyone disable standard Windows features for heavens sake!!??

Additionally the large sceen is only great for apps. that support it properly. I have themes and games it does not display properly that were fine on my TYTN II. Also, when an application needs a stylus input, could no one figure out your finger is actually bigger than a stylus and thus you may end up covering the very thing you need to see to use it!!! Needless to say a stylus doesn't work with the screen. Thus one of my games bites the dust as I canoot see the ball properly.

Finally the phone I have been sent is not that new as the version of Microsoft MyPhone is the beta version and I am forced tp update when I first use it!! The live version came out about 4 weeks ago!!

To conclude I feel like I am running an alpha version as the 6.5 Beta versions on my old TYTN II were far superior on the whole.

[Steve]

Too many broken hearts in the world......

[Doug]

Just got my HD2 and I am new to this forum but had to join to share my experience with the battery.

Got my handset on Friday, charged it overnight and used it Saturday. By lunch time it was warning me that the battery was low and that I should recharge it. Now I am no novice when it comes to Windows Mobile but still I thought perhaps I had done something wrong to get such an appauling run time.

So I recharged it until fully charged and powered back on and checked that I hadnt left the WiFi on etc. Took it out on Sunday with me, made a few calls and sent a couple of texts. Showed my mates and within 6 hours the phone was dead!

So what the * is going on? Is this a bad batch of batteries or is there something really screwy with the HD2?

[bengrendon]

Anyone got an issue with the location stating it is in a different place.
Mine keeps on telling me i am in Glasgow when i am actuallty in Dundee. i know it is only minor but it annoys me.

A tip for battery life i have got mine set with email syncing manually as well as twitter every fours hours and facebook only when i ask it too. with these setting i charged it last night (3rd full charge) and i am now only on 80% this is with having data turned on fr the last 3 1/2 hours as well.
Having something that would automatically switch data off when not in use would be nice.

Gaz

P.S. iknow there is a reg edit that will allow this but i dont want too have to essentially hack my new phone, its too new and shiny

[paul-lemonidis]

Update. I think there is a major bug with this phone when playing MP3 files. I started up Task Manager and watched as an MP3 was trying to play and saw windows media player taking over 90% CPU most of the time today. This would explain why my battery went down so dramatically and also why the others have reported poor battery lfie when playing MP3 files even with the screen turned off. The rest of the time the phone seems fine apart from when the "morons dept" at HTC just cannot leave the basic standard interface alone!

One more niggle. Another stupid removal from the basic UI. Why did they have to remove task manager from the default start bar at the top right hand corner of the screen. This had the option to make the X on apps. actually close them rather than just minimize them. With this gone I can only pause a music or video track and cannot just close the application! Again why would "morons are us" at HTC remove basic UI functions!!??? Best of all as the HTC Sense UI apps don't even appear in task manager I cannot kill them either. Thus the only genuine way to be sure an app is gone is to reboot the phone!!!

[BartekGo]

Hi, I'm new to this forum but I'm not exactly new to mobile phones...

I have got my HTC HD2 from Vodafone, long story short I've purchased it online on Monday 16th, on 18th I got an email saying that HTC has delay and that soonest delivery of HD2 will be in december, because I couldn't wait that long I have called customer service and I spoke with them for an hour, just nag at them They couldn't do anything to help me other then cancel the order...
I went to Vodafone store in Kingston and asked them if they have HD2 in stock, Suprise they didn't
BUT! they had brand new HD2 waiting to be opened and used as a demonstration phone but I couldn't let them to waste such amazing phone, I've asked them if I can have this unit, after couple minutes argument with store manager it was mine

So I got the phone, I like it very much.
If I was to rate it out of 10 I would give it 9/10, I would rate it 10/10 if battery life was better.

I'm 15 years old so as you expect I got a lot on FaceBook, I text people and listen to MP3 all day and my battery seems to hold up fine, I charge it every night and use it all day long, today for example my phone had 80% battery as I was using it at night after charge for YouTube, so I was playing music for around 3 hours, I was going on internet for good 2 hours using 3G, sent couple text's out and took couple pictures, my WiFi was off when I was in School but as soon as I got home at 4pm I putted WiFi on.
My HD2 was on all day and now at 22.21 or 10.21pm my battery is at 8% so is not as bad as you guys say.

I will try to see how much battery my HD2 will use when playing music for one hour with out touching it with WiFi Off to see how much exactly power it consumes when playing music.

Also I heard that one company is working on around 3000mAh battery for HD2 at 70$, that would be sweet

[Matt]

Reports on battery life seem to vary a lot. I'm not sure if this is due to varying usage or bad batteries. It's very odd as some report days whereas others hours!

Are you using Push Email?

[BartekGo]

I'm using MSN and Live account at the same time, I know that is strange.
will test my battery and power usage when playing MP3, to make it fair I will turn of all the connections, I will shut off and turn phone back on to make sure that all other apps will be closed and see how quickly battery will drain.

[shu8i]

i get about 10 hours out of it. listening min. 3hours to mp3, since i'm on the go all the time. watching 3-5 youtube videos. writing loads of sms. surfing a bit and showing it to almost second person xD. push weather etc. all on, although i somehow don't get push mail (hotmail) to work :S. 3G

[ThT]

Mine lasts just over a day on heavy usage. (And by heavy I mean that I browse the web on it for about 3 hours while listening to music and occasionally watching a Youtube video (Yeah, I travel by train), continue listening to music for another 3-4 hours, use RDP for a couple of hours and still show off some of it's capabilities to whoever hasn't seen it yet. )
My friend however has bought one recently, and his barely survives 3-4 hours of listening to mp3's...
I thought he was kidding at first, but after his battery dying in the middle of a trip while it was clearly at ninety-something percent at the start got me worried.
By now he has sent his unit back to HTC, let's hope he gets it back with a proper battery.

It appears to me that HTC is getting their batteries from different suppliers, some good, some (very) bad.

[chriscamplejohn]

I got my HTC HD2 on Tuesday 17th and have been struggling to make it through the day on a single charge and it is worse than that if I turn the Wi-Fi on. I am using push email as well as synching with hotmail every 15 minutes. I wonder if it is the push email for outlook that is killing it as most of the people that are getting good battery life seem to not be using that. I might try disabling it and see how I get on. Other than that I have been doing less than 1 hour internet browsing (including using the facebook app) and not been listening to music or watching videos (been at a conference - otherwise I would normaly listen to music during the day). Have been writting quite a few emails and texts, but wouldn't say it's heavy usage!

On a side note, I moved from O2 to Vodafone and my text messages are horribly delayed at the minute - about 7 hours!! Not happy about that!

Chris

[cybergamer]

Hi Guys,

Ive had my phone since the release day and though i would throw my 2ps worth in.

I have Bluethooth running all the time, push email, and 1 hour sync on other email and peep/weather/facebook. I do about 1 hour of talk time a day on avg.

I pretty much loose 1 bar per day on the battery and while i always charge over night i would say the phone is good for 2 days.

I ran a simple test yesterday and ran copilot for 3 hours and lost 1 bar from charge. Pretty good considering the GPS, screen was running all the time. It is almost like the performance from my old touch pro.

[ijob]

I havn't really noticed a huge difference between the battery life of the HD2 and the Touch Diamond 2.

Part of me thinks too that the specs of the HD2 are up there with a full size laptops of a few years ago and u know how large those batteries are!

[BartekGo]

to be honest my Ipod Touch battery was draining quicker then on my HTC HD2, I play same amount of videos and music but HD2 is also constantly connected to 3G and has bigger screen and still works longer...

but if the 3000mAh battery will come out then it will be bad *