How I Fixed My Battery Problems

[-Scienide-]

I got my HTC 8X on Nov 2nd here in the UK. I thought the battery was a bit poor as I was struggling to get through a day without charging it up some more. I just thought this was because I was using a lot as it was all new and exciting. After a week I started to settle down into a pattern and was still struggling to leave work with more than 20% battery left. With very little use during the day. I started to think I had a problem.

Then I noticed an article on WPCentrals app that went into detail about the NFC being the culprit.

Here's what I did. Initially I just turned of NFC (Tap & Share) in the settings and watched the battery for a few hours. I was still losing 10% per hour in standby. Then i rebooted the phone. Things changed drastically. I went from 7:30am with 90% battery to 10:15pm with 87% battery. I used the phone for 15 minutes. I then went from 10:30am with 82% battery to 1pm with 79% battery. I then used my phone for a solid hour playing music, sharing my internet with my ipad and making texts. The battery went down to about 70%. I went from 2pm at 70% until 3:15pm with 68% and then from 3:30pm at 65% to 4:30pm with 63%.

I'm sat at home, its 8:14pm and I have 31% battery. Ive been using the phone quite a bit at home. Its saying I have 10 hours left on the battery saver screen.



So, basically, my advice to you if you have HTC 8X with battery problems is to turn off the tap & send NFC setting, reboot the phone and then keep an eye on your battery life. Preferably starting from a full charge and seeing how you go. I'd like to hear from you if this works or doesn't work for you.

 

[rkremers]

My phone has been unplugged for 7 hours, and I'm at 69%. I've made two short phone calls, sent probably 10 text messages, updated 6 apps, tweeted a few things etc. Fairly minimal use I'd say. I just turned this feature off... hoping it improves, but I've literally only had my phone for 24 hours, and people always say it takes several days for the battery to get adjusted to use.

made sure to reboot my phone too

 

[DeathBreath]

Thanks for the info. Today is my first full day with the phone. It's only 2:46pm right now and I have 40% battery left. Admittedly, I have been using it quite a bit. 40 min phone call, played a few games(10-20 min), watched a youtube vid, showed 4 people the phone and the usage that goes along with that , I have two Exchange accounts and both push email, contacts, calendar. I get quite a bit of email. And some other misc stuff here and there.

7:15am: Unplugged

10:45: 73%
11:50: 62%
13:27: 51%
14:33: 43%
14:46: 40%

I'll probably leave everything running again tomorrow and disable NFC later after I've warmed up to the phone. I'm going to keep running my phone until it dies to see how long it lasts.

 

[-Scienide-]

Well, I made it to 11pm and still had 17% battery left so I'm pretty happy with that. Almost doubled my battery life. Hopefully you guys get the same results.

 

[DeathBreath]

I wanted to report back on my final battery usage. This is with fairly heavy usage including having tethering turned on for almost 1 hour and 45 minutes to give wifi access to my nexus 7 for navigation on my ride home.

7:15am: Unplugged
10:45: 73%
11:50: 62%
13:27: 51%
14:33: 43%
14:46: 40%
16:07: 37% (turned on tethering)
17:50: 12% (turned off tethering)
18:00: 10% (battery saver kicked in)
18:20: Daughter started playing games
18:40: Battery Died

So 12.5 hours or so. Comparing to my iphone, I would still have 15-40% battery left. I suspect ove rthe coming days, it will improve and hopefully turning off nfc will help as well.

 

[TheAccuser]

My battery was pretty bad for the first couple of days and definitely improved after that. It was still not lasting as long as my iPhone 5 with similar usage. I just turned NFC off and rebooted to test your theory. I'll report my results. Ultimately when there is a reason to use NFC, I will want it on...so this is not a fix.

 

[Joelist]

So 8 hours even with NFC on (which requires an additional always on chip). NFC at this stage in its life is a power pig because it is always powered up and is in effect an additional short range radio. As virtually no one today uses NFC turning it off makes sense.

 

[Pete]

Good idea. I habitually turn Bluetooth off until I need to use it, but overlooked nfc. Have turned it off now and will see how that affects the battery usage.

 

[GoodThings2Life]

For what it's worth, we're having a lot of these same issues on the Lumia 920. And while the reboot trick works, alas I don't believe it to be an NFC issue since I have experienced the issue with NFC disabled, with Airplane and Battery Saver modes enabled, and all apps shutdown.

I think it's a buggy firmware issue in Windows Phone itself at this point. I think the overreacting to background apps and NFC really have little to do with it and are placebo effects.

The good news is that if it's a WP8 bug, it's easily fixed by software once the WP team gets enough feedback to get it sorted out. So feel free to tweet @joebelfiore and @windowsphone and @winphonesupport.

 

[Pete]

I don't think it's related to reboots. My phone has been rebooting itself (along with many others). I have turned off nfc and has my phone on and unchanged since nine this morning. It's now three am and the battery is only at 66%. I would say that turning off nfc has significantly increased my battery life.

 

[DeathBreath]

Turning off NFC didn't seem to do anything for me, but blocking Groupon from using background tasks seemed to boost my battery, but I only changed that a couple of hours ago. But the kicker is that my battery has only gone down 3% since 2-3 hours ago.

 

[aventador779]

I wanted to report back on my final battery usage. This is with fairly heavy usage including having tethering turned on for almost 1 hour and 45 minutes to give wifi access to my nexus 7 for navigation on my ride home.

7:15am: Unplugged
10:45: 73%
11:50: 62%
13:27: 51%
14:33: 43%
14:46: 40%
16:07: 37% (turned on tethering)
17:50: 12% (turned off tethering)
18:00: 10% (battery saver kicked in)
18:20: Daughter started playing games
18:40: Battery Died

So 12.5 hours or so. Comparing to my iphone, I would still have 15-40% battery left. I suspect ove rthe coming days, it will improve and hopefully turning off nfc will help as well.

You used tethering? Are you on Verizon? I would really love to get my Verizon 8X and use free tethering, just like I do with my Android device. But I'm guessing you pay for it...

 

[sibrecat]

Turning NFC off has improved my battery life considerably as well pressing the left key to shut all the apps properly as well as a few tweaks

 

[pdch]

You used tethering? Are you on Verizon? I would really love to get my Verizon 8X and use free tethering, just like I do with my Android device. But I'm guessing you pay for it...

If you switch to a shared plan, tethering is free. I am a single user on my verizon account, and I saved 30/month while gaining 2GB by switching to a shared plan.

 

[Coolknight1968]

If you switch off NFC, reboot the device. It switches on boot it seems.

 

[gmfeld]

I set my brightness to High yesterday, and noticed a substantial degrading of battery power. Switched it back to medium. Too bad, I like he high brightness better.

 

[TheAccuser]

I set my brightness to High yesterday, and noticed a substantial degrading of battery power. Switched it back to medium. Too bad, I like he high brightness better.

This kinda made me LOL.

 

[-Scienide-]

I'll be honest, I'm not entirely convinced anybody knows what's causing these battery problems for sure, myself included. We're all just trying to figure it out and reporting back different results.

Whatever it is there seems to be an issue on the software side of things with batteries draining way to quickly. I still cant quite figure this battery out but I seem to have reached a manageable level of drain.

I got so freaked out in the first week of owning the phone that I've now got chargers everywhere anyway lol. Hopefully MS will get to the bottom of it.

 

[DeathBreath]

So I've had my phone for 3 full days now. First day with heavy use, the battery lasted for 12.5 hours. Basically 7:15AM until 7:45PM. Second day, battery had 6% left when I put it on the charger at 10PM. Today, it's only 6:20Pm and I still have 48%. Admittedly, I didn't use my phone as much today compared to day 1 & 2. On day 2 I turned off NFC and blocked groupon(which seems to be the biggest drain for me) about halfway through the day. I'm curious what your background tasks look like compared to mine(show below). Feel free and post pics to compare. All in all, I'm pretty happy with the battery life, but no where near as good as my iPhone. I just hope MS keeps tweaking things to make it better over time(and I'm sure they will).

EDIT, after looking at my pics on this page, I'm going to uninstall the NFL Mobile and Photofunia apps as I won't use them after a few more days and there is no way to keep it and block background tasks. BTW, anything under advanced can't be blocked. And what's up with Groupon being blocked on the left but running on the right?

 

[DeathBreath]

If you switch to a shared plan, tethering is free. I am a single user on my verizon account, and I saved 30/month while gaining 2GB by switching to a shared plan.

What he said. I share a plan with my wife and tethering is part of the shared plan. If you can share with someone else, I recommend it as it is unlimited voice,text and the data plan of your choice, plus tethering.