[Battery] My battery dies quickly.

[Chief_Adu]

Hi!

I know, I know, you have all seen loads of thread about this: HTC 8X batteries dying very quickly. But all those topics are pretty old now and I thought, their may be new tips, tricks and ideas to solve this problem.

I recently got in touch with my HTC 8X last Thursday. I had to install several updates (I guess 3 system updates and one language pack update, USA language). Later on I noticed I updated the GDR 2 update. I thought HTC pulled back that update due to some problems.

I installed all my apps I had on my Huawei Ascend W1, changed the setting to what I prefer and was ready to show my phone to all my classmates.

To test the battery directly, I charged it to 100% before I went to sleep. When I got up, it was a 83%. Fishy, I could stay 100% all night with my Huawei. But hey, it's a brand new phone, the battery has to change to my usage.

From 8AM till 12PM, my battery dropped from 83% to 29%, and I didn't even use it that much. I tried to use BlackNight1968's battery tips, but the battery died within 3-4 hours. So, I did a factory reset to fix it all up, again. I only installed the apps I only need and disabled almost all background applications, still no success. The battery still died within 5 hours (Wait, I see improvement here!).

Today, I'm at 80% in 3 hours (it's still getting better!). I didn't use it that much, but when I did, I could see the battery dropping very quickly.

I know some of you have an amazing battery life (16 hours - 2 days) and some of you have the same problem as I have (2-6 hours). The fun thing is that my dad had a HTC 8X as well, and he could rock his phone for days. Using navigation, having chat-chats with his girlfriend, playing games when he was in a traffic jam in his truck. And I have to be lucky to 5 hours by barely using the phone, disable almost every background application and to disable all the fun features.

Please provide me some tips, tricks, ideas, suggestion or whatever you can. I also read a couple articles that the battery is getting better with in one to two weeks (I may believe that), can someone confirm this.

As I said, most of you have seen threads like this and will probably tell me the same. But still, make my day!

 

[WanderingTraveler]

Swap your 8X with your dad's

Other than that, you could try cycling it for a week, Chief. Cycling it as in normal use, of course, or until the replacement period expires.

Should it not return to normal use, have it replaced.

Otherwise, get Cortana to fix it for you

 

[Chief_Adu]

Swap your 8X with your dad's

Other than that, you could try cycling it for a week, Chief. Cycling it as in normal use, of course, or until the replacement period expires.

Should it not return to normal use, have it replaced.

Otherwise, get Cortana to fix it for you

I have seen more people mentioning the word "Cycling", what do you mean by this?

I'd like to swap with my dad, but he dropped his phone within a week @_@

I have a 14 days "no good? replace it" period. I am going to wait until it gets better within time. Otherwise I have to replace it

 

[Chief_Adu]

Little update:

My battery lasted for 8 hours,with low-moderate usage. I hope this performance continues

 

[Microsoftjunkie]

I get on average 8-14hrs.

I have everything on accept things like bt, and WiFi. I do have on nfc, I also have 8 live tiles updating.

Since you updated to gdr2, did you factory reset? If not, do so.

Also if you're into news type of apps, try to find a central app that has all of your fav news, sites. Don't try to download every dedicated app.

Other than that, your usage maybe more than you think. After gdr2 the heat, performance, battery life, web, basically every thing that was wrong was fixed for me. The battery life estimates are greatly improved too.

 

[Chief_Adu]

I get on average 8-14hrs.

I have everything on accept things like bt, and WiFi. I do have on nfc, I also have 8 live tiles updating.

Since you updated to gdr2, did you factory reset? If not, do so.

Also if you're into news type of apps, try to find a central app that has all of your fav news, sites. Don't try to download every dedicated app.

Other than that, your usage maybe more than you think. After gdr2 the heat, performance, battery life, web, basically every thing that was wrong was fixed for me. The battery life estimates are greatly improved too.

I guess that may be true :|

I have WiFi and G3 mostly on. No NFC and no Bluetooth.

I did a factory reset, but it looks like it kept the GDR 2 update.

The only use WPCentral and Tweakers (A Dutch tech site app.) Both don't run in the background (I'm not sure about WPCentral)

Today I almost didn't use my phone, but after the battery is fully drained (at 4% now), I'm going to recharge it to 100% and use it heavy to check how quickly my battery will drain.

 

[Microsoftjunkie]

I guess that may be true :|

I have WiFi and G3 mostly on. No NFC and no Bluetooth.

I did a factory reset, but it looks like it kept the GDR 2 update.

The only use WPCentral and Tweakers (A Dutch tech site app.) Both don't run in the background (I'm not sure about WPCentral)

Today I almost didn't use my phone, but after the battery is fully drained (at 4% now), I'm going to recharge it to 100% and use it heavy to check how quickly my battery will drain.

If you use it heavily it will still go down fast enough. My usage is around medium. One problem I noticed before gdr2 was battery life estimates. Its almost unanimous here in the community that when you phone is low on juice, restarting it will show an increase from 2-75%. Seriously I had such a drastic difference after rebooting. So it definitely seemed the phone was draining faster than it actually would. So gdr2, fixed that. At least for me.

 

[Eric J F]

Try installing one of those battery monitoring apps; I like Battery Sense. It graphs level and rate so you can associate usage with behavior.

I notice my 8X occasionally uses up the charge at a much faster rate than normal, and one guess is there is something going on with the cell signal and it's working harder than usual.

When it loses juice for no apparent reason I'll do a soft reset and that usually helps. Maybe some app is running in the background without me knowing.

Also, I think phones are like cars- some stay on full a long time then drop fast; others drop fast right away. My wife's Lumia 521 stays on 100% a long time but drops really fast near the end. My 8X drops fast at the beginning but slows down later on.

 

[Aardappelboom]

I'm pretty sure there is something wrong with the battery drain on lock screen since GDR2 though. It drains 20% over night. Every time. The lockscreen should essentially put the phone in hibernation. Everything else seems like normal drainage to me.

 

[WanderingTraveler]

I'm pretty sure there is something wrong with the battery drain on lock screen since GDR2 though. It drains 20% over night. Every time. The lockscreen should essentially put the phone in hibernation. Everything else seems like normal drainage to me.

A reboot or soft reset should solve the problem.

II you think of it, a lot of the battery drainage problems on WP are either because if the inaccurate battery meter, or because of a rogue background task

 

[WanderingTraveler]

I'm pretty sure there is something wrong with the battery drain on lock screen since GDR2 though. It drains 20% over night. Every time. The lockscreen should essentially put the phone in hibernation. Everything else seems like normal drainage to me.

A reboot or soft reset should solve the problem.

II you think of it, a lot of the battery drainage problems on WP are either because if the inaccurate battery meter, or because of a rogue background task.

 

[Chief_Adu]

*UPDATE*

I guess I am a heavy user. My battery lasted 12 hours yesterday on (real) low-moderate use.

Lets see if I can beat that 12 later

Thank you all for your suggestions!

 

[Aardappelboom]

I get around 14 hours. It's a bit low. I did the soft reset thing and that didn't really work.

However. I did notice that when performing the HTC battery calibration trick (put the Phone on charger, wait until the light goes green, restart the phone, if it's not green immediatly, wait until it gets green and restart the phone again. Repeat until the light is green immediately) my phone never restarts with a green light. I guess my phone could be miscalibrated.

Still the drainage during lockscreen is quite strange. I got better batterly life before GDR 2

 

[Chief_Adu]

I get around 14 hours. It's a bit low. I did the soft reset thing and that didn't really work.

However. I did notice that when performing the HTC battery calibration trick (put the Phone on charger, wait until the light goes green, restart the phone, if it's not green immediatly, wait until it gets green and restart the phone again. Repeat until the light is green immediately) my phone never restarts with a green light. I guess my phone could be miscalibrated.

Still the drainage during lockscreen is quite strange. I got better batterly life before GDR 2

I see, I see... I got a 15-16 hours today, so it's getting better! (I turned from a heavy user to a low-moderate use, haha)

 

[Roobesh Thumiah]

Most probably after several charging cycles, your battery will be calibrated and you should get more juice out of it.

 

[Chief_Adu]

Most probably after several charging cycles, your battery will be calibrated and you should get more juice out of it.

I noticed that

 

[Aardappelboom]

I've had the Phone for a year, so I guess that's not it.

 

[Aardappelboom]

I just tried turning off mobile network and it's doubled my battery life. Surely it's bugged since it worked perfectly before GDR2.

 

[Chief_Adu]

I just tried turning off mobile network and it's doubled my battery life. Surely it's bugged since it worked perfectly before GDR2.

I know, without G3 it will last for days.

The last days were perfect for me. I could hit the 12-16 hours

 

[Aardappelboom]

I know, without G3 it will last for days.

The last days were perfect for me. I could hit the 12-16 hours

I'm just saying pre-GDR2 I could leave my G3 on and it lasted for a lot more than 12-16 hours.

I am pretty sure it turned off automatically whenever Wifi was available thus saving a lot of battery when at work or at home.
With this behaviour in GDR2 toggles are a must. It's a drag to micromanage your connections through the settings page.

With all that said, it's still the best phone I've had, let's hope they patch a few things with GDR3 and add tons of cool features with 8.1