Desire vs Wildfire - battery life

agrinnall

I'm looking at getting a new phone on Vodafone, the list is currently narrowed to Desire or Wildfire (I was interested in the Legend but have been put off by the horrendous problems detailed in a 27 page thread on the Voda forum!).

Now I know that the Desire is clearly the better phone and the cost for my usage needs would be £10 per month more, which I can afford. However, I'm very concerned about the battery life, it seems that most people need to charge it every day, sometimes more than once. Isn't the whole point of a mobile phone that you should be able to use it anywhere, if you have to go home or carry your charger with you and hope to find a power point that doesn't really seem that mobile. The Wildfire battery life looks better at 2 - 3 days, can anyone confirm what life they get from either of these phones?

Jon_01

Welcome to the wonderful world of smartphones.

You will get more time per charge after you've been using it for while (my lad can get 2 days out of his Desire, which he'd now had for about 3 weeks). But battery tech is lagging behind phone tech.

There's so much going on in a smartphone that the battery runs down at a rate of knots. There's not much you can do about other then not buying one (not helpful, I know). If you're sitting in front of a pc all day get a usb charge lead.

You get get high powered batteries on Ebay but they extend the back of the phone by 50% (they supply you with a new back for the phone). Also a car charger is a good idea.

Oscar_The_Grouch

The problem with modern phones is that people expect so much of them - internet browsing, playing films, receiving e-mails and the like, plus the usual options of making phone calls and sending texts! Your phone becomes a mini laptop AND phone combined.

Do you expect a laptop to go for 3 days without charging? Everyone would agree that this is simply not going to happen.

The Desire is a bigger, faster phone than the Wildfire and this has a cost in terms of battery life. I expect, however, that if you were to turn off the additional features of both phones, the battery life would be extended and quite similar.

I think what you need to look at is the features of both phones and what you want out of them. The Wildfire will be set up to extend the battery life (as is my Windows Phone - default settings for 3G, GPS and Wi-Fi are "off") so if there's anything you'd want to change on that side of things, expect it to drain the battery very quickly.

4743hudsonj

I have a desire, mother has a wildfire.

I can get 2 days out of it if i turn down screen and try to make it last, i get one and a half days out of normal use and a day for very heavy use.

Mum isnt so heavy on the internet but gets very similar results, possibly half a day longer.

Thats with all features on (not inc bluetooth and gps) and brightness full.

The battery is diabolical in the first week or so but improved tremendously when it goes through its first few charge cycles.

flyingscotno1

I use my Desire a good bit, mostly internet / e-mail / texts with some calls.

I have to admit to being lazy and leaving Wi-Fi, GPS and Bluetooth on and by 11pm most nights it is down to about 25% left. With management I'm sure 2 days is possible, but I got into the habit of charging at night and the few times I forget I have a car charger and USB charger at the desk.

bubblesmoney

what you do with the phone drains the battery more than the phone, the apps you use, GPS, WiFi, where you use the phone will determine the power use. poor signal strength will be a bigger drain on power than anything else on the phone.

ampletime

Vodafone are going through a funny patch with their customer service at the moment. I have seen Vodafone being shot down on here quite a bit of the past few months.

The others on this thread have given you some good advice re the battery. Don't run apps you aren't using. Keep the screen brightness down but to a level that is easy on the eye and put it in Airplane Mode if you aren't using the phone, say in the cinema or in areas that have no signal and switch to 2g and only 3g when you need it.

Meepster

I get around 2 days also (unless running satnav for more than a hour a day)

Turn screen brightness down, turn off all data funtions until you actually need them, and download task manager from the market to kill any processes that don't shut down on exit.

Also, kill off any "running services" that you don't actually need running all the time...

sandsy

I use my Desire for about 90 mins a day, surfing the net using my provider's network. That's pretty much it. I have to charge it every night without fail. Battery life is abysmal. If I look at what is using the battery, it's the android system itself.

bubblesmoney

mp3 playback does not kill the battery. i played 5h continuously a couple of days ago along with some surfing etc but still had quite a bot of charge left.

video streaming on 3g kills the battery fast. especially high quality video streaming on 3g. i guess it might do the same on wifi as well.

leaving wifi on continuosly will eat into battery as well. choose a 15min sleep policy if not in use. see settings menu for details.

gps switch off if not needed.

single most useful widget on your android phone will be the power control widget preinstalled on all android phones.

gaming will use a lot of power as well for screen and video processing and also vibrations etc and music. ps: try the (free demo from android market. cool demo allows 1 level playback in action mode and campaign mode) game winds of steel (great dog fights etc in combat aircraft)

as i said earlier poor signal is the worst culprit. with a good signal i get two days on my desire. if working in a poor signal area it can run down in 10hours but lasts more if i use the airplane mode widget (preinstalled by htc) to switch off mobile signal antenna if not getting a signal if deep inside a building etc.

push email will use less power than pull email.

live wallpaper only uses a bit more power than ordinary wallpaper

black background will use less power than red background which in turn will use less power than other backgrounds. screen brightness also has a bearing.

apps constantly keeping the phone awake drain battery. facebook app keeps phone awake more so reduce freq of updates. some sky apps are reported to drain battery, like the sky sports app and some task killers like advanced task killer are reported to drain the battery.

chuckley

u cant compare any phones battery life with another. each have different features and user settings. 2 desire owners will have polar opposite battery life as their usage and settings wont b the same!

battery life is user specific and should never b considered when buying a phone.