Standby Time...

[TW]Fox

[TW]Fox

[TW]Fox

Man of Honour
Joined
17 Oct 2002
Posts
160,229
Hi guys,

Was in a few phone shops at the weekend and was amazed to see the quoted standby time of a HTC Desire was..

wait for it...

.... 14 days.

Yup, Fourteen Days. Infact all the smartphones had quoted standby times of around 2 weeks.

Is it any wonder people are annoyed about battery life when the mobile phone networks stores mislead people in such a way?

It's completely impossible to get 14 days standby out of a HTC Desire. I tried when I was in the States - set to 2G mode only, data disabled, everything disabled pretty much, no calls made or received and it still only lasted 3 days..

Why are they allowed to basically.. lie?
 
Yep, those times are complete fabrications, official HTC figures too. Why not go the full hog and say 1000 million years standby!!! :D

Best time I've seen on a smartphone is ~200 hours with a 1st gen iPhone.
 
I just checked what the main 4 networks state is the standby time:

Orange: 14 Days
T-Mobile: 340 hours (14.1 days)
O2: Up to 15 days
Vodafone: 490 hours (20.4 days!!!!)

Which sort of rubbishes my initial thought (and sarge's) that they use standard specs given to them by the manufacturers, I'll do some digging and see how it's actually worked out. None of them are anywhere near realistic though!
 
They LIE! because we let them get away with it. we take it lieing down. Unfortunatly!
Time to stand up and be counted. It's like their unlimited web that they keep getting away with. Missleading, Missconstrued, Un-Truths.
 
Orange Peel said:
I'm sure those standby times are how long the battery holds charge while NOT in the phone!
Click to expand...

What is Stand-by Time?
Definition: The total time a battery can power a phone that is not used to receive or perform a call but only standing by, which consumes less energy. Usually expressed in days, as in "3 days standby time."

My spare Desire battery has lasted well over a month without dropping much charge.
 
I just checked and HTC specify 340 hours so I guess you can't really blame Orange, O2 or T-Mobile as it's between 14 and 15 days. However not sure where Vodafone are getting 490 hours (20 days) from!
 
sarge78 said:
What is Stand-by Time?
Definition: The total time a battery can power a phone that is not used to receive or perform a call but only standing by, which consumes less energy. Usually expressed in days, as in "3 days standby time."

My spare Desire battery has lasted well over a month without dropping much charge.
Click to expand...

Really, you didn't realise I was joking?
 
The problem with Android is that its power management sucks. It only supports a few power states so there's hardly any granularity between full standby mode and all systems go. In the real world, you're not going to get anywhere close to the quoted standby time for an Android phone.
 
Tunney said:
The problem with Android is that its power management sucks. It only supports a few power states so there's hardly any granularity between full standby mode and all systems go. In the real world, you're not going to get anywhere close to the quoted standby time for an Android phone.
Click to expand...

The same goes for any smartphone, not just Android but the benefit here is Android users can actually do something about it by rooting (easy as clicking 2 buttons) and installing a UV or HAVS kernel or setting custom power states and governors in apps like SetCPU which dynamically scales the CPU based on usage and screen state.
 
It's always been the same but not quite as bad as it is now. Phones ~10 years ago used to quote standby times that you had no chane of achieving. I would guess the reason is that any particular phone company does it because all the others do it and no one wants to change the standard and advertise a phone with 2 days stand-by amongst similar phones with 5x that.
 
I don't think anything, anything at all can ever beat the HTC Touch2's battery life. It's been in standby for 321 Hours 25 Mins since the last charge, and there's still 70% battery left.
 
TBH I've had over a week with 3g before on my Touch HD, I normally charge it every 2-3 days with normal use. Put it in flight mode and I could easily see it lasting a few weeks if the screen isn't turned on.
 
Motorola quote the milestone as 2 weeks as well. 24 hours of medium usage is the norm. Have seen 50 hours max but that was barely using the thing, although I never turn off 3g or anything. Setcpu scales it back to 250mhz maximum when screen is off, 1.2ghz maximum when screen is on.
 
They get away with it by quoting standby in lab conditions in a controlled state resembling airplane mode. There are no signal searches or strength variations, no processes, gui elements or applications running other than minimal OS, no input, movement, sensors or screen is used. You would expect them to use undervolted/minimum clock scaling/settings and alternative governors for tests. It's agreed standard procedure. All you currently need for advertising authorities is a disclaimer along the lines of "Times tested in lab conditions. When using any mobile phone in real life circumstances, the standby time could be considerably lower and will be strongly dependent on the factors such as, but not limited to, network, settings, location, movement, signal strength and data traffic".

/mr.obvious mode ;)
 
sarge78 said:
Yep, those times are complete fabrications, official HTC figures too. Why not go the full hog and say 1000 million years standby!!! :D

Best time I've seen on a smartphone is ~200 hours with a 1st gen iPhone.
Click to expand...

my 2g iphone still manages that, well over a week if i dont use it
 
I was getting less than a day (around 18h IIRC) on my Desire from a full charge, and that's when I wasn't using it much.

Then again, I don't find the iP4 much better - 24-36h depending on usage.

Still, for utterly misleading you have to admire Vauxhall's 100,000 mile "lifetime" warranty. I think my brain had a massive syntax error when I first read it!
 
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