[Tilt, TyTN II, MDA Vario III General] BusterTyTN:
This thread refers to cases where the HTC Kaiser (and probably other HTC phone models with the same built-in GPS chip, such as Polaris) sucks the battery empty within a single day, particularly during standby, particularly if all features of the phone are DISABLED, or after low usage. Another symptom may be a phone which unexpectedly did not come back to life, but operated normally after recharging. Yet another symptom is unusually short battery life through normal use. Note, this thread is

not

about limited battery endurance due to heavy usage.

*** Battery drain FAQ ***

How can I see whether my Kaiser is affected?

- A large percentage of HTC phones with Qualcomm chipset and internal GPS seems to suffer from the bug described here, some appear to be robust enough, likely depending on chip revisions. If you never ever use GPS, you are probably out of risk. If you use GPS at least occasionally, you should have a look at your phone, and closely. It is possible that an otherwise normal to heavy use of the phone conceals a basic, added current consumption which is what we are talking about here. In such a situation you may have got used to a certain battery endurance, which may be much higher under normal circumstances. So far I observed currents between 28 and 78 mA, depending on DUT and OS. Some users reported currents in excess of 100mA. Note, this added current does nothing for you, except accelerate your battery drain!

How to check this?

- Check the true standby current (see the following description). That simple.

How to measure the standby current?

- Clean up: switch all phone features off (GPS, Phone, Bluetooth, Media Player, really everything). Terminate all applications, use Task Manager to verify this. Make sure no processor intensive background tasks are running (standard installations should meet this requirement). Do NOT soft reset at this point!

- Put the phone in standby, and wait approx. 10 seconds. The phone needs a while to complete entering the standby though it appears to be off immediately.

- Now measure the current. Best and fastest way of doing it would be to have a current meter connected between your battery and your phone which gives you realtime readouts. Second to that is a suitable battery tool, such as "BatteryStatus", but you have to get used to the delayed current display (see post #4 for details). Using the software battery gauge, you should wait an additional 20 seconds or so to allow for the current capture, then reactivate from standby and take the lowest possible current readout.

- If the phone is in a good condition, the standby current must be in the range 1..3 mA, roughly. If you see a repeatable current well in excess of 20mA, your phone is in the BAD condition !!

- Another simple method is to leave the cleaned up phone in standby overnight. Next morning, soft reset your phone because the phone may have lost track of the battery capacity. Check whether the capacity dropped dramatically. And also check whether the phone feels warm to the touch.

How to reproduce the problem?

- Activate GPS until you get a fix. Probably receiving the first NMEA strings is good enough, but I have not verified this. GPSTest, HTC's GPS Tool or any navigation software does the job.

- Deactivate GPS. Just to be safe, terminate the GPS software, too.

- Check the standby current.

- The fault does not pop up always, so you may have to repeat these steps several times until it appears. The phones I tested usually catch fever after only one or two tries, but it is possible that you need to cycle through this procedure 5 or 10 times. Which is in the nature of intermittent bugs.

How to reset this nasty condition?

- Fault recovery is possible by continued on/off cycling of the GPS unit, similar to what provoked this fault.

- Activating the cellphone unit does also seem to cause the phone to return to a low consumption, but maybe not in all cases.

- Try to soft reset your phone, or to cycle the power to the phone (long press of the power button).

- If you really cannot get rid of the problem, back up your phone data, then execute a hard reset. BEFORE restoring the phone, load a battery gauge software and see whether the consumption is gone. If yes, some application is likely to cause your headaches.

After performing one of the above steps you may repeat the described current measurement, to confirm that the standby current is back in the normal range.

***********************

Original text:

I have reason to believe that all Kaiser models are prone to the "excessive standby current consumption" problem. I tried it on two original "VPA compact V" by Vodafone (= HTC Kaiser), using the original WM6, ROM 1.56.162.5, Radio 1.27.12.11. I gave a **** on warranty now, stepped up through HardSPL to "Duttys_Official_WM6.1_Rom_5.2.19716_UC.zip", Radio 1.64.08.21. The results are all the same: an excessive current consumption which can vary between 25 and 75 mA. Interestingly, the current is always the same in a specific setup, but varies between phones and operating systems. In the latest case, the same phone took 28mA under WM6, went up to 78mA under WM61. Consequence being, the battery will be sucked empty within a day or so, without obvious reason. The only mitigation is a reset, or a complete switch-off.

There is no application which could cause the current consumption, at least none I installed. It does not even matter which GPS application you used. The only active processes are (according to TaskManager, latest WM6.1 version, ".exe" omitted for the sake of ease): filesys, device, biotouch, gwes, shell32, cprog, services, quickdial, connmgr, mediahubmini, taskmgr, htcactionscreen, sapsettings, aplauncher, quickmenu, nk. I repeat: ALL applications properly terminated, ALL internal units are OFF (WLAN, Bluetooth, Phone, GPRS, GPS, Camera, Media Player etc. - really NOTHING).

Before anybody prematurely states that these findings can not be reproduced: the problem is unlikely to appear if you switch on the GPS for a couple of NMEA strings, then off again (though it did already). If need be, you have to leave it on for a while, play a bit, walk around a bit and so on. Take your time testing it _thoroughly_, really. I cannot tell when the fault actually appears, and it may not come up immediately because it seems somewhat sporadic in nature - but take my word, it will, I observed this issue for a long enough time. I can only repeat myself: I am sure there is something wrong with the power management in the GPS driver.

Anybody, feel free to contribute, but PLEASE avoid funny statements like "you have to shut down all programs", "WLAN can take up lots of energy" and so on. And before you express doubts just because there are not quite many people out there who come to the same conclusions, think again. Without going into details, most users are simply not in the position to come to the correct conclusions.

BusterTyTN