"dialer" is being a battery hog

[ethanw]

Looks like my earlier post didn't work or something, so here it is again. I've been having the issue with the dialer using a seemingly abnormal amount of power. I did a quick test. Yesterday I went all day without making or receiving any calls. I used the phone lightly otherwise: GPS for a couple minutes, texting, posting a couple pics to Evernote, etc. The dialer never showed up under battery usage. Today I made a five second call right away in the morning. "dialer" quickly showed up as using 2% battery. Without doing anything with the phone, the dialer continued to use a larger and larger percentage of the battery, maxing out at 17%. When I used the phone for something else, the apps started to catch up in the battery % list, but as soon as I was done with them, the dialer started going up in % again. My problem isn't as bad as some I've heard of though. My battery went from 100% to 53% in 9.5 hours yesterday. Today it took around 7 hours to drain that far. One day isn't a great sample, but it looks like there is an actual effect on overall battery life. I'm losing a few hours by the time the day is done.

I'll do more testing, but I was wondering if any of you TB users have had, and corrected this problem. Maybe with a third party dialer app, or fast reboot type app. Are there a lot of TB users with this problem?

I didn't try a factory reset because I've read other places that for other phones it didn't work. Of course it's possible that it will work for me, so I may go for it. I did try turning off dialing assist, pocket mode, flip for speaker, and quiet on pick up. I am stock GB. I'm not sure if this started with GB or not. I just noticed it three days ago.

 

[ethanw]

no one else with this? Maybe I should exchange the phone.

 

[chris8679]

Dialer App Killing Battery

I have the same problem, today the Dialer app has used 41% phone is almost dead after approx. 14 hours of up time. Not that 14 plus hours is a terrible battery life, however, how long could i use the phone without this d@mn dialer app. Turned off assisted dialing, worked for a few weeks then right back to almost half battery being used by dialer. HELP!!

 

[ethanw]

From HTC

"I'm sorry to hear about the issue you are having with your HTC Thunderbolt's dialer consuming excessive amounts of power. We will do our best to troubleshoot this with you to see if a solution or workaround can be found. If not, we can look further into escalating this.

The first thing we would like you to try, Ethan, is toggling Bluetooth on/off. Navigate to menu> settings> wireless&networks> and see if enabling or disabling Bluetooth changes the issue at all.

Another area to check is in menu> settings> sound> flip for speaker. Try disabling or enabling this option as the case may be to see if the Dialer still continues running in the background. Since the issue appears to be related to the sensor, perhaps toggling the items that use the sensor will correct this issue.

Also, if you have a protective case on your phone please remove it. In some instances the cases may cover the proximity sensor on the phone causing it to behave erratically. Temporarily remove the case if you have one to see if the issue is affected at all.

Also verify your phone for a third party task killer. Task killer apps are known to interfere with the proper functionality of the Sense User Interface used on most HTC android devices. If you have any third party task killers, please uninstall them immediately.

After performing any of the above changes, please ensure that you also soft reset the device. This is done by powering off, remove the battery for at least 30 seconds, replace and restart. This will clear the cache and RAM and can alleviate any cumulative system errors that may be residing in the device RAM.

If the issue remains after these steps, we would like you to test the phone in safe mode. Safe mode prevents all third party apps and drivers from launching on boot. You will still be able to make and receive calls, texts, emails, and use the internet. Please avoid launching third party apps or the Market as this will render the test results moot. To enter safe mode on this phone use the following steps :

Power off and remove/replace battery. Power on and as soon as the phone starts to load press and hold Volume Down until the OS loads. The phone should produce one long vibration as it enters safe mode, and Safe Mode text will appear at the bottom left of the screen to let you know it worked. To exit safe mode simply restart the device.

Test the phone like this for a day to see if the situation changes at all or if the issue persists. If the matter continues to happen, please let us know. We will advise you on what we can do to further address this issue. We may want to have the matter transferred to our escalations department, or we may have some additional steps to try first. "

 

[chris8679]

Never turned on blue tooth, have no case for the phone, have no third party task killer apps...the only option is flip for speaker which i will try with infinitesimally small optimism...paid $300 cash for a phone that runs silly apps for no reason and drains battery, I simply do not have the luxury of enough free time to sit around and trouble shoot a phone...HTC should see enough users with the problem, i certainly have in a five minute web search, and resolve the issue for said customers. That being said i will try the flip for speaker OFF option and see if this helps, if not i shall wait for other users to find a solution and just live with it, as i assume people will take action much faster and equally, if not more, qualified than the employees of certain hardware manufacturers....

 

[ethanw]

You can still try the blue tooth toggle. From what I understand, It's not that it happens because you use blue tooth. Supposedly it works because toggling the blue tooth gets the dialer to stop polling the sensor. Apparently it works on some HTC phones. It did not work for me on the Thunderbolt. Flip for speaker did not work for me. One thing that seems to have worked for some people is flip to mute. Unfortunately, the TB does not have that option. I also tried turning off pocket mode and quiet on pick up. They didn't work. The only thing that I've done that helped (other than turning the phone off and then back on) was downloading the "proximity screen off" app (or something close to that name). It kept the dialer down, but used enough juice itself to make it somewhat useless as far as I could tell.

 

[billyberu]

May not work but I was following a thread the other day relating to proximity sensor issues and these issues were resolved by blowing the gap by the earpiece near the proximity sensor with compressed air.seems dust builds up in there.just a thought and good luck.

Sent from my ADR6400L using DroidForums

 

[fitzie]

Evo 4G has same issue.

My HTC Evo 4G has the same issue. I unplugged it around 8:30AM today, and by 10:30AM, it had shut down. Dialer typically takes 50% of battery.

I don't use bluetooth either. Issue seems to materialized after last upgrade a couple of weeks ago. Currently:
Android version: 2.3.5
Baseband version: 2.15.00.12.19
Kernel version: 2.6.35.10-g94d0005
Build number: 5.07.651.1 CL356670 release-keys
Software number: 5.07.651.1 71ORD
Browser version: Webkit/533.1
PRI Version: 2.33_003
PRL Version: 60690

My only complaint before this was all of the crapware that HTC builds into the phone. Crapware that cannot be deleted.