Fix battery issues on HTC Desire 601 since software update 4.4.2

I’ve had an HTC Desire 601 for a few months now and have generally been very happy with it. Generally the battery has lasted about 30 hours with minimal use, but last week HTC released a software update which meant battery the battery life went to about 6 hours without me even using it!

I was starting to consider installing Cyanogen in the hope that it would reduce the amount of bloat running in the background and therefore improve battery life. However after trawling various sites and forums I found a much simpler, less scary solution that doesn’t even involve a factory reset so you don’t lose any of your apps or data (although the usual backside-covering disclaimers apply — all advice on this blog comes without warranty and you follow this entirely at your own risk).

This guide is based on a forum post on a similar issue for the HTC One (thanks to "padlnjones" for this). I’ve modified the instructions slightly to make them a bit more complete and hopefully to make the information easier to find in future.

  1. Go to Settings > scroll down and go to Power, then scroll to the bottom and disable Fast-boot mode.
  2. Power the phone off.
  3. Press and hold the volume down button and then while still holding volume down, press the power button as well.
    You will get a menu giving you options such as: 'Fastboot', 'Recovery', 'Clear Storage' etc.
  4. Navigate to 'Recovery' using volume buttons, then press the power button to select.
    Momentarily it will change to an image of a phone with a red triangle and exclamation mark.
  5. Press and hold volume up then press the power button for about 3 seconds then let go.
    A new screen will give you options like 'reboot system now', 'wipe cache partition', 'wipe data/factory reset' etc.
  6. Navigate to 'wipe cache partition' the volume buttons and select with the power button.
  7. Once the operation is complete, navigate to 'reboot system now' with the volume buttons and select with the power button.
  8. When the phone has booted back to normal, go to Settings > Power and re-enable Fast-boot.

Aside — by the way I do actually like the tweaks and refinements added by the software update, especially the ability to turn off the slightly pointless extra HTC “blinkfeed” home screen.

Comments

This is awesome, I was getting ready to chuck my phone in a lake. Your instructions were spot on and easy to follow.

Much Obliged,

Kyle

Roxanne - Tue, 25/11/2014 - 11:43

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This morning the battery was 98% and in 3 hours it drained to 60%. I did this procedure about an hour ago and it hasn't drained that much since then. Do you think it might be necessary to repeat the steps if the draining will start again?

Thanks!

Anonymous - Wed, 26/11/2014 - 20:04

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Thank you - quick, easy solution that worked! Think the battery life is better than when I first got my phone.

I can't believe it ! My battery would last like 5h hours and now it's gone totally back to normal! Thank you sooo much

Battery drain was really annoying on basically new phone...
But this tip solved the problem...simple, easy and quick...
Thank you so much...

Cheers, was just about to attack phone with a mallet, often charging it 3 times a day. All is good now. Great tip, easy to follow instructions

Long term my 601 reverts back to its less than 'desirable' state and has now gone into a useless loop. If the data you store on your mobile is valuable, replace the 601!

Reed McLay - Sun, 01/03/2015 - 17:34

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One of the buy decision for the Desire 601 is the replaceable battery. After loosing it half way through the day, went shopping for a new battery.
In the process, found and followed the directions... Hope to be thrilled.

I too had major problems my phone battery, it was drained in a couple of hours,
but the strange thing was that the android system used about 90% of the battery.
I followed these steps and I hope it works.

Steve Lam - Tue, 24/03/2015 - 23:21

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I did this and it still doesn't work. I bought a new battery, and it got even worse.

I tried the solution above and it worked for a while but after about 2 weeks I was back to square one.

This is the solution I got after contacting HTC Support Centre.
According to them you have to reset the battery memory. The solution above only clears the cache and cookies.

Their solution is as follows.
1. Turn off the phone.
2. Plug in the phone using the charger provided with the phone.
3. Press and hold Volume Up, Volume Down and Power buttons simultaneously.
Hold all three for two or 3 minutes. The phone will light, vibrate and reboot several times.
4. Unplug the phone, restart it and then use as normal until the battery is completely drained.
5. Plug in and fully recharge the phone.
6 Monitor battery performance.

Hope that helps.

I have this same problem more than 1 year I tried all solution from google ;/ .After this method my phone worked 4 days on battery, but problem back. Battery using is around 20% / hour. Localization options are disabled, power saving enabled. Nothing helps...Even a new battery.
It's seems this problem is connected with 4.4.2 upgrade. Did someone tray reset mobile to factory settings and don't upgrade again to Android ver 4.4.2?

HTC USER - Sun, 10/05/2015 - 18:33

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Doing this made by battery life worse. It went from one day to 5 hours. I left it on my desk with a full charge and the Wifi and Bluetooth on, and didn't touch it. It went dead in 5 hours whereas it would have lasted until the next day before.

Looked easy to do... hope it resolves the issue.

My HTC 601 for the last few weeks has been draining ridiculously fast - and I'm tethered to a charger at work, in the car, and then at home. It was going from 100% to 0% in about 5 hours. . .somewhere around 5% gone every 15 minutes or so - so I am CAUTIOUSLY (but very optimistically) saying that I just performed this little trick and the phone has now gone down only 3% in the last hour. THANK YOU SO MUCH! :-)

This method works but has to be repeated at variable intervals as the phone will revert to high battery drain eventually. Sometimes a few days, sometimes a few weeks. Seems to be dependent on updates and notifications being sent to the device - especially if updates do not install automatically or some app(s) send notifications which hang around waiting to be acknowledged or cancelled (AVG seems to be a major culprit, with "PRO" notifications etc., along with existing apps which request new permissions before they will install). The cause still seems to be Google Play Services which is now too stupid to go to sleep if there are notifications like this in its cache ... and, after that, simply seems to forget HOW to go to sleep even after those notifications have been acted upon and removed from cache.

Google is to blame for this !! Making it easier for its app providers to nag users and thereby costing users valuable battery time. Google should fix this in favour of users ... but I'm not holding my breath for that to happen !! It's clear that Google has no concern for its users at all ... and moves away from being user-friendly more and more every day while pushing ahead madly with newer and newer versions of Android with dubious "benefits".

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