If you recently purchased an HTC One S for T-Mobile, congratulations – you’ve got one of the best Android phones available in the US at the moment. But as is usually the case with high-profile phone releases, there’s at least one fly in the ointment. T-Mobile’s unique WiFi calling service is included on their version of the One S to save picky customers from using up their calling minutes. But it looks like this feature is draining the battery unusually fast, and at least some T-Mobile customers must have already complained.

Not to worry, though: Magenta has a fool-proof solution to keep your One S from losing power: charge it while you’re making Wifi calls. Yes, really. For a more permanent solution, the carrier says that the problem will be addressed in a future software update. Which, you know, helps. In the meantime, calls via Skype and similar VOIP services seem to work fine, though the charges therein aren’t included in your T-Mobile subscription.

The One S normally gets pretty solid battery life, thanks to a slightly larger than average 1650mAh battery and the solid power management properties of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon S4. I’m no expert, but if there’s an issue here’s it’s probably got something to do with the wireless chipset opening up more bandwidth (and thus battery drain) than is strictly necessary for WiFi calling. It could also be something unique to T-Mobile’s app, perhaps communicating poorly with the One S hardware, Ice Cream Sandwich or Sense 4.0, none of which appeared on T-Mobile before the One S. We’ll be eagerly waiting more specifics from either T-Mobile or HTC.

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[via Android Central]

8 COMMENTS

  1. Are you sure that WiFi calling saves minutes? Seems like it only gets me a signal to call out or text if I’m in a dead zone.

    • It does if you call t-mobile and tell them to flip the wifi calling switch. .. or tell them u get crappy service in your house. they’ll do it for free. and then you won’t incur minutes.

  2. I’ve had this phone for about two weeks, and the battery life is terrible. Coming from a Blackberry, I thought this was just how all android phones worked, but when comparing it to other android phones, the battery drains significantly faster, even with wifi off. I’m definitely getting this checked out over the weekend.

  3. I’ve had the phone for a lil over 2 weeks (just out of my buyers remorse period, and there is a lot of remorse…) The battery life is horrible. The wifi calling issue (snap, crackle & pops during calls while connected to wifi) is pissing me off, besides the WiFi calling draining the piss out of the battery. There are graffix issues. The screen freezes, and the three buttons located at the bottom of the phone freeze. Not to mention, almost ***EVERY*** HTC One S sold has come with a “Tampered”/”Locked” bootloader. The how multi-tasking & ram is used on the phone is also odd. Can’t believe I sold my SGS2 for this.

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