My 2nd trip with the Droid. Battery life an issue.

[wil318466]

Well, lets start with the good. The Droid is a beast when travelling. You can find resturaunts, GPS is a godsend, and the email and all that good stuff is just great to have while not being in your hometown. Between "Where" and "Aloqa", I can find pretty much every good resturaunt/place to hang out in the area of whereever you are. My whole group pretty much started relying on my phone. "look for a good place with your phone, Wil". Reading the yelp reviews and all that was very handy, and wound up making our decisions.

Now, the bad. There really isnt' much bad, except for battery life. It was constantly an issue under heavy usage. I had it at 100% at 8am, and by 10:30am with heavy usage (Internet, email, constant texting) for 2.5 hours straight, the phone pretty much died.

It was a constant battle to keep battery life going. You can drain the battery in 2-3 hours, but it takes 2-3 to charge it back to full. Its not easy to keep some juice in the phone under HEAVY usage. I know, I know, some of you say the battery life is fine, some even say its good. Its not. If you use your phone lightly, it WILL last a while, at least 8-10 hours. If you use it heavy, it WILL drain pretty quickly. Remember, I was texting, emailing, and on Nimbuzz all at the same time and very constant.

The solution has to be to carry an extra battery. I ordered two more and a stand alone charger so I should be fine in the future, but I just wanted to throw that out there so that when people are on business trips they realize they should keep the backup on them. They will need it.

Also, when charging, it seems that if you are using it while charging, its pretty much staying where its at. So, if you really want to make some progress on the charging portion, plug it in, turn off the screen and let it charge up. If you use it while charging it will take quite a while to get a full charge.

But, like I've said before, the phone really is a godsend. Music through the TV in my hotel room with an AUX cable. Music in the car with the AUX cable. GPS. Resturaunt reviews. Everything you need in your pocket. Just keep an eye on the juice, and you're good. Hopefully something will come out that will help with the battery issue (which isn't an issue to everyone, I know).


-Wil

[Guchi]

get a zagg sparq

[wil318466]

get a zagg sparq

Seems like a good idea, but its 100 bucks. I've spent quite a bit on this phone already, dropping another hundred is kind of annoying. I guess I can look at it differently since the Sparq will charge multiple devices, and I can use it again with a different phone in the future.

The real issue is portability. I don't want a brick in my pocket. I think I'll just try the extra batteries for a while. If that doesn't work, the Sparq might get a run.

-Wil

[Fraxinus]

I've sort of wondered about this as I'll be doing my first travel with the Droid shortly. I've had good luck with battery life under normal (read light) usage during an average day. However, I'm picturing boarding a plane with less than 100%, watching a movie, and arriving with a dead Droid. One thing I will say, I have an iGo charger and I plan on bringing it with me for in-car recharging and GPS turn-by-turn use.

[MrCapcom]

Yea I notice my phone dies kinda quick when its "the phone" when going out with fam and people who don't have a smartphone. But I just have a usb charger on me at all times (just the cable) and I have the car charger so it works out. I thought energizer had something that was like microusb (w/e our port is) to a kinda of double A dock and we can just charge off of batteries or w/e

[darreno1]

Seems to me your issue could be because of a bad battery as well. I say that because I often use mine heavily doing the same things and usually make it through the work day. 2.5 hours seem awfully short for what you're describing. How long does it last with light to normal usage?

[christim]

I killed mine in less than an hour in the car with GPS. For longer trips or hevy hitting days the best solution is to plug in often if you can if you don't have a spare battery.

If you are traveling and watching a movie on it....and plug it into a laptop that is not plugged into anything, will it charge?

Often times we'll grab wall outlets in airports in between flights.

Then again, a couple spare batteries might just be easier.

[darreno1]

When I use the GPS I keep it plugged into the car charger. The charger was from my Palm pre and it must put out a good charge because my phone charges even while the Navigation is up and running. The cheapo charger I bought off ebay just could not keep up.

[psujames41]

The DROID is a must have on a trip. I recently traveled to Vermont from PA for a graduate school interview at UVM (I've since been accepted!!!). I used my TomTom to get me there and it worked great- up until I had to board a ferry to get from NY state to VT. A lot of them were closed due to ice, so I hopped online with my DROID, got the ferry schedules, clicked on the closest one that was open, and navigated there using google nav. Absolutely perfect- DROID came in handy when I needed it the most!

[Aluminum21]

when I was in NYC I was using the phones constantly. I was using google maps and directions a lot and always on the browser and using apps like where, yellow papages.... at the end of the day the phone would always be at 10-15% max. I thought the battery was damn good seeing how much I would use every day.