Another battery llife issue..

[Manderson31395]

I know this has been beaten to death but my battery life just sucks

I mean its kinda ridiculous that I cant get anything over 8 hours of battery after having two phone conversations and less than 10 texts.
I've done all the standard stuff (task killers, display, timeout, wifi, bluetooth) but im still getting terrible battery life

When looking at the battery manager the big percentages are:
phone idle 36
cell standby 24
android system 18

I've looked into this and it seems to be whether I'm in bad cell areas, so my question is short of airplane mode, is there any way to make my droid 3 use less battery when in areas of bad service.

Another problem is when on the battery management when the phone is said to be awake and charging the phone loses battery when plugged in.
I'm pretty sure it has to do with a texting thing but if there is any advice please i'm open to it.

Im waiting for the update but I dont think it'll solve all my problems

[pistacio]

Try out the different battery modes which will allow you to turn off data at certain times of day. Might help when your in a bad area.

Settings> battery and data manager> battery mode ( or any of the others in there).

Sent from my DROID3 using DroidForums App

[akhi216]

I know this has been beaten to death but my battery life just sucks

I mean its kinda ridiculous that I cant get anything over 8 hours of battery after having two phone conversations and less than 10 texts.
I've done all the standard stuff (task killers, display, timeout, wifi, bluetooth) but im still getting terrible battery life

When looking at the battery manager the big percentages are:
phone idle 36
cell standby 24
android system 18

I've looked into this and it seems to be whether I'm in bad cell areas, so my question is short of airplane mode, is there any way to make my droid 3 use less battery when in areas of bad service.

Another problem is when on the battery management when the phone is said to be awake and charging the phone loses battery when plugged in.
I'm pretty sure it has to do with a texting thing but if there is any advice please i'm open to it.

Im waiting for the update but I dont think it'll solve all my problems

For the bad signal areas you can try "Signal Booster" from the market.

Sent from my DROID3 using DroidForums

[jonamurphy]

I've done all the standard stuff (task killers ...

I've read a number of posts here stating that task killers may actually cause the phone to work harder rebooting killed apps instead of just letting them idle in memory.

It may be worth it to disable the task killer for a day and see if you notice a difference.

[Manderson31395]

Sorry i didnt mention but all I do is the maximum battery mode in the battery modes thing, i messed around with custom but I went with maximum when I couldnt stand it anymore and it helped a little and I know of the endless start-kills of task managers and i started using task manager after the problem was noticed and the problem is definitely not within one app, its more likely to do with the signal.

And in reference to the signal booster do you mean this one
https://market.android.com/details?id=com.s4bb.signalbooster&feature=search_r esult

or others because there are a lot

[NoBloatware]

Get rid of the task killer, take everything off the auto-end list. Uninstall antivirus, security apps.

Have you switched to CDMA only? Leave roaming on.

[Manderson31395]

Get rid of the task killer, take everything off the auto-end list. Uninstall antivirus, security apps.

Have you switched to CDMA only? Leave roaming on.

all already done, I only had one item in auto-end list but i will remove it

[NoBloatware]

In addition to setting to CDMA only and turning on roaming:

- consider doing a factory reset. Do not sync apps, wifi connections, etc. with Google services as that may cause a problem. Install all apps and wifi connections from scratch. A bit of a pain, but not too bad.- install a home/launcher replacement. I use Go Launcher EX, which is free, and I love it. No reason to try out an alternative launcher as you can always go back to how you had it.

- don't use an automatic task killer--not even the one that comes with the phone. Reboot your phone and look at what's running. If anything that you've installed is running and there's no reason for it, then uninstall it and find an alternative that behaves. Ignore any stock apps that run on boot as I've found them to be more or less benign.

- weather widgets, live wallpapers, news/social feeds, any app or service that you use that runs--do without it if you can.

- don't use antivirus

- the DLNA app pops up a dialog box that will set your WIFI sleep policy to never. The default is "turn off when screen turns off" and I personally think that this setting is the best thing for battery life. Under wifi settings view your connections then hit menu to see "Advanced options" where you can set the sleep policy

- if you have access to wifi, leave it toggled on as it is more efficient than 3G. This is different from the sleep policy.

- I leave GPS toggled on too by the way. Apps use it as needed. When I'm done with Maps or an app that uses it, I'm sure to return to the home screen so GPS can stop. Under wireless settings turn on "Google location services" so that an app is able to use network resources to get your location instead of GPS. I have "VZW location services" turned off--don't know why that option is even there. By the way, I increase the speed of voice output > text to speech > speech rate because I like the directions to get spit out faster. That saves a bit of battery. Turning off the display and just listening for directions help. Also, often I just get the directions and then exit back to the home screen: GPS uses so much battery I try to get it over with ASAP.

- when you get a new battery, do a factory reset, or an OS upgrade run your battery all the way down until the phone shuts off and then charge the battery all the way up. This will callibrate the phone's understanding of the battery's capacity. Do this once every month or two also, but don't do it too often if you can help it.

- I have my battery set to "Performance Mode" and data is on all the time because I am on call 24x7. If you don't mind, try out a more conservative battery profile to save more gobs of energy.

- set screen brightness to "Automatic"

- under Accounts, click on any account listed and turn off sync for any items that you're not interested in syncing. For example, Google Books if you don't use it. Don't use Backup Assistant--I prefer syncing my contacts with Google. You don't need both. Also go into your contacts > menu > display options > backup assistant > UNCHECK. Also do contacts > menu > more > settings > contact storage > and select your Google account and "remember this choice"

- if you never use bluetooth then toggle it off. If you do use it sometimes, it's fine to leave it toggled on all the time.

- consider turning off voice privacy. This may not be a big deal but it will save some processing (and therefore battery). It may also improve call quality.

- turn off haptic feedback, animations, and any un-needed sounds in Android settings and in your apps

- set your screen timeout to as low a time as you can stand (I use 1 minute) and manually turn the screen off when you're done using the phone. I use an app to lock the screen so I don't wear out my power button...as happened on my original droid.

- turn off in-pocket detection

- keyboard: turn off vibrate on keypress and sounds for any keyboards you use

- use a red screen background. On the original Droid screen--not sure about this Droid 3 screen--red was the most efficient color that could be displayed. Anyone know if this still holds true?

- camera app: i like keeping location on and flash on auto. Consider turning location off or at least returning to the home screen ASAP when using camera if location for camera is on.

- in stock browser the default home page is Google and it uses your location. This is a bad idea as it can waste your battery for no reason. Make something else your home page and make sure to close any web page that uses your location when you're done viewing it.

- charge your phone via the wall charger instead of computer USB as it is faster. Also, don't use long USB cords--use regular power extension cords instead. I stick with the charger that came with the phone.

[Manderson31395]

That all makes sense and not to shoot it down but I had a droid 1 and since I've gotten a droid 3 I've been doing most of that stuff and I'll try the little things but the real problem is when I have bad to mediocre service, i guess searching for signal just drains my battery. I really want to know if theres any way to make the phone not search for better service when Im pretty much staying put in the same area of bad service.

Ill do a system restore before the update comes out so I can start from a clean slate and maybe get an extended battery.

At the end of the day, just because my school is in an area of bad service does that mean my phone lasts for 8 hours, thats just wrong.

Thanks for the great feedback though, ill be sure to keep it in mind

[NoBloatware]

Other than updating PRLs (dial *22899) and being sure that roaming is on I'm not sure what else you could do to stop battery drain in a low signal area.

Well, one other idea is to use software that will recognize the low signal area and shut off the radio for certain periods of time. For example, if it sees that you have 1G signal and barely 1 bar of service the software can turn off data for whatever time you specify...say 10 minutes. Unfortunately, I don't know the name of this software but I've seen people discuss it. (try Juice Defender, NoBars Battery Saver)

Hm, do you have good WIFI availability in that low signal area? If so, you could set your WIFI sleep policy to never while you're there so that your phone isn't burning up battery trying to stay connected to Verizon. You could use location-based software (perhaps llama, free from market) to do this automatically.