Droid X battery problems discovered!!!!!!!

[aminaked]

The question I have, is how is his display % use so low? Mine is usually at about 75% or so. I have my backlight set to 40%.

I am getting about 15 hrs battery life on mine, with or without GPS enabled.

I bet I could probably get 25 hours if I set my backlight down to 5%. The display it what is using my battery.

What kind of phone do you have?

I'm guessing to achieve those percentages he was on the phone quite a bit and didn't use it for much else.

[stryguy]

Yeah I was on the phone a lot so the display was off a lot.

Unfortunately I believe the "display" category is a catch all for a lot of battery use though. If you get "System Panel" (app from appstore) and let it run for 1 charge cycle you'll see what really uses your battery.

I leave my display on Auto. I can't say I sit and stare at my display for hours on end but I'm also not afraid to turn my phone on to see what the weather will be or type that text message back to the wife about when I'll be home from work. I spend my lunch cruising the appstore for free games and crap to good around with.

And if that "what kind of phone" question was to me.. that was the Droid X.

[aminaked]

I was asking wmscottmc what kind of phone he has.

As for you, stryguy, do you normally leave GPS toggled OFF??????

[stryguy]

Yes, after some testing on my wife's phone I found the same issue that this thread is referring to. Unless you manually toggle the GPS off it eats your battery even though the icon on the task bar shows it's not in use.

Other then the few times I've used the turn by turn navigation in Google Maps I've never had a reason to turn GPS on.

[wmscottmc]

I was asking wmscottmc what kind of phone he has.

As for you, stryguy, do you normally leave GPS toggled OFF??????

Droid X .....

[aminaked]

Yes, after some testing on my wife's phone I found the same issue that this thread is referring to. Unless you manually toggle the GPS off it eats your battery even though the icon on the task bar shows it's not in use.

Other then the few times I've used the turn by turn navigation in Google Maps I've never had a reason to turn GPS on.

OK, cool, that's what I was getting at. I guess this kinda seals the deal for me then. Right now, GPS should be turned off on the droid x. After the 2.2 update, we'll probably be able to turn it back on.

You see, I think that GPS, wifi, etc. is meant to be left on. In the case of GPS, it doesn't use any juice if it isn't actively being used by an app or widget. In the case of wifi, you want to use it whenever it's available because it uses less juice than 3G.

[aminaked]

The question I have, is how is his display % use so low? Mine is usually at about 75% or so. I have my backlight set to 40%.

I am getting about 15 hrs battery life on mine, with or without GPS enabled.

I bet I could probably get 25 hours if I set my backlight down to 5%. The display it what is using my battery.

As stryguy mentions, display may be a catchall. And if the droid x gps bug is real, what it does is not let your phone sleep...thereby, theoretically, leaving the display on. You might want to try leaving gps off for now...although 15 hours is pretty good. If you don't have any apps/widgets that turn on GPS throughout the day, then turning GPS off wouldn't help you.

[stryguy]

OK, cool, that's what I was getting at. I guess this kinda seals the deal for me then. Right now, GPS should be turned off on the droid x. After the 2.2 update, we'll probably be able to turn it back on.

You see, I think that GPS, wifi, etc. is meant to be left on. In the case of GPS, it doesn't use any juice if it isn't actively being used by an app or widget. In the case of wifi, you want to use it whenever it's available because it uses less juice than 3G.

I'm in complete agreement with you. It just makes sense this would be the case.

[plumcrazy]

i leave GPS off unless i need to use it and have this same issue.

[aminaked]

i leave GPS off unless i need to use it and have this same issue.

GPS is only one way to cause this problem. For example, recently the facebook app was causing it but I believe they updated it. If you leave gps off and still have bad battery life on the x, it might be one of your apps. Maybe get spare parts and try to pinpoint it.

Also, it's possible that you may need to toggle GPS on and off more than once when you're done using it to let the phone sleep again. I think I saw someone mention that in another forum. ACTUALLY, I THINK I'M WRONG ABOUT THIS, BUT HERE'S A WORKAROUND FOUND ON ANOTHER FORUM:

I've been playing with Tasker a bit and created a few scenarios. I set a few applications that when launched will toggle the GPS on. Apps like Maps, Navigation, Camera, Foursquare, etc. I set an exit task that toggles the GPS back off once the application is exited. So far so so good using this method. It's not a perfect solutions, but if you have Tasker or Locale or a similar program try setting something like this up and report back with your results.

Yet another problem may stem from activating the phone. For example, when I activated it gave an error. I didn't think much of it because the phone worked fine. Then I noticed "Cell standby" was taking up a lot of power. I tried calling *228 and used option 1 to activate. It worked and battery seemed to get better. I've also read that you should call *228 (every month?) and choose option 2 to update your phone.