Battery Life

[keiichi25]

I've tried numerous things. This battery life is worse than the BB Storm. I had read reviews where it was better?

Oh well......luckily chargers at work, home and car.

Uhm, I would re-check those reviews and also do inquiries on how they came to that conclusion.

As an actual BB Storm user, I can eek out maybe 4 to 5 days before I need to recharge the Storm, but then again, I have it at a much more minimal use and I also use the Auto On/Off feature on it to conserve battery power. The Droid, I can go through most of the day with semi-regular activity, but I charge it every night.

[Skyecat]

I have had my new Droid since Saturday 11/28. I have been reading everything I can and setting my options to the best possible while still being useful for saving the battery. I unplugged @ 6:32 am today and have my Bluetooth running, have made 36m worth of voice calls. Had my email being checked every 15m on a single account. Received 3 text messages and sent 2. No web browsing and no game playing. Goggle Talk, Android Keyboard, Corp. Calendar (which I have killed) and bluetooth updating service is all that is running per the app manager in the settings tab. GPS and WiFi are turned off. Screen brightness is at just under 25%. My battery is now @ 40%. Battery usage states that 56% of what has killed my battery so far is the paltry 36m worth of voice calls (this was only 2 different calls by the way). Correct me if I am wrong, but shouldn't I be getting better results then this? Someone did mention that they were able to get a new battery under warranty...is this something I should consider? Someone also stated that they simply returned the entire phone for a new one. Anyone think I should do that or just wait it out? I understand I will not get the 3-5 days that I got out of my regular phone, but, using almost 1/4 of the battery to talk for 36m is kinda ridiculous. Thanks for any help/suggestion ahead of time

[TommyGrubz]

:

I don't think leaving your phone plugged into the charge will fry your battery. It used to be that way but I think the chargers are 'smart' now and automatically shut down when the battery is completely charged.

If you say so... just remember the freezer trick I mentioned when your battery stops holding its charge

Anyways, instead of leaving it plugged in all the time, why not just charge it when it gets low?

[jltung]

Battery Life
Battery Life is a major problem for a lot of people. I think it comes in 4 different packages:

1: Battery : Do you drain the battery to zero or never let it drain down

completely ? I do not know the definitive answer. It depends

on who you believe and personal experience. I have not tried to

drain the battery yet.

2. Charger : Many people who have bought after market chargers have had

interesting experiences from auto phone calls and emails made in

sleep time to discharging while plugged in etc. I have several

after market chargers, some work and some do not.

3. Killer Apps : I believe they are helpful although they also drain battery.

Some people feel that the LINUX system auto shuts down

unused programs. I am not sure.

I think TasKiller and Adv Task Killer work but use more battery.

I personally use Adv Task Manager and find it works well for me

4. Usage : Of course the biggest drain is usage. Any battery no matter how

good will drain with heavy usage. i.e. game playing, listening to

music, gps, bluetooth, wifi etc. The main drain is how long is the

screen on.

Conclusions: 1. Battery: defective ? Replace. Drain or not drain ???

2. Charger: defective ? Dispose

3. Killer apps: Do you need them ? I like Adv Task Management

4. Usage: Review usage in Settings/ App - Spare Parts

Modify especially in areas of low coverage. A lot of

the programs kick in automatically and if your

coverage is not good it continues to search and

uses battery. That is what the Killer apps do.


Originally Posted by sooper_droid12
Lithium ion batteries should NEVER be allowed to discharge or reach a low level of charge and then fully charged (i.e. full cycle charges). A friend of mine has his mind set on the fact that you need to fully discharge a battery and charge it to full to maintain its longevity. The opposite though is true: 1) Each battery has a finite number of charge/discharge cycles so no matter what, every batterywill eventually decline and die (i.e. these batteries do not have memory); 2) Several partial discharges with frequent recharges are favorable over one deep one; 3) Since our batteries are being measured by a gauge, 1 full discharge in 30 will keep the battery's circuitry calibrated with the gauge.

These are just some tips. Again, no battery is going to last forever and typical life for Li-ion batteries are 2-3 years. And don't bother getting a spare battery, unless you're one of those users who just blasts through batteries.
Agreed, I always have people telling me to discharge fully, don't overcharge, etc... and I always have to go on with this story.

The batteries that benefit from this type of charging and discharging are NiCd and NiMH cells; which were once very popular until lithium-ion technology came along. Lithium-ion does not have this "memory" effect and does not benefit from fully discharging, conversely, it looses capacity in these discharges.

Lithium-ion (or lithium-ion polymer) degrades based on the amount of "charging cycles" that it undergoes; each full charge (0->100%) counts as one full cycle. So, as sooper said partial discharges are more favorable over full discharges as they only count as a fraction of a full charge cycle.

As for the charging overnight, modern charges, phones, and batteries all include circuitry to prevent thebattery from being overcharged. You should be fine leaving it plugged in overnight.

[moosc]

depending on use i get any where from 6 hours which is good to whooping 10.25 hours that was my best but i wasnt using it a whole lot. my biggest pet peeve im tired of reading about is charging cable there is no difference in the charging cable they ALL are micro USB cables nothing fancy just plain simple micro usb. which by the way is going to be the norm over in Europe they have all ready signed a pack for a all new phones to be micro usb heck even the mighty apple iphone is going micro usb. so stop complaining about the dang cable. double check your droid when in you place it in the dock make sure its seated look at the dang icon for the bolt. i dont even use the stock bedside app that is on the droid i downloaded the bedside it does everything minus weather but shows the battery icon.

[Backnblack]

my biggest pet peeve im tired of reading about is charging cable there is no difference in the charging cable they ALL are micro USB cables nothing fancy just plain simple micro usb.

it's not the cable, it's the power supplied by said cable....

[richelesro]

Is there a way to find out how much power is being supplied to the phone? I have three car chargers and none of them seem to be the quick-charge type, although they all state 850mA.

[passleft49]

so, my battery doesn't last but for maybe 5 hours...today when i got to work i noticed that at the top there was a little satellite looking thing, i don't know what it was and i didn't know how to turn it off...i just now got the advanced task killer and turned a bunch of stuff off and it's gone, i looked at where my battery usage had gone and 80% of it was the browser...i'm not sure what happened but now i have to go all the way until 7:00 after basketball practice is over without my droid! someone please tell me what i'm doing wrong.

[brewbart]

so, my battery doesn't last but for maybe 5 hours...today when i got to work i noticed that at the top there was a little satellite looking thing, i don't know what it was and i didn't know how to turn it off...i just now got the advanced task killer and turned a bunch of stuff off and it's gone, i looked at where my battery usage had gone and 80% of it was the browser...i'm not sure what happened but now i have to go all the way until 7:00 after basketball practice is over without my droid! someone please tell me what i'm doing wrong.

The little satellite icon is your GPS working on finding your location. I had the same problem with the browser draining my battery. All I did was make sure that after I am done with the phone I use Advanced task killer to kill all the apps and then put the phone to sleep. It has increased my battery life about double which while isn't much is better then nothing...

[diverbelow]

I went back to 2.0.1 stock yesterday, and I installed Google Sky as it is a very interesting app. Well, I thought I exit out of GS, then I noticed couple hours later, my Droid was flashing the red light (it was already at 20%, and when I opened up GS, it was at 60%).