Understanding Battery Life...

[andjarnic]

You both need to return and get it replaced. They sound defective. I had issues with my first phone.. it kept getting stuck in sleep mode, I would have to remove the battery to get it to come back on. My replacement works just fine. For some reason, perhaps it's just us on this forum, but it seems a lot of people have had faulty phones. I don't know if Moto rushed to get this out before google/whoever released phones or what, and I am sure they wont ever acknowledge if there is like a 20% return rate on bad phones.. but it sure seems to me there have been a lot of moto droid problems with devices doing strange things. I would definitely return your phones and get new ones.

[mikes]

I quickly went to the battery usage page and it, of course, said no usage since last power up and that the battery charge was only at 5% ...

I've noticed that, for some reason, the battery usage page doesn't always automatically update every time you go into it. Hit menu, then refresh to make sure it's current.

[MastiffMom]

I work nights so I went to bed after I posted these. When I woke up, my phone was fully charged and working fine. Sigh. Hopefully now I can remain a happy Droid Mommy.

[silentlyloud]

In past experience, When you've had the device a wile and you notice that you arent getting the same amount of time on the phone like you used to and you want to keep a longer lasting charge, let the battery run down to its last 5-15% life and then charge from there. even tho the device is showing X% of life left, experience has shown that once you start to charge the battery's, they start to reset and want to charge from 0 life. whether its an internal battery or removable, this hypothesis has been proven useful.

In other words, At the end of the night, when you go to charge your device's battery, run it down as much as possible.

[SSHGuru]

Not with a L-Ion like we have - no memory so it doesnt matter at all.

In past experience, When you've had the device a wile and you notice that you arent getting the same amount of time on the phone like you used to and you want to keep a longer lasting charge, let the battery run down to its last 5-15% life and then charge from there. even tho the device is showing X% of life left, experience has shown that once you start to charge the battery's, they start to reset and want to charge from 0 life. whether its an internal battery or removable, this hypothesis has been proven useful.

In other words, At the end of the night, when you go to charge your device's battery, run it down as much as possible.

[STIDRIVER]

Can anyone confirm the whole 3g vs Wi-fi in a poor coverage zone?? I purchased the Network Extender for the apartment, but that doesn't work for 3g. So, if my phone is searching for 3G while at home, that could be a culprit for battery drain. Not sure that you could make the phone not search for 3G... but if I could and just put it on wi-fi, I could see that helping.... Any thoughts? FYI, I don't use the Droid for the net at home (unless I'm feeling REALLY lazy), so I wouldn't be apposed to turning mobile access off.. but I guess that bites you too because a lot of apps use it..

[Sweettooth]

This may be a little off-topic but given the Droid has a lot of different capabilities one could say it has the potential to be vital it's functional. Therefore, shouldn't there be an option for an audible notification the battery is almost fully discharged?

The light is fine if you're looking but say I'm waiting on an important work email with the phone in my pocket or maybe just sleeping while waiting for a call/text about something to do on the weekend and the phone dies. Personally I'd like it to play "Daisy" that the HAL 9000 sings in 2001: A Space Odyssey as he's being powered down. :-)

[andjarnic]

@STIDRIVER,

If you put your phone in wifi mode, and it finds a wifi connection, it does NOT try to find 3G. It doesn't use both wifi and 3G at the same time. It will switch to 3G when no wifi that it knows how to connect to is available. If I were you, I'd leave it on wifi at home. After all, you presumably have a charger that if you were worried about drain, could plug it in to keep it charged.

I am baffled about the battery drain issue. I leave my phone off the charger all day, at home, it's on wifi, I develop for Android so am using it constantly to test apps, etc. My battery lasts all day UNLESS I leave a beefy app like gmaps with screen on running, where it might very well drain the battery due to constantly updating/pulling data down, etc.

[STIDRIVER]

^^^ Thx.. I'll give it a try... I didn't know wi-fi would make your phone not search for 3G.. I'm still screwed at work (no wi-fi or 3G), but this'll at least help at home...

[steveparker]

There is still battery problems are face any type of cell phones.