Understanding Battery Life...

[syntax53]

So I thought I was doing alright with managing my battery life. However, today (my first day at work with the phone) I am in the red with the phone about to die and no micro USB cable nearby. I think I am being plagued by the terrible signal causing battery drain issue as my office is on the basement floor surrounded by cinder blocks, mostly.

The phone has only been on for 7 hours and 44 minutes. It's telling me the display ate up ~65% of my battery life even though it's saying that it has only been on for 1 hours and 13 minutes, and that's with the "automatic brightness" setting on. I've barely done anything with the phone today. No calls, 2 text messages. I did have the GPS on with the only thing using it would be weatherbug tracking my location for the weather once an hour, which hadn't been an issue. The next two items using the most battery power are both "phone idle" and "cell standby" at ~10% each.

I use taskiller to kill running tasks all the time so I'm at a loss. Is there a way to properly re-calibrate the batteries in this? I let the phone die last night (turn itself off) but I don't think that's really doing a calibration because I assume the phone turns off because the battery says so... and if the battery isn't calibrated properly...

[bigthinker]

Hey Droid lovers....I was having issues with my battery life for about a week and then went into the marketplace and bought Advanced Task Killer....WOW, my battery is lasting a greater part of the day now...Where before it was only lasting 2 hours. I use the phone about 6 to 7 hours a day for talking....

I recommend this app for all Droid users....You would be amazed at the stuff running on the Droid that doesn't need to be running.

[captclueless]

Hey Droid lovers....I was having issues with my battery life for about a week and then went into the marketplace and bought Advanced Task Killer....WOW, my battery is lasting a greater part of the day now...Where before it was only lasting 2 hours. I use the phone about 6 to 7 hours a day for talking....

I recommend this app for all Droid users....You would be amazed at the stuff running on the Droid that doesn't need to be running.

I do the same thing. Also, How are you supposed to charge the phone with it powered off, when when I plug in the charger, it turns the phone on.

[bigthinker]

Hey Capt,

When you plug it back in and it turns on, if your phone is working properly, it should charge....does it not?

[captclueless]

Hey Capt,

When you plug it back in and it turns on, if your phone is working properly, it should charge....does it not?

Yeah it charges. But People keep saying to turn the phone off and then plug it in to charge the battery with the phone off. I figured it's kind of hard to do that when the phone automatically turns itself on when you plug it in to charge it.

[bigthinker]

Hey Capt,

The way I charge mine is when the power still on. After I plug it in I then press the top button to turn off the screen.....After I awake....It's fully charged and ready to go.

[rkeller62]

OK - am I doing something wrong?

Full charge - unplug time - 4:00 am.

As of 9:10pm I am at 30% battery.

I have push AND fetch for email accounts OFF. I only check for new messages when I open the mail app. I have syncing with Facebook & Gmail OFF. I only synced once to get my contacts onto the phone and then disabled syncing. I have background data and auto-sync OFF.

I made 3 phone calls all under 5 minutes long. Texted maybe 15-20 times. Browsed for about 15 minutes. Screen brightness is set ALL the way to the lowest position on the slider, and screen timeout is 15 seconds.

Doesn't this sound horrible? I know I've switched from the iPhone which can't multitask, but even without multitasking, with mostly ALL options disabled, 30% after 15 hours mostly in standby, that doesn't seem good?

How good of signal strength do you have where you are at?

One of the things I have come across is that being in a weak signal area of a home can drain a battery fast. I have had my moto slvr that would normally hold a charge for about 4-5 days.

(yep lots of standby for me as I don't talk on the cell that much, my last months bill only had 18 minutes used on it out of 450.)


But this phone if I drove over to my brothers house and spent the night would drain in 4-5 hours after leaving it on the coffee table in the room I was staying at. I was puzzled shortly as to why it would drain so quick.

Well then next time I went over I was setting the phone down when I noticed that the phone was searching for a signal and switched to analog. Then it would search for a signal then switch back to evdo. And it just kept doing this... but only in that room . As soon as I would walk out of the room with it, it would lock in evdo and stay on.

To cut to the chase what ever was going on with the signal in that room kept causing the phone to search for another network even though there was 2-3 bars of signal there. This was eating up my battery in a very short amount of time. Check your signal and if it is weak move it to another location that has a stronger signal.

But I hope that they come out with an extended battery soon for the droid.

It is not a deal killer for me as I am just a guy that uses it when I to go to work then back home in the evenings. But if I were younger before I had a family then I would need all the extended standby as I was very rarely home so I could see this would affect a person on the move.

+1 on this. I have had smartphones for over 4 years. At work I have very poor reception and am constantly switching from 1x to 3g (EVDO) coverage. I have had the same issue with all my smartphones (2 WinMo phones and the Droid) of constantly searching for a good signal and switching from 1x to 3g being a big drain on the battery. My Moto Q9m would never make it through the day but my Droid does.

[KeithH]

I too just noticed a RADICAL change in battery usage. Last night I noticed that the phone was significantly warmer than normal - even though I hadn't used it in hours.

I charged last night and had very light usage this morning (one phone call, check email just a couple of times - am at the office and have much better access here than even on the phone). As of 1pm I am already down to 15% on the battery. Everything is off (wifi, bluetooth, gps, etc). The only thing left on is the refresh - but I've never had to turn that off before and my battery would last most of the day with even more usage.

I also noticed last night that when driving home (phone in car dock, plugged into car charger, GPS on, etc) the map (I like to see the upcoming traffic so I can choose the best path) would jump from my current position back to the overridden location (this also just started happening yesterday.

[metsnfins]

my signal seems worse since the update

[Mojoman]

I can't figure the battery usage by the Droid at all. Can someone explain this to me. I charge my battery to 100%, power it off, 9 hours later in the morning it has only 10% left. How does a phone or any other device use 90% of a battery when it's off? Next night after downloading Taskiller, phone charged to 100%, all apps shut down, power off and 9 hours later, 10% left again!! Next night, charged to 100%, all apps killed, phone left on and allowed to go to sleep, 9 hours later, 90% left, only 10% gone!! WTF!!! Verizon says it sounds like a problem. I've left the phone on now for 3 nights and only lost 10% each night. How is this possible?