Battery lasting forever!!!!

[keiichi25]

Understood. Unless of course you're comparing it to an iPhone, or other people posting in this thread.

Ex/ Unplugged my phone with a full charge at midnight last night. The phone has been idle with no background programs running. 7 hours later my phone has used 25 - 30% of its battery with NO use.

Does that seem reasonable?

It does not seem reasonable, but unfortunately, without seeing your phone or knowing what measures you have taken to be sure there is nothing running on it.... There is a chance that you might have things you don't know going on.

The other thing is, it could also be a bad battery or a defective device. Suffice it to say, not saying you are wrong, but given I have a Motorola Droid phone, I have not charged it since Yesterday for only about maybe 6 to 7 hours at most, and have now gone to 30+ hours and having an indicator of 60% battery power remaining, with me occasionally flipping it on, doing a little e-mail reading and browsing and making one call to do a PRL (Program Roaming Locations)... It suggests something else is involved.

I will state, I do have Locale installed on my Droid and I have it programmably set to turn on Airplane mode using the Auto-pilot plugin to turn off the phone radios between 11:00pm to 6:20 AM, but I also went through a 9 hour work day with it barely going below 80% battery power yesterday. So 40% power drain over 30 hours under those conditions suggests something else could be causing the problem.

 

[RLJSlick]

I'm getting about a 25-30% increase it seems like. Before the updated my battery would be about 40-45% by the time I get home now it's roughly about 65% now. That's really something since my cell phone always connect to the office wi fi.

 

[eversonsc]

I have no issues with the battery life. I keep the phone charged at home. I have a micro-usb cable for the car, charging cable at work and an extra battery w/charger at the house. I'm never under 50% of charge wherever I am and always have an extra battery as a backup. I use my phone constantly.

 

[yah27]

Battery life increase quite significantly IMO. Before the update, my battery would be at half by 2pm but since the update, it is about 70% full. Love it!

 

[omni]

new technology using nanowires in lithium ion batteries's anodes increases the battery capacity almost 10 fold, and the longevity as well. - in a few years when that hits the market, this will be a thing of the past

 

[RW-1]

You cannot base previous phone batt life to the droid, plain and simple. Bb to droid, perhaps.

I definately have seen an increase in life, moderate use and I've gone longer than ever before, but let's face it, you're going to have to charge it after using it each day if you want to start fresh. Use the power widget and manage the radios, screen brightness, etc.

I've noticed that if I used my moto V9 charger, it takes longer than the new one utilizing the USB port, haven't checked the ratings on it but suspect the new unit has a greater charge amperage. Only 1.5 hours from 20% and I'm charged; it also knows to stop charging - nice!

I'll allow for a bad batt here and there, and perhaps a bad droid here and there, can't avoid that on any gear, to those who end up in that category, my heartfelt apologies.

 

[keiichi25]

You cannot base previous phone batt life to the droid, plain and simple. Bb to droid, perhaps.

I definately have seen an increase in life, moderate use and I've gone longer than ever before, but let's face it, you're going to have to charge it after using it each day if you want to start fresh. Use the power widget and manage the radios, screen brightness, etc.

I've noticed that if I used my moto V9 charger, it takes longer than the new one utilizing the USB port, haven't checked the ratings on it but suspect the new unit has a greater charge amperage. Only 1.5 hours from 20% and I'm charged; it also knows to stop charging - nice!

I'll allow for a bad batt here and there, and perhaps a bad droid here and there, can't avoid that on any gear, to those who end up in that category, my heartfelt apologies.

Actually, you can't even compare a BB with the Droid with Battery life as you can tweak a BB a little more as well have a LACK of things going on because of how hard it is to really find anything worthwhile and free for the most part.

Coming from a person who has used the Blackberry Storm, which also has been notorious for short battery life by older blackberry users, the most common theme in battery life issues is the fact both have larger screens than the older Blackberry devices and most phone devices, and that the main resultant of battery drain are more 'chattier' type apps running on them. IM clients and apps that poll for information regularly are general the chief power eaters next to not keeping the phone's screen brightness at a lower setting.

The problem with people with battery problems, that I have noticed, are generally the belief of the phone 'not doing anything' but, at the same time, do not discuss their phone usage habits or how they are sure they have not done anything on the phone. Rarely they speak of apps they have downloaded or also apps to terminate certain programs.

I will admit, I am a very strict person with my phone... I made the blackberry storm shut itself off at certain times because I don't want to receive calls at a certain time. I eeked out 3 to 5 days before I need to charge the phone, and again, that one, people were complaining about 4 to 5 hours before needing to charge... And this is before their most recent OS update, which is 5.0. I was doing that on their 4.75 OS which was still buggy and needed more and the 4.128 wasn't that much better.

In either case, please take the time to put down exactly what your habits are and what apps you have on the phone. Also what state you might leave them at, in most cases, some people will have apps still running, thinking they aren't running and don't use Taskiller or ATK to make sure they are closed out after the fact.

 

[dustin4863]

i must use my phone way to much battery sucked before and still sucked but i send receive 500 to 600 text a day send receive 30 to 40 emails talk 2 to 3 hours and hard web use i cant make it to lunch without charging and im up at 5:30 so its a bit of an improvement with the update i am just waiting on a good extended battery it may be the towers in my area but in my opinion hard use is hard use i don't care how many updates the droid gets

 

[appirishmen]

it has been up for about 14 hrs and still at 90% i love this.

This is just absolutely impossible. I don't even think a StarTac got that kind of battery life.

Let's not go crazy now. I had a StarTac and I charged that thing every Sunday night whether it needed it or not.

As for my Droid, count me in the 'improved battery' category.

it was. but i was studying for finals and only made a few calls and txts. i was very surprised also. its now at 50% with 39 hrs of up time. but like i said, thats with studying all day and only playing on the internet to keep track of a football game.

 

[hookbill]

Yesterday I really put my phone to the test because I was playing with it a lot. Didn't make a lot of phone calls but did a lot of texting and browsing. Battery life is great on this, I don't know what the people in that other thread are complaining about.

 

[boatman2220]

Auto -Brit, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS all on and I make it through the day just fine. Better than the Storm that I had.

 

[808droid]

This weekend I took a trip off island and used MAPS, Navigation, talked on the phone, sent text and chatted on eBuddy for a 1/2 hour. Left home 5 am to the airport, returned 10:45 pm just in the red. Now that is over 15 hours off the charger. Previously with this usages, I would have had it on the charger 5 hours earlier. That's pretty good IMO since the update!

 

[TheCyclist]

How in the world is everyone keeping their battery life so high? I have been fiddling with my phone for the past couple hours on and off (since it's new to me) and I have the brand new update and I just looked at my battery (50%) while just using it to do basic things like check my email and text one or two people back. Not even a voice call. =/

Am I doing something wrong?

 

[keiichi25]

How in the world is everyone keeping their battery life so high? I have been fiddling with my phone for the past couple hours on and off (since it's new to me) and I have the brand new update and I just looked at my battery (50%) while just using it to do basic things like check my email and text one or two people back. Not even a voice call. =/

Am I doing something wrong?

The short answer is - Not really...

However, what you are doing wrong is not listing off how you have your Droid setup.

For instance, I submitted the following to Droid FAQ:

http://www.droidforums.net/forum/pe.../8575-informational-2-0-1-battery-issues.html

I highly recommend people who have short battery life issues with the 2.0.1 Update, to stop for a moment... And post the following:

1. List all apps installed on your Droid Phone - In all seriousness, just saying the problem exists without helping identify possible causes is much like going to the Car Mechanic and saying your car is broken, but not saying what is wrong beyond that.
2. Take the time to get the Battery Usage Information and post it - This helps identify where most of your battery power seems to be getting lost.

Just to give you a fair example of a situation - My phone...

I had it unplugged on December 10th, around 6:30 AM PST time
Did not plug it in until around Decmber 12:th, around 8:30 PM PST time with about 30% power left.

On that phone, I have the following Apps:

Meebo
*Locale
Auto-Pilot (Locale Airplane Mode Plugin)
GPS Plugin for Locale
*Battery Status
*Battery Widget
*Automatic Task Killer
*TasKiller
*Flexis' Lookout
Barcode Scanner
Corporate Directory
DroidLight
GPS Status
IPCalc
Movies
OneManga
Opensudoku
Pente
Reversi
Ringdroid
Rockon
Shazam
ShopSavvy
Solitaire
Timeriffic
Word Search

The ones with the * are the ones that running at all times on my Droid that I don't have ATK killing or manually killing myself.

My Battery Usage shows as:

Phone Idle---------43%
Cell Standby-------25%
Display------------13%
Browser-----------5%
Android System---5%
Android OS-------5%
Locale-------------3%
Voice Calls--------2%
Email--------------2%

I want you to note that as you can tell from here, I am sitting at roughly 52 hours of Uptime on my phone with that setup as it is now. I do not have ATK killing Mail and Gmail either, and I do receive mail. I did some web browsing. The fact that I am a fairly light user and managed to eek out 52 hours or so of battery life this way, should point out the fact that 2.0.1 isn't necessarily the culprit of battery issues, but definitely something else is for other people.

I will further add that I also have Background Sync enabled, GPS enabled, Auto-Brightness disabled, WiFi disabled, and Bluetooth disabled by default. Auto-brightness is at the lowest setting for brightness. Haptic (Vibration) feedback enabled. I use Locale to enable Airplane Mode for time windows, like between 11:00 PM to 6:20 AM on Weekdays, 8:20 AM on Weekends if I am at home. So whether or not this behavior helps in lengthening the battery life is hard to say, but it is a habit of mine that I carried over with the Blackberries I have used.

To better identify your issues, the Battery Usage is KEY to identifying your problems and also doing EXACTLY what I did above to help narrow down the possible causes of power drain on your droid. Without knowing details like how I posted above, it makes it difficult how to better help you.

What I listed is the apps I have installed on my Droid, how I have it setup and what I do with my Droid as far as apps are concerned.

The only thing I did not mention in there that someone else brought up which is also a valid point is your signal strength in various areas. The lower the signal strength, the harder the radio will work to try and maintain a connection. If you have 1 or 2 bars of signal strength, your phone will use a bit more power to keep connected versus 2-3 or 3-4 bars of signal strength. Same if it is using 1x versus 3G on its network indicator. Knowing if you are using WiFi, especially leaving it on while in places where you do not use WiFi, or leaving Bluetooth on will also drain the battery as those are actively looking for connections versus passively.

What I outlined above is how I function with my droid. I don't have WiFi spots near where I work, and I don't use WiFi at home for the most part. I don't use Bluetooth unless I need to, and that helps a little in conserving battery power. I make sure my IM app is logged off when I am not actively using it, or having it killed for that purpose. I try not to use any polling or updating apps beyond the Calendar/Corp Calendar and Mail/Gmail apps to minimize chatter and that allows the battery not to be hammered as much.

Lastly, just look at the Battery Usage information. It will tell you what things seem to be using power the most. In my case, being on Standby and Idle should be highest of the battery usage. If it is not, whatever else is taking up battery usage is a more likely suspect if you state you don't use your phone much. One user posted his Usage was 90% Display... For something that wasn't doing anything, 90% battery usage on display is a bit too high to be 'not doing anything'.

 

[808droid]

If your GPS AND Wi-fi is enabled, that will drain your battery life faster. Also, sometimes while playing with the phone if you choose maps, it may run in the background that could kill your battery faster. If non of those are active, then you may have a defective battery.