Battery Life?

[militant]

Wifi helps battery. That's how people can go 20 hours on a charge.

Only time it hurts is when its searching for a wifi network.

MIUI

I've gone 40+ hours on a charge, and that was with wifi off. With wifi on, connected to my network at full strength, the battery drains A LOT faster. I thought the consensus was to shut wifi off when not in use, not just when roaming where it would be scanning for different networks, but even just sitting idle it uses more battery. It makes sense to me anyway. The CDMA antenna has to stay on the whole time to get texts/calls, and having the wifi on is just having something else running/using battery power. I don't see how the battery could possibly last longer with Wifi on.

WiFi uses less battery power than 3g. Go look at Anandtech's review and look at the battery tests. When wifi is on, 3g is turned off so that's why it saves. The phone uses 2g for phone calls and texting from what I understand.

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I don't dispute the fact their tests may have shown better life with Wifi. I know that, beyond a shadow of a doubt, BOTH of my Android phones have had better battery life with WiFi off. Maybe it's the case on some phones and not on others?

 

[jaycemiskel]

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4551/motorola-droid-3-review-third-times-a-charm/11
During the web browsing test the battery lasted 4.42 hours using 3g and 8.17 on Wifi. That link should take you to the battery test page.
And maybe your phone is just different from everyone else's. Wifi always makes my battery last longer, it's done so with every one of my phones.

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[darkmatter]

From what I understood, 3g uses less power on standby, and wifi uses less power when transferring data.

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[jaycemiskel]

I guess that would explain why when wifi is enabled for some the battery lasts less and for others lasts longer. I use my phone quite a lot so that would explain why wifi is better.

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[darkmatter]

I wonder if one reason I get great battery life is that I've added every last bit of bloatware to the auto end list, not to mention some others, like maps and such.

I check the task manager every now and then, and when I see something that I didn't start, I add it ti the auto end list.

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[militant]

And what happens is most of those programs keeps opening and task manager keeps having to close them...thus using more battery. I don't use auto end on anything, but I do check periodically to make sure apks have closed properly. I don't add say, vz nav to auto end because it uses 0% cpu 2mb of ram and its just going to re open itself again so putting it on auto kill is going to cause more cpu usage and less battery life. Its why google has out right said do not use task killers. If you have an app that keeps running and uses a lot of ram and cpu, id just uninstall it rather than auto kill it.

Apps are designed to run in the background so that they load faster and more seemlessly. Android will autoload apps it thinks its going to need because ram uses the same about of battery weather or not its being used. Its more beneficial to the battery to have an app loaded in memory because it'll require less cpu use to open it. If more ram is needed the furthest processes down on the priority list will be auto killed to free up the ram.

tl;dr don't use task killers or put apps on autokill unless they are using vast amounts of memory or cpu otherwise it is counter productive.

*annoying tapatalk sig here*

 

[billy4]

So without ATK my battery life will be better? That just doesn't sound right to me.

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[jstafford1]

So without ATK my battery life will be better? That just doesn't sound right to me.

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When using ATK you are constantly killing and restarting apps. That will use more than letting them stay in memory where they aren't using any battery. Starting the, and stopping uses cpu cycles impacting battery life. Sitting in memory doesn't use any resources.

end of line...

 

[Fr33dom]

So without ATK my battery life will be better? That just doesn't sound right to me.

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When using ATK you are constantly killing and restarting apps. That will use more than letting them stay in memory where they aren't using any battery. Starting the, and stopping uses cpu cycles impacting battery life. Sitting in memory doesn't use any resources.

end of line...

Agree, I just haven't seen any of these restarting services and applications using much cpu and the battery stats do not indicate that anything other than the radio is to blame. Everything we do to save memory is to mitigate radio problems, not application problems.

There have been several folks indicate that particular apps are eating up memory. One of those, VTOK is a candidate for autokill, but it is also a candidate for the uninstal button

 

[darkmatter]

I dunno. I'm using to included task manager and am getting better than average battery life.

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[rongotti]

I have had mine off the charger for 45 min just surfing the net and I am down to 70% with my display being at 31% and cell standby at 29% this is rediculous. I am all about droid phones and that is the sole reason I switched to Verizon but this battery life is killing me. Do I need to ask them for a new battery or a replacement phone?

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[spacecasespiff]

I have had mine off the charger for 45 min just surfing the net and I am down to 70% with my display being at 31% and cell standby at 29% this is rediculous. I am all about droid phones and that is the sole reason I switched to Verizon but this battery life is killing me. Do I need to ask them for a new battery or a replacement phone?

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Your display seems really high. Mine never goes up past 9% and that's with live wallpaper. I usually will drop down to 90% within 10 min of use but yours seems that its going a little to fast. Maybe go a see if they will bive you a battery.

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[militant]

So without ATK my battery life will be better? That just doesn't sound right to me.

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As long as nothing that's running in the background is using a ton of cpu or constantly searching for updates/data, yes. Did you miss the part where I said google has explicitly mentioned to NOT use task killers? I mean, I broke down how the system handles apps and memory to the most basic levels, and from my explanation you should be able to deduce why tks are counter productive. The only exceptions are to use it to close an app that is not closing properly and shows high cpu use when you check it in task manager.

Remember. Ram uses the same battery juice weather its chillin there empty lookin for an apk to hangout with or its loaded up with file. Now...think about what's going on internally when you kill that app. Cpu force closes it (battery used), cpu automatically opens it again (battery used). If it just sits there undisturbed, its not using anything. Unless of course its using a high cpu percentage. In which case id simply uninstall the app if possible until an update comes out.

*annoying tapatalk sig here*

 

[BenLand150]

I have had mine off the charger for 45 min just surfing the net and I am down to 70% with my display being at 31% and cell standby at 29% this is rediculous. I am all about droid phones and that is the sole reason I switched to Verizon but this battery life is killing me. Do I need to ask them for a new battery or a replacement phone?

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Your display seems really high. Mine never goes up past 9% and that's with live wallpaper. I usually will drop down to 90% within 10 min of use but yours seems that its going a little to fast. Maybe go a see if they will bive you a battery.

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10% drop after just 10minutes its quite a bit, too.

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[militant]

I have had mine off the charger for 45 min just surfing the net and I am down to 70% with my display being at 31% and cell standby at 29% this is rediculous. I am all about droid phones and that is the sole reason I switched to Verizon but this battery life is killing me. Do I need to ask them for a new battery or a replacement phone?

Sent from my DROID3 using Tapatalk

Your display seems really high. Mine never goes up past 9% and that's with live wallpaper. I usually will drop down to 90% within 10 min of use but yours seems that its going a little to fast. Maybe go a see if they will bive you a battery.

Sent from my DROID3 using DroidForums

10% drop after just 10minutes its quite a bit, too.

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Its not really dropping 10%, its how the phone calculates and rounds down/up for the battery. Explanation: You charge your phone, once it hits 95%, it reads as 100%, even though it still has 5% to go. So if you take your phone off the charger the second it says full, its really only at 95%, once you drop 1% down to 94%, it'll show the battery at 90%. I always charge to the full 100%, and if it's sitting on standby and not being used much, it'll last 2-3 hours before it hits 94% and shows 90%. Download circle battery widget if you want to see what I'm talking about.