Brand new to Droid Pro... Battery Life?

chrisg20

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Hi all,
I am brand new to my Droid Pro, coming from a Blackberry Curve for 2 years that had fantastic battery life.
I am a light, casual user, and use mainly for email, texting and internet. My battery manager says the majority of my use is 60% display.

Day 1 with my Pro, my battery died by 3pm in the afternoon, after only using lightly that day. Same thing with Day 2. I called Verizon for help and he told me to download Taskill to remove some running apps.
I am shocked how many widgets and unknown things are running! I am assuming these are what is draining my battery so fast?
My husband lowered my screen brightness and it only stays on for 15 sec of non use.
Can I delete these widget things off the home screens? I don't need constant news/weather etc. If i want to check these i can go online and do it manually. Also, is there a way to change how often Facebook fetches updates? i don't need it constantly updated. I want it to update when I check it a few times a day. Someone mentioned there is a better FB app to use than the one that is constantly running on my phone?

Sorry to have so many silly questions... this is totally new to me! Loving the phone, but not the battery life!
 

jpcalhoun

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Hi all,
I am brand new to my Droid Pro, coming from a Blackberry Curve for 2 years that had fantastic battery life.
I am a light, casual user, and use mainly for email, texting and internet. My battery manager says the majority of my use is 60% display.

Day 1 with my Pro, my battery died by 3pm in the afternoon, after only using lightly that day. Same thing with Day 2. I called Verizon for help and he told me to download Taskill to remove some running apps.
I am shocked how many widgets and unknown things are running! I am assuming these are what is draining my battery so fast?
My husband lowered my screen brightness and it only stays on for 15 sec of non use.
Can I delete these widget things off the home screens? I don't need constant news/weather etc. If i want to check these i can go online and do it manually. Also, is there a way to change how often Facebook fetches updates? i don't need it constantly updated. I want it to update when I check it a few times a day. Someone mentioned there is a better FB app to use than the one that is constantly running on my phone?

Sorry to have so many silly questions... this is totally new to me! Loving the phone, but not the battery life!

You are experiencing what every Android phone user experiences. Android phones are notorious for poor battery life in comparison to other phones such as the Blackberry. There are a few things you can do to improve battery life...here are a few suggestions:

-By all means get the extended battery offered by Verizon. It will improve your battery significantly. It improved my battery life by about 35%
-Turn down your screen brightness to as low as you can comfortably stand.
-Turn off WiFi, GPS, Bluetooth unless you are using them.
-Remove any widget that you don't need/use from your home screens in all three profiles. If you have a widget, like weather, on all three profiles, when it updates it updates all three profiles.
-I recommend having your POP emails forwarded to your gmail account. This enables you to turn off email fetch because gmail will push your forwarded emails to your phone. Operates much like BB BIS.
-For widgets that you do use, set them to "never update" or update to manual...like a weather widget for instance.
-You can try to stop apps from running with at task manager or task killer, but the truth of the matter is that is only a temporary fix, and most apps will start again on their own. Some report that their task killer is actually a battery killer themselves.
-I don't use FB so I can't help you there.

Hope these help.
-FORGOT ONE...make sure your network type is set to CDMA...not global. Verizon is a CDMA carrier...the global setting will increase battery usage. Global appears to be the setting put on the phone during manufacturing. Don't use global...CDMA is what you should use.
 
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google123

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The above post has been approved by google123. Excellent advise :D

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guidot

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Don't forget to have multiple chargers.

Wife has one in her purse, one at the office, bedside table and car charger.

She hasn't been complaining as much about battery life so I will have to ask her how its been.

Sent from my GimpDroid (Installed by RZR).
 

MO3iusONE

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I can't stress this enough, buy an extended battery!

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vh5150

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How do you set the weather app to manual? I dont see that in settings, there are only 3 options there.

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mystery252

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Download JuiceDefender from the market. Best app I've downloaded.

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jpcalhoun

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How do you set the weather app to manual? I dont see that in settings, there are only 3 options there.

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I assume you are using the native weather app. I use Weather Bug Lite. If your weather app does not have an option to update manually, then I guess the only choices you have is to return the weather app to the app drawer and launch the app from their. Not a great solution I know. The other option is to use a different weather app...there is a number of free ones on the market.
 

BayouFlyFisher

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Here's my tips:

1. (Doesn’t apply to all phones) Go to settings/wireless & networks/mobile networks/Enable always-on data. Uncheck always on data. Your phone will still receive email, text, & phone calls as before as well as internet usage but your battery will last a lot longer.

2. Emails: I don't know what email app you use, but try this. It saves battery power and in some cases emails arrive quicker. This scheme will have you using only the Gmail app on the phone for all email accounts whether they are pop3 accounts or Gmail. Go to the Google Gmail inbox on your computer and log into the Gmail account. On the top right of the screen is an option called Settings. In there is an option to have the Gmail program poll your regular, non-Gmail accounts. Provide the email address and the password. The Google Gmail program will then poll your other accounts on a frequency from 1-5 minutes and push the email immediately to your phone. The polling frequency is determined by each account's activity - more emails = faster polling. This saves battery power because on the android OS pop3 accounts are polled at a frequency of 1-30 minutes and that really eats battery. Because the phone goes and checks those accounts for mail whether there is mail there or not.

3. If you are using Live Wall Papers, stop!

4. Use wifi any time it is available. It uses a lot less power than 3G and it is much faster.

5. If there are widgets that automatically update (facebook, weather, etc.) change their update frequency in their settings menu. Set them to 30mins or 1 hour.

6. Oh, almost forgot, get the extended battery from Verizon.

7. Turn off the GPS unless you are actually using it. There are some background apps that can burn a lot of power via a live gps.

8. The Power Control Widget is a good tool for easily turning on and off some of these features (gps, wifi, screen brightness, etc.).

9. From the home screen do the following: menu/settings/About Phone/Battery Use. This graph will show the 10 biggest power users on the phone. It should always be Screen as the top user and the android os, android system, phone standby and phone idle should be the other top users. If there is an app listed you should determine if it’s an app you actually use a lot or do you have a rogue app that needs to be uninstalled.

10. Get Screebl. It will turn your phone off anytime you are not actively using it.

11. If you have either a task killer or an anti-virus app installed, you should uninstall.

12. Go to data>system>and delete batterystats.bin after you've charged your phone to 100%. This will help with battery meter accuracy.
 

jetjim

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@BayouFlyFisher

I have a wireless router with a very fast Internet connection, and I also get a pretty good 3G signal in my home. As an experiment, I tried keeping my phone on WiFi one day while I was home. I was pretty close to my router for the day. It seemed to drain the battery faster than on 3G. I was also using the phone's browser from time to time, checking out how fast the connection was on my phone with WiFi turned on.

My question is, why did it seem that my battery drained faster on WiFi than on 3G? Maybe I'll try it again next time I'm home all day to see how it again compares to 3G.
 

kjjb0204

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You can also try going into menu, settings, accounts and turn off sync for those default news and weather apps/widgets.

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