Droid Razr Maxx battery is horrible for me.

[Olivia]

I researched the Droid Razr Maxx before I bought the phone, and I came across threads saying how great/terrible the phone battery life is, so I was really hoping I would be the lucky one and get one with great battery life, but I guess I'm just unlucky.

I did read the battery thread about charging it to 100% while off etc., so I did that when I received it, but no such luck. I'm having to carry around my one charger (I did not order extra since I did not think I needed it) and I hate that I have to remember to carry it everywhere. Now I am going to have to order a car charger, and one extra wall charger to carry around with me. I think that is so unfair. Especially since I am seeing people post they went 20 some hours without charging. I wonder if these people use their phones much at all.

I admit I am a heavy user, and I even downloaded juice defender and I chose for the extreme mode. Last night when I went to bed at 1am, my phone was at 40%. When I woke up around 9am, it was at 20%. I thought this juice defender was supposed to turn off all sorts of things while the phone was not in use?

I do leave 4g turned on most the time because my thinking is I bought the phone for 4g, why would I constantly turn it off and on? I don't stream movies, I just surf the web on it or download apps. Don't know what I'm doing wrong. I don't think I should be forced to worry about what apps are running etc. because this phone was advertised to have an awesome battery, and it's not. I mean come on! I had an iphone 4 before switching to this one, and when I went to bed at night, whatever the phone battery was at, it pretty much was the same when I woke up.

I did look to see what was the biggest battery drain on my phone, and it showed that the brightness was, but how is that possible when the phone is not even in use? I don't know what else to do except carry my charger around now. I love the phone other than that reason, and I'm still hoping battery use gets better.

 

[FoxKat]

I researched the Droid Razr Maxx before I bought the phone, and I came across threads saying how great/terrible the phone battery life is, so I was really hoping I would be the lucky one and get one with great battery life, but I guess I'm just unlucky.

I did read the battery thread about charging it to 100% while off etc., so I did that when I received it, but no such luck. I'm having to carry around my one charger (I did not order extra since I did not think I needed it) and I hate that I have to remember to carry it everywhere. Now I am going to have to order a car charger, and one extra wall charger to carry around with me. I think that is so unfair. Especially since I am seeing people post they went 20 some hours without charging. I wonder if these people use their phones much at all.

I admit I am a heavy user, and I even downloaded juice defender and I chose for the extreme mode. Last night when I went to bed at 1am, my phone was at 40%. When I woke up around 9am, it was at 20%. I thought this juice defender was supposed to turn off all sorts of things while the phone was not in use?

I do leave 4g turned on most the time because my thinking is I bought the phone for 4g, why would I constantly turn it off and on? I don't stream movies, I just surf the web on it or download apps. Don't know what I'm doing wrong. I don't think I should be forced to worry about what apps are running etc. because this phone was advertised to have an awesome battery, and it's not. I mean come on! I had an iphone 4 before switching to this one, and when I went to bed at night, whatever the phone battery was at, it pretty much was the same when I woke up.

I did look to see what was the biggest battery drain on my phone, and it showed that the brightness was, but how is that possible when the phone is not even in use? I don't know what else to do except carry my charger around now. I love the phone other than that reason, and I'm still hoping battery use gets better.

Dear Olivia, I am disappointed that you aren't getting the battery life that you were hoping for. I would give it a chance though. There are some things you haven't yet tried which will help, and depending on just how long you've had it you may be within the period of time from initial activation where the phone is populating caches and such and uses more power. Almost everyone experiences better battery life after a few days. Incorrectly they attribute it to the battery being cycled and gaining capacity. This couldn't be farther from the truth.

The overnight power drain could have been as little as 11% (from 40% to 29%), since the gauge only changes when it hits the next 10% increment. 11% overnight is not unreasonable, even for a phone in "rest" state. Batteries will self-discharge with NO load at a rate of from 2%-5% in 24 hours, so 1%-3% or so of that decrease can be attributed to just simply battery self-discharge, leaving from 8% to 10% being the actual use by the phone.

Also, when you charged the first time to 100% with power off, you set the Capacity flag (or 100% flag), but unless you then discharged to 15%, you never set the "Low battery" flag, so the phone's meter STILL doesn't know exactly what the RANGE of charge is, it only knows what is Maximum charge, and what voltage it will cut off at (0% at 3V). Everywhere in between is a total guess by the meter until it knows "how long the road is".

Juice Defender in Extreme mode may put the phone into the lowest rate of consumption it can be, but it's still using power. Please don't misunderstand this statement, but this is NOT your old cell phone, where you could charge it and it would give you phone capability for days at a time. It's a portable computer and more, and you wouldn't expect your laptop with the huge battery it has to run for 24 hours while powered on, why should you expect your phone can?

4G is a hotly debated issue. If you don't "need" it (that is you are not using it at the moment), there is NO benefit to having it turned on. It's like keeping 2 portable radios turned on and tuned to the same station but keeping one at normal listening level and the other with the volume turned down to nothing. It's still on, it's still drawing power, and it's providing you absolutely no benefit. Also, if you are in a "fringe" area of 4G, it will suck power like a Dyson. Yes, it's a 4G phone, and yes you should be able to benefit from 4G, but why turn it on if you're not "using" it?

As for what uses the most power, yes the display is one of the biggest draws, but in percentage as compared to other features. If it says 40%, but you've only used 10% of your power, that means the display has used 2.5% of the battery. You have to understand that or you'll drive yourself crazy with those percentages. It's a percentage of the total percentage of power used.

Finally, the battery won't "get better". The phone will get more efficient, yes, and the meter calibration will help, but unrealistic expectations can be a source of diminishing returns.

Good luck and please report back with any new findings. :biggrin:

 

[94lt1]

If I may make some suggestions Olivia... first put down the phone.... don't throw it at us seriously though, are you using the task manager? How about smart actions battery saver? If not, try this for me...

Open the task manager(pre loaded on the device) select every single app on there. Add to auto kill list. This will ease the load on the CPU, it will also kill apps as needed, and when you turn your screen off, it will kill all apps after two minutes.

Smart actions, open it, tap on examples, battery saver, now long press and delete these rules: turn off Wi-Fi, location, and motion. All that should be left is turn off data sync and screen off. So now when your screen times out or is shut off, your device will kill background data sync. Emails and pic messages will come through when your device is awake, and it only takes a second to wake it up and have the data sync come on.

Sorry FoxKat, but I thought I would throw this in. I hate to see people struggle with this. This device is awesome.. only device I've actually grown attached to. So they will both be in rotation with the vanquish

DROID RAZR MAXXIMIZED!!!! PREPARE TO BE VANQUISHED!!!

 

[FoxKat]

I'm right with you on this one, Agent 94!

Sent from my DROID RAZR MAXX using Xparent ICS Tapatalk 2 with Google voice to text translation. Please excuse any minor spelling, punctuation, capitalization or grammatical errors.

 

[hazelgreen]

Olivia, just curious to see if the battery has gotten better? I just factory reset mine last night so going to see if my battery improves. I think I had an rogue app somewhere.

 

[Caesars]

If you go to Verizon wireless.com, how's your coverage based off your zip code?