How to conserve battery life on Droid X?

[Grifter]

All I can do is speak from my own experience. I can't say that anyone else is right or wrong from their own experiences.

ATK saved my battery on my new DX. Plain and simple. It was running all sorts of applications that it didn't need to be like Amazon MP3, Maps, Music and several others. I had ATK on my Moto Droid, but didn't want to install it on the DX until I saw how it was running. Plain and simple - all the running apps were draining the crap out of the battery.

I installed ATK onto my DX and have had zero issues. It's preserved a better battery life for me and I have zero issues running the task killer. I select which apps I want it to ignore, and when I close it it kills what I want it to. Even checking just now, Music is running along with Amazon MP3. Why? I dunno. I haven't used either of them since getting the phone on launch day.

I also work in IT as a network Administrator, and even your operating system comes with a Task Manager that allows you to kill the applications you want. My feeling is that with your smart phone, you should have the same thing.

It's a free app. In the end, if you try it and it doesn't work for you - then you've lost nothing. But if it does work for you, then you're better for it.

Just my 2 cents, nothing more.

How was it draining the crap outa your battery? Idle apps use extremely little memory and dont use the cpu. You're draining more battery opening up your task killer and closing the apps that Android itself is most likely going to reopen in the background anyway

The ATK runs in the background itself. I do nothing after the set up. When I close my phone, any applications that I don't have selected as "Ignore" are then shut down.

On launch day, like everyone else, I played with the phone - a lot. Found the battery dying rather quickly. No worries - will charge the battery over night.

Friday morning, took it off of the charger and took it to work. Didn't play with it much, showed it off a wee bit and by the time I got home after a 9 hour day, the battery was nearly dead. Now mind you, I was not leaving anything running. I "let the OS do it's thing". Wondering why it was dying so quickly, I looked at all the open applications....things I didn't even open were running - Maps, Navigation, Amazon, Radio...essentially a list of what's what on the phone.

Saturday, didn't use it much and after a full night charge, it was below 50% usage.

Sunday I installed ATK on the DX. Now, in all fairness I had it on the Moto Droid and it helped. I didn't install it right away because I wanted to see how the phone battery was, and I had read several reviews how the phone battery was lasting a long time. I was a tad disappointed.

Now since the recent update today, I'm very tempted to take off ATK and see how it runs without it. I'm hoping I don't need it.

But like I mentioned before - All I can go by is my own experience and what has worked and not worked for me. I'm not saying what anyone else is suggesting is right or wrong by any means. Just strictly going by my own experience.

 

[Grifter]

I also work in IT as a network Administrator, and even your operating system comes with a Task Manager that allows you to kill the applications you want. My feeling is that with your smart phone, you should have the same thing.

I get it, I used to be a Network Engineer before getting promoted, and before that I was a Help Desk dweeb...

While a PC OS comes with a task manager, it typically is only used if a program hangs. Also, when you end a task on your own, it even throws up a disclaimer that you may cause other issues with other tasks running. So, while you don't know why Amazon and the Music apps run, when you kill them, you may be causing one of the necessary core services to fail or produce some other performace issue.

PS: There is a free "app killer" on your Android phone... Go to: Settings>Applications>Running Services You can kill things in there and that "app killer" was written by the same people that designed the OS of the phone, not a 3rd party developer.

As I have seen lots of other places (not just this forum), "Let the phone handle the applications naturally, it does a fantastic job on its own."

I've removed ATK. At least for now. I want to see how the phone operates after this update today on it's own. While I would agree that killing one application may affect the service of another...I dunno how or why Music or Amazon or Maps whould be affected by my checking my Gmail or Yahoo mail, but *shrug*. I'll try it this way and see what I think of it.

 

[monkeyshines]

Just a little funny story... I just searched for advanced task killer in the market and I messed up on swype and it came up as "advanced yak killer". Lol. Now THAT would be some app!

 

[mikeatdroidforums]

woke up at 7 with 100 percent. im at 40 now. EEGADS!!!!

 

[monkeyshines]

woke up at 7 with 100 percent. im at 40 now. EEGADS!!!!

I always preach that this doesn't work, but I was getting the same problem so I gave out a shot... I let the phone die amd then charged it all the way up with the phone off and its been great ever since.

 

[mikeatdroidforums]

woke up at 7 with 100 percent. im at 40 now. EEGADS!!!!

I always preach that this doesn't work, but I was getting the same problem so I gave out a shot... I let the phone die amd then charged it all the way up with the phone off and its been great ever since.

Could just be it breaking in then. will try, thanks.

 

[nacho220]

As much as it is bad to see other people having similar battery issues, hopefully we can learn from some of the suggestions and such. I haven't had a chance to jump deep into the detail of some of the suggestions. I skimmed over some of the posts so far. I hope to have time this weekend to try out some of the ideas. It seems though on the surface that people are on one end of the spectrum or the other regarding the ATK. Either it is worthless, don't need it, or it is great, helps out a lot. One of the things I was trying to get at was that when I open what someone pointed out the "other" lol, free app killer on the phone....the settings menu, ha.... I open the manage running tasks tab and there is so much running that I'm not sure why its running. Some people have said leave it all alone cause its natural for some of that to run and then automatically not run, and run in the background, etc. I guess for some that might be the case. With something like say, Rhapsody though. If I'm playing an album, now I'm effectively done using the app cause I got out of my car or something and turning it "off". Well, I don't need that app "running" anymore. If I go to it again when I get back in my car I'll just have to reopen the app anyways. So that is something I can kill. In comparison with the Motorola Droid 1 to the X, there are many many more services running as it were. If I shouldn't just kill all of them I won't, but one of my concerns was, how many of these do I really need open. What is the best way to determine what apps or services are essential to the regular idle running of the phone. I really need to do something though, soon, because this battery is getting worse as the week goes on since I got it. It probably also has a lot to do with the extreme signal issues I've been having lately.

http://www.droidforums.net/forum/droid-x-tech-issues/61550-my-droid-x-issues.html

Today while at work it went from 100% to 30% in 4 hours. I sent a few emails, sent a few texts...and that was about it.

I just wanted to share where I was at in the discussion...I guess not any better than before if I haven't had a chance to try out some of the suggestions, lol, but I appreciate everyone's help. Hopefully other people are getting some answers too.

 

[jrodx]

Try airplane mode

I was having a very high percentage of my battery go towards "cell standby". If you go to Settings>Battery Manager>Battery Use>Cell Standby it may say that the time without signal is very large, up to 70% in my case. The fix that seemed to work was to switch into Airplane mode for a few minutes and then turn Airplane mode back off, so your signals resume. Then I realized the "time without signal" percentage slowly went down throughout the day and helped the battery. I also heard of people plugging it in to charge while in airplane mode. I also did the *228 update, which seemed to help a bit. Hope this helps.

 

[aiwasoundsystem]

What I have done recently to conserve batter life:

1. Turn off Auto-Brightness ... Went out in sunlight and adjusted display down to where I could still see.

2. Under Data Management ... Turned off Background Data, Social Applications sync over wifi only.

3. Disabled Haptic Feedback, Disabled Vibrate for incoming calls

4. Put a static wallpaper instead of live wallpaper.

Been running for an hour now to test battery drain with GPS, WiFi and Bluetooth on. 10% in one hour with ATK and Battery Status Pro running in background.

 

[aiwasoundsystem]

Also, my phone must stay awake so no sleep mode during that time. Screen brightness @ 30%. Phone has to stay awake due to looping restart issue caused by the sleep mode. Replacement phone sometime around 8/3. Just having fun testing a phone that's getting replaced. So I've used 10% battery over the span of an hour with wifi, bluetooth, gps on and without letting the phone sleep so the display has been on for that hour straight. Even played a video and listened to some visual voicemail.

If it keeps at this rate it will be 10ish hours before the battery runs too low.

 

[Pluto77189]

This is my first smartphone. I avoided them until I could get one with a touchscreen I could use (big enough) and good battery life. They all sucked. I kept my waterproof Casio phone for nearly 3 years as a result.

I had hoped the Droid X's battery would last long enough for my needs.

I'm a CNA, and I work two jobs 3X a week. I get up at 7:30AM and am done for the day at 11:00PM. Today was my first stress test for the thing.

I unplugged it at 7:30AM, and used it normally - mostly phone calls, occasional web surfing while on breaks - checking email and drudge. I showed google earth and streetview to some of the old folks... didn't bother to charge it in the car in between jobs.

When I got off work after 11:00PM, I used the phone heavily to show off the multimedia features and look up a local traffic report. Used a good 30 minutes of heavy usage - GPS included.

My phone gave me the "15% alert" and said I needed to charge it after 15 hours and 55 minutes. It went down to 5% before I plugged it into the car charger. It lasted ALL DAY.

I was impressed.

 

[aiwasoundsystem]

2 hours 15 minutes just dropped to 80%. Took a walk with Nav, browsed wifi a bit, played Zombie Run while walking also which uses google maps also.

 

[jtdiddy]

This is my first smartphone. I avoided them until I could get one with a touchscreen I could use (big enough) and good battery life. They all sucked. I kept my waterproof Casio phone for nearly 3 years as a result.

I had hoped the Droid X's battery would last long enough for my needs.

I'm a CNA, and I work two jobs 3X a week. I get up at 7:30AM and am done for the day at 11:00PM. Today was my first stress test for the thing.

I unplugged it at 7:30AM, and used it normally - mostly phone calls, occasional web surfing while on breaks - checking email and drudge. I showed google earth and streetview to some of the old folks... didn't bother to charge it in the car in between jobs.

When I got off work after 11:00PM, I used the phone heavily to show off the multimedia features and look up a local traffic report. Used a good 30 minutes of heavy usage - GPS included.

My phone gave me the "15% alert" and said I needed to charge it after 15 hours and 55 minutes. It went down to 5% before I plugged it into the car charger. It lasted ALL DAY.

I was impressed.

What battery mode was your phone in? Also please describe if you turned any settings off. If i can get 10-15hrs on one charge i would be estatic

Sent from my DROIDX using Tapatalk

 

[Inkarnit]

I've been reading these forums about all the people with great battery life and have determined I have to have a faulty phone. I've already had them swap my battery out and see the same problems. Yesterday I went through 2 complete charges in one day. I don't do any heavy usage! Through 2 charges I talked on my phone for a total of maybe 1 hour, ran no videos, played no games, did minimal browsing and text messaging, etc. I didn't have wifi, gps, or bluetooth running either. I don't have any widgets active. The only thing I do that uses constant data streaming is eBuddy for my instant messaging. I understand that I should expect it to use more battery since I stay connected to that, but let's get serious. My first charge yesterday lasted 7 hours. It then took 2 full hours plugged into the wall to get to 100%. Another 5 hours later, my battery was drained again.

This morning, I've had it unplugged for 2 hours. During that 2 hours I talked on the phone for about 5 minutes. Display is using 72%, voice calls 23%, standby 6%, idle 2%. I am at 60% battery. Thoughts?

 

[Robslaw]

What I have done recently to conserve batter life:

1. Turn off Auto-Brightness ... Went out in sunlight and adjusted display down to where I could still see.

2. Under Data Management ... Turned off Background Data, Social Applications sync over wifi only.

3. Disabled Haptic Feedback, Disabled Vibrate for incoming calls

4. Put a static wallpaper instead of live wallpaper.

Been running for an hour now to test battery drain with GPS, WiFi and Bluetooth on. 10% in one hour with ATK and Battery Status Pro running in background.

Ok not to look like a complete idiot here but.... "social applications" would be facebook twitter and such, correct? Not skype or google talk?