My phone is Useless - PLEASE HELP ME!

[pcolevr]

IT'S GETTING WORSE - LAST FULL CHARGE ONLY LASTED1 HR AND 12 MINUTES!!!!! HELP IF YOU CAN!

Hello - I came onto the forum to try to find help with a problem that is rendering my beloved Motorola Droid almost useless. I am a single female that generally is very adept at technology and gadgets, but since around the time I received the Froyo update, my full battery only stays charged for 2-1/2 hours TOPS. I have triple checked to make sure WI FI is off, and all the other apps that suck battery life. My phone is also so hot it will burn you while chargining and takes hours and hours to charge. In frustration, I went to Verizon and was given a new battery. When no improvement happened, they even sent me a completely new phone with the exact same results. Now I'm wondering if it could POSSIBLY be the charger? Its the only thing that isn't brand new, plus it's the only common denominator between the old phone and the new one...
One day I used someone elses charger and it charged faster and held the charge longer. I work smack dab in the middle of a large city, so it can't be signal searching or any of the typical answers, right? I need someone to HELP ME PLEASE! I've had the Droid since early December, but this just started happening recently. Any advice on things I can try uninstalling, etc.?? I don't have a large number of market applications on my phone as I would rather have the speed. I have been searching for weeks and ready everything I can find regarding battery life but nothing has helped to this point. So I'm calling out to all you brilliant Droidtastic people out there to point me in the right direction!

Thanks in advance and any help is greatly appreciated! :motdroidhoriz:

 

[gatewayad]

It could be the charger for some of your problems, does your phone get hot when it's charging or when unplugged and using it. But it sounds like you have apps that are constantly updating in the background, ex. twitter, facebook news weatherbug and there are several others that you can go into their options and change the refresh frequency or possibly a bad app. have you checked under settings about phone battery use. Display and/or voice calls should be the highest then back out a couple pages and click application setting (still under settings) and look at running services it will show you everything that is running right now on your phone. you can also get an app called system monitor in the market (i dont think u have to be rooted) and it will also show you everything running.

 

[pcolevr]

@ gatewayad - Thanks for the quick response. The phone has only gotten alarmingly hot when plugged into the charger. I've even attempted charging through the USB plugged into both my laptop and work computers and while it didn't get as hot, the length of time it took to charge was HOURS. I have deleted Advanced Task Killer, Facebook (will re-install) Panda Home, all the apps that I thought were "cute" - downloaded and used once are gone; I'm about down to the bones. If this doesn't help, I don't know what else to do. I will definitely look into the app you suggested (system monitor).

If you think of ANYTHING else I can try, please let me know. I will post results here of anything that was a success. Thanks again!

 

[hookbill]

What does the battery usage say? Obviously something is running to make it hot like that.

Have you tried doing a factory data reset? This would probably clear everything up and get your Droid working correctly. They should have done that at the Verizon Store. If you can, back up your apps because the unpaid apps will not reappear.

 

[pcolevr]

Hiya Hook - I'm Patti, but you can call me frustrated! I was reading through another posting that was discussing the Froyo update and the seemingly related battery life issues and saw where many people had listed their battery usage. After a quick compare, MY usage sticks out like a purple tuxedo!! Please keep in mind that at the time I jotted these numbers down, my phone had been off the charger for approximately 15 minutes or less:

DISPLAY - 68% (1 HOUR, 18 MINUTES)
ANDROID SYSTEM - 10% (9 MINUTES)
ANDROID PROCESS - 4% (2 MINUTES)
E-MAIL - 4% (2 MINUTES)
CELL STANDBY - 3% (2 HOURS, 6 MINUTES)
ANTIVIRUS - 3% (2 MINUTES, 16 SECONDS)
BROWSER - 2% (1 MINUTE)
PHONE IDLE - 2% (47 MINUTES)
MARKET - 2% (1 MINUTE)
ANDROID OS - 2% (1 MINUTE)
FACEBOOK - 2% (58 SECONDS)

If the phone has only been unplugged for 15 minutes from the charges, how can it show 1 HOUR and 18 Minutes on the display statistics? Could this be part of my problem? Also, I hadn't opened anything, so I don't know if it's normal for Facebook, Market, Browser and E-mail all to be open...

Where do I go from here? I did download Juice Defender after getting the stats above off the phone.

Thanks to all for the help!

 

[pcolevr]

Forgot to mention that in the 15 minutes from the time I took the Droid off the charger and viewed the battery usage long enough to type the above posting, my battery has already sunk to almost half gone....it's sad.

Since I have actually USED the phone for once, removing apps that might be contributors to the problem and notating battery usage, etc. my last full charge lasted an ASTONISHING 1 hr and 12 minutes and the phone is now completely, totally dead.

 

[hookbill]

Do you have another charger around you can try? Might seem like an unusual question but that's the only solution I can think of.

The time off the charger is interesting, but just for grins and giggles I took my D2 off the charger and looked at it. It said it was off the charger for 15 minutes, no way it was more like 15 seconds.

Go back to Verizon with charger in hand and tell them you want a new charger. They should just hand that to you.