Normal Battery Drain vs. Faulty Battery

[blunta]

Ok, I purchased my droid 2 about 5 days ago. I'm in love with the phone, but have one complaint (which may be a deal breaker for me). The battery life! I've researched numerous sites and threads taking in little peices of advice here and there and I am still having trouble. And I'm looking for a more individualized answer to my question before I decide if I'm going to take the phone back and ask what I can do about it.

Just a couple things first...1. I apologize for asking a quessdtion that has been asked a million times. 2. I'm not as technically savvy as some, so I may have to ask for clarification at times. 3. I had a Motorola Cliq before getting my Droid and I could easily make it through the day without recharging with moderate-heavy use...so i may be spoiled?? lol

So, on my droid, I'm not running live wallpapers, I don't use ANY widgets, I have the display turned ALL the way down (Which drives me nuts btw), I use task killer like a crazy person to try to help things out, and I have the GPS and Wifi turned off. I'm what I would call a moderate-heavy user normally. Ok so...in the morning, this morning for exaplme, I unplugged my phone at 6:20am. I checked Facebook for not even 5 minutes, and at 6:50am, only 30 minutes later, my battery was at 90%?! I did some browsing on the internet for about 15 minutes and now the battery is down to 80% at only 8:30am. I'm lucky to make it to noon or 2pm and thats barely using the phone, just checking email and FB quickly a fewtimes and then on standby!! I'm not happy at all with this. I mean what is the point of having a smart phone with all the bells and whistles without being able to use them. At this rate of drain I'll never be able to use my droid as I planned. Might as well forget about games, social networking, and so on.

My only question is, is this normal or did I get a faulty battery? The rep. at the Verizon store that I purchased the phone from said to let the battery drain and then fully charge a few times (which I have done twice so far) before I brought it in and he would see what he could do. He said we could try another battery and if that didn't help we could go from there.

Any advice is much appriciated! I just don't want to get stuck with a phone for 2 years that I have to be constantly plugged in to use or that is dead otherwise. Thanks!

 

[Phillipsave]

Get rid of the task killer, everyone says it causes all kind of problems like this.

 

[blunta]

I've heard of the task killer causing issues, but didn't know how much truth there was to it since the Verizon rep installed it on my phone before I left and told me to be sure I was using it when I called about my issues. What's up with that? It's definitely worth a shot at this point.

 

[gsxr_guy3344]

Im having the same problem and I have the extended battery....First I will say what everyone else is going to tell you...REMOVE task killer the droid 2 has a built in one that does just fine any added one's are just going to confuse the phone....you can try juice defender but it didnt work for me...I wouldnt get e-mails,texts and sometimes i couldnt use the web....other people say it works great for them I however didnt like it. If you your using bluetooth make sure you turn it off when your not using it...for example I use the bluetooth when im in my vehicle and I usually have it on the car dock charger...when done I turn it off even tho the phones not using it when its off it still drains the battery. Try setting your battery setting to night time mode. Settings:/Battery Manager:/ Night Time Mode...

 

[Redflea]

Get rid of the task killer, not needed, won't help, might hurt.

At five days your battery is still on the border of the break in period...give it a few more days and see if things improve at all. Do not run your battery all the way down each day, that is not good for it...these batteries will do best over time if they are charged up when they hit in the 30% range, give or take.

You should be able to run your phone with the screen set to auto-brightness w/out having it kill the battery.

There is a setting in the Batter Manager - Settings>Battery Manager>Battery Mode>Maximum Battery Saver. Using this setting will help - it basically turns off data when your phone is idle - it stops syncing data after 15 minutes of inactivity. Calls and texts are unaffected - they always come through immediately, but email reception, and other background data activities are suspended until you wake up your phone again.

Unless you must know immediately when an email arrives on your Droid (and few of us really do) this has little affect on your use of the phone but saves battery life. When you wake up your phone, data is quickly enabled and your email, etc., catch up.

You can also set your social networking apps to only sync over wifi (I believe that setting is under Data Management).

The screen is the biggest power hog, but you can review what is eating up your batter by tapping on the big battery icon in Battery Management - that may give you some clues.

I'd give it a few more days to let your phone usage and battery settle in, and see how it goes...Try the battery setting I suggested (or you can create your own custom profile in Battery Manager).

Finally, if you're in a poor signal area, that will eat the battery alive - the hunting between 1x and 3g signal will just kill your phone. In that case it's always better to be on a wifi signal for data, so if there is a wifi network available and you have low/poor 3G signal, attach to the wifi network.

Good luck...

 

[Pandemic187]

Do not run your battery all the way down each day, that is not good for it...these batteries will do best over time if they are charged up when they hit in the 30% range, give or take.

I've never heard this - in fact, I believe I've only heard the opposite. What makes you say that?

To the OP - you get the battery life you choose, basically. I don't use my phone a lot and I can usually get more than a day, sometimes two days of life without needing to charge. But as I've said before, I kind of go to the extreme as far as tweaking all the settings to save battery life.

 

[spaz33g]

Do not run your battery all the way down each day, that is not good for it...these batteries will do best over time if they are charged up when they hit in the 30% range, give or take.

I've never heard this - in fact, I believe I've only heard the opposite. What makes you say that?

To the OP - you get the battery life you choose, basically. I don't use my phone a lot and I can usually get more than a day, sometimes two days of life without needing to charge. But as I've said before, I kind of go to the extreme as far as tweaking all the settings to save battery life.

I was originally in the camp of let it drain, in fact on my last phone (env touch) i would drain the batt once a week and fully charge while off but recent information i have seen about liion batts has illustrated to me that this is actually really bad. Do a google search and you'll find a lot of tech sites dispelling this myth. I think there is even a thread about it somwhere on this site

 

[Redflea]

You only want to fully drain once every few months to keep the battery meter and battery in sync, say every three months or so.

More than that is just not necessary, nor good, for the battery.

 

[spaz33g]

From what I've heard from a moderator in one of the other threads the droid 2 won't even allow you to fully drain the battery. I don't know if this is true for all phones or even for the droid 2 but apparently it will always power itself down before reaching zero and that even that is not great.

 

[Montecarlo97z]

From what I've heard from a moderator in one of the other threads the droid 2 won't even allow you to fully drain the battery. I don't know if this is true for all phones or even for the droid 2 but apparently it will always power itself down before reaching zero and that even that is not great.

it powers down at 5% battery life

 

[Redflea]

From what I've heard from a moderator in one of the other threads the droid 2 won't even allow you to fully drain the battery. I don't know if this is true for all phones or even for the droid 2 but apparently it will always power itself down before reaching zero and that even that is not great.

As noted - it shuts off at 5%...that's pretty much fully draining the battery, and that's what you want to generally avoid with Li-ion batteries like the one the D2 (and most cell phones these days).

 

[spaz33g]

Ya exactly. I tend to plug it in at 30% (i think that's when it turns orange at least)

 

[Pandemic187]

Wow. Alright. I'll be charging mine sooner now. Luckily I'm still getting good battery life (only had the phone/battery around a month), so I should be okay.