Battery life issue after official ICS

SithLord0498

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you don't get what I'm saying. My car doesn't drive around picking up messages for me all day. My phone kind of does. it's more like asking someone to go pick up a pizza for me, and then taking away the car keys and not giving them any money. they still might get around to it, eventually, but they don't help me right now.

That is a great analogy, and the biggest hurdle here is that Verizon's system requires you to be connected to their data network in order to receive MMS messages. If they could find some way to allow those messages to come through on Wi-Fi, a good number of people could switch off their data connection more often and save on battery power.

I posted these screenshots on another Droid forum to give an overview on my phone's performance after going through a few ICS power cycles. This is, I believe, the 3rd charging cycle after installing ICS, and I have the official Motorola extended battery in my Bionic.

View attachment 57950

As you can see, I got 57 hours out of the phone, which is on par with previous performance on OS 2.3. And there was still 10% power left (although that final 10% seems to drop off very sharply!)

To get a clearer picture, I tend to keep it on Airplane Mode from 5-7 in the morning (the time I'm sleeping between my newspaper delivery job and when I wake up for my day job) and then again from 8:30a - 12p because the classroom I work in has walls that significantly muffles cellular and wi-fi signals. 4G is kept turned off unless I actively need it or I'm out shopping and *might* need it. When at home, I keep it connected to my home wi-fi with the phone set to stay connected even when the screen is powered down. 45 minutes of voice calls is actually above the usual average for me in a power cycle, and probably half of that was via Bluetooth through my car's sound system (phone was kept in my pocket, NOT on the charger). These changes are all done manually as I have disabled Smart Actions.

My current cycle, though, burned through battery life much faster and was down to roughly 25-30% after only 16-18 hours, and the only significant difference in my usage was...yep, using the 4G more! I streamed music over 4G via TuneIN radio for about 30 minutes, and it knocked out almost 10% of my battery. On Gingerbread, it would take about 1.5 hours to use up the same battery life.

So after letting ICS soak in and keeping tabs on my phone's stats, I can confidently say that, at least for my Bionic, the ICS update's biggest weakness is that it burns up more battery power than GB when it comes to being on the 4G LTE network.

Hopefully, that is an area where future phones will fare better.
 

galactichero

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this IS a droid bionic forum, right?

"Future phones"?? I'm going to go out on a limb here... don't we all own THIS phone right NOW? "Future phones" doesn't. help us much...
 

SithLord0498

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"Future phones"?? I'm going to go out on a limb here... don't we all own THIS phone right NOW? "Future phones" doesn't. help us much...

Well gee whiz...I'm sorry for suggesting that we can all hope 4G is better on battery life when the time comes for upgrades. :confused:


Guess you missed the part where I concluded that 4G (from my personal experience with ICS on the BIONIC so far) has been the biggest culprit of battery drain, so avoid using it as much as possible.
 

shawn4057

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3g 4g

Well gee whiz...I'm sorry for suggesting that we can all hope 4G is better on battery life when the time comes for upgrades. :confused:


Guess you missed the part where I concluded that 4G (from my personal experience with ICS on the BIONIC so far) has been the biggest culprit of battery drain, so avoid using it as much as possible.

Not able to choose 3 or 4g anymore.
 

SithLord0498

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That part I wasn't happy about either because most of the time 3G is more than sufficient for my needs. What I meant though was use Wi-Fi as much as possible and limit yourself to doing things on 4G to only when you are away from Wi-Fi.

That being said, I have heard that there are apps on Google Play that give you ways to force a switch to 3G, but I haven't tried any of them. May be worth Googling though.
 

shadowsjc

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LTEonoff is a free app in the market that lets you choose between 3G only or 3G/4G (normal mode). it screwed up my data for a bit after i used it, and i've read the same happened to others as well. a few reboots / battery pulls / sim card pulls later though everything returned to normal. turning 4G off helps a ton with my bionic's battery life
 

wheeler062505

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SithLord0498 said:
That part I wasn't happy about either because most of the time 3G is more than sufficient for my needs. What I meant though was use Wi-Fi as much as possible and limit yourself to doing things on 4G to only when you are away from Wi-Fi.

That being said, I have heard that there are apps on Google Play that give you ways to force a switch to 3G, but I haven't tried any of them. May be worth Googling though.

I don't get it my phone switches between 3g and 4g on its own. Has from the beginning. Even after downloading ics.
 

shadowsjc

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wheeler062505 said:
I don't get it my phone switches between 3g and 4g on its own. Has from the beginning. Even after downloading ics.

The phone switches automatically but sometimes you want to force it on 3G in order to save battery
 

shadowsjc

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i got about 6 hours with moderate use on 4G today. the phone gets warm regularly and i think it's because there's poor service in my area (hit by Hurricane Sandy), and also because the damn Facebook app sucks the battery dry
 

unbesorgt

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i got about 6 hours with moderate use on 4G today. the phone gets warm regularly and i think it's because there's poor service in my area (hit by Hurricane Sandy), and also because the damn Facebook app sucks the battery dry

I have the Facebook app disabled and use Plume for Fb/Twitter instead. Much more efficient and easy on the battery.
 

DevilDogMP

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If you have data sync for Facebook on then of course it will drain your battery. That's why i turned t off and just check Facebook periodically .
 
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