Battery Life... You've Got Questions, We've Got Answers!

[dudemansir]

thanks for a truly informative post. just grabbed droid 2 week ago...obsessed much.

a little confused by the OP. specifically in terms of wifi/3g

so...use wifi whenever available. so it is recommended to leave wifi off until we can obtain some wifi, but wont turning wifi on to scan cost battery? so we should only turn wifi on when we are positive there is some int he area?

also i can't seem to find "sync" settings, and if i have found it i def do not see a specific option to set frequency. is this different than "background data?"

 

[Juicemane]

thanks for a truly informative post. just grabbed droid 2 week ago...obsessed much.

a little confused by the OP. specifically in terms of wifi/3g

so...use wifi whenever available. so it is recommended to leave wifi off until we can obtain some wifi, but wont turning wifi on to scan cost battery? so we should only turn wifi on when we are positive there is some int he area?

also i can't seem to find "sync" settings, and if i have found it i def do not see a specific option to set frequency. is this different than "background data?"

If you're rooted you can modify the scan interval in the build.prop so you can leave wifi on without having it be a major factor. Also, using wifi when its in range can help improve battery life vs using 3g with poor signal. I keep my wifi on all day with the build prop changes and it makes a minimal drain on the battery.

 

[dudemansir]

my poor droid 2 is not rooted. however i did notice significant improvement in life when using wifi. got her up to about 15 hours (i was sleeping a bunch of those)

i dropped the standard wifi on/off widget on the home screen for easy switching and for some reason the damn thing doesnt re-connect to remembered routers. i actually have to go into Wireless Settings to get that going.

 

[spartan466]

Great thread! Couple questions though... I have a stock DX 2.2 and I've been getting about 9-11 hours of life out of my battery with moderate use (display is on >50% of the time). Looking at battery usage statistics, my display is the main power consumer as I would expect. But it seems that I can only get about 4 to 4 1/2 hours of display "time on" before the battery dies. Seemed reasonable to me until I read the article that compared the DX to other Android phones and it said that the DX had averaged 7 hours and 42 minutes during their test… which was with the display turned on and set at 40% the whole time!

I thought maybe my other processes (syncing numerous email accounts, social networking widgets updating, etc) were contributing to the reduced life, so I tried to replicate their test:

· First, I deleted all my Market apps and did a hard reset on the device to get it back to an out of the box configuration
· I did not set up any emails to sync during initial setup
· Then I downloaded My Settings (as they did in their test)
· Then, I opened My Settings, and did the following (as they did in their test):
· Turn screen brightness to 40%, and turn off auto brightness.
· Turn off Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS location, cell location, and auto sync.
· Deactivate screen timeout; that is, make sure the screen stays on indefinitely.
· In the Web browser, we turn off Flash support and plug-ins.

In their test, they had an app that opened and closed the web browser every minute and went to selected web sites. I didn't have said app so I just loaded web pages at random (I obviously didn't have time to do this every minute, so I would have expected AT LEAST the same battery life as they had). I believe they ended the test when the battery reached 5%.

My results were nowhere near 7 hours and 45 minutes. My results were 5h 25m:
Display – 88% (5h 25m Time On)
Browser – 8% (35m 29s CPU total)
Cell Standby – 3% (5h 25m Time On)
Android System – 2% (9m 34s CPU total)

That’s all that was running. Soooo… am I missing something? What is everyone else seeing in terms of display “Time On”?

Thanks!

 

[illmatic636]

Great read! Here's a general question. I'm a chronic charger. My phone will be on 100% charged while I'm at work, but I'll still have it hooked up for the majority of my work day. Is this OK to do or is it unhealthy for the battery? Will it cause any problems?

That is a very nasty little question. Here is why: Trickle charging.

We would have to know if the DX still has a slight trickle charge being applied once at 100%. If so, technically yes, it can be bad for the battery over its entire life time. But, and there always has to be a but, you will probably get rid of the phone before the 2.5 year mark where the battery might go bad from it.

My hope is that the DX circuitry is properly setup and this is a "non-issue". But research is required to be 100% sure.

qft ^

Replacement batteries are cheap, I wouldn't worry about it. The device itself should be fine, if anything, it could cause some minor cell damage to the battery.

I would not advise you purchase a cheap battery at all. These batteries tend to heat up and in extreme cases explode in your pocket. Search-out some Motorola-OEM batteries for your device. It's a bit more expensive but will be worth it. Considering your life+your $600 phone.

 

[gotkwah]

New battery question

Just got a new Droid X today...
So what is the consensus about a new battery?
Fully charge it first or drain it first?

(or maybe even something crazy like, charge it to 62%, drain it to 37, recharge to 54, drain to 18, then fully charge??)

TIA guys. sooo excited about my new phone! first droid and first new phone in a while!! (switching from treo 700p, yea, i know...)

 

[illmatic636]

hahaha. I had the PPC6700, Touch, touchpro, MT3G, and now the Droid. Some people say, drain it, then charge it full overnight. I think if you got it fully charged then you should be good to go. Batteries these days do not have memory, nor can be trained from what I hear. I usually fully charge and discharge to nothing before charging it again.

Welcome to the forum.

 

[TwerpPoet]

. . .So what is the consensus about a new battery? . . .

Here is an excellent article on the care and feeding of lithium ion batteries. It is slightly dated, newer batteries are rated to last longer, but the general guidelines are still true.

How to prolong lithium-based batteries

 

[Juicemane]

. . .So what is the consensus about a new battery? . . .

Here is an excellent article on the care and feeding of lithium ion batteries. It is slightly dated, newer batteries are rated to last longer, but the general guidelines are still true.

How to prolong lithium-based batteries

Thanks for that!

 

[TwerpPoet]

No problem. I've been trying to convince certain relatives that their new batteries shouldn't be treated like nicads. I've finally come to the conclusion that it isn't teaching old dogs new tricks that's the problem. It's getting them to unlearn the old tricks.

 

[Juicemane]

No problem. I've been trying to convince certain relatives that their new batteries shouldn't be treated like nicads. I've finally come to the conclusion that it isn't teaching old dogs new tricks that's the problem. It's getting them to unlearn the old tricks.

Qft.


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