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

[KsKnightmare]

Am I able to change the build.prop on the droid 1?

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[mountainbikermark]

How does having something on the card compare to it being on the phone?
On dumbphones using wallpaper and such stored on the card made a large difference in performance and battery life. Since so much is capable of being stored on a card on a droid are the readers more efficient or is that a drain also?
My swype was always in the top 5 battery users and I'm wondering if it being installed on the card was part of it. My slideit and ShapeWriter never show up in the usage at all
Thanks

wified from my Incredible monolith using some form of slider keypad on Tapatalk

 

[Juicemane]

Am I able to change the build.prop on the droid 1?

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Yes. Its slightly different though.

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[Juicemane]

bump
:icon_ banana:

 

[chrisb3]

Hey Juicemane,

What's your thoughts on the app "Watchdog"?

 

[bgillyjcu]

Still loving my 35 hours of battery life.

I never have to worry about going 7am til 1am the next morning with HEAVY USE on a Friday or Saturday.

 

[Riddlin]

You instruct to stay away from JuiceDefender. That's a dumb statement without any proof behind it. I've used JD enabled and disabled on my extended battery and disabling data periodically (when it's enabled) is a WINNER for saving battery.

Why use Juice Defender on the DX when the DX has its own Battery Saver. lol

 

[BLAZE86DUBZ]

i have a quick question on battery mode i have mine set to custom battery saver on peak hours what does that mean to turn off date after 15 min and so on what should i set it at ? i usually keep my signed onto yahoo messanger does thast mean after 15 min its going to sign me off?whats the best setting to keep it at for best battery life?

 

[Big Fate]

Hello fellow Droid Lovers! I decided to try to consolidate all the information floating around about the battery performance for our beloved Droid X. Before we begin let me just point out the obvious... The majority of users having battery issues, are not having issues, they simply do everything possible to rape the life out of the phone. In comparison to other smart phones, the X has great, yes great, battery life. So with that said let’s continue on.

*** But Juice... My phone dies in 4 hours, wtf m8? Why is this happening? ***

The main culprits for bad battery life are as follows (in no particular order)

1. The User (more on this later)
2. GPS / Wi-Fi / Signal / Sync
3. Screen Brightness
4. Rogue Apps
5. Task killers (big no-no, especially with Froyo)
6. Faulty Battery (it happens, rarely, but it happens)

So, with these 6 or so items Ill break each down into detail, if this isn’t your first time around the block, you can skip this information.

1. The User - STOP, put the phone down; pull your Ostrich like head out of the sand, and stop being naive about things. I have seen so many non-tech people argue with informed users on this site that it’s getting disgusting. We are here to help each other, take the advice if it’s good.

2. GPS / Wi-Fi / Signal / Sync - These four bad boys will chew up battery if you don't keep them inline. GPS and Wi-Fi can stay off 24/7 unless you need them. They don't have to, but it does eliminate a big threat to the life of your battery. Turning off WiFi should only be done when NOT around a WiFi signal. Otherwise you want WiFi on over 3G. WiFi uses less power by at least 30% to 40%. And you should setup WiFi to never go to sleep if the phone is in Sleep/Standby. Because auto-sync data will occur during Sleep/Standby which will drain your battery more than if you had it connected to WiFi. Poor Signal is by far the biggest battery drain (at least for me). If you have crappy coverage at home/work/school, expect your phones battery life to suffer. At home my phone will die in less then 10 hours sitting idle due to loss of service. Also, make sure your PRL list is up to date (dial *228 opt 2) Lastly, Sync... It requires a service to run in order to Sync, that service takes up resources that require power, it also requires a data connection which chews up even more power. Following me? Turn your sync settings down to something that works for you, most of us don't need Twitter to sync every 15 minutes, although a lot of you do it anyways, and then in turn complain. (See #1)

3. Screen Brightness – Set it to auto, or turn it down to the lowest visible setting. Even though with the X the screen is not that big of a battery drain in comparison to other devices (doesn’t make much sense given its size, but the benchmarks have been done and it really isn’t that bad)

4. Rogue Apps – Keep an eye on your apps. Spend more then 2 seconds reading comments before installing apps, most of the comments will help you make a decision on whether the app works on your device or not. If you see 10 people commenting about how it’s been destroying the battery and forcing GPS on, maybe wait for an update to install it? No? (See #1)

5. Task Killers – Let me break it down sweet and simple. Your Droid X is NOT a Windows PC. Apps may show as “running” but I promise you, 99% of the time, they’re in a suspended state, not doing anything. Get over the Windows mentality and you’ll be fine. Task killers are constantly running services (see sync above) that require power to run. Every time you “close” unwanted apps, you’re wasting battery life. I tested this on both my D1 and DX and trust me; you can squeeze an extra 2+ hours out of your battery by NOT using a Task killer. If you think I’m lying… (See #1)

6. If you take the advice in this article and follow some of the steps below, you’ll be able to tell if the battery is bad. Bad batteries normally have other issues besides not lasting long. If the only issue you have is not getting 10 hours out of your phone (be happy with 10 hours) it’s probably not a bad battery and falls into the other 5 items.

*** Wow Juice, thanks for a bunch of stuff to read that didn’t tell me what to do! ***

Alright now for some useful things you can do to maximize battery life.

1. Set screen brightness to Auto or the lowest visible brightness setting. This is done via Settings > Display > Brightness
2. Adjust sync settings to the longest duration. Changing sync settings is a bit weird on the X, most apps can be set in there native settings.
3. Turn off GPS when not in use. Turn WiFi off when out of range. Easy way is to use the Power Control Widget.
4. Do NOT use a task killer.
5. If you run an alt home launcher (LauncherPro, ADW, etc) Try running 1 home screen with as few widgets as possible.
6. Use Battery Manager and create a custom profile. Change the timeout for peak and off-peak hours to whatever you desire.
7. Stay away from most apps designed to give you better battery life (Juice defender, Power Settings, etc) sometimes they work, but when they don’t…
8. Buy an Extended Battery. Worth every penny IMO, mines shipping today :icon_ banana:

That’s all I have at this time for Non-Root users. For those of us with root, we can all do everything listed above, however; we can also do everything listed below.

1. Edit your Build.Prop file. Click here for more info.
2. Remove Bloat. Click here for more info.
3. Use Set CPU to manage your processor state and max/min speeds. Market app, worth every penny.
4. Themes.
5. Custom ROMs. Click here for more info.

That’s all I have right now. As more information or tweaks become available I will update this thread. This is also my first “Guide” so be gentle. It’s very rough and I’m sure there are tons of grammatical errors. If anyone has anything additional to add please post it up, I’ll try to keep this updated. Feel free to link back to this article, and thanks for taking the time to read it, hope it helps!

Thanks for your advice...

I guess probably the only thing I would have to ignore on your suggestions, which is probably gonna drain me like crazy. Turning GPS mode off, I keep mine on at all times due to me having the app "Wheres My droid". Which i'm sure you all know of locates your phone if ever stolen or lost. I would rather take a drained battery any day over none...

I use task killer as well which I heard works pretty well via comments on app download screen. But you say you've tested this huh?

 

[Big Fate]

Still loving my 35 hours of battery life.

I never have to worry about going 7am til 1am the next morning with HEAVY USE on a Friday or Saturday.

What do you use? Extended battery??

 

[bigjonmoo73]

Sweet write up! Didn't know that WiFi uses that much less battery than leaving it on 3G, I thought it was the other way around... Haha

 

[chkmate]

Very nice write up, thanks!

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[ocpd44]

Well, about the only thing I could do that I hadn't already done was get rid of my task killer. So, I finally dumped it. I figure if it doesn't help I can always reinstall.

I do use Juice Defender and, for me, it works well. I've recommended it to others and it works well for them. My biggest problem during a work day is the weak signal I have. Not much I can do about that other than keep a charger in the drawer. With all the talk on the extended batteries, I may get the Verizon 1750mah so that I can continue to use my Verizon holster (which I reply like). At the least, I'll have two batteries.

Jeff

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[Juicemane]

Juicedefender is hit or miss. As for task killers don't use them.

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[Juicemane]

bump. maybe a sticky is in order?