Did I get a lemon/bad battery?

[donnie5336]

Hi all... not that new to the forum, had a OG Droid for 2 years and posted here a little, but mostly lurked and searched. Just got my Razr and so far I love the features, but the battery life--not so much. I've been reading up and from what I've read, I don't think I'm getting nearly the battery life as most. It actually all started when i first got the phone on Friday, we had to go through 3 sim cards to get me up and running; sending and receiving data. I don't know if they just had a bad batch of sim cards or if this may be another sign of a bug with my phone. Regardless, we got it going after that. Well, my battery hasn't lasted long at all. I'm not in an area with 4G yet so i have cut the LTE off. I also have a couple smart actions set to save battery at night and when the phone is motionless with the screen off. I would say i'm an average user, not alot of texts, a little browsing, little facebook, etc. I don't stream music or video often. With that said, I don't think my battery has lasted maybe 6 hours without being needing to be charged (I consider less than 20% as needing to be charged because it dies quickly after that). Also for reference, I had my phone plugged in last night and I woke up at around 4am. It was fully charged so I unplugged it. When I got up and dressed and out of the house this morning i plugged it in again on the way to work and at about 7:30 it read 70%. So sitting doing nothing, 30% of my battery was depleted in 3 hours. Does this sound like I should be taking it back to Verizon? Also, nothing looks fishy on my battery usage.

Thanks for your help.

 

[jpcalhoun]

They had to try a couple of different sim cards on mine also, I don't think that has anything to do with your battery issue. It takes a couple of days for your battery to "settle in". Running it through several charge and drain cycles usually does it. Apps like Facebook, weather, news etc that update in the background can really drain a battery. Check to see how often those apps are updating. If you can, select to update manually...that will save a lot of battery. Also, how often do you have email being sync'd? The longer between sync cycles the better for battery. Live wallpaper is nice but it is a battery "hog" and 3rd party task managers/killers usually will cause more problems than they solve...and use a lot of battery. Try powering your phone off completely (turn it off) before charging a couple of times. Turn down the display brightness to about 30%...that makes a big difference also. You may have to adjust the display brightness up if you're outside. Haptic feedback is also a battery "hog".

 

[wyld]

One of the largest battery drains on the Razr is an app called (in pocket) you might wanna check and see if that is turned on? I believe it is in settings/display menu. This feature is absolutely useless!!!!!

Rooted Razr 2.3.6 .173

 

[wyld]

40% left

Rooted Razr 2.3.6 .173

 

[Zandar]

If you're on 3G only and don't have a lot of crazy apps going in the background, you should be able to get far more out of it. I can do 17+ hours of moderate usage easy with 3G only. I'd recommend you factory reset and then add apps back in one at a time to see if any are a problem (cumbersome, I know; but it beats having that crummy of battery life).

 

[jpcalhoun]

If you're on 3G only and don't have a lot of crazy apps going in the background, you should be able to get far more out of it. I can do 17+ hours of moderate usage easy with 3G only. I'd recommend you factory reset and then add apps back in one at a time to see if any are a problem (cumbersome, I know; but it beats having that crummy of battery life).

Yeap, if all else fails, a Factory Reset is a good option.

 

[djspy]

Try to always use the charger that came with the phone. I noticed that on nights i charge them phone using the HDMI dock it doesn't last as much as when i charge it with the wall charger that came with it. I don't have any smart actions set because for some reason having them drained my battery fast. I turned them off. In the My Music app(s) turn off Live Music Information and anything that syncs "live" to facebook like your gallery and my music app. I found that twitter also uses a lot of battery. Turn off sync for that. Also, one thing that uses a lot of battery is Google+ that app for some reason uses it a lot. Finally, what i have done is the infamous cycle. I let my phone drain all the way until it **** off then i plugged it in to charge and left the phone OFF all night. I noticed a major increase in battery life after i did the cycle.

Hope it helps! I am getting about 16-17 hours a day with normal/moderate/heavy-ish use.

 

[Zandar]

Try to always use the charger that came with the phone. I noticed that on nights i charge them phone using the HDMI dock it doesn't last as much as when i charge it with the wall charger that came with it. I don't have any smart actions set because for some reason having them drained my battery fast. I turned them off. In the My Music app(s) turn off Live Music Information and anything that syncs "live" to facebook like your gallery and my music app. I found that twitter also uses a lot of battery. Turn off sync for that. Also, one thing that uses a lot of battery is Google+ that app for some reason uses it a lot. Finally, what i have done is the infamous cycle. I let my phone drain all the way until it **** off then i plugged it in to charge and left the phone OFF all night. I noticed a major increase in battery life after i did the cycle.

Hope it helps! I am getting about 16-17 hours a day with normal/moderate/heavy-ish use.

Tell Google+ to not synch your photos unless you ask it to (might only be able to say, "WiFi only;" I forget). Do this and watch it's usage plummet to reasonable levels.

 

[djspy]

Tell Google+ to not synch your photos unless you ask it to (might only be able to say, "WiFi only;" I forget). Do this and watch it's usage plummet to reasonable levels.

I always choose the option to never sync.

 

[Zandar]

I always choose the option to never sync.

I don't have that issue at all on mine. You may want to uninstall/reinstall the app.

 

[donnie5336]

I dont have anything syncing except gmail. No social media except facebook app. Its not sync'ed straight to the phone. Only downloaded about 10 of my apps so far and its weather channel, fox news, ebay, etc. I had the phone charging on my way home from work today and it was 90% when i got home. After 3 hours of being in my pocket in sleep mode it was down to 30%. I dont get it. I cut the live music information thing off... dont have "in-pocket" detection on, and have brightness set low. Also ive been through about 4-5 full charge>dead>full charge cycles already (because it dies so fast). So... is there a chance i just got a bad one?


EDIT: I just received an OTA update to 6.11.748. Should this help any?

 

[FoxKat]

I dont have anything syncing except gmail. No social media except facebook app. Its not sync'ed straight to the phone. Only downloaded about 10 of my apps so far and its weather channel, fox news, ebay, etc. I had the phone charging on my way home from work today and it was 90% when i got home. After 3 hours of being in my pocket in sleep mode it was down to 30%. I dont get it. I cut the live music information thing off... dont have "in-pocket" detection on, and have brightness set low. Also ive been through about 4-5 full charge>dead>full charge cycles already (because it dies so fast). So... is there a chance i just got a bad one?


EDIT: I just received an OTA update to 6.11.748. Should this help any?

Do it. Your battery life and lots of other things will be improved with .748

Sent from my DROID RAZR using DroidForums

 

[donnie5336]

OK, I installed the update last night before going to bed. When I put my phone down, it was at 60% around 1am. Got up at 7am and it was still at 60%. So I'm thinking "great!" Well, now that I'm at work, the phone has been sitting at idle for 34 minutes and has lost 20% battery since I got here. I've sent one text. The phone hasn't been on other than that. Also, again just to clarify... I have NO live wallpaper, NO "battery saver" app (ATK, etc.), brightness LOW, NO haptic feedback, NO syncing (except gmail), LTE OFF. This is what it says on my battery use:

Display 42%
Android OS 27%
Phone idle 16%
Cell standby 14%
Gmail 2%
Android System 2%

And don't ask me why but that adds up to 103%..????

I don't understand how the display can be so high when I've only had my phone on just to receive and reply to a text, then once more just to check the battery level.

 

[jpcalhoun]

OK, I installed the update last night before going to bed. When I put my phone down, it was at 60% around 1am. Got up at 7am and it was still at 60%. So I'm thinking "great!" Well, now that I'm at work, the phone has been sitting at idle for 34 minutes and has lost 20% battery since I got here. I've sent one text. The phone hasn't been on other than that. Also, again just to clarify... I have NO live wallpaper, NO "battery saver" app (ATK, etc.), brightness LOW, NO haptic feedback, NO syncing (except gmail), LTE OFF. This is what it says on my battery use:

Display 42%
Android OS 27%
Phone idle 16%
Cell standby 14%
Gmail 2%
Android System 2%

And don't ask me why but that adds up to 103%..????

I don't understand how the display can be so high when I've only had my phone on just to receive and reply to a text, then once more just to check the battery level.

Well it sounds like you're set up right. Your display, under normal conditions, will always be very high in terms of % battery used...that is just the way it is. Remember, the percentages you see under battery usage is the percent of battery used, not percent of total battery capacity (100% being fully charged)...they are different. Based on what you say I would recommend a Factory Reset and see if that doesn't help. If you take your phone back to Verizon that is the first thing they will recommend and won't entertain exchanging phones until you do that. Bummer I know. If you do a Factory Reset download 3rd party apps one at a time and see how your phone (battery) reacts to each one independently.

 

[donnie5336]

I guess the Factory Reset is my only option. Although, I really don't think it's going to help. As I said in my first post, we had to go through 3 sim cards before we got one that worked with data. Well, the first one that was put in, the phone didn't recognize at all, so they put another in and everything looked fine. It showed 3G signal with 5 bars. Cell services worked fine but data never would work. The told me there to give it an hour or so since the device was just activated and see if it would ever start working. Well, I had it for 2-3 hours before I ever got back to verizon but the data send/receive was never working. So I had downloaded no apps or anything in that first period. I know that would still be considered the "break-in" period on my phone, but I did seem to notice that battery life seemed very bad in that time. I really think there's a problem with my phone or the battery itself. Hopefully if that's the case, Verizon will man-up and replace it.

Also, if i do the factory reset... will my SD card be wiped? Do I need to save anything I want from there to my PC?