Faulty phone?

[adampalooza]

Hello. I received my Droid Razr Maxx from amazon.com 4 days ago and I am having problems. It ran perfectly and did exactly what it was supposed to for the first two days. I installed some apps and widgets...nothing out of the ordinary- didn't root and didn't go overboard with downloads or games. The past two days I have been getting less than 24 total hours of battery life with light/moderate use. Most of the time it is on standby and still drops battery alarmingly fast considering I should be able to get DAYS of standby time out of it. Am I doing something wrong or not doing something I should be doing or do I just have a faulty phone? I did a factory restore and did some more basic app/widget download and installs. I run Go Launcher with some some apps like beautiful widgets, circle battery widget, some music apps like amazon mp3 and pandora (which I haven't even used for fear of killing the battery) and some social networking apps with notifications disabled. I don't have 4G here so it's been running on 3G. Bluetooth, GPS and background sync have all been turned off indefinitely while wifi is only on while I'm home which is really the only time I do much web surfing/video watching and gets turned off at night. I've done another factory restore and plan to only run the phone as bare bones as makes sense for having a smartphone to see how the battery responds. Do I need to return it? I got this phone so I wouldn't have to fear about battery dying so fast or tweaking every possible function to get proper battery life out of it. Help!

Thank you.

 

[Trash Can]

I realize you said there's no LTE where you live, but did you change the settings to 'CDMA only' so it's not even looking for 4G? The battery will drain quite a bit faster when the phone is constantly searching for a non-existent 4G signal.

menu>settings>wireless and networks>mobile networks>network mode>CDMA only

or download '4G Toggle' from the Play Store for a shortcut to the above.

EDIT: Also, be sure to take advantage of Smart Actions. Very helpful and easy to set up. Just follow the samples and tweak as desired.

 

[adampalooza]

I had not made that change but I just made it now. Hopefully that will help. Yesterday I noticed that while my phone had been on standby for the majority of the day that the android OS was using up most of the battery (40-50%) and all other resources were using a minuscule amount but today display was the highest (I toyed around with my phone much more today than yesterday) and android OS was at about 20%. Would the LTE searching be keeping the OS "awake" even while it's on standby or would this be caused by my apps?

 

[Trash Can]

I had not made that change but I just made it now. Hopefully that will help. Yesterday I noticed that while my phone had been on standby for the majority of the day that the android OS was using up most of the battery (40-50%) and all other resources were using a minuscule amount but today display was the highest (I toyed around with my phone much more today than yesterday) and android OS was at about 20%. Would the LTE searching be keeping the OS "awake" even while it's on standby or would this be caused by my apps?

Forcing the phone to stay on 3G definitely will help.

Regarding your last question, I rather let others chime in versus give you some bad info.

 

[Mike.757]

Did you download Facebook? That can or a tremendous drain on a battery. Unless settings are changed, fb continuously checks for new info and will check even while the phone is in standby.

Sent from my DROID BIONIC using DroidForums

 

[adampalooza]

I realize you said there's no LTE where you live, but did you change the settings to 'CDMA only' so it's not even looking for 4G? The battery will drain quite a bit faster when the phone is constantly searching for a non-existent 4G signal.

menu>settings>wireless and networks>mobile networks>network mode>CDMA only

or download '4G Toggle' from the Play Store for a shortcut to the above.

EDIT: Also, be sure to take advantage of Smart Actions. Very helpful and easy to set up. Just follow the samples and tweak as desired.

I followed this advice and has worked pretty well so far. I had a near full charge last night before bed and upon waking today I had only lost 4% battery over night. I'm not sure how this rates compared to other razr maxx owners but it's been a great improvement. I'm at 84% after 12 hours mostly standby/light use but I think i accidently left wifi on overnight so I think I need to set a smart action for that. Very appreciative of the advice.

 

[Andielyn]

Fairly new MAXX owner here and in a 3G area and turning off the 4G and setting smart actions made a huge difference. Was experiencing the same sort of battery drain you were seeing initially. It was mostly searching for a 4G signal that was draining the battery in my opinion.

Sent from my DROID RAZR using Tapatalk

 

[FoxKat]

I followed this advice and has worked pretty well so far. I had a near full charge last night before bed and upon waking today I had only lost 4% battery over night. I'm not sure how this rates compared to other razr maxx owners but it's been a great improvement. I'm at 84% after 12 hours mostly standby/light use but I think i accidently left wifi on overnight so I think I need to set a smart action for that. Very appreciative of the advice.

One question...did you start using the phone immediately after activating rather than plugging in to charge before powering the phone up? If so, power the phone down, then plug in the charger and allow it to charge fully (100%) while powered off. It will display a large animated battery with a "liquid" level. A full charge to 100% should take approximately 5-6 hours if the phone is nearly dead. Once it reaches 100%, disconnect and power back up, use as you would normally, but as soon as you get a low battery warning, go through the same charging method described above.

I suggest you do this once every 3.4 months to keep the battery and charger in proper sync.

 

[adampalooza]

FoxKat, my battery is at 72% right now. I haven't done that yet. Should I do the powered down charge now or wait until it falls to that 15% mark first?

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[FoxKat]

FoxKat, my battery is at 72% right now. I haven't done that yet. Should I do the powered down charge now or wait until it falls to that 15% mark first?

Sent from my DROID RAZR using DroidForums

The preferred method to accomplish this is to charge to 100% with the power off first, then discharge to low battery flag, then charge to 100% with power off again. The idea is to set the max charge flag first, then min, then max again. See illustration below:


View attachment 48532
Figure 1: Full-discharge and full-charge flags



Calibration occurs by applying a full charge, discharge and charge. This is done in the equipment or with a battery analyzer as part of battery maintenance.

Courtesy Cadex


How often does a battery need calibrating? The answer depends on the application. For practical purposes, a calibration should be done once every three months or after 40 partial cycles. If the portable device applies a periodic deep discharge on its own, no additional calibration will be needed. However, if the equipment had been in constant battery power with no full-discharge interval for a period of a few months, then a deliberate discharge is recommended. This can be done in the equipment, with a charger featuring a discharge function or a battery analyzer. Avoid doing too many deep discharges for the sake of calibration because this would wear the battery down.

So for people who charge their phone every night, they could benefit from doing this once every 1.5 months. For people who may get 2 days out of their phone before a charge (MAXX), 3 months makes more sense. By the way, all along I've been saying 40 full cycles but I now see I misread it - it's 40 partial cycles so if you plug in often, you may benefit from the battery training even more frequently.

 

[adampalooza]

Ok, last question about this powered off charge (I think). Will charging overnight cause an issue in the phone finding the max charge flag? If it hits 100% and remains on the charger while I sleep will the continual drop and rise of charge give a bad reading?

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[FoxKat]

Ok, last question about this powered off charge (I think). Will charging overnight cause an issue in the phone finding the max charge flag? If it hits 100% and remains on the charger while I sleep will the continual drop and rise of charge give a bad reading?

Sent from my DROID RAZR using DroidForums

Great question and I see you understand the whole concept. Have you been reading my posts? (LOL!) No, the overnight charging and topping off sequences will not throw off the meter. What does throw off the meter is multiple partial charges of different lengths because as said in a previous post, the voltage read from the battery at various intervals will likely read near 4V through most of the typical day since these batteries tend to level off at about 4V through the middle 60% of the full usable capacity. So if someone frequently uses the phone to 25% as an example, then plugs in for a short period and has 70% when they pull it off the charger again, the voltage hasn't actually increased by any but a very small amount. This is what confuses the meter because it doesn't recognize a .08 voltage increase as a 45% charge increase for example.

On the other hand, the topping off cycles happen in the top 10% of the usable capacity. This is an area where for the difference in charge, the voltages actually change significantly from 3.6V to 4.2V

See the chart below to get a better handle on what I am saying. You'll notice the line representing voltage level in the battery rises rapidly during the first 20% of the charging cycle (Stage 1), then levels off for the next 80% to capacity (stage 2), and then drops off as it's sitting and discharging, a more steep decline in the last 20% (Stage 3). Since the charging and monitoring circuitry recognizes the voltage drop and triggers the topping off cycle (Stage 4), it knows that it's at or near capacity when the voltage rises and reaches 4.2 again (end of Stage 4 and start of Stage 3 again).

View attachment 48540

 

[adampalooza]

So far so good. My battery has been behaving extremely well :biggrin: big thanks to everyone for the advice