First time Droid user, having problem with battery life

jimrawr

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Hi everyone, I recently bought myself a Galaxy S2 phone having been an iPhone user for 2 years. I am so happy with the phone, I absolutely love it, except a problem that I am having with the battery life. For some reason, on some days, my battery will be dead after about 10-12 hours with minimal use. Minimal use means less than an hour of talking, and less than an hour of phone use. When I go to my battery usage indicator, brcmbluetoothservices has used 50% of my battery life. The only time I use bluetooth is in my car as it auto syncs up. I dont have any other bluetooth devices, and I dont typically drive for more than an hour a day. The weird thing is sometimes when my phone is just sitting idle for a few hours, when I go to turn it on the battery will be almost dead after having no use, but the phone is HOT. As if its trying to process something and its heating up. I dont really have many apps/widgets running.

Can anyone help explain what may be happening here? Why would the bluetooth drain my phone when its being used an hour at the most each day (probably closer to 30 mins in the car on a usual day). Why is my phone hot while its doing nothing?

for my battery usage

brcmbluetoothservices:48%
voicecalls:18%
maps:14%
android OS: 9%
display:4%

etc
 

BodyBagz

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I would disble the BT on the phone when it is not needed. As long as the BT is tuned ON, the phone will constantly be "searching" for other BT items to connect to...ultimately eating away at battery. Other than that, here is my "standard" list of things to do to increase battery life...YMMV...

1) Go into Settings--->Battery--->Nightime Saver Mode..this is actually IMO a better setting than Maximum Saver, at least on my Droid X.

2) Your e-mail accounts, do they sync on their own? What type of schedule? Sync only over WiFi or over 3G as well? Set them for WiFI Only if you are in a good WiFi area...extend the times out if you are mostly on 3G.

3) What type of signal reception do you have, Great, Good, Lousy or 2 Soup Cans and some String? If your signal reception is Low, your phone will work harder trying to stay connected and trying to bounce between stronger towers. If signal is really bad, but a free WiFi connection is available, switch the WiFi on and keep it on until you are in a better 3G area.

4) Do you have any Social Widgets, RSS Feed Widgets, Weather Widgets or any other Widgets/Apps that like to update themselves regularly? If so, what are the refresh times for each? Can you set them to only update on a Manual Push? If not, then set the frequency to the longest permissible time frame for your ease of use and lifestyle.
 
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jimrawr

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I would disble the BT on the phone when it is not needed. As long as the BT is tuned ON, the phone will constantly be "searching" for other BT items to connect to...ultimately eating away at battery. Other than that, here is my "standard" list of things to do to increase battery life...YMMV...

1) Go into Settings--->Battery--->Nightime Saver Mode..this is actually IMO a better setting than Maximum Saver, at least on my Droid X.

2) Your e-mail accounts, do they sync on their own? What type of schedule? Sync only over WiFi or over 3G as well? Set them for WiFI Only if you are in a good WiFi area...extend the times out if you are mostly on 3G.

3) What type of signal reception do you have, Great, Good, Lousy or 2 Soup Cans and some String? If your signal reception is Low, your phone will work harder trying to stay connected and trying to bounce between stronger towers. If signal is really bad, but a free WiFi connection is available, switch the WiFi on and keep it on until you are in a better 3G area.

4) Do you have any Social Widgets, RSS Feed Widgets, Weather Widgets or any other Widgets/Apps that like to update themselves regularly? If so, what are the refresh times for each? Can you set them to only update on a Manual Push? If not, then set the frequency to the longest permissible time frame for your ease of use and lifestyle.

Thanks for the reply. I can turn off the bluetooth everytime I get in and out of the car but thats a bit of a pain in the butt. Never had to do that on my iphone, I always had it on and my battery was fine. Also on my droid I keep wifi off because my 3GS speeds are really great, dont really need faster so no point on wasting battery for wifi.

My email checks every hour, again dont use WIFI so it checks when in 3G. I dont have more than 10 emails a day so it cant be that draining. My 3g signal and cell reception are both great. As far as widgets I have a few things that check for updates every 3 hours (weather,news) and facebook checks pretty often.

I dont really want to go all out and shut everything down, minimize my use of everything, what the heck is the point of having a smart phone if I cant count on it keeping me up to date. Something else is wrong and I am sure its something with bluetooth but I dont understand why it should drain the battery that fast as it didnt on my iPhone
 

Liderc

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It's obviously searching for bluetooth devices non-stop and it's killing the battery. Need to figure out how to configure it to only look for your bluetooth once in the car and then make it not search for additional devices once it's not needed. 48% from bluetooth searching is definitely your problem, it's not the phone.
 

takeshi

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I dont really want to go all out and shut everything down, minimize my use of everything, what the heck is the point of having a smart phone if I cant count on it keeping me up to date.
Every Android user has to balance features versus power consumption.

My email checks every hour, again dont use WIFI so it checks when in 3G. I dont have more than 10 emails a day so it cant be that draining.
Number of email messages doesn't matter. If you're polling and you don't have new mail on the server then you're wasting power. Are your accounts not push? If they're push-capable then allow them to push as it's far more efficient than pull. I doubt this is your battery drain but every bit helps.

Why is my phone hot while its doing nothing?
It's doing something if it's hot. CPU and GPS are common suspects in my experience.

If nothing else, at least disable BT and possibly GPS for troubleshooting purposes. If your battery life drastically improves then you can perform some more focused troubleshooting to see if you can resolve the issue without entirely disabling those features. I leave both on with no impact but I know that I have no apps that use these features unless I initiate the use of those features.
 
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jimrawr

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Today I had Bluetooth off since the morning and my battery after the whole day of use is only down to like 70%. So yeah, HUGE difference. I will try to see if there is a way to stop my bluetooth from trying to find devices constantly
 

tuffD1

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It can't be that much of a pain to turn on/off BT when enter/exit vehicle. Use your toggle widget.

Via-Liquefied & beat up DROID
 

takeshi

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Sure it can. I never toggle BT and battery life isn't adversely affected. Never assume that your situation or preferences are universal.
 
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jimrawr

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Its not that much of a pain to turn it off/on but the thing is, why is that even necessary? I haven't had a phone drain the battery this fast by leaving bluetooth on, ever. Its definitely an issue that isnt normal
 

born2golf

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I agree with this post. Just put a toggle on your homescreen. Beautiful widgets has an easy one.

Another poster recommended Juicedefender, which is also good. But I have stopped using it since I switched to a Liberty ROM for my D2.


It can't be that much of a pain to turn on/off BT when enter/exit vehicle. Use your toggle widget.

Via-Liquefied & beat up DROID
 
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jimrawr

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Ok guys well its not the bluetooth creating the problem after all. I have had bluetooth off the last few days, and today my battery was dead by 2pm without even making one phone call. So I would say very minimal use on the day, maybe maximum one hour total. Something is definitely wrong here, there is nothing that should be killing the battery from 10am-2pm like this. Looking for any insight as to what can be causing this .. ?? Its only happening SOME DAYS, not every day. I would say 2-3 days a week now this happens.

GPS: OFF
WIFI: OFF
BLUETOOTH: OFF

Widgets: Date/Time, Weather, Facebook Status Updates, Fish Tank Status Updates, Calander, PowerAMP. Thats it.
 
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