I've been consistently getting no more than 5 hrs of battery life on a full charge. I've tried so many things to fix it; removing all widgets, trying to force close social location, turning off bluetooth, putting juice defender on aggressive, setting all the battery settings to max battery saving, using the phone until the battery died then charging it with the phone off..... none of them worked.
A friend of mine has the bionic and is getting plenty of battery so we were both going through every setting to find something different. We had some differences like I was using Launcherpro, he was using motoblur. Then I noticed his wi-fi wasn't on. I asked him why, he said because he's got a strong 4g signal there's no reason for wifi. It was worth a shot. I turned off wifi today and... amazingly my phone battery lasts HOURS longer. After 3 hours of listening to music through headphones streamed over 4g (what I would call heavy usage), the phone still had 60% battery. With wifi on I could charge the phone fully then not touch it for 3 hours and it would be down to 40% with no usage at all.
TURN OFF YOUR WIFI IF YOU'RE HAVING BATTERY PROBLEMS!
Of course only if you're in a strong 4g area.
Here's why I think it works. It's completely counter intuitive. We all know the 4g radio uses MUCH more battery than the wifi radio so theoretically being on Wifi should save battery. But the software on the Bionic is the problem. If you're on wifi, the phone will use the Social Location app to locate you using the wifi. It will then keep the phone alive to keep the wifi connection alive. This is regardless of any settings that you can change on the phone (that I've found anyway). If you kill the Social Location app, it will restart itself in a few minutes (even if you add it to the auto end list in task manager). All the other Verizon bloatware will grab that Wifi connection too and constantly update. But if you turn wi-fi off, Social Location will not leave itself on and running. It will not poll the 4g connection continuously like it does on WiFi. And I haven't seen VZ Navigator or IM or any of that garbage trying to start itself like it does on wifi.
If you're having battery issues like I was, then give this a shot.
A friend of mine has the bionic and is getting plenty of battery so we were both going through every setting to find something different. We had some differences like I was using Launcherpro, he was using motoblur. Then I noticed his wi-fi wasn't on. I asked him why, he said because he's got a strong 4g signal there's no reason for wifi. It was worth a shot. I turned off wifi today and... amazingly my phone battery lasts HOURS longer. After 3 hours of listening to music through headphones streamed over 4g (what I would call heavy usage), the phone still had 60% battery. With wifi on I could charge the phone fully then not touch it for 3 hours and it would be down to 40% with no usage at all.
TURN OFF YOUR WIFI IF YOU'RE HAVING BATTERY PROBLEMS!
Of course only if you're in a strong 4g area.
Here's why I think it works. It's completely counter intuitive. We all know the 4g radio uses MUCH more battery than the wifi radio so theoretically being on Wifi should save battery. But the software on the Bionic is the problem. If you're on wifi, the phone will use the Social Location app to locate you using the wifi. It will then keep the phone alive to keep the wifi connection alive. This is regardless of any settings that you can change on the phone (that I've found anyway). If you kill the Social Location app, it will restart itself in a few minutes (even if you add it to the auto end list in task manager). All the other Verizon bloatware will grab that Wifi connection too and constantly update. But if you turn wi-fi off, Social Location will not leave itself on and running. It will not poll the 4g connection continuously like it does on WiFi. And I haven't seen VZ Navigator or IM or any of that garbage trying to start itself like it does on wifi.
If you're having battery issues like I was, then give this a shot.
