ideas about battery life

[lennywc]

I have been reading posts concerning droid batteries running out of power, many of these posts lay the blame on various applications. Everyone seems to have his favorite whipping boy.

I have had the droid since day one and have not been a big one for installing apps or using my gps. I have always kept my gps turned off. Anyway, I have not had any issues with battery life, I have been very happy with the performance of my droid and its battery. A couple of days ago I heard of the google sky app and being a star watcher I installed it. This installation prompted me to turn on my gps so I did. Well, since turning on the gps, my battery has a life of about 3 hours. The gps is probably the culprit in 80% of the complaints of short battery life. I no longer leave that gps on except when I am using it. This act of switching off the gps solved my problem and I wonder if it would do the same for most people with battery life complaints.

(For what it is worth)

 

[Jonny Kansas]

I have been reading posts concerning droid batteries running out of power, many of these posts lay the blame on various applications. Everyone seems to have his favorite whipping boy.

I have had the droid since day one and have not been a big one for installing apps or using my gps. I have always kept my gps turned off. Anyway, I have not had any issues with battery life, I have been very happy with the performance of my droid and its battery. A couple of days ago I heard of the google sky app and being a star watcher I installed it. This installation prompted me to turn on my gps so I did. Well, since turning on the gps, my battery has a life of about 3 hours. The gps is probably the culprit in 80% of the complaints of short battery life. I no longer leave that gps on except when I am using it. This act of switching off the gps solved my problem and I wonder if it would do the same for most people with battery life complaints.

(For what it is worth)

As you may have seen since you said you've read a lot of threads about battery life, GPS is ONLY using resources when the satellite icon is visible in your notification bar. If you exit Google Sky Map, and the icon disappears and stays gone until you open another app that uses GPS and the icon come back, then GPS isn't your problem...

 

[640k]

I have been reading posts concerning droid batteries running out of power, many of these posts lay the blame on various applications. Everyone seems to have his favorite whipping boy.

I have had the droid since day one and have not been a big one for installing apps or using my gps. I have always kept my gps turned off. Anyway, I have not had any issues with battery life, I have been very happy with the performance of my droid and its battery. A couple of days ago I heard of the google sky app and being a star watcher I installed it. This installation prompted me to turn on my gps so I did. Well, since turning on the gps, my battery has a life of about 3 hours. The gps is probably the culprit in 80% of the complaints of short battery life. I no longer leave that gps on except when I am using it. This act of switching off the gps solved my problem and I wonder if it would do the same for most people with battery life complaints.

(For what it is worth)

As you may have seen since you said you've read a lot of threads about battery life, GPS is ONLY using resources when the satellite icon is visible in your notification bar. If you exit Google Sky Map, and the icon disappears and stays gone until you open another app that uses GPS and the icon come back, then GPS isn't your problem...

this is exactly right. gps isn't polling any satellites until its use has been requested. it just stays resident until you need it. i leave all of my services on all of the time and get excellent battery life.

 

[hookbill]

It's my experience from using both the Blackberry Storm and Storm 2 that battery life on a smart phone is short lived. And I find the "smarter" the phone is the shorter the battery life. For Example battery life was a bit shorter on the Storm 2 then it was on the Storm 1, and a heck of a lot shorter on Droid then on the Storm 2.

I read an article once and I don't have a link unfortunately that basically says batteries today, even as evolved as they are still can't keep up with the technology and their "running times" are exaggerated.

 

[takeshi]

There are some apps that you might not expect to use the GPS (such as the browser) but monitoring the notification bar will tell you if the GPS is active and eating your battery. It's certainly true that disabling GPS entirely will safeguard you from this issue but I personally use GPS quite a bit an prefer to allow the receiver to be used as needed. Of course, YMMV.

You'll see many culprits for named for battery life issues as there are certainly many reasons that a person could be experiencing battery life issues. I mean, we don't all use the same apps and we don't all use our Droids in exactly the same way even if one of us happens to have the exact same apps as another person.

The important thing, IMO, is to have a good method of troubleshooting the issues rather than memorizing every single possible solution out there. Check the Battery Info/Usage screen. Watch the notification bar to ensure that GPS or WiFi isn't active when it shouldn't be. Be aware of what apps you've installed recently or how your usage patterns may have changes since you noticed that battery life was impacted. Take note of your coverage. On many devices, poor coverage can affect battery life. I'm not entirely sure that this is true with the Droid but maybe someone more knowledgeable can chime in.

 

[Scribble]

And I find the "smarter" the phone is the shorter the battery life. For Example battery life was a bit shorter on the Storm 2 then it was on the Storm 1, and a heck of a lot shorter on Droid then on the Storm 2.

This doesn't hold true... My Droid's battery life is a ton better then my LG ENV Touch's battery... Oh wait, that phone was just crap- NM.

 

[BayouFlyFisher]

The reason everyone has a "different whipping boy" concerning this issue is that we all now have different droids. We've all downloaded different apps and we use them differently. We all have our options/settings/preferences set differently. Some are rooted, some are not, some are overclocked and some are not. Now, on to my favorite whipping boy: Cell signal strength. If you have to spend time in areas with weak signal strength you will experience increased battery consumption.

I can tell you this concerning my phone, my battery is now lasting much longer since I started using two programs. The first is Screebl. It determines when you are actually using the phone and keeps the screen on. What this allows you to do is to set a screen timeout of 15 seconds so the screen shuts off very quickly when you aren't using the phone. and it eliminates those oh so annoying screen dimmings while using the phone. The other program requires rooting, but it is worth it (imho) and that is Setcpu. It allows you turn the cpu speed down dramatically when the phone is idle. I turn mine down to 125 mhz now. I also turn it down to that level when it's charging because personally I never use my phone when it's charging. My battery usage now is great. Yesterday I used my phone a lot and this is mostly my normal day: 30-45 minutes GPS use (Cardio Trainer walk), video viewing 30 minutes, surfing (a lot), emails a lot, cruising the market, etc., etc. Last night at 11Pm after having been off charger for 16 hours, I had 60% battery!! Now, during that whole day I also had excellent signal strength so that helped a lot.

 

[bigthinker]

Great insights everyone....I get 6 to 7 hours of battery life whereas when I first got the Mothership, I was getting 2 to maybe 4 hours of battery life....I found that when I control whats running on the droid or what I need to have running with advanced task manager....IT really has made a HUGE difference in the life of my droids daily battery life. I am on the droid in phone mode with 200+ calls per day. :motdroidhoriz:

 

[640k]

Great insights everyone....I get 6 to 7 hours of battery life whereas when I first got the Mothership, I was getting 2 to maybe 4 hours of battery life....I found that when I control whats running on the droid or what I need to have running with advanced task manager....IT really has made a HUGE difference in the life of my droids daily battery life. I am on the droid in phone mode with 200+ calls per day. :motdroidhoriz:

wow 200+ calls/day? the phone is rated at about 320 min of talk time, right?

 

[bigthinker]

Great insights everyone....I get 6 to 7 hours of battery life whereas when I first got the Mothership, I was getting 2 to maybe 4 hours of battery life....I found that when I control whats running on the droid or what I need to have running with advanced task manager....IT really has made a HUGE difference in the life of my droids daily battery life. I am on the droid in phone mode with 200+ calls per day. :motdroidhoriz:

wow 200+ calls/day? the phone is rated at about 320 min of talk time, right?

Yes....I think so...I have to swap batteries at about 3 or 4 pm in the afternoon for the rest of the day.....

 

[ScooberJake]

GPS is ONLY using resources when the satellite icon is visible in your notification bar.

Is this true for Wifi as well?

I was loving my Droid battery life after the 2.0 update. I had been using Locale Beta since I got the phone, but recently upgraded to Locale 1.0 and my battery life has tanked. My suspicion is that this is due to a change in the way Locale uses Wifi. With Beta, I had Locale set to only use GPS (which I left turned on always) to find my location. In Locale 1.0, it will periodically poll Wifi to help locate the phone, and this cannot be turned off. Although I have Wifi turned off through the Droid settings, it seems that whenever I check the phone for an email or text or whatever, the Power widget shows Wifi on, almost always. To make matters worse, here at my work location there are no real Wifi networks, only a very weak one from a nearby library.

Could this by the reason for my shorter battery life? If the Power widget shows Wifi turned on, is it using battery? Or only using it if the Wifi icon is in the notification pane at the top? Spare Parts battery history, under "Other usage" shows Running at 16.6%, Screen on at 4.5%, Wifi On at 4.3%, and Wifi Running at 3.5%. Seems like a lot of juice going to Wifi. I don't remember what this showed before the Locale upgrade.

 

[640k]

GPS is ONLY using resources when the satellite icon is visible in your notification bar.

Is this true for Wifi as well?

I was loving my Droid battery life after the 2.0 update. I had been using Locale Beta since I got the phone, but recently upgraded to Locale 1.0 and my battery life has tanked. My suspicion is that this is due to a change in the way Locale uses Wifi. With Beta, I had Locale set to only use GPS (which I left turned on always) to find my location. In Locale 1.0, it will periodically poll Wifi to help locate the phone, and this cannot be turned off. Although I have Wifi turned off through the Droid settings, it seems that whenever I check the phone for an email or text or whatever, the Power widget shows Wifi on, almost always. To make matters worse, here at my work location there are no real Wifi networks, only a very weak one from a nearby library.

Could this by the reason for my shorter battery life? If the Power widget shows Wifi turned on, is it using battery? Or only using it if the Wifi icon is in the notification pane at the top? Spare Parts battery history, under "Other usage" shows Running at 16.6%, Screen on at 4.5%, Wifi On at 4.3%, and Wifi Running at 3.5%. Seems like a lot of juice going to Wifi. I don't remember what this showed before the Locale upgrade.

by default, wifi goes to sleep when the phone's screen is off (standby/sleep mode).

http://www.droidforums.net/forum/dr...didja-know-wifi-sleeping.html?highlight=didja

 

[iPirate]

this is exactly right. gps isn't polling any satellites until its use has been requested. it just stays resident until you need it. i leave all of my services on all of the time and get excellent battery life.

me too.:icon_ banana:

 

[BayouFlyFisher]

this is exactly right. gps isn't polling any satellites until its use has been requested. it just stays resident until you need it. i leave all of my services on all of the time and get excellent battery life.

me too.:icon_ banana:

Me three. I've been doing this since early December and I've got great battery life.