Is Bionic Battery Life Really This Abysmal??

[tgarza]

Well...it was my first full day with my new Bionic, and things didn't turn out as well as I had expected. Usage was light...just as much as when I had my 2yr old BB Tour yesterday. It was dead by lunch. Good thing I brought a charger. Got it charged to 80% by quitting time at around 430...but died again by 800. Is the battery life really this abysmal? I am considering returning it. I use it for work and its useless if it doesn't last me a full day.

View attachment 40442

As you can see, 35% phone idle and 25% standby took up the most usage:



Thoughts? Is it a defective battery or are others experiencing similar battery life?

 

[Jelem1880]

Yes this problem is becoming a huge issue for me as well. I just picked mine up and also noticed a huge drain with regular use. I read somewhere in this forum that turning off 4G may help slow it down but it's hard to do when you've gotten a taste of that kind of speed. Other than that I can only suggest the usual power management tricks (backlight, running apps, etc.). Good luck!

 

[bmwnick]

same here may be a deal breaker as it is really bad if you use gps forget about it

 

[NCREDIBLE DROID]

I hope the Bionic gets an update before I get it by the 30th of this month.

 

[TatDroid]

Tgarza, it sounds like your phone hasn't gotten a FULL charge yet. Give it a full, overnight charge (8 to 10 hours) and run it through a few full charge/drain cycles before you judge. Also be aware, ALL 4 of Verizon's current 4G LTE phones use battery fast when on 4G. Switch your phone to 3G mode when in standby and you'll notice a difference.

Sent from my DROID BIONIC using DroidForums

 

[bmwnick]

how do u turn off 4g and change to 3g?

 

[BayouFlyFisher]

http://www.droidforums.net/forum/mo...y-standard-battery-better-than-i-thought.html

 

[stevo95]

There are many reasons, everyone has so many different apps and some of them eat up battery. I bought the extended and I am getting around 16-18 hours of use with moderate usage. There is a setting under location and security which is share picture location. I would turn that off. Also turn off bluetooth when you are not using it. Make sure you charge and discharge the phone fully a few times as well.

There was a really good post in here by a Verizon rep about his experience with the battery with some good tips in it.

A lot of people like Juice defender which is supposed to be great for saving battery.

 

[Darev]

Last week I was pretty happy with the battery life on my Bionic. Something seems to have changed over the weekend. Saturday around 6 pm it was at 100%, by noon on Sunday the phone was powered off due to a dead battery. I had not used the phone at all during that time. As that was the first complete battery drain (extended battery BTW) I'm going to do another one today. As this is my second week, I have to determine if the bugs with the phone (choppy audio/video while recording in the car cradle and now potentially a battery life issue) are worth keeping it.

 

[mandragora]

Last week I was pretty happy with the battery life on my Bionic. Something seems to have changed over the weekend. Saturday around 6 pm it was at 100%, by noon on Sunday the phone was powered off due to a dead battery. I had not used the phone at all during that time. As that was the first complete battery drain (extended battery BTW) I'm going to do another one today. As this is my second week, I have to determine if the bugs with the phone (choppy audio/video while recording in the car cradle and now potentially a battery life issue) are worth keeping it.

I had a similar experience this weekend. I think the difference was being at my house all weekend. Normally I am at work in a 4G area and I was managing about 8 hrs. At home I am outside of the 4G area but I did not turn 4G off. I was swapping batteries every 5-6 hrs. (Luckily got this from Costco with the bundle that contained the extra battery and charger.)

This morning I programed the phone to turn off 4G at my house (Using Llama) and I am hoping that will make a difference but I am tired of fighting the fight so I ordered the extended battery ($25) just in case.

 

[gravebelly]

There is a free app on the market called LTE Switch. I made a widget and allows you to turn on and off 4 g o you dont have to go through the settings.

 

[tgarza]

Thanks for the 4G suggestions, that sounds like it could make a difference. I ended up going back to Verizon to buy an extended battery but instead they warrantied out the existing one. The existing one was bulged out in the middle already. I set it to turn off data after 15 mins of idle. We'll see how that goes.

 

[socalsurfer]

Dead twice in a row

I've had the Bionic for a little over a week- first week was very impressive battery life; all day no probs. Not great battery life, but better than expected. This weekend I put the phone on my desk with the battery at 80%. I came back about two hours later and the phone was dead-this with no emails, no using GPS, no bluetooth-nada! I put a fully charged battery in it -left it alone, and three hours later, another dead battery.

I did a reset to get rid of ALL my downloaded apps and I recharged the phone overnight. Now after about 3 hours of no phone calls, no browsing, just checking battery status occasionally, on 3G only the battery is still at 90%. Phone idle and cell standby have been 75% of the usage, display and Android OS the rest.

Just reinstalled my apps but left the phone on 3G only. If this happens again it's most likely an app -perhaps one of them doesn't like Gingerbread...if everything works well I would have to assume it's the 4G sucking the battery dry. This would be a shame, because 4G is very alluring, but not if it makes the phone impractical to use-I could save $300 and stick with my Dinc2.

 

[82DMC12]

Not sure what to tell you guys but I have my phone on either 4G or wifi all the time. The only widgets I have are facebook, calendar, tasks, MLB at bat, dictionary.com. I have it set to adjust brightness on AUTO, use maximum battery saver, I shut the screen off with the power button as soon as I am done using the phone. GPS is always on, but never bluetooth. I get 10 hours AT LEAST, and my best so far is 20 hours which included being 100% on 4G at my gf's house and I slept for 7 hours with the phone on stand-by.

I take the phone off the charger at 7 am and it's always got enough juice to get me through the work day, go to the gym, and eat dinner around 6:30 pm. I don't usually charge it until I go to bed but if I used it heavy like watching netflix I might have to charge it after dinner. I take at least 10 calls a day at work, send a lot of texts, use the calendar, surf the web for maybe up to 30 min, I read all my gmail on there as well as a POP3 account.... I don't know, I'm having pretty good battery life! FWIW, as soon as I got the phone I fully charged it then fully discharged it three times in a row before I started not worrying about battery cycles.

 

[JohnAP2]

The Old Lady bought this phone and it's no better on it's battery than my 6-month old T-bolt...