My battery issue - Fixed!

[droid100]

I found the problem with my battery.

First off, im not crazy, my battery life was definitely poor. I was getting <12hrs of life out of the phone with 100% charge. I did everything imaginable to try and extend the life but couldnt get it to beyond 10hrs of service... i even called support, and opened a case, but they never got back to me.(Whats up with that?)

Anyway, I tested the phone by task-killing all applications, everything, and it looks like it worked.

The life is now excellent! I turned most of my services back on, and even at the 12hr mark, I had a remaining 60%.

I found that it was my chat client that was draining the battery.

Im not sure what the issue is but meebo and ebuddy both KILL my battery. I switched to google talk and everything has been working since... its such a pain that I cant use an MSN client, since all my contacts use it, but at least my phone will last through the evening.

Dont bother with anything but google talk. ALL the MSN or AIM clients are shoddy. Id be willing to pay 10-15$ for an app that is guaranteed not to drain the battery and keeps me reliably logged into msn.

Pretty frustrating stuff.

 

[evil_O]

^^^Good info. Thanks.

 

[jamiehughes]

verizon already replaced my battery, but mine was going dead in like 4 hours, with nothing running, so there are some problem batteries out there.

 

[keiichi25]

verizon already replaced my battery, but mine was going dead in like 4 hours, with nothing running, so there are some problem batteries out there.

Well, it is not saying that there is no such thing as bad batteries, however, I would suggest looking over how you have your phone setup.

While you saying nothing is running, consider that if you have your pop mail setup beyond the G-mail, that may be a problem.

Do you leave GPS/WiFi/Bluetooth on? Those will also drain the battery in the process.

It isn't simply making sure you have 'nothing running', but using an app like TasKiller to show what things might be running or certain settings being higher than they should, would contribute to battery life being short.

 

[keiichi25]

I found the problem with my battery.

First off, im not crazy, my battery life was definitely poor. I was getting <12hrs of life out of the phone with 100% charge. I did everything imaginable to try and extend the life but couldnt get it to beyond 10hrs of service... i even called support, and opened a case, but they never got back to me.(Whats up with that?)

Anyway, I tested the phone by task-killing all applications, everything, and it looks like it worked.

The life is now excellent! I turned most of my services back on, and even at the 12hr mark, I had a remaining 60%.

I found that it was my chat client that was draining the battery.

Im not sure what the issue is but meebo and ebuddy both KILL my battery. I switched to google talk and everything has been working since... its such a pain that I cant use an MSN client, since all my contacts use it, but at least my phone will last through the evening.

Dont bother with anything but google talk. ALL the MSN or AIM clients are shoddy. Id be willing to pay 10-15$ for an app that is guaranteed not to drain the battery and keeps me reliably logged into msn.

Pretty frustrating stuff.

Yes. I would recommend doing a 'search' on Battery Life and there is a posting I put up in the Tech forum about understanding Battery Life. One of the things I mentioned there is things such as IM clients being left logged in is sort of a bad thing.

The reason you don't want to leave IM on, on any phone, is the inherent design of IM. When you are logged in, it needs to 'ping' the server to say, "This person is online." It will do it constantly.

Things like that is considered 'talk time', even if you aren't actively using it, it is still pinging away at a more steady rate than anything else. With it doing that, and more clients doing it, the more you rack up 'talk time' usage on your phone as far as the battery is concerned.

Remember, most phones are 'passive' with regards to how it handles things. It listens, not 'asks for' information. When a celltower broadcasts says, "Hey, I got something for you..." Your phone responds.

IM clients, on the other hand is having your phone go, "Hey, I'm still connected." So it isn't as 'passive' anymore. And mind you, this is the design of IM where people can loose connection from time to time, so it needs to know that you are 'here' more often than you think.

 

[jamiehughes]

verizon already replaced my battery, but mine was going dead in like 4 hours, with nothing running, so there are some problem batteries out there.

Well, it is not saying that there is no such thing as bad batteries, however, I would suggest looking over how you have your phone setup.

While you saying nothing is running, consider that if you have your pop mail setup beyond the G-mail, that may be a problem.

Do you leave GPS/WiFi/Bluetooth on? Those will also drain the battery in the process.

It isn't simply making sure you have 'nothing running', but using an app like TasKiller to show what things might be running or certain settings being higher than they should, would contribute to battery life being short.

yea, i dont use or have wi-fi on, nor the gps, nor the bluetooth, i know how to shut off or kill these apps, and i have turned all the email auto syncs off. it was def a battery prob as it worked fine the day before, and now it seems to hold up really good, hopefully it keeps it up. and i like the task killer app, it does seem to really conserve battery life

 

[dezymond]

Battery has seemed to improved after the 2.0.1 update. Usually I charge my phone to 100% before bed and when i woke up today about 9 hours later, found out the phone was still at 100% when it's usually at 90% by then. Google has delivered on their word.

 

[droid100]

i'm noticing mixed results today... i'm no longer running the chat clients but i'm back to poor life. i'm going to kill everything again and try to start over.

 

[Erron]

my battery meter says 3:45 total time left when unplugged at a full charge. No wifi, gps, or bt running. How is that for horrible!

 

[Caindris]

my battery meter says 3:45 total time left when unplugged at a full charge. No wifi, gps, or bt running. How is that for horrible!

3:45 of non-standby time is pretty good. I was getting terrible battery life until I used my power management widget. Now I'm easily getting a day and a half of average usage. Granted my average may be your light, so with all things.. YMMV.

 

[droid100]

Bummer. It just died on me @7hrs... something must have gone wrong. It's saying 40% of usage was Android OS. DAMMIT.

 

[bigthinker]

When I purchased Advanced Task Killer Manager, I took my battery life from 3 hours to 6 hours, so doubling it....I am on my phone alot though...Probably have 100 calls in the last 30 hours. I would recommend this app to anyone who is looking to extend battery life

 

[sapo916]

Yeah, only Google Talk is efficienct all the other chat clients are hogs and I only use them sometimes.

 

[windstrings]

my battery meter says 3:45 total time left when unplugged at a full charge. No wifi, gps, or bt running. How is that for horrible!

You would be surprised at what runs in the background.. .especially if you love widgets.
Widgets run as services which use resources continually.
If you don't believe me.. go to settings--->applications---> running services and see all your widgets running. Services kick in an run anytime the phone is on.. you don't have to activate them manually.

Get a task killer or manager and see what all is running from a fresh reboot, now imagine not rebooting your phone for a week or more.

Every time I open almost any app, its still runs "if I let it" in the background.

 

[backlash]

Battery has seemed to improved after the 2.0.1 update. Usually I charge my phone to 100% before bed and when i woke up today about 9 hours later, found out the phone was still at 100% when it's usually at 90% by then. Google has delivered on their word.

That is excellent news, as I have noticed the same thing with my phone.