Never hated a phone so much.... (Battery Help please?)

[AloneFX]

I honestly have never had such a terrible battery on a phone in my life. I have had my phone since March or so if that's important. I have tried all the usual things like kill tasks, turn off 4g, lower brightness, have battery die fully than charge it, etc. Nothing has helped me out ever. Without any exageration when I say this, I can not and will not ever play games, go on the internet, use social networking apps, or anything similar to these things unless I know I will be near a charger soon. I just can't. The phone is just terrible, I go through the day with my phone in my pocket only checking for text messages or emails and by the time school is done (8 hours) I will easily lose 15-30 percent of battery life just doing that. I actually find this phone worse and more pointless than a flip phone. Reason of this is because a flip phone can play games, text, internet, emails, and much more without dying for like a day easy. My phone can't go three hours without dying if I played games. Having games on the phone is just stupid because I can't ever play them. I have not played a game on this phone unless my phone was on a charger since I got it. This is a mix of a rant towards this piece of crap and also asking you guys to help me with this phone because it has been far to much raging over this phone.

 

[Droid-Xer]

What is your average screen on time per full charge?

 

[SallyC]

Going 8 hrs with some Internet use and losing 15-30% of battery life doesn't seem bad to me - unless you have the Maxx.

Can you install something like Badass Battery Monitor and give us a little more detail of what's using up your battery and how long a charge lasts?

 

[Papa_T]

I found BatteryXL and it did wonders for my battery. I set it to turn 3g off but it will turn on every 30 minutes and sync. I went from 4 or 5 percent usage an hour to around 2 percent.

 

[cereal killer]

moved......................

 

[syndicate0017]

moved......................

Perhaps we need something on the front page announcing the new battery forum.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

 

[nonnasmyladie]

to where?

 

[thegreatone3]

I came from an iPhone and was thoroughly unimpressed with the Razr's battery. I loved the 4G, the large display, and the call quality, but the battery was requiring multiple charges per day (yeah, I'm a heavy user). I kicked myself for passing on the Maxx and then finally went for the conversion kit on cellphonerepairshop. I now have the Maxx's battery in my OG Razr and the difference is night and day! Finally I don't have to worry about constantly finding a place to charge.

 

[FoxKat]

I honestly have never had such a terrible battery on a phone in my life. I have had my phone since March or so if that's important. I have tried all the usual things like kill tasks, turn off 4g, lower brightness, have battery die fully than charge it, etc. Nothing has helped me out ever. Without any exageration when I say this, I can not and will not ever play games, go on the internet, use social networking apps, or anything similar to these things unless I know I will be near a charger soon. I just can't. The phone is just terrible, I go through the day with my phone in my pocket only checking for text messages or emails and by the time school is done (8 hours) I will easily lose 15-30 percent of battery life just doing that. I actually find this phone worse and more pointless than a flip phone. Reason of this is because a flip phone can play games, text, internet, emails, and much more without dying for like a day easy. My phone can't go three hours without dying if I played games. Having games on the phone is just stupid because I can't ever play them. I have not played a game on this phone unless my phone was on a charger since I got it. This is a mix of a rant towards this piece of crap and also asking you guys to help me with this phone because it has been far to much raging over this phone.

Dear AloneFX,

Welcome to the new Battery Forum. Your original post and the thread have been moved here in hopes of giving you greater opportunity to get advice from some of the best battery-savvy people on the forum. There are a great bunch of people here, many who have followed me here as a result of work I have done along the same vein.

I've read the post and I am slightly confused. In one line you state;

"I go through the day with my phone in my pocket only checking for text messages or emails and by the time school is done (8 hours) I will easily lose 15-30 percent of battery life just doing that."
​

And then in another you state;

"My phone can't go three hours without dying if I played games."
​

First I must say, a 15% to 30% reduction in the total charge level over an 8 hour period is not what I would consider excessive, especially given the battery size (1,750mAh). The battery is designed to run the device for an entire average day with a full charge the night before, but depending on your usage pattern and whether you use "computer-like" functions more (surfing, gaming, applications), or phone functions more (calling and texting utilize the phone functions) will have a great impact on the battery's ability to maintain power over the duration of the day.

This is far more a computer than any "Flip-phone" ever was. As a result, it consumes considerably more power. Some of the biggest users of power are;

1. The screen
   1. Much larger, therefore uses more power
   2. Since it's a Super Active-Matrix Organic Light Emitting Diode (SAMOLED), as opposed to the display on your Flip phone which was likely a back-lit Liquid Crystal Display (LCD), as a result, every point of light on this display is a separate and individual LED, and each one uses power.
   3. The brighter the screen is, the more power it uses. White is the most power-hungry, black uses almost no power, any color in between will use either more or less power depending on how much closer to white or black it is.
   4. The longer the display is on while you are not paying attention, such as if you sit it down and turn to do something else, the more power you are wasting while it's staring at the ceiling.
2. The 4G radio
   1. Although 4G is FAST, it also uses more power than 3G, mainly because it actually works WITH 3G, rather than instead of it...2 radios on, at least twice the power consumption.
   2. Proximity to or quality of reception of 4G signal will impact battery consumption, since if it is having a hard time finding or clearly communicating with a 4G tower, it will "turn up" the power consumption to increase signal to the tower. This in turn uses more battery power.
3. The GPS
   1. Similarly to the 4G signal issues and resulting power consumption, GPS will suck battery power if it is not getting a strong signal from the satellites, such as inside a building.
4. Social networking apps
   1. These apps will not only pull data at intervals throughout the day, but they will do so potentially hundreds of times daily depending on how active the "friends" in your network are and how frequent they post.
   2. More than one Social network, means more than one app pulling data.
   3. Each time these apps pull data, they use the cellular data portion of the phone's communication, and whether it's 3G or 4G, it's consuming battery power.
5. Widgets
   1. Many Widgets are also data collection tools, such as clock/weather widgets, news widgets, Social networking widgets, Photo or Media widgets, etc.
   2. Each time these widgets look for updated data, your battery is being sucked dry by them.

There are LOTS of things you can do to minimize or eliminate battery depletion problems, but you also have to realize that if you use it with screen on for extended periods of time, and especially if watching videos or playing games, the computer portion of the phone will shift into overdrive and draw power from the battery in mass consumption. Take some time to click on the links below and read through the lists of suggestions. Get to know the phone even better than you already do. Try taking advantage of some of the built-in tools that are designed to help you limit battery consumption, and even take advantage of some tried and true tools available on the Google Play Store as well.

Don't forget to check back here, because if I know my team, they'll be all over this post and want to help you get the most out of your RAZR.

Good luck! :biggrin:

Quick links

Things you should know

Battery specifications

Tips to extend battery life

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Built-in tools to assist you in optimizing battery life:

Power control widget

Data Saver

Motorola Task Manager

Smart Actions

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[Zandar]

I came from an iPhone and was thoroughly unimpressed with the Razr's battery. I loved the 4G, the large display, and the call quality, but the battery was requiring multiple charges per day (yeah, I'm a heavy user). I kicked myself for passing on the Maxx and then finally went for the conversion kit on cellphonerepairshop. I now have the Maxx's battery in my OG Razr and the difference is night and day! Finally I don't have to worry about constantly finding a place to charge.

To really compare with the iPhone, you should run your RAZR in 3G only mode (since iPhone can't do 4G). You'll see battery life similar to or better than the iPhone in that case, and you'll still have the option to go 4G if you feel the Maverick need for speed. My wife leaves hers in 3G most of the time and gets a day and a half easy (non-Maxx; her usage is on the light side, in fairness).

-Sliced from my RAZR

 

[FoxKat]

To really compare with the iPhone, you should run your RAZR in 3G only mode (since iPhone can't do 4G). You'll see battery life similar to or better than the iPhone in that case, and you'll still have the option to go 4G if you feel the Maverick need for speed. My wife leaves hers in 3G most of the time and gets a day and a half easy (non-Maxx; her usage is on the light side, in fairness).

-Sliced from my RAZR

A very sound post and explanation of the Pros and cons of 4G at the moment. I do believe that the ICS update is doing some creative manipulation of the radios to lessen the impact of 4G on the battery without sacrificing speed or transition stability. We shall see.

Sent from my DROID RAZR MAXX using Xparent ICS Tapatalk 2 with Google voice to text translation. Please excuse any minor spelling, punctuation, capitalization or grammatical errors.

 

[thegreatone3]

To really compare with the iPhone, you should run your RAZR in 3G only mode (since iPhone can't do 4G). You'll see battery life similar to or better than the iPhone in that case, and you'll still have the option to go 4G if you feel the Maverick need for speed. My wife leaves hers in 3G most of the time and gets a day and a half easy (non-Maxx; her usage is on the light side, in fairness).

I mostly use 4G on an on-demand basis for things like streaming music and video. Otherwise, I'm on 3G. Even as a pure 3G device (with absolutely zero 4G usage), the OG Razr's battery didn't cut it with my usage. Again - LOVING the Maxx's battery.

 

[FoxKat]

Just crested 400 "likes"! Thank you all for your incredible and staunch support of me. You have no idea just how much it really means to me when I see you posting cheers and pleas for me. I only hope repay you by turning the small words you type into a thousand volumes by helping to make this forum better and better every day!

:icon_ banana:dancedroid:hail: