New phones and batteries

[Fr33dom]

When new phones come out folks generally start out unhappy with their battery. Here are a few tips to make you happier with your new D4.

1. The phone will arrive with the battery partially charged. Charging it to full before first use is recommended. When you start your phone it will record the battery level as if it were fully charged so starting it without a full charge may not allow it to know what full is.

2. The phone profiles the battery to give you better expectations of its level. This generally takes about a week. Until its complete, you will not get good battery life.

3. You can leave your phone in the charger overnight. Its circuitry will not allow an overcharge.

4. The kinds and numbers of apps you load can have a big impact on battery life. I like to run bone-stock for a couple weeks to see how it performs before adding apps so I know the difference.

5. The apps that come with your phone may not be the most efficient to use (if they were, nobody would have to pay to have them preloaded).

6. If you're comming from a legacy phone (Pre Droid 3 or perhaps even Pre RAZR) you may be unfamiliar with some of the changes to the Apps that are preloaded and the settings that can affect battery life. You might want to poke around in the RAZR forums to see what they did to get better battery life.

 

[debdroid1a]

Poking around the Razr section, I found these that might help.

Portable battery . I have one of these all ready for my D1. It's a Rayovac I got at walmart for $20. This one is nice because the same cord that plugs into a USB plug (separate purchse, but I all ready had), just reverses and it plugs into a Moto phone. Other phones require a separate adaptor to use (yes even the iphone). So I don't have to carry around a separate adaptor. Yes it may have been more then an extra battery, but it works. The extra battery suggested here didn't work for me.

Extend Battery Life Like CRAZYYYYY this option is like Task Killer, and it's up to you if you want to use it. Some say don't, others say do. Also mentions Smart Actions Which the Droid 4 will have that will help extend battery life.

Question (Smart Actions) here's a list of smart actions one person uses on their razr.

Battery life help? A post with ideas and suggestions that might help Droid 4 owners.

How can you do the equivalent of a battery pull with the Razr? This post has a good explanation of the hard reset you can do with the Droid4 too.

Razr battery life help

I think this will be good for now.

If anyone has any for the Droid 4, please post them. I would love to read them.dancedroid

 

[Fr33dom]

Task killers

The problem with task killers is that few know what they can kill and what they should stay away from. Task killers use to be a handy thing to have but these days Android does a good job of handling most situations. Here are some things to know:

1. Android does some predictive loading of apps to make the phone faster. Things that get loaded into memory but are not running do not use battery power. The OS will remove any of these apps if more memory is needed by another app.

2. Android apps can use code segments from other apps so something may be running in memory because another app is using it.

3. Some things that get loaded will reload if you remove them or place them in an auto-kill list. This will use clock-cycles and therefore battery power. Use auto kill lists sparingly if at all.

4. Some apps get locked up occasionally and don't let go of their memory and these are the only thing you should use a task killer for. If this happens to you, look for an update or replacement app.

Some people report that using a task killer makes their system faster. I obviously cannot evaluate something someone feels, at least not without some comparative data, but from my experience these users are experiencing something similar to the placebo effect. YMMV.

Edit:

If you're going to use a task killer, I'd recommend establishing a firm baseline and making small changes and testing them for a couple days. To establish a baseline, try to keep your usage similar and do not add any new apps during the testing period. Record your battery use before and after the changes and then reverse the changes and test for a couple days to validate your findings. You may need something like circle battery widget to see the battery changes in single digits.

I've found that many of the things folks have recommended to save battery power have not done so well and some have ended-up using more battery power.