No joke. How I doubled my battery life

[samiusmc]

I thought I would share this in case anyone else has similar issues:

I bought my Droid in November. At the time, I was unaware of how to care for the battery or any tips to extend its life. Subsequently, I came across a brief tip guide from Verizon illustrating how to extend the Droid's battery life (I’m posting a copy of the guide here). I also read posts on this forum regarding "conditioning the battery" which included the tips in the Verizon guide. I looked into this because my battery was lasting for about 8-9 hours. I thought that was good until I read about some users getting significantly better battery life. I wondered if I may have unintentionally damaged the original battery because I didn’t know how to care for it or if I had a defective battery.

I wanted to make a fresh start with my battery since I was now more educated. I decided to buy a brand new OEM battery from Amazon for about $15.00. I followed all the tips in the Verizon guide as well as what I read on this forum (charging for 24 hours, letting it discharge completely twice, etc.). The guide is confusing since it instructs the reader to charge the Droid while it’s off which is impossible. Regardless, I charged it for 24 hours with the Droid on, let it drain until the Droid turned off and repeated a second time.

I've had the battery for a week now. Currently, my Droid has been running for 24 hours without charging. With typical usage yesterday and today, as well as leaving it on all night, I still have 20% battery life remaining. This was unheard of before I bought the new battery. The day before my battery lasted 19 hours.

Like I said, I'm posting this for information. I don't have anything to do with selling batteries and I don't care where or if you get one.

 

[bwhite82]

Thanks for posting this information. Does it only work for new batteries? I hope not, my current battery life is similar to what yours used to be. Terrible. I am going to give this a try.

 

[solorca]

Can you please give us an estimate of usage when you are getting that amount of time? For instance, how much time you display is on, etc.

 

[samiusmc]

Can you please give us an estimate of usage when you are getting that amount of time? For instance, how much time you display is on, etc.

Right now I still have 20% left after 24.5 hours. Here's the usage:

Display 43%, cell standby 23%, phone idle 16%, NewsRob 7%, Android Sys 5%, Xscope 3% Android OS 3%, Beaut Widgets 2%

 

[solorca]

Can you please give us an estimate of usage when you are getting that amount of time? For instance, how much time you display is on, etc.

Right now I still have 20% left after 24.5 hours. Here's the usage:

Display 43%, cell standby 23%, phone idle 16%, NewsRob 7%, Android Sys 5%, Xscope 3% Android OS 3%, Beaut Widgets 2%

Sorry to ask another question, but could you check and see how much display time has been used (the actual minutes)?

The reason I ask is because I'm using an extended battery, and I'm curious about how my usage compares.

 

[samiusmc]

Can you please give us an estimate of usage when you are getting that amount of time? For instance, how much time you display is on, etc.

Right now I still have 20% left after 24.5 hours. Here's the usage:

Display 43%, cell standby 23%, phone idle 16%, NewsRob 7%, Android Sys 5%, Xscope 3% Android OS 3%, Beaut Widgets 2%

Sorry to ask another question, but could you check and see how much display time has been used (the actual minutes)?

The reason I ask is because I'm using an extended battery, and I'm curious about how my usage compares.

It says 2hrs 16 minutes.

 

[solorca]

Right now I still have 20% left after 24.5 hours. Here's the usage:

Display 43%, cell standby 23%, phone idle 16%, NewsRob 7%, Android Sys 5%, Xscope 3% Android OS 3%, Beaut Widgets 2%

Sorry to ask another question, but could you check and see how much display time has been used (the actual minutes)?

The reason I ask is because I'm using an extended battery, and I'm curious about how my usage compares.

It says 2hrs 16 minutes.

Cool. Thank you. I'm averaging between 4-4 1/2 hours on display with the extended battery, so that's in line with what you have it seems (just doubled, since the extended battery is twice as big). Of course, at that point the battery dies, while you still have 20%.

 

[samiusmc]

Sorry to ask another question, but could you check and see how much display time has been used (the actual minutes)?

The reason I ask is because I'm using an extended battery, and I'm curious about how my usage compares.

It says 2hrs 16 minutes.

Cool. Thank you. I'm averaging between 4-4 1/2 hours on display with the extended battery, so that's in line with what you have it seems (just doubled, since the extended battery is twice as big). Of course, at that point the battery dies, while you still have 20%.

One other thing I noticed was the markings on the Amazon battery were slightly different. Perhaps my factory battery came from a bad batch produced when the Droid first launched.

 

[aaf709]

Nice, I'll have to copy this to my phone; that way I'll always have it with me.

 

[SamTHorn]

Interesting. I'll try it with another one to see if it works.
Thanks for sharing.
~ Sam

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[Killmanaj]

IS your phone rooted? I ask because I recently went back to stock for about 3 days and my battery life almost tripled. Rather than having 20% when I went to go to bed I had about 80% with the same usage. Then I rerooted and flashed a new rom and my battery life sucks again.

 

[nikkix]

i was wondering if rooting/roms affects the battery that drastically too. im using adamz low voltage kernel and it seemed to help, but only slightly

 

[samiusmc]

IS your phone rooted? I ask because I recently went back to stock for about 3 days and my battery life almost tripled. Rather than having 20% when I went to go to bed I had about 80% with the same usage. Then I rerooted and flashed a new rom and my battery life sucks again.

I'm rooted. I'm running Bugless Beast v0.9. I'm using the ChevyNo1 1.0 ghz 5 slot kernel and overclocking at 800mhz

 

[mjs31]

i was wondering if rooting/roms affects the battery that drastically too. im using adamz low voltage kernel and it seemed to help, but only slightly

Could be different reasons for this. I have been rooted for some time and rootings with over clocking actually increased my battery life. Of course I use Set Cpu and have it throttle back to about 125mhz when the phone is idle, but otherwise I run everything the same.

With the exception of some bad batteries, I believe it is a matter of your settings and the apps you are running.

 

[R1Lover]

you say normal usage and yet you show no call usage in your stats of battery use....

I get more then two hours of display in 8 hours.... so you just aren't using the droid enough... lol