"Official"? Bionic battery life thread

[chiefvelo]

Wish I could get decent battery life. I have my extended battery in and im in 4g. Have data saver on, battery set to performance mode, wifi, gps, bluetooth are all off. I have played a game for like 15 min. Checked facebook a few times. Watched a 4 min youtube video, and talked for like 20 min and my battery is down to 40% and its been on the charger for 6.5 hrs. Seems like the extended battery should be doing way better than that. That's pretty sucky in my opinion

Sent from my DROID BIONIC using DroidForums

I recently saw my battery life shorten quite a bit. (both on standard and Extended battery) It would last 6 hours even with light use. I have had similar issues with my Droid 1. I have always traced it back to an app or apps keeping the phone active. (i also found under-clocked kernels did the same battery drain on the D1).
I reset my Bionic 2 days again and only set up one email to start at a time. Gmail, Exchange and then Hotmail with exchange settings. ( i changed these to check every 30 min this morning). this morning at 7am in had been unplugged for 15 hours and was at 66% and i did use it lightly last night.
IME the data saver only saves a little battery but either the social apps or i was thinking the ad-ware apps are keeping the data alive and draining the battery. the social location was often active before but i am not sure what app was making it kick in. Facebook? Skype? I haven't set up any as of yet but the batter is doing ok now.
So my suggestion is reset and put only what you really need on and after the battery holds add one app at a time and watch it for a day.
.Anyone have a better solution? i would love to know it!

 

[txrover]

My extended battery lasts a good 14 hrs+ under my normal use (lots of email/web/non-streamed music). 100% to 40% in about an hour is way off.

 

[revelated]

So, an update.

I found a hidden sync setting which I disabled. It caused my phone to get the legendary battery life I stated before. Re-enabling this setting put me down to a happy medium, which for my normal use is 24 hours on average. That's well more than enough.

4G does drain the battery a good amount BUT it depends on what's going on. For example, Touchdown on push is going to hurt the battery. Touchdown every 5 minute polling seems to be quite reasonable. I use no social networking apps on this phone, so I'm good there. Some apps will absolutely bring the battery to its knees, like that notorious Blockbuster app.

I actually bought the extended battery but I simply don't ever use it. The standard battery lasting 24 hours is just unheard of, and from what I'm hearing from colleagues, even the iPhone 4S struggles to meet that from time to time. I'm actually trying to get this rather gorgeous one to come back to the Droid family after she defected to iPhone (Peer pressure), and the Bionic just might accomplish the mission.

 

[mikeruoc]

What and where is this hidden setting??

So, an update.

I found a hidden sync setting which I disabled. It caused my phone to get the legendary battery life I stated before. Re-enabling this setting put me down to a happy medium, which for my normal use is 24 hours on average. That's well more than enough.

4G does drain the battery a good amount BUT it depends on what's going on. For example, Touchdown on push is going to hurt the battery. Touchdown every 5 minute polling seems to be quite reasonable. I use no social networking apps on this phone, so I'm good there. Some apps will absolutely bring the battery to its knees, like that notorious Blockbuster app.

I actually bought the extended battery but I simply don't ever use it. The standard battery lasting 24 hours is just unheard of, and from what I'm hearing from colleagues, even the iPhone 4S struggles to meet that from time to time. I'm actually trying to get this rather gorgeous one to come back to the Droid family after she defected to iPhone (Peer pressure), and the Bionic just might accomplish the mission.

 

[FuturePrimitive]

I found a hidden sync setting which I disabled. It caused my phone to get the legendary battery life I stated before. Re-enabling this setting put me down to a happy medium, which for my normal use is 24 hours on average.

And this setting is...?

 

[chiefvelo]

I did not open the blockbuster app since i reset and did turn off the "Push" settings for email accounts. I at 90% after over 5hrs of light use. surfing and reinstalled two apps this morning. I had over 60% left after more than 14 hrs yesterday with occasional light use on 3g and wifi.

There are battery killing apps and wish it was easier to identify them!

So, an update.

I found a hidden sync setting which I disabled. It caused my phone to get the legendary battery life I stated before. Re-enabling this setting put me down to a happy medium, which for my normal use is 24 hours on average. That's well more than enough.

4G does drain the battery a good amount BUT it depends on what's going on. For example, Touchdown on push is going to hurt the battery. Touchdown every 5 minute polling seems to be quite reasonable. I use no social networking apps on this phone, so I'm good there. Some apps will absolutely bring the battery to its knees, like that notorious Blockbuster app.

I actually bought the extended battery but I simply don't ever use it. The standard battery lasting 24 hours is just unheard of, and from what I'm hearing from colleagues, even the iPhone 4S struggles to meet that from time to time. I'm actually trying to get this rather gorgeous one to come back to the Droid family after she defected to iPhone (Peer pressure), and the Bionic just might accomplish the mission.

 

[revelated]

What and where is this hidden setting??

And this setting is...?

I did not open the blockbuster app since i reset and did turn off the "Push" settings for email accounts. I at 90% after over 5hrs of light use. surfing and reinstalled two apps this morning. I had over 60% left after more than 14 hrs yesterday with occasional light use on 3g and wifi.

There are battery killing apps and wish it was easier to identify them!

There is a way. But I'll get to that in a moment.

For those who have asked here is how to get to the hidden sync setting. You can't get there from the regular menu. Methinks it's Motorola who hid it with their MOTOBLUR skin.

• Disable Background Data (Settings --> Battery And Data Manager --> Data Delivery).
• Attempt to open Market.
• Market will yell that it needs background data and present you with two buttons, Settings, and Cancel. Click Settings.
• You will then be presented with the default Android data options, including an option that allows all apps to sync whenever they please. This is the option that GMail specifically uses to push its email to the device. Disabling this option will basically cryo GMail unless and until you do a manual check. Your widgets also may not be able to do anything either. Even on Wi-Fi.

By default this is on. Mind you, The legendary battery life came not only due to this setting, but also changing how I used the device, according to my YouTube videos.

Now, battery killing apps that I have identified (and feel free to add to this list:

• Blockbuster - it's a specific process that activates the first time you run the app and it will then auto-activate itself every time you reboot even if you never go into Blockbuster again. This is a NOTORIOUS battery murderer, identified first on the Thunderbolt. It was the cause of some people getting like 3 hours of battery on that phone. Has something to do with some setting in the app, but I say just don't run it.
• Maps with GPS/BeatTheTraffic with GPS/any mapping app with GPS - GPS by itself left on isn't too bad. But when these mapping apps use the GPS, even if you're not actually doing GPS nav, it will destroy your battery. Just today I used it for 20 minutes and my battery life dropped from an estimated 18 hours to 9 hours. Unfortunately without GPS you'll have to manually enter addresses for directions. You can use the favorites feature inside of Google Maps to toggle favorite start points and then just voice search for the destinations.
• TouchDown - In push mode TouchDown is a battery murderer. This might apply to the buit-in email app, not sure, I stopped using it once I found out about the whole Device Administrator and them being able to wipe your whole device in Gingerbread. But I know TouchDown for certain is a battery killer. In 5-minute-poll mode it's not as bad. But when I bought the full version and downloaded the mail, my battery took a steep hit.
• VZ-anything - Except My Verizon Mobile. But like VZ Apps, VZ Nav, VZ Tones, whatever...they will just auto run themselves and cause some battery pain.
• LinkedIn With the auto sync enabled. But the same applies to any of the social networking apps. Especially Twitter it seems.
• DLNA can suck battery down at times. I've caught it running in the background all the time, but can't stop it because Task Manager treats it as a "System Task". ES Task Manager can see it and can terminate it, but it comes right back

Others I suspect may be violators are GoToMeeting, Citrix Receiver, and Market. But I haven't confirmed any of those.

 

[Berniep]

Widget locker was killing my battery. Knocking it down from 14 plus hours to less than 6. I uninstalled it and got my battery life back. Reinstalled it and bad battery life came back.
It never showed up in the regular battery monitor apps.

 

[mandragora]

Widget locker was killing my battery. Knocking it down from 14 plus hours to less than 6. I uninstalled it and got my battery life back. Reinstalled it and bad battery life came back.
It never showed up in the regular battery monitor apps.

I previously had the same problem. I had run the same tests and ended up taking Widget Locker off. I found other people in other forums complaining about this as well.

 

[hondabomdc5]

ok, so i did a factory reset thinking that it would help my battery life. Well to my surprise it has. im at 9hrs 36mins and my battery is at 49%. Usually it would be alot lower. my battery stats are:

Maps- 53%
Cell Standby- 21%
Phone Idle- 18%
Display-5%
Voice Calls- 3%
Android OS-2%

After the factory reset i installed all my apps again. Well, i havent been using Maps at all today. I have geolocation turned off for Beautiful Widgets, i have share my location for google off, and i dont have my gps on. So apparently there is a app that is using my Maps application which is a big chunk of my battery life today. If i did mysteriously have Maps running i bet my battery life would be alot better. Usually the cell standby and phone idle are both in the 40-50% range so i was surprised to see them as low as they are. I am on 3g currently also. So if anybody can help me figure out a way to see what app is using my maps so i can disable it or delete it that would be AWESOME of you. Thanks

 

[wooddale]

ok, so i did a factory reset thinking that it would help my battery life. Well to my surprise it has. im at 9hrs 36mins and my battery is at 49%. Usually it would be alot lower. my battery stats are:

Maps- 53%
Cell Standby- 21%
Phone Idle- 18%
Display-5%
Voice Calls- 3%
Android OS-2%

After the factory reset i installed all my apps again. Well, i havent been using Maps at all today. I have geolocation turned off for Beautiful Widgets, i have share my location for google off, and i dont have my gps on. So apparently there is a app that is using my Maps application which is a big chunk of my battery life today. If i did mysteriously have Maps running i bet my battery life would be alot better. Usually the cell standby and phone idle are both in the 40-50% range so i was surprised to see them as low as they are. I am on 3g currently also. So if anybody can help me figure out a way to see what app is using my maps so i can disable it or delete it that would be AWESOME of you. Thanks

So what your saying if you turn all the stuff off on your phone you will get good battery life. Whats the point? If you dont use it you aint gonna use battery. If Im hanging with my buds and someone says wonder how far that place is I want to be able to answer them 4G style not wait for 3G thats why I bought the phone

 

[hondabomdc5]

thats not the helpful answer i was looking for but here ya go......The reason i have 3g on most of the day is because at my place of work.....i dont have 4g so it would be retarded for me to have 4g on and have it constantly looking for 4g all the time.....that would really kill my battery.

 

[tgyberg]

ok, so i did a factory reset thinking that it would help my battery life. Well to my surprise it has. im at 9hrs 36mins and my battery is at 49%. Usually it would be alot lower. my battery stats are:

Maps- 53%
Cell Standby- 21%
Phone Idle- 18%
Display-5%
Voice Calls- 3%
Android OS-2%

After the factory reset i installed all my apps again. Well, i havent been using Maps at all today. I have geolocation turned off for Beautiful Widgets, i have share my location for google off, and i dont have my gps on. So apparently there is a app that is using my Maps application which is a big chunk of my battery life today. If i did mysteriously have Maps running i bet my battery life would be alot better. Usually the cell standby and phone idle are both in the 40-50% range so i was surprised to see them as low as they are. I am on 3g currently also. So if anybody can help me figure out a way to see what app is using my maps so i can disable it or delete it that would be AWESOME of you. Thanks

I had maps as the top battery user for me too. I tried turning off GPS but that didnt help. No idea why maps is the leader in battery usage.. So I froze it, problem solved! lol (I just unfreeze quick when I need it)

 

[wooddale]

thats not the helpful answer i was looking for but here ya go......The reason i have 3g on most of the day is because at my place of work.....i dont have 4g so it would be retarded for me to have 4g on and have it constantly looking for 4g all the time.....that would really kill my battery.

Sorry didnt mean to be rude Im just so tired of going threw all the crap with these phones and there batteries I guess I gave up now I just keep pluging the sucker in. Im a slut when it comes to phones I gotta have everything on all the time lol.

 

[GlenBoRTR]

Sorry didnt mean to be rude Im just so tired of going threw all the crap with these phones and there batteries I guess I gave up now I just keep pluging the sucker in. Im a slut when it comes to phones I gotta have everything on all the time lol.

I definately feel your pain. My stock battery got about 3 hours of light use... I was told that the extended battery would give me between 15 - 20 hours. I'm luck if I get 6.
I've read most of the threads dealing with the poor battery life of the Bionic, and I've come to the conclusion that the only way to get a decent battery life, is to basically "turn off the phone" (no blue tooth, no GPS, no Wi-Fi, no programs, no 4G... Really?). I can't believe that a $600.00 phone can only be use as a paper weight.
I'm trying my FOURTH battery callibratation tonight. Cross your fingers... Maybe I can use my blue tooth for 5 minutes tomorrow.