qustion about battery life- some phones drain faster then others?

[kq702]

Hi I have several droid razr phones (not currently activated) and I was testing the batteries on all of them and noticed something funny. Of the 7 phones I have, four of them seem to drain quicker then the other three.

I did all the updates on them, then gave them all a full charge. I let them all sit in the same area of the room for 48 hours and then checked them once the 48 hours was up. Three were about 50% drained, four had less then 10% battery left.

So I was thinking the four with 10% battery left maybe had defective batteries. So I decided to remove the three good batteries and install them in the device that only had 10% left. So I charged them up again and ran the 48 hour test again, (this time with known good batteries installed in the devices). 48 hours later when I checked them, they once again showed less then 10% left. That hints that it is the phone that is causing them to drain faster, not a battery problem.

One thing I noticed was all the ones that drain faster have two messages when I the home scree and swipe my finger down from the top it says "background data restricted" touch to remove the restriction. Then it also says active smart actions, low battery saver.

The three phones that have 50% battery remaining after 48 hours does not have any messages when I swipe my finger down the screen. So that may have something to do with it, does anyone have any idea? below is a photo of the two messages that show up on one of the four that only last 48 hrs.

 

[JDeRose11]

I have had a droid and a windows, they are about the same.

 

[MasterGadgets]

Your battery saver in "Smart Actions" is doing the data restriction and the message when the battery falls below a certain percent of battery life.

Even though all the phones are the same, do they have the same apps running?
Unless you have done a FDR and started from scratch on each phone, your test does not prove much.

 

[Mike.757]

If the other 4 phones reached the threshold, the smart actions would have tripped on them too. What I am interested in is what is causing the three to drain faster than the others? If you have time, please keep comparing and retesting. This could become something of value for droid users.

Things I would look into:

Do all the phones have the same apps?
Same question about widgets.
Do all of the phones have the same software update?
Are the sync apps/times the same? Things like Facebook, Tumblr, Google Gmail...

 

[kq702]

thanks for all the sugestions, I am going to retest the devices once again. I did have all the latest updates installed on all the devices prior to the test, however I did have some different apps installed on the devices.

I just did a factory reset on all of them and did not install any extra apps, or add any additional accounts to any of them. The only thing I did on all of them was connect each one to my wi fi. Then I gave them each a full charge, noted the voltage of each battery and a new test is currently in progress. Will post the results when I have them, in about 48 hours.

 

[kq702]

Well I figured after resetting to the factory defaults that it would make the other ones last longer but it did not. I did the test with 5 phones total, (the four phones that died early in the first test, along with a known good one) and when I checked them all four were dead except the test phone which was a known good one, it had 10% of battery life left. Unsure when the first one died because I was not at my work till tonight.

I also checked them yesterday and all four were at the 50% charged area and the known good one was in the 70% charged area.

I am going to do another test, I am going to test 2 phones, one of the four dead phones along with the test phone that had 10% battery left. I am going to switch batteries in them and if the known good phone outlives the other phone that may show the problem is hardware related (or something else related).

 

[kq702]

just checked ending voltages so I will post them here.

PHONE 1 (TEST PHONE, KNOWN GOOD)
STARTING:4.31 V
ENDING: 3.66 V
10% battery remaining


PHONE 2
STARTING: 4.26 V
ENDING: 3.28 V
dead in phone

PHONE 3
STARTING: 4.29 V
ENDING: 3.20 V
dead in phone

PHONE 4
STARTING: 4.33V
ENDING: 3.23V
dead in phone

PHONE 5
STARTING: 4.29V
ENDING: 3.33V
dead in phone

 

[kq702]

After further testing, I believe the reason some appeared to last longer then others was due to the battery. I know I said I tested the batteries before time, but I believe several factors may have influenced the batteries. For example some batteries were not used for several months, so maybe they took a few charge cycles to fully recharge.

Also I noticed if you leave the battery on the charger the charge level goes from 90% to 100%, but if you unplug it as soon as it says 100% the battery may not be fully charged. if you leave it on the charger a bit longer after it says 100%, it will still continue to get a higher voltage. What that means is if you unplug the phone as soon as it says 100% fully charged, it may go down to 90% 1 or 2 hours later. But if you leave it plugged in a bit longer then the voltage gets a bit higher, meaning when you unplug it the phone may take 3 or 4 hours to hit 90%.