Help What's wrong with my Droid X?

[Chango99]

I have a couple of issues with my Droid X that I want to express my concerns about. Any help is appreciated and I searched but couldn't find, but if there are posts like this, redirect me to them.

Battery:
It's not really great. It would be fully charged, then I spend time on it for like 10 minutes tops, and by the end of the day, it's at half battery. Everything is off except 3G and I try to run task manager all the time and kill everything. My wallpaper and widgets are also minimal.

What concerns me is that sometimes, my phone will just start heating up after I put it anyway, even if I close the program before I lock the phone. I seriously was taking my finals and put it in my pocket and it was burning my pants. It's not just warm, it gets decently hot. This probably means something is using the CPU, but I have no idea what the hell, it's concerning, and it burns my battery.

It brings me to my next point,
Music:
I suspect that music running in the background might be doing something with the battery, but I'm not sure. I use the phone as an mp3 player and I use it a lot. I pause it when i stop listening; the Droid X's interface for it's music player will display it, but just paused.

It also sucks that the only control the phone has for earphones with a button/mic only allows for play/pause of music. Double click does nothing, neither triple. At least it's not voice command anymore, but it's still very limited.

Now, one of my major annoyances,
Freezing:
Often times with music, I try to go to the next song manually, but it won't do anything. I touch and I touch but nothing happens, completely unresponsive. Music is still playing, but phone's freezing up. Now, I probably should wait it out or something, but I hit the top button to try and "reset", but when I try to go back to the unlock screen it'll be stuck and I would just be staring at a blank screen for a while. I usually just try to wait or manually hold power button or more drastically pull battery out when that happens ans nothing is working.

I'd say it's happened with programs too, but I use music a lot more so that's what I notice a lot.

Are these issues common or do I have a shitty phone? It's been like this for many months, but I just put up with it since I don't use it a lot... which is stupid, but I like to have something and not need it rather than vice versa... but that might change since $30/mo for data isn't cheap.

Btw, I came from a droid incredible which had much better handling with music and I don't remember any freezing.

 

[pool_shark]

Killing your apps is not going to help your battery. The OS is just going to restart them or restart other apps in its place. You're using more cpu and battery forcing the OS to restart them.

You said you have everything turned off, does that include syncing emails, weather, etc?

If you're in a bad coverage area the phone automatically switches to 1x which drains the battery quickly.

 

[Deleted User]

Battery:
It's not really great. It would be fully charged, then I spend time on it for like 10 minutes tops, and by the end of the day, it's at half battery. Everything is off except 3G and I try to run task manager all the time and kill everything. My wallpaper and widgets are also minimal.

Turn off your task manager completely. Just stop using it. You're hurting the battery.

What concerns me is that sometimes, my phone will just start heating up after I put it anyway, even if I close the program before I lock the phone. I seriously was taking my finals and put it in my pocket and it was burning my pants. It's not just warm, it gets decently hot. This probably means something is using the CPU, but I have no idea what the hell, it's concerning, and it burns my battery.

Do you go into your battery manager and look for what's happening? It will tell you what apps are using the most battery. After a day of using your phone, go to Settings > Battery > Battery Manager and see what is using your battery the most, maybe you have a bad app or maybe your phone is constantly hunting for a signal.

I suspect that music running in the background might be doing something with the battery, but I'm not sure. I use the phone as an mp3 player and I use it a lot. I pause it when i stop listening; the Droid X's interface for it's music player will display it, but just paused.

The music app isn't using battery juice when it's paused.

Are these issues common or do I have a shitty phone? It's been like this for many months, but I just put up with it since I don't use it a lot... which is stupid, but I like to have something and not need it rather than vice versa... but that might change since $30/mo for data isn't cheap.

The freezing isn't normal. I really recommend you completely uninstall your task manager - it tends to reduce stability and battery life of systems if not used carefully and for certain tasks. Uninstall it and see if it helps your problems.

 

[bigbadwulff]

Battery dying.
Pausing music.

Uh......

 

[RichSz]

While the heat you describe doesn't seem normal, I think a stock DX getting two days from a full charge (you said 50% and EOD) is pretty good. It's better than my old iPhone 3gs. I think the EVO guys would kill for that kind of battery life.

 

[Steven58]

Hi,

I moved this to support for you. Hopefully, we can get you good help. Ultimately, rooting will give you more satisfaction, as you will have more control.

 

[Chango99]

While most of you suggest not using the task manager, it's what I was resorting BECAUSE of my problems. No luck either way.

As for data, yes I do have data retrieving in the background.

Battery manager I use maximum battery saver mode, also, from memory, I recall checking what used the battery the most and it would just say phone, about 93%.

Also, today I had my phone around half battery and it should last overnight. I left wifi on and set an alarm for 3 hours later. Now, the phone either ran out of battery before then, or I was in such a deep sleep since I haven't been sleeping much that the alarm had rang for hours which didn't wake me up, which resulted in the battery being drained, or the alarm just plain didn't work and the battery just drained. Now, i'm reluctant to say it was because I haven't had much sleep, because the alarm has woken me up quite easily before. I slept for 10 hours rather than the 3 I expected (i'm trying a polyphasic sleeping schedule).

 

[thedrizl]

one thing i can suggest: use wifi over 3G whenever possible. i don't know the hows or the why of it working, but 3G and 1X both are heavy drains on the battery. also, go into your wifi settings and adjust it so that when you have wifi on it never goes off, even when the phone is locked and you're doing something important like sleeping. normally, when the phone is "sleeping" it turns wifi off and reverts back to 3G -- which can kill the battery and is probably what happened while you were sleeping. i have my wifi on all the time at home, and i can see a considerable difference in battery life between wifi and 3G.

as for the overheating, you may just have a bad battery. there's a bunch of apps on the market that will test the battery's health for you. Battery Booster by IMOBLIFE is the one i use. if you can, invest in the extended battery for DX; it's well worth the extra couple of bucks.

hope this helps.

 

[sonofaresiii]

While most of you suggest not using the task manager, it's what I was resorting BECAUSE of my problems. No luck either way.

As for data, yes I do have data retrieving in the background.

Battery manager I use maximum battery saver mode, also, from memory, I recall checking what used the battery the most and it would just say phone, about 93%.

Also, today I had my phone around half battery and it should last overnight. I left wifi on and set an alarm for 3 hours later. Now, the phone either ran out of battery before then, or I was in such a deep sleep since I haven't been sleeping much that the alarm had rang for hours which didn't wake me up, which resulted in the battery being drained, or the alarm just plain didn't work and the battery just drained. Now, i'm reluctant to say it was because I haven't had much sleep, because the alarm has woken me up quite easily before. I slept for 10 hours rather than the 3 I expected (i'm trying a polyphasic sleeping schedule).

For your first point, regardless of all else killing programs using task manager is bad for your phone and may cause other problems, including losing battery life and instability. You may have instability problems in ADDITION to task manager problems, but the task manager is just making it worse.

Now, having your phone at 50% at the end of the day sounds pretty good to me. These phones use a lot of juice, period. But you can do some things to tweak it, major culprits are: app updates (facebook, twitter, weather)-- set these to every hour or every hour. Display: set it as low as you can stand. I keep mine all the way down unless I'm in direct sunlight. Widgets: if you've got a lot of widgets running, it's going to eat away at your battery. There's many other things you can do, those are just a few.

It also sounds like Juice Defender (free lite version in the market) may work really well for you. It's great for some, bad for others, but from what you're describing it may help. Install it, leave all the settings where they're at, and keep it on for a few days before you decide if it's helping or not.

Finally, it sounds like your phone is just a little buggy. Could very well be a rogue app, which would cause pretty much all of the problems involved... but that's by no means the only way to have the problems you're having. I'd suggest doing a factory reset, a fresh start could be just what you need to clean everything out and get going smooth again.