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Absurdly awful battery life!

Santamoose said:
Just out of curiosity, how are you guys precisely measuring your battery life, and what is using how much of it? All I see up top is a little battery bar, and no other options to view it under settings.
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Settings>About Phone> battery use.

Shows what is using the battery and time since being unplugged.
 
So far this morning without any use really I've been out of the charegr for about 5 hours and have 80 percent battery. I did a drain and full charge last night for the second time. is 5 hours with 80% left not much use at all about where it should be or is it still too low?
 
can anyone tell me how my post above sounds? and if draining the battery and fully recharging it twice may have solved my issue? Or should I wait to see how it lasts by the end of the day
 
adamman41 said:
So far this morning without any use really I've been out of the charegr for about 5 hours and have 80 percent battery. I did a drain and full charge last night for the second time. is 5 hours with 80% left not much use at all about where it should be or is it still too low?
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that sounds a lot like what I'm getting.
 
baddriver said:
that sounds a lot like what I'm getting.
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okay I'll see how it does by the end of the day, what do you usually get out of a normal day's use. I haven't really been suing it much today thus far and am at 70% after 6 hours, it still sounds like people have been getting much more than this after a pretty good amount of use so I'm still pretty concerned. Also do you recommend I do a 3rd full drain and full charge? has that been working for people?
 
got my phone on Saturday and charged it up all the way. I did some heavy talking, surfing, and texting on it to try to discharge it completely before recharge. The first charge lasted me until Monday at about noon. Recharged again completely by 2pm and phone still at 100% at 5pm. I think the phone does very well with the charge. One thing I would say for sure is to discharge the battery all the way (until the phone shuts off by itself) and then re-charge. I work with aircraft batteries and one step in recharging them is to charge and discharge all the way before recharging....hope that made some sense. Cheers!!
 
Here's my setup and here's what I get battery-wise:

-Mfg. Date: 43/09
-Auto-sync on.
-Gmail sync on.
-Contact sync off.
-Calendar sync off.
-Wifi off.
-GPS off.
-Brightness auto.
-Task Killer NOT INSTALLED.
-GTalk/Weather Bug running in the background.

Day 1 = 12 hours down to 10% before charge. Normal browsing, chatting, calls mixed in with an hour or so of navigation usage.

Day 2 = 13 hours down to 30% before charge. Normal browsing, chatting, calls and no navigation usage.

The first day I got the phone I attempted to calibrate my battery by charging it for 13 straight hours and then using it down to 0% before charging it again. Ever since the results have been great.

Today the device has been unplugged for 5.5 hours and after moderate browser and phone usage the battery is down to 70%. For those of your having battery issues the only thing I can suggest is the following:

1. Calibrate your battery.
2. Manage your wifi/gps usage via the built in power control widget.
3. Check your apps again to see which are running in the background.
4. Check your signal status. Do an *228 + 2 to get connected to updated towers. Your battery could be dwindling down because your phone can't find a signal.
5. Let the OS manage your memory. Try not to use task managers. When I had a TM installed I kept on closing everything and the OS would re-open then one second later thus running the processor over and over.

Good luck!
 
adamman41 said:
okay I'll see how it does by the end of the day, what do you usually get out of a normal day's use. I haven't really been suing it much today thus far and am at 70% after 6 hours, it still sounds like people have been getting much more than this after a pretty good amount of use so I'm still pretty concerned. Also do you recommend I do a 3rd full drain and full charge? has that been working for people?
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I've also been impressed/jealous of the 1-1.5 days of battery life some people are claiming. While some phones may just be better than others, I've noticed battery life to be pretty consistent with how much I ask the phone to do. I understand having apps refreshing in the background will kill the battery faster but I'd rather have to charge every night and get my data instantly. I have the facebook widget pulling in status updates, I have the weather widget pulling in updates. I have The battery graphing app logging battery usage. I've got my gmail and google talk going. I've got google listen checking for new feeds.

All google syncs are on and facebook sync is on, background data and auto-sync on

With that being said, stats for today, what I would classify as a bit of a heavier use day for me:

-9h since unplugged, 50% battery remaining
------------------------------------------------
-Display 50% (time on 1h 50m @ ~30% brightness)
-Voice calls 19% (time on 16m)
-Android System 8% (CPU Total 16m) this is all the background data syncs and processes
-Phone idle 7% (time on 7h 15m)
-Cell standby 7% (time on 9h, time without signal 25%)
-Other (Texting/core apps/os) 7%
 
i get 6-7 hours of moderate usage before the phone completely dies

Screen on very low, mebbe 15% brightness, only gmail synch on

1 hours total use browsing
50ish txt msgs / IM's
1 hours worth pandora
3-4 5 minute phone convos

thats it :(

i would trade my phone in but, A. The battery life is the only issue I have
B. I do NOT want to to go to all the trouble of setting up a new phone and putting all the info, apps and widgets back in.

sigh. i guess ill just keep charging it everyday in the early afternoon and and all night until i can get an extended battery.
 
I don't see how you can compare battery life without saying how many bars you have. Battery drains faster when the cell signal is weak. E.g. when my daughter moved back home after college, she commented that her Blackberry battery appeared to be dying, because it suddenly wasn't holding a charge as long. No, it was because she had a good signal at college, while at home we get zero or one bar.
 
I'm not at 40% left with 10 hours of not much use. do you thinnk I should tryf or another one and exchange it, give it another full drain, full power up, or is this about right as far as battery life without much web browsing, without any voice calls today, just texting basically and im always on Meebo IM which really doesnt take up much battery.

so exchange, full drain full recharge and take it from there and if it doesn't improve exhange, or is 40% after 10 hours with below average use about where it should be?
 
adamman41 said:
I'm not at 40% left with 10 hours of not much use. do you thinnk I should tryf or another one and exchange it, give it another full drain, full power up, or is this about right as far as battery life without much web browsing, without any voice calls today, just texting basically and im always on Meebo IM which really doesnt take up much battery.

so exchange, full drain full recharge and take it from there and if it doesn't improve exhange, or is 40% after 10 hours with below average use about where it should be?
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I'd say you're in pretty good shape. I was completely discharging on my last phone after about 9 hours with absolutely no use at all. All services turned off. I just returned that phone for a new one. I'll run this one down and then charge it back up. Hopefully that will do the trick. It sounds like you'll ultimately get 15 hours battery life out of your phone - what more can you expect than that?

Whoever mentioned that the system rounds down I think is correct. As soon as I take my phone off power within 15 minutes it's down to 90 percent and it stays there for quite some time. As soon as it drops below 100% I'm relatively sure it goes right to 90% - there are no increments other than 10% with this OS (for now)
 
wow my firts phone call fo the day after like 12 hours off charger and it drops 10% immediately and it says voice cals has been using 25% of my battery, how can voice calls use 25% of battery for a 8 minute call 12 hours in? is this broken?
 
20% Battery life remaining
brightness auto until about 11:00 p.m. then dropped it to about 5%
Screen timeout 1 Minute
Weatherbug in background
Wifi off and network and Gps location off

17h 17m since unplugged

display 45%
Voice Calls 24%
Phone Idle 9%
Cell Standby 8%
Android System 5%
Mediaserver 4%
Market 2%

I used my phone as normal yesterday. A few 5-10 mins call then a half anhour one and showed the phone to a few of my friends, only turned on GPS to show for a few mins the google sky app. Got home was on the internet and market to get a few apps for about 30 mins.That got it down to around 50% at 7 hours more or less. Then turned off everything from talk killer and turned off everything from the power control widget. That was around 1 a.m. Fell asleep listening to an audio book, Was half-way thru a "cd" on the media player around 2:00 a.m.. I woke up around 8:30 and this is what I have. Not sure if that is bad but compared to my old phone it's horrendous time. Tho I was not downloading apps on the dare.

It would be nice to get a full day and a half out of the phone. I think the screen is the main issue. I've seen other posts with the same kinda info and some videos and all show that the screen takes up the most. The brightness might help out a bit. But I think just the size of the screen and it's quality that drains the life outta the phone. I am thinking of getting a extended battery, but I don't want to have a brick sitting in my pocket all day.
 
OK - so I returned my 42-09 for a 39-09. I worked it down to about 5% out of the store and then charged it back up. It immediately discharged down to 90% within 15 minutes of taking it off the charger - how disheartening.

So I was talking to a friend of mine and he said "are you SURE you don't have anything running in the background??" "Yes, I'm sure.......ohhhh, wait, TWITROID!!!!!" I had it set to refresh every 3 minutes. I pushed that to 15 minutes and then got rid of the Locale app that I wasn't really using correctly but was running and definitely constantly updating and I just got 18 hours of use on a charge with wifi going the whole time and I'm still at 20%. I'm going ot discharge this down to zero and see how long it takes. I actually ditched Locale in the middle of this discharge period so there's a pretty good chance the battery life will be better next time around.

I would say this to people who are getting poor battery life. Think about what apps you have going that are constantly refreshing or picking up your location. If you are truly concerned about battery life, you should run as few apps as possible that track your location or provide you with updates.

I can live with 18-20 hours. I couldn't live with 9.

Rock on

MB
 
I went through two Droids before I got a third that appears to have good battery life - I went from 7AM to 8PM yesterday and had 30% at that point.

I have poor signal at work, so there is signal hunting going on, which also ate up the battery on my BB Pearl I had previously, so I'm pretty happy w/that level of battery life if it maintains.

If you're having consistent poor results and have removed background apps (apps that actually do something in the background, as opposed to apps that just sit there when not in use) then I'd go for a battery exchange and if that doesn't work, a phone exchange.
 
Read the thread on task killer apps. I uninstalled it. Turned down sceeen brightness and my battery is lasting all day when before it was 7 hours max.
 
I don't think the applications are the only problem here.

I've had two Droids now that have perfectly good 3G performance but horrible 1x signal. I'm getting complaints from people I talk to on the phone about how I sound, even though I hear them better than I've ever heard people on the phone. I'm getting 1x signal of around -100dBm in my home, versus -80dBm on my old phones. The phone heats up very fast on calls, no doubt trying to hold this weak signal.

As I don't have time to deal with betaware, I'm going back and having my old phone reactivated.
 
how long did you have the battery B4 you did a full discharge and re-charge?

since I may or may know what I'm talking about, I fully charged and then fully discharged the batt several times before I connected to keep it charged up.

I did this with my sony ericsson z ?? 4/5 years ago - and still using the initial batteries. initially charged and discharged several time after purchase, then probably discharged completely every 1 or 2 months. Not necessarily on purpose.. At 1st purposely discharged once a month or so.
 
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