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Help Bad Battery?

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bradmatic

Guest
Morning folks... I just got my Maxx on Thursday and I believe I have a bad battery.

I unplugged at 100% 7.5 hours ago.
Now, I'm at 30%

You might ask, bradmatic, what's been using your battery?
--Display 36%
--Wi-Fi 18%
--Android OS 9%
--c:geo 8%
--Cell standby 6%
--Phone idle 5%
--Draw Some 4%
--Mediaserver 4%
--rest less than 2%

What's up? I'm on Wi-Fi when I'm home and at work... has been 7 of the last 7.5 hours. I even have the cell radios off when I'm at work because my building is a dead zone.

This can't be right considering the batter that's allegedly inside this phone.

Also, does anyone know why the battery only reports life in 10% increments?
 
Whats your hours/minutes of Display? And what is your brightness set at?

I find that with max brightness, I get about 5 hours of Display time.
 
javasirc said:
Whats your hours/minutes of Display? And what is your brightness set at?

I find that with max brightness, I get about 5 hours of Display time.
Click to expand...

I use auto-brightness. At the end of the day I'll take a look at my display time and let you know.

In response to the previous reply, my GPS is on.. but not polling other than when requested by applications-- Facebook, Foursquare, Maps...

Right now I've been off charger for 2hr 40min and I've been on wifi the whole time. Display has been on for 1hr 25min because i've been doing heavy texting. I'm down to 80% charge. We'll see what happens at the end of the day (around 6am)
 
Facebook may be your problem. It was huge battery drain on my phone until I removed it. It's constantly trying to poll. you can go into settings and try to configure it, but wasn't worth my effort. IMO one the most poorly written apps. I have my screen setting at 75% but do not text a lot like you. With the screen constantly on for an hour and a half, and constantly polling and sending texts, that battery will drain. Just streaming music without screen on, I will lose 5% in one hour. Now leave the screen on, and it will drain a lot more. Your drain seems normal.
 
wxman2003 said:
Facebook may be your problem. It was huge battery drain on my phone until I removed it. It's constantly trying to poll. you can go into settings and try to configure it, but wasn't worth my effort. IMO one the most poorly written apps. I have my screen setting at 75% but do not text a lot like you. With the screen constantly on for an hour and a half, and constantly polling and sending texts, that battery will drain. Just streaming music without screen on, I will lose 5% in one hour. Now leave the screen on, and it will drain a lot more. Your drain seems normal.
Click to expand...

No Facebook!? I might die.

Okay, seriously... I'll switch Facebook to manual poll. Do you know if I will still receive push notifications if I have the refresh interval set to Never? -- guess I'll find out soon enough!
 
You could also just read all the other battery threads by doing a search and they will give you amazing snippets of info that you can try with your phone to make it better... just like i did
 
Fred Bassett said:
You could also just read all the other battery threads by doing a search and they will give you amazing snippets of info that you can try with your phone to make it better... just like i did
Click to expand...

Fred, I did look at many of the other battery threads. I noticed some of them had specific apps that were an obvious problem and battery draim. In my case, I could not find any singular app causing my battery drain. That's why I posted.
 
I would say your battery is just fine! IF you had a "bad battery" you would know it in a much more blatant way. With the lithium technology being used nowadays, the battery ratings are usually pretty much right on. Yes, you do have a 3300 mAh battery, but this phone is also at least twice as powerful if not more so than the Droid X2, just for example. I can drain my battery in as little as 5 hours with constant usage, and get about 24 hours with minimal usage. Your battery is just fine! And your distribution is looking identical to mine. My advice? Go out and enjoy the phone and stop worrying about where you think the battery should be at! The battery is doing what it is supposed to, and as you get more familiar with the phone you will learn how to conserve battery as much as possible. Either way, I plug my phone in every night when I get home from classes, and usually have somewhere between 50% all the way down to <10%. Just depends! I have never had the battery die on me yet, which is the biggest reason I got this phone.

If you are interested in learning more details about the lithium ion battery technology, for example why you DO NOT need to condition your battery, check out the battery university (just google it). They have outstanding info.
 
PS... I use the program "Battery Indicator Pro" to report my battery in 1% increments. Motorola seems to think 10% is good enough, which is silly! This app is totally worth the 2 bucks. I also have an alarm set to let me know if my battery exceeds 115 degrees F. The phone can take much more, but it is a good cutoff to know when you are power using a little too hard. Only exceeded that temp once playing Modern Combat 3 online multiplayer and streaming 4G Pandora music for over an hour.
 
AlbinLee:

Thank you very, very much for your through reply. I greatly appreciate it.

My previous phone was a Samsung Fascinate. I'm just getting used to 4G and how much battery it requires. I believe I was being hypercritical of the battery and what life I expected it to provide. I think I was expecting phenomenal 3G battery performance on my 4G phone.

However, The more I use it the happier I become. Yesterday I pulled 10hrs on a full charge.

I am going to check out that battery app. I appreciate the help!
 
bradmatic said:
Fred, I did look at many of the other battery threads. I noticed some of them had specific apps that were an obvious problem and battery draim. In my case, I could not find any singular app causing my battery drain. That's why I posted.
Click to expand...

I agree, I always read these threads to find out which apps to avoid.
 
Hi.. it's been a few weeks and things haven't gotten worse but they sure haven't gotten better.

Here's what a full charge looks like for me.

10h 35m on battery
WiFi - 23% - 10h 35min
Display - 22% - 1hr 21min
Phone Idle - 8% - 9hr 13min
Maps - 8%
Cell Standby - 7%
Android OS - 6%
com.motorola.contacts.data - 5%
Mediaserver - 4%
Oregon Settler - 4%
com.motorola.friendfeed - 3%
Bluetooth - 3%

As you can see, I have been on WiFi for the entire charge-- no 4G, no 3G. I was in a 4G service area the entire time with solid signal strength. With the phone quoted at 21hrs approx Talk Time and 380hrs standby... I still can't believe I'm getting what I paid for.

I even talked to someone with a normal RAZR who is seeing battery life around 8 hours not using WiFi-- all 4G.

Does WiFi use less battery than 4G?

Would I be crazy to go into Verizon and ask if there's a problem with my phone?
 
On my razr maxx wifi uses more battery than 3g/4g. I only get 2 bars of 4g so i leave it on 3g. But the worse signal you have the more battery it will use for data.
 
I'm not a big power user of the phone and don't get into streaming movies and/or music, so I've been leaving my Maxx set on 3G, with 4G and WiFi disabled. That combo seems to give me the best battery life.
 
dwaters76 said:
@thisisnascar - How do you set your phone to only use 3G? Are you suing a ROM?
Click to expand...


Settings, Wireless and Network Settings, Mobile Networks, Network Mode and select CDMA only. I also turn off my WiFi and that leaves with with 3G only and greater battery life.
 
Okay... today I did something different.

No Wi-Fi, no twitter, no ActiveSync e-mail pushes (more than 100 while at work alone) -- same lackluster battery performance in a 50-75% 3G zone.

8hr 41min on battery - 26% life left

Android OS - 18%
Phone Idle - 17% - 8hr 17min
Display - 14% - 23min
Cell Standby - 13%
Android System - 10%

Remainder less than 5%
 
I upgraded from OG Droid to Nexus last Week. After a weekend of beating my head against the wall with battery only giving me 5 hours, and signal drops to the point where it would take me 5 min to walk around enough to make a phone call, (even with the 4.0.4 update), I traded in for a Maxx...

WOW this battery rocks

At 24 hours, I am still at 70% :eek:

This is on my first full charge, and is during the second day of owning the phone, so I have been playing with it quite a bit. I am wi-fi on, and sync on, and 4g full time. No GPS, but do connect to wi-fi at work and home. Screen on auto, and am a moderate user. This phone rocks.

ETA: I do not sync any social apps, NO FB, NO Twitter, just gmail. I push all other email accounts to Gmail through those servers.
 
HOTHEAD said:
I upgraded from OG Droid to Nexus last Week. After a weekend of beating my head against the wall with battery only giving me 5 hours, and signal drops to the point where it would take me 5 min to walk around enough to make a phone call, (even with the 4.0.4 update), I traded in for a Maxx...

WOW this battery rocks

At 24 hours, I am still at 70% :eek:

This is on my first full charge, and is during the second day of owning the phone, so I have been playing with it quite a bit. I am wi-fi on, and sync on, and 4g full time. No GPS, but do connect to wi-fi at work and home. Screen on auto, and am a moderate user. This phone rocks.

ETA: I do not sync any social apps, NO FB, NO Twitter, just gmail. I push all other email accounts to Gmail through those servers.
Click to expand...

Okay.. even if I do have FB running (not active) and Twitter refreshing every :30 minutes, Gmail and ActiveSync pushing... there's no way my battery is so much different than yours.

I mean geez, I don't touch the damn thing for 8 hours while at work and the phone is at 30%.

I've seen moto's GPS, Video, & Streaming Music tests. With screen on, GPS on, the MAXX ran a navigation course for 4hr 12min and still had 40% battery! DROID RAZR MAXX by Motorola: GPS Navigation Test - YouTube
 
bradmatic said:
Okay.. even if I do have FB running (not active) and Twitter refreshing every :30 minutes, Gmail and ActiveSync pushing... there's no way my battery is so much different than yours.

I mean geez, I don't touch the damn thing for 8 hours while at work and the phone is at 30%.

I've seen moto's GPS, Video, & Streaming Music tests. With screen on, GPS on, the MAXX ran a navigation course for 4hr 12min and still had 40% battery! DROID RAZR MAXX by Motorola: GPS Navigation Test - YouTube
Click to expand...

I think your battery is defective to be honest. You are getting usage similar to my nexus with extended battery which is still a good amount smaller. I would take it back and see what they say and tell them you aren't happy. Also, I'm fairly certain wi-fi uses less power than 3G/4G
 
Update: I went to VZW and they are overnighting me a new/refurb MAXX. I should get it tomorrow evening. I'll charge it and have an update by Friday night. Basically, the guy said he wasn't doubting my battery usage information, he hasn't seen any bad MAXX batteries, however, we can't just exchange the battery so we have to exchange the phone.
 
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