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Help Battery Drain due to Software Bug w/GPS?

Are you able to replicate this same issue?

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Thanks Lex, this is great!

My DX arrived 4 days ago and my battery life has been horrible. I typically take my phone off the charger around 8AM... by the end of the work day 5PM it is dead. My use is high right now because it's new and I'm playing around a lot. That said, my old droid would last at least a day and a half with the same high level of use.

I'll report back if my battery life increases now that I know to keep an eye on the GPS and sleep states.
 
Dave17 said:
Wife's X, charge over night, down to 40 percent by noon with next to no use (GPS on). Deleted the stock weather widget and manually stopped GPS. Has been at 40 percent since--now for a day and a half (very light use).

Ran OP's test and can confirm.
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I assume you are rooted so that you could delete that?
 
I've been reading through Droid X battery threads on all the forums and finally today decided to do something about my battery, it hasn't been the best AND I've got an extended battery. Tell me how this makes any sense.. I took it off the charger with GPS and everything turned OFF. My battery meter dropped to 90% in maybe 10 minutes. I put it back on the charger and let it charge back up to 100%. I took it off the charger, turned GPS, BT, WIFI and I'm now on the internet doing my best to run the battery down... still at 100%. WHAT IS GOING ON?!?! I know about the 'Battery Info/History' and Spare Parts and have been monitoring them constantly. But I just can't make sense of it. To be perfectly clear, using the"GPS toggle" widget does properly turn GPS on then back off right? And that's how people are fixing this bug, correct? It just doesn't make sense to me.. one hour later, I'm at 95%. I'm gonna fully discharge the battery, fully charge it, pull the battery, put in back in, charge it a bit more and then go from there, obviously toggling the GPS off when it boots. Any help guys?
 
Mr X said:
I've been reading through Droid X battery threads on all the forums and finally today decided to do something about my battery, it hasn't been the best AND I've got an extended battery. Tell me how this makes any sense.. I took it off the charger with GPS and everything turned OFF. My battery meter dropped to 90% in maybe 10 minutes. I put it back on the charger and let it charge back up to 100%. I took it off the charger, turned GPS, BT, WIFI and I'm now on the internet doing my best to run the battery down... still at 100%. WHAT IS GOING ON?!?! I know about the 'Battery Info/History' and Spare Parts and have been monitoring them constantly. But I just can't make sense of it. To be perfectly clear, using the"GPS toggle" widget does properly turn GPS on then back off right? And that's how people are fixing this bug, correct? It just doesn't make sense to me.. one hour later, I'm at 95%. I'm gonna fully discharge the battery, fully charge it, pull the battery, put in back in, charge it a bit more and then go from there, obviously toggling the GPS off when it boots. Any help guys?
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The Droid X battery does not ever show 95%. It has 10% increments.

Also the GPS being on only makes a difference when you are actually using the GPS (ie you can see the GPS icon in the status bar). This thread is much ado about nothing.
 
WPWoodJr said:
The Droid X battery does not ever show 95%. It has 10% increments.

Also the GPS being on only makes a difference when you are actually using the GPS (ie you can see the GPS icon in the status bar). This thread is much ado about nothing.
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1 - I use a battery monitoring widget that shows the battery percentage in 1% increments.

2 - There's definitely an issue, I'm not sure you know what we're talking about here. Motorola does. To such an extent that there's a thread on the official Motorola forums in which a representative from the company not only acknowledges that there is indeed a problem, but that it's been reported to the Droid X development team so they can work on a fix.
 
Mr X said:
1 - I use a battery monitoring widget that shows the battery percentage in 1% increments.

2 - There's definitely an issue, I'm not sure you know what we're talking about here. Motorola does. To such an extent that there's a thread on the official Motorola forums in which a representative from the company not only acknowledges that there is indeed a problem, but that it's been reported to the Droid X development team so they can work on a fix.
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Yes, and what he said was that the bug may make a 2% difference in battery life. :D

The Droid X doesn't provide increments of less than 10%. What battery monitoring tool are you using?
 
WPWoodJr said:
Yes, and what he said was that the bug may make a 2% difference in battery life. :D

The Droid X doesn't provide increments of less than 10%. What battery monitoring tool are you using?
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Anyone who's used the X for more than a week knows that 2% claim is bullshit. And I use the "Battery Left" widget.
 
Mr X said:
Anyone who's used the X for more than a week knows that 2% claim is bullshit. And I use the "Battery Left" widget.
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I tested the battery drain with 100% run time and could not detect any significant effect. See this post. Can you provide a test that I can repeat which shows the battery draining effects of 100% run time?

Thanks for the tip on Battery Left. I'll try it out.
 
WPWoodJr said:
I tested the battery drain with 100% run time and could not detect any significant effect. See this post. Can you provide a test that I can repeat which shows the battery draining effects of 100% run time?

Thanks for the tip on Battery Left. I'll try it out.
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Let me ask you this - what kinda battery life are you getting?
 
I lose 10 percent of the battery for every 30 minutes of active use with the screen on. So I get about 5 hours of active use. When the screen isn't on it lasts for a long time.
 
Alright, the verdict is in for me. After discovering this thread I found my apps that use the GPS and either turned them off or changed the settings. For good measure I also now toggle the GPS on/off before I put the phone to sleep every time.

Yesterday was my first full day and the difference in battery is astonishing! I plugged it in after a full day of use with 30% battery left... before making these changes I was only getting about 8-10hrs before having to charge or watch my phone die!

I know Motorola and others on this thread have said that the phone not going into sleep mode should make little to no difference in battery life, but this is pretty hard to refute. I didn't change my phone habits at all yesterday other than changing some settings and doing the toggle on/off before sleep. I would even go so far as to say it should have drained faster because I read a chapter of Sherlock Holmes in the kindle app.

The only apps I had using the GPS were Latitude and Weatherbug Elite. Over the next few days I will test each one individually using the same settings and see if either of them, or both, are draining the battery. It could be the case that when the processor doesn't go into sleep mode that one of these apps keeps running or even pinging the GPS in the background causing the battery drain. I doubt it is the sole fault of the app as I had both of them set up the same on my old droid and usually got 2 full days of battery life.

I'll report back if I notice anything significant.
 
It is interesting that some people think the rest of us are all crazy. My experience: before making the changes in this thread, battery life was bad (6 hours). After the changes, I get at least double that. If I ever forget to do the workarounds, my battery sucks again.

So far, of all the posts in this thread, I've only seen 2 people saying that this bug is bogus. As far as I'm concerned, they're lucky because I've seen the problem first hand and Motorola has acknowledged it--although Moto massively understates it's significance.
 
aminaked said:
It is interesting that some people think the rest of us are all crazy. My experience: before making the changes in this thread, battery life was bad (6 hours). After the changes, I get at least double that. If I ever forget to do the workarounds, my battery sucks again.

So far, of all the posts in this thread, I've only seen 2 people saying that this bug is bogus. As far as I'm concerned, they're lucky because I've seen the problem first hand and Motorola has acknowledged it--although Moto massively understates it's significance.
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Just give me something to test repeatably and i'll believe it.
 
Okay, so you want a repeatable test... here's what I came up with:

First we need a metric. The percent numbers from the OS on battery left are not a good metric since they are calculated using battery voltage and probably some smart logic. Every battery is a little different in regard to it's overall voltage (usually some DC offset between batts) and total capacity. Li-Ion discharge curves (Voltage vs total charge) however are pretty repeatable. They are linear for the most part between 95-20% charge and have a severe knee downward at the end of a charge (search google images for
 
WPWoodJr said:
Bizarre. As I reported here, I lost only 10% in 9.5 hours with 100% run time.

I'll see if I can try your test too.
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Awesome! Thanks.

It is very bizarre. I feel very confident that if I put my phone in state 1 above for 9.5hrs and didn't touch it that at the end of the period I would have no or almost no battery. Before discovering this thread I would go from about 8am-5pm before the phone died.

Hopefully if my test works and people find it easy enough to replicate we will have a yard stick to compare each others battery performance against. It's always so difficult when some say their battery is bad and others say it is good... who do you trust because we all perceive battery life differently.
 
OK I'm starting the "State 1" test where GPS causes 100% run time. Wifi off, BlueTooth on, Cell phone on, Battery in smart mode.

STATE 1: Toggle GPS on. Opened maps. Selected latitude from menu. Selected myself and then show on map. Waited for a good lock on the map. Exited maps. (here is where I recorded data for start of test) Put phone to sleep.
Begin - BL=90% V=4032 T=34C

I will report results tomorrow.
 
Ok, I still have 80% left after 7h 40m 16s since unplugged

End - BL=80% V=3958 T=24C

According to Battery Graph it went from 90% to 80% at 12:23 (shortly after the test began) and stayed at 80% the rest of the night. This is with 100% "Running" and 100% bluetooth, Airplane mode off.

Obviously I'm getting very different results than you. What does "Battery Use" say on your DX after you run this test?
 
BTW I was using the extended battery but that would not explain the big difference in results we are seeing because it only adds about 25% to the standard battery.
 
I am very glad I found this thread and Motorola should be too! I would have definitely returned the phone otherwise. It barely made it five hours the first day, but I never would have figured out why. Turned off GPS and the phone easily makes it from morning to night, sometimes up to 24 hours depending on usage. Thanks OP!
 
Though I discovered this thread late, I am glad I did and I have a simple observation to make. The data presented in this thread is outstanding and I don't doubt the validity of it, nor the benefits we all will reap from it. Here is a very simple observation along the subject of battery life that seems to be overlooked.

This phone has a large display, compared to most phones. My battery stats constantly show heavy usage attributed to the display.

I can listen to music with bluetooth headphones for hours (display asleep) and hardly drain the battery.

Yet, browsing/composing emails will drain it almost literally as I watch. As much as 40% an hour. I could adjust the brightness levels, but I am not going to get a headache keeping it on the dimmest setting to save battery life. I usually leave it on the "middle" setting and I keep a charger in my vehicle and work.

Hopefully, the fix for the problem the original poster discovered will add to the battery life. If you are still looking for a source of excessive battery drain, consider the display.
 
I agree, the display is by far the worst battery life drainer unless you have a run-away process or are in poor cell coverage or something. I'm surprised you burn 40% per hour, I seem to get about 5 hours of active use on a charge (6+ hours on the extended battery) which equates to about 20% per hour. This is with screen brightness on "Auto".

I was concerned about wifi drain on the battery but then I saw that the default setting for wifi is to turn it off while the screen is off. So its probably better to leave wifi on except when you're not in a coverage zone because I think it uses less power than cell data. This setting is really buried. You can check it under Settings...Wireless & networks...WiFi settings...Menu...Advanced...WiFi sleep policy
 
swtex said:
Yet, browsing/composing emails will drain it almost literally as I watch. As much as 40% an hour. I could adjust the brightness levels, but I am not going to get a headache keeping it on the dimmest setting to save battery life. I usually leave it on the "middle" setting and I keep a charger in my vehicle and work.
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Sounds like you have a defective touchscreen.

Despite all the hoopla about brightness, these batteries should be able to power the few LEDs it takes to light the screen for months of solid on. These screens kill battery because they are capacitive. which means they must be charged to record your finger position, and the larger the screen the more energy is required.

I'd think something in the touchscreen is sucking more power than it should be, you shouldn't see such a drain.

Hopefully we'll start seeing Quantum Tunneling screens soon, they're supposed to use near zero power as they only require energy while actually being touched.
 
SgtBaxter said:
Sounds like you have a defective touchscreen.

Despite all the hoopla about brightness, these batteries should be able to power the few LEDs it takes to light the screen for months of solid on. These screens kill battery because they are capacitive. which means they must be charged to record your finger position, and the larger the screen the more energy is required.

I'd think something in the touchscreen is sucking more power than it should be, you shouldn't see such a drain.

Hopefully we'll start seeing Quantum Tunneling screens soon, they're supposed to use near zero power as they only require energy while actually being touched.
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I was hoping this was true, so that I could stop worrying about my screen brightness setting. So I put it to the test. Charged my DX up to 100%, then put the screen on lowest brightness and left the screen on. Airplane mode on. It took 1 hour 38 minutes to get to 90%. Then I charged her right back up to 100%, and let her sit with the screen on full brightness. Took 31 minutes to get to 90%.

So it makes a big difference how bright the screen is.
 
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