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Battery life post ICS update?

I get the battery complaints, but what is the expectation of folks for a smart phone? If you can get the better part of a day, that seems pretty solid. If you use ANY smart phone for hours on hours the battery is going to drop like a rock. Maybe when the quad core phones come out the battery life will be really great, but until then do what I have always done, keep a charger in the car, at work, home. ;)
 
HTTR said:
I get the battery complaints, but what is the expectation of folks for a smart phone? If you can get the better part of a day, that seems pretty solid. If you use ANY smart phone for hours on hours the battery is going to drop like a rock. Maybe when the quad core phones come out the battery life will be really great, but until then do what I have always done, keep a charger in the car, at work, home. ;)
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The problem is, GB set an expectation for this phone and ICS for alot of people doesn't meet that same expecation. On GB I was getting 14-16 hours with moderate use. Not getting that with ICS. GB proved to me what my phone could realistically do, so I have an expectation that I can get the same life or better with an upgraded operating system that states better battery life as one of it's key features.

However, yesterday I took it off the charger at around 4 and it was at 100%. I turned the screen on to check the time and turned it back off right away at least once every 45 minutes and I never moved from 100% until around 8 when I actually started using it. Shortly after 8, I surfed FB a bit and texted a bit and by 11pm I was down to like 50%. I also noted that at 8 when it dropped to 99%, it said that it was off the charger for two hours when it really was off the charger for four hours. This morning, took it off the charger at 6, hardly used it, and was at 89% by around 8:30.

I did the FDR through Privacy, then I did another through the boot menu and I've cleared the cache a couple times, changed from Global, dropped the screen brightness so far down that I can't see it outside unless it's overcast, and made sure to never use wi-fi and still getting crappy battery life. If I leave it off and not use it, battery life is fantastic, but as soon as I start using it, big drain. Something just isn't right.
 
HTTR said:
I get the battery complaints, but what is the expectation of folks for a smart phone? If you can get the better part of a day, that seems pretty solid. If you use ANY smart phone for hours on hours the battery is going to drop like a rock. Maybe when the quad core phones come out the battery life will be really great, but until then do what I have always done, keep a charger in the car, at work, home. ;)
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This is more or less the way I have always viewed it. Since I began using smartphones I've known that they were not going to have battery life worth anything. Even with "extended" batteries in some phones I was lucky to make it to the 12 hour mark. I've read about some crazy, in my mind anyway, extremes that people have gone to, to extend their battery life.

With the introduction of the Maxx, things changed. Once a phone is expected to get over 24 hours of battery life with normal use, it becomes expected. Even when you have a phone with a normal sized cell battery you want more because you know it is out there. Even now that I have a life that puts me within reach of an electrical outlet for 85% to 90% of my day, I look at people getting 50 hours of battery life and wonder what I can to do to get that. Do I need it? Absolutely not, I put my phone on the charger just about every night anyway, but I'd still like to be able to do it. I'd like to know that if I was in a situation that prevented me from having access to a charger for a day or so, I'd be able to use my phone.

So, even though I think some are over analyzing it a bit (don't give me that look, you know you are) I can understand it. We'd all love to have a phone that we could play videos for 6 days straight or talk on for a week without needing a charger. Just like there are people that would use up a terabyte if the space was available on their phone.
 
Some small part of me gets a a sick pleasure out of seeing the Maxx users getting the same (or worse) battery than me with the basic Razr.

It seems like only a couple months ago that Maxx owers were laughing at me as I got the Razr (literally 2 weeks) before the Maxx came out.

While I want us ALL to get great battery life, I cannot help but smile, just a little, inside..so no one can see.......;)...***evil laugh***
 
I got my MAXX 2 days before I got the update to ICS ... so my phone didnt have enough time to settle in to Gingerbread. For those 2 days with heavy use I would be at about 45% when I would go to bed at night. After the update, again with heavy use I was at about 35% when I would go to bed ... not a huge difference. Now that I have had it for a while ... with fairly heavy usage, I am again at 45% when I go to bed. IMO this is outstanding for a smartphone.
 
OfTheDamned said:
I'm not sure were or when people started saying to avoid wifi, it is historically a huge battery saver and much better for battery life than cellular.
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Well, I've found that using wifi is a big battery drain. I installed the app CPU Spy. It allows me to see how much time the cpu spends in sleep mode and the several levels of speed (300 MHZ up to 1200 MHz), With wifi off, and the phone just sitting there doing nothing, most of the time is spent in sleep mode. However, with wifi on, and the phone just sitting there doing nothing, it spends most of the time in the 300MHz mode and this uses the battery rapidly.

Something with wifi is preventing the phone from entering sleep mode. Yes, the screen shuts off, but this is not the same thing as sleep mode.
 
CharlieD said:
Well, I've found that using wifi is a big battery drain. I installed the app CPU Spy. It allows me to see how much time the cpu spends in sleep mode and the several levels of speed (300 MHZ up to 1200 MHz), With wifi off, and the phone just sitting there doing nothing, most of the time is spent in sleep mode. However, with wifi on, and the phone just sitting there doing nothing, it spends most of the time in the 300MHz mode and this uses the battery rapidly.

Something with wifi is preventing the phone from entering sleep mode. Yes, the screen shuts off, but this is not the same thing as sleep mode.
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Have you used Wifi Analyzer to test the wifi network you are on? I can see there being a problem on a poor network. Pretty odd to see wifi draining the battery faster than LTE would. LTE is normally a very large battery drain.

Also, are you using smart actions? Any wifi triggers set?
 
OfTheDamned said:
Have you used Wifi Analyzer to test the wifi network you are on? I can see there being a problem on a poor network. Pretty odd to see wifi draining the battery faster than LTE would. LTE is normally a very large battery drain.

Also, are you using smart actions? Any wifi triggers set?
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No smart actions. No triggers.

I'm in the same room now as my home wifi. Great signal. Also happens at work. I've tested it several times.

I've googled this a bit and others report the same problem although I know others here report they use wifi and have no problems.
 
CharlieD said:
No smart actions. No triggers.

I'm in the same room now as my home wifi. Great signal. Also happens at work. I've tested it several times.

I've googled this a bit and others report the same problem although I know others here report they use wifi and have no problems.
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That is really strange. I use wifi through most of the day and have no issue at all. I'm getting around 30 hours off of a charge with pretty heavy usage.

What are your advanced settings under wifi? Is it set to keep on during sleep?
 
OfTheDamned said:
That is really strange. I use wifi through most of the day and have no issue at all. I'm getting around 30 hours off of a charge with pretty heavy usage.

What are your advanced settings under wifi? Is it set to keep on during sleep?
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Yes, if is set to keep wifi on during sleep. I believe that's the default. I would thing you would want that. If wifi goes off when the phone is sleeping, wouldn't go back to using LTE? Isn't the reason for using wifi to get off LTE when possible so you would want to keep it on?
 
CharlieD said:
Yes, if is set to keep wifi on during sleep. I believe that's the default. I would thing you would want that. If wifi goes off when the phone is sleeping, wouldn't go back to using LTE? Isn't the reason for using wifi to get off LTE when possible so you would want to keep it on?
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Absolutely, I was just wondering if maybe that was the reason for the drain. If it was set to sleep when the phone shut off then it could be running the CPU waiting for the phone to wake up.

The only thing I can some up with is an app. Do you have any apps that are set to only sync or run when you are connected to wifi? I know that a few of the stock apps have that setting so that you aren't using too much data. Maybe one of those is continuously running whenever you connect.
 
OfTheDamned said:
Absolutely, I was just wondering if maybe that was the reason for the drain. If it was set to sleep when the phone shut off then it could be running the CPU waiting for the phone to wake up.

The only thing I can some up with is an app. Do you have any apps that are set to only sync or run when you are connected to wifi? I know that a few of the stock apps have that setting so that you aren't using too much data. Maybe one of those is continuously running whenever you connect.
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I'll have to check for any app like this. I can't think of one off the top of my head, so I guess I'll have to go through each one and see, unless you know of another app that may be helpful in this regard
 
I was having battery issues since getting ICS via the soak test. After reading through this thread and trying some things I managed to get my battery life back! Here is what I did that may help some of you.

1. Factory Reset (this didn't help initially, so I went on to do the rest of the items below at once)

2. Wipe the cache via the instructions provided in this thread. Here they are for quick reference:
1. Turn the phone off
2. Press and hold the power button and that vol up AND vol down keys all at the same time untill it loads into the screen where you can select "recovery"
3. Use the vol down key to highlight "recovery" then use the vol up key to select it
4. Wait for it to boot up (not pressing anything) untill you see an Android and a ! Inside of a triangle.
5. Once that screen appears, press the vol up and vol down key at the same time
6. It should load the recovery menu, press the vol down key to get down to "wipe cache" then use the power key to select it
7. When it is done, go to "reboot system now" and select it with the power key.

3. Rooted the phone via this utlity: [TOOL][ROOT][Razr] EternityProject EasyRootICS [Win/Linux] - xda-developers

4. Downloaded cachemate cache cleaner and run every now and then.

5. Downloaded Titanium Backup and froze the following apps:
Amazon Kindle
Apps 3.06.86
(Every Backup Assistant App) There are 5 I think
Blockbuster
Color 1.1.1.8
DLNA 0709.69
DlnaSystemService 1.0
Emergency Alerts
FlashRemoval
Google Play Music
Google +
Go To Meeting
Guided Tours
Let's Golf
MOG
MotoACTV
My Verizon Mobile
Netflix
NFL Mobile
Slacker Radio
Slingbox
Swype
Talkback
V Cast Tones
Verizon SSO Engine
Verizon Video
Video Calling
Video Surf
VZ Navigator
Weather

6. Downloaded the app Juice Defender. Start the app and run the basic "balanced" setting and left it go.

7. Run the following smart action: Triggers: display off, not charging - Actions: GPS off, background sync disable

8. Run the brightness at a set dim setting. Its at about the "to" in the words "Automatic Brightness" on the settings screen.

9. Download the app LTE OnOff and set the network type to "CDMA auto (PRL)

10. Under settings wifi, change "Keep Wi-Fi on during sleep" set to "only when plugged in".

11. Settings, sounds, disable "vibrate on touch".

I hope these settings may help some of you as they sure helped me. I was ready to get rid of the phone after the ICS update. I am back to being happy again. :)
 
CharlieD said:
I'll have to check for any app like this. I can't think of one off the top of my head, so I guess I'll have to go through each one and see, unless you know of another app that may be helpful in this regard
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There are a number of them that you can set for this. I'd look at your sync settings first. Then maybe look at your data usage and see if any apps are using a bit more than you'd expect. Then move into any social networking apps. Then RSS or news readers and go from there. Anything set to update could do it. Apps that deal with weather.

I'd also look into sites that may be blocked at work or home on your network. If there is something trying to send or receive information and it is being blocked that could also cause CPU usage and possible battery drain.
 
OfTheDamned said:
There are a number of them that you can set for this. I'd look at your sync settings first. Then maybe look at your data usage and see if any apps are using a bit more than you'd expect. Then move into any social networking apps. Then RSS or news readers and go from there. Anything set to update could do it. Apps that deal with weather.

I'd also look into sites that may be blocked at work or home on your network. If there is something trying to send or receive information and it is being blocked that could also cause CPU usage and possible battery drain.
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I don't see anything in sync settings related to this. Previously in trying to track down what was causing this, I had deleted all the social networking apps and news/stocks/RSS apps Nothing helped. I'll keep looking, though.

Thanks for all the help and suggestions.
 
My battery life has had its ups and downs.. I got a RAZR ( non-MAXX) as a replacement or my Bionic which I kept having to replace for different issues.

my 1st RAZR was decent except for a noicse with the speaker, bad enough to the point I could not use it for more then a minute or 2. So after 7 Calls to Tier 2 Tech, they sent a replacement. Well knowing how my 1st Battery worked, the 2nd RAZR would be at 50% after 4 hours, typical use for me was off the charger at 6am then on it at 9-10pm at around 40% or less

so I called and the Tier 2 Tech sent me a phone right away, funny how that works..

Anyway today is the first day with the replacement and I think RAZR #2 had some sort of Battery issue ( or maybe kernal issue)

Here is RAZR #3:

Screenshot_2012-07-10-13-31-15.png


Voice calls were only 15min total
 
The battery life problem since the update is a known issue. There is an update that already leaked and battery life is now the most common complaint at stores for the thin and Maxx. Current suggestion to customers is a factory restore, but that does not help- not for me, anyway.

As far as comparing one person's usage to another person, that is too subjective. What matters is your own use and if you notice a change. The change for me is profound and I started with a factory restored and wiped device. Since sleep mode does not appear to be impacted, of COURSE battery life will be similar if you do not use the device much. 4G is now a battery sucking demon from the third level of heck (it was first level).

I tested the GS3 out today for a little over an hour and two customers were in at the time to complain about it and the manager of the store has the problem as well and mentioned an update patch is being worked on.
 
After my Factory Reset and Cache Clearing, I have gotten 32 hours out of 1 charge. I have used it to update the stock apps, made a few short phone calls. Downloaded only a couple apps that I felt I needed at this time. Made a few updates on Facebook and sent/received multiple emails and text messages.

I hope after a few more full battery drains and charges this battery life will increase.
 
After factory reset my battery life was terrible. Then I remembered back on GB I had to go through all apps that sync and change the sync intervals from default to when I wanted them to sync. Since I've done that battery life has improved but still it's not as good as GB.
 
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