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Battery life tips (30% after 40 hrs unplugged)

sorka said:
There must really be a wide range in battery quality. Mine will go a solid 24 hours with lots of surfing, email, and youtube watching. This is with the default smart mode settings except that I'm leaving my data on 24 hours a day as I have to be able to get email in the middle of the night.

BTW, I leave me GPS and bluetooth on always.

Since I've had my phone, there was a 2 day period where I barely touched it except for voice calls and the battery was 50% after 48 hours. We just charged my wife's for the first time since getting it 2 days ago. It went 48 hours with 30% at the end of that period and she's been doing lots of social networking on facebook.

Her GPS has been left on so that I can track the phone with mylookout.com as latitude won't use the GPS unless it's running the foreground.

Her bluetooth has been off, but I'm about to turn it on to pair with the Prius
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I'm curious of your battery stats...do you think you can post what they are before your next charge?

There has to be an explaination as to why some people get this kind of battery life and others get 8 hours.

For myself, I was in a very low signal area for one weekend with my DX and I was barely getting a day out of the phone before I had to refill. Now that I'm back in a heavily covered area, my phone is lasting much longer than that, average 48 hours almost. I know for a fact that the phone will pump more juice to its antenna to "reach out" and get the weaker signals, so this may be why people are getting low use times.


My current stats are as such:

21h 19m 25s since unplugged

Display: 62%
Cell standby: 21%
Voice Calls: 12%
Phone idle 7%

Battery left: 50%

Services On: 3G and location (sometimes)

So based on this, I could probably get another 21 hours out of the phone quite easily.

I should mention that the first day I recieved the phone, I let it die completly. As in it turned itself off and wouldn't come back on. Then I charged it back off while it was off and it took about 2 hours to get her up to full again. Repeated again. By doing this method, I think it trains the battery to last a bit longer. Just a theory though.
 
I'll do that before my next charge. I just discoverd that if you power down and then up, the battery manager resets and you lose your stats. They start over after the phone powers up.

I've been in a solid 4 to 5 bar 3g coverage area the entire time. The only time I wasn't was last weekend when we drove through parts of Oregon that had poor coverage, but it was charging in the car dock.
 
Ha!

I'm guessing none of you had the incredible..

The X blows it away in battery life. I am super impressed with it. Especially with the bigger screen. The X get's a solid day and a half with decent usage. That is awesome in today's standards.
 
my battery life hasn't been great but i have been doing a lot with it...

i came across an article online with Motorola suggesting to train your battery:

"Train Droid X Battery to Improve Battery Life:
Training the new battery is a good practice to increase battery retention and the number of life-cycles. Motorola gives tips to train your battery to get improved battery life. The way to train the battery is to fully charge it and drain the battery completely.
Motorola says,

Turn off Motorola X and fully charge the battery until the LED stops flashing and remains on.
*Charge the battery for an additional TWO hours.
Completely drain the battery
Repeat the process once again"

*So you're supposed to over charge it an additional 2 hours? that doesn't make sense to me.
 
Szadzik said:
As for turning off anything in Android - I see it as pointless. It is a phone that is made to work online and having it offline is like not having it at all.
Click to expand...

Yes, the phone is made to work online, but turning things off would make sense for many people (including me).

If your battery runs out prematurely, and you're not in a position to charge it up, then you have a lovely Android phone with zero features turned on, and no possibility of turning them on. It's only this dead-battery situation that is "like not having it at all."

So, for people who have limited opportunities to charge their phones...are you saying that it's better to:

  • Have a phone with all features running all the time for x hours, but then be totally unable to use the phone at all for y hours

    versus:
  • Have a phone with some features turned off unless/until they're important, running for x+y hours?
The second option looks more appealing to me and not at all "pointless."
 
effin_eric said:
*So you're supposed to over charge it an additional 2 hours? that doesn't make sense to me.
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I don't even think that's possible with the Moto charger. If I remember correctly, the charger should stop feeding the DX electricity once it has reached full capacity to AVOID such overcharging...
 
I never realized until this morning reading at another forum that u could leave GPS on and it wont kill the battery. I used it sometime last week and never even realized I didnt turn it off...lol

The only time GPS will kill the battery is when using something that uses GPS constantly. I got Beautiful Widgets. I dont have the Geolocation and GPS settings on for BW. But if trying to change settings, u will see the GPS icon come on for about 5-10 seconds then go away. No big deal. I bet if I turned the GPS and Geolocation settings on it would drain my battery.

I got 1 day + some hrs recently..... right now Im at 20 hrs unplugged, 60% battery. Right now I'm doing a bluetooth file transfer with my Droid (didnt realize it would be this slooow..lol) I did some browsing, used Tapatalk, played some HR Battle 3D, checked GMail, listened to FM Radio and .mp3's in the last 20 hrs...I didnt those things alot tho....I only used Smart Mode in Battery Manager since getting the phone.

20 Hrs unplugged
Display 63% - on for 1hr 19 min
Cell Standby 20% - 19 hrs
Voice Calls 11% - on for 6 min
Phone Idle 7% - 18 hrs

And this is with having the screen at 100% brightness. Background data is on. Auto sync is on.

I never really tried to see how much battery I actually got but I might this weekend. Play some 3D games for more than an hour, try to browse for more than an hour, talk for more than an hour, etc.

I do know that for my usage, that never changed from when I used my Droid, I'm getting better battery life.
 
bemaitea said:
I don't even think that's possible with the Moto charger. If I remember correctly, the charger should stop feeding the DX electricity once it has reached full capacity to AVOID such overcharging...
Click to expand...

yes i have read that as well.... but i did it anyways :D and my phone lasted a lot longer today than it did yesterday! i have used a bunch of games / apps / mail / txt etc... and got around 8 - 9 hours of constant usage!

this article convinced me to try: Android Rights Blog: How To Calibrate Your Lithium-ion Battery for your Smartphone
 
jroc said:
I never realized until this morning reading at another forum that u could leave GPS on and it wont kill the battery. I used it sometime last week and never even realized I didnt turn it off...lol

The only time GPS will kill the battery is when using something that uses GPS constantly. I got Beautiful Widgets. I dont have the Geolocation and GPS settings on for BW. But if trying to change settings, u will see the GPS icon come on for about 5-10 seconds then go away. No big deal. I bet if I turned the GPS and Geolocation settings on it would drain my battery.

I got 1 day + some hrs recently..... right now Im at 20 hrs unplugged, 60% battery. Right now I'm doing a bluetooth file transfer with my Droid (didnt realize it would be this slooow..lol) I did some browsing, used Tapatalk, played some HR Battle 3D, checked GMail, listened to FM Radio and .mp3's in the last 20 hrs...I didnt those things alot tho....I only used Smart Mode in Battery Manager since getting the phone.

20 Hrs unplugged
Display 63% - on for 1hr 19 min
Cell Standby 20% - 19 hrs
Voice Calls 11% - on for 6 min
Phone Idle 7% - 18 hrs

And this is with having the screen at 100% brightness. Background data is on. Auto sync is on.

I never really tried to see how much battery I actually got but I might this weekend. Play some 3D games for more than an hour, try to browse for more than an hour, talk for more than an hour, etc.

I do know that for my usage, that never changed from when I used my Droid, I'm getting better battery life.
Click to expand...
What apps do you have installed? How are your screens setup? I would love to get 20Hrs out of my phone.
 
007E said:
What apps do you have installed? How are your screens setup? I would love to get 20Hrs out of my phone.
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I would be willing to be he is in an area with very solid signal just about everywhere: that alone will make an enormous difference b/c the radios will not be continually searching for signals and struggling to hold them.

I would also like to point out that his usage time is only 1 hr and 19 min. That is most likely the main reason that the battery is lasting so long: he's really not using his phone all that much. If he were to start using it for 3 hrs or so you'd see an extreme drop in battery life.

@jroc, is my assumption about the signal in your area accurate? (I'm betting you live in a decent sized city or just outside one...)
 
lol....I dont know how much this will help....Apps, I dont really have any installed. The ones I do, I know if they using GPS or grabbing data in the background...

I have Beautiful Widgets, but not using the GPS settings in it.

Games I have: HR Battle 3D, Jewels, DroidBall, Speedx 3D. I havent tried the network play on HR Battle yet.

Quadrant, Volume Button Controller, Tapatalk, RadioTime, MotoTorch, Fandango, ES File Explorer....and everything else that came with the phone.

I'm using Launcher Pro, 7 screens. No Live wallpaper. I got Power Control widget, Beautiful Widgets Airplane, GPS, Brightness, Bluetooth widgets and 4 shortcuts on one screen;

One screen has Battery Left and SetCPU widgets, 4 shortcuts;

One screen has Volume Button Control widget and 1 shortcut;

One screen has Mototorch widget and 4 shortcuts;

One screen has Beautiful Widgets Clock widget and one shortcut;

Thats it. I dont use any of the social widgets or apps. Never have even with my Droid.

Under Privacy settings I have Use My Location unchecked. Under Location and Security I have Use wireless networks unchecked. Dont know if that means anything for battery life.

I was gonna say like kwest12 just mentioned....being in a good reception area probably helps. At home its good reception. At work its a bad reception area.

Thats why I'm amazed that some ppl said just on standby only their X only lasted 6-7 hours. I think I could go days on standby. At home anyway...lol

Yea kwest12, at home I average decibels in the low to mid -70's . At work its anywhere from -95 to -102 at my desk. Some areas in the building its -120...Outside at work its mid -80's to mid -90's.
 
My phone seems to be lasting quite well so far...

Stats:

2d 4h 52m 50s since unplugged

Display - 47% (3 h 24m 2s)
Cell Standby - 25% (2d 4h 52m 48s)
Voice Calls - 21% (50m 56s)
Idle - 8% (2d 1h 32m 28s)

15% Battery left

Coverage here is fine, 2-3 bars. GPS on when needed.

I'm probably going to let it drain out and charge it up while off once more just for good measure.

But it is lasting much longer than the first day when I didn't train it. I'd def. suggest those with new phones let it die out completly the first night and charge it back up while off. Really helps out.
 
Another tip is Google Talk. It is set up to sign in automatically when the phone is started. This means it needs to let Google Talk servers know that you're online and check and see if your contacts are online. If you don't use Talk, then go into the application and set it to not automatically sign in when the phone turns out, then sign out. It'll help a bit and every bit helps.
 
dguy said:
Another tip is Google Talk. It is set up to sign in automatically when the phone is started. This means it needs to let Google Talk servers know that you're online and check and see if your contacts are online. If you don't use Talk, then go into the application and set it to not automatically sign in when the phone turns out, then sign out. It'll help a bit and every bit helps.
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Thx for the tip. I noticed whenever I went to Running Services it shows Talk, Skype, News, and a couple others even though I don't use them. I went in and turned off what I could from auto launch/sign-in and updates.
 
My phone will last through out my 10 hour shift and needs charging when I get home. MUCH better than the Omnia. But if I make a 15 min call, my batt will only last about 6 hours.
 
effin_eric said:
i came across an article online with Motorola suggesting to train your battery:
...
Turn off Motorola X and fully charge the battery until the LED stops flashing and remains on.
...
Click to expand...

I don't have an LED lit when it's charging, flashing or otherwise. There's an LED when battery is very low (<20%?), but not otherwise. Do you get a "charging" LED?
 
That's it. I am going to the store tomorrow and getting a new battery. I turn off all kinds of crap and still barely make it through the day. If I do not charge it midday for a bit, I have to worry about it every time I turn it on. Today, I had it unplugged at 9:30 and I am at 15% now at 8:30. per the battery stats, here is what the drain was :
display 42% (mostly web surfing and a few pictures and background searches)
calls 28% (14. 5 minutes talk time)
standby 26%
Idle 4%
maps 3%
TOTAL BS!
 
mahers said:
That's it. I am going to the store tomorrow and getting a new battery. I turn off all kinds of crap and still barely make it through the day. If I do not charge it midday for a bit, I have to worry about it every time I turn it on. Today, I had it unplugged at 9:30 and I am at 15% now at 8:30. per the battery stats, here is what the drain was :
display 42% (mostly web surfing and a few pictures and background searches)
calls 28% (14. 5 minutes talk time)
standby 26%
Idle 4%
maps 3%
TOTAL BS!
Click to expand...


Did you try calibrating your battery like some of the posters have said? Fully charge it, use it until your battery drains and shuts itself off....Charge her up and repeat. People tend to see increased battery life if they do this.
 
mahers said:
That's it. I am going to the store tomorrow and getting a new battery. I turn off all kinds of crap and still barely make it through the day. If I do not charge it midday for a bit, I have to worry about it every time I turn it on. Today, I had it unplugged at 9:30 and I am at 15% now at 8:30. per the battery stats, here is what the drain was :
display 42% (mostly web surfing and a few pictures and background searches)
calls 28% (14. 5 minutes talk time)
standby 26%
Idle 4%
maps 3%
TOTAL BS!
Click to expand...
Depending on your signal and how much web browsing you were doing, that doesn't sound that abnormal.

Doubt a battery will help much.

If you are in an area where you can stay on wifi much of the day, that'd help some.
 
bosox2k1 said:
Did you try calibrating your battery like some of the posters have said? Fully charge it, use it until your battery drains and shuts itself off....Charge her up and repeat. People tend to see increased battery life if they do this.
Click to expand...

Don't advise people to do that. It's horrible on Lithium Ion batteries. You should do it once in a while (maybe twice per month) to make sure its memory stays on track, but draining the battery completely should not be a practice you get into the habit of.

How to prolong lithium-based batteries
 
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