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Battery life

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Endgame715

Newbie
My Droid X is a year old. Great phone. I understand that in order to go a little faster you're going to have to use some gas, or battery life in this case. However, I am needing to charge my phone 2 sometimes 3 full times a day. Even Verizon couldn't figure it out. I have minimal settings, brightness is all the way down, no blue tooth, gps, sync is on. I only use Wifi at home because I have little to no service. Other than texting, mp3s , Facebook and the occasional call(s), I don't do much with my phone. Seems like a waste huh? I find games boring for the most part.

I have also tried putting another battery in. A fully charged Droid X battery from my wifes phone. It still was flashing red when I powered it back up. Why is this?

Anyway, suggestions and tips are welcome. Thanks in advance.
 
It's kind of hard to know, but there's definitely something wrong. A year-old phone shouldn't drain so quickly that yo have to recharge it three times in one day.

I've heard a number of theories for runaway battery drain. One is that it has to do with your location. If you're in a bad signal area, your phone will be on 2G but then look for 3G/4G constantly, and that looking process drains battery. Another is that it's some badly designed app that is ruining everything somehow. Or you're using a task killer (which you shouldn't be).

In my case, I had runaway battery drain with the latest Cyanogen Mod (I'm rooted), and I tried all kinds of stuff--dim the screen, use a different governor, change the CPU maximum, etc. All to no avail. Then I turned off the Notification Power Widget, and all was good.
 
Hi there - sounds like a battery calibration issue to me. I assume your phone is not rooted? If that is the case then you can try the various charging calibration methods out there which can easily be found on google (charge all the way, discharge, recharge - that sort of thing) or you can just do a factory reset and start over. the latter being my recommendation.

however in my opinion your best option is to root the phone which will allow you to reset the battery settings either in recovery mode or using a great little free app called Battery Calibration which you can find here:

https://market.android.com/details?...xLDEsImNvbS5uZW1hLmJhdHRlcnljYWxpYnJhdGlvbiJd

this worked wonders on my device and unexpectedly this was the best part of rooting my phone, an evo 4g which had atrocious battery life out of the box - even with all of the various battery saving methods you mentioned above and on every android sticky on the internet...
 
Recalibrating the battery every month or so is a good idea.

In my case, it did nothing.

I hope it works for the OP, though, because otherwise it can be tough to track down what the resource hog is.
 
You should also consider the kind of use it has had. A li-ion battery normally has capacity of 400-600 charge cycles, so it may just be the battery worn down.
 
Could it just be one app that's doing all this damage?

Maybe a live wallpaper or some widget? Or if you're rooted could it be that you're running at some overclock which is responsible for the drain?

How often are you at home? You may want to change the WiFi sleep settings so it's not constantly searching for networks.

And since you have poor coverage at home, is there an option to do something like "WiFi Calling" where it would disconnect you from the mobile network and transfer everything over WiFi? T-Mobile has an app like this, but if you don't then the phone is still searching for coverage even though it's connected to WiFi.
 
I would add Watchdog CPU to that list. It monitors cpu usage, and can alert you when any app hits a threshold for usage. Maybe the OP just has a janky app. There is a lite version available.
 
TechieGeek said:
Could it just be one app that's doing all this damage?

Maybe a live wallpaper or some widget? Or if you're rooted could it be that you're running at some overclock which is responsible for the drain?

How often are you at home? You may want to change the WiFi sleep settings so it's not constantly searching for networks.

And since you have poor coverage at home, is there an option to do something like "WiFi Calling" where it would disconnect you from the mobile network and transfer everything over WiFi? T-Mobile has an app like this, but if you don't then the phone is still searching for coverage even though it's connected to WiFi.
Click to expand...



I am unsure if Verizon has it. I'll look into it. I turn WiFi on when I know I am about to lose signal. I use it as a computer basically if the house computer is being used.
 
I also was informed recently that when you get a new phone that you should let it drain completely, keep it turned off, and THEN charge it. Something about it trains the battery to know when it'll be charged again.

Modern day tragedy: Dumb people with smartphones. I think I am starting to fall into that category. Haha.
 
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