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Battery questions

R

rcyphermd

Android Expert
I have the thunderbolt and am considering switching to the charge. Some reviews say the charge is much better at battery life. Pc world said the TB was better! What do you real world users say, especially if you had a TB to compare. I am tired of being afraid to use my phone because of the battery.

Also, does the charge battery match any other samsung phone batteries? I was curious if any of seidio extended batteries would fit? Thanks in advance.
 
rcyphermd said:
I have the thunderbolt and am considering switching to the charge. Some reviews say the charge is much better at battery life. Pc world said the TB was better! What do you real world users say, especially if you had a TB to compare. I am tired of being afraid to use my phone because of the battery.

Also, does the charge battery match any other samsung phone batteries? I was curious if any of seidio extended batteries would fit? Thanks in advance.
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That pcworld review is a joke. The testing method they used for the battery made no sense. There is no comparison, the Charge wins hands down. I had a Thunderbolt and really liked it and would still be using one today if htc had any quality control. My girlfriend has a Thunderbolt (wanted a Charge after seeing mine and the best buy would not sell it to her) and her battery will drain twice as fast as mine. Both phones are good, to me I like the Charge a lot more. Sure it could have been better but so can any device.
 
Just got the Droid Charge today ... it comes out of the box with WiFi activated, but it's easy to toggle it off. Bet that saves a lot of battery life. Also the Droid Charge is pre-loaded with a number of how-to videos including one with various tips about prolonging and managing battery life.

I have read so many reports of TB bad batter life and so many reviews saying Droid Charge battery life is better. Gotta believe that's the case, notwithstanding PC World's review.
 
The Charge's battery is great. I have been fooling around with it for a couple days now, I generally run my phones through some pretty rigorous battery tests in the first week or so to see if it can handle what I want from it. The battery life has gotten consistently better each day; I've worked it down to almost dead and then charged overnight.

I live in a 4G area so I'm running the 4G LTE radio (switching to CDMA will probably get you even more juice) and have been unplugged for 16 hours, and I am around 15 percent battery life. I talked on the phone for 15 minutes, did a fair amount of web browsing, sent some emails, a whole mess of texts, took 5-10 minutes of video, and 30 minutes of various apps, and 15 minutes using GPS navigation. For the past 8 hours the phone's been set to auto sync, just because I want to see how fast it drains the battery.

The 1600 mAh battery on this is good enough that you can get through the day and still a decent amount of wiggle room in terms of settings. You can get a Thunderbolt through the day as well, but I hate feeling like I'm sparring with the battery. Turn the screen brightness down, turn off navigation and wifi if you're not using them, set apps you use infrequently to update either every hour, or even less often, things of that nature and you won't even have to worry about getting through the day without a charger. Great phone, great battery life.
 
Samsung shows a 2600mah extended battery for the Charge, WOW! I hear it will be available in 2 weeks. If the DC is doing this well ont he standard battery I am curious to se how long the DC will last with that beast. I'm on fence abotu a phone and woudl liek the DC, am not happy with the browser lag, but if the extended battery clearly blows theough a day of heavy use I may hope a future update or potenital root/rom may make it good.
 
addictedtocars said:
Samsung shows a 2600mah extended battery for the Charge, WOW! I hear it will be available in 2 weeks. If the DC is doing this well ont he standard battery I am curious to se how long the DC will last with that beast. I'm on fence abotu a phone and woudl liek the DC, am not happy with the browser lag, but if the extended battery clearly blows theough a day of heavy use I may hope a future update or potenital root/rom may make it good.
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Well the browser lag is easy to get rid of..just dwnload a alternate browser i got xscope and i swear there is no lag at all...works smooth and fast
 
I think I need to check out this extended life battery for the Charge you speak of...I seem to constantly be on the charger with mine...
 
bombman7 said:
I think I need to check out this extended life battery for the Charge you speak of...I seem to constantly be on the charger with mine...
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Yes :) If I end up keeping the phone I think an extended battery will be a must. The Charge seems to do "well" for a 4G phone, but I think it's going to need the extra boost. I wonder if the extended battery will have any issues with the docking station or if it comes with its own.
 
I have to say. My battery life with the Charge has been pretty poor. Left the house this morning at 6:30 with a full overnight charge. Sent some google voice messages this morning (10 or 12) and browsed some google reader feeds. I'm running my screen brightness pretty low. Only 2 widgets loaded (smooth calendar and Go Weather/Clock). Background is set to black carbon (since light colors use more power with OLED screens). Still by noon, my battery was at 49%. By 3:30 in the afternoon, I got a low battery when on a 15 minute call (the only call I made all day). Went to Verizon to ask about this and gotL "It's not a battery problem. That's common. If you make it through the day with an android phone you're lucky."

I'm coming from an iPhone 4 on AT&T and there's a lot I like about the Droid Charge. I'm just not sure I want to start carrying a deck of batteries in my pocket. Plus I want to feel like I can use some of the capabilities of the phone, not have to ration my use, just to make it through the day.

I still have 10 days on my 14 day return period, so I'll see if the battery life gets better.

Kevin
 
Forgot to mention, I'm also in a 3g area (we get 4g later this year). So I expected better battery life. Once 4g arrives, I'll be lucky to make it to noon.

Kevin
 
I always leave WiFi on (turn off wifi notifications)...won't hurt battery life, may improve it from the data I've seen from a year or more ago when this was being debated in the OG Droid forums...
 
What did I found out today?

Rated talk time for the Charge is 11 HOURS!!!

Thats better than 3 phones that, until the Charge came, out had the best battery life of Android phones.

The Atrix gets 9 hrs with a 1900 mAh battery.
The Droid X 1 and 2 get 8 hours with a 1540 battery.
The Charge gets 11 HOURS with a 1600 battery.

One MAJOR pro for the Charge should be battery life. One thing most ppl rave about with the Droid X is battery life...and thats with a rated talk time of 8 hours. For comparisons the Thunderbolt, another LTE phone, gets 6 hrs. 20 min...on a 1400 mAh battery.
 
Redflea said:
I always leave WiFi on (turn off wifi notifications)...won't hurt battery life, may improve it from the data I've seen from a year or more ago when this was being debated in the OG Droid forums...
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You think leaving WiFi on may improve battery life? It's not April.. It's May...
 
cubsfan61 said:
I have to say. My battery life with the Charge has been pretty poor. Left the house this morning at 6:30 with a full overnight charge. Sent some google voice messages this morning (10 or 12) and browsed some google reader feeds. I'm running my screen brightness pretty low. Only 2 widgets loaded (smooth calendar and Go Weather/Clock). Background is set to black carbon (since light colors use more power with OLED screens). Still by noon, my battery was at 49%. By 3:30 in the afternoon, I got a low battery when on a 15 minute call (the only call I made all day). Went to Verizon to ask about this and gotL "It's not a battery problem. That's common. If you make it through the day with an android phone you're lucky."

I'm coming from an iPhone 4 on AT&T and there's a lot I like about the Droid Charge. I'm just not sure I want to start carrying a deck of batteries in my pocket. Plus I want to feel like I can use some of the capabilities of the phone, not have to ration my use, just to make it through the day.

I still have 10 days on my 14 day return period, so I'll see if the battery life gets better.

Kevin
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You need to go through full drain/recharge cycle at least three times to get most out of new battery. Also as you use more apps doing frequent auto-syncing it will drain faster, so adjust sync intervals properly if possible. But it looks like you are not that heavy user. Another factor is signal reception strength. Poorer the reception, worse the drain.

It's also possible that you got faulty battery unfortunately though chance of that is slim. It might be worth of trying other battery if it doesn't improve otherwise.
 
Yeah I've already adjusted sync settings. Taken my exchange mail off of push. Weather widget is only updating every 3 hours.

I'm actually a heavier user. At least I was on my iPhone but have scaled back so far on the Charge just to get through the day.

So do I need to completely drain the battery or is draining it to less than 20% sufficient?

Kevin
 
Going to play golf this morning. DL'd one of the low priced golf gps apps from the market. Will be interesting to see if I can make it through the round using the app.

Kevin
 
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