Help Droid 2 Global's Battery Life problems

[burnthemartyr]

The GF and I just got our new Droid 2 Globals, on Tuesday, and we couldn't be more happy with them. It's a very well thought out phone, awesome design, and the customization is awesome. The 1.2GHz Processor, 512MB of RAM and its Dedicated GPU for gaming and such, makes it a badass phone, but the one problem I'm having that I noticed a few others are as well, is that I seem to have gotten a bad phone and/or battery. My phone (after fulling charging it) starts to drop below 20% battery life after only 3 or 4 hours, and that's with barely using it, and I know that even though Android phones eat up battery pretty quick, that the D2G does way better then that. I should at least be able to make it through most of the day on a single charge, but I cant even make it 1/3 of the day. My GF's seems to work fine. She makes it through the day, and most of the evening before she needs to recharge, and she uses the internet/facebook, etc etc, quite a bit (as Do I, she just does it a lot more lol) and most people I've talked to IRL and Online, who also own this phone, say that the amount of battery life I'm getting is ridiculous, and that I definitely need to exchange my phone (like I said, I just got it on Tuesday, so not even a week ago, so I'm well within the 30days to exchange/replace my phone) but I wanted to see what some peeps on this forum thought.

And to let you know, I deleted almost all the Apps I've downloaded, except for Facebook, Winamp, AVG and Advanced Task Killer. I removed most of my widgets from my desktop, and I killed most of the non-essential apps that were running in the background. And of course I make sure that GPS, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, is turned off, and I got my brightness turned down pretty low, and I even took off my Live-Wallpaper, and just put a standard one on there. But It hasn't really helped much, so I'm pretty convinced its a bad battery and/or phone. But again, like i said, I wanted to get some more opinions before I go down to Verizon tomorrow. So what do you guys think. Should I just switch it out ?

 

[NiceGuysFinishLast]

Check your facebook app's refresh time settings. Often times they're set stupidly low, eating battery. Also, ATK is not necessary in android 2.2 and actually causes your battery life to suck way worse than just letting android do its thing. I suggest you look for autokiller instead, because it doesn't kill system processes (that start right back up again, consuming battery quicker), and it kills nonessential things using the built in Android processes, which is the most economical way. Finally, AVG is pretty much unnecessary, and I suspect is contributing to your poor battery life as well.

I bought the BP7X for $50, and with SetCPU and Autokiller, my battery is good for 2-3 days of light usage, or 1.5 of moderate usage, or 1-1.5 of very heavy usage (constant games/display usage/wifi/etc)

Also, get Titanium backup to freeze all the stock bloatware that comes on the phone, that'll improve performance and battery life. Just type any of the app names into the search here (or google) for more information.

 

[NiceGuysFinishLast]

Just so you know what these things CAN do, my phone has been unplugged for 9h, 18m, and 46s according to battery manager, and is at 90%. (Granted, that 9 hours was while I was asleep, but still, that's better than some people get on their whole battery)

 

[Ted J]

When i bought this phone last month, i had the same problem initially that the battery can only last 3-4 hours (dropped below 15% quickly), even i donot use any fancy feature (e.g. Wi-Fi), donot download any extra apps and only make 1-2 phone calls.

The only thing I did with this new phone was to add a few email accounts. I was really frustrated, even I followed tips from Tips: how to extend battery life for Motorola Droid 2 Global | Verizon Cell Phones.

Then i used an app called Green Power Free which can periodically turn off data network , and started to realize that email synchronization with one account may be a problem. Green Power Free turns off data network periodically and effectively extends my battery, and thus it can last 12-16 hours. The only problem is that it seems to mess up something and when I want to browse Internet, data network cannot be up quickly enough.

Finally I found an email app called K-9 which can synchronize one of my email accounts better without affecting battery.

Now I have deleted Green Power Free, used K-9 to read one of my email accounts. Gmail with the standard droid software is fine.
Everything looks wonderful and the battery can last a day or more without a problem. I have not played with synchronization frequency extensively, the default may be fine with K-9. Also I have not got enough time to play with the Droid email sync frequency, which might help solving my initial email/battery issue. But I find K-9 has some feature i like so i decide to stay with K-9.

I have also tried Juicy defender which has some feature similar to Green Power Free and comes with a toggle to turn data network on. But this software seems to cause periodic operating system crash (not sure if it is caused by co-existance with Green Power Free). I had to delete this app after a bad crash for which i had to use a hardware resetting.

It looks that Droid global is a great phone and I am very happy now. Its battery can last long if one can isolate the situation/setting that causes excessive battery usage. Normal usages with Gmail, perhaps Yahoo mail should not have any problem. Watch any app downloaded and if there is a problem after downloading/usage, need to delete it.

My blackberry phone does not have any problem in dealing with my emails. I hope Droid email developers can soon improve its email software in handling subtle cases.

Hope my experience will be useful for you

 

[draexo]

My wife recently surprised me with a Droid 2 Global. (I did not need the Global, but it was all they had). I have been pretty disappointed in the battery life as well.
I am still experimenting, but so far from what I understand, the Global has two radio systems and the default from Verizon is for them both to be turned on. In the US, the only one you need is the CDMA. Go into Settings > Wireless & Networks > Mobile Networks > Network Mode > and turn off the default setting of Global and turn on CDMA. This assumes you are in the US. This seems to have extended my battery life somewhat. I am also messing around with underclocking, but I am not sure if that is making a difference. I am underclocked to 1 GHZ. I notice no performance difference.


Options?
I may just go purchase the extended battery or a second battery. The Verizon tech told me he personally uses two batteries on his Droid X because he uses it so much.
I hear Fission Rom is much better on battery life. I have rooted my phone, but I am not sure I want to start messing with ROMS, especially when documentation is scarce.

 

[Lare]

Is there a base that will charge a second battery outside of the phone?

I'm mostly satisfied with my battery life (I can get a day out of it and recharge overnight). I was having a problem with the Weatherbug widget killing my battery if I left the phone on overnight so I deleted that and disabled updates. That fixed the problem at the cost that I no longer have the temperature in the status bar.

 

[draexo]

Is there a base that will charge a second battery outside of the phone?

I'm mostly satisfied with my battery life (I can get a day out of it and recharge overnight). I was having a problem with the Weatherbug widget killing my battery if I left the phone on overnight so I deleted that and disabled updates. That fixed the problem at the cost that I no longer have the temperature in the status bar.

I started running the Droid 2 Overclock utility and lowered the volated to the low (but not ultra low) setting and I am at 40% and that is with 30 minutes of talk time! I am amazed. It would be dead by now normally.

I still would like to get a new battery. My wife is out of state at a place where cell service is spotty and her Droid X died in 9 hours. Probably because it is transmitting on full power. My old flip phone barely lasted a day there and it normally lasted two to three here at home.

 

[draexo]

Check your facebook app's refresh time settings. Often times they're set stupidly low, eating battery. Also, ATK is not necessary in android 2.2 and actually causes your battery life to suck way worse than just letting android do its thing. I suggest you look for autokiller instead, because it doesn't kill system processes (that start right back up again, consuming battery quicker), and it kills nonessential things using the built in Android processes, which is the most economical way. Finally, AVG is pretty much unnecessary, and I suspect is contributing to your poor battery life as well.

I bought the BP7X for $50, and with SetCPU and Autokiller, my battery is good for 2-3 days of light usage, or 1.5 of moderate usage, or 1-1.5 of very heavy usage (constant games/display usage/wifi/etc)

Also, get Titanium backup to freeze all the stock bloatware that comes on the phone, that'll improve performance and battery life. Just type any of the app names into the search here (or google) for more information.

You make me wonder if my battery is slunky. There is no way I could get 2 to 3 days with my stock Droid 2 Globlal battery.

 

[NiceGuysFinishLast]

You make me wonder if my battery is slunky. There is no way I could get 2 to 3 days with my stock Droid 2 Globlal battery.

No no no, I have the extended battery. I don't even know what my stock battery lasted for, I only had it for a few days. Here's my battery tonight, after 11 straight hours of MP3s at work, plus text, web, email, and 10-15mins of voice calls.

 

[draexo]

No no no, I have the extended battery. I don't even know what my stock battery lasted for, I only had it for a few days. Here's my battery tonight, after 11 straight hours of MP3s at work, plus text, web, email, and 10-15mins of voice calls.

What battery app do you use?
Also, does the extended battery require a new cover?

 

[boatman]

ok. this is ridiculous. I want to like this phone, but the battery life is killing me vs. my d1. it's going back unless i can figure out something. My phone is rooted, with set cpu set to display off.

It has been off the charge for 7 hours. I have not touched it except to look at it now. It is down to 60%. Battery usage says phone idle is 42%, cell standby is 32%, and display is 21% (how can that be, display has been on for about 1 minute).

Would love to hear any ideas. Any chance I got a bad phone/battery? GSM is set to off. bt is set too off. wifi is on.

 

[NiceGuysFinishLast]

What battery app do you use?
Also, does the extended battery require a new cover?

That's battery indicator pro. The extended battery requires a new cover, which comes with it. Motorola/Verizon sell an extended battery for the R2D2, and the white of the new door matches the Global (I'm told, I got the grey one, cuz they had no R2D2s and I didn't care). I use the Seidio Innocase, so I had to take the battery door off to make it fit, anyway. Without it, the case fits perfectly.

ok. this is ridiculous. I want to like this phone, but the battery life is killing me vs. my d1. it's going back unless i can figure out something. My phone is rooted, with set cpu set to display off.

It has been off the charge for 7 hours. I have not touched it except to look at it now. It is down to 60%. Battery usage says phone idle is 42%, cell standby is 32%, and display is 21% (how can that be, display has been on for about 1 minute).

Would love to hear any ideas. Any chance I got a bad phone/battery? GSM is set to off. bt is set too off. wifi is on.

Uhh.. 7 hours of wifi can eat up battery fairly quick... Also, what do you have setcpu set to when the screen is off?

 

[boatman]

That's battery indicator pro. The extended battery requires a new cover, which comes with it. Motorola/Verizon sell an extended battery for the R2D2, and the white of the new door matches the Global (I'm told, I got the grey one, cuz they had no R2D2s and I didn't care). I use the Seidio Innocase, so I had to take the battery door off to make it fit, anyway. Without it, the case fits perfectly.




Uhh.. 7 hours of wifi can eat up battery fairly quick... Also, what do you have setcpu set to when the screen is off?

not that i was using wifi for 7 hours, the phone was just sitting on my desk with wifi enabled. my d1 will go for 24+ hours if i just leave it alone with wifi, bt, gps all enabled. the d2 didn't make the night. setcpu was on screen off profile. thanks for any help you can give.

 

[draexo]

ok. this is ridiculous. I want to like this phone, but the battery life is killing me vs. my d1. it's going back unless i can figure out something. My phone is rooted, with set cpu set to display off.

It has been off the charge for 7 hours. I have not touched it except to look at it now. It is down to 60%. Battery usage says phone idle is 42%, cell standby is 32%, and display is 21% (how can that be, display has been on for about 1 minute).

Would love to hear any ideas. Any chance I got a bad phone/battery? GSM is set to off. bt is set too off. wifi is on.

Turn off the wifi. That eats battery it seems to me.

 

[lance-tek]

draexo, did you find that rooting helped your battery life at all? Also, what approach/method did you use to root your D2G? I have one and want to root but I want feedback from a D2G user in lieu of a D2 user.

Thanks,

-lance

 

[boatman]

draexo, did you find that rooting helped your battery life at all? Also, what approach/method did you use to root your D2G? I have one and want to root but I want feedback from a D2G user in lieu of a D2 user.

Thanks,

-lance

so far , rooting has done very little for me. see my post above. compared to my d1, the d2g is just terrible and unuseable for me. I am not a power user, I make about 10 minutes of calls a day, about 5 texts, but do get emails from exchange active sync. I normally do not reply, but just check them when i am not in front of my computer. on my d1, i can get between 16-24 hours doing this. I have wifi turned on, bt turned on even though I have no bt, gps turned on.

With the d2g, which i easily rooted with a 1 step rooter, I get 8 hours by not doing anything with the phone. My d2g is not even active on the phone radio, i have the d1 in use. So my d2g just have wifi enable, I have not used it, just took it a full charge this morning and it didn't make it until 5pm!

I might have a bad phone/battery combo, I will bring to vzw to get another to check.

 

[NiceGuysFinishLast]

Well, gee, a 1.2GHz phone just might take more battery than a 550MHz phone... You say you didn't use wifi for the whole 7 hours, but that you had it enabled for 7 hours.. If it's enabled, you're using it... So what you're telling me doesn't make sense. Also, you can't tell us that you have SetCPU in the screen off profile... YOU DEFINE THAT PROFILE... so that doesn't mean anything to us until you tell us how YOU defined it.

 

[boatman]

Well, gee, a 1.2GHz phone just might take more battery than a 550MHz phone... You say you didn't use wifi for the whole 7 hours, but that you had it enabled for 7 hours.. If it's enabled, you're using it... So what you're telling me doesn't make sense. Also, you can't tell us that you have SetCPU in the screen off profile... YOU DEFINE THAT PROFILE... so that doesn't mean anything to us until you tell us how YOU defined it.

i absolutely agree that this phone will use more battery with its cpu running faster. when i say above it's not being used though wifi is on, i mean i just have the radio enabled, but i have not actually connected to the internet to browse web sites etc. i realize in the background it is doing some things, but I am not actively using it. In this comparision test, I have both phones charged to full, take them off the charger. I use my d1 as my phone, I check my email, get texts, etc. My d2 just stays on the desk. my screen off profile has scaling on demand, max clock is set to 1ghz.

i don't have my d1 rooted, mod'd etc. My d2, which is not even connected to a cell network and only has the wifi radio enabled vs. my d1 which is in use with every radio on it enabled, lasts 1/3 as long.

believe me, i want to like and keep this d2. I want the global, I would like no lag. But if I can't get 8 hours out of my phone without even using it, it is un useable as a device for me. I need to be able to rely on my phone.

Is anyone else getting such poor battery life, or do I just have a dog.

 

[NiceGuysFinishLast]

Wifi on is using the radio, which is drawing power. Lots of it. Also, why would you have your processor set to 1GHz when the screen is off? Turn it down to 600MHz, or even 300.

The phone uses a set amount of power to do any of its (high powered) advanced wizardry, like running at 1.2GHz, or using wifi, or browsing the internet. It has a small battery. Your choices are: Long battery life for decent performance or max performance with a short battery life. Get an extended battery, stop doing things like leaving high powered radios on continuously, and realize that until battery tech catches up with smart phone tech, you WILL be charging daily, that's reality.

 

[boatman]

thanks for your advice. i have had a treo from the beginning, then curve, then storm, then d1 so i am not a novice to smartphones. Also, I used to design chips for a living, so i know how they work.

leaving wifi on is preferred as it draws less than the cell to goto the internet, email, etc. my processor is not set to 1ghz, but rather in setcpu it is limited to 1ghz, setcpu scales between 600 and 1ghz.

I am not looking for long battery life, I am looking for a phone that doesn't chew up it's entire battery doing NOTHING but being in a standby state for 8 hours. As I have said, my D1 with standard for me use, 10 min phone, 20 text, viewing 25 emails, checking 3 or things on the web, reading news for 5 minutes goes 20+ hours. The performance isn't critical, but having more than 8 hours is. If I were to use my d2g like my d1, I might get 6 hours. I just got a second one to see if it was the specific phone, or this is an issue with the phone in general. Thanks for you input.

 

[draexo]

draexo, did you find that rooting helped your battery life at all? Also, what approach/method did you use to root your D2G? I have one and want to root but I want feedback from a D2G user in lieu of a D2 user.

Thanks,

-lance

Rooting gave me the ability to overclock, use Wireless Tether, and Titanium Backup.

I rooted with Z4 mod (permanent option).

I have Wifi, Bluetooth, and GPS off. I turn them on when I need them.

I use "Droid Overclock" to slow down my CPU.
I am using "Battery Doctor" but I am considering "Battery Indicator Pro" as recommended by another poster.

I take the phone off the charger about 7am. I have had no issues lasting all day since I changed what I posted above. The biggest single things have been slowing down the CPU and shutting off WiFi and GPS. Since I made multiple changes at a time, I am not 100% sure which change had the most impact, but I am much better off than the first few days that I had the phone and it was dying within 12 hours. My gut feeling is that turning off WiFi made the biggest difference.

I was planning on running Fission Rom - it is the only option for the Global right now - and it is supposed to save battery. However, I am now satisfied with my battery for the most part and will eventually get the extended battery. I prepped everything to put on Fission Rom but never actually did. I used Titanium Backup to get rid of some of the bloatware.

That is about it. I do not know if I will ever flash my Global. If I had an X or plain 2, I might flash... but the global seems to be quirky. 2.3 (Gingerbread) is supposed to be much easier on the battery - but Verizon (my carrier) probably will not roll it out for months.

 

[lance-tek]

So, if I were to root, I would need to unroot to update to Gingerbread right? It could be done though and then to just root again (as I understand it). If that is the case then I have no worries

I just saw that you said "permanent" and I am also not sure what you would need to flash. I am not a hard core phone person so I am probably just missing half of this because i am not on your level.

Any info you can elaborate on to help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks again,

-lance

 

[draexo]

So, if I were to root, I would need to unroot to update to Gingerbread right? It could be done though and then to just root again (as I understand it). If that is the case then I have no worries

I just saw that you said "permanent" and I am also not sure what you would need to flash. I am not a hard core phone person so I am probably just missing half of this because i am not on your level.

Any info you can elaborate on to help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks again,

-lance

Lance.
Believe me, I know about as much as you about phones and I am certainly not "hard core". I was just telling you what worked for my Global. I am more of a computer tech.... but what is our phone but a computer and a radio? The path I outlined in my prior post was not a straight line. It took many turns (I tried other rooting methods), tried other programs, before settling on ones that worked and I like.

As for Gingerbread - I am not running it. I did a Verizon software update, but it did not change my OS. So I am still running 2.2. I have no idea what will happen when Gingerbread hits my phone. I prompted it to do updates before I rooted but nothing. Gingerbread is supposed to monitor the battery better and watch for apps that drain the battery.

It could take Verizon MONTHS to roll out Gingerbread.... so I decided to not wait.

Can anyone tell me if I will need to re-root once Gingerbread is installed????

 

[lance-tek]

Lance.
Believe me, I know about as much as you about phones and I am certainly not "hard core". I was just telling you what worked for my Global. I am more of a computer tech.... but what is our phone but a computer and a radio? The path I outlined in my prior post was not a straight line. It took many turns (I tried other rooting methods), tried other programs, before settling on ones that worked and I like.

As for Gingerbread - I am not running it. I did a Verizon software update, but it did not change my OS. So I am still running 2.2. I have no idea what will happen when Gingerbread hits my phone. I prompted it to do updates before I rooted but nothing. Gingerbread is supposed to monitor the battery better and watch for apps that drain the battery.

It could take Verizon MONTHS to roll out Gingerbread.... so I decided to not wait.

Can anyone tell me if I will need to re-root once Gingerbread is installed????

Well then, were birds of a feather. Lucky for me, you are in the front of the flock and I can follow your lead ;-)

Thanks again,

-lance

 

[draexo]

Well then, were birds of a feather. Lucky for me, you are in the front of the flock and I can follow your lead ;-)

Thanks again,

-lance

No one has any idea when Verizon will send out an update to 2.3 (ginger bread). So for now, I am staying rooted in 2.2 and learning. Once it comes out, I will probably hold off until I know I can stay rooted or that I can re-root.