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How bad is battery life?

P

pjr710

Newbie
I can totally keep my phone charged if i really have to, however it's not my first choice.

I really value being able to use full brightness on my phone, and not having to fuss with it all the damn time like i do now on my DX.

I like the D4 better than the Maxx, however the Maxx battery life is VERY appealing.

So how bad is battery life on the D4? Can u go a whole day with bluetooth, sync, brightness high turned on?

Just for comparison, my DX needs to be plugged in at least twice per day, and i really have to watch my usage when im not near a charger - its horrendous.
 
Do you need all of those things on the whole day? I get great battery life on mine. I average 18-22 hour charges. I do use wi-fi a lot and use JuiceDefender, but still, I think that's impressive. I mostly play about an hour of games, read a lot of online news, and stream a bit of music. I will get slightly less life (about 14-16 hours) if I need to navigate somewhere for more than a half hour. Oh and when I DO use VZW data instead of wifi, I always am on 4G, never on 3G.

I do use bluetooth occationally for 30+ minutes and my brightness is set to auto, which is fine. qHD screens are pretty good in sunlight.
 
I have very little experience but here's today's usage. Alas, I don't have the number of hours I was doing anything in particular.

I left the house at 9 am with the phone fully charged. I plugged it in in the car and listened to podcasts with Beyond Pod. (On the way home I discovered that the car USB charger while using the phone seems to only about maintain the level and not charge. This seems consistent with experience with my husband's older Droid which we use for audio books when we travel.)

At about 9:45 am it was unplugged and remained unplugged until 5 pm. During the day I did not use it continuously, but I did make several phone calls, one maybe 20 minutes long. It was connected to wifi all day. I used it rather often but not all of the time. Installed a few programs, checked them out, uninstalled a couple, checked the calendar and MLO several times and did some editing on both.

At 5 pm it was about 40%. I'd say it does not last a day of heavy use for sure.

This doesn't matter for me because the way we use phones most of the time we are home or in a car or a motorhome to keep them charged most of the time.

Judy
 
if i have certian things disabled and kept from running i can go a whole day on one charge. also playing games and playing music.

i have go launcher and once in awhile il go into running apps and stop them.
disable google sync, wifi, and gps.
also download the app juice defender, it realy helps
 
IMO - the battery life is horrible. I wanted the Razr Maxx but went with D4 becasue of the physical keyboard (made the switch from a BB that I had for 6 years). I wish I had gotten the Maxx. I use the onscreen keyboard now all the time on my D4 so I would have gotten used to the Maxx just fine.

For me, it is just such a hassle and there are so many compromises you need to make in order to maximize battery life. For me, I need to turn off all auto-updates of feeds and push notifications. GPS is disabled. Screen brightness is at the lowest setting. And 4G is turned off. This was all required so that I could get through an 8 hour work day without charging. Well what's the point of a 4G phone if you turn 4G off? What's the point of turn-by-turn navigation if you can't use it?

Other people say they are getting 18+ hours. Well, I wish I had your phone. I've been to the Verizon store 3 times. I am on my third Droid 4. I don't know if there were bad batteries but I am very disappointed.

I should have kept my BB. It would stay charged for 2-3 days. Yea, I didn't have all the bells and whistles as I do on my D4, but since they are all turned off to maximize battery life, guess it's a wash.

PS - internal batteries suck. I had 3 fully charged batteries for my BB that could be swapped whenever needed. Guaranteed my BB wouldn't have died on my during the zombie apocalypse.
 
The battery life could have been better, but its by no means "horrible". I got this after an Avail on ATT, which lasted me ~2 days on a charge. However, due to ATT's horrible coverage area, I had it on airplane mode the entire time I was home. After all, I was LUCKY to get one bar at the house on ATT. Even in town I only had Edge anyway, so that changed that too. However, I get 3G at my house with this and 4 in town, so that comparison may not mean much.
Generally I have it plugged in overnight streaming pandora for a couple hours via Wifi. In the morning I close pandora and unplug it at ~7 AM. Between the hours of 7 AM and 8 PM, my battery is generally at ~30 percent, some days ~15. This includes 1-3 hours of pandora, a round of Words with Friends, playing games such as Ninjump, Speedx 3D, Temple Run, and Final Fantasy 3 for roughly 1-2 hours a day, 2 email addresses syncing all day, Skype running, and 0 to 3 minutes of calling. GPS is off the entire time, though. AVG is also running in the background. I clear excess processes every 1-2 hours with the Advanced Task Killer. It is in no way horrible. However, it could be better.
 
KBoy420 said:
IMO - the battery life is horrible. I wanted the Razr Maxx but went with D4 becasue of the physical keyboard (made the switch from a BB that I had for 6 years). I wish I had gotten the Maxx. I use the onscreen keyboard now all the time on my D4 so I would have gotten used to the Maxx just fine.

For me, it is just such a hassle and there are so many compromises you need to make in order to maximize battery life. For me, I need to turn off all auto-updates of feeds and push notifications. GPS is disabled. Screen brightness is at the lowest setting. And 4G is turned off. This was all required so that I could get through an 8 hour work day without charging. Well what's the point of a 4G phone if you turn 4G off? What's the point of turn-by-turn navigation if you can't use it?

Other people say they are getting 18+ hours. Well, I wish I had your phone. I've been to the Verizon store 3 times. I am on my third Droid 4. I don't know if there were bad batteries but I am very disappointed. ...
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In regards to this issue, check for software updates. A month or two ago there as an update released to help with the low battery life. I know I've seen an improvement personally. They also claim it helps with wifi reception, but I haven't seen a change in that, but the battery has lasted quite a while longer since the update. Give the update a shot, I think you'll feel a little differently about the battery life.
 
FOUND SOMETHIGN THAT SUPERCEEDS ANY OTHER BATTERY HELPER

data widget :D

go to the market and download a data widget.
iv had the internet off for 2 days straight. i jus turn it on when i need it.
i still have half battery life wooooot
 
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