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tell us about your battery life

Overnight I went from almost a full battery to almost no battery. All the phone was doing was sitting idle. When I checked what was draining it the top 2 were phone idle & cell standby. Anyone have ideas as to what I can do to keep the battery from draining when it's idle?
So far that is the only issue I have with the phone. I especially love that in the exact same places I had NO bars on my Evo, I have a full signal on my Photon. YEA BABY!!!! :D
 
That is correct that the top 2 should be Phone Idle and Cell Standby if your phone was just sitting idle. If something else was listed at top then that would be a problem.

As far as how to prevent it, I'm not sure. Sorry I can't help you with that. I haven't had the phone long enough to see how it does overnight yet.
 
Whiskeypawz said:
Overnight I went from almost a full battery to almost no battery. All the phone was doing was sitting idle. When I checked what was draining it the top 2 were phone idle & cell standby. Anyone have ideas as to what I can do to keep the battery from draining when it's idle?
So far that is the only issue I have with the phone. I especially love that in the exact same places I had NO bars on my Evo, I have a full signal on my Photon. YEA BABY!!!! :D
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What are the other stats. No reason you should have that sort of drain with no phone usage overnight.
 
SporkLover said:
What are the other stats. No reason you should have that sort of drain with no phone usage overnight.
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The other stats were next to nothing. I'd say 5% or less...
I was thinking that was strange to have the sort of drain with not usage overnight. My first thought was "What in the world has been running all night?" But the answer was literally nothing.
Maybe I just need to let the battery drain all the way & recharge it all the way with the phone off. From what I understand battery "memory" is supposed to be a thing of the past. But I still hear of people training their batteries.
 
under settings there is a battery and data manager section, under battery mode there is a setting for battery modes, with different settings. Max performance may be checking things too much. You may try a custom setting.

(sorry if this was obvious)

Kevin
 
Whiskeypawz said:
The other stats were next to nothing. I'd say 5% or less...
I was thinking that was strange to have the sort of drain with not usage overnight. My first thought was "What in the world has been running all night?" But the answer was literally nothing.
Maybe I just need to let the battery drain all the way & recharge it all the way with the phone off. From what I understand battery "memory" is supposed to be a thing of the past. But I still hear of people training their batteries.
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If you haven't invested too much time into your current phone setup. It might be worth while to do a "factory reset". I learned that from my old windows mobile days, some issues can be avoided if you did that right off the bat after activating the handset. Unexplained battery consumption was one of those issues.
 
SporkLover said:
If you haven't invested too much time into your current phone setup. It might be worth while to do a "factory reset". I learned that from my old windows mobile days, some issues can be avoided if you did that right off the bat after activating the handset. Unexplained battery consumption was one of those issues.
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Yikes I invested most of my day yesterday, after I got the phone! If all else fails I may have to try this. Thanks for the suggestion!
 
krock said:
under settings there is a battery and data manager section, under battery mode there is a setting for battery modes, with different settings. Max performance may be checking things too much. You may try a custom setting.

(sorry if this was obvious)

Kevin
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Thanks Kevin. I didn't even know that was there! It's set to Nighttime saver, which bothers me even more since it's supposed to save battery at night & that's when the problem seems to be occurring.
 
Whiskeypawz said:
Bluetooth & 4g are both off, GPS is on but I've always left it on with my other (HTC) phones & not had this issue.
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I usually had an issue with GPS being on with my EVO and EVO 3D. I once turned it on in the morning and forgot, and by about 5 pm that evening it was almost dead. Try tuning the GPS off overnight and see if it's different..

ALSO! Why do you leave the GPS on? You don't need it for anything - like the weather, etc, they get your location from your cell phone tower quite accurately. GPS is only usually needed for maps and stuff.
 
SyberianPuppy said:
ALSO! Why do you leave the GPS on? You don't need it for anything - like the weather, etc, they get your location from your cell phone tower quite accurately. GPS is only usually needed for maps and stuff.
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I use apps that utilize the maps/GPS such as Latitude & Trapster. If I don't leave GPS on I have to take extra steps to turn it on to use those apps & it becomes a hassle so I just leave it on.

Thanks for your suggestion, I'll try that tonight. :)
 
FYI the GPS on/off toggle or switch in options does not actually power on the GPS. The switch is to turn the power off permanently. If the GPS toggle/switch is on then the GPS can be turn on by apps as needed. So in theory if you have no apps utilizing GPS then toggle on or off will not make a difference because the GPS will actually never be powered up, just the ability to be powered up will be there if an app needs to.

now I am seeing the exact same thing as the OP. But at the same time for the first two days of my EVO 4G phone idle was the number one app. So wait a couple days and reboot then see if the phone idle trails off. I think it is a process that allows the phone to do work in the background building data or what not for the first few days. But like I said my E4G drained in 6 hours for the first two days then after that I could run almost 18 hours on a single charge with 1.5 hours screen on time and 30min talk, plus lots of games.

So lets keep an eye on it and go from there.
 
reddragon72 said:
But like I said my E4G drained in 6 hours for the first two days then after that I could run almost 18 hours on a single charge with 1.5 hours screen on time and 30min talk, plus lots of games.

So lets keep an eye on it and go from there.
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I couldn't get my Evo battery to last much more than 4 hours on a good day! That was with minimal talk & text. Even after the GB update "improved battery life" I didn't see any difference. If anything it got worse. Oh well, may the Evo r.i.p.! :D
 
Well I usually keep it plugged into a charger wither wall or car (due to the habits I picked up with the EVO battery draining faster than usual issue) but I did tested it on Sat and compared to the EVO it lasts way longer with 4G.

But I would have to really do a more thorough test to see when it actually dies and see exactly the time length.

TS
 
I will just copy what I posted on another forum.

I am a little disappointed by the battery life I got so far. I test the battery life by taxing the phone continuously. I stream netflix and other tv streaming service to the phone until it dies. My result.

Photon:
Wifi- 4 hrs 20 minutes
4g - 3 hrs 20 minutes

Evo 4g:
Wifi - 3 hrs 25 minutes
4g - 2 hrs 30 minutes

Did not test 3g as i didn't get a great 3g signal. Screen was on 100% of the time.

As expected the Photon wins as it comes with a higher capacity battery. I was expecting much more battery life than shown.

More testing shows I can expect about 4+ hrs of random browsing, YouTube, texting, music, and shine video thrown in. Screen was on the whole time except for about 15 minutes for music. 4g was on the whole time as well. After 4+ hrs the 5% left warning came on.
 
the timing isnt horrible considering constant use non-stop. the math equates out to about 20% better than the Evo (appx of course) so i would venture to say motorola isnt doing too bad. one day, all these new phones will come with new battery technology that will hold up to the new technology a bit better, until then, this is what we have to work with.
 
Did anyone mention signal strength? I havent seen that mentioned as a possible culprit but if your signal is weak or fluctuating, that will be a significant drain.
 
I tested my phone for this last night. When I went to bed the phone had 70% battery life. I turned off 4G, GPS, Wifi, and Bluetooth. When I woke up battery was at 60%. Phone idle still my number 1 item for drainage at 58%. Display next at 23%.
 
Whiskeypawz said:
I couldn't get my Evo battery to last much more than 4 hours on a good day! That was with minimal talk & text. Even after the GB update "improved battery life" I didn't see any difference. If anything it got worse. Oh well, may the Evo r.i.p.! :D
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Not trying to be rude, but it sounds like however you have your phones set up (or certain apps you've downloaded that pull information even when they're not running) is what is draining the battery, more-so than the actual phones being the problem.

To have problems with the EVO after the Gingerbread update and now have a similar situation with the Photon? You mentioned that you use latitude and trapster, which are gps oriented apps. Maybe those are contributing to the issue.

Have you tried using Juice Defender? It worked great for me on my evo and seems to be working just as well with my Photon (although, I actually got better battery life with my EVO 4G).
 
Ok so I was having a few other issues and decided to go with a totally system reset. So after restoring to factory and redoing my entire phone last night back to the exact way it was with all the same apps loaded I am happy to say that the battery drain is fixed. Now remember I did not do that because of the battery issue as I did see a marked improvement in the battery over one day, but I had other issues that warranted it.

So now that I have had the phone off of life support for 1 hour 20 min I am glad to say I am still at 100% battery with phone idle being the number one at 1 hour and 7 min, display at 8min 34s, cell standby at 1hour 15min time without signal 11% and wifi at 1h15m

so as of right now the factory restore really seems to have fixed my other issues and at the same time the battery drain seems to have totally disappeared. Will that work for you?? don't know and can't know unless you take the plunge. So either live with a possible list of issues and not the best battery you can get, or redo your phone and deal with setting it all up again. I recommend the second one.

And for the record my biggest reason for it was to fix the backlight auto issue that kept the backlight at 100% when on auto. That is now fixed. And FYI if you think the phone is fast now, which I did but had a few area's that seemed to lag, then you have not seen anything yet.

And yea the signal strength can have an impact, but maybe 2-3 hours cut off of your phone, but not half a day. I think the issue is with the software and having something stuck running in the background. Also this is with wifi and gps on and data saver to performance(checking all the time).

So what I did.(my battery was at 20% when I started this but I doubt that matters)
1 backup contacts
2 backup pics/vids
3 backup other data that you may have on the phone.
4 do a factory restore on AC(charging from a wall socket, NOT plugged into a PC)
5 let the phone set for 15min. DO NOT TOUCH IT AT ALL!! AT ALL!!!
6. reboot the phone after the 15 min wait.
7. run through the phones setup as normal with the google account and any others you want.
8. update PRL
9. update profile.
10. check for updates from moto.
11. have at it, but do not remove the AC till the battery is full (100%) charged.
 
drexappeal said:
Not trying to be rude, but it sounds like however you have your phones set up (or certain apps you've downloaded that pull information even when they're not running) is what is draining the battery, more-so than the actual phones being the problem.

To have problems with the EVO after the Gingerbread update and now have a similar situation with the Photon? You mentioned that you use latitude and trapster, which are gps oriented apps. Maybe those are contributing to the issue.

Have you tried using Juice Defender? It worked great for me on my evo and seems to be working just as well with my Photon (although, I actually got better battery life with my EVO 4G).
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No offense taken...I appreciate any input. :)
The entire Evo was a problem after the update, not just battery life. I have not tried Juice Defender. If I continue to have a battery problem I will definitely give that a try. I didn't have the crazy battery drain last night so we'll see how night 3 goes. What's confusing to me is that during the day, when I'm using my phone, my battery is GREAT. The battery drain occurred at night, when the phone was doing nothing.
 
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