meralake

Hi,

I've had my Atrix since May 2011. It's been great except for the last week and a half, when it developed a very sudden battery drain.

History: Not rooted. I always have it at max battery saver, bluetooth, wifi, gps, background data, all off unless I am using them, with the display set to the dimmest and auto turn off after 30 seconds. I usually don't leave too many apps running when I'm not using it. With these settings, my battery has been lasting for around 2 days or more. I think the last few months my battery was not lasting as long, but not so that I noticed until I thought about it. However, in a matter of two days, my phone just started sucking the battery. The battery will last about 4 to 5 hours with very,very light usage. (Checking/sending around 20 texts, browsing the net for 15 min.) It will last maybe an hour if I am using it to browse the internet for that long. Once it gets to 15%, it will drop to the red in about 30 seconds. Then about 5 mins later it will turn itself off. When I restart it without charging, the battery indicator is back up to 90% but will only last for another 2 to 3 hours with light usage. Restart again after it drains, and battery down to 50%. After that, it will only last a matter minutes. If I charge it to 100% and leave it overnight without touching it for battery is down to 50% 7 hours later. The battery usage graph shows sharp drops whenever I'm actually using the phone.

I hadn't changed any settings and I don't remember any updates.

Things I tried to fix the issue but made no difference:
New battery.
New charger.
Factory reset, 3 times. Twice through the bootup menu and once through the software.
Cache partition wipe, 2 times.
Battery recalibration/cycle (let it drain, charge turned off, etc)
Formatted both internal and external memory.

I've searched for maybe 20 hours on this problem and can't find a fix. Any ideas?
Also, the battery seems to run warmer than usual, especially when the display is on.

Failing a fix for it, I need a new phone. Any suggestions? I really like it, so would like something equivalent in $300 to $400 range. Long battery life is important to me. However, meager funds make me really hope one of you have a suggestion for me to fix my atrix.