colnago

I'm sure many of the "poor battery life" reports were pre-mature, as people didn't realize their new rechargable has to condition itself, but today I ran into a new situation. This is my second Droid, since replacing original, due to wanting to confirm a faulty antenna, and trying to solve the 3G->1x issue.

Reception at my house is a crap shoot, where moving my phone 6 inches on my desk make speed tests go from 1.5Mb to 300k. So today I'm at mom's, 2 miles away, and we are both equidistant from the VZ store, which is also 2 miles away. However at her house, I pretty much get (0) bars. I left my house with about a 95% charge, pulling it from the plug before I left. I used it maybe 15min to try to resolve her router issue. After 6 days, my battery was good for a at least 18-24hrs of light browsing and mail checking. Well today, It was down to 50% after 3 hours, while flipping back and forth from 3G ->1x. I had (0) bars most of the time and noticed that the battery was warmer than usual. Signal strength was between -95dBM and -110dBm. Now "almost" 5 hours after pulling from the plug, I'm down to 20%. If my hypothesis is correct, I bet the charge will last the night now that the channels have stabilized.

Just letting you guys know...YMMV.

Last edited by colnago; November 26th, 2009 at 08:26 PM.

bigdroid

There have been other post in regards to this. I had the droid and had signal issues as well. In regards to the battery draining it and recharging a few times has been one way to help.

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colnago

Other threads in regards to, one being in a poor signal area and battery draining faster than normal? If so, my bad...yet another redundant post.

However my point was that my battery was at a stage where it was able to maintain normal operating life, but when placed in a situation where it struggled to maintain signal, battery usage was accelerated.

bigdroid

No problem. Mainly responding to get you off the messages that have not been responded to. I actually swapped my Droid for the Eris. For me the Eris works better.

colnago

Roger that. Mine went back last Friday...thinking GSM version of the Droid, soon to hit Canada, would work better for me, but in the mean time, N900 order going in soon.

FrayAdjacent

I think the best way to handle a new device is to start by FULLY charging the battery, then discharging it deeply, then charge it all the way back up.

You should also try to do this about every month.

"topping off" will not hurt it. Leaving it discharged for a long time will hurt it.

jltung

Battery Life is a major problem for a lot of people. I think it comes in 4 different packages:

1: Battery : Do you drain the battery to zero or never let it drain down

completely ? It depends on who you believe and personal experience.

According to some battery experts :

Lithium-ion batteries should NEVER be depleted below their minimum voltage (2.4 to 2.8 V/cell, depending on chemistry). If a lithium-ion battery is stored with too low a charge, there is a risk that the charge will drop below the low-voltage threshold, resulting in an unrecoverable dead battery.[citation needed] Usually this does not instantly damage the battery itself but a charger or device which uses that battery will refuse to charge a dead battery. The battery appears to be dead or not existent because the protection circuit disables further discharging and there is zero voltage on the battery terminals.
Lit have not tried to drain the battery yet.

Draining, recycling the battery etc. was a theory of the older NI-Cad batteries

2. Charger : Many people who have bought after market chargers have had

interesting experiences from auto phone calls and emails made in

sleep time to discharging while plugged in etc. I have several

after market chargers, some work and some do not.

3. Killer Apps : I believe they are helpful although they also drain battery.

Some people feel that the LINUX system auto shuts down

unused programs. I am not sure.

I think TasKiller and Adv Task Killer work but use more battery.

I personally use Adv Task Manager and find it works well for me

4. Usage : Of course the biggest drain is usage. Any battery no matter how

good will drain with heavy usage. i.e. game playing, listening to

music, gps, bluetooth, wifi etc. The main drain is how long is the

screen on.

Conclusions: 1. Battery: defective ? Replace. Drain or not drain ???

2. Charger: defective ? Dispose

3. Killer apps: Do you need them ? I like Adv Task Management

4. Usage: Review usage in Settings/ App - Spare Parts

Modify especially in areas of low coverage. A lot of

the programs kick in automatically and if your

coverage is not good it continues to search and

uses battery. That is what the Killer apps do.

colnago

Good info jltung...but all that won't do anything to help a battery that's fully conditioned and able to last a full 24, with no active foreground nor background services, when its in an area of weak or no signal.