My Droid's battery life experiences

[Corvid]

Today, I decided to test out my battery life by doing...nothing. Last night, I fully charged my Droid's battery. I woke up at 8am and unplugged it from the charger. I never turned the screen on and only have the default programs running. I received no phonecalls (haven't given out my new number) and I made no phone calls. I never even turned the screen on.

Tonight around 8pm I turned the screen on and had a warning about my battery's life. It said it was below 20% and when I clicked on the icon, it showed me a list of everything that had been using up the battery life. The Android OS and "standby" were the leading battery usage, but at only 29% and 37% respectively. Everything else was minimal.

Having not even used the phone, having bluetooth and wifi off and having the barebones applications running, this is completely unacceptable to me. Is this normally what the rest of you are seeing with your battery life? Did I possibly get a bad battery, a bad unit? Is there any other cause that I should be looking into? Any help would be appreciated. Thank you.

 

[c64]

Take it back.I've had the droid since 11/6.There are some days of occasional use my battery level is only down to 70%.Heavy use will drop to 40 to 50%. The only 2 things I keep off most of the time is wifi & bluetooth and I have plenty of apps running all the time. I have no battery complaints when it comes to the droid.I've had a lot of smart phones, including the iphone.When it comes to heavy use you will be charging it daily, you might be able to make to the second day, but who wants to be bothered charging the phone in the middle of the day.Its just the safest way to live with a smart phone.

 

[oceanlight]

what i do to extend battery life is:

1.) turn down screen brightness, unless i'm watching a video.
2.) turn off gps, bluetooth, and wifi via the power-control widget unless needed.

my battery lasts a good long time.

 

[Deleted User]

I've had my Droid off the charger for 16 hours. Made some calls, heavy texting, 2 hours of music, some browsing, and I'm showing a 60% charge. I'd check your accounts & sync settings to see if something is constantly reaching out for data.

Also, download Spare Parts from the market place, and it will give you an extremely detailed explanation as to what is using your battery. Much more detail than the default Android battery usage.

For leaving the phone in an idle state all day, the battery shouldn't be any less than 80%, if that. Hopefully you can shed some light on it, as it's definitely not normal.

 

[e39e60]

Today, I decided to test out my battery life by doing...nothing. Last night, I fully charged my Droid's battery. I woke up at 8am and unplugged it from the charger. I never turned the screen on and only have the default programs running. I received no phonecalls (haven't given out my new number) and I made no phone calls. I never even turned the screen on.

Tonight around 8pm I turned the screen on and had a warning about my battery's life. It said it was below 20% and when I clicked on the icon, it showed me a list of everything that had been using up the battery life. The Android OS and "standby" were the leading battery usage, but at only 29% and 37% respectively. Everything else was minimal.

Having not even used the phone, having bluetooth and wifi off and having the barebones applications running, this is completely unacceptable to me. Is this normally what the rest of you are seeing with your battery life? Did I possibly get a bad battery, a bad unit? Is there any other cause that I should be looking into? Any help would be appreciated. Thank you.

I'd wait a week. My battery seems to have gotten better. I charged to 100% last night and did bunches of stuff except phone calls. I'm talking podcast streaming via BT, twitter, surfing.

E-mal, google voice, and all radios on. Left it off charger all night and it didnt hit 20% until about 8pm. That's about 24hrs.

And Exchange e-mail is set to push. GMail is set to default as well as GV.

 

[Gunner]

I decided to test mine out the other day. With moderate use...texting, some various app use, light browsing, and about 20-25 mins video recording at a concert, I made it to 26 hrs before it went completely dead.

 

[ProfessorHM]

Yeah, there's something wrong w/ your droid. You definitely should try taking it back. But before you might want to try to cycle the battery a couple times(completely drain and completely charge) and try a hard reset.

Right now I'm at 50% with on time for about 15hrs. Talked on the phone for over an hr with bluetooth on. Did some texting and chatting, light browsing. I keep GPS and wifi turned off using the power manager widget. All this and I don't use taskiller app.

Something is very wrong when you're not using it at all and it only lasts you that long. Droid's battery life is very good for a hardware this powerful.

 

[radikal]

wow really!? i didnt use mine very much one day (to test), texted and made some calls, it made 11 hrs, but if I use pandora with heavy skipping it will kill it. web surfing kills it too! viewing pics is fine, but heavy surfing/loading will drain. What you guys think? Do I have a good battery? It has been getting WAY better, like, the battery learns if that makes sense? it knows my trends and such. Ideas?

 

[ProfessorHM]

if you're not using it much, you should last more than 11hrs..I'm guessing around 18 or more. Again this depends on how many apps are accessing the GPS, and stuff that's running in the background. I disable the GPS, and bluetooth manually using the power manager widget and only turn them on when I need them. This helps alot in maintaining long battery life.

If you have all those things disabled, it's probably the phone itself. My first droid reset a few times and then got worse. I got max of 8-9hrs with moderate use. I see a HUGE difference between that one and my current droid that has not reset and I can easily last 15hrs with 30-40% battery life left.

The battery will get slightly better, as you use it and cycle it but I don't think it'd get to the point where it would give you something like 5 more hrs. I really think the problem might be in your phone given all your settings are set to a conservative power setting.

You should consider taking the droid back if the battery life has not been improving. Does your phone reset frequently?

 

[colnago]

I got my DROID on Sat night, and have been on it ever since. Today is the first day I let it behave normally, but I work from home so its subject to my tinkering. I've fully charged it 6-7 times, and today is the first day its made it past 12 hours. Screen kills it, I use it at "0" since day one, but found an app that takes it lower than default "0" (Quick Settings; Market).

Save for the 2 hour camera "LED Flashlight Test", I'm going on 14 hours and at 30%. However during the test my (2) POP3 accounts were polling at 5 and 10 minutes respectively, as I forgot to set them back to normal. Add on about half an hour of settings checks and tweaks, its been a good day.

Your battery will need a solid week of use and charging to "get right". Just keep an eye out for Seidio to come out with an extended battery and cover...or just go buy a second for a spare, 'cuz "pimpin' ain't easy".

 

[radikal]

Like I said, I text, I twitter, I use bloo for facebbok, gps is on and wifi is off. I don't overly surf and it maybe lasts 11 hrs and its nearly dead. But I also have the speaker issue, figure I will take it back. Thoughts, I don't wanna take it in and have them laugh at me and tell me its normal

 

[nhpace]

I read in another forum that is you do a *228 to program your tower info that your phone may run more efficient and conserve battery. Worth a try...

 

[DroidDaddy]

Turning off the GPS Satellite radios made a huge difference for me. I now have 60~70% battery at 5pm compared to 30% before. I'm amazed they made leaving them on the default. I'm a heavy email user with 5 Exchange push accounts running. Occasional music over lunch, web browsing during boring meetings, etc.

Unless you're using something that needs precise location, they're just a drain. Other apps can use the cell tower triangulation method (like weather to find your city, etc.) The Where app prompts me to turn the GPS radios and turn them off when done.

I dont' run wifi, or bluetooth either. Verizon 3g is fast enough that I haven't bothered with wifi. And I prefer a hard wired headset on the rare occasions that I use them.

 

[htowngtr]

I am wondering about mine too

I don't use wifi or BT, but I have gmail, GV, and facebook all sync constantly for the day (default, I guess). I turned off the GPS even though that technically only runs when a program requires it. I might use the phone for 30 minutes each day, but every time an email comes in I check it.

I guess you could say it's 2-3 hours of moderate use and I take it off the charger around 7am so by 5-6pm it's around 30-40%. If I let it go till it died I'd probably get 12-13 hours of battery use w/o calling.

Funny thing though is that I did a reset on it and my battery went from 30% to 50%.

 

[radikal]

i tested with out gps today and will again for a while! otherwise i may go back to the mall where i bought it

 

[kmfdmk]

Had mine for about 3 weeks or so. Fully charge it at night before bed (around 12.30am). Up for work in the morning @ 5.30am, check email real quick, and check weather. Sometimes used to nav to work (on a charger) other times just screen off (Wifi, BT, GPS& OFF & Screen on Dimmest, w/ Sync. ON)

Sits in my lunch box @ work (w/ excellent coverage, so no searching) till about 12.00pm for lunch, quick check of email again, maybe play a song or two, then back in lunch box. Battery will be either 100% or 90%.

5pm rolls around I listen to tunes on the way home. Battery STARTS @ about 80%. I get home around 6.30pm check email, heavy surfing, music, youtube for maybe 1 to 2 hours and I'm down to a measly 20%. As I type now @ 8.42pm I was @ 10% and had to charge it.

I installed an App called "My Battery Status" that puts a %age Number in the status bar so I can see what my percentage really is.

I don't really think this is normal for the battery. Perhaps it is. I mean *shrugs* I don't know though. First PDA phone I've had.

The only things I leave running in the BG while @ work are:
Messaging
GMAIL
Google Voice
Advanced Task Killer Free
My Battery Status
Facebook (sometimes)

It just seems that I should be able to get a bit more life out of the battery.

I just did a Hard Reset on Friday (due to the stupid "Searching for GPS" problem that "fixed" itself) so that doesn't seem to make a difference though.

Anyone else? Think I should go back and request a different battery?

Is anyone making an Extended Life battery yet?