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Anyone having Droid battery issues?

jlund

Newbie
Nov 5, 2009
16
1
Hey guys. Got my Droid Friday morning, and thus far I have been very surprised at what a slick device this is.

I am coming from a BBerry Curve; and I will say the one thing that concerns me about this phone is the battery life.

I could effectively use my BBerry for 1.5 days (at least a solid high use work day) without worrying about battery life.

So far my Droid has not made it through an entire day with low to moderate use...:mad:

My quesitons:
Do I have a dud battery?
Are you guys experiencing this?
Is this just the battery life you have to accept on a phone like this (iPhone & Droid)?

Any help is appreciated. If I can't sort this issue out, I may have to reactivate my BBerry... :(

Thanks.

jL
 
I had the same issue through Saturday. I charged the phone several times. After reading some things on here, I turned off some things I wasn't using and also lowered the brightness of the display significantly (although I don't really notice a difference looking at the screen.) Whatever I did made a HUGE difference. I'm not really sure what I turned off but I think it was bluetooth and wifi which I wasn't using.
 
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they told me this battery is supposed to be amazing (I have the HTC Hero) but what I have found is that it sucks. They got me to download some software called "task killer" which kills all the programs I have running, so thats supposed to help with the battery. give it a try.

I was just reading the same thing. While I am in the office in front of my PC, I jus tneed my Droid to be a phone, so I am going to try putting on the task killer app, and turn everything off when I am in the office.

Hopefully this will help...

Thanks.
 
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So I installed a free app, "TasKiller" and it was very simple to stop everything on the phone with the exception of my messaging.

It was very interesting to see how many applications were running in the background; I had over 20 applications running: Twitdroid, Mobile Messenging, Weather, Email, Facebook, Maps, etc.

So my gut tells me, that taking this extra step in the morning when I get into the office will get me the extra battery life I am looking for (at least I hope).

But for those of you with the same problem, download Taskiller.

Good luck..

jL
 
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^ Agreed. As I said in an above post. I think that my strategy is this:

I use my cell to talk on all day at the office & I am in front of my PC. So I do not need the twitter, facebook, gps, weather, etc. type features on the phone during the day.

So when I get in in the am, I will turn off all apps while firing up my PC, hopefully use the phone throughout the day, and then once I leave the office I can turn back on the apps...

We'll see... This is definitely something I wasn't expecting to have to deal with, and IMO a little bit of a pain in the ass, but so far, this device seems to be worth it.

Maybe Motorola will just come out with an extended life battery at some point...
 
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I am also coming from the Curve where the battery life I would say was beyond amazing. One trick from the curve I learned is that you should keep the GPS off by default. It will greatly increase battery life. Also something I remember from 1st getting the curve is I played with it a lot as I am with the droid and that sucks the life out of the battery.

I use Taskiller as my app killer and it works great. I also use battery widget since it lets me quickly turn off bluetooth, wifi, gps etc etc from the home screen.
 
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I have found my battery life to be sufficient to get me through an entire day. I'm not sure that I would say that it is as good as the HTC Hero I tried with Sprint. I was able to get 2 days use out of that thing a couple of times. I have left GPS turned on though since I got the phone which I know I don't need.
 
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I have found my battery life to be sufficient to get me through an entire day. I'm not sure that I would say that it is as good as the HTC Hero I tried with Sprint. I was able to get 2 days use out of that thing a couple of times. I have left GPS turned on though since I got the phone which I know I don't need.

That's odd I also had Sprint Hero and I find the Droid battery to be a lot better. I am sure Seidio will have a couple extended life batteries out soon
 
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I've noticed there's a variety of Task Killer app's, do some work better than others or do they all work about the same?

Here are a few i've come across:

Advanced Task Killer free
Advanced Task Killer
aTask Killer
Automatic Task Killer
TaskControl
TasKiller free
EStrongs Task Manager
TaskPanel
Taskiller Full
 
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I left sportstap on and accidentally had it update every minute. It wasn't really a problem til I went in an area that didn't have a excellent signal. When I checked my phone after about 3 hours. i had a warning about battery level being below 15 percent.. I found that I didn't have any battery game until the lakers started playing (who got beat down..).. Anyways, If you have sportstap installed, or anything that is constantly trying to contact a server, you can expect your batt life to be BEAT DOWN like my lakers...
 
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There has to be something wrong with your battery or the connection of it to the phone (whatever that's called). I fully charged it and have had it unplugged for 17 hours with moderate use and it just went down to 70% remaining in the past hour. But I also keep the screen brightness on low and kill most tasks when i lock the phone. And moderate use being making ringtones with ringdroid for 30 minutes, checking NFL scores a few time, making 2 calls, sending about 25 texts, and downloading a couple apps and widgets.

and to rcourt, advance task killer free is a solid choice, although I haven't used any of the others you listed.
 
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There are *several* threads here about task killers. The upshot is that taskillers on Android are not needed. Android manages memory differently than a pc or mac, and just because something is still *in memory* does not mean it's consuming battery life.

I got my droid on November 6. I ran it full-out for a day or two before I noticed the battery life sucks when you do that. About that time I started using advanced task killer, and turning off services I do not use, as well as turning off screen auto-bright and GPS. A great tool is in Android: shortcuts>settings>battery use, because it tells you what is consuming your battery. Another one is the app Spare Parts. With it you can see what's not allowing your phone to stay asleep.

IMO, disabling auto-bright and GPS are key...

Perhaps three weeks later, after paying *very* close attention to my battery life, I found an anti-taskilller thread. I deleted taskiller, and noticed no change in my battery life. None.

At the end of a heavy-use day, I have 10-25% battery left over. On a normal day, 50-60%.

As a former Palm user, the doid's battery life is not good. But if this is what it is, I can live with it, as long as I don't need to charge before supper. :)

Good luck,
Dan
 
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does leaving the GPS on consume more battery than leaving it off? even though the time GPS is on is not being used? (not showing teh GPS icon in the status bar)

Yes, leaving the GPS on will use more battery power than if you turned it off.
I leave mine off unless I'm using it. It is handy to have when I need it, but I dont need it very often.

I'm actually pretty blown away by how much life I get out of the Droids battery. In normal use (a couple of hours browsing, etc) I am only down 50% after a day. I came from a Winmo phone, so recharging when I go to bed is fine with me.
 
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I had major battery problems when I recieved my droid and one of the first programs I installed was a task killer. It did not help and may have even made it worse. Battery only lasted half a day, even with GPS, wifi, everything off. I deleted all the programs I had installed and it still sucked. Then I did a "reset to factory" or something like that and ever since it has been fine. This also fixed my random re-booting issue.
 
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I feel like I get pretty good battery life. Some reference stats, if they might be useful:

9h 20m since it came off the dock
50% life remaining
percent time:
running (ie not sleep) 43.6%
screen on 19.5% (med brightness)
wifi on 90.9%
wifi running 59%
bluetooth on 31.1%

No calls but pretty heavy media player, streaming radio, and browser usage. Screen is by far the biggest power draw. Quite a few widgets and home++ going. I can go 1.5 days but I always charge overnight. I have advanced taskkiller installed but don't run it normally or use it often.
 
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Guys,

It's real easy to determine what tasks are eating the battery. I saw a post on here that one guy had twenty apps running. That many apps will eat battery like there is no tomorrow.

I run a stock Droid with email and get over a day of life before it runs out.

Go to settings -> About -> Battery use

On my phone it says 74% of the battery went to voice calls. 6% display, 5% phone idle and so forth.

This feature was added in Droid 2.01
 
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Guys,

It's real easy to determine what tasks are eating the battery. I saw a post on here that one guy had twenty apps running. That many apps will eat battery like there is no tomorrow.

I run a stock Droid with email and get over a day of life before it runs out.

Go to settings -> About -> Battery use

On my phone it says 74% of the battery went to voice calls. 6% display, 5% phone idle and so forth.

This feature was added in Droid 2.01

Additionally, if you want to look at whether something is waking the phone or preventing it from sleeping, you can check out the app Spare Parts, which gives a more detailed breakdown. This can be a useful step because something that's waking the phone all the time will not show up in the list of active processes as a battery hog itself but can cause a huge hit in battery life because it's preventing native battery conservation, turning GPS active at regular intervals, ect.
 
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