Help Motorola Droid 4 terrible battery life

[nickdalzell]

If you're getting a sudden drop (it goes from, say, 50% to 0%, no low battery warning, just turns off) i'd bet your battery is totally out of calibration. every so often you need to drain it more than 75% to ensure the battery percentage is read correctly. i had this issue a lot with an iPhone 3GS back when, if i kept topping it up from 89% to 100% and suddenly left it off charge longer than normal, it'd hit 75% and instantly go dead.

 

[bkenobi69]

Any recommended approach for recalibrating it? I left it on until it died the other day and then charged it mostly (75%) with it off before needing to make a call. I can do something different given advice/a guide.

 

[nickdalzell]

when you leave it on to die, let it stay off a few minutes, then remove the battery, then put it back in and try charging it with the power OFF. it should start at 0-1%. once fully charged, power it back on and do the same thing again, and again. each time the level where the device shuts down should get more and more accurate. if it previously died at 50%, it should then start to shut off around 25% or lower, just keep doing it until it's giving you the low battery alert (should be from 15-20%) and then just remember in the future to do regular calibration every few months.

There might be apps that do that as well. i suggest looking around in Google Play.

 

[bkenobi69]

I noticed yesterday that sometimes when using Chrome the GPS icon is displayed. I don't know that it's on often, but I suppose something is causing it to connect when it doesn't need to.

Either way, I drained the battery again and then charged it to 100% with the phone off. I then turned it on and left it on the charger until morning. Today I didn't really use the phone, but by 10pm I still have 85% charge. Not bad compared to what I was seeing. Either the issue was calibration, GPS, or some location based issue I will see again tomorrow when I get to work.

 

[bkenobi69]

I swapped batteries last weekend and it appears that I'm getting good battery life again.

Don't listen to the claims that the Droid4 battery can't be replaced. It took 5 minutes including finding the back plate removal tool. I did have to buy some double sided tape, but everything went very smooth without things blowing up (as some people suggested around the interweb).