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Help New battery drain issue on the droid

While you're right about lithium batteries not developing a memory, you're probably incorrect about the overall idea of recalibration.

This recalibration is not calibrating the battery, it's calibrating the phone. What the phone shows you for your battery status is very much a guess based on what it thinks it should be consuming. It's a good idea to let the battery drain down to the warning once in a while, then charge it back up completely.


Also, lithium batteries do NOT like being COMPLETELY drained. I wouldn't recommend running the phone until it shuts off. I'd only run it until the warning shows up, then plug it in to charge it up fully.

A battery is like a muscle. It does need some exercise to stay healthy.

Well, I'm not sure I agree with you on a lot of this. I mean surely the phone just reads the batteries voltage and calculates a percentage. I'm sure it's told that (and I'm just going to make up numbers because I don't want to do the research to support all this :D) 4100mv = 100% and 3975 = 90% and so on. Not a fancy solution, but very reliable and easy to do. Isn't that the way it works? No calibrating - hard coded numbers.

I did read a couple of articles recently about lithium batteries and all said that lithium batteries will last longer with frequent charges. In other words, do not do any deep discharge before charging as that shortens the batteries life.
 
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Well, the voltage drop is not linear, so it is a guess... guesstimation, SWAG.... ;)

Anyway, sometimes the phone gets out of whack. Draining the battery and charging it up seems to work well to recalibrate it. Fortunately I have not run into any issues after the first couple days of owning my Droid when the battery drained pretty quick. Now the most it goes down in the 18 hours of the day it's not on the dock charging is about 60% with light use.
 
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I knew as soon as I opened this thread that people would start whipping out their DroidPuds for the factpinion-pissing contest.:rolleyes:

-"Well, it worked for me!" is NOT a good enough of an answer for most people that visit a forum like this. Tell us why, and if you can't then you can't dispute what someone else says. At all.

Lithium Ion battery facts, as well as Nickel Cadmium battery facts: www.batteryuniversity.com

Do some research, people.
I'm NOT a proponent of "Search, Noob!". I hate that. But don't spew out unfounded BS, either.
Read the site linked above and you'll find that Li-Ion batteries:

  1. -do not have a "memory" like the old Ni-Cads do.
  2. -can not tolerate heat. It kills them.
  3. -should be stored at 40% charge, as cool as possible (like in a freezer).
  4. -have a shelf life. That's why "new old stock" Li-Ion batteries sold on Ebay & the like are so cheap. They haven't been stored properly, won't hold theier charge very long, and may not even hold a 100% charge, either. Knock-offs may be made with inferior cells, or cells that are sold off as "seconds" by manufacturers because they do not meet the OEM specs called for.
These are facts. Armed with facts we can better find out just what the problem is (or is not) instead of wild speculation.
 
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As an interesting sidebar to @psychokitty's post, since I learned that heat is the enemy of lithium batteries about a year ago, I stopped leaving my laptop on charge overnight. I would guess that minimizing unnecessary time on the phone's charger may increase battery longevity, but I'm not certain how much heat buildup is generated by this. I will investigate. If any battery experts know the answer to this, please post.
 
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Update: Had my second battery glitch (90% --> 5% and back with reboot) today. It occurred after receiving and reading a text message through the standard app, perhaps a similar circumstance to @diggie. It's clearly a software glitch; just trying to see if I can figure out the app(s) involved. I don't get many text messages (I'm dating myself) and this is only the second event since getting the phone in November 2009. Don't remember if I got a message prior to the 1st event. I've seen this reported on at least one other thread so it must be a widespread glitch. Perhaps with other reports we'll be able to hone in on the culprit(s). Hope 2.1 resolves it.
 
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While you're right about lithium batteries not developing a memory, you're probably incorrect about the overall idea of recalibration.

This recalibration is not calibrating the battery, it's calibrating the phone. What the phone shows you for your battery status is very much a guess based on what it thinks it should be consuming. It's a good idea to let the battery drain down to the warning once in a while, then charge it back up completely.


Also, lithium batteries do NOT like being COMPLETELY drained. I wouldn't recommend running the phone until it shuts off. I'd only run it until the warning shows up, then plug it in to charge it up fully.

A battery is like a muscle. It does need some exercise to stay healthy.

Agreed with all your points. As for the last one, also refer to Apple's battery guide - Apple - Batteries - iPhone, the last paragraph at the bottom. Again, it is not about calibrating the battery, doing that just keeps the battery active.
 
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I know this has been said, but going into Settings, Applications, Manage Applications, then on the top go to that little box that says running apps. That will show you all the apps that are currently running, and in my experience Facebook, Gmail, Mail, Amazon, etc usually always end up in this list. It's annoying, but manually force stopping these apps a few times seems to make them stop from restarting. Make note of which are running, and edit settings as need...

For example, i noticed uninstalling the Facebook update from 1.5 to 1.3 (i believe its 1.3, or whatever the stock version is) helps to keep facebook from continuously restarting after you quit. Just try and mess around with some settings, like cancel auto update in facebook, etc. To do this, just go to manage apps under applications, click facebook, and uninstall update.

Not sure if any of this helped, but it's worth a shot.

Im still searching for issues, but some have said the /int program is constantly running. Im no expert, but ill research this some more. Thanks for allowing me to share.
 
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imjehh, stop thinking about Android like it is Windows. It manages memory differently, indeed keeping programs loaded into memory for later use. This doesn't mean that they are using processor, just memory...which is cleared if it needs to allocate that memory elsewhere. If you want a better sense of what is really EATING your battery, download Watchdog and monitor there.
 
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nycebo, thanks for that. Ive only had Android for a month, so im not familiar with it but ill stop thinking of it like windows. I understand now, that the programs that reopen a while after i close them is just using memory, not really battery. Im going to download Watchdog as per your advice. Thanks.
 
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