Help phone getting hot, battery draining fast

[BrianRoden]

Since I got my Captivate just a couple of weeks after it hit the market, I experienced really good battery life. I could plug the charger in at 6:00 when I get up, take it off the charger at 7:30 when I leave for work, and make it til the next morning most days.

A couple of weeks ago, I left for work with a full charge, and around 11:00 I took out my phone to test WiFi coverage for some new access points we had installed in the office. The phone felt very warm, and the battery indicator was yellow. For the next couple of days it went like this.

I had a spare Samsung battery from when AT&T sent us a new one for my wife's Captivate when she was having random shutdown issues, so I swapped batteries. Things were fine for 10-11 days. Then suddenly last evening about 7:30, when I went to look something up online with my phone, it was very warm again, and the battery indicator was red. Had to put it on the car charger when I left church.

When I got home, I put it on the charger all night. By midday today, it was in the yellow, and it finally died about an hour ago. again the handset felt very warm. I don't have a spare USB cable here at work, so will have to wait to get home to charge it.

Anything particular I should look for on the phone (running apps, etc.)? Or do I just need to go ahead and place a call to AT&T support?

 

[jaydee77ca]

Do you have TweetDeck installed? That app is a battery killer. I would lose about 37% of my battery power in the 8 hours it would sit on my desk at work not being used. I set TweetDeck updating to on demand and removed the widget from my homescreen and my battery life more than doubled. I only lost 15% or so in the same 8 hour period the very next day.

 

[BrianRoden]

No, just the Twitter section that comes on the Captivate under Feeds and Updates, and it's set to refresh every hour.

 

[jaydee77ca]

Check out this thread. Specifically this post. Looks like the Captivate might have some kind of battery issue with wifi. After using wifi the battery starts to drain at a really high rate even when idling. Something seems to be keeping it from going to sleep. This seems to happen after wifi has been used even if is later turned off.

So, if you use wifi, try restarting or rebooting the phone right after you turn wifi off.

 

[jean1207]

even when i'm not using my phone its getting warn and drained so fast