Reason for Droid Eris battery life issues

[WPWoodJr]

I've been reading about the Eris battery life issues on this and other forums. Even with all the tweaks that users have applied to it, the Eris continues to have a rep for bad battery life. Its a bit odd that the Eris gets worse battery life than the Moto Droid which has a larger screen and more processing power, don't you think?

I've also read that Eris reception is not that great, that the Droid gets 3G reception when the Eris can't etc.

These issues (battery life and reception) lead me to wonder if they are related. Perhaps the Eris has a weak antenna, or bad antenna placement? This would lead it to have worse reception than other smart phones and also worse battery life because it would have to apply more juice to the antenna to reach the cell phone towers.

I've attached a poll to see if there is any correlation between bad battery life and bad reception.

 

[doogald]

I answered "both", but I have always had issues with bad reception at home, and, of course, lower battery life (as the phone must work harder to find a signal.) Verizon has been planning to put up a tower a couple of miles from my house; I'll be much happier when they do.

 

[iAndroiid]

0 problems here. phone lasts for 2 full days. did tweak the phone a little bit to get that but still works fine no problems. use widgets to turn off things you don't need when your not using 3g/wifi/bluetooth/gps. pretty basic. dim the backlight to 20% or so and you will notice you can get a full 48 hours with this phone with talk time. playing games. surfing the internet. it all depends on how much you use the phone also. I would say i use the phone a lot between texts and games from time to time and also e-mail or looking stuff up. hope that helps? ps. let the phone run down 3 full times till the phone turns off b/c it has no more battery life then fully charge it then let it die down 2 more times. after doing that turn the phone back on the 4th time and pull out the battery while the phone is on. put the battery back in and turn the phone on. you will notice a huge difference along with the minor tweaking you can do and turning off gps/wifi/3g when not using them. pm me if u have any questions. i have 4 friends who got the same exact phone after i got it and they hated it and i tweaked it for them and told them what to do and now all 4 guys are happy with the phone. 2 of which used to own an iphone

 

[erisuser1]

The time between battery charges really depends on only two things:

- Cell signal strength.
- User behavior.

The answers you get are are likely to be all over the map because of both of those issues. Even if signal strength was not an issue, no two users exhibit the same set of behaviors. That means that if HTC did a good job of sizing the power supply, there will be some disappointed people.

There is also a tendency for new owners to use their phones quite a lot initially; that is natural - but it means that they might judge their initial experience to be "poor" - but after the novelty has worn off, they end up using it less frequently, and what do you know: their battery life is suddenly acceptable.

This is especially true of a segment of users that somehow think that the amount of time between charges should be independent of the way they use it - including their choice of applications which are not built nor tested by the carrier or handset maker. That clearly is inconsistent with the way that smart phones function.

hth

eu1

 

[bagged00]

i used to use my phones alot but this is the first phone that i have backed off on because of the battery. kinda angers me like i kind of have to limit my usage per day due to the fact that the battery wouldnt last all day if i was on it a good bit.prolly gonna get 1750 mah battery and this will be the first phone i have ever had to get a bigger battery for. not gonna lie, if att would be worth a damn where i live theres no doubt in my mind id get the 3gs. better apps, better battery life, and less lag at least from what ive played with.

 

[WPWoodJr]

I did a simple test of the Eris in a strong signal area - played with it for 1 hour, web surfing, downloading and installing apps, streaming music. It lost 32% of its charge. I used BatteryGraph to measure the battery and the slope of the line was linear so I estimate that about 3 hours of constant use is possible.

 

[trau]

I get great reception all over the Metro Detroit area and most of Michigan that I've traveled to since getting the phone. Better than my previous phone which was a razor. Battery life is what I would expect -- I feel like I'm moderate to heavy user and get a solid day out of it every time, unless I use the camera a lot or travel to the rare area where it needs to search for a signal a lot.

 

[Garick]

simple...the battery is undersized. Looking at the specs for verizon phones and comparing 'talk time'

Droid Eris: 214 min
Droid: 385
omnia 2: 360
imagio: 318
touch pro 2: 318
storm 2: 330
tour: 300
nexus one google specs: 420

It is interesting that the nexus one only has a 1400 mAh battery.

compare actual talk time in these reviews:
7:35 droid
Motorola Droid (Verizon Wireless) Smartphone reviews - CNET Reviews

5:27 droid eris
HTC Droid Eris (Verizon Wireless) Smartphone reviews - CNET Reviews

 

[erisuser1]

I got inspired by Garick's post to actually go out and collect some data, rather than just make an uninformed rant.

So, I got the battery and talk times for all of (or most) of Verizon's current PDA offerings, and put them in a spreadsheet.

I was wrong - in comparison to other handsets, the Eris does suck when it comes to battery life. Not only does it have a relatively smaller battery, but it seems to use the available capacity faster, too.

Notice the metric "minutes/mAh" in the fourth column - it just divides the talk time by the mAh rating, so that phones with different sized batteries can be compared on an equal footing (assuming they are all 4v batteries). Also, every one of thes phones is a Verizon CDMA phone - so "talk time" is apples to apples (I'm not comparing CDMA2000 to GSM, etc).

The Eris isn't even comparable to any of the other phones; it actually has a pathologically low score on that metric.

What's sort of strange is that there are a variety of different handsets that use the MSM7600 processor, and have the same amount of RAM - and their minutes/mAh metric is more typical of the rest of the group of phones.

Seems like there could only be two explanations for that: software or antenna. (If the antenna gain is significantly worse in the Eris, it will always use more power when transmitting than other handsets in the same location - the tower commands the handset what power to use based on the received signal strength it gets).

One can hope that this is a software issue that might get improved with the 2.x release "in Q1"... on the other hand, I'm betting that if it is a software problem, it is radio software - not Android O/S software.

eu1

 

[WPWoodJr]

Very interesting! The HTC Hero has the same processor as Eris, a 1500 mAH battery, and a rated talk time of 240 minutes, making its min/mAH rating 0.16 as well - not surprising given the similarity of the two devices.

According to CNET the Hero actually got 5:45 hours of battery life. The Eris got 5:27.

What do you guys think of this monster 3500 mAH battery? Looks like the speakerphone might be muffled by the new back.

Has anyone tried this 1750 mAH battery?

 

[WPWoodJr]

Also interesting about your chart, the HTC phones are all worse in min/mAH than the other brands!

 

[erisuser1]

Very interesting! The HTC Hero has the same processor as Eris, a 1500 mAH battery, and a rated talk time of 240 minutes, making its min/mAH rating 0.16 as well - not surprising given the similarity of the two devices.

That's probably an apples-n-oranges comparison because of differences in power consumption by GSM vs CDMA radios and baseband processors. As an example, Verizon quotes the talk time for the Blackberry 8830 World Edition phone depending on which radio is in use: 220 minutes CDMA, 300 GSM! Same phone, but 36% more "talk time" when using the GSM radio.

I think that there is a version of the HTC Hero for CDMA coming to Verizon, but I couldn't find a "talk time" spec for it.

There are a number of phones using the same processor, and they have scores up to 0.24, so I'm not entirely sure the blame can be laid at the feet of the processor. See the specs for the Samsung SPH-i350 Intrepid, for instance.

According to CNET the Hero actually got 5:45 hours of battery life. The Eris got 5:27.

You have to be careful about "sample benchmarks" like this - if the offices where the benchmark are being done sit underneath a VZW cell tower, the TX power of the phone will be low - and the measured talk time long. Or the other way around. The "talk time" values provided by the carriers are sort of averages - they won't tell you what you will get, but as an average they are better than what Billy Bob or Joe Shmo report report as sample measurements.

Also interesting about your chart, the HTC phones are all worse in min/mAH than the other brands!

Judging from the numbers coming from this Verizon document, I'm not sure that is a fair assesment. OTOH, using the same metric, the Moto Droid scores a 0.28... and the Nexus One 0.3 !


eu1

 

[bagged00]

well at least we can figure out the talk time with the 2 new batteries.
1750= about 290
3500= about 560

 

[Garick]

thanks for compiling some data...there are obviously some other issues beyond the relatively small battery of the eris. No way we can know if this will be helped by a software update or if it is a hardware issue. I can't understand why they would make the battery smaller than the hero...cost cutting I guess. It was only $99.

The cnet reviews are a nice data point. You would assume that they test all phones in the same manner. I'm sure there will still be some variances though. Droid beat the Eris by over 2 hours, about 36% more than the Eris.

I think the 3500 mAh battery is a little excessive unless you know you are going to be nowhere near a charger for a few days. It adds way too much bulk and $70 is pretty steep. The 1750 is a nice option and should increase life by about 35%. I will probably be switching to the droid mostly because of all of this. It doesn't seem worth it to turn my $99 phone into a $150 one and still be left with some of the other eris shortcomings (of course it has advantages too).

 

[brian4x]

I live 75 miles north of DC and 75 miles east og Baltimore. My sprint Balckberry for work lasts about two days on a charge - My eris, honestly, three hrs regardless if I am using it or not. I only had it in the car today and was using my work phn because battery life makes it dysfunctional - after reading the attached, I think I have to buy a new phone. Any advice?

I got inspired by Garick's post to actually go out and collect some data, rather than just make an uninformed rant.

So, I got the battery and talk times for all of (or most) of Verizon's current PDA offerings, and put them in a spreadsheet.

I was wrong - in comparison to other handsets, the Eris does suck when it comes to battery life. Not only does it have a relatively smaller battery, but it seems to use the available capacity faster, too.

Notice the metric "minutes/mAh" in the fourth column - it just divides the talk time by the mAh rating, so that phones with different sized batteries can be compared on an equal footing (assuming they are all 4v batteries). Also, every one of thes phones is a Verizon CDMA phone - so "talk time" is apples to apples (I'm not comparing CDMA2000 to GSM, etc).

The Eris isn't even comparable to any of the other phones; it actually has a pathologically low score on that metric.

What's sort of strange is that there are a variety of different handsets that use the MSM7600 processor, and have the same amount of RAM - and their minutes/mAh metric is more typical of the rest of the group of phones.

Seems like there could only be two explanations for that: software or antenna. (If the antenna gain is significantly worse in the Eris, it will always use more power when transmitting than other handsets in the same location - the tower commands the handset what power to use based on the received signal strength it gets).

One can hope that this is a software issue that might get improved with the 2.x release "in Q1"... on the other hand, I'm betting that if it is a software problem, it is radio software - not Android O/S software.

eu1

 

[yankeeboy]

but it means that they might judge their initial experience to be "poor"

I do agree with this statement - however, I generally "beat up" my phones for the first few weeks, and comparitively, the Eris battery was simply horrible. With it being a phone, the phone is what seems to kill the battery the worst. A 1/2 hour conversation can drop the battery 30%...

That being said, the first update provided an improvement, the second update has really changed the battery life. The biggest thing I have noticed is that my awake time has dropped from 15% to 5%....all this while I have been testing leaving GPS on and mobile network always connected...they must have changed something with the way the phone sleeps, thats all I can think of. Phone has been on all day, used somewhat lightly today, and I am at 84% at 7:41 PM.