New pro. Battery life and other questions.

[mcarroll42]

Ok to start things out, android left a bad taste in my mouth after the eris I owned. Yes I know it was a bad phone but it made frustrated enough to switch back to a 3 year old flip phone. Well a year later that finally died so I went to get a new phone yesterday. Wanted a casio fliphone or iphone but the sales lady talked me into a droid. I went with the pro and realized that this is how android should run, nothing like my eris. Loved it.

I took it off the charger today at 530am for work. By noon it was 50% percent and by 3 it was dead. I did not use this phone ONCE through out that time period. That really frustrates me and id hate to see what happens if i actually use it. Anyone else have this problem?

Also is there a physical button I can press to answer/end calls because i cant see the screen to slide the answer outside.

Thank you.

 

[Lucky Eddie]

My battery life was pretty bad at first too. The guy at the Verizon store said that a Task Killer was a "must have" app. This being my first real smart phone, I complied. I quickly learned from others on this forum that a task killer was not necesssary, and getting rid of the task killer helped my battery life significantly.

I am connected to an exchange server, and push email is my other big drain on battery. I have set my work email to push only on weekdays from 7AM to 7PM, and I don't push my personal email, but rather check it about every 15 minutes. I see a noticible difference in battery life when I'm pushing versus not.

I usually unplug 5:30-6:00 AM, and plug back in between 10-11 PM with 30% left. I'm not a heavy data user (mostly email and facebook). And I probably have 30-40 minutes of talk time each day.

Regarding answering the phone, I have had to set my brightness higher now that I'm out in the sun more. I did notice bit greater drain on the battery since increasing display brightness for the summer.

 

[tattooz]

I see a noticible difference in battery life when I'm pushing versus not.

I thought it was the other way around. I thought that if the email is pushed to the phone, it uses less battery than having the phone check every 15 minutes for email.

If your statement is true, that would answer my battery issue.....

 

[jpcalhoun]

Ok to start things out, android left a bad taste in my mouth after the eris I owned. Yes I know it was a bad phone but it made frustrated enough to switch back to a 3 year old flip phone. Well a year later that finally died so I went to get a new phone yesterday. Wanted a casio fliphone or iphone but the sales lady talked me into a droid. I went with the pro and realized that this is how android should run, nothing like my eris. Loved it.

I took it off the charger today at 530am for work. By noon it was 50% percent and by 3 it was dead. I did not use this phone ONCE through out that time period. That really frustrates me and id hate to see what happens if i actually use it. Anyone else have this problem?

Also is there a physical button I can press to answer/end calls because i cant see the screen to slide the answer outside.

Thank you.

Ok, here's some tips that will help you improve battery life...trust me, we have all had the same issue at first, but these tips will make a big difference:
-Get the extended battery from Verizon (not some other maker).
-If you have live wallpaper running, find a different wallpaper...live wallpaper eats battery
-Make sure your network is set to CDMA, not GSM. Most Pros come default with GSM setting...have no idea why. Verizon is a CDMA carrier.
-If you have downloaded a task killer get rid of it...it serves little purpose really and will kill your battery.
-Turn you screen brightness down to as low a level as you can tolerate. You can always turn it up when you go outside.
-If you have any app updating in the background (weather, news/weather, email, etc) select the longest update interval that you can be comfortable with.
-Email...you have a number of different options with personal email. The best options involve having gmail push your email to you. I have my 2 personal email accounts FORWARDED to my gmail account which in turn pushes that mail to my phone...it is almost instantaneous and my phone doesn't have to go get the email...saves battery. Gmail also has a BIS/BES like function that will "poll" your personal accounts and forward them to you...time interval between polling is dependent upon how active your accounts are.
-Turn WiFi, GPS and Bluetooth off until you need to use one of them. There is no sense to have, lets say WiFi, turned on if your in an area where WiFi is not available.
-Turn your phone off when charging. Off mean off...not screen off.
After a full night's charge and medium use I get at least 36 hours of use out of my Pro with 30-40% battery remaining. Hope these tips help. Enjoy your Pro...it is a great phone.

 

[tattooz]

Thanks for the tips. I also notice what a battery hog the Facebook app is. I logged out of the app and use the browser when I want to check.

 

[jpcalhoun]

Thanks for the tips. I also notice what a battery hog the Facebook app is. I logged out of the app and use the browser when I want to check.

Your welcome. I bet you're right about Facebook. I didn't install the Facebook app because I didn't want all the BS on my phone. For most people the screen is what eats up the large majority of the power used on an Android phone (maybe all phones, IDK). I look at it this way, the fewer times a day that I have to turn on the screen to check/do something the longer that battery will last. And, the fewer times that phone has to receive or send something, likewise, the longer the battery will last.

 

[jago25_98]

Took me a lot of learning to figure this all out bud so hope you like it.

1) Buy ~1700mah uprated battery from Mugen, no cheap chinese knockoffs.

2) Use rommanager to find a better rom, like IceCreamSandwich.

3) Whenever you install something run the Task Manager from Astro. I've noticed some task managers don't show services or processes and tend to confuse matters.

Check to see if it's added a service. If it has remove it. You have to remove because the app will only start it again. It's bummer not being able to use skype & fring but that's their fault. You might also have to avoid widgets and K9mail.

Also check if you can to see if the backgrounded apps are coming out of suspend and using CPU %.

Backgrounded apps and services are different things. Also, potentially (I think) you could have processes that might not advertise as either but personally I'm not worrying about that just yet.


My DroidPro arrived today and I think with all this it should be behaving similar to my GalaxyS1 (i9000). The i9000 is similar to a S2 on a fresh install but after you install a few things you get lag that you don't get on a s2 due to that 2nd CPU.

Hope this helps,
open for tips