Let's talk about the battery

[Deleted User]

I am seeing an increase in my standby time with low usage. Having turned GSM off and working only on the CDMA network the battery usage has improved drastically.

The first day it discharged 60% overnight: 8 hours. After the battery discharged completely, I turned off GSM and this was the result:
12 hours since last charge, down to the last 10%.

Statistics:
Cell standby: 38%
Phone idle: 32%
Android system: 16%
Android OS: 7%
Display: 4%
Voice calls: 4%

Activities: every 2 hours it updating Weatherbug automatically, constantly syncing Gmail and Google contacts. No GPS or WiFi.



Now: 16h 44m on battery, down to 80%
Statistics:
Google maps: 50%
Cell standby: 20%
Phone idle: 20%
Android system: 9%

Activities: no google maps at all, every 2 hours it updating Weatherbug automatically, constantly syncing Gmail and Google contacts. No GPS or WiFi.

I would like to see what everybody else experiences with their droid.

 

[fegriffith]

Are you saying you have been running it 16 hours and are at 80% battery? So you used 20% in 16 hours??? :O

 

[JohnDa]

Mine: 13h 55m on battery - 50% battery left.

Cell standby 37%
Phone Idle 35%
com.motorola.contacts.data 17%
Display 3%

My phone sat overnight while I slept - about 7 h. Since then, I have used it a moderate amount. About an hour of music/podcasts, some email, some internet searching. Interestingly, despite the high % cell standby and idle, my phone lost less battery overnight than my OG Droid would. Both have push email and are set to update weatherbug every 2 h.

 

[codemonkey2k5]

Ive had my droid 3 now for about 8 days. I love it, but the battery life is garbage!

When I look at the battery usage the one thing that stands out is that the highest percentage of battery usage is "CELL STANDBY". This just should not be!
The top of the list should be "Phone Idle" if the phone is not in use. I basicly left the phone unused a few days back. Pulled it off the charger at 9am.
Phone network set to CDMA only. WiFi off, GPS off, Bluetooth off. I killed all apps. By 10pm my battery was down to 30% with 60% used by Cell Standby.
In reading other forums, this seems to be the norm for this phone. But that doesnt make it acceptable. I sure hope that Motorola fixes this very soon!!!

I have run the *228 option 2 from Verizon to update cell tower info. And my service is very good. Pretty much always 4 bars and never a dropped call.
Other than battery life, I love this phone.


Droid 3
Android version: 2.3.4
Baseband version: N_03.18.16P

Regards,
Codemonkey


Update: I went down to the local Verizon store and talked with them about it. They polled the droid 3's in their store and confirmed the problem on all of them. So either we are going to have a huge recall for a bad radio or there needs to be a software updates soon. The store manager suggested that I report the problem to Google support themselves. I did do. Still waiting...

 

[sox08]

okay so I have a problem with cell phones espically lately. In the last month ive sold my Iphone 4 and got the droid charge and returned it and activated an old env touch and learned about tiered data so I sold that and went with DX2 and today I returned that and got D3. Plus ive also had dinc 1 and DX1 in the past year and I def love the D3 best just as good as the DX1. {for those wondering why I returned the charge the screen is beautiful but it def gets laggy and battery life was beyond terrible, I was using gps and tune in radio app and it was plugged in car charging and battery went from 88 to 83 in a 3 hr trip. Yes the battery went down plugged in! D3 is great Keyboard is amazing and didnt have a problem with pentile at all not even in DX2 cause its the first display not to fade out in the sun.! So my problem with the D3 and its bad and getting worse with each new android release on verizon, they seriously have to stop loading the phones with the CRAP APPS!!! theres nothing like getting a new cell and upon powering it on you see that verizon filled your first 3 pages in the app folder with crap apps. I mean is their a petition we can sign or anything.?! Its seriously the only thing I liked about iphone is no bloat! The droid 3 is great and is the best 3G and imo best cell on VZW at the moment.

im just nervous that every year we get a new droid and currently its D3 means 3 pages of apps d4 comes with 4 pages of crap apps. Stopppp Verizon!


forget unlocked bootloaders! unlock the damn apps and let us delete!!!

 

[Ghostlight]

I'm brand new to smart phones and I'm not sure what GSM is or where to turn it off. Could you tell me where to find this setting?

 

[Schreiber]

Go to settings > Wireless and networks > Mobile Networks > Network Mode. From there, select the option you want (CDMA to save battery).

 

[bsweetness]

I agree the bloatware is annoying, and it would be nice to be able to clear up the space. But at least you can hide all of it so you don't see it in the app drawer with the new version of Blur (or with custom launchers like Launcher Pro).

 

[rushmore]

Looking forward to hopefully zapping bloat, but so far have seen no impact to performance.

 

[cookiemonster79]

I agree the bloatware is annoying, and it would be nice to be able to clear up the space. But at least you can hide all of it so you don't see it in the app drawer with the new version of Blur (or with custom launchers like Launcher Pro).

How do you hide it?

 

[UncleMike]

How do you hide it?

Based on my brief time with the Droid 3 in the store (right now I'm waiting for the Bionic)... open the app drawer, and at the top left it will say "all apps" (or something similar). Tap there, or somewhere in that general area, and you can add an "app group", then specify which apps you want shown in that group. Once you've created and selected that group, it appears that it remains the default until you choose another one, even following a reboot.

It's not quite the same as hiding apps, since when you install new apps they won't appear in custom groups until you add them (I think), but it minimizes the constant nagging feeling of seeing all those unwanted apps in the app drawer.

 

[Ghostlight]

Got it. Thank you!

 

[darrin2520]

okay so I have a problem with cell phones espically lately. In the last month ive sold my Iphone 4 and got the droid charge and returned it and activated an old env touch and learned about tiered data so I sold that and went with DX2 and today I returned that and got D3. Plus ive also had dinc 1 and DX1 in the past year and I def love the D3 best just as good as the DX1. {for those wondering why I returned the charge the screen is beautiful but it def gets laggy and battery life was beyond terrible, I was using gps and tune in radio app and it was plugged in car charging and battery went from 88 to 83 in a 3 hr trip. Yes the battery went down plugged in! D3 is great Keyboard is amazing and didnt have a problem with pentile at all not even in DX2 cause its the first display not to fade out in the sun.! So my problem with the D3 and its bad and getting worse with each new android release on verizon, they seriously have to stop loading the phones with the CRAP APPS!!! theres nothing like getting a new cell and upon powering it on you see that verizon filled your first 3 pages in the app folder with crap apps. I mean is their a petition we can sign or anything.?! Its seriously the only thing I liked about iphone is no bloat! The droid 3 is great and is the best 3G and imo best cell on VZW at the moment.

im just nervous that every year we get a new droid and currently its D3 means 3 pages of apps d4 comes with 4 pages of crap apps. Stopppp Verizon!


forget unlocked bootloaders! unlock the damn apps and let us delete!!!

Well said. I am hoping that this phone becomes popular enough for the modding community to break it open. I am not as interested in custom roms at this point as I am being able to control my own phone and have on there what I want on there.

On the phone discharging on the car charger, I have had that happen as well. I have on OC'ed Droid 1 that was OC'ed a bit too much apparently. It actually died on the car charger while running the GPS on a long trip. In my experience, nothing charges as effectively as being plugged into the wall.

 

[rushmore]

Battery life for me has been better than the Incredible and so far, in spite of having 1.3gb of apps (215 of them) have not had the idle issues some are having. I will now make note of apps installed from this point, since it would seem the OS and stock apps are probably not the issue (in my case, anyway).

After over eight hours, the D3 is cold since put to sleep, with only 1% power used. This is my estimate, since it was at 80% when turned to sleep and 80% when woke up (seems it had to use something).

Added:

My Incredible and the DX2 did not behave this well with the same apps installed.

 

[PetriesLast]

I hope they fix this issue, as I'm having the same problem. It's the main drain on my battery and simply shouldn't be. Do we have any ideas what is causing it yet?

 

[sox08]

yea but least yours was over clocked. i dont root at all cause i seem to have bad luck with cells and dont need any issues with verizon over the exchange/refurb policy. so far the d3 is great but the g button on the keyboard i have to press down a little firmer then the rest for some reason, a lil annoying but workable.

also picked up the blue snap on case cause their finally making cases that will fit with media docks. still waiting on the mall kiosk for zagg screen protectors to come in and have one installed here though.

 

[Invader DJ]

My battery life isn't horrible, but I'm still doing testing.

If there is anything that can be pointed at as causing bad battery life on this phone it will be the high cell standby percentages and the bloatware. The cell standby times are such an obvious bug that I can see a modem update coming quickly to fix it. The bloatware/Blur will hopefully be fixed once this phone has root.

 

[redddog]

Yep. Universal problem.

 

[imnotmikal]

Support Cell Standby time is at the top of my battery use list!

Welcome to Android phones.

 

[ekyle]

Welcome to Android phones.

Haha, yup.

It wont help reporting this to Google. It's not their problem, it's Motorola's problem.

 

[ekyle]

Battery life for me has been better than the Incredible and so far, in spite of having 1.3gb of apps (215 of them) have not had the idle issues some are having. I will now make note of apps installed from this point, since it would seem the OS and stock apps are probably not the issue (in my case, anyway).

After over eight hours, the D3 is cold since put to sleep, with only 1% power used. This is my estimate, since it was at 80% when turned to sleep and 80% when woke up (seems it had to use something).

Added:

My Incredible and the DX2 did not behave this well with the same apps installed.

What are you getting for idle time?

 

[redddog]

Never had this problem with D1.

 

[bitbyte]

Never had this problem with D1.

Nope that's because on the D1 the display was always the top one, no matter how much or little you used it. I'll take the D3's longer battery life and WAY lower display consumption in exchange.

 

[ekyle]

I'm glad the blu case fits with the extended battery too

I agree with the bloatware. It the only reason I root. That and screenshots lol. Ironically that's two things the iPhone does right. No bloat and simple screenshots.

 

[sox08]

I'm glad the blu case fits with the extended battery too

I agree with the bloatware. It the only reason I root. That and screenshots lol. Ironically that's two things the iPhone does right. No bloat and simple screenshots.

wait so theres no easy way for screenshots??? seriously?