my experience: battery problems and phone turning itself off.

[Interventizio]

I have had the droid for 4 days now and I like it. But of course I am searching the net to find out what could be issues and what not, in order to knowif I have to return the device as defective. Here my questions:

1) battery. 12 hours of phone being in standby during night with no apps in the background and despite that charge minus 20 %. Is that normal?
2) also, is it true that battery needs an initial period of optimization after which REAL improvements can be noticed? That is being said everywhere, but I didn't notice that with my previous phones. For now iam barely getting 4 hours of heavy usage.
3) the phone died on me once. Just switched itself off. I turned it on and all seems normal. No big deal, but what do u think?
Thank u I think ill come forward with other questions later on. Bythe way, physical keyboard is notas bad as they say.

 

[Shadowtech]

I think one of the things with battery life being reported on a new phone could be something with it not being fully calibrated yet. I'm still rather new to the technical details of this phone, but I noticed my battery life seemed to get better the more I used/charged it.. as far as what was reported anyway.

The phone shutting off could have been due to a glitch in the software maybe.. I noticed a few times my battery would say it was majorly low and I needed to plug it in, like an hour off the charger. But when I rebooted it, it was back up to 90%.

There have been a lot of reports of users getting bad batteries, so I would suggest taking note of it's performance during the next few weeks. It's a lot easier to return the phone within your 30 day grace period.

Regarding heavy usage.. this phone is only rated at around 385 minutes of talk time. The chances of you ever actually getting that are slim. So if you do use it for a lot of calls, it's going to run out faster, no way around it. Throw in some web browsing or heavy app usage where the screen is on, it goes even faster. That said, there are a few tips to consider to get more out of your battery.

1. Disable WiFi/Bluetooth when you don't need it.
2. Turn off or lengthen data sync intervals in all your apps.
3. Turn the screen brightness down, the display eats up a large chunk of battery life. The screen is still bright enough at the lowest setting for most environments. The only issue I ever had where I needed it full was in sunlight or to show the screen off to friends.
4. If you're sitting at your desk or in your car while doing most of your talking.. plug the phone in. It can't run out if you're constantly charging it.
5. Poor cell signal strength has also been linked to battery drain. If you have no/low signal, the phone is constantly trying to search for one.

 

[Alex2190]

disable gps

root + downclock

 

[Interventizio]

Thank u both. There is an app called quick setting which allows u to decrease luminosity of 2 further steps from he lowest factory level. Was wondering if anybody knows of an app that can top that. Screen is main concern for battery consumption and the lowest brightness setting the droid offers out of the box is too bright for indoor use.

 

[Shadowtech]

Thank u both. There is an app called quick setting which allows u to decrease luminosity of 2 further steps from he lowest factory level. Was wondering if anybody knows of an app that can top that. Screen is main concern for battery consumption and the lowest brightness setting the droid offers out of the box is too bright for indoor use.

I believe the only way to drop it any lower is to root the phone. Once rooted you can drop it quite a bit more. I would suggest reading these forums a bit more until you become more accustomed to the phone and android before attempting it though.

 

[meekrab]

When you root, you can use setcpu to throttle the phone's processor. Even though my phone runs over twice the clock speed compared to stock, I have noticed a marked improvement in battery life as the proc throttles below stock clock speed when not in heavy use.