Help Droid Charge Battery Life

[JimR45]

I have tried several things to improve the battery life of my droid Charge including: manually killing running applications, have wifi turn off automatically after no activity in a short time, loading an application to manage the power better.

As time goes on, I have found the battery life to be pathetic. One of the reasons I bought the Droid Charge was that it supposedly had more run time life than others. I have found the idle time power usage to be pathetic. I do have a backup battery, but I am beginning to wonder if you need 2 phones if you have a smart phone. One which has a battery life to perform as a phone, and the other a smart phone with its capabilities but an unacceptable battery life.

Charged the phone yesterday and after the charge I only accessed it briefly last night to clear some mail, and then this morning after being idle over night with only 13hours it only had 23% charge from 5 minute use the night before. Am I missing something or is this supposed to be acceptable. If it is, Samsung should include a secondary cheap phone with its smart phone so you can still use and make phone calls. I do have a spare battery, but I did not think I would need that just to go out for awhile and make some phone calls and web access. They need to fix this problem by cleaning up the problem or providing a longer life battery.

 

[Unforgiven]

Killing tasks actually negatively affects battery performance and is not recommended (unless they are acting up). Android is optimized to run at or near memory capacity. When it has too much free memory, it will load an app in the background (using processor power and hence the battery hit). If it doesn't have enough memory to open an app you want, it will close an app that you infrequently use. After a while, it will only load apps in the background that you actually use.

Other general battery saving tips are controlling syncing. I do not need my Facebook synced in real time, I am OK with it getting new info when I open the app. Most apps that sync have an option to disable or control the frequency of their syncing. Tailor them to fit your needs.

Check the battery usage stats (Settings | About Phone | Battery) and check to see what is using the battery. The top two are usually Screen and Android OS. Your Android OS may be higher than others see due to the task killer issue I mentioned above. Beyond these two, you can look for other apps that may be eating your battery.

I hope this helps.

 

[JimR45]

Thank you. I should have mentioned stopping tasks is not done regularly, but I have tried a few times to see if there would be more life. I ususally check to see what is using the battery life. Going back into it now I found the top to be Android OS 25, Maps 19 (just killed), Android System 18, Cell standy 18, phone idle 8, display 4, juice defender 3, dialer 4, wifi 2. They appear in the order I gave and the numbers reflect usage. Time is 6 hours and 20 minutes and the battery level is only 68%. I consider this to be pathetic since it has been mostly idle.

 

[Bozz5384]

I've determined they don't call this thing the CHARGE for nothin'.... I rock 2 batteries and charge every opportunity I get and sometimes it just seems pathetic.

Wanted to go all day yesterday without charging so I turned off mobile data for most of the day... turned it on 2-3 times in 12 hours to get any emails and stuff. Amazing what turning off the 'smart' part of your smartphone does.

 

[HBLush]

I know that this is not the rooting section but what helped me was the battery calibrator. You have to be rooted to use it but it easily added 20% more to my battery life. Also, some roms specialize is battery sipping(like Humble 5.0) There is also an extended battery that you could get if you dont want to root.

 

[Shane2943]

I know that this is not the rooting section but what helped me was the battery calibrator. You have to be rooted to use it but it easily added 20% more to my battery life. Also, some roms specialize is battery sipping(like Humble 5.0) There is also an extended battery that you could get if you dont want to root.

+1. Rooting is the answer to about three quarters of the questions asked in this section!

I'm rockin Humble 3.1 (still...not going to switch until Humble 5 comes out of RC or until an ICS complete ROM is released) and can easily go all day with pretty heavy usage (emails, tapatalk, youtube vids, uploading pics, web browsing, wimp, etc).

Also try the Screen Filter app. No need for root on that one. It dims your screen down to a level you can adjust, and it works with the auto-brightness. These AMOLED screens suck the juice quick when sitting at max brightness.

 

[W_A_Watson_II]

Read several post and sites on rooting, but what is the best method for the Samsung Charge, Gingerbreak?

 

[Blacklight82]

There is also an extended battery that you could get if you dont want to root.

Anyone have a picture of the extended battery on? I came from a Thunderbolt and honestly battery life is just as bad as the TBolt. I rocked the extended battery and was fine with the added thickness.
Is the 2600mah or the 3500mah the one to get? I ask because the 2600 is official and the 3500 is a third party and I heard that they overrate the mah.
Is there a big difference in thickness between the two?

 

[Shane2943]

Read several post and sites on rooting, but what is the best method for the Samsung Charge, Gingerbreak?

Definitely not Gingerbreak. Last I heard, that doesn't work. The only/best (as far as i know) way to root is to flash a rom/kernel to the phone using a program called Odin. There are videos on how to root the Droid Charge now. Do a google search for them. It seems hard at first and is a bit unerving, but it's really easy once you do it.

 

[Blacklight82]

Read several post and sites on rooting, but what is the best method for the Samsung Charge, Gingerbreak?

This is the easiest way to root plus you don't have to wipe. Took me about 10 minutes.

http://www.chargeforums.com/forum/droid-charge-hacking-guides/1264-how-root-your-droid-charge.html

 

[NJtoTX]

One thing that recently increased my battery life was uninstalling Amazon App Store. I had downloaded a lot of free apps of the day and other apps, and apparently, no matter what your notification settings are, AAS will keep pinging your phone for update status (and possibly other reasons, like seeing if you "need" new apps). It shows up as both a running app and as part of the Android OS percentage. Watchdog Lite keeps citing it for CPU spikes.

Haven't had a problem with downloaded apps not working yet, but I'm told it's likely.

I'm betting that Google play app update pings also strain the battery, but I'm willing to live with that. Probably a good idea to uninstall apps you'll never use again, though.