For those of you with excellent battery time...

[Markus729]

Please tell me your phone's setup? Although I'm getting better battery time than my Droid Incredible, I'm not seeing the huge hours some have posted. I'm a moderate user, no games, watch a few YouTube videos a week, check email a lot, use Evernote, Springpad, RSS readers, some Facebook, have a few Sports widgets, Wifi whenever possible, I've turned off 4G because of the spotty coverage, but I have a smartphone for a reason and don't have everything turned off.

I also have the usual suspects in check, like auto-brightness turned on, etc... I consider myself pretty savvy overall, read the forums and web sites for optimal use. I also am not naive in thinking that, hey, this is a smart phone, it uses juice all the time. But the reason I got the Maxx over the 'normal' Razr was because of all the extra battery time it proclaims. Smart Actions seems to drain my battery much more than not using it at all.

I plug in at night around 11 pm when I go to bed and the Maxx battery is at around 26-30%. Fine, it got me through the day. I shouldn't complain, right? I unplug in the morning at 100% at about 7 am, and by 830 its already down to 84%??

I check what's using the battery and while everything is well below 15%, the Android OS is typically at between 45-60%. Is this average, normal, high?

Again, realistically, it gets me through the day, all day, and I plug in at night, so what. Is this the new reality, or should I be getting more? Or should I simply stop caring and get over it?

 

[cbreze]

same here pretty much as far as your usage. All I need is to get thru the day. Why would I want to start the second day with less than 100%? If you get thru the whole day that's fantastic! Better than most all other android devices. I always want to start my day with afull tank. Who can say how much usage you might need extra for a particular day? I'm almost always at about 20 to 30 percent by bedtime. If I was at 50 or 60 I'd still plug in. Its not a contest, for longest battery, just enjoy this awesome device.

 

[mahers]

Ditto to the OP. I definitely don't consider myself a power user. Probably moderate plus, if such a thing exists...email, facebook, >10 texts, sports updates, RSS, >10 minutes talk time...and I plug in around 11ish at 20% or less. My Droid X was much better in battery time with the extended battery, but it was smaller than the Maxx's! I even have fewer apps as I didn't bother installing ones I never used. Android OS is a huge battery suck, but what's uses it so much is my mystery.

I just did a factory reset as someone suggested and staerted adding a couple of apps at a time. Not that I want to brag about having 50% at the end of the day, but I don't want to worry that I may need a boost if I happened to listen to a ballgame on my At Bat app!! People brag about streaming for hours with Pandora or YouTube and it uses practically nothing. Something is off.

 

[arparaspolo]

I came from a D3 with a Moto extended battery. It lasted me all day. Then I went into a RAZR. That crap died in 4 or 5 hours. I complained enough and got the MAXX! My percentages vary daily but it lasts me all day. That is all one could ask for. And is pretty damn awesome if you ask me. I too have auto bright and 30 sec timeout. i have a live wallpaper(forest) and constantly check my phone and use draw some. Facebook. email. internet. twitter. slacker radio. my music. Instagram. yelp. eBay. texts up the wazoo. I do have WiFi on while at work cause my service sucks here and I do plug it in while driving. I have a smart action to launch volume ace, slacker and activate GPS when my charger and headphones(aux) are plugged in. But that is only for maybe 15 minutes a day. I live very close to work lol. All of that and I still have plenty of juice to spare on most days. I have never had to plug in mid day cause I was about to die. Now if only we had ICS....ADWLauncher with ICS theme will have to do in the mean time.

 

[pseudoveritas]

I've pretty much given up. I tried everything. I'm on my second phone and the battery life is still the same. I get about 5 - 6 hours before I am under 15%. Its a great phone but its pretty disappointing that I can't get through my workday without plugging my phone in. I can only imagine how bad it would be if I had the original Razr.

 

[arparaspolo]

I've pretty much given up. I tried everything. I'm on my second phone and the battery life is still the same. I get about 5 - 6 hours before I am under 15%. Its a great phone but its pretty disappointing that I can't get through my workday without plugging my phone in. I can only imagine how bad it would be if I had the original Razr.

You could have a rouge app. Something has to be secretly drinking your juice. I don't know how to find out which one it is. But your battery should last longer. Unless your phone is fighting for signal. Which gulps battery juice.

 

[Ultimateone]

I usually go well over a day with hundreds of texts and phone calls, my 2 other Android phones would be dead in less than a half a day

 

[mahers]

I usually go well over a day with hundreds of texts and phone calls, my 2 other Android phones would be dead in less than a half a day

See? Comments like this kill me. What are you doing that is so different than me, yet mine barely lasts. It HAS to be a rogue app, as arparaspolo said. I have an idea it might be Words w/ Friends, so I may hold off installing it until later. Also, you can use Watchdog or Android System Info to help figure it out.

 

[cbreze]

I've pretty much given up. I tried everything. I'm on my second phone and the battery life is still the same. I get about 5 - 6 hours before I am under 15%. Its a great phone but its pretty disappointing that I can't get through my workday without plugging my phone in. I can only imagine how bad it would be if I had the original Razr.

As mentioned, how's your RF? Biggest battery sucker is signal searching alot.
If that's not an issue I'd check running apps, maybe get a monitor such as "watchdog". I keep that set to alert me if anything uses to much. If all else fails I'd clean it by hard resetting back to factory and be careful what I load back up. Bottom line two bad battery sucking devices in a row goes a bit beyond coincidence IMHO. Sounds like an app or signal issue to me, unless your constantly watching videos or on the hot spot that entire time.

 

[Ultimateone]

Yeah I switched to 3G only, and always keep an eye on my apps, nothing seems to be out of the normal.

When I use to have LTE/CDMA on at the same time my battery suffered because of my location where signals are poor.

 

[fdnj48]

I usually go about a day on a charge. I would say im a moderate to heavy user. I have 4G and GPS on 24/7, screen set at about 50%, screen timeout set to 30 sec, play games, text, email, surf the web all day. Last night I went 12 hours 41 minutes on battery and I was at 61% when I plugged it in. Something has to be up with the battery or apps on your phone if your phone is dying that fast. I hope everyone is able to get the battery life resolved. Good luck!!

 

[aztexan512]

Did you change your phone settings in order to maintain the battery life?

 

[Taskellusaf]

I'm betting is your signal strength... I'm sure those people with high battery life also live in a major cities... we just got 4 g.. 4 g drains your battery like no other... wifi is definitely the way to go...
Don't worry man I'm not seein the proclaimed 21 hours of talk time either... maybe 5. Download a free app called badass battery monitor... it breaks down just about everything.

 

[Taskellusaf]

I just dropped 14 percent in 40 minutes surfing the internet on 4g.... screen brightness is at 0.. I'm right next to the airport and a air force base... is that kind battery consumption normal

 

[sciullo779]

try this battery calibration method another user posted:

"Have you tried a deep discharge? As in let it completely go below 1% and shut down by itself, recharge fully w/o stops, power it on/off, then back on, plug it back into the charger for a full hour, power off then back on and see how it tracks and uses battery. "

worked wonders for me, ill get around 1.5 days of heavy use, 2 of moderate, and almost 3 when im just texting

 

[Markus729]

I should also add that this is my second Maxx, (this story is on the thread I started "Maxx just shuts down??") and it basically is doing the same thing my first Maxx did. I did a factory reset and turned off all background syncing for Facebook, news apps, etc. until I open the app. Makes sense, right? I don't need my apps updating in the background if I'm not seeing it, so I have what I can sync/update when I actually use the app. I just don't get it. So, the fact that both of my Maxx's are running about the same in battery time, it MUST be one of my apps that is killing me.

I've even got Juice Defender for crying out loud. This must prove those kinds of apps are worthless.

 

[pseudoveritas]

It may be something wrong with my apps. It is not my coverage. I am in Hartford and I have an excellent 4G and 3G signal with all my bars. I never had an issue with my Droid X either. Everytime I've reset the phone (or got a new one) I put all my apps in immediately. Maybe that's it.

Also on the new phone I've noticed two new things sucking battery: com.motorola.home and Android System. What's that all about? Do other people have these processes too?

 

[moparharn]

I charge my phone every other day. It is turned off at night. I am 3g at work and 4g all other times for the most part. I read about 50 emails a day, talk about two hours per day, and surf for about 1.5 hours per day. These are rough numbers, but the battery life is very good. I have three full screens of icons. Play some card games, network news, espn, local news, radar live, weather channel, six or so chat rooms, but not any major games, or other big power users. The only phone I have owned that would do a big use day was my X with an extended battery. My Iphone 4s would not do a full day of heavy use, but usually got through most days. Hope this helps.

 

[mahers]

Pseudo

I did a reset yesterday, but I didn't let the phone automatically apply my old settings. Also, I'm adding only apps I know don't do anything until I use it. So far, so good. I think it was a recent app or two I got after getting the Maxx. I figured with such great battery life, I could update background info more frequently and do whatever I want, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

Sent from my DROID RAZR using Tapatalk 2

 

[DaveTN]

One thing you might wanto consider is what is going on in the background. I've bragged a lot about getting 36+ hours on my maxx and then one day BAM! Less than 12 hours. I too wondered what was going on and thought about rogue apps but have not installed anything new.
However..... two apps were competing heavilly for my wifi data and were trying to upload gigabytes of data in the background - dropbox and motocast.
I had both set to upload pictires when connected to wifi and they were doing fine until I recorded a couple videos and added some older pictures back into my photos folder. So, there was about 4 gigs of data waiting to be uploaded via wifi. Each time I would connect to a saved network, it would upload a little at a time and then wait until I connected again.
Once I changed the settings to "upload when plugged in" the problem went away and I am back to awesome battery life.
Hope that helps.

David

 

[Markus729]

OK, this morning is a prime example. I unplugged my phone at 7 am. I've not used my phone AT ALL and waited to check email when I got to the office. 2+ hours later, I check my phone, and its down to 85% without my even using it. So, I checked battery use in my settings, and Android OS is at 54%, while everything else is in the low single digits %.

So the Android OS is using over half of the battery just......BEING? Isn't that like me sleeping (doing nothing but breathing) and using up half my energy even doing nothing, and waking up even more tired?

I've turned off all monitoring stuff so that no background syncing happens, but only syncs when I turn on an app and actually need to use it, except Gmail. What is the Andoid OS really doing?

 

[mahers]

Once I changed the settings to "upload when plugged in" the problem went away and I am back to awesome battery life.
Hope that helps.

David

I don't see that option in DropBox. I see where I can select Wifi only or Wifi + Data Plan, but don't see where I can tell it "upload when plugged in" as you mention.

 

[DaveTN]

I don't see that option in DropBox. I see where I can select Wifi only or Wifi + Data Plan, but don't see where I can tell it "upload when plugged in" as you mention.

@mahers,

Sorry, my bad. It had been a few days since I did that and realized that there are TWO things that need to be done; The second is in dropbox. Choose settings then "tuen off camera upload". Sorry for the miscommunication.

David

 

[DaveTN]

OK, this morning is a prime example. I unplugged my phone at 7 am. I've not used my phone AT ALL and waited to check email when I got to the office. 2+ hours later, I check my phone, and its down to 85% without my even using it. So, I checked battery use in my settings, and Android OS is at 54%, while everything else is in the low single digits %.

So the Android OS is using over half of the battery just......BEING? Isn't that like me sleeping (doing nothing but breathing) and using up half my energy even doing nothing, and waking up even more tired?

I've turned off all monitoring stuff so that no background syncing happens, but only syncs when I turn on an app and actually need to use it, except Gmail. What is the Andoid OS really doing?

Try this:
open Task Manager then choose settings and then refresh.
Look at which apps are using the most cpu cycles, select and kill them.
For instance, I just checked mine and google+ is using 33% and I rarely use it. Google music is using 16% and google docs is using 8%. I just manually select them and kill them. See if that helps.

David

 

[kellygh5]

try this battery calibration method another user posted:

"Have you tried a deep discharge? As in let it completely go below 1% and shut down by itself, recharge fully w/o stops, power it on/off, then back on, plug it back into the charger for a full hour, power off then back on and see how it tracks and uses battery. "

worked wonders for me, ill get around 1.5 days of heavy use, 2 of moderate, and almost 3 when im just texting

I have learned more about batteries, charging, & chargers in the past month than I have in almost 2 yrs of reading Android news/forum from some very knowledgeable folks, IMO, on another forum. 1) Never allow your phone to shut down from battery drain. You can calibrate your battery to recognize high/low flags without draining to nothing. It worked for sciullo779, but I would be afraid. Sometimes damage isn't readily apparent. 2) go to ww.batteryuniversity.com for good info &/or google foxkat.