• After 15+ years, we've made a big change: Android Forums is now Early Bird Club. Learn more here.

How long does the battery last on your DROID after conditioning?

I know conditioning has been suggested many times in this forum but it just isn't necessary. A quick google search confirms this on just about every site/article...

Here is an inmportant quote from one of the above articles,

"A lithium-ion battery provides 300-500 discharge/charge cycles. The battery prefers a partial rather than a full discharge. Frequent full discharges should be avoided when possible. Instead, charge the battery more often or use a larger battery. There is no concern of memory when applying unscheduled charges."
 
Upvote 0
That is something I like to refer to as "newness wearing off". ;) You use it non stop for a week, and then it just becomes a phone again.

I was using my "2nd Droid" as a "phone"...both had poor life in idle state during the first few charges. With my Moto Q, I had it for over a year prior to picking up the Seidio. The Seidio also held charge poorly for the first few cycles. You may not need to completely drain the battery, but its definately not at its peak in the beginning.
 
Upvote 0
I'm not sure the % meter is linear so I don't personally depend on that to suggest how much *time* I have left but only as a rough guide.

However, I am getting anywhere from 10-16 hours of time depending on what I am doing. I haven't yet documented all the scenarious and the associated "up time" for my Droid. There has been a couple of occassions where I really didn't use it much and got closer to the 10 and other times it seems I was using it a lot and got closer to the 16.

So I am continuing my "unscientific" documentation of what is running and how I am using it.
 
Upvote 0
The surest way to test the battery usage by various services (GPS, screen, Wi-Fi, calls etc) is to insert a milliampmeter between one of the battery terminals and the phone, and record the current drawn when using those apps/services. I have done this by inserting a strip of two-sided adhesive tape with two very narrow strips of copper foil on the two surfaces; the strips are then connected through a recording multimeter or simple data logger. If in parallel you'll record the terminal voltage of the battery, you can easily calculate the power drawn during each service/program test (P=U*i).

As you can imagine, there will be an almost inifinte number of combinations and parameters to conside under varous use conditions, thus giving an average battery life may, or may not, be very useful. For example, the power used during a phone call will depend on the signal strength and sound level; the former, in turn, will depend on the distance to the trasmission power, atmospheric conditions, location etc etc.) Any number you'll see quoted around will easily have a +/-50 % error...
 
Upvote 0
I killed my Droid's battery all the way down and my battery life nearly doubled! I know there are naysayers online that poo-poo the idea that Li-Ion batteries have memory or need to be conditioned, but I knows what I sees. And I likes :D

I don't have a Droid (am waiting for the Milestone release in the UK) but I've found the same thing with my last 2 phones both using Li-Ion batteries, I think it might be a case of the phone needing to calibrate itself. So the batteries have no 'memory', but maybe the phone isn't able to get a handle on how much juice is left until it has seen a complete full-empty cycle?
 
Upvote 0
Can I (force) the battery to discharge quicker by never letting the screen timeout and playing music? Will this hurt the battery?
I need better battery life,thats for sure. I'm only getting about 5 hours till its 20% or so then I recharge. But as any other person,i've been ****ing with the phone non stop. downloading apps and such. If it's ok I will drain the battery as mentioned above and recharge a few times to hopefully gain a bit more battery life.
What do you all think?
KAHN
 
Upvote 0
Can I (force) the battery to discharge quicker by never letting the screen timeout and playing music? Will this hurt the battery?
I need better battery life,thats for sure. I'm only getting about 5 hours till its 20% or so then I recharge. But as any other person,i've been ****ing with the phone non stop. downloading apps and such. If it's ok I will drain the battery as mentioned above and recharge a few times to hopefully gain a bit more battery life.
What do you all think?
KAHN

Turn your phones screen on, turn on Latitude, and leave it running. I do it every night, and if it isn't plugged in, the battery is drained in 3 to 3.5 hours.

;)
 
Upvote 0
A typical cell phone battery should easily and safely handle a 2C-rate discharge (a total discharge in 30 minutes), but it will generate a decent amount of heat. This is because a battery has an internal resistance (for a 1.4 Ah prismatic battery, it is probabaly somewhere in the 60-100 mohm range, thus a 2C rate would be 2.8 A, from which you can calculate the amount of heat evolved and, approximately, the maximum battery temperature...)
 
Upvote 0
Li-ion batteries do NOT need to be conditioned to work well; what needs to be conditioned is the circuit/device that measures the state of charge (coulomb counters etc.). In principle, the state of charge of a cell can easily be determined for a given battery chemistry from its OCV (open-circuit voltage), but since the cell voltage depends on the currrent load, other means (coulomb (charge) counting circuits) have to be used under practical variable load conditions... For general examples, look at figures 2 and 4 in http://www.intersil.com/data/an/an126.pdf
 
Upvote 0
I'm getting anywhere from 10-15 hours before the Droid tells me to plug it in (10% battery left). It all depends on usage; sometimes less if I have a lot of conference calls. For the first 3 weeks or so I had screen timeout at 30 seconds - since then I decreased it to 15 seconds - that helped to make the battery last longer. There's an app to toggle screen timeout on/off that I've been playing with for apps like browsing when I'm not always tocuhing the screen - reading articles etc. Display is almost always the # 1 user of battery(although I just checked and today it's voice calls). I keep it plugged in in the car.
 
Upvote 0
Lithium-ion batteries do not have memory issues like the older nickel-cadmium, so you don't have to fully charge or deplete them to increase battery life.

The only reason you would want to fully charge or fully deplete the battery is so the "battery Status" indicator is very close to to batteries actual charge. So if the battery is completely charged the white battery icon is actually accurate.
 
Upvote 0
My battery longevity is much less since the upgrade to 2.01. I am getting about 7-8 hours. I haven't been able to pinpoint the reason yet. I notice GPS is always on today and tried turning that off and it seemed better. Then I turned on the 'always push' for my work email and it started draining again. Somewhere during the day GPS started again and the battery went down quickly, but I am unable at this time able to tell if it is strictly GPS on or always push on the email. Either way it was much better prior to the upgrade.

Of course I continue to try different stuff like Home++ and now the phone is really starting to lag. I hate to give up on Home++ since it is much nicer than the stock Home.

I'm considering a factory reset, but I need to search on the forum to understand what the impact of that is.
 
Upvote 0

BEST TECH IN 2023

We've been tracking upcoming products and ranking the best tech since 2007. Thanks for trusting our opinion: we get rewarded through affiliate links that earn us a commission and we invite you to learn more about us.

Smartphones