Went to Bed owning a Fascinate, woke up to buy a Droid X

Kabob said:

Curious, how long does the Droix X's battery last on average? I use my Fascinate quite a bit and I'm getting a little bummed by how quickly it runs out of juice. I'm still within my 1 month exchange period so I could swap it if I wanted to, although I doubt I will.

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I took mine off charge at 5 a.m. yesterday, and just stuck it back on the charger a few minutes ago...still had around 20% left. And I downloaded a buttload of updates in addition to my normal use (texting, some calls, lots of playing around).

Hrm, the few comparisons I've read say the Fascinate's battery lasts nearly as long as that in the Droid X but from how you all describe it that certainly doesn't seem the case.

Kabob said:

Hrm, the few comparisons I've read say the Fascinate's battery lasts nearly as long as that in the Droid X but from how you all describe it that certainly doesn't seem the case.

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Well, without much playing around (I've been busy this morning) - that is, three phone calls, a download of a podcast, ~30 minutes of Bluetooth music streaming, and a couple manual refreshes of my social network streams reading a few emails - I'm down to 90% from unplugging it at 7:15am.

Yeah, I haven't used my phone much this morning either (less than you) and it's at a similar battery level.

I went from a Dinc, to an SF for 3 weeks, to the DX and I couldnt be happier. The voice quality alone would be enough to sell me. I liked the SF - but it felt like a teenager wondering what it would be like to be all grown up...half baked.

Make sure you condition your phone's battery for at least the first through charge cycles - let the battery completely drain before putting it on the charger and allow it to receive a full charge. Above that, make sure to turn off your bluetooth, gps, and wifi until they are needed.

An optimized X will last quite longer than an optimized SF.

sean, the X gods hate you.

rehpyc said:

Make sure you condition your phone's battery for at least the first through charge cycles - let the battery completely drain before putting it on the charger and allow it to receive a full charge. Above that, make sure to turn off your bluetooth, gps, and wifi until they are needed.

An optimized X will last quite longer than an optimized SF.

sean, the X gods hate you.

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I leave GPS and wifi on all the time. Who the hell wants to deal with turning it on and off whenever you need it?

The battery life is fine like this.

rehpyc said:

Make sure you condition your phone's battery for at least the first through charge cycles - let the battery completely drain before putting it on the charger and allow it to receive a full charge.

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Lithium batteries do not need to condition.

Above that, make sure to turn off your bluetooth, gps, and wifi until they are needed.

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GPS drains exactly zero battery unless you have an application actively accessing it - which will be indicated by a flashing GPS icon in the notification bar.

WiFi and Bluetooth, okay, they actually do drain the battery a bit since they are active - but I would argue that both use fairly minimal battery life. I leave all of my radios on all of the time, and I get superb battery life.

binary visions said:

Lithium batteries do not need to condition.

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More on this please. So I don't need to drain the battery the first few times? Does it decrease the amount of charge the battery will hold if I start charging it say, when it's only half depleted? I brought a spare charger to work but I wondered if it would kill my battery life over time to leave it plugged in when I'm sitting here, even if it had a good amount of charge on it.

Lithium batteries don't suffer from the "memory effect", yes, but they do still receive some help with their maximum potential when conditioned for the first few charge cycles. Some people/places will say they don't, others will. There's been tests done with phones to see if it helps, and the tests showed it did slightly help with a battery's potential. Beyond the first few cycles, it really doesn't matter how often you put the thing on the charger.

Much thanks!

Kabob said:

More on this please. So I don't need to drain the battery the first few times? Does it decrease the amount of charge the battery will hold if I start charging it say, when it's only half depleted? I brought a spare charger to work but I wondered if it would kill my battery life over time to leave it plugged in when I'm sitting here, even if it had a good amount of charge on it.

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There have been a lot of tests in a lot of places and it's generally accepted that Lithium batteries don't need special treatment. Actually, I just read a recent test where it was demonstrated that plugging in the battery every time you were near an outlet marginally extended the battery life.

It's good to fully discharge them every few dozen cycles to allow the meter in your phone to calibrate itself again and provide you with accurate estimates - but that's really not conditioning the battery, just the meter.

So far I haven't seen any test that's shown that a "breaking-in" period exists where you should be fully discharging/charging your phone to improve battery life. rhepyc, do you have a link to the tests you're talking about?

rehpyc said:

Make sure you condition your phone's battery for at least the first through charge cycles - let the battery completely drain before putting it on the charger and allow it to receive a full charge.

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binary visions said:

Lithium batteries do not need to condition.

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Lithium batteries don't develop memories like ni-cad batteries, but they will perform better if you charge them completely and drain to nearly empty the first time you use it. Think of it this way... the phone needs to learn the battery's capacity.

If said battery comes comes half charged, do you deplete it completely then charge, then deplete again?

I got a fascinate on release day with one of the upgrade eligible lines on my account. I used it up until a week ago then I took it back and exchanged it for the x before my 30 days were up. Best decision I made in some time.

On a side note, I also found a guy on craigslist who was willing to trade me an incredible for my droid 1 that was collecting dust. This phone to me is also better than the fascinate as well, regardless of the super amoled display.

Kabob said:

If said battery comes comes half charged, do you deplete it completely then charge, then deplete again?

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I always charge it to 100%, then leave it in the charger for a bit longer the first time (maybe an hour extra), then start using it until it's nearly dead. It'll give you a warning at 15% and power down around 5% or so.

When I got my extended battery the guy at the Verizon store also told me that these batteries did not develop a memory at all. All I can say is... old habits die hard!

I still took it home, depleted it all the way (it came with about a 60% charge on it) and then left it on the charger the entire night. Then I took it from full to shut down three full times before ever plugging it in prior to the phone shutting down on its own. My philosophy is this, "it can't hurt it any" if I do this. If they are right about them, then so be it, I still haven't hurt the battery by running it through 3 full power cycles right off the get go. But if they develop even the slightest amount of memory, then I have the peace of mind in knowing I did everything I could do to help extend the battery as much as I possibly could.

When I got my DX I found the stock battery to be absolutely horrid. I was getting the, "please plug into charger" 15% alert within 4 hours of unplugging. Mind you I was really playing around with it a lot, but even once I started leaving it alone more, I still was not happy with the stock batteries performance in the least. So it got me to wondering if perhaps my phone had been 'played with' before being shipped off to me, and the battery suffered from not starting it's life out the right way.

What I mean by 'being played with' is, when the DX was first released and was on back order everywhere I would go down to my local Verizon store from time to time just to 'play with' what ever DX they had in the store at that time. What would happen is they would get a few phones in, and while they were waiting on whomever they had called on the list to come pick their phone up, they would let the customers demo one of them to try to 'hook' them into getting one. That's actually how they hooked me. I had gone in to purchase an original Droid (during the buy one, get one free promo), and they had a DX on the counter so I started playing around with it. Played one game of NFS Shift and couldn't believe how awesome the graphics were for a damn cell phone. They had me hook, line and sinker after that.

But at any rate, I remember thinking, "boy I wonder if they're charging these things correctly before they let customers just play around on them? If not, I'd hate to get one of these devices and have a sucky ass battery because they didn't break it in right". And even though I didn't get my phone from them (ordered mine directly from Verizon's website), I wondered if perhaps before they even packaged it if maybe the employee's did anything similar, just playing around with them before they packed them up and sent them off. You just never know what exactly your phone has actually been through before it reached your finger tips. I'm sure most of the people picking up their DX's from the waiting list had no idea that customers had been playing with their phone all day.

And what really got me thinking something like that could have happened with my phone was because after getting the extended battery for my DX and doing the same 'break-in' on it that I did with my stock battery, it immediately started lasting at least twice as long as it had on the stock battery... dispite only having roughly 20% more capacity?

The numbers just didn't add up to me?

binary visions said:

XFactor, you are absolutely fAsCiNaTeD with bashing the Fascinate. Why you feel compelled to alternate caps when typing it like a 1990's wanna-be hacker, I am not sure.

Why don't you just be happy with the device you own? I occasionally peruse the Fascinate forum because I think it's an interesting device and you spend half your time in there riling those guys up.

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People get upset by me typing fAsCiNaTe? Ok. But I have to say, X > fAsCiNaTe.

Outlaw71 said:

When I got my extended battery the guy at the Verizon store also told me that these batteries did not develop a memory at all. All I can say is... old habits die hard!

I still took it home, depleted it all the way (it came with about a 60% charge on it) and then left it on the charger the entire night. Then I took it from full to shut down three full times before ever plugging it in prior to the phone shutting down on its own. My philosophy is this, "it can't hurt it any" if I do this. If they are right about them, then so be it, I still haven't hurt the battery by running it through 3 full power cycles right off the get go. But if they develop even the slightest amount of memory, then I have the peace of mind in knowing I did everything I could do to help extend the battery as much as I possibly could.

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Running a lithium battery down low actually degrades their performance. Do it enough times and you will shorten it's service life. Lithium batteries perform better when they are charged, so it's better to top them off, rather than let them get low.

xliderider said:

Do it enough times and you will shorten it's service life...

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Why isn't there more information about that? That's pretty important and does not jive at all with the claim that lithium batteries don't have issues with memory patterns.

andross77 said:

Just a quick note on the Droid X's reception: lately it has been TERRIBLE at my office! I have a trouble ticket in but VZW said no towers are down. My guess is they lost a roaming agreement on a nearby tower. So basically i'm screwed at work.

I was thinking maybe my phone crapped out but this past weekend I went to a conference downtown Chicago and INSIDE the building i checked my signal...wait for it....wait for it....


-48 DB !!!!!!!

SNAP! The Droid X has an amazing antenna! I can still make a call at work when it is at -120 it just breaks up and has a chance of cutting. But anyways on my original droid the lowest i got was -63 or so and i thought that was amazing.

-48 i thought i might be straddling a tower but since i have no idea what they look like or where to locate them i didn't check if there was one hanging from the window of where i was.

TLDR: Droid X has the best antenna and reception of any of the 40+ phones i've ever owned and equally amazing call quality. And with the extended battery i last 24 hours with extremely heavy use or 2-3 days with mild use. It is the measuring stick i will use against all future android phones!

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I know this doesn't help your reception but get Google voice and when you're at work forward your calls to your land line. this is what I did when I owned a Dinc which wouldn't get reception in my office. Of course I'm assuming you work in doors if not ..never mind.

TheAlmightyDrew said:

I am in the same boat but I still have the Fascinate. I am trying to decide between the Incredible and the X.

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That's a hard choice. I have both, but might return the X. The Inc and the X are good in different ways.

X = great call quality, big screen, a little laggy, blur is dumb

Inc = call quality not so great (sometimes it's fine), lightning smooth/never any lag, beautiful sharp screen, fits nicely in the hand and can operate with one hand.

Outlaw71 said:

Why isn't there more information about that? That's pretty important and does not jive at all with the claim that lithium batteries don't have issues with memory patterns.

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It's because it's not really true.

Well. No, that's a lie. It's true that it will slowly damage the battery if you repeatedly drain it.

But, your phone won't let you drain it. Go ahead and try. You know what happens? It goes through the shutdown procedure. You know why it doesn't just blink off? Because the phone protects the battery and there is still juice left when it does this. Even if you managed to lock the phone up so it wouldn't shut down, it would still likely turn off the phone before the battery hit absolute-zero, as there is a lot of protective circuitry built into lithium-powered devices to keep the battery happy.

Technically, lithium batteries are happiest if you keep them charged rather than constantly dropping them to shut-off, and charging them again. But the tests that have been done on consumer devices have - at least as far as I've seen - shown that the difference is very small and is only measurable over a significant lifespan of the device.