The Droid's battery life is very good. With constant screen use you can get several hours out of it, depending on what you are doing. I could imagine it easily going several days with rare use, but I wouldn't know about that since I use it a lot and charge it every day.
I sometimes think we're all talking about completely different phones. For every "great battery life" comment I read, there's someone else like me that's completely fed up with the way the Droid eats the battery... and I have yet to figure out why. Mine will consistently drain 40-50% of a fully-charged battery in only 4 hours - and that's just sitting there with ZERO use! I've tried everything I can think of: I've tested a number of different ROMs, different kernels, and different speeds. I've even tried under-clocking, but still the same disappointing results. I have stopped every user app that I can, and turned off almost every type of background notification. I do connect to Exchange email (using Touchdown), but turning push email completely off doesn't help. The only widgets I'm running are Beautiful Smaller Home, Genie (aka News & Weather), Power Manager, and Pure Calendar. And heaven forbid I actually try to *use* the phone! 30-45 minutes of Web browsing via 3G at fairly low screen brightness, leaves me with only 10-20% left. Just playing a basic Solitaire game for an hour does the same thing. Thinking it might be the battery itself, I bought a new replacement -- but it drains just as quickly. I'm at a loss to know what else to try. Looking at battery use stats in Settings or Spare Parts says that it's not any one app sucking the battery dry; the vast majority shows as normal cell and phone standby. So if anyone has suggestions, I'd be very grateful to hear them. I love this phone, but I have never owned any portable device with worse battery life. What could be wrong?
I have experienced both great battery life, and horrible battery life on my droid. Some days, after 18 hours of running on battery, including 80 minutes of talk via bluetooth headset, reading the news, push email on both personal email and work exchange email totaling about 200 messages. I'm still left with a 70% charge. other days, with the phone in standby sitting on a desk, after 2 hours it's down to 60%. I haven't been able to figure it out. I've done tests where for 10 days, I've done the exact same activity on the phone, and the results are still inconclusive. Some days great battery life, others horrible. this morning I unplugged the phone when I woke up, left it on my desk for 2 hours, went to check how its doing and it went from 100% down to 60% doing absolutely nothing but sitting idle. I then charged it up again, and unplugged it. now over the past 8 hours, I've been talking on the phone for 43 minutes via bluetooth headset, playing mp3's via the music app for 3 hours, watched 32 minutes of youtube videos, read the news (where news, and the genie news), checked the weather forecast, read a dozen email messages, replied to 5 text messages, and looked up a few addresses with google maps. it is showing still 70% charged. doesn't make any sense at all. I give up trying to figure out the battery life on this thing.
I'm currently doing great with battery life; I get about 13-15 hours between charges. To me, it seems like a no-brainer: don't turn the brightness up on the screen. No matter what I do in a day, play a game, go on the web, make calls or text, the screen is always 40-50% of my day's usage. I turn the brightness all the way down, except for when I go outside and get into my car. Screen management seems to me like the #1 way to solve battery life. Also, turn off wifi and gps if they're not being used.
just to add for someone that might want a comparison, I have a stock droid with no additional widgets and only have Handcent & Skype installed...I use wiFi while I am home and I can get 2-3 days of idle time but always at least a day + with moderate usage. my guess is that there is some widget that is killing ya. i had a news update for MLB and it knocked me down to under a day of idle time. i know it will be painful but i would uninstall everything and get it back to stock to see if you increase your batt-life
With limited use, I've had mine last 25 hours, depleting about 50% of its charge. Under my typical usage habits, though, a day of use usually results in about 30% battery life by days end. Under heavy usage, or in an area where I'm not getting the best signal, I can probably do the battery in, in about 6 hours. As some others have said, there are days where it fluctuates. On a given day, I can get to mid-day at about 70-80% charge, and other days, I'll be down to 50%, with no real change in habit. In my experience, display, so far as the Droid is concerned, is the leading reason for battery drain (which I don't mind, since I bought the phone to enjoy the display)...but thats usually if I'm not using data or making calls, both of which outdo the display for battery drain. All in all, I'm happy with the battery life, and take into consideration the fact that as a smartphone, its going to be burdened with lesser battery life, given I'm always toying around with something.
LOL i gave up awhile back. I have a charger at home one at work and a car charger. My phone has been unplugged for 2 hrs 49 mins and its at 80%. I did however get 14 hrs out of it the other day. It sat on my desk at work for 7.5 hrs straight without turning it on at all So..... if you use it you lose it.....
I read this in an article and it's made a HUGE difference in my battery life: Change your wi-fi settings to "sleep/never." (SETTINGS/WIRELESS AND NETWORKS/WI-FI SETTINGS then use the menu key to get ADVANCED/WI-FI SLEEP POLICY). I'm sitting in an office in a building with wi-fi, and when I use Wi-Fi analyzer, I can see that the wi-fi signal fluctuates wildly, sometimes being strong, sometimes not being present, all within one minute. By setting wi-fi to sleep/never, it prevents the phone from turning wi-fi off and on when the signal is weak, but more important, keeps the wi-fi on when you put the phone to sleep by turning off the screen. It doesn't have to re-scan for wi-fi networks, and re-log-in all the time.
I usually charge mine for a bit in the afternoon while at my desk. I find that doing that ensures I won't have an issue in the evening. If I don't the phone ususally starts having an issue and shutting down around 9PM. Either way it's not that big of an issue I just know how it works and deal with it.
I only have wifi on when needed that being said, I do not see this setting under settings > wireless & networks > wi-fi settings.. I see no "advanced" section??
If you haven't already found the "Advanced" setting then Go to Settings > Wireless & networks > Wi-fi settings > then hit your menu button and there will be an option for "Scan" and "Advanced". Hope that helped
thanks.. I totally missed the "then use the menu key" in his post... my bad but I decided to pass as this makes little sense to me to improve battery in any way "keeps the wi-fi on when you put the phone to sleep by turning off the screen." as clearly, leaving wifi active when phone is asleep means it is just wasting battery power going out and pinging the signal constantly.. how could that possibly help battery and why would you want to have that done while the phone is asleep? say you did not use it for 2 hours, yet for 2 hours, it is staying attached to your wifi for... what reason? seems the power needed to "re-scan for wi-fi networks, and re-log-in all the time" is not only minimal, it is only needed if your going to use the phone. by forcing it to not sleep, it stays on a pings the network constantly to find and keep active wifi channels or stay attached to a channel.. how can that not kill battery?
Not everyone uses their Droids the same way. That and there are other factors (such as coverage) that can affect battery life. I leave GPS, WiFi and BT on and see negligible impact from these. The only email account I have is an Exchange account and email is pushed as it is received, FWIW. Dunno. As I said, mine is always on and the effect on battery life is negligible. You're probably missing a piece of the equation is my guess. You could try it out and see for yourself.
My 2 cents I'm running stock 2.1 with gps and wifi left on all the time. The only widgets I run are Astrid task manager and the weather app that came with 2.1 On average my phone easily last from 7am-5pm with over 75% still to go. Last Friday was a bit of a test because it went from 7am until about 2am the next morning with only a quick 15 min on the usb charger in the middle of all that. Had some heavy use in the evening helping navigate with GPS, texting, and cheat at scrabble using a website. it didn't start showing red on the indicator sometime after 1am. Battery life has never really been an issue for me with this phone, I am really happy with it. As of right now it has been off the charger for about 6 hours and is still at 90%
Battery life on my Droid is completely random. Some days it'll last forever, others it seems like it died even before I started using it. I keep a very minimal amount of applications inistalled and only a couple running in the background. *shrug*
Go to settings>about phone>battery use>press cell standby. Some people have been seeing their "Time without a signal" (I think that is the phrase) at around 50%. This means your phone has been constantly searching for a signal and will lead to a lot of battery usage. If it does not show "time without a signal" in cell standby, then you have not lost any signal since your last charge. To fix this, hold the on/off button, put your phone in airplane mode for 10 seconds then switch airplane mode back off. This should help to resolve the signal loss but it is only a temporary fix. You will have to do this anytime you see your time without signal around 50%. This will also help if you are having issues with bluetooth, wifi, or 3G coverage. Hope this helps someone!
Mine shows: Display 38% Cell Standby - 28% Phone Idle 18% Android System 7% The rest are below 3%. Are these normal numbers?
Makes sense. Today, since the last charge 4+ hours ago, mine is at 65%. I'm actually not too surprised, given the area, though it does say a lot.
I usually have to charge my phone daily, but that's because I play Final Fantasy 3 on it quite often, while I am a text freak.... I hardly think the battery dies "too fast", though. It seems to last as much as I'd expect with how much I use it.
Like I said, ADVANCED is under the Menu button. Hit the MENU button and you'll see "SCAN" and "ADVANCED." EDIT: Whoops! Too late.
