Battery Life Experience - Standard battery

[Vihzel]

I'm actually very satisfied with my phone and LTE. I LOVE the extended battery. I'm at 50% and at 12.5hrs.

 

[BlueIce5249]

Looks like some people are getting lucky. Not only is the battery life terrible, the signal on the phone is even worse. I dropped 5 calls just today. Places that used to be 4 bars are now 1 if Im lucky.

 

[Somniferum]

Incidentally there's a browser BUG. When a browser window is open, and you go to settings, and tap on windows, you see a list of open windows. Each one has a red button with a - sign on it. You have to tap on that red button to remove that window...but on my phone you try to tap on it and you just bring up that window again, it does not sense your touch on the red button. Wonder if others have this problem.

Yep mine does that too. Between that bug and the lack of a home button in the default browser, I decided to go back to using Dolphin HD. I have to say, Dolphin ran fine on my OG Droid but it's a truly a thing of beauty on the Bionic!

 

[mills23]

Mine shows "standby" as using the most battery.

 

[BlueIce5249]

Mine shows "standby" as using the most battery.

Mines phone Idle and standy. I cant freaking use anything else.

 

[murth]

wondering if "cell standby" is the phone having to look for the 3g towers, it seems post Irene a lot of people around me on multiple networks complain that the 3g has gotten worse here.

though I will note that unless I have heavy video use my extended battery is getting 9-12 hours of use

 

[bbtkd]

I'm actually very satisfied with my phone and LTE. I LOVE the extended battery. I'm at 50% and at 12.5hrs.

I agree. I was worried that my extended battery wouldn't hold up at work where LTE is non-existent and CDMA/3G is marginal. I figured it would run the battery dead quickly. My OG droid would be 70% or less by 2:00. My Bionic was at 80% at 2:00 and was still at 70% at 4:00 after it had been on for over 10 hours - including having Wifi on. Now after 16 hours it is 60%.

 

[mills23]

I have my data off cause I use wifi most of the time. I also use the verizon network extender for my talk coverage.

 

[rushmore]

Did you check what was sucking up the battery? I know that one of my apps (a compass) was sucking up the battery for some reason. I decided to uninstall it.

Good point there.

Settings for apps can also kill the device quick (especially news and social apps). Live wallpapers and social or news widgets are a killa' as well.

 

[Jerm13]

Trying to figure out if I have a slight defect with my phone.

I am getting decent battery life, but not great.

Currently I am at less than 50% (43% according to circle widget) with just over 4 hours of use. Screen on time of 1 hr 40 minutes.
This is with 4G disabled and a solid 3G signal.

What gets me a little concerned is in battery use, Bluetooth is tied for biggest drain.
I like to keep bluetooth enabled so I can sync to my car or headset at a moment's notice, but I have not actually used it for anything today. I always kept it enabled on my OG droid with no significant drain, and I've seen a few people post their battery usage on the Bionic showing the same.
Why is Bluetooth so huge if it's not being used?

I know I can turn it off, but I don't think I should have to.
Is anyone else seeing similar bluetooth behavior?

 

[dwillis]

This battery is HORRID. I have to charge my phone 4-5 times a day!!!!!!!!!! I found if I turn LTE off it helps a little bit, but I shouldnt have to carry my charger around with my phone everywhere.

Any suggestions on how to make it better?

I had the exact same problem from Thursday morning when I got the phone through Sunday night. Would get 5-8 hours before it was dead and I was consciously making an effort not to even use the thing on Saturday and Sunday except for a few text messages and extremely brief phone calls.

Was ready to return or exchange it, so Sunday night I did a factory reset and wiped the cache as well. Charged it while i slept and it ended up lasting me the whole day and night on Monday with moderate use (unplugged at 9am, was down to about 30% when I plugged it back in at 1am). This was with LTE and Bluetooth on the entire day, and wifi on and connected for about 6 hours.

Not sure if it just needed a break-in period, a reset, or if I had installed a battery draining app (slowly reinstalling the regular apps I was using on my X), but it's astonishingly better now. So the factory reset and cache wipe may be worth a try (you'd want to do that anyway to exchange it).

 

[thatguy188]

Something has to be wrong with your battery or something. I just took the following screenshot, and I have 49% battery left. I don't have the extended battery, only the normal one.

I have TweetDeck & Facebook running, and have been doing a good share of playing a game (Im addicted to Restaurant Story, lol). GPS was also running for a little bit. I am on 3G only (since I am at home) and using Wi-Fi 80% of those 11 hours. 6 of those hours I was however sleeping.

other things I've done:

Watch ~20 minutes of NFL Mobile, Live game last night Pats vs Dolphins
~10 minutes of phone calls
~10 texts

Im sure I did more, just can't remember now

 

[mills23]

I've got a exchange coming today. We'll see how that goes.

 

[YankeeDudeL]

Trying to figure out if I have a slight defect with my phone.

I am getting decent battery life, but not great.

Currently I am at less than 50% (43% according to circle widget) with just over 4 hours of use. Screen on time of 1 hr 40 minutes.
This is with 4G disabled and a solid 3G signal.

What gets me a little concerned is in battery use, Bluetooth is tied for biggest drain.
I like to keep bluetooth enabled so I can sync to my car or headset at a moment's notice, but I have not actually used it for anything today. I always kept it enabled on my OG droid with no significant drain, and I've seen a few people post their battery usage on the Bionic showing the same.
Why is Bluetooth so huge if it's not being used?

I know I can turn it off, but I don't think I should have to.
Is anyone else seeing similar bluetooth behavior?

That Bluetooth is def going to affect your battery life. Turning it on and off is as simple as placing the toggle widget on your homescreen. When bluetooth is turned on but not connecting to anything, it's constantly seeking out a signal to connect with, which drains the battery significantly. Same thing goes for WiFi.

 

[dixonba]

Guys,

dont confuse your "screen on" time with your standby time. If you sit and mash the screen and dont put it down you can expect to get somewhere in the lines of 3.236 hours like the following article states (find the web browsing battery life chart).

AnandTech - Motorola Droid Bionic - A Quick Preview

If you have the extended, then add 60% to that.

You cant just say "oh i got ten hours of battery life" without stating your usage. Even at that people have different views of moderate to like usage. People like the OP see that and think their phone is defective. If you can browse the web for 3.236 hours or something similar then your phone is fine. If your standby time stinks, then you probably have an app that is preventing the phone from sleeping or doing too much syncing.

 

[husker_fan]

I think it all depends on usage. I've used mine fairly heavy and only gotten about 4 hours and down to 40%. I was in a 4g fringe area and only made 2 very short calls and after 6 hours was down to 30%. As we speak I'm at 19hrs 38min with 70%, all 3g, only used for calls and texts. I limited my usage just to see what the phone consumes mostly sitting there. I can't really complain. Use it for a phone it seems like it'd last a few days pretty easy, use apps and the browser and other power hungry things and it'll eat it quick. I guess that's the price to be paid for a laptop in your pocket. BTW, this is my first smartphone, so go easy on me lol.

 

[Bogie]

OK, so far I've gotten 12 hours and down to 22% on the standard battery with light usage and inside my office which has terrible cell signal so the phone is often searching for a signal.

I've been messing around with the phone a bit, reading some forums, and adding new apps. Inside the office I am on WiFi but the biggest power consumer is cell standy at 30% with WiFi coming in at 28%

Tomorrow I am going to try the same thing but run some cloud music (Google Music) for a few hours and see where I am at about the same time of day. Will update in this post.

I have to say I am impressed though because my OG Droid usually managed to drain itself down to about 10% in 8 hours in my office.

 

[jbdan]

I'm impressed as well with the stock battery. The first day or 2 scared me. After several charge cycles the battery life has increased a great deal. I'm on 9 hours so far today with 52% left. 45 min of phone calls, 3 emails, 25 texts, 30 min of surfing, emails and weather syncing every hour. My average usage for the day which I consider light to medium usage.

The first 2 days I could barely pull 8 hours with this same kind of usage

 

[jbdan]

My battery life has been very well on stock battery. It took a few days through many charge cycles, but dang it's great now! On 4G 24/7

 

[welbinator]

we can finally use live wallpapers now!!

is it sad that that's what I'm most excited for with this improved battery life over my droid inc?

 

[jbdan]

we can finally use live wallpapers now!!

is it sad that that's what I'm most excited for with this improved battery life over my droid inc?

Not at all I think it's great too and the phone acts as if it's not a live paper at all!

 

[proxas]

Using the standard battery. I disabled the 4g chip in the networks settings. I use wifi all day. Stream Pandora for about an hour. Use text messaging and phone calls throughout the day. I am currently at 15% battery life on battery for 26 hours. I do expect to get atleast another 2 hours out of the battery. With the CDMA/LTE setting ON, my battery will last between 14-16 hours. As much as I use wifi, and do not really need 4g at the moment better to leave the 4g chip off and get a days worth of charge of it.

 

[ChelsNicole]

I'm getting really frustrated with my battery. Its been running on the battery for 4 hours. I've been on 4g the whole time with good service (2-3 bars). I'm now at 60% with these stats:

Standby: 45%
Idle: 40%
Display: 8%
OS: 7%

I've barely done anything with it. Checked Facebook and this thread, thats about it.
Can someone give me some advice? I really don't want to return the phone. Would a new battery help? Extended battery?

 

[Groid]

My battery life has improved over time as I have let it drain completely or almost completely before recharging. With light/moderate use on wifi with data turned off, I can go all day easily.

 

[HotDawg]

I'm getting really frustrated with my battery. Its been running on the battery for 4 hours. I've been on 4g the whole time with good service (2-3 bars). I'm now at 60% with these stats:

Standby: 45%
Idle: 40%
Display: 8%
OS: 7%

I've barely done anything with it. Checked Facebook and this thread, thats about it.
Can someone give me some advice? I really don't want to return the phone. Would a new battery help? Extended battery?

How long have you had it? For the first couple of days my battery life sucked and the charge was painfully slow. Now, I'm at full charge in a couple of hours and standard battery lasts me all day. I didn't drain it or do any "conditioning".