Battery Life Suddenly Draining Ridiculously

[adamman41]

Hey my battery life has been pretty good since getting the phone in November but the last few days, my use or setting haven't changed but my battery goes from 100% to dead without much use in about 3-3.5 hours. The back of the phone also feels extremely hot. This is with auto brightness, wifi, and bluetooth turned off to maximize battery life. What should I do?

 

[xliderider]

Try two things. First, if you have a spare micro sd card around, put that in your phone to see if the problem goes away. If you don't have a spare card, just take your card out and see if the problem goes away. I had a problem with my memory card that caused the same battery and heat issues, with the addition of severe lagging, freezing, and unresponsive screens and softkeys and power button. All the problems went away when another card was put in the phone. I ended up reformatting my original 16gb card.

The other thing is to do a Factory Reset to reset your Droid to default settings. something may be causing your phone to act up.

 

[global2]

Mine, too, drains before my eyes after being very reliable on one charge for 12 plus hours. I loaded the stock power tool bar on my homescreen, and turned sync and GPS off, and made the screen auto. I also bought the Batteryminder Pro in Market just to try and see what the deal is. This morning, I went from 100 to 80 percent in one hour, and the phone had only been used for a few minutes.
Now I check several times a day with either Batteryminder or the stock Running Services app, to see what is actually activated. I have noticed a few times that the Map app was listed twice as open at the same time. Very peculiar. I'm hoping the battery will adjust to the new updates -- but until then I don't go anywhere without my charger.

 

[tazdevl2000]

have you downloaded any new programs? i installed K9mail love it. but i had polling on and i killed my battery. so i turned off polling and that helped

 

[ricksievers]

I am having battery issues also since 2.2 ota. Verizon is sending one of those certified like new replacements and Im very worried about what they are sending me.

 

[underd86]

mine started doing the same thing also, just a week ago. had it since oct last year how long do the batteries last?

 

[nmelluzzo]

Check your email account. Mine stopped syncing without my knowledge and it was constantly searching for servers. Caused my battery to drain in less than 3 hours

 

[BigRedGonzo]

Mine started doing the same thing all of a sudden. Luckily I hadn't installed anything new recently, so I knew it wasn't something not playing well with others. I worked for a day or two trying to rectify the problem and had no luck. I was to the point of doing a factory reset and ended up at the VZW store looking for a cover for my daughter's phone and mentioned it to the rep. He told me to give him my old battery. I did and he handed me a brand new one, no questions asked. This fixed the problem.

ADDITIONAL INFO
I work with another engineer that used to work for a very large, very well known battery manufacturer. I asked him about this and he said that when the Lithium Ion batteries die, they aren't like the old Nickel Cadmium batteries that just get shorter and shorter on life. They just suddenly start loosing large amounts of battery life quickly and very quickly (within a few charges) get to the point where they will not hold a charge at all.

Anyway, I don't know if this helps any, but its just words on a page.

Cheers,
BigRedGonzo

 

[ricksievers]

I have 2 new batteries and still the same poor battery life since 2.2

 

[rcaine]

I've had this issue since the froyo update. I charged my phone last night before bed and left it overnight. In the morning I was showing 40% charged with nothing running. I checked the history and nothing showed up as the culprit. Cell Standby was listed as the big user of power.

I will try pulling the SD card shortly. That one I have not tried. Until then I'll have to keep the charger with me.

 

[del2484]

Just wrote this in another thread, but do a factory reset. Had the same exact problem after the Froyo update. Battery would heat up to 120 degrees while doing nothing, got only five hours with virtually no use. Now I'm back to my normal 20-23 hours.

 

[SDraconis]

To the OP, if your phone is feeling hot in additional to the low life, my guess is one of two things: either an app is running a lot and keeping you at max processor usage, or the battery has gone totally bad. The former is more likely, but keep in mind batteries hate heat and running hot all the time could've damaged the battery at this point. Take a peek at what app is eating the most battery life by looking at the Battery Usage screen.

This could also be the "50% time without signal" bug that's been going around, especially since the Froyo update. I know I've had this issue. If you click on "Cell Standby" in the Battery Usage screen and it says you're at something around 50% time without signal, try going to airplane mode for a bit and then back. You should see this number go down bit by bit to 0% and notice better battery life.

 

[mrs.duck]

How do I know if the battery's gone bad? I've tried almost every tip I've searched, and while I don't have the crazy 2-hr or 3-hr life, I don't make it through the day, which I used to before 2.2.
My usage is mostly calls, check tm, em, some surfing. gps when plugged in. no media--music, games, etc.
I got rid of ATK (which from what I read is one of the main culprits with 2.2), removed several apps i used.
I know one of the culprits was "android media" for which I got 2 alerts from watchdog's read.
Telephone calls are draining like they didn't before and my signal hasn't really changed. Now i'm having to check whether i'm 3G and/or wifi--which is a total pain, have removed syncs--which is also one that had been working well before.

From all the searches, it seems like i can't remove the amazon mp3 and no matter how many times i try to manually force stop amazon mp3, it keeps popping up again.

could having the adobe flash player installed--even if i don't use it be draining the battery?
Phone is heating up.
Now i'm wondering if it could be the battery. I have a car adaptor, plugs in the car so you can use it as a regular outlet. I plug in my motorola regular phone charger there--both the charger and the phone do get pretty hot.

do i have to start everything from scratch with factory reset--lose my apps, email acct info, contacts, etc?