Battery life tips (30% after 40 hrs unplugged)

[mahers]

Did you try calibrating your battery like some of the posters have said? Fully charge it, use it until your battery drains and shuts itself off....Charge her up and repeat. People tend to see increased battery life if they do this.

Tried this when I got the phone. Didn't see any improvement.

Depending on your signal and how much web browsing you were doing, that doesn't sound that abnormal.

Doubt a battery will help much.

If you are in an area where you can stay on wifi much of the day, that'd help some.

Well, only time will tell. Hopefully, they don't give me a hard time or tell me I need a task killer. I will give an update afterwards.

 

[bosox2k1]

If his battery isn't trained, then that is exactly what you do. Where did I say to do this each and every time? Please tell me.

 

[zane!]

Did you try calibrating your battery like some of the posters have said? Fully charge it, use it until your battery drains and shuts itself off....Charge her up and repeat. People tend to see increased battery life if they do this.

Yes, this definitely helps.

Don't advise people to do that. It's horrible on Lithium Ion batteries. You should do it once in a while (maybe twice per month) to make sure its memory stays on track, but draining the battery completely should not be a practice you get into the habit of.

How to prolong lithium-based batteries

Sorry, but you are incorrect and the source you quoted is bunk when it comes to cell phone and laptop applications. After a lot of testing we have seen the best performance out of li-po packs by sticking to full discharges/full charges through the phone whenever possible (or as close to full discharges as possible- at least until the "charge your phone" indication appears. The occasional full discharge until the phone shuts off is still helpful).

The phone's firmware will not allow a 100% battery dump and stops it at a safe level so the risk of battery damage is non-existent. When the phone says the battery is at "0%" it still has a safe voltage in order to prevent any battery damage. Android also prevents the phone from running if the voltage drops too low so there is really no risk as long as the battery stays in the phone. Now if you are using a li-po battery on a stand-alone charger that is another story entirely.



My battery life tips (IMO, YMMV, etc):

EDIT: I should add that I get 16-18 hours of use out of this phone with moderate texting, calling, internet, youtube, Pandora, various games and light camera use. If I'm busy and data use is light I can go up to 36 hours.

-The google talk idea mentioned earlier is a good tip. Turn off auto-log-in in any apps you don't use.

-DO NOT run a 3rd party Task Killer or Task Manager! This phone does a good job of killing apps on its own and most people get carried away killing apps, causing more power and data to be expended when the phone needs to start the app up from nothing.

-Run the toggle switches (or power manager) and keep GPS, wifi and bluetooth off unless you're actually using them.

-Keep the battery manager on smart mode and set the non-peak hours accurately to your schedule. Run 15 min data timeout on off-peak hours.

-Keeping the screen brightness on auto works well, you will save more battery by turning it to the minimum setting but I'll take some usability as a compromise.

-Keeping the Background data running seems to work more efficiently than syncing each app manually.

-Running your email on a fetch schedule instead of push saves some battery (I use yahoo so I have to run fetch anyway)

-Keep an eye on how the system is running using the "Testing" Menu (accessed by *#*#4636#*#*), "Applications> Running Services", and "Battery Manager> Battery Use". If a particular app or widget uses a ton of resources, try to find a lighter program to use (e.g. the Moto Weather widget is a lot lighter on the system than "The Weather Channel" widget.)

-I should also add that I'm running launcherpro, though I'm not sure if it's improving my battery life at all...

 

[TheXFactor]

I ran the X today as I normally would. 12 hours of use I am down to 30%. All this battery saver stuff is great and all, but that's not how I intend to use my phone. I use the living crap out of the X today. Would have like to seen a few more hours before dipping down into the 30% range.

So, those of you who can squeeze 30-40 hours out of the battery, more power to you. Not happening here.....

 

[Mike20878]

On the power control widget, what does the control second from the right (next to the screen brightness) do? It isn't one of the other toggle widgets so I can't tell what I'm doing when I shut it off.

So I seriously shouldn't use a task killer? I'm always leaving stuff running because most apps don't have an exit/close function. I don't usually remember to close them either way, hitting the home key to go back.

I'm going to try figuring out how to stop things like Google Talk and Skype from running automatically. Is that in their respective settings?

I'm running an app I found called AppBrain to sync my apps. It's pretty cool as it lets me know when there are updates to my apps.

 

[izomiac]

Sorry, but you are incorrect and the source you quoted is bunk when it comes to cell phone and laptop applications.

Interesting, do you have another source? That source has been spot-on when it comes to my experience with laptops and small devices.

I think that you're forgetting that the lithium ion battery has its own control circuit independent of Android. This circuit draws power, so if you let your battery stay at "0%" for very long the voltage drops to a point that some of the cells might start permanently reversing polarity, which reduces the maximum voltage when it's recharged. The circuit also prevents overcharging, so the battery doesn't explode (the OMAP will trickle charge at this point, so the power drained by the control circuit is replenished). Android has its own safeguards, as do laptops. Laptops will even stop charging at 80% or even 60% if you enable "battery saver" type programs supplied by the OEM.

Android doesn't actually have a way of measuring charge level on a lithium ion battery. It uses voltage as a proxy so that it can extrapolate. Since the voltage over time doesn't drop linearly from the maximum voltage, this is a bit tricky, and it helps to do a full charge/discharge/immediate recharge to calibrate this function once in a while. But for day-to-day operation it's much better to keep the average charge level around 40% - 70%. Or at least that's the theory that's been experimentally verified, and it's my practical experience with 3 years of laptop support with identical batteries but differing usage patterns, plus micromanaging my personal devices over the years.

My personal strategy is to recharge when my phone gets to 50%, and stop charging ASAP upon reaching 100%. But with my smartphone I've come close enough to depleting it during the day that I'm just letting it charge to 100% every night. I'm still playing with Android, but here's what I've found to work so far: 1) Turn off what you don't use and minimize brightness. 2) See if you have the GPS bug. 3) See if you have the corporate directory bug. 4) Keep your auto-updating applications to a minimum. 5) Be conservative with the widgets. 6) Stay in a place with good signal (the difference is shocking). 7) Possibly prefer WiFi over 3G if it's constantly available (I'm testing that now).

 

[PeaceMaker]

Interesting, do you have another source? That source has been spot-on when it comes to my experience with laptops and small devices.

I think that you're forgetting that the lithium ion battery has its own control circuit independent of Android. This circuit draws power, so if you let your battery stay at "0%" for very long the voltage drops to a point that some of the cells might start permanently reversing polarity, which reduces the maximum voltage when it's recharged. The circuit also prevents overcharging, so the battery doesn't explode (the OMAP will trickle charge at this point, so the power drained by the control circuit is replenished). Android has its own safeguards, as do laptops. Laptops will even stop charging at 80% or even 60% if you enable "battery saver" type programs supplied by the OEM.

Android doesn't actually have a way of measuring charge level on a lithium ion battery. It uses voltage as a proxy so that it can extrapolate. Since the voltage over time doesn't drop linearly from the maximum voltage, this is a bit tricky, and it helps to do a full charge/discharge/immediate recharge to calibrate this function once in a while. But for day-to-day operation it's much better to keep the average charge level around 40% - 70%. Or at least that's the theory that's been experimentally verified, and it's my practical experience with 3 years of laptop support with identical batteries but differing usage patterns, plus micromanaging my personal devices over the years.

My personal strategy is to recharge when my phone gets to 50%, and stop charging ASAP upon reaching 100%. But with my smartphone I've come close enough to depleting it during the day that I'm just letting it charge to 100% every night. I'm still playing with Android, but here's what I've found to work so far: 1) Turn off what you don't use and minimize brightness. 2) See if you have the GPS bug. 3) See if you have the corporate directory bug. 4) Keep your auto-updating applications to a minimum. 5) Be conservative with the widgets. 6) Stay in a place with good signal (the difference is shocking). 7) Possibly prefer WiFi over 3G if it's constantly available (I'm testing that now).

What is the GPS bug?? i may have that... is that trouble acquiring satellites?

 

[izomiac]

The GPS bug is where your phone won't stop "running"after any application uses GPS. In other words, GPS will go off but the phone won't switch to a power saving state afterwards.

The corporate directory bug is where you haven't setup corporate directory yet but it's in the list of items your phone searches. What happens is that when you use the global search the corporate directory service will use 100% CPU continuously. The phone becomes laggy and has atrocious battery life.

Search the forums for more details.

 

[PeaceMaker]

The GPS bug is where your phone won't stop "running"after any application uses GPS. In other words, GPS will go off but the phone won't switch to a power saving state afterwards.

The corporate directory bug is where you haven't setup corporate directory yet but it's in the list of items your phone searches. What happens is that when you use the global search the corporate directory service will use 100% CPU continuously. The phone becomes laggy and has atrocious battery life.

Search the forums for more details.

Thanks. I found more info on the GPS bug but not the corporate directory bug... Can you link me or tell me how to test my phone for this issue?

Thanks!!!

 

[iamfiretruck]

As this is my first real android I am keeping (took a big step and gave up my crackberry finally.. tried to almost 4 times with out vail)

I CANNOT put this thing down. I murder the battery in hours... Its ok though, wall charger, computer charger (not to really increase my charge but stop it from draining), car charge.

I wish you could adjust auto brightness... It seems max brightness is 80% and min brightness is 30%...

I would like it to be 0% brightness unless I cant see the screen direct sunlight then 90% brightness. When video play back or pluggged in 100% brightness unless its dark...

Seems auto brightness is a little slow...

 

[iamfiretruck]

The GPS bug is where your phone won't stop "running"after any application uses GPS. In other words, GPS will go off but the phone won't switch to a power saving state afterwards.

The corporate directory bug is where you haven't setup corporate directory yet but it's in the list of items your phone searches. What happens is that when you use the global search the corporate directory service will use 100% CPU continuously. The phone becomes laggy and has atrocious battery life.

Search the forums for more details.

APP KILLER....

When ive been using the phone doing all kinds of things, riding in a friends car, taking the bus, or on a plane and im done playing i shut kill everything, lock, pocket, game set match point.

I use a system info (root needed, for system info, but there are so many non root needed) to set excludes and kill things. It catagorizes by system, excluded, active, background apps, innactive. I usually run it on active as my excluded list is a tight night.

 

[izomiac]

Thanks. I found more info on the GPS bug but not the corporate directory bug... Can you link me or tell me how to test my phone for this issue?

Thanks!!!

Well, I figured more people had experienced it, but maybe it was just my phone. Basically, I opened the app to see what it was, but never set it up. From then on, when I used the global search, the Corporate Directory service would get stuck in an infinite loop and use 100% CPU until I killed it or rebooted. Obviously this made the phone very slow and my battery life was pathetic. The solution was to simply remove it from the list of searchable items (Settings -> Search -> Searchable Items).

If you want to test for it, use a taskmanager that shows CPU usage. I use an adware application called Android System Info. That program is a bit glitchy though, it'll show Launcher Pro as using 100% CPU twice, so verify that the total CPU load corroborates the information. You could probably also use Spare Parts to check if Corporate Directory is being a CPU hog on your device.

 

[ezflip]

I just had to stop here and say that I did the battery calibration Wednesday night (its now Friday) I let my battery drain until the phone shut off. Plugged it in at about midnight (with the phone still off) and unplugged it and turned it on at 5:30 thursday morning. I am now at

1d 6h 29m since unplugged

cell standby - 45%
Display - 38%
Phone idle - 15%
Voice calls - 3%
Camera - 2%

Battery is at 60%

This is with my normal usage which use to leave me at about 15% from 7am until 11pm. My normal usage is several (close to 75) emails a day, read and replied too. A few phone calls, about 1-2 hours of texting a day, and light web usage (usually checking bank account and a forum or two)

Im downright impressed with how just letting the battery drain one time made my battery last at least 4x as long.

 

[kheovnien]

ezflip, can u post the display time?

 

[Guardsix]

Bad experience last night. First time this has happened and I got my DX on 7/15.

I just finished fully charging my DX to 100%. Had double checked that no GPS was running.

I put the DX to sleep and into silent mode at 9:45 pm.

I attempted to turn it back on at 9:00 am. Dead! Wouldn't do anything.

Put it on the charger and it said the battery was 0% and charging.

What happened?

 

[novemberwhiskey]

Anyone that is getting outstanding battery life (12 hrs +) is just not using the phone that much. If your display is using less than 85% of your battery life, you aren't using your phone too much. It is just idling there.

I think Moto's official stats are something like 8 hrs of web browsing. That is perfectly in line with the battery life I get.

Everytime I see someone with 40 hrs of battery life, they have their display using less than 60% of the battery. That means that their display is rarely on, and the phone is idling most of the time.

The display is what eats most of the battery usually (save GPS, etc.)

 

[rjoudrey]

Guys, there are so many variables affecting battery life they are probably too numerous to mention. Signal strength, usage, back-light, programs running in background, human perception, charging regiment, navigation vs social networking, one could go on and on. I am convinced the only way to know if you are getting bad results is to live side by side with another and do EXACTLY the same thing they are doing with their Droid.

 

[exempli_gratia]

Guys, there are so many variables affecting battery life they are probably too numerous to mention. Signal strength, usage, back-light, programs running in background, human perception, charging regiment, navigation vs social networking, one could go on and on. I am convinced the only way to know if you are getting bad results is to live side by side with another and do EXACTLY the same thing they are doing with their Droid.

You can remove many of the variables:

• Switch to Airplane mode.
• Switch screen to 100%.
• Set screen to never shut-off.
• Run the clock/timer (so something's happening).
• Start with 100% battery. Go till phone dies.

I get about 6 hours this way on my X's full battery.

I think this is actually a good comparison. Would like to know what others get.

P.S. This is very close to what I got from my EVO (may be 10% more).

 

[rjoudrey]

You can remove many of the variables:

• Switch to Airplane mode.
• Switch screen to 100%.
• Set screen to never shut-off.
• Run the clock/timer (so something's happening).
• Start with 100% battery. Go till phone dies.

I get about 6 hours this way on my X's full battery.

I think this is actually a good comparison. Would like to know what others get.

P.S. This is very close to what I got from my EVO (may be 10% more).

I would say this method would only test your battery from one phone to another or a DX to a DX. One type of phone may have much better battery optimization and this would only be known with various operations being performed.

 

[exempli_gratia]

You can remove many of the variables:
...
I get about 6 hours this way on my X's full battery.

... this is actually a good comparison. Would like to know what others get.

P.S. This is very close to what I got from my EVO (may be 10% more).

I would say this method would only test your battery from one phone to another or a DX to a DX. One type of phone may have much better battery optimization and this would only be known with various operations being performed.

That's really the point, isn't it? To compare DX's (and similar phones) to see which model is more efficient and which phone/battery is defective?

 

[rjoudrey]

Yes I agree this is a good method for testing your battery, but not to compare one phone to another.

 

[backwater]

On the power control widget, what does the control second from the right (next to the screen brightness) do? It isn't one of the other toggle widgets so I can't tell what I'm doing when I shut it off.

it's for data syncing, i guess like facebook and gmail and stuff

 

[rjoudrey]

Bad experience last night. First time this has happened and I got my DX on 7/15.

I just finished fully charging my DX to 100%. Had double checked that no GPS was running.

I put the DX to sleep and into silent mode at 9:45 pm.

I attempted to turn it back on at 9:00 am. Dead! Wouldn't do anything.

Put it on the charger and it said the battery was 0% and charging.

What happened?

This is where a task killer may come in handy.

 

[exempli_gratia]

Yes I agree this is a good method for testing your battery, but not to compare one phone to another.

Seems a fair comparison of the screen+cpu/mem between phones (or at least very close to fair). No diff in reception quality or usage patterns. Just full screen, full time, with minimal processing. See which wins.

The big hitters are screen, radios, cpu/mem. This isolates the foremost, and doesn't get tied down in the anecdotal.

 

[darkcyber]

Just got my Droid X last week and love the thing, but the battery life is not stellar, by any means. I had a Droid before this and I could go forever on a single charge.

I know all of the arguments about the much larger screen sucks up the juice, faster processor...etc. turn this off, turn this down, dim the screen to where you can't see it...etc. Come on people, what is the use of having a SMART Phone if you can't use the dang thing to do the fun things SMART phones are suppose to do.

ALL the blame on the X lies strictly with Motorola. Instead of trying to make a skinny phone, they should have concentrated more of making it have a larger battery. That could have been done by making the phone thicker or creating a larger square of a battery. Motorola knew the large power requirements this phone would need and should have planned better for it. That phone SHOULD NOT have shipped with anything less than a 2000 mAh battery and that would be a bare minimum, 2500 mAh would be more like it.

I am sorry, but disabling everything on your Smart phone to make it through a day and still have some battery life, simply gives you a DUMB phone. Why waste all of that money, just grab and old bell corded telephone and drag it around with you all day, about the same difference.