Help Droid 2 Battery Life Issues

[NightGriffin]

My phone died on me yesterday after being off the charger for about 8 hours. Granted, I was using it pretty heavily for about an hour and a half while I was waiting to meet with someone. But I still want it to perform better if that's possible.

Those of you who are getting really good battery life (12+ hours), how long does it take to charge your phone. Someone mentioned before that they thought it was weird that their phone takes less than an hour to charge, and I'm wondering if the phone just isn't accurately reading the battery level and cuts off the charger before its fully charged.

Hello redpanda. It will usually take me around an hour to two to charge my phone fully. The key to getting good battery life is to also look at which widgets and apps you have running on a consistent basis and keep everything organized. I did a factory reset which does erase everything but I got all my stuff back from Back Up assistant, and the Google sync. I don't know how honestly or where it saves because it was all automatic but after logging back into my Gmail account when activating the phone all my apps, contacts, background were reinstalled no worries. After the reset I have been getting fabulous battery life. I charged my phone last night because it was dying and right now after being asleep all night it is at 80% and has been unplugged for almost 13 hours so that is pretty good idle saving.

 

[browntown]

Good to hear your battery is doing better Mister. I can HAPPILY say that after a factory reset my battery is doing 100x better then before.....
.....So I am very happy, the factory reset did wonders.. I'll keep checking in of course and seeing how other people are doing.

- NG

I did a factory reset on my gf's phone last night. Let's see how it does today. She's been having terrible battery issues. If this doesn't work, we'll take it back to the store.

 

[Lightnspirit]

I'll get a few days on light use, like just text msg few phone calls and FB, if I surf the web and download and or watch some video's I'll nomally get a full day or alittle less. I'm comming from a Storm1 witch the battery was fail from day one, so I am happy with the battery life my D2 has.

 

[NightGriffin]

I'll get a few days on light use, like just text msg few phone calls and FB, if I surf the web and download and or watch some video's I'll nomally get a full day or alittle less. I'm comming from a Storm1 witch the battery was fail from day one, so I am happy with the battery life my D2 has.

Yeah I also came from a Storm 1 and it was a horrible phone, but after doing the reset my D2 has really been getting some solid battery life.

 

[C011IN5]

Went full to dead today in about 13 hours which isnt to bad. Use was pretty average I would say, some texting, web browsing, and using the music player. I also use quite a few widgets.

I refuse not to use the widgets. Thats what they are there for and if I didn't use them and kept everything as conservative as possible then whats the point in owning the phone. If I wanted to keep things basic id go buy an iPhone.

 

[jradicle11]

Lost about 65% over a 4 hour period. I was also streaming Pandora the whole time full volume and texting and playing some poker.

 

[NightGriffin]

Good to hear that peoples batteries are starting to hold up. The factory reset definitely set mine straight because I have been getting wonderful battery life and making it a full day without charge.

So for anyone coming into the thread late and is having horrible battery problems try a Factory Reset by going to Setting > Privacy > Factory Reset. It will erase all of your data but once you log back into your Gmail account and reactivate the phone everything will be restore to normal.

 

[jradicle11]

I need to train my battery, I guess. With school plus extracurriculars, my phone is going to need to last from 7am-8pm. It definitely isn't making it that far now.

 

[abhoward9]

Good to hear that peoples batteries are starting to hold up. The factory reset definitely set mine straight because I have been getting wonderful battery life and making it a full day without charge.

So for anyone coming into the thread late and is having horrible battery problems try a Factory Reset by going to Setting > Privacy > Factory Reset. It will erase all of your data but once you log back into your Gmail account and reactivate the phone everything will be restore to normal.

Hi, I'm really close to doing a factory reset. my battery yesterday was pretty terrible, display was on for a total of 5 hours i think, some of that was on wifi but i turned the wifi off when i wasnt using it. turned off a bunch of widgets and put it on max battery saver so i'll see if that has any effect today. although took it off the charger 2 hours ago and the display was on for 40 of that and it just went to ~80%.

My question is: is there a way to backup my apps to my computer? when you say "restored to normal" does that mean my apps will come back? or just my contacts? there is an app that i got from a friend that i would like to keep.

 

[woodguy]

So I too just purchased Droid 2. When I first got it out of the box, configured my email accounts, and played around, my battery was dead in 5 hours. I downloaded the APK program but removed since I heard that also might cause battery drain.

I had an issue with too many contacts syncing so I had to do a factory reset, which was recommended here...I actually had to do this 3 times because of issues, so I know that I've done this.

I have my Droid docked to media dock next to bed in the evening. I have unplugged my Droid today @ 630am. As of right now, 930, 3 hours later, I'm at 80% battery life.

Having to constantly shut off Widgets is annoying.

What I'd REALLY like to do is remove the News and Weather Widgets that are preinstalled on the device. These apps are ALWAYS running in the background. One thing I'd like to do is add my own services that I can then update on my own when I want.

I have downloaded a few apps like FeedR (but I force shut it down until needed) but these usually do not affect battery.

I'm not going to cast doubt as to battery, but having it last 5-6 hours is unacceptable even under heavy use.

Every time I read a review on the Droid 2 or Droid X, I laugh as the reviewer says "I'm getting through the entire day with no problems". How is THAT possible when the majority if not all of us are having issues with battery life?

Now, I'm going to let my phone completely die today and try to recycle it that way.

I'd like to see this thing go all the way to 5pm without a charge (10-12 hours would be acceptable).

One note as well. I am checking corporate email frequently, sending email about 5-6 times/hour. I am NOT listening to any music at all at this point. Text messages probably 20/day. Light web browsing to very light web browsing at all.

I switched from Blackberry Bold because I wanted a better performing device that could do it all, and so far, on that side of it, the Droid is MUCH better. But the battery is FAR worse as I could go all day on my Bold with heavy email and BBM, some browsing, and I'd go all the way to 8-9pm from 6am and have about 10-15% battery left.

 

[jradicle11]

Turn off background data and the widgets won't sync unless you do it manually.

 

[woodguy]

1st, let me say, that when you go into the battery manager and look under how long the phone as been disconnected from a power source, it is WRONG. And it's is wrong by a couple hours.

So following up on my post above, here is how battery performed.

Backlight set at 50%. I work outside a lot and need the lighting.

Browser running for MAYBE 15 minutes or less.

Made 6 phone calls totaling 32 minutes.

Check email inbox and received 39 emails and returned half those amounts.

sent and received 12 texts

Checked Feedr application for RSS 4 times

Connected to Bluetooth and used this for 32 minutes

NO WIFI, NO GPS

I'm NOT going to spend the time shutting off background widgets when I don't have a lot and that would seem on the face of it ridiculous. We use these phones vs. Blackberries or iPhones for a reason.

The result for my phone? I unplugged my phone at 630am EST and it went down to 5% battery @ 415pm EST. That's almost 10 hours of battery life but with almost NO use of the browser and really light amount of time talking on the phone itself.

Do others find this reasonable? Maybe it is and that's really good for this kind of device given all it can do.

I wish there was a way to REMOVE the bloatware that we do not want that runs constantly (like their news and weather apps that run that I don't want).

FYI...After I plugged in I decided to use the phone more intensively using the browser to surf the web and watch some pitch by pitch baseball with my MLB At Bat application (not video) for about an hour (refreshed every 15 seconds). I unplugged at 6pm and by 9pm, my battery was at 50%.



READ ARTICLE FROM LAPTOP MAGAZINE ON ANDROID PHONE BATTERY TEST

This article said that the top 2 phones were Droid X and Droid 2. They said that the AVERAGE battery life was 6 hours and that these 2 phones received 7.5 hours of life...Their test only used BROWSER USE which was used constantly over this time with APK running and backlighting set to 40%.

How is THAT possible? WOW. Not even CLOSE to what I am seeing.

Anyone have thoughts on my LONG post ?

 

[Silver Phantom]

Ok - I think I figured out the battery problem on my Droid. I was having problems like everyone else - 3-5 hour battery life, 8-9 hours if it just sat unplugged overnight 'doing nothing', etc. I have push enabled for two email accounts - google and corporate email - and a twitter and facebook account loaded.

I went to Settings > Data Manager > Data Delivery > Motorola Applications and checked the box "Sync over WiFi only" (sets social networking applications to only sync when connected to a wireless network).

Before when I'd go to the battery use summary, I'd see the Motorola applications would have eaten 30% or more of the used battery life. Now I see it use 4%. Not sure how long the battery will last now, but I'm sure it will be substantially better.

This is a good compromise for those who need to have push email but also need to extend their battery life as much as possible.

 

[RJT185]

Ok - I think I figured out the battery problem on my Droid. I was having problems like everyone else - 3-5 hour battery life, 8-9 hours if it just sat unplugged overnight 'doing nothing', etc. I have push enabled for two email accounts - google and corporate email - and a twitter and facebook account loaded.

I went to Settings > Data Manager > Data Delivery > Motorola Applications and checked the box "Sync over WiFi only" (sets social networking applications to only sync when connected to a wireless network).

Before when I'd go to the battery use summary, I'd see the Motorola applications would have eaten 30% or more of the used battery life. Now I see it use 4%. Not sure how long the battery will last now, but I'm sure it will be substantially better.

This is a good compromise for those who need to have push email but also need to extend their battery life as much as possible.

If you do that anything that's MOTO specific wont update unless you're on WiFi.

 

[jradicle11]

1st, let me say, that when you go into the battery manager and look under how long the phone as been disconnected from a power source, it is WRONG. And it's is wrong by a couple hours.

Must just be your device. Mine is accurate and I've made sure of it by knowing exactly when I took it off the charger.

 

[woodguy]

Must just be your device. Mine is accurate and I've made sure of it by knowing exactly when I took it off the charger.

Maybe but I just looked again and it says 3h 30m 40s since unplugged. That is 100% WRONG. I unplugged my device at exactly 10:02 AM EST before leaving my home and I have 20% battery life left. BETTER than it had been, so some of the settings I made seemed to have worked.

Voice calls 54%
Display 23%
Cell Standby 5%
com.motorola.providers.com 5%
Android System 4%
com.motorola.home 4%
phone idle 2%
com.android.phone 2%

Can you imagine that I actually used this PHONE to make, um, CALLS? LOL

My talk time seems to be 2 hours, 22 minutes in total for the day. I have also sent 21 text messages, sent 12 email messages, and checked my gmail messages 13 times.

NO video at all. NO music at all. Screen brightness at 30%.

Right now, I'm at 20% left after 8.5 hours...better than yesterday no doubt.

OH, and one other thing...I have had Bluetooth ON for the entire day since I need it when I am driving and someone calls me when in the car...goes through my BT in my vehicle.

 

[Silver Phantom]

I think I'm done. I went to the Verizon store today and swapped the phone out for a new one. The battery life on this one is just as bad.

I may have to go back to a blackberry...

 

[RJT185]

Folks. Seriously. You gotta train the battery and the phone.

 

[JasonU]

Folks. Seriously. You gotta train the battery and the phone.

Bingo. Makes a world of difference.

I had this problem when I had my Palm Pre. It was lasting about 4-6 hours between charges, so I constantly had a charger cord nearby. I was on the verge of returning it, and tried conditioning the battery. It was a PITA for a day or two, and from then on I was able to make it through the day no problem.

 

[jkrevitz]

Dowload advanced task killer for free, set auto kill level to crazy, set frequency to when screen shuts off!

 

[JDunc]

Dowload advanced task killer for free, set auto kill level to crazy, set frequency to when screen shuts off!

That is definitely what you supposed to not do!

 

[pool_shark]

I just noticed today that talk app is always signed in and running. I was looking for an IM app and someone mentioned the native talk app. I never touched it before, but as soon as I did it was already signed in and available.

I changed the settings to not automatically sign-in.

Not sure how much power the talk app uses, but it had to be using some.

 

[jradicle11]

I don't get how some people are so impatient. There are quite a few thread/posts advising on how to increase the battery life of your device yet it seems some people completely disregard these tricks and still complain about their battery life. If you see a tip that many people have followed and has worked for many others, why wouldn't you follow it?

I honestly just don't understand, it would be great if someone could explain that mindset to me.

 

[pool_shark]

I don't get how some people are so impatient. There are quite a few thread/posts advising on how to increase the battery life of your device yet it seems some people completely disregard these tricks and still complain about their battery life. If you see a tip that many people have followed and has worked for many others, why wouldn't you follow it?

I honestly just don't understand, it would be great if someone could explain that mindset to me.

I can't help you there. I don't bother with trying to increase battery life, I just charge my phone frequently.

I was just giving people something else to look for in case they didn't know it was there.

 

[jamesdavisiv]

I just checked out my battery use on my droid 2, and it turns outmy antivirus app is using 10%, and an app called com.motorola.providers.contacts is using 32%. Also, com.motorola.home is using 15%. How can i make them use less?! What are these apps?

Thanks