I think many read the "21 Hours Talk Time" thing and are under the impression that this phone will last 21 hours of constant use. Best I have done is 8 hours of solid use meaning the phone screen was on for 8 solid hours streaming video on Netflix and Youtube, playing games, texting, Facebook, Twitter, etc. on 4G with no WIFI connection and a fairly weak 4G signal to boot. I'll take that any day. I think to that the strength of the 4 G signal plays a major effect on battery life on 4G. If I get a really weak signal the phone gets pretty hot and uses battery a lot faster. I have been thinking of just switching mine to 3G only as I can stream video in my area with no buffering on 3G so don't see any advantage to 4G unless I was trying to download a large file which I rarely do. I really don't think the "battery level" readings are all that accurate at times either. I wanted to run mine down till it shut off last night. It hit red and said connect a charger. It took me well over an hour, close to two hours of constant use with everything turned on I could imagine to get the thing to shut off. With mild to moderate use, I could go a couple days without a charge and have once when I plugged the charger in but didn't get it pushed in all the way I guess and phone didn't charge overnight. I am just pleased that I don't have to carry a charger with me to work anymore and can get through a whole 12 hour shift and to home with plenty a charge left. Mine is normally at around 30-35% when I plug it in to charge after a 12 hour shift which I use the phone a lot during my down time.
That may be part of the problem. We gotta remember when on a phone call the screen can be off the majority of the time. So getting close to 21 hours of talk time is ok. 8 hours of on screen time....is amazing. The most I have got when doing battery tests on my Droid X1....in a decent reception area....doing things on my phone for 1/2 to an hour was 4 hours. And a regular cell phone compared to a smartphone...is comparing apples to watermelons...
The point is that the battery life on the RAZR maxx is NOT what was promised. the battery on mine has gone down to ~70% in the 3 hrs it's been of the charger, which is typically for mine. I use circle battery widget which uses 1% increments. I get about 9hrs with little to no use. the promised was 8hrs with constant use, 1 1/2 days with light use. Oh & I tried "conditioning" the battery. That didn't do a thing. Granted the battery is better than my old Samsung stratosphere, which went from 100% to 15% in 4-5 hrs, but still not what was promised. I bought this phone specifically for the promised battery life. OTOH the build quality of this makes my plastic stratosphere feel cheapy.
1) check to see what is using your battery. It sounds like something is running in the background that is draining the battery. 2) how long have you had the phone (or did you buy it new). Batteries wear out with use. And no, his point was clearly "my expectations were unreasonably high, and I'm upset the phone didn't meet my arbitrary and pointless standards". Just because some people have reasonable complaints about something, does not mean everybody complaining about it is being reasonable (and anybody who *needs* their smartphone to make it 3 days off a charge is not being reasonable).
Why not just get another make of Android or Apple phone. If you can find one that will have anywhere near the battery life as you use it as the Razr Maxx. I get up to 4 days with light use and more than 12 hours in heavy use from mine. neither Samsung or Apple can last even half that time.
I was using my with moderate use and before Jelly Bean I would be at 50%-60% at the end of a 12 hour day. After the Jelly Bean I take it off the charger at 6:30am and when I get home around 5pm it's 30% or less at times. I've intentionally cut down on my usage too! I average about an hour of talk time and an hour of screen time and I use around 70% of my battery now. I've talked to two different "sales reps" at Verizon, neither of which can so much as spell phone, let alone work on one. Both wanted to turn off Wi-Fi, like that was going to be the savior of my battery. Made no appreciable difference. I've had this phone for 15 months now and I'm going to either buy a SGS4 or wait to see what Google has with their X phone they are supposed to unveil at their upcoming conference. If that phone isn't all that, Samsung here I come. I'll never own another phone without a removable battery, unless every phone out there is that way!
You do know that wifi is a huge battery killer if it isn't connected. Never leave it on unless you re connected or it will constantly search for connections
I suggest downloading this app called du battery saver. I downloaded it and I can easily get 20 hours on a charge. The app gives you two widgets that can really help you manage your battery. The first is similar to the default RAZR MAXX power control widget but with more options. You can easily switch off power consuming functions when you're not using them. The other widget shows you approximate time left and a button that can quickly stop all background apps. I'm on my phone quite a bit in school so 20 hours is a pretty good life for me. I highly recommend the app.
I use a battery monitoring program and it gives a breakdown of the items that use the battery. Wi-Fi typically uses about 5% per DAY. I can live with that. Prior to Jelly Bean I had great life, typically at the end of a 15 hour day I'd have 40% of more left. Today, I made it 11 1/2 hours and had 4% left. I used 2 hours of talk time and 1 hour and 43 minutes of screen time. These are typical numbers and since JB was installed my battery has gone to hell. I even have less apps installed than I did before.
my battery went to hell for about three charge cycles after JB. after that it went right back to normal. and, as dj said, turn Now off, or at least turn the location tracking part of Now off. anything like that - GPS, Now, weather apps - that constantly pegs satellites for locations is going to chew batteries like a fat kid eats oreos.
FWIW, here is what I've found out on my DRM regarding battery life. I'm not a heavy user but I usually charge mine every other day. Every once in a while the battery would seem to drain quickly. Some googling around led me to find out that it was not going to sleep at these times. I got the app BetterBatteryStats, the only app I've ever paid for and well worth it. One of the things it can tell you is the amount of time spent in different CPU states (300 mhz, 600 mhz, etc and deep sleep). When acting normally, deep sleep is higher than all the other states. When the battery is draining fast (when I think it should not be) then if fails to go into deep sleep and starts using the cpu at various speeds. When that happens, I use another screen in this app that shows partial wakelocks. It will show you what keeps waking up the phone to do work. In my case, the offending app was called BE Weather. Obviously, a weather app. I got rid of it and got Weather Bug instead. No more unexplained battery drain. Hope this helps. -- Charlie
Average life on my battery is over 20 hours with heavy use. It's rare for me to have less than 2.5-3 hrs of screen on time.
In my experience, this is true if you have it set to notify you for WIFI networks. I turned off notify and leave my WIFI on all the time, it only connects to the networks I have "remembered" and there is no discernible difference in battery life. Your mileage may vary. ;-)
Wait and see how long the battery lasts over the course of a week to make sure you have an accurate picture of your battery use.
