Help How is the battery life on the Droid X?

[mattstud36]

After hearing about the EVO's battery not lasting more than half a day, I was nervous to order the Droid X. I'm seeing some articles online stating that the battery life is pretty decent on the X. How have your experiences been so far?

I have mine coming in the mail on Monday, and I'm hoping I don't need an extended battery that will turn my phone into something the size of a cinder block!

 

[Clittzen]

I have the best battery life I have had on a phone in YEARS. I am extremely impressed and satisfied!

Got my phone at 11 last night, played with it till 330AM, charged it for 5 hours, went to work all day and home now, not even at half yet!

 

[mattstud36]

I'm assuming that you can make it through a day with moderate usage then?

 

[mattstud36]

Thanks, Clittzen!

How is the battery working for everyone else?

This is my first Andriod phone. Are you using task killers or anything like that to get the good battery life?

 

[WordofDJ]

Easily the best battery life I've had in a phone in a long time. It's much better than the life on my droid, and my dare before that. I'm at 60% currently after a full day fairly heavy usage (for me). My original droid would be dead, or close to it.

 

[Shorty324]

It works pretty good for me. I've been heavily using it (at least 5 hours of usage) and I would say it was about 40% left!

 

[swagner53]

Best I have had from any smartphone except blackberry. I have had Pre, Hero, Evo, and some older ones- Treo, Moto Q-- etc. I played with it a ton today-- downloading apps-- tweaking, run lots of widgets, 3 email accounts (2 push) a couple of calls. Got over 14 hours today before 15% warning.

 

[just4747]

oy..

http://androidforums.com/motorola-droid-x/124623-battery-drops-like-ashley-simpsons-career.html

 

[colchiro]

I've been using mine all day and still have 50% left. I charged it before going to bed and it had dropped to 90% when I got up.

I've got it set to battery saving mode with Wifi turned on (using my wireless router) and screen brightness is set to 50%. Much better than my Dinc!

I've been installing, checking out apps all day.

 

[chrlswltrs]

The last 2 days I have been getting 8-9 hours of moderate to heavy usage before my battery is down to 15%. A lot of web surfing and streaming internet radio. I am very pleased with the battery.

 

[novemberwhiskey]

I have been getting pretty terrible battery life on my Droid. Need to re-charge mid-way through the day.

To those of you getting great battery life, do you have GPS enabled? I remember messing with the default settings, and was wondering if turning GPS on is draining my battery.

I don't understand the difference b/t the different settings:

Use wireless networks (how do you use a wireless network for GPS tracking)
Use GPS satellites
Enable Assisted GPS (what's teh difference between this and the previous setting?)

 

[JoshG]

I've been having really big issues with my battery. For one, the battery display is very erratic and inaccurate. It will say I'm fine, drop down to 20% or so and yellow, then I'll turn it off and it will go back into green. Very weird.

The main problem, though, is that the battery is just not lasting long. Anywhere from 4-6 hours with moderate use. I've dimmed the screen. I use app killer. I'm not watching tons (or any) YouTube. No games. Am taking some pictures, but not a ridiculous amount. Went into a Verizon store to see how much a spare battery would cost (was told $40) and someone there who also had an X complained about the battery also (and said he had had much better battery performance with his old iPhone 3GS which he traded in for a Droid).

 

[Emosa]

For what it's worth, my battery is doing great. Takes 2 hours to charge fully, and lasts most of the day, and that's saying a lot because I haven't put it down! For everyone having problems, change your settings, use task killer every once in a while, etc.

My ipod touch has to be charged mid-day, yet my X lasts way longer and it has the bigger screen.

 

[Vihzel]

I'm getting the best battery life that I've ever had in recent memory. That includes the Blackberry Storm, Samsung Omnia 2, Palm Pre Plus, Motorola Droid, and the HTC Incredible. Right now I'm at 70% battery life (8h 30m since unplugged) with the display taking up 63% of it.

 

[Clittzen]

For those of you have ANY battery issues:

PLEASE contact Verizon, tell them to send you a NEW battery under warranty. You may have a dud! Protect yourself and I hope you get better usage out of your X's! This is most likely the cause.

 

[just4747]

After a phone call, I had Verizon send me a replacement battery today after going through allllll the different recommendations the CSR had for me lol..of course I had tried them all already and then some. But hopefully between the new battery and/or the update coming up next week, I'll have better battery life!!

 

[hotzorro]

The battery life is incredible!!! Motorola put a lot of thought into this and I'm thanking them for that....Phone has been on standby without charging for about 9 hours now and it's 90%!!! and under heavy use, It lasts 8+ hours......Finally, a phone that wont go dead on me!!

 

[rossmathis]

13h 27m 15s since unplugged

...and still have more than half the juice left.

I have the phone on Battery Saver mode, which turns off the 3G after 30 mins of inactivity. I don't really require constant data updates. Typically use the phone for Twitter, checking email, minimal web browsing and marketplace peroozing, etc.

Cell standby - 69%
Display -20%
Phone idle - 12%

 

[masse]

I'm probably having issues. Low screen brightness and intermittent use gets 10 hours per charge. Charging itself is pathetically slow as well. It somehow feels like its starting to last longer though.


Could someone point out which services use the most battery?

I use battery saver mode.
I run launcher pro with 5 home screens and 3d app drawer.
Facebook twitter engadget and one other news feed widget.
GPS bluetooth and wifi all off.
I do use a nexus one live wallpaper though.


does my battery life seem reasonable considering this configuration?

 

[mwpeck]

13h 27m 15s since unplugged

...and still have more than half the juice left.

I have the phone on Battery Saver mode, which turns off the 3G after 30 mins of inactivity. I don't really require constant data updates. Typically use the phone for Twitter, checking email, minimal web browsing and marketplace peroozing, etc.

Cell standby - 69%
Display -20%
Phone idle - 12%

What app do you use to get that usage info?

I unplugged my phone last night around 10:30, used it until 11:45 for internet, went to bed and turned it back on around 8:00. At which time, it was around 56% or so. 8 hours of standby and an hour and 15 minutes of use and it was almost half dead.

I run it in smart mode though, does it make that much of a difference? I need to get email updates while in standby so I do not want to disable 3g but it seems to drain way too quick in standby...it went from 80% down to ~56% in only 8 hours.

Edit: GPS, wifi and bluetooth are all disabled for the entire duration listed above.

Edit 2:

Found it,

Display-85%
Standby-12%
Idle-4%

When I used it last night the screen was set to auto brightness, is it really that much of a drain? Before I went to bed I set it to 30% so that's what it's running at now.

 

[colchiro]

In the Dinc forum they recommended using your wireless router and turning wifi on to save battery (and have a faster network speed).

I had great battery life when I was at home all day yesterday and installing apps on my phone. I had wifi on, live wallpaper, a battery profile of "battery saving mode", and brightness at 50%.

When I left town today with bluetooth on all day, gps on for part of the time, brightness at 100% (it was sunny), I came home this afternoon with only 50% left.

FWIW, after a full charge and 8 hours of standby (overnight), I'll have 90% battery left (again with wifi on).

 

[genxgeek]

I wish I could get what a lot of you are saying. I am averaging between 4-5 hours on a full charge. Maybe I should ask Verizon for a new battery?

 

[colchiro]

I wish I could get what a lot of you are saying. I am averaging between 4-5 hours on a full charge. Maybe I should ask Verizon for a new battery?

Add the "power control" widget to one of your screens, then turn off stuff you don't need, like GPS, bluetooth, etc.

The icons from L to R are:
Wifi, Bluetooth, GPS, data syncing and screen brightness.

Make sure you turn off what you don't need.

 

[genxgeek]

Add the "power control" widget to one of your screens, then turn off stuff you don't need, like GPS, bluetooth, etc.

The icons from L to R are:
Wifi, Bluetooth, GPS, data syncing and screen brightness.

Make sure you turn off what you don't need.

Thanks for the help...but I do have that installed. the only thing I like to leave on is the syncing.

 

[pantsman]

The auto brightness seems to make the screen REALLY bright to me. It'd be nice if there was a way to adjust it by setting a min and max brightness or something...

That being said I've had mine on smart mode and have used it for probably 5-6 hours today (web/twitter/market browsing, playing games, setting up more stuff as I found it...I was in a training class that wasn't designed for me so I was bored). I'm about ready to go home and it says it has about 15% battery left. Screen is something like 70-80% of my battery usage. I'm going to try battery saver mode although I think today was probably just about my worst case usage scenario.

The only comparison I can make is my Omnia would be shutting itself off if I was using 3G (web/twitter/etc) for 2 hours. And that was with the back light on minimum.