Help New battery drain issue on the droid

[johnlgalt]

I bet even money those folks seeing an increased battery drain also have newer apps / settings / configurations that were not there before that are eating a lot more battery power than they were before as well....

The only way I kill my battery with regular use is if I go on a long drive using Nav with Satellite and Gas Station layers, b/c I now have latitude also. However, I have other apps that normally start up with the phone that I either set to not start up (twidroid) or else I use the native 'exit application (found three apps, along with twidroid, that now have this - w00t!) that will make a least a small difference - twidroid alone sucks some serious power during the day b/c of my not so optimum settings of checking every 5 or 10 minutes....

TBH, I need a battery with about 4- times the charge as the one that came with the phone....then I wouldn't be so app sensitive....

 

[GorillaTheHutt]

for those of you experiencing extra power drain: did you download the Defender app that was mentioned in the news a few days ago (where the lady found her Droid because the Defender app uploaded pics of the thieves)?

i seem to have experienced more power drain than usual since installing that app. and, indeed, it has a service that constantly runs in the background...

 

[cacophony]

I bet even money those folks seeing an increased battery drain also have newer apps / settings / configurations that were not there before that are eating a lot more battery power than they were before as well....

It's not "increased battery drain", per se.

It sounds more like a bug in the sw or a battery issue. Like I said, the battery was at 90% (after 15 hours of usage) before bed and then unplugged it and went to sleep. Woke up 8 hours later and the red light was blinking, and the phone said 5%. Plugged it in and it immediately said 60%. So, that's not battery drain, that's just weird. You might could said it drained 40%, but...

The only application that was running (according to the phone) was Android Keyboard. Nothing else was running. The battery usage looked normal. Most of it was Phone Idle.

Plus, I was not running Dolphin Browser. In fact, I had deleted it a week or so prior.

Nor had I installed any new apps lately. No Defender app either.

Phone had been giving me 2-3 days of usage on one charge. Nothing changed on my end.

At least one other person had the same 5/60 issue that I had.

 

[cacophony]

Basically, here's a recap of what happened to me....

Phone had been great, 2-3 days of usage typically, until one day (call it Day 1)...

Day 1: Phone was fine, battery was fine all day, until... pulled it out of my pocket, and red light was blinking. Went home and charged it up. Unplugged and went to bed.

Day 2: Woke up, battery was at 80%. Never had it drain that much overnight. Checked things again, and noticed Wifi was on (don't know how that happened, since I didn't deliberately do it), so I turned it off and recharged. Phone was fine all that day. Said it was at 90% after 15 hours of usage. Didn't try to charge. Went to sleep.

Day 3: Woke up, red light blinking. Charged it, where it did the 5/60 thing. Charged up had no issues during the rest of the day.

Another odd thing that I noticed is that sometimes the phone would seem to cache old battery usage values and not show me the real values. But that may have only been through the Battery Usage widget (shortcut) from my phone's desktop.

 

[aileendq]

whether or not you've left Wifi/GPS on than anything else

I leave my GPS on all the time because I have Mobile Defense installed. GPS should not be draining your battery unless it's in use. That is, if you have an app that turns on the GPS then it will use your battery. If GPS isn't being used, it should not use ANY battery at all.

You can leave it toggled on and it shouldn't drain your battery any faster.

 

[PridgNYC]

I'm thinking it is a bug, possibly related to uptime. My typical battery usage is to be down to about 60% by the time I get home in the evening and plug it in to the charger. However, yesterday, I was down to 50% by about 3:00pm with no unusual usage. I plugged it in to the charger last night, but this morning when I took it out of the dock, the red light came on instantly and showed less than 5% power. I plugged it back in then unplugged, and the battery was showing 60%. This had happened once before, so I knew it wasn't the charger. I then pulled the battery and rebooted, and now it is showing 100%, and still showing 100% 3 hours later.

 

[nycebo]

Aileendq: Agreed!

 

[davecor]

I've had the battery drain message once (<5%). Plugged in, it read 60%, like the other posts. Unplugged it read 90% (can't remember if I rebooted first--think I did it afterward as a precaution. Clearly a software glitch. The phone was sitting by the computer--perhaps an EM pulse of some kind?
@aileendq or anyone: Do you know if Where's My Droid uses the GPS continuously if it isn't queried when it's running in the background? I'm also using Mobile Defense; not sure I need both but I like the idea of a five minute ring if I misplace the phone in the house.

 

[Needsdecaf]

Guys, there's a lot of random thoughts in this thread, but a lot of it is misleading.

First, if you never have done it, you should do a deep discharge at least twice to calibrate the meter.

Second, if "all of a sudden" you're getting mega battery drain, you've likely activated a setting that's causing it, or downloaded an app that's doing it. Look at the battery usage, and figure out what's causing that. Take a look at that program's settings or, if necessary, unload it.

Third, keep in mind the big battery hogs: GPS, bluetooth, etc. Make sure you are using those judiciously.

 

[Droidood]

THE CALIBRATION NONSENSE IS A MYTH

I'm sick of people spewing that BS. You don't need to do a "deep discharge / charge" or whatever other voodoo mumbo-jumbo the idiots on here tell you. Lithium-ion batteries don't need to be calibrated and they don't have "memory," period.

Just try restarting your phone and pulling the battery a couple times since it's probably a software issue. Mine randomly started draining 20% per hour with minimal use and that fixed it for me a couple days ago. I hadn't updated or installed any apps so I have no clue what caused it.

 

[Needsdecaf]

THE CALIBRATION NONSENSE IS A MYTH

I'm sick of people spewing that BS. You don't need to do a "deep discharge / charge" or whatever other voodoo mumbo-jumbo the idiots on here tell you. Lithium-ion batteries don't need to be calibrated and they don't have "memory," period.

Just try restarting your phone and pulling the battery a couple times since it's probably a software issue. Mine randomly started draining 20% per hour with minimal use and that fixed it for me a couple days ago. I hadn't updated or installed any apps so I have no clue what caused it.

Myth or not, worked for me on both my Eris and Droid.

FYI, I got my Eris day 1 and noted the phenomenon before actually reading about it as well. I didn't find this forum for about a week, at which time I had already done this (simply by virtue of wanting to see how long it took to run the battery out on a new phone). When I first had the phone, the first 30% would drop very quickly, and it would last forever once it hit 5% (hours).

After a couple of discharge cycles, it was much more linear.

And if it's such a myth, why does the "Battery Left" widget specifically state that it needs to be done in order to calibrate the widget.

This practice does not calibrate the battery, you're calibrating the METER. I agree, batteries do not have to be conditioned for performance.

To those that are having issues with the meter reading wonky, try running it until it shuts off and see if you're really as low as the meter is telling you.

 

[davecor]

As far as the problem I alluded to, it wasn't a battery drain issue. It was pseudo-battery drain and clearly a software glitch. Whether it was caused by a new app I couldn't say, but it hasn't recurred over the past week or two.

 

[Helenoftroy08]

I leave my GPS on all the time because I have Mobile Defense installed. GPS should not be draining your battery unless it's in use. That is, if you have an app that turns on the GPS then it will use your battery. If GPS isn't being used, it should not use ANY battery at all.

You can leave it toggled on and it shouldn't drain your battery any faster.

There is so much conflicting information on this subject...Can anyone else confirm what Aileendq has posted?

 

[Geezer Squid]

There is so much conflicting information on this subject...Can anyone else confirm what Aileendq has posted?

Empirical data only: I can confirm that I leave GPS, Wifi and Bluetooth on 100% of the time and I have good battery life. By that I mean I get through each day without having to recharge. I usually have 30-40% left by bedtime. I then recharge each night.

BTW, I also have my phone overclocked to 1Ghz and use Setcpu to lower the processor speed to 125 mhz while the phone is asleep or being charged.

 

[spinnaker]

I'm having somewhat similar issues, but rather sporadic. Over the last few weeks, a few times I've had the battery drain from a full charge to 5% in a matter of 3-4 hours. When I look at the battery use, "Android OS" is using 60%+ of the battery. Usually the "Android OS" process uses a tiny percentage of my battery. I've also noticed the phone feeling a bit warm when this occurs.

Anyone else experienced this? Any thoughts what's causing this? Thanks.

 

[Techdroid]

Another battery drainer is Antivirus. It will also slow your phone down to a crawl. Also check which app. updates you got when the problem started. Sometimes 2 or more app. updates can conflict with each other and cause your browser to drain your battery.

 

[Helenoftroy08]

Empirical data only: I can confirm that I leave GPS, Wifi and Bluetooth on 100% of the time and I have good battery life. By that I mean I get through each day without having to recharge. I usually have 30-40% left by bedtime. I then recharge each night.

BTW, I also have my phone overclocked to 1Ghz and use Setcpu to lower the processor speed to 125 mhz while the phone is asleep or being charged.

Thanks Geezer Squid!

 

[dougwilson2000]

There is so much conflicting information on this subject...Can anyone else confirm what Aileendq has posted?

I have GPS TURNED ON ALL THE TIME. Even though it is on it does not run all the time. The notification at the top does not come on. I also have Lookout and where's my Droid. If I am at home or in one place the GPS NEVER RUNS unless I turn on an app that needs it. How else can you find your Droid without GPS unless your ten feet away??
The browser being number one for the op is weird. My screen light usually takes the most battery. Must be leaving the browser on in the backround for sure. Needs to insure all windows are closed before exiting. I use task killer with no ill effects.
With all this,I can fully charge my battery to 100% and let it set overnight for sometimes 12 hours and will have 90-100% of battery (most of the time 100%). I like to go to bed with a fully charged battery.
I play on the Droid in the evening while it is charging.

 

[crankerchick]

myth or not, sometimes the phone gets wacked out has the battery reading different from what it really is. thats why a reboot or battery pull brings it back to life and reading properly. i agree the battery itself doesn't need the full discharge cycle to function properly, but the software does indeed to calibrate to the battery if that makes sense. i've seen this on laptops and cell phone's alike. my laptop continually tells me that my battery is at 15% capacity when in reality it is not because I replaced the battery with an extended one. It was annoying because my laptop would hibernate way too soon because it perceived my battery to be low. Finally I got around to turning off the auto-hibernate and let my laptop run in this "low battery state" and it kept saying i had 0% left except my laptop was still running, LOL. I let it run to cut off and now that doesn't happen anymore, LOL. I've seen this too when using extended batteries on my last 2 pda phones. Physically speaking, the battery itself doesn't need to run through a full cycle to work properly, but I really wonder if the software reading the battery can benefit from such behavior.

 

[dougwilson2000]

It is not the battery, it is the software that resets on a reboot. I really do not understand the need to pull the battery. The MD has reserve power when the battery is pulled and replaced for a short period, unlike many other phones. The only time it should be pulled is if you cannot reboot because of frozen screen.
I see a lot of people talk about pulling the battery, I think because of old habit and just to do it,but I have never pulled my battery. Rebooting is all that is needed. I am thinking all the extra taking off of covers is going to weaken the fit after awhile.

 

[jv59]

There is definitely a software issue here. This has happened to me several times and rebooting my phone fixes the problem. I do think it's related to the GPS, because it seems to happen right after I run an app that requires GPS.

 

[davecor]

This thread may have diverged into 2 problems. If @spinnaker had a true battery drain that is not the same as the other problem I and others have decribed. A sudden drop in reading that corrects without charging is clearly a software issue. In my experience this is sporadic (don't recall if it was related to a program that used GPS) and hasn't recurred yet.
Lithium ion batteries, as mentioned, do not require draining to function properly, as they have no memory. The battery meter does require a drain to calibrate, as mentioned. In fact, on my laptop I use BatteryBar and when I upgraded to a 12 cell battery it correctly identified the capacity of the new battery as 120,768 mW, but states the battery wear as X% of 88,800 mWh (the old battery's capacity). I wondered why until @crancherchick's post. Guess I should drain the battery completely once.

 

[diggie]

I want to confirm the software bug described where the battery life apparently drops to 5% and there is a sudden red light.

While watching tv I got a text and paused the show with about 7 minutes left. I answered the text, put the phone down and unpaused the show. At this point the phone had been charging a while and had a high charge on it, but I don't know the exact value. When the show ended, I looked at my phone and it was at 5% power. The red light was blinking. I shut it down and turned it back on (didn't touch the battery) and it came back on at 80% power. Seems unlikely it could really discharge that much in under 10 minutes (or recharge that much in 30 seconds).

This is the fourth time this is happened with this 2-month-old Motorola Droid phone, so I'm surprised more people aren't seeing it! Definitely an annoyance.

 

[FrayAdjacent]

THE CALIBRATION NONSENSE IS A MYTH

I'm sick of people spewing that BS. You don't need to do a "deep discharge / charge" or whatever other voodoo mumbo-jumbo the idiots on here tell you. Lithium-ion batteries don't need to be calibrated and they don't have "memory," period.

Just try restarting your phone and pulling the battery a couple times since it's probably a software issue. Mine randomly started draining 20% per hour with minimal use and that fixed it for me a couple days ago. I hadn't updated or installed any apps so I have no clue what caused it.

While you're right about lithium batteries not developing a memory, you're probably incorrect about the overall idea of recalibration.

This recalibration is not calibrating the battery, it's calibrating the phone. What the phone shows you for your battery status is very much a guess based on what it thinks it should be consuming. It's a good idea to let the battery drain down to the warning once in a while, then charge it back up completely.


Also, lithium batteries do NOT like being COMPLETELY drained. I wouldn't recommend running the phone until it shuts off. I'd only run it until the warning shows up, then plug it in to charge it up fully.

A battery is like a muscle. It does need some exercise to stay healthy.

 

[gthrift]

I noticed this today. Normally I can get 20-36 hours of battery life out of my Droid. Today my phone is at 20% after 14 hours with only 25 minutes of voice calls at 40%, Idle for 14 hours, display at 13% at 14 minutes, cell standby at 13% for 14 hours. That is very little use, much lower than normal since I worked 12 of those 14 hours today so didn't even take it out of my jacket pocket much.

I'm thinking there is a bug since that little bit of usage shouldn't kill the battery that fast.