Help Problems with Droid

[johnwartjr]

I have an original Motorola Droid, and it's giving me some fits.

It's on OS 2.2.2, FRG83G

Not rooted.

Recently, the battery started dying in an hour or less. It's about 2 years old, my first thought was, maybe it's just time for a battery. But, then I realized the sync icon was always displayed at the top of the screen, to the left of the clock, and it would take forever when I'd try to view contacts, almost as if the contacts area was empty.

I noticed the process android.acore.process was using 60-90% of the battery when unplugged.

The only thing I was syncing would be contacts from Gmail.

After trying a lot of things I'd read about pulling the battery and waiting 10 minutes, etc, deleting recently added contacts (thinking it was having an issue syncing some contact, etc), I resorted to a factory reset. It's still running that process at a high % of battery, and not syncing my contacts. I've installed no apps on the phone since the reset, just configured the gmail account as it asked me to give the phone my google account when I did the factory reset.

I've even shut synch off on the gmail account, and the icon still shows up in the upper tray.

Any ideas or suggestions? I'll try most everything, I'm not due for an upgrade til January, so it would cost me a fair amount of $$ out of pocket to just go in and buy a new phone. Would be cheaper to pay the contract cancellation fee, and sign up a new account.

Thoughts? Thanks!

 

[AngryHatter]

Sounds like hardware problem. No insurance?
Battery dying faster, etc. OEM charger? Exhibit same behavior plugged in or not?

 

[johnwartjr]

Sounds like hardware problem. No insurance?
Battery dying faster, etc. OEM charger? Exhibit same behavior plugged in or not?

No insurance. It's never made sense, considering what Verizon charged for it versus the cost of the device.

Articles like this made me rethink the idea of insurance:

Do you need cell insurance? - Business - Consumer news - ConsumerMan - msnbc.com

I have the OEM charger and am using it presently, my car charger isn't an OEM charger though.

Plugged in, it will last indefinitely. Once unplugged, it drains the battery rapidly.

I guess at this point, I have to decide whether to try a new battery, or just get a new phone. I'm at $130 or $120 to buy out of my contract, and can then sign a new contract and get a discounted new phone @ $200-300, depending on features and which one I'd choose.

Or, grab a used device on eBay and hope it lasts me til January, if some great new phone is coming out in a couple months to save the contract buyout.

Thanks for the insight.

 

[johnlgalt]

After the factory reset, you allowed it to sync every thing again, right? The first sync always takes inordinately long. I highly suggest that you do it over WiFi instead of 3G, as that will significantly shorten the time needed for synchronization (depending upon your WiFi connection speed, of course).

Also, when you re-add yor Google account, it takes you next ot a screen where it starts populating the account with various services that it can sync - if the service is enabled, disable it - and if the little icon beside it does not go away, re-enable it and then disable it again (this is temporary), so hold tight).

Then it will only sync things like contacts and settings.

Now, after the sync goes away, go back and enable one and let it fully sync (I usually start with GMail). the add another, then another, etc so that they don't all try to sync simultaneously.

Next time, before resorting to a factory reset, try clearing the caches of the apps first.

 

[AngryHatter]

OEM battery? I made the mistake of buying something that looked like the Motorola battery but would be drained within 3 or 4 hours.

 

[johnlgalt]

I bought 2 OEM batteries from Amazon - they were perfectly fine for me - used, but they were identical to my original battery.

I still have them, a little worse for wear and tear, as they won't keep the device powered longer than 5 hours under heavy use, but that's why I bought spares lol...

 

[johnwartjr]

Yes, it is the original battery. Came with the phone. I talked to Verizon and they will let me upgrade a month before my upgrade date, so I need to make this phone last for another month

As long as I don't spend too much time outside my car or away from home, the battery will last. It's just gonna have to live on the charger.

The power button has been long broken, the only way to power it on is to hook it to a wall or car charger - so, even if I had multiple batteries, I'd still need to be able to plug it in to get it to start up after changing them.

I'll try using wifi to synch, thanks!

 

[johnlgalt]

Ouch - broken power button definitely makes a difference.

I suggest that you pick a day when you an let the phone battery die and let the phone power itself off after losing all charge, then plug it in and let it fully charge without any use, and then let it drain again and then fully charge it again - it might help a bit with the battery lasting longer for this last month.

I'm actually considering selling my DROID with dual batteries, extra chargers, shell / holster combo case, car dock and multimedia dock, but only for a reasonable price - I've spent a lot of money acquiring those items, and at the same time I hate o make someone spend half the price of a new phone just to buy my stuff for merely using it for a month, so in your case it's really not worth it....

 

[johnwartjr]

A friend just upgraded to the new Droid Bionic and hooked me up with his old Droid to hold me over until my upgrade is due, another 3 weeks or so from today.

Verizon activated it for free, so my cost was nothing.

Hopefully, this one will last the month for me

 

[johnwartjr]

Well, I thought that fixed the problem, but the replacement phone is sucking the battery dry in no time flat.

I also noticed a few contacts missing from the phone. Thought it was odd, but thought perhaps they weren't in my GMAIL, so I went to GMAIL, and found I had... 25,000+ contacts!

Only 49 contacts were actually unique, and there were 25000+ copies of the same contact, which is one I manually created on the phone a few weeks ago, around when this problem started!

I found this thread, with a similar issue on an iphone:

My contacts duplicated thousands of times and have been transferred to my Droid-how do I get them off!!!HELP! - Gmail Help

I used it to export my contacts, clear all the contacts, and reimport the 49 contacts I want.

I deleted all the contacts on the phone, and have told it to synchronize, which it's been working on for an hour now - and not completing. It appears I may have to do a factory reset on the phone to get them to sync. I'm hoping not, as I got my apps reinstalled, my mail configured, etc, and I don't want to go through that again.

 

[johnwartjr]

Problem solved! It still wouldn't synch, and I got an error on the screen after several hours that said 'too many contacts deletes'. So, I googled the error, and found this page:

Too Many Contacts Deletes – Android Solution | Notorious D.A.D.

Cleared the contacts, like it suggested, and sync'd. Now, I have all my contacts! Yay! Been using the same charge all morning and the battery meter says it's fully charged still!