battery life.....

[SithLord0498]

Yeah, this battery life isn't very good at all even after the cache wipe. It may be as good as Gingerbread on a good day, but it's definitely not better.

I'm currently at 44% after 22 hours, but here are the conditions I've put it under:

1. 4G and Wi-Fi turned off unless I need them.
2. About 6 of those hours, I was sleeping and only had it running for the alarm clock.
3. Display time is 2 hours 3 minutes with the brightness around 40%
4. I did have PlayerPro (my MP3 player of choice) playing almost continuously for 4 hours today.
5. Bluetooth has been on for about 4-5 hours total, but it's usually just on standby and not actively running because I only pair with the Bluetooth system built into my car.


Looking at my stats and the drainage in real time (I use "Battery Indicator" which measures 1% increments in the status bar), I noticed two things:

1. Rate of battery depletion at least DOUBLED when 4G was switched on. It didn't seem to matter what environment (inside, outside, etc).
2. I have two lengthy segments of YELLOW in the bar graph under "Mobile Network Signal". I know exactly where I was during those times, and I have never seen signal weakness recorded there while running Gingerbread. This leads me to believe that the 246 build actually REDUCED my phone's reception, and it's having to try harder to keep a strong signal.


Now, I am grateful that we have a smoother running operating system. I'm happy that my GPS functions again (905 basically rendered it unusable). I'm happy that the screen resolution appears sharper and more vibrant.

However, I'm greatly disappointed in the power management of this build, the reduced reception, and...yes...there have been three times since Saturday night that my phone has dropped data. It's not even close to the instability my 905 had been exhibiting over the past month, but it's still a disappointment.

Hopefully, these problems end up being widespread, and Motorola is forced to design and release a software patch to address these issues.


But...I'm not holding my breath. Maybe the OS 4.1 update will yield better results. As for now, I'm going to have to make sure I recharge every night and also keep it plugged in and charging while driving.

 

[JesusG90]

Same here... I noticed that I get much less battery life after updating to ICS. No data drop issues though.

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[SithLord0498]

OK so here are the results of the "tests" (and I do admittedly use that word loosely) I just did.

Since my battery app can measure 1% increments, I asked my wife to use the stopwatch on her Incredible 4G the moment I hit 39%. I immediately went into Google Reader and randomly opened links in Chrome and casually browsed the articles just as I would in everyday use. I was able to go for approximately 2 mins 15 sec before dropping down to 38%. If that rate was to stay consistent (again, this is a very un-scientific test), I would get around 3.8 hours of web browsing on 4G. Personally, I can't imagine a day where I'd have that much time available to me anyway--especially on a capped data plan.

Now...here's the interesting part. I can't explain why, but I just have a strange feeling that Smart Actions has something to do with this. Prior to this test, I disabled that app. So I decided to re-activate the Smart Actions app, which seems to run even if you haven't established any rules in it. Halfway through the test, my 4G got hung up and stalled again. Maybe it's a coincidence or maybe not.

My suggestion then to those experiencing bad battery life would be to try disabling the Smart Actions app and see if you notice any change. Like I said, it's just a strange feeling I have, but it couldn't hurt to try.

 

[JesusG90]

Thanks.. I will try that.. You disable by going where it would say "uninstall" through MANAGE APPS?

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[TOPshogun]

Mine seems to be doing almost the same as GB, i have moto extended battery.










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[smooth4lyfe]

Get an extended battery!

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy S3 Boyyyyyy!

 

[SithLord0498]

Thanks.. I will try that.. You disable by going where it would say "uninstall" through MANAGE APPS?

Sent from my DROID BIONIC using Android Central Forums

Yes that is correct. It'll be under the ALL tab. There are three listings. You can only disable the first one. I guess the other two only run if the main app is running anyway.

 

[JesusG90]

Mine seems to be doing almost the same as GB, i have moto extended battery.










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Do you have the 2760mah battery? How is it? No problems? Easy to calibrate?

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[TOPshogun]

Do you have the 2760mah battery? How is it? No problems? Easy to calibrate?

Sent from my DROID BIONIC using Android Central Forums

Ya thats the one, i like it. On stock battery id get to maybe 5pm but on the extended battery it gets me through the day with some juice left. And i have no idea what calibrating means haha.

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[JesusG90]

Ya thats the one, i like it. On stock battery id get to maybe 5pm but on the extended battery it gets me through the day with some juice left. And i have no idea what calibrating means haha.

Sent from my DROID BIONIC using Android Central Forums

Ohh haha thanks.. I heard that you have to get an app to calibrate or something.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Android Central Forums

 

[usmcsilver]

I use SWITCHIT and run 3G to conserve battery. It still sucks even with light use. GB gave me better battery life.

Sent from Samsung Galaxy Tab via Tapatalk2

 

[Manofsteel927]

4 hours off charger screen on for 37 minutes down to 60%. And I do have the moto extended battery this is riduculous

 

[londonham]

4 hours off charger screen on for 37 minutes down to 60%. And I do have the moto extended battery this is riduculous

I'm at 3 hours off charger, screen on for 39 mins, I have used several apps like Reddit, tapatalk and the play store and had an ~8 min phone call, and I'm at 86%. Most of it on 3g.

 

[JesusG90]

It seems as if my battery life has gotten better.. Im back at the usual.. 2hrs screen time out of 13.3 hrs and I'm at 50%.. No extended battery.

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[Manofsteel927]

Wow verizon owes me a new phone the. Because if I use my phone.for an hour straight I'd be around 50%

 

[SithLord0498]

Here are the results of my first full extended battery cycle after the cache wipe. Probably add another 10 minutes to the total because it seemed like it took a very long time for the final 1% to deplete and I spent that time in the Kindle app. I got almost 3.75 hours of display time out of this charge. The sharp drop at 40% was because I accidentally turned off the phone.




But what really stands out on me is the "mobile network signal" bar. Look at all the yellow in it (the gaps were Airplane Mode). As I said earlier, I know where those locations were, and my Bionic on GB never had to struggle that hard for a signal. Additionally, the longest sections of yellow were cell signal only--4G was turned OFF! It's the cell radio that was struggling. Of course, that burns up more power. When you throw the 4G radio into the mix and force BOTH radios to struggle, yeah...I can start to see why the battery life sucks!!

I'm hoping this issue resolves itself after a few cycles. If not, I'll check to see if the reduced reception is a constant occurrence and will e-mail the screenshots (loving that feature BTW!!) to Motorola in the hopes that it will help them develop a software patch.

 

[mallenbiker]

I have same issue with battery, and don't see any advantage with ICS. I have an extended Moto battery that was fine before update and now will deplete in an hour even with the charger plugged in.
Is there a way to go back to GB? My phone worked fine w GB and now i wish I had never updated to ICS.

 

[WebOS Refugee]

I've noticed that ICS has a lot more stuff running at any given time than GB did. Not just the recently-used / multitasking feature, but services. I periodically use Fast Reboot to clear things out; under GB I'd have maybe 50 MB of stuff running, while under ICS I routinely see numbers over 200 MB. I'm not having any major battery problems (the car dock had the phone mostly charged when I got home nearly 6 hours ago, home is a poor reception area for Verizon, and I'm still above 50% of battery life), but I anticipate that battery life will get even better as I do a bit of pruning of some of those processes that are sucking power without necessarily providing a high degree of benefit to me.

 

[SithLord0498]

I've noticed that ICS has a lot more stuff running at any given time than GB did. Not just the recently-used / multitasking feature, but services. I periodically use Fast Reboot to clear things out; under GB I'd have maybe 50 MB of stuff running, while under ICS I routinely see numbers over 200 MB. I'm not having any major battery problems (the car dock had the phone mostly charged when I got home nearly 6 hours ago, home is a poor reception area for Verizon, and I'm still above 50% of battery life), but I anticipate that battery life will get even better as I do a bit of pruning of some of those processes that are sucking power without necessarily providing a high degree of benefit to me.

Can you be more specific on what programs and processes are running on ICS that weren't on GB?

 

[kinglizard46]

how does one calibrat the extended battery?