New to Droid and got the Maxx, help!

[conan1071]

Came from a Blackberry 9930 with VZW and got the Maxx on Monday. I dont have many apps installed. I use 2 gmail accounts and 1 corporate sync email account. The past 2 days each, I have used about 100 minutes of bluetooth talk, 40 emails, about an hour web, a few downloads and thats all, no social media at all. My battery comes off the charger at about 7am and I pretty much stop using it at 7pm and the battery will be at 30%. Last night, the battery went from 30% to 5% with about 30 minutes of web browsing. My battery usage is below. If you have any ideas how to improve the battery life, or if this is how it is, please respond. Thanks.

android os=31%
display=16%
phone idle=14%
cell standby=12%
voice calls=10%
gmail=5%
bluetooth=4%
android system=4%
com.motorola.service.activesync=2%
motorola services=2%
smart actions=2%

 

[anthonycr]

You have something running in the background for Android OS to be so high. Normally cell standby it higher. What apps do you have installed and running?

 

[conan1071]

How do i find out whats running in the back ground?

 

[Shadowtc]

It should have a task manager app installed and it should show you what's running

Sent from my MB860 using Tapatalk 2

 

[kingmeow]

Like you I'm fairly new to the Maxx and Android. The first few days when I got the phone, I just used it as is and I noticed that my battery wasn't lasting as long as some people described here. Certain it was good but not fantastic. At the time I didn't have much apps other than a few e-mail accounts and phone calls here and there throughout the day.

One thing to save battery is to set up a Smart Action so that when you are sleeping, so does the phone. No e-mails, no syncing, no bluetooth, no wifi, etc. Have it wake up 30 mins. before you do and when you get up it'll be all sync'ed up and ready to go.

Also note that with lipo batteries, they really don't develop their full capacity until after 3-5 full cycles. I use these types of batteries to fly my radio control helicopters and airplanes. The first thing I do with a new pack is to cycle them 3-5 times down to 10% and back to charge them back to 100% without interruption to "train" them. After that you can do whatever your want; 1/2 charge, top if off, etc.

 

[durango992007]

Like kingmeow said, a couple cycles of charging, plus using smart actions, will improve battery life. I say next week your phone will be down to maybe 50% by 7pm after this. If you don't have time to customize your smart actions, it comes with quite a few suggestions already, and they all work great.

Also, it doesn't hurt to restart the phone every once in awhile (hold down power, turn off, turn back on). I usually do it if I start to see battery drainage when it really shouldn't be draining.

 

[bradenfontaine]

just throwing this out there, but try turning off all smart actions for a couple of days to see if that improves things. i have an open issue with Motorola about smart actions eating up over 2 hours of maxxed out CPU usage for no apparent reason. they are aware of the issue, but dont have a fix for it yet. it is worse when you have locations set up for smart actions, severe battery killer. great app, just needs a couple of fixes.

 

[normio2]

Root, debloat, best two things you could do for battery life.

 

[mrcraft2u]

For me...the biggest thing I did to save the battery life is to toggle off 4G when I don't need it. 4G eats up a ton of battery...especially if you are not in a strong 4G area. The only time I need 4G is when I am downloading or streaming music/data. I also use the smart actions with the "sleep" mode. I have it set for midnight to 6am. I can easily go 2 days without needing to charge my maxx. I was able to go 36 hours before my battery dropped down to 50%.

 

[B. Diddy]

For me...the biggest thing I did to save the battery life is to toggle off 4G when I don't need it. 4G eats up a ton of battery...especially if you are not in a strong 4G area. The only time I need 4G is when I am downloading or streaming music/data. I also use the smart actions with the "sleep" mode. I have it set for midnight to 6am. I can easily go 2 days without needing to charge my maxx. I was able to go 36 hours before my battery dropped down to 50%.

Absolutely agree. Keep a mobile data toggle widget on your homescreen and turn it on only when you need it. Keeping mobile data on at all times is really only necessary if you constantly need to know in real time if you got an email or a Facebook notification, for example. If this isn't mission critical to you, then just keep 4G off, and toggle it on when you're ready to refresh and check your email or social ap.

 

[tech_head]

Root, debloat, best two things you could do for battery life.

That would be root and "Freeze Bloat". Do not remove it.
It's too painful to get back on the farm and get OTA updates unless you know what you are really doing. YMMV

 

[jdtruong]

bradenfontaine,
I have had the same issues with Smart Actions. I've turned them off completely today as a test and the battery seems to be not draining as quickly.

 

[Shadowtc]

That would be root and "Freeze Bloat". Do not remove it.
It's too painful to get back on the farm and get OTA updates unless you know what you are really doing. YMMV

It is safer to freeze you just have to know what you can freeze or you will mess up the phone

Sent from my MB860 using Tapatalk 2

 

[ryanidcomm]

Turn off smart actions
Turn off 4G

Check those email accounts and how often they sync

With just my gmail, no 4g and using llama instead of smart actions I get 1 day and 3 hours of battery life according to my battery app

Im a heavy user

just what i need!

 

[conan1071]

Thanks for everyones help. BTW Im in Chicago with great 4g coverage.

I have done what is suggested and have power cycled twice since posting. Battery doesnt seem to be much better. Maybe its my expectation based on what I read about the battery, however coming from a Blackberry 9930 and using my phone mostly for calls and emails, the Maxx battery isnt much better.

Today I took the Maxx off the charger at 8:30am and received about 8 emails, 2 texts, and browsed the web on 4g(it does switch off 4g sometimes) and the battery info is below.

60% left on the battery
3h 49m 54s on battery
voice calls=35%
dolphin browser=28%
display-22%
android OS=6%
cell standyby=2%
the rest are all very low usage

Any other advice...

 

[conan1071]

So I have done about 5 battery cycles and all the steps above. I also went to a Verizon store and they said it could be a bad battery; that 1 out of 5 have bad batteries. Also, I do get signal fluctuations and that can contribute; yesterday I only got 13.5 hours for the day and was on 30% battery web surfing on 4g for about 45 minutes and it dropped to 10%.

Really wish I can get 1.5 to 2 days out of this phone...

 

[ttens]

I was told it is rare to have problems but my phone was replaced as I wasn't getting the battery life expected. The new phone is definitely better but i'm not sure yet how long I will get as i'm on vacation this week and not on my normal schedule.

 

[ttens]

Oh and everyone has t told me different info about charging. I was told I can d do intermittent charges and don't need to run the battery down. I was told not to charge overnight. But I've also heard many contradictory things!