Decreasing battery life since purchase

benawhile

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Hi

After purchasing my Moto G three months ago I found that with extremely minimal use, wifi off, background data restricted, screen dimmed, 30 sec timout, I could get a week between charges but this is now down to 60 hours.

I have made only 15mins of voice calls during 75% battery discharge and this accounts for 9% of battery use.

Could the cause of this be that the battery has deteriorated? If so I will take the phone back under warranty. One thing I have concluded from most forum posts is that with hindsight I should not have allowed the Li ion battery to discharge to zero. I should point out that there is no guidance about this provided in the Moto G guide nor by the sellers. In fact in the Motorola forum there are several posts advising to discharge to zero and then to fully charge as a recalibration fix. Would you advise me to risk trying this at all? Is it OK to charge from about 20% to maximum?

I haven't yet tried disabling apps because Android system is only 7% and Android OS use only 2%. of total battery usage but is it possible apps or services are draining battery without showing up in the stats?

For example in the ″running″ list there are about 12 apps but there are about 150 apps in the ″All″ list and all have a force stop option, which implies to me that they are running, so why aren't they included in the ″running″ list?
 

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arch stanton1

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Sometimes if there is a weaker 3G signal, the standby will drain the battery more. I've found that killing tasks every hour or so and disabling anything you don't use really works. I disabled Youtube, but every 6 hours or so it re-starts and drains the battery. Whenever there is anything in the notification area, I find that my battery drain is about 3X.

Do a cache clear and see if that helps.

Draining a Li ion battery is bad for it, but I really doubt that the Moto G circuitry would allow that. I try to recharge at the 30% level.
 

neu smurph

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May 15, 2013
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It's difficult to estimate from the screenshots but it looks like your screen is using a fair proportion of the battery when the screen on time doesn't look that high.

One thing to bear in mind (I'm assuming you are northern hemisphere) is that if you have auto brightness set as the day length gets longer/days are sunnier/you are using your device more often out doors etc, the auto brightness is going to be cranking the screen brightness higher more often than it would have done a few months ago in the winter, and overall battery life reduces markedly as a result. Screen brightness makes a massive difference to battery drain. Having said that you say screen is dimmed...... for 44% screen of 69% overall drain you should be getting 5hours+ of screen on time at a low brightness setting.

The apps in the all list won't be running. The drain rate looks very steady....what does it do in airplane mode? If you are getting drain of more than about 1% every 5-6 hours in airplane mode try a reboot. As a general rule rebooting the device every couple of days isn't bad practise.

Re charging practice is not a good practice for any device with a Li-ion battery to regularly discharge to 0% every charge cycle, but I doubt it will have affected capacity that much. It is also 'bad' for Li-ion batteries to charge them to 100%, but it's unrealistic in consumer gear not too so we all have to live with the fact that capacity will start dropping sometime after 500+ charge cycles.... I generally charge every 2nd day phone could be anywhere between 10-40% depending on my usage.

Good reading - http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries
 
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benawhile

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I have now gone through two successive discharge and charge cycles (discharged to 20 and 40%) and would be interested in any comments on the following two observations:

Although at least one web source says I should power off the phone during a recal charge, I was unable to do this. I powered down the phone but as soon as I connected the charging lead, it powered up again.

The battery charge level indicator is now stuck at 100% after 2 hrs use, same fault as reported by other people, although this has never happened to me before. I powered down to see if that would change anything, but since I powered up again I found that the indicator was still stuck at 100% and moreover the "time on battery " had reset to the most recent power up time, so that instead of the graph indicating the time since the last charge, it only indicated time and battery level since last power up.
 

diecast10

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I have now gone through two successive discharge and charge cycles (discharged to 20 and 40%) and would be interested in any comments on the following two observations:

Although at least one web source says I should power off the phone during a recal charge, I was unable to do this. I powered down the phone but as soon as I connected the charging lead, it powered up again.

The battery charge level indicator is now stuck at 100% after 2 hrs use, same fault as reported by other people, although this has never happened to me before. I powered down to see if that would change anything, but since I powered up again I found that the indicator was still stuck at 100% and moreover the "time on battery " had reset to the most recent power up time, so that instead of the graph indicating the time since the last charge, it only indicated time and battery level since last power up.

https://motorola-global-portal.custhelp.com/app/answers/prod_answer_detail/a_id/93162/p/30,6720,8577

Στάλθηκε από το XT1032 μου χρησιμοποιώντας Tapatalk
 

neu smurph

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Although at least one web source says I should power off the phone during a recal charge, I was unable to do this. I powered down the phone but as soon as I connected the charging lead, it powered up again.

The battery charge level indicator is now stuck at 100% after 2 hrs use, same fault as reported by other people, although this has never happened to me before. I powered down to see if that would change anything, but since I powered up again I found that the indicator was still stuck at 100% and moreover the "time on battery " had reset to the most recent power up time, so that instead of the graph indicating the time since the last charge, it only indicated time and battery level since last power up.

Try a different charger - some chargers will force a reboot, some won't (I use a Blackberry Charger which doesn't).

Never come across it 'stuck' on on 100% if in use for (rather than just switched on) for a couple of hours. My phone often stays on 100% for > 1hr after a charge if it's left idle though.

The cache clear instructions linked to by diecast10 might help. By the way you don't mention if you have had a major OTA update since owning the phone? If so and you didn't Factory Reset after the OTA it might not be a bad idea to try a reset.
 

benawhile

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Thanks neusmurph and diecast. Have now cleared the cache. Link was to droid razr but found moto g site, slightly different procedure but I seem to have got it.
I had been using a spare chrger that I bought from amazon which looks identical to the one supplied. Now using the one supplied and that doesn't force a reboot.
Charge level is now going down slowly and is at 93% after about 35 hrs. I am hardly using the phone at all so this may be correct, we will see. I will do one more recal charge, although the first two weren't following strict instructions. Main thing is I will not discharge to zero any more.
There is more help on the motorola site than I realised so will refer to that more in future.
 
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JohnCenaFan

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thinking of doing a clear cache on my phone as barry is draining quick does this why any data off the phone or just temp files.

my phone battery is currently 76% after 1 day is this normal
 

diecast10

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Thanks neusmurph and diecast. Have now cleared the cache. Link was to droid razr but found moto g site, slightly different procedure but I seem to have got it.
I had been using a spare chrger that I bought from amazon which looks identical to the one supplied. Now using the one supplied and that doesn't force a reboot.
Charge level is now going down slowly and is at 93% after about 35 hrs. I am hardly using the phone at all so this may be correct, we will see. I will do one more recal charge, although the first two weren't following strict instructions. Main thing is I will not discharge to zero any more.
There is more help on the motorola site than I realised so will refer to that more in future.

If you contact with motorola and you say you have problem with battery they advice you to wipe cache! I have done about 3 weeks after purchasing the phone and boom problem solved :)

Στάλθηκε από το XT1032 μου χρησιμοποιώντας Tapatalk
 

MotoClive

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Dec 6, 2013
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thinking of doing a clear cache on my phone as barry is draining quick does this why any data off the phone or just temp files.

my phone battery is currently 76% after 1 day is this normal

Its atually wondeful and rare for most smartphones to have only used 24% in 1 day.
 

benawhile

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AS a postscript, my last charge lasted a full week. Only used 4% in last 24 hrs. Problem now solved after the recal charges, (did NOT discharge to zero, went down to about 20%) and cache clear.
 

Nikhil Ramakrishnan

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Hey guys. Just a small question. How long should my battery last in normal usage conditions? I am mostly connected to WiFi or use mobile data (3G) throughout the day for receiving messages on WhatsApp and Messenger.
 

benawhile

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First you have to establish exactly what counts as "normal usage" if there is such a thing. Some people even seem to be using their phones so much that they have to recharge during the day, and accept this as normal. My 2 cents worth of advice would be to try a day, or at least a night, with wi fi, mobile data and background data all disabled and then see how fast it's draining over night when you don't use it. If you do the arithmetic this will tell you how much extra juice the apps are using and I would say it's the first thing you need to know. I would expect to lose 4-6% of charge over 8 hours at most, although some people say this is expecting too much, but I am achieving even better than that at present. Some people on the forums are even suggesting that current android phones may go through a period after purchase during which battery performance temporarily seems to drop, and then recover with no know known cause.
 

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