Moto X: Poor Battery Life

[Dswann3]

Had this phone for 10 days now and about ready to send it back to Motorola. Battery has been draining fast regardless of use. I even went so far as to do a factory reset & re-install everything making sure to turn off every unnecessary sync, location service, etc and even turned off 4G in case that was a factor. Charged it full last night and let it sit for 7 hours with no use, down to 78%. GSam said most power usage was in the 'android system' so no particular app from what I can tell & CPU Spy is saying little deep sleep (most was around 384MHz). I love the size & form factor of the phone (G2 & Maxx are too big for me) so not sure what I'm going to do next. For sure I'm not keeping a phone that drains faster than my old Droid RAZR. Thoughts out there?

 

[A895]

Re: Poor Battery Life

Had this phone for 10 days now and about ready to send it back to Motorola. Battery has been draining fast regardless of use. I even went so far as to do a factory reset & re-install everything making sure to turn off every unnecessary sync, location service, etc and even turned off 4G in case that was a factor. Charged it full last night and let it sit for 7 hours with no use, down to 78%. GSam said most power usage was in the 'android system' so no particular app from what I can tell & CPU Spy is saying little deep sleep (most was around 384MHz). I love the size & form factor of the phone (G2 & Maxx are too big for me) so not sure what I'm going to do next. For sure I'm not keeping a phone that drains faster than my old Droid RAZR. Thoughts out there?

Might have a faulty device. I chose the Moto X because of form factor too.

Posted via Android Central App

 

[effreyj]

Re: Poor Battery Life

Turn off location reporting as well as go into apps and disable "use location". Just set your locations manually in things that need location, such as weather apps. This seems to drain the battery since KitKat. Also, Moto Assist for driving uses a lot of battery, so uncheck it unless you're actually driving. Also, for apps like Facebook/Twitter/etc, if you set them to just manual refresh, it stops your phone from waking up when you're not using it.

Another thing to check in addition to GSam, is under "Developer Options->Process Stats", which tells you how much CPU each app is using and how long they're running.

Hope that helps.

 

[Dswann3]

Re: Poor Battery Life

Turn off location reporting as well as go into apps and disable "use location". Just set your locations manually in things that need location, such as weather apps. This seems to drain the battery since KitKat. Also, Moto Assist for driving uses a lot of battery, so uncheck it unless you're actually driving. Also, for apps like Facebook/Twitter/etc, if you set them to just manual refresh, it stops your phone from waking up when you're not using it.

Another thing to check in addition to GSam, is under "Developer Options->Process Stats", which tells you how much CPU each app is using and how long they're running.

Hope that helps.

Thanks. Already had MotoAssist turned off and don't even have FB or Twitter app that runs in the background. I use twicca for twitter and a manual refresh is needed. Everything else set pretty much the same as my old phone. Not using touchless control or Moto Connect either. Location is set to 'battery saver' (no GPS) so should be ok there. I even tried swapping ART for Davlik before the factory reset and no noticeable difference in battery usage. I really think it's just something in Kit Kat.

 

[Dswann3]

Re: Poor Battery Life

Frustrating thing is the G2 I had before this phone was WONDERFUL with battery life (2 days easy!) just too big & call quality was lacking. Not sure what to do at this point. No other great small phones on Verizon.

 

[A895]

Re: Poor Battery Life

Frustrating thing is the G2 I had before this phone was WONDERFUL with battery life (2 days easy!) just too big & call quality was lacking. Not sure what to do at this point. No other great small phones on Verizon.

Look at this:

http://forums.androidcentral.com/showthread.php?t=348630

Posted via Android Central App

 

[PDT816]

Re: Poor Battery Life

From you example of charging your phone and leaving it alone all night only to find that it's had a 22% batter drain....

First thing I'm going to check for being responsible for poor battery performance is the quality of my signal coming into the phone's radios. Low signal from your wifi system or from the towers for your phone radios is a much better candidate for being the issue than turning off apps/services.

 

[davidnc]

Re: Poor Battery Life

So I assume you already checked to make sure nothing was keeping the phone awake while it was idle? You mentioned CPU Spy was showing a "little deep sleep" . What percentage was it showing as being in deep sleep?

 

[Dswann3]

Re: Poor Battery Life

From you example of charging your phone and leaving it alone all night only to find that it's had a 22% batter drain....

First thing I'm going to check for being responsible for poor battery performance is the quality of my signal coming into the phone's radios. Low signal from your wifi system or from the towers for your phone radios is a much better candidate for being the issue than turning off apps/services.

Agreed. Signal is strong with all 'green' at my home. Wifi was off at the time. Signal is an issue causing higher drain at work but not at home.

Edit: Actually just double-checked the phone and it was indeed a bit below what it normally is at home. Hmmmm. Good catch.

 

[Dswann3]

Re: Poor Battery Life

So I assume you already checked to make sure nothing was keeping the phone awake while it was idle? You mentioned CPU Spy was showing a "little deep sleep" . What percentage was it showing as being in deep sleep?

Low, say 5%. The majority of the % was at the next level up, 384MHz. Really looks like something was keeping it awake. Would the unit indicate a high 'deep sleep' if it was having trouble pulling in a strong signal? Are those two things mutually exclusive?

 

[davidnc]

Re: Poor Battery Life

Low, say 5%. The majority of the % was at the next level up, 384MHz. Really looks like something was keeping it awake. Would the unit indicate a high 'deep sleep' if it was having trouble pulling in a strong signal? Are those two things mutually exclusive?

When I was using CPU Spy on my other android phone(retired) The deep sleep percentage would be like 89% - 92% something like that.

Im not 100% sure if a weak signal would cause it to not go into deep sleep tho.At first glance I would say no but I could be wrong on that.

 

[SandroidE]

If you ask me, it is not smart to do a factory reset and then re install everything you had prior the reset... If the issue is caused by an app, you reinstalled it...
In these cases what you would need to do is to gradually install apps to see if there's something wrong there...
In fact, you should not install apps right away...
Let the phone 'clean' for a few hours with location off and all those things, also disable voice commands... and check how it goes...
If even in that condition there's battery drain, then the issue is with the phone itself...

Enviado desde mi XT1058 usando Tapatalk 2

 

[Dswann3]

I did end up finding an app that was having some issues. I had added the stock JB messaging 8 app (wanted a dark option) and it was hanging sometimes so I deleted it and dropped only 6% over 7 hours last night on 3G (no wifi) so much better than yesterday. I'm going to watch it today and see how it drains over a normal day now. What would be considered 'good' for this phone? I know Motorola advertises 24 hours but is that a good target? Are there other Verizon phones (Moto G?) that are similar in size that have better battery life to consider? My 14 days is up on Saturday so want to be sure by then. Thanks for any input!

 

[PDT816]

I'm always within a good wifi range so I'm not using LTE services. But I get up at 6 AM and go to bed about midnight and always have at least 30 percent charge

Sent via my Moto X

 

[Dswann3]

Anyone else? It would be nice to get some daily averages on here after Kit Kat, not just for me but for anyone else looking thru the X threads.

 

[drvier8]

I returned my X after the Kit Kat update because I was getting the low battery warning after 10-11 hours. It was better pre-Kit Kat, but even disabling everything I wanted to use, I could only get it up to 12. Having gotten used to the battery life of my previous phone (Razr Maxx), I could not live with the X's battery performance.

 

[ETPhoneHomeT]

My battery life is similar to PDT816. I recently retired so much of my usage is at home on wifi, not that much on data (3G/4GLTE). I usually get up around 6:00 and go to bed around 11:00. I use my phone as my alarm clock and let it charge overnight on my nightstand. With very heavy usage, I might get as low as 15% but that's the exception rather than the norm. With moderate usage, I usually have around 35 to 40% left and on light days, maybe as much as 50% left. I do not turn off any of the phone features that use location services. I use Google Now, Active Display, Touchless Control, Moto Assist and Moto Connect. I don't leave GPS or Bluetooth running unless I'm actively using it. Since on average, my battery capacity extrapolates to somewhere between 26 to 28 hours and the phone is rated at 24 hours of mixed use, I'm OK with that since I rarely have any concern for running out of charge before the day is done. I came from a Droid Razr Maxx, so I am using slightly more battery percentage-wise, but not really all that much. I usually have around 3 hours of screen on time each day, give or take an hour or so. I didn't notice any real change post KitKat.

 

[msnider23]

Since the KitKat update I'm getting a maximum of 5-6 hours off of a charge. It's becoming quite frustrating because this is the kind of battery life that got me wanting to ditch iPhone in the first place. I reboot usually every other day, and close apps several times a day just to ensure that nothing is sucking battery for no reason. I'm pretty frustrated with it, but also stuck with it

Sent from my XT1060 using Tapatalk

 

[Dswann3]

I returned my X after the Kit Kat update because I was getting the low battery warning after 10-11 hours. It was better pre-Kit Kat, but even disabling everything I wanted to use, I could only get it up to 12. Having gotten used to the battery life of my previous phone (Razr Maxx), I could not live with the X's battery performance.

What did you end up going with? Another Maxx?

 

[Dswann3]

My battery life is similar to PDT816. I recently retired so much of my usage is at home on wifi, not that much on data (3G/4GLTE). I usually get up around 6:00 and go to bed around 11:00. I use my phone as my alarm clock and let it charge overnight on my nightstand. With very heavy usage, I might get as low as 15% but that's the exception rather than the norm. With moderate usage, I usually have around 35 to 40% left and on light days, maybe as much as 50% left. I do not turn off any of the phone features that use location services. I use Google Now, Active Display, Touchless Control, Moto Assist and Moto Connect. I don't leave GPS or Bluetooth running unless I'm actively using it. Since on average, my battery capacity extrapolates to somewhere between 26 to 28 hours and the phone is rated at 24 hours of mixed use, I'm OK with that since I rarely have any concern for running out of charge before the day is done. I came from a Droid Razr Maxx, so I am using slightly more battery percentage-wise, but not really all that much. I usually have around 3 hours of screen on time each day, give or take an hour or so. I didn't notice any real change post KitKat.

That's actually pretty good considering you left on some of the features that are known to draw the battery down quicker.