Droid Maxx battery not even lasting a full day

[pessen]

I've had my Droid Maxx for about a year now, and while I had never been hugely impressed by the battery, it had almost always lasted at least a full day for me even under heavy usage. Recently, though, in the past month or so, the battery hasn't even been lasting a full day for me. I've been running Android 4.4.4 for a bit, now, but the battery performance decrease doesn't seem to coincide with the upgrade to Kit Kat. I've tried clearing caches and completely draining the battery and then charging it while the phone is off, but neither has made a noticeable difference. The built-in battery analyzer hasn't indicated any problem apps ("screen" is consistently the #1 battery drain at around 30%) and I haven't noticed anything problematic using the GSam Battery Monitory. According to GSam, I'm only getting about 14 hours of battery life, and I don't feel like I'm a particularly heavy user of my phone. Does anybody have any suggestions on what I can do to get my battery performance back to where it used to be? I don't want to do a factory reset until I get Lollipop. Thanks.

 

[doogald]

Yep, KitKat drains the battery faster. It could be that the phone is now a year old and the battery has lost some of its full cycle as well.

If you haven't done a factory data reset since getting KitKat, though, I'd strongly suggest it. I tried running a few weeks after the upgrade but the phone was terrible. An FDR made it much better (though, of course, the battery was still a bit worse than JB.)

Of course if you did a post-Kitkat FDR, then never mind. It probably won't make a long-term difference.

One thing you can try is to turn off some of the features of the phone - touchless controls, Assist app driving support - and see if that adds significant battery life. If you use Facebook, turn off background updates in the app. The same goes for Google+. If you have any home screen widgets, see if removing them makes the phone last longer. You mention GSAM - I often wonder if GSAM itself has battery drain? Try uninstalling it for a few days to see if it makes a difference.

I'd not try all of those things at once, just one at a time, to see which makes a difference, if any.

 

[pessen]

Thanks for the suggestions. I can understand a year old battery losing some of it's capacity, but I've read about people still getting 48 hours from their phones so I figured getting one day's worth wasn't too much to ask. I haven't done an FDR, and I had been hoping to hold off until I got Lollipop because I figured I might be able to kill two birds with one stone there. I've never used the Assist app, and when I load it up, everything appears to be disabled. Is there anything else to turn off there? The battery problems pre-date the installation of GSam (I installed it to help diagnose the problem), but I will try the other suggestions. Thanks.

 

[hotshot24]

I had a similar problem and clearing the download cache and chrome cache helped a lot.

 

[NotFromHere]

I've also had battery issues, and I've tried everything. Disabling unused apps helps, especially all of the Amazon stuff but it's been quite a while since I did that. Recently and randomly I read about something that seems to have made a huge difference, and I don't know if it was cause & effect or just coincidence. Try going into Settings | Mobile Networks | Preferred Network Type and switch from Global to LTE/CDMA. After I made that change my battery went back to its original performance, and I've had my MAXX for a year now. Today I'm at 47% after 16 hours, including 2.5 hours on voice calls. Again, this could be a coincidence, but I can't think of any other recent charge I've made that would account for the improved battery life.

Posted via Android Central App

 

[NotFromHere]

Try going into Settings | Mobile Networks | Preferred Network Type and switch from Global to LTE / CDMA. I did that recently and, though it may have been some kind of coincidence, my battery life improved immensely on my year old MAXX. Right now I'm at 47% after more than 16 hours, including 2.5 hours of talk time.

Sorry for the double post...my first post didn't seem to take last night for some reason, but now I see it.

Posted via Android Central App

 

[perkdog65]

Had anyone replaced their battery yet? It doesn't look that difficult.

 

[Andy88488]

I had a similar problem and clearing the download cache and chrome cache helped a lot.

Yeah, I cleared the Google Play cache (which may or not be the same thing, I'm not sure) and it helped a TON. I went from ending the day with no battery or maybe 6% battery to having a good 20-30% left on a routine basis. I was very skeptical of this advice, but it really, really worked.

 

[doogald]

Thanks for the suggestions. I can understand a year old battery losing some of it's capacity, but I've read about people still getting 48 hours from their phones so I figured getting one day's worth wasn't too much to ask.

Good luck. FWIW, I never came close to 48 hours life. When I first bought the phone, at best I would trend to 40 hours, but if you divided hours by battery percent used I generally trended to about 34 hours. Since the KitKat update that's closer to 26 hours now (and GSAM says that my average life is now 23h 14m.)

I live in an area where the cell signal isn't great, and when I travel to places where the signal is better, I get better battery life. So if your signal strength is bad, that may explain some battery performance issues.

One other thing to try is to try switching to the ART runtime from the default Dalvik, if you haven't tried that already. Some people report better battery life with ART, though my experience is that battery life is much the same, maybe a little better on ART, but performance (particularly scrolling within apps) is much better.

To switch, you have to turn on developer mode. Open settings, about phone, then tap the build number about 10 times (it will tell you when you are developer.) This will unlock the settings / Developer options - open that, turn it on at the top, then go into "Select Runtime" and choose ART. This will reboot the phone and spend about 20 minutes compiling your apps for ART, then the phone will start as normal. There are some apps that don't work on ART, but none of the apps I use have a problem, and this may be worth trying to see if it helps.

Oh, and one other thing I've noticed that seems to help with battery for me - restarting the phone. Usually I get better battery life day one after a fresh restart.

 

[BlueLions81]

My battery seems to be draining quite a bit when it's idle. I noticed it dropped 11% in 3 hours. I do live in an area with bad signal and at work the signal is bad, but that seems high to me. How much does your battery drain when idle? I've grabbed snapshots, but can't post them right now. Phone battery time is 15 hrs 41m 37s, screen on 3 hr 50 min 44s and battery was at 10%.

It shows that phone idle was 4% of the battery drain. How can it only be 4% when it dropped 11% from when I last used it 3 hrs ago?

 

[doogald]

My phone drops about 3.5 to 4.5 percent an hour, so that sounds right to me. Your phone is rarely truly idle. It's checking email in the background. It's managing active display, to show you notifications. It's maybe checking Facebook or Twitter or instagram or any other apps you have that are set to look for updates periodically. It's listening for the touchless control "ok Google now" signal. It's monitoring your location. It's making sure that it stays connected to mobile and wifi networks. It's looking for received calls and text messages. If you've turned on the features, it's watching for a signal from Android device manager or Motorola's similar service to locate the phone, or lock it out, in case you've lost it.

 

[BlueLions81]

My phone drops about 3.5 to 4.5 percent an hour, so that sounds right to me. Your phone is rarely truly idle. It's checking email in the background. It's managing active display, to show you notifications. It's maybe checking Facebook or Twitter or instagram or any other apps you have that are set to look for updates periodically. It's listening for the touchless control "ok Google now" signal. It's monitoring your location. It's making sure that it stays connected to mobile and wifi networks. It's looking for received calls and text messages. If you've turned on the features, it's watching for a signal from Android device manager or Motorola's similar service to locate the phone, or lock it out, in case you've lost it.

I don't have email synced and I don't have a facebook account or twitter. I also turn off the mobile network unless I'm using it, which isn't too much. I also have location off.

 

[pessen]

Try going into Settings | Mobile Networks | Preferred Network Type and switch from Global to LTE / CDMA. I did that recently and, though it may have been some kind of coincidence, my battery life improved immensely on my year old MAXX. Right now I'm at 47% after more than 16 hours, including 2.5 hours of talk time.

I gave this a try yesterday and the initial results are promising. GSAM is estimating closer to 20 hours of battery now. The real test will be this weekend, when my phone gets more of a workout. Does anybody know if there is some sort of downside to making this change? Thanks.

 

[doogald]

I gave this a try yesterday and the initial results are promising. GSAM is estimating closer to 20 hours of battery now. The real test will be this weekend, when my phone gets more of a workout. Does anybody know if there is some sort of downside to making this change? Thanks.

The only downside is if you travel out of the country to a place that has only GSM networks - you won't be able to get mobile data.

A very small downside for most of us, easily switched when we do travel.

In my experience, it made no difference for me. But I think if you're often in a no signal cdma area the phone will look for GSM if you have global on, even in the US, though it won't actually roam to GSM, so if you are often in low to no signal areas, maybe it will make a difference.

 

[pessen]

I gave this a try yesterday and the initial results are promising. GSAM is estimating closer to 20 hours of battery now. The real test will be this weekend, when my phone gets more of a workout. Does anybody know if there is some sort of downside to making this change? Thanks.

Looks like it was a temporary thing. Phone is back to getting 12-14 hours under moderate use. Thanks for the suggestions, everybody. I'll probably just wait for Lollipop, then do a factory reset, and hope that either that or the switch to ART makes a difference.

 

[jrabin]

If I do a factory reset, will that wipe out the data (I'm mostly thinking of photos), or will the data be preserved?

 

[jrabin]

How to you clear the Google Play cache? (Thanks in advance for the answer).

 

[doogald]

If I do a factory reset, will that wipe out the data (I'm mostly thinking of photos), or will the data be preserved?

Yes, it will. Back up everything in storage, photos, videos, etc., that you don't want to lose. I recommend using Google+ automatic photo backup, or Dropbox automatic photo backup, or onedrive, etc. - there are a lot of services that do auto photo backup as you take them.

All text messages, call logs, will be lost, though your messaging client may keep backups.

Basically it will be as if the phone came out of the box brand new.

 

[hotshot24]

How to you clear the Google Play cache? (Thanks in advance for the answer).

Click on. Settings - apps- all - google play - clear cache then clear data

I had over 400meg in those 2 items, now after 3 weeks I have 6 meg. I didn't notice anything that changed after I wiped cache and deleted the data except a battery life improvement. My passwords, apps, everything stayed the same so deleting those things did nothing negative to my user experience.

I did the same thing to downloads and my battery life went way up since 3 weeks ago when I did those 2 things.