Maybe this explains the rebooting/bad battery life?

[ottscay]

I hope that is all it is, although I was told by verizon tech support (611) that they are waiting for Froyo to come out as Motorola has informed them that the battery issue is a software related item and Froyo will take care of the problem.....interesting.......

I can believe it; once I learned the reboot trick prior to the OTA update I had better battery life for two days...and then the OTA killed it. I've only just gotten back to similar times by installing Juce Defender (it automatically installs the part about wifi and 3G, just don't touch the rest), removing a few widgets, and cranking down my screen brightness. Yesterday I got really good battery life, but I did it without my calendar widget (ugh) and with the screen at 10% most of the time.

Today, with the screen hifgher (30-40% during the day) and my calendar widget back but using Juice Defender I'm at 30% after 10 hours. Not awesome, but I used it reasonably well so if it makes it 15 hours it'll seem like a victory.

I really hope the Froyo update (and other software magic) fixes it, but man am I jonesing for the 1900 mAH OEM battery that Motorola promised at this point...

 

[lcsglvr]

Turned phone on at 6:10 a.m. Deleted the 6 emails that came in, replied to 1 text and checked facebook. I got to work at 6:30 at about 7:30 it used doggcatcher to download the first 40 minute podcast of the Dan Patrick Show, listened to that, with headphones, it proceded to download the next 2 40 minute sessions in which I listened to those as well. I listened to about 45 minutes of Stern too.



Made/Received a total of 9 phone calls, had 1 google voice message I listened to and completed a total of 27 text messages.

About 5 minutes of mobile web on the browser and that was it. In that time, the wifi was turned off, gps turned off, screen brightness at a very low 11% and bluetooth was never on.

After a total of 10 hours (from 6:10 a.m. to 4:10 p.m.) of what I would consider light usage, I just received the 15% warning for the battery.

This is light usage? ? Especially the first paragraph.

 

[rion_j]

rion_j,

How did you get Juice Defender to automatically turn on wifi? Thanks!

i just did the auto set-up and left it alone. no changes at all after it completed set-up. as long as your near wifi, the app will automatically switch to it. when your screen is off and then you click it back on, you'll notice that the 3G logo is gone. which is what you want. the X is a data hog and when 3G is left on all day, it crushes battery.

it will occasionally switch over to 3G now and then which is ok and when your not in a wifi area, and you want to use your phone, it will flip back to 3G. basically, the program prefers wifi over 3G which is how you can save on battery life.

if your having trouble finding a wifi network, i found a pretty handy app today called WiFi Buddy. i'm not sure it's helping just yet, but i seem to have more of a steady wifi connection with it enabled. give it a try and let us know how it goes.

 

[jasoncardenas21]

I'm taking mine off of the charger today at 6 a.m. I uninstalled JD and ATK for testing purposes. I'm heading into my nearest Verizon store today and am taking all of your advice to show them how fast the battery has drained with me doing nothing. Hopefully I'll be able to get a new battery and then I'll put back JD on it.

Yesterday, I was unplugged for 15 hours and 23 minutes and still at 30% battery life. I used it quite a bit too.

EDIT: So I just went to unplug it and apparantly it it is left on, it won't charge. It was still at 30% even after being plugged in all night. Turned off, plugged in and will hope to have it at 100% before I leave....ARGGHHHHH

 

[GenericMessage]

I am gonna say the same thing that I've said to all users of these powerhouse Android devices;


You're carrying around a laptop's worth of power running on AA batteries.

Every day is going to have slightly different results on how your battery works.

Every second you have that massive screen on, its MURDERING the battery.
Wifi uses less juice than 3G
Those are pretty much the two big things you can solve easily.

But as for these people being upset that they're getting 10 hrs of life out of their device? You should be thankful! I've read many of your usage patterns on here that you claim as "light" and they aren't.
Most of these devices survive for maybe 3 hrs of heavy usage.

So don't worry, your phone isn't defective, its just a smartphone.

 

[Matt Kline]

I'm taking mine off of the charger today at 6 a.m. I uninstalled JD and ATK for testing purposes. I'm heading into my nearest Verizon store today and am taking all of your advice to show them how fast the battery has drained with me doing nothing. Hopefully I'll be able to get a new battery and then I'll put back JD on it.

Yesterday, I was unplugged for 15 hours and 23 minutes and still at 30% battery life. I used it quite a bit too.

EDIT: So I just went to unplug it and apparantly it it is left on, it won't charge. It was still at 30% even after being plugged in all night. Turned off, plugged in and will hope to have it at 100% before I leave....ARGGHHHHH

I always charged my phone with it on. Something else is wrong with it.

 

[ottscay]

So...after a couple of days of decent-to-excellent battery life, today my phones was dead after six hours, and I wasn't using it differently (well, except that i used it for like 9-10 extra hours in the days before...).

Suspects:

1) I re-installed Pure Calendar widget again
2) There was yet another update to Beautiful Widgets today just as I unplugged my phone
3) As an experiment I tried out DLNA. I did manually kill the processes a couple hours later when I noticed they were still there.
4) I wasn't able to charge the phone as long past 100% as normal...I'd guess it was charged for about 5 hours after running it out of juice, rather than overnight.

I'm not sure which one to suspect. I've already uninstalled Pure Calendar widget, so that will be my first test. I'm thinking of starting a new thread with a very specific format for people to list what widgets/apps they have running and what their normal battery life is, just to see if there are any obvious conflicts or parallels.

 

[Matt Kline]

As soon as I got rid of pure calendar my battery has improved a lot.

 

[adeelmd]

has anyone noticed the free atk taking battery life away? The first few days, I will only use atk when I needed it (turn it on, kill atk along with all the apps 1x-2x daily). Even with eavy usage, I could still get 12-18 hours of use. Ever since I have turned it on and it is running in the background, my battery is getting hosed. That could just be a coinidence, but I'll tinker around for a few days.

 

[RayStinkle]

has anyone noticed the free atk taking battery life away? The first few days, I will only use atk when I needed it (turn it on, kill atk along with all the apps 1x-2x daily). Even with eavy usage, I could still get 12-18 hours of use. Ever since I have turned it on and it is running in the background, my battery is getting hosed. That could just be a coinidence, but I'll tinker around for a few days.

Well that kinda makes sense if atk is auto killing all day. It is fighting the OS all the time. The OS wants to load certain things and atk keeps killing them. Over and over this IS using CPU to fight each other.

 

[tmax1964]

As I reported a few days ago I went to this droid x class this morning, Found out that verizon recommends the "advanced task manager", The guy explained to me that everytime you go into anything on your phone and leave that app, it runs what you were just in in the background,example facebook, youtube games internet etc. He recommends I hit this button twice a day, that will save on battery life, Its pretty easy to use,and also can exclude some apps that you want. also said to keep the screen brightness on auto. He said depending on your usage of phone you should be able to get a full day of battery usage, unless you are using it as a laptop and your out till wee hours of the night then throw on charger. Best way to charge is by wall, if using car charger or charging through a computer, it will charge faster but doesnt give you a full charge like if you were using the wall outlet. the car and computer charging is meant for temporary charging fix. Also there are some software issues with the battery charging indicator and the alarm clock, He said the next update will fix all of this. he also said all android phones are being updated through this month of august. Each week another phone will be getting the froyo 2.2 with other bug fixes, he belevies droid x will have by third week in august. SO we shall see.

 

[Bond32]

Hmmm try this out tmax, let us know how it works. There are so many mixed views on task killers its hard to really tell. The article on this site is ok, but it doesnt give a definite answer. Someone had posted back an article from the devs that was a good read on it, sorry I dont have the link. Considering the phone will continue to reopen these apps after you close them it sounds to me a bad idea, but I would be curious to see if it makes any improvements.

 

[jasoncardenas21]

After going to the Verizon store yesterday and explaining my situation and showing them the proof of the actual battery drain, they immediately replaced my battery. I haven't used JD or ATK since and the battery seems to be holding up pretty good. I'll give a better update tomorrow.

 

[tmax1964]

ok day one of the test. I had verizon put the highly recommened , Advanced task manager on my phone about 9:30 this morning after a full nights charge keep in mind I was already at 80% at 9:30 only thing used before app put on was alarm clock. Its almost 11:00pm and Im at 30% trying to kill the battery down for the past 2 hours so I can put on charger at 15% to get an accuarte 100% charge over night, I purposly used it heavy today, downloaded a bunch of different free apps, used facebook constantly, texting alot, watch several you tube videos, took pictures edited pictures, Played many different games, ran radar app, only hit the kill switch twice as recommened by the guy at verizon. If I didnt have to work tomorrow I would have left off charger tonight to see where I was at by morning. But since I am working it wont get has much heavy use as I did today, so I will report tomorrow night on how day 2 went. Hopefully this guy at verizon was right but this week will tell.

 

[Bald Steve]

As soon as I got rid of pure calendar my battery has improved a lot.

Same here. As soon as I deleted that thing I noticed a marked improvement in battery life.

 

[ceriem]

Wow, I must say the Juice Defender does an amazing job of keeping my battery life high. I get a projected 20 hours of life at least on a full charge (estimates at the beginning of the day on JuicePlotter are around 36 hours, but its more realistically about 12 less.)

If your worried that it keeps mobile data off for the majority of the time, then I would recommend getting the paid version and customizing how you want it to turn data on and off. It may affect performance, but you'll still be saving.

Usually with a live wallpaper going, I'm down close to 30% at the end of my work day around 6. Now, I'm staying well about 60% during the same time period. I am a satisfied customer and may soon invest in the Pro version.

 

[tmax1964]

day two of the test. I took phone off charger this morning at 6:30, I have texted, made several phone calls, checked facebook and did some googling, through out the day. It is 9:15pm and my battery is at 70%, so here comes the big test, Im not charging it tonight and I will see what happens tomorrow, I will bring my charger to work just in case. But today was a good phone day with the advance task manager, stay tuned till tomorrow night

 

[gafly]

Wow, I must say the Juice Defender does an amazing job of keeping my battery life high. I get a projected 20 hours of life at least on a full charge...

I see your 20 hours with Juice Defender turning stuff on and off and I raise you SetCPU on a rooted DX not turning stuff on and off... just lowering the max CPU speed when the screen is off.

With 15% left

 

[ottscay]

Yeah, as soon as froyo has been out for like a month on the DX (just to make sure there isn't a small OTA update) I'll probably root mine so I can use SetCPU.

Still, the mere absence of Pure Calendar and presence of Juice Defender has doubled my battery life.

 

[ceriem]

I see your 20 hours with Juice Defender turning stuff on and off and I raise you SetCPU on a rooted DX not turning stuff on and off... just lowering the max CPU speed when the screen is off.

With 15% left

Wow, that's pretty serious data you got there. I can definitely get a full 24 hours out of mine, but prefer a charge at night so I probably won't test that til the weekend when I can charge my phone during the day at home.