Battery Life

[njdevs96]

Good tip, mine was setup for Global - just switched it over

 

[patotong#AC]

hi, first time to the droid community! loving my dpro!!!

in finding ways to save battery life, i turned off several of the items in the Running Services. so far, i have not seen any issues with them but have seen improvement in the battery life. which of those would you recommend i should keep running?

 

[spmmn]

I may have

 

[ross8428]

This is my first Android phone, and I came from a BB 9630 which had great battery life (over one day, even with moderate - heavy usage). Like everyone else, I was getting horrible battery life with my Dpro. I went from Charlotte to Atlanta (around 3.5 hours) the other day, used the phone for one call, and the rest of the time it was on "standby". It lost 30% battery life in that time. Yesterday, with moderate text usage, 13 minutes 10 seconds of calls, and looking up 4 items on the internet, it was dead in 12 hours. I disabled a bunch of stuff, and now the phone has lost 10% battery life in 8 hours. Of course, I was asleep; but when I was in the hotel room the other night, it would lose around 50% power while I was asleep. Here is what I did, hopefully this will help some of you guys having problems.

1. I rooted the phone with z4.
2. I bought titanium backup pro. I freezed a ton of apps that were running that I did not use. Skype mobile, backup assist, the weather widget. Pretty much anything listed in applications -> running programs that I never used or would never use, except the system motorola ones, and ones that looked important
3. I set up the phone to kill data after 15 minutes all the time, not just when I am asleep. Do this in the battery manager section.
4. I disabled background data. (I just enable it when I want to get something from the market place).
5. I disabled gps, wifi, and bluetooth. I do not keep the GPS on because I have navigation in my truck. Wifi I do not need either; I will use my laptop. I have unlimited data; if you are on the 150mb plan, then the wifi option is probably a good one. Bluetooth is also something I do not use.
6. Set facebook to sync only when connected to a wifi. Facebook is something that is useful, but all in all, I do not really care what my friend's status updates are. I could care less that someone is going to the park and what a beautiful day it is outside; I can see what kind of day it is with my eyes.
7. Finally - the biggest one. I disabled the sync with the power control widget. While this does make gmail not sync and push, with the widget all you have to do it is turn it on whenever you want to check your email, then turn it off whenever it is finished.

Sounds like a lot to be disabled and you may wonder why I did all of this. Basically I would rather my phone last more than 12 hours on a charge because I cannot always be near a charger. I do have one in my car, but I am not going to pack a spare travel bag with an extra battery, extra car charger, a USB charger, and another wall charger just to go hang out with my friends. All of the settings above make the phone work perfectly. You can still browse the web, you can get text messages, mms, and phone calls. I also do not need to check my email constantly because most people know that texting me is much more efficient and a quicker response.

Hopefully this will help some of you guys. I was hating this phone, but now that I have the battery seeming to be in better condition; I am much happier. Tonight when I go to bed I will post how much battery I used over the course of the day.

 

[jpcalhoun]

Well, I'll jump on this post also...my battery life sucks compared to the Blackberry I was using. And, as someone else has posted...Moto really needs to configure a Droid Pro to sync with Outlook right out of the box similar to Palm and Blackberry. Having to establish a gmail account and then purchasing third party software just to get everything in outlook sync'd to the phone is really backwards engineering IMHO.

 

[njdevs96]

ok, i just can't find where to set/alter facebook's sync options. Where can I do this from?

 

[ross8428]

ok, i just can't find where to set/alter facebook's sync options. Where can I do this from?

Settings -> data manager -> data delivery -> social applications -> sync over wifi only.

 

[dwaynewilliams#WN]

you have to remember that while smartphones are taking huge steps forward with advancements in a very short amount of time, battery technology isnt. our new devices have all these new features and high screen resolution with super-fast processors, but the battery that is powering them has the same capacity as my BB curve did two years ago. of course, they could come with bigger batteries, but that would make the phones even more expensive, and much heavier and bulkier. adjusting to tweaking battery settings is one of the more challenging things i dealt with when switching to android, but fortunately there are a lot of options in the OS to help.

in the settings menu, there is a battery manager that has several profiles (including a customizable one) that can essentially cut off your 3g data stream when not using your phone, which helps. you can also go into the data manager and set your social network streams to only update while you are connected to wi-fi. as a previous poster mentioned, a lot of stuff gets pushed directly to the phone. besides emails, you also get constant FB and twitter updates pushed if you are using the account setup integrated in the OS, which was the biggest culprit for me when i switched to the droid x. the battery manager will help keep that in check. there are also many people who will just download the facebook and twitter apps and use them instead, as with the apps you can request status updates on demand.

the biggest thing to realize though is that the battery life is not going to be as good as many of you are used to from BB because you now own a phone that can do more than your BB ever could. use your phone how you want to though, as there is no point to having all this awesomeness and not using it. and for me, if that means i have to get an extended battery, or carry a spare charger with me, then im willing to do it

Thanks for the tip. I didn't even know that I coould adjust those settings. Doing it now for my D2.

 

[njdevs96]

Gotta love it - I hit the 12hr mark with my phone today with just 15% to go. I had basically everything shutdown as suggested and was affraid to use it for the most part.

Couple of questions - when looking at the battery manager and utilization my display is typically around 35% of battery consumption. Is this high or normal, if I turn the brightness down much further I won't be able to see the screen.

Also, can someone please compile a "top ten" list of battery saving tips and how to make these adjustments.

So far this battery life issue is a deal breaker for me. It's kind of like being given a Ferrari that gets 5 mph with only a 1 gallon tank. Ton's of cool features but there's a cost to using them

 

[ross8428]

Gotta love it - I hit the 12hr mark with my phone today with just 15% to go. I had basically everything shutdown as suggested and was affraid to use it for the most part.

Couple of questions - when looking at the battery manager and utilization my display is typically around 35% of battery consumption. Is this high or normal, if I turn the brightness down much further I won't be able to see the screen.

Also, can someone please compile a "top ten" list of battery saving tips and how to make these adjustments.

So far this battery life issue is a deal breaker for me. It's kind of like being given a Ferrari that gets 5 mph with only a 1 gallon tank. Ton's of cool features but there's a cost to using them

If you read the novel I wrote above, it tells what I did.

Today my phone went 21 hours without being plugged in, went to 10% life, and I made over an hour of calls, 200 texts, browsed the web some, worked on getting my contacts synced properly for over an hour, and ran wifi for about 1.5 hours. Then my best friend came over and was looking at all of the features on the phone as well. I am very pleased with the battery life now based on what I posted above, that is a huge increase in battery life.

 

[jpcalhoun]

Gotta love it - I hit the 12hr mark with my phone today with just 15% to go. I had basically everything shutdown as suggested and was affraid to use it for the most part.

Couple of questions - when looking at the battery manager and utilization my display is typically around 35% of battery consumption. Is this high or normal, if I turn the brightness down much further I won't be able to see the screen.

Also, can someone please compile a "top ten" list of battery saving tips and how to make these adjustments.

So far this battery life issue is a deal breaker for me. It's kind of like being given a Ferrari that gets 5 mph with only a 1 gallon tank. Ton's of cool features but there's a cost to using them

Well I'm no expert on battery life but here goes a few that I can think of:

-Turn your screen brightness down to as low as you can live with
-Make sure your phone is in CDMA mode not global (factory default I think)
-Only turn-on Bluetooth, GPS or WiFi when you need to use them...otherwise they should be turned off
-Set your email delivery to "manual" (keep in mind you will have to initiate retreval of your email)
-minimize the use of applications that need internet access to update (RSS feeds, weather apps etc).
-Set your screen to turn off to the lowest setting you are comfortable with (I think the lowest is 30 seconds)

That's not ten, but it is the best I can do off the top of my head.

 

[Eloquence]

Hi Everyone,

For those of you who are migrating from BlackBerries, welcome to the wonderful world of Android! I am a DX owner, but I have a couple of tips that will help you get immense battery life out of your DPro.

If you are willing to -- ROOT. You can get a lot more out of your phone if you do this simple procedure.

1) Download JuiceDefender immediately and use the widget to turn off mobile 3G data. This will increase your battery life CONSIDERABLY.

2) As said before turn off all radios you are not using (GPS, Bluetooth Wifi, 3G when necessary)

3) Buy setCPU ($3) and set it up so that your phone, when the screen is off, defaults to the lowest mHz possible (300 mHz I believe), and when your battery gets below 30% or so limit it to 800mHz or 600mHz max.

4) Get rid of all task killers! These do not help at ALL. There is only one program that you need to manage memory and that is Autokiller. Read about it. It is NOT a TASK KILLER just a memory manager.

5) Get rid of live wallpapers and/or widgets that are intense on the data using 3G radios.

6) Get that extended battery, when it arrives, if you have the $$. The one for the X is INCREDIBLE (1.5x the battery life).

That's all I got for now. If you have any quesitons, give me a shout on this thread or PM me. We can squeeze so much juice out of your phone, but it has to be done right.

Good luck!
-Elo