Battery Usage - Normal Most days, Very High some days

[funguy123us]

Overall I am very happy with Thunderbolt.

On most days my battery is fine (acceptable). But I do have some days where it drains like crazy without using much. It will be down to 15% in 4-5 hours with minimum use. Once I reboot issue goes away.

Is this just me or are you guys having this issue? BTW, this is happening from day ONE (March 17).

I understand every OS needs a reboot but It is strange that it goes through like that. Also, it's random when it will happens, it's not like it will happen 3 days after I rebooted etc..

 

[Shryne]

Yea, I upgraded my battery to the 1750mAh battery from Sedio, and my battery feels like a normal battery like any other smartphone.

The only time that my battery runs short is when I just watch netflix on 4G for several hours...I keep my old 1300mAh battery around for that.

 

[slimc84]

I rooted and flashed Infected Eternity with iso 5.0.1 for the kernel and got 49hrs out of 67% of my battery with light/moderate usage. Best battery life ever for the thunderbolt.

 

[hmackenz]

Yup. Sometimes i get up to 20 hours, and sometimes i get like 7

 

[hmackenz]

I rooted and flashed Infected Eternity with iso 5.0.1 for the kernel and got 49hrs out of 67% of my battery with light/moderate usage. Best battery life ever for the thunderbolt.

might have to look into this!

 

[MRW1215]

Mine is often fairly random, too. With the latest GB OTAs (along with JuiceDefender), I can get pretty solid battery life out of the stock battery. Normally I can go about 8-9 hours (with an hour, hour-and-a-half of that being web browsing, e-mail, etc.) and still have about 50-60% left at the end of the day. Sometimes, though, it dips down to the 40s, and one time, it even dipped into the 30s. Not really sure what causes that, but eh.

 

[funguy123us]

Actually mine is very different.

When i say it drains, it will go to 0% (ie dead) in less then 6 hours with very minimum use (less then 20 minutes).

But again this only happens once in a while and when it does, I just reboot and it fixes the issue and I am back to normal where it lasts all day.

 

[anon(394005)]

Overall I am very happy with Thunderbolt.

On most days my battery is fine (acceptable). But I do have some days where it drains like crazy without using much. It will be down to 15% in 4-5 hours with minimum use. Once I reboot issue goes away.

Is this just me or are you guys having this issue? BTW, this is happening from day ONE (March 17).

I understand every OS needs a reboot but It is strange that it goes through like that. Also, it's random when it will happens, it's not like it will happen 3 days after I rebooted etc..

Anything showing under Battery use (Menu, Settings, About Phone, Battery) when battery life is less? Possibly the Dialer issue some have been experiencing? (see this link: http://forums.androidcentral.com/verizon-htc-thunderbolt-forums/131501-delete-dialer-data.html) Are you using a battery saving app like Juice Defender that may be killing something that keeps restarting?

My battery life is pretty consistent. Although I'm probably different than most as I have multiple batteries that are charged by a Seidio multi-function battery charger, rarely the phone itself. As such, I frequently power down and swap out for a fresh battery. With the two standard batteries, that's about once a day, with the extended, about 2-3 days. That and the batteries get charged without having to power the phone at the same time or experience the phone charge cycle where the phone stops charging the battery when it reaches 100%, and doesn't start to charge it again until it drops 5-10%. So, I'm always at 99-100% charge after boot up on a fresh battery.

 

[Dilpickle1]

Before I switch to a windows phone, my thunderbolt was acting up as well. One day it would die super quick, the next it would last 24+ hours.

 

[cclifft]

Yeah, I would have to agree with several of you about erratic battery. Not to start up another "TB Battery Sucks" thread, but lately mine has been draining faster than normal.

I'm not rooted, completely stock, and updated to current GB release. Most days I am good, I am not a heavy user, but now twice in the last 4 days, I have gone to bed with 50% or more on my battery, and woken up 7-8hrs later to a dead phone. I have a strong Wifi signal in my house, so I usually just leave wifi on all night on the phone, also have it set to never turn wifi off when in sleep mode. First night it drained from about 60% to dead in about 8 hours of 0 use, I was sleeping. Last night I tried to turn wifi off, used the cell signal (solid 4g) and turned background data off as well, went to sleep with 50% battery, woke up 7 hrs later, dead phone. I am just using the standard stock battery as well. I have the extended battery, but hate the bulk.

Usually, I can go to sleep with a full charge, leave it on wifi and then wake up to about 90% left or so, and when I look at the battery usage and graph, it shows a steep decline at night when I am asleep, but during the day, it's just a steady, slow decline in use, etc. Not sure why it's doing this at night, when I tend to check my phone more in the day, so I would expect bigger battery drain in the day hours. Perhaps the underpant gnomes are using my phone while I sleep.

Sorry to not offer any suggestions to how to fix it, all I can do now is just leave background data off, and put it on a charger at night when I sleep, which lately means that I am going to have to have it on the charger twice a day, once in the morning while it builds back up from the dead drain the night before, and now at night, to keep it from draining.

 

[steve_ma]

My battery life seems consistent and is just fine. I did very much adjust my expectations when I got an android versus my old cell phones and my BB curve.

 

[funguy123us]

Anything showing under Battery use (Menu, Settings, About Phone, Battery) when battery life is less? Possibly the Dialer issue some have been experiencing? (see this link: http://forums.androidcentral.com/verizon-htc-thunderbolt-forums/131501-delete-dialer-data.html) Are you using a battery saving app like Juice Defender that may be killing something that keeps restarting?

My battery life is pretty consistent. Although I'm probably different than most as I have multiple batteries that are charged by a Seidio multi-function battery charger, rarely the phone itself. As such, I frequently power down and swap out for a fresh battery. With the two standard batteries, that's about once a day, with the extended, about 2-3 days. That and the batteries get charged without having to power the phone at the same time or experience the phone charge cycle where the phone stops charging the battery when it reaches 100%, and doesn't start to charge it again until it drops 5-10%. So, I'm always at 99-100% charge after boot up on a fresh battery.

No Juice Defender on my phone.
Dialer, yes i do see Dialer using some % of usage.
My point is though it's not consistence, I don't care if TBolt has poor battery but it needs to be poor all day everyday the same.

Basically My phone has two types of days, good day and bad day.

On a good day - It lasts all day and plus some
On a bad day - less then 6 hr without using it.

WHY?

I wonder it has something to do with Android and/or some apps/services going nuts?

Yeah, I would have to agree with several of you about erratic battery. Not to start up another "TB Battery Sucks" thread, but lately mine has been draining faster than normal.

I'm not rooted, completely stock, and updated to current GB release. Most days I am good, I am not a heavy user, but now twice in the last 4 days, I have gone to bed with 50% or more on my battery, and woken up 7-8hrs later to a dead phone. I have a strong Wifi signal in my house, so I usually just leave wifi on all night on the phone, also have it set to never turn wifi off when in sleep mode. First night it drained from about 60% to dead in about 8 hours of 0 use, I was sleeping. Last night I tried to turn wifi off, used the cell signal (solid 4g) and turned background data off as well, went to sleep with 50% battery, woke up 7 hrs later, dead phone. I am just using the standard stock battery as well. I have the extended battery, but hate the bulk.

Usually, I can go to sleep with a full charge, leave it on wifi and then wake up to about 90% left or so, and when I look at the battery usage and graph, it shows a steep decline at night when I am asleep, but during the day, it's just a steady, slow decline in use, etc. Not sure why it's doing this at night, when I tend to check my phone more in the day, so I would expect bigger battery drain in the day hours. Perhaps the underpant gnomes are using my phone while I sleep.

Sorry to not offer any suggestions to how to fix it, all I can do now is just leave background data off, and put it on a charger at night when I sleep, which lately means that I am going to have to have it on the charger twice a day, once in the morning while it builds back up from the dead drain the night before, and now at night, to keep it from draining.

Agreed, My phone died in the morning too (it was a bad day), Now I always charge.

Too bad Android doens't have option to say, stop everything but phone? Or is there an option like that?

 

[cgChez]

(Stock, not even rooted. Current OTA. Usually: strong wifi nearby.)

Mine has also behaved in this erratic way too.
I spent some time trying to find a runaway app on a couple of these occasions and did not find anything.

I finally realized that the problem is the 4G radio cutting in and out.
This battery usage does not get charged to something that shows up.

The key factor here is that I am in an area where the 4G signal is not steady.
Somedays are better than others, somedays are worse.

Good days are when the 4g is solid or when the 4g is terrible.
Bad days are when the 4g is spotty (it comes and goes all day long).

Can others corroborate this behavior?

 

[anon(394005)]

Weak signal can definitely have a negative effect on battery life. Even old dumb (feature) phones would experience this to some degree, although it doesn't seem to be as pronounced as with smart phones. Since LTE went live back in Oct., I've noticed increased battery life as the signal is now much stronger and more consistent. The phone now rarely drops the data signal and is always on LTE. Previously, it would frequently lose the 3G connection and at times struggle to reconnect. To improve battery life, you could set the phone to 3G (CDMA) only to keep it from flipping in and out of LTE.