Battery life keeps getting worse!

flashpiti

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A couple of weeks ago I could get trought about 10-12 hours of battery without recharging. Now I get through 6 hours and 30 minutes. I'm in a 4G area with no switching and it says 49% of my battery is used by my phone calls which constitute all of 14 minutes. I like the phone but WTF, this is rediculous! Having to charge a phone twice a day when I do hardly anything on it is pitiful.
 

Charmed Juan

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Get a spare battery and cradle charger. Change your battery at mid day.
Problem solved.
Batteries and chargers range from $10 to $40 on ebay
 

fatboy97

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I'll say it again:

Might have changed some setting??? Have you considered rebooting your device... maybe something is running you are not aware of... you can always go into Settings > Applications > Manage applications > Running tab... this will show you all the apps running in the background... some you really can't stop because they will start again automatically... reboot... wait a little while... see what apps are running.

You can also get into Settings > About phone > Battery > Battery use... just to see what might be using up all your battery power.
 
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Chrisy

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You must be vigilant! There has to be a reason why you're battery life decreased. Identify the issues, then correct it.

Check your Blockbuster app. As state above a reboot sometimes fixes a rogue app issue. Check your widgets.
 

dubge

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Ya I am getting tired of this battery crap. I have the ext battery and rebooted my phone when it was done charging (including bump charging today) and in a little over 3 hours I was down to 51% If I had the stock battery I am pretty sure it would have been dead! I am sick and tired of having to watch my battery. In that 3.5 hours I had 1 6 min phone call, that is it! I didnt use my phone for anything AND rebooted it, I just rebooted again.

I really hope they do something to fix this or another phone comes out with better battery life, ya samsung may never update but if battery life is better it might be worth it
 
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fatboy97

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Ya I am getting tired of this battery crap. I have the ext battery and rebooted my phone when it was done charging (including bump charging today) and in a little over 3 hours I was down to 51% If I had the stock battery I am pretty sure it would have been dead! I am sick and tired of having to watch my battery. In that 3.5 hours I had 1 6 min phone call, that is it! I didnt use my phone for anything AND rebooted it, I just rebooted again.

I really hope they do something to fix this or another phone comes out with better battery life, ya samsung may never update but if battery life is better it might be worth it

Supporting material??? What apps are running in the background??? What's using up your battery??? Do you know???

Anyone can make statements like yours, but can you tell us in the same statement what you have running taking up your battery life that you can't live without, or just back off to once every two hours instead of once every hour???
 

nate44

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Ya I am getting tired of this battery crap. I have the ext battery and rebooted my phone when it was done charging (including bump charging today) and in a little over 3 hours I was down to 51% If I had the stock battery I am pretty sure it would have been dead! I am sick and tired of having to watch my battery. In that 3.5 hours I had 1 6 min phone call, that is it! I didnt use my phone for anything AND rebooted it, I just rebooted again.

I really hope they do something to fix this or another phone comes out with better battery life, ya samsung may never update but if battery life is better it might be worth it

Get System Panel and set it to monitor usage for about a day or so. It will give you a better glimpse of what is eating up your battery. Whether it be a rogue app, network or system issues. If it's the latter two then hopefully the upcoming update will address those problems.

Have you thought about rooting? Running a custom Rom and undervolted kernel has done wonders with my battery life.
 

jedoles

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I know that it has been said that the Thunderbolt manages running applications fine on its own however I have found that not to be the case. I get great battery life. Usually get a good 20 hours or so in and I am in a 4G area. I do run advanced task killer and I keep it on crazy level with kill once an hour. I found when I didnt have a task killer my battery was draining much faster. I also have gmail on synch every 15 min, weather and facebook once an hour.
 

Edwill86

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Iv been having the same type of problems. I was getting 6-9 hours before the battery was conditioned after was getting 9-15 hours.. now Im getting sometimes less then 6 hours some days.

I have not really added any new apps recently and have not changed any settings.

it started right before the recent network outages.
I just attribute it to 4g/3g hand off issues and data network interruptions that Im hopping vzw will fix soon.
 

nate44

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I know that it has been said that the Thunderbolt manages running applications fine on its own however I have found that not to be the case. I get great battery life. Usually get a good 20 hours or so in and I am in a 4G area. I do run advanced task killer and I keep it on crazy level with kill once an hour. I found when I didnt have a task killer my battery was draining much faster. I also have gmail on synch every 15 min, weather and facebook once an hour.

Task killers are worthless, and cause more harm than good. This is Linux not Windows, in Linux free memory is wasted memory. The apps that you see "running" in the background are preloaded for when you want to switch to them. Most aren't doing anything anyways, they're just sitting there idle until they're opened.

Don't believe me? Then read this
 
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delynnie

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Mine too! My battery seems to be getting worse too! From 3am til about 1p is when I would usually have to do a battery change, and today at 9:30am it was at 37%, and by 11am it was dead! I haven't done anything different that I always do, same apps, just check my txt msgs, check facebook, and tweeter, and 1 or 2 phone calls!
 

jedoles

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Task killers are worthless, and cause more harm than good. This is Linux not Windows, in Linux free memory is wasted memory. The apps that you see "running" in the background are preloaded for when you want to switch to them. Most aren't doing anything anyways, they're just sitting there idle until they're opened.

Don't believe me? Then read this

I have seen the arguments on it, I am just telling you what I have found. You may say it does more harm than good however I have found that it has improved my battery life. I did read over the link however and it does make sense. I am going to give it a try again. I am very new to Android phones and maybe my battery was still conditioning when I did my original testing.
 
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Mike_is_Mike

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You must be vigilant! There has to be a reason why you're battery life decreased. Identify the issues, then correct it.

Check your Blockbuster app. As state above a reboot sometimes fixes a rogue app issue. Check your widgets.

This is what I hate about Droid --- You must be vigilant.

Gone are the days when you could rely on your cell phone to be ready when you needed it. Used to be, plug it in over night and and you would be good to go for the rest of the week. No tweaking, no "rom"ing, no vigilance, no need for forums on how to get your phone to work??.because they worked right out of the box from the get go.

I still have a spare Samsung flip phone I keep in my glove compartment of my car for emergencies. No text, no internet, just a basic phone. I charge it a FEW TIMES A YEAR AS NEEDED.
 

flashpiti

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This is what I hate about Droid --- You must be vigilant.

Gone are the days when you could rely on your cell phone to be ready when you needed it. Used to be, plug it in over night and and you would be good to go for the rest of the week. No tweaking, no "rom"ing, no vigilance, no need for forums on how to get your phone to work??.because they worked right out of the box from the get go.

Unless you own an iPhone ;)
 

fatboy97

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This is what I hate about Droid --- You must be vigilant.

Gone are the days when you could rely on your cell phone to be ready when you needed it. Used to be, plug it in over night and and you would be good to go for the rest of the week. No tweaking, no "rom"ing, no vigilance, no need for forums on how to get your phone to work??.because they worked right out of the box from the get go.

I still have a spare Samsung flip phone I keep in my glove compartment of my car for emergencies. No text, no internet, just a basic phone. I charge it a FEW TIMES A YEAR AS NEEDED.

First, I don't use a Droid... I use an Android... and I'm fairly sure most Tbolt users will agree with that... even though the Droid line is VZW's line of Android devices.

Yes, I guess the days are gone as you stated above, but if you really need a an OLD phone you can always go back to a RAZR, or other "feature phones" that are still be sold, or get a Blackberry which IMHO are very limiting and not as full featured as the Android smartphones of today and into the future.

I know what my devices does... I know what is running on my device... I know when it does things... I'm very happy with my ANDROID... yes, it would be nice if the battery life will increase in the future... we will just have to wait and see, or go back to using those "feature phones" that do not have near the capabilities of the modern day smartphones of today.
 

pbannist

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I've been having similar problems to a few of you in this post - and have seen a few other posts on this topic as well. To give background on my exact situation (again, which sounds like a number of you):

- Extended Battery
- Prior to the 4G network downtime last week, had great battery life, could easily get through a full day (7am-11pm) with moderate usage and still have 40%+ battery life left
- Since 4G downtime have had abyssmal battery life. Without charging, could barely get from 7am-1pm. Even with a lot of charging have trouble getting through the end of the day as I can't be tethered to my desk charging all of the time
- Battery running very hot, even when screen off for an hour the phone is still hot
- Nothing else has changed. No new apps, no change in usage (using it less, if anything)
- Have also seen in the few instances where I've had a long phone call (e.g,. like 15-20 minutes) it has destroyed my battery (used like 10-15% of charge during the call) and the "What's Using My Battery" page confirms that
- Not rooted. Have rebooted (soft and hard) many times in the last week
- Force the phone into 3G and the problem goes away entirely - back to fantastic battery life

Things specific to me
- Live and work in Manhattan, get a 4G signal with no switching practically everywhere I am (basically work and home)
- No change in my route to/from work or any other geographical changes

I have checked the Blockbuster app, I have checked my syncing/accounts, and checked a whole bunch of other things - can't find any rogue apps and haven't really installed anything new in the last week anyway.

To me, all signs point to something to do with the 4G crash last week changing something that is messing up battery life for some of us - but just some of us. I did use the administration tools (whatever they are called) to force my phone onto the standard 3G network (as opposed to the ePHRD) when the 4G/3G issue happened, but swapped that back. I'm not sure if I (and some others?) messed something up in that process and that is the issue with our phones? Or whether it's an issue on Verizon's side that is only affecting a subset of people.

I know that rooting and a custom rom can help me, but I'm not prepared to do that just yet. I know that I can get another battery and charge more throughout the day, but just doesn't feel like this is the right solution to my and others' problem.

I tried to be exhaustive with information here as I do think that some of us have a specific issue that is tied to the 4G shutdown, just not sure what it is. Thanks for any thoughts!
 

ericaph

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Same problem here. I check running apps multiple times a day, I know there's no "rogue app" making this different. Everything running needs to be, a DM service, touch input, syncservice, that's IT.

I've had the extended battery for almost a month; before the 4G system crash last week I was was getting almost 3 days on one charge (72 hrs to be exact) - it was AMAZING! Of course I don't actually do much on my phone.

Yesterday, unplugged at 7am died at 5pm. Today I took it off the charger at 7am & it was down to 30% by 2pm. Something is going on with the radio - this is crazy!

In Battery Use as usual display is tops but only @ 35%, Cell Standby is 25%, phone idle 20%, misc items make up the rest. Typicall display would be well over 65% - 75%. Cell Standby is the only thing that's changed. (and I have display at 30% strength).
 

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