Moto X Battery Life Expectations

[eric002]

Hi everyone,

I just got a custom 32 gig moto X and i absolutely love it! I'm doing some trial Runs with my battery, and the first full day I had it I got 13 hours out of it and the next couple of days, I've been getting a little less. How often does everyone swipe and shut down their recent apps? It seems like that first day I hadn't done that, and still managed to get a substantial amount of power out of my battery. All of my display settings are all on automatic. Regardless of this, I absolutely love the stock vanilla kit Kat 4.4.2! Thanks for the support.

Posted via Android Central App

 

[Aquila]

It will help a little to take display brightness off of automatic and set it at a comfortable level. You shouldn't have to close or kill any apps, Android will do that automatically as it needs to without any performance issues. Sometimes I swipe away to unclutter the list, but generally apps should only be force closed if they are misbehaving. For comparison on time, I usually don't go more than 16-20 hours without charging (we don't really want these batteries to go below 20% very often, it's better to keep them topped off rather than letting them drain to the bottom), but with my average usage I can get 18-26 hours without absolutely needing to charge it (closer to 18 on days I'm at work, closer to 26 on days I'm at home). It lasts much longer if it's in airplane mode for part of that (sometimes will put it in airplane while sleeping), but it has no problems whatsoever coming off of the charger in when I wake up and still having plenty of juice left at bed time.

 

[eric002]

Thanks for the response so quickly! Well, mine is always on 4g LTE which i know is a bit of a battery killer but I'd rather not download and setup again that app JuiceDefender only because I did notice on my older android devices that it messes up the Google Hangouts new notification syncing. As far as my display, I have heard about that trick about auto- , brightness, and i just did turn off the auto part, and turn the brightness all the way down. Shockingly though, it's still pretty easy to see things on the screen still... As far as killing the apps, yeah I mean I'm not new to android by any means and I've rooted many devices before I just wanted to get some specific battery feedback about this phone now, that's all. I didn't Think i should have to "kill or stop" the apps that often/frequently in order to get good battery life out of my phone.. So, with my cell data connection always on and of course not on "airplane mode", was the max/average daily battery life you think I should be seeing? About 13 hours or so? Thanks again for the support!

 

[Aquila]

It's hard to say an hours number because of all the variables (how much the screen is on, signal strength, what apps are syncing and how often, etc), but if you're getting around 13 hours I will say that's not too surprising of a number for being on LTE all of the time. I'd agree with not getting JuiceDefender with the X (or really, any modern Android). The Moto X does great in stand-by mode, barely sipping power, but most people are getting a cumulative 2-5 hours of "screen on" time depending on how that's spread out through the day, what they're doing while it's on, etc. If you're getting the 2-5 hours of screen time over 13 hours (especially if it's closer to the 4 or 5 side) then I'd say that's pretty typical.

 

[eric002]

I gotcha..well tomorrow, on a fresh fully charged battery against my "normal" usage of course hahaha I'll have to give it another battery trial test. As far as my expectations are concerned, again, I am by no means complaining about the battery life of course, and on 4g LTE high speed VZW Data, I'd have to agree with you that 13 hours seems really legit if I can consistently achieve that especially with the display brightness manually turned down all the way, and hopefully even in direct sunlight, I'll be able to see it of course. haha. I'm trying to think of any other settings that I'm missing. In developers options, do you have background activities being killed "instantly" at all? I have that turned on, but am curious as to what that does because it's unfortunately not so self explanatory as it may seem. Meaning, once you leave an apk, it's still running in the background if you hit the multi-tasking button...

 

[Aquila]

I gotcha..well tomorrow, on a fresh fully charged battery against my "normal" usage of course hahaha I'll have to give it another battery trial test. As far as my expectations are concerned, again, I am by no means complaining about the battery life of course, and on 4g LTE high speed VZW Data, I'd have to agree with you that 13 hours seems really legit if I can consistently achieve that especially with the display brightness manually turned down all the way, and hopefully even in direct sunlight, I'll be able to see it of course. haha. I'm trying to think of any other settings that I'm missing. In developers options, do you have background activities being killed "instantly" at all? I have that turned on, but am curious as to what that does because it's unfortunately not so self explanatory as it may seem. Meaning, once you leave an apk, it's still running in the background if you hit the multi-tasking button...

I didn't change that setting, but my hunch is that it's a trade-off based on how often you switch back into the same app. For example, if you're constantly killing and opening and killing an app, it's probably more taxing than just letting it do it's thing in the dynamic background processing, but you're right, it doesn't provide any details about how it interacts with the recent tasks, and also doesn't say much about how push notifications will work, etc.

 

[eric002]

Nah, you're absolutely right about that setting. I mean for the moment, I'll just leave it be for killing all activities in the background> i mean it's not hurting an OS Based app, so I figure why not?lol Yeah, Hopefully that new display brightness setting I've got will be helping me conserve a bit more battery juice as well, that's all I've got to say...Are there any other tips/tricks that you can think of that I may be missing at all?

 

[Golfdriver97]

Like NIT said, killing apps is only needed when an app is misbehaving. I also pick a brightness setting and stick with it. Mine is near 100%, by the way. Included is today's battery use.

From a Sprint Moto X using AC Forums app

 

[eric002]

damn wow you're screen is taking up 67% battery power and your still only at 36% power after 12 hours.. how're you managing that? lol

 

[Golfdriver97]

damn wow you're screen is taking up 67% battery power and your still only at 36% power after 12 hours.. how're you managing that? lol

Short screen on times. Meaning Screen cuts off at 30 seconds. Today I worked, so the device wasn't on like it would when I am off, but I can easily make it 12 hours on 70%. Just think if my mobile signal was stronger.....

 

[UJ95x]

damn wow you're screen is taking up 67% battery power and your still only at 36% power after 12 hours.. how're you managing that? lol

The percentage shown in the first screenshot, doesn't mean that it's using 67% of the total battery, but rather 67% of the amount that has been used. So of the 64% that the phone has lost, about 41% can be attributed to the screen.

Sent from my Galaxy S4 running SlimKat 4.4.2

 

[eric002]

Short screen on times. Meaning Screen cuts off at 30 seconds. Today I worked, so the device wasn't on like it would when I am off, but I can easily make it 12 hours on 70%. Just think if my mobile signal was stronger.....

ohh so you mean that for your screen time out period, that's se =t to 30 seconds and not 2 minutes? Wow, that's what I have mine set to. I'll probably wind up trying to change that setting as well .Thank you.

 

[dpham00]

Gsam is also a good app to troubleshoot battery drain

dpham00, Android Central Moderator
Sent from my Verizon Samsung Galaxy Note 3 via Tapatalk Pro

 

[UJ95x]

ohh so you mean that for your screen time out period, that's se =t to 30 seconds and not 2 minutes? Wow, that's what I have mine set to. I'll probably wind up trying to change that setting as well .Thank you.

That only affects battery life if you leave your screen on when the phone is not in use. If you always lock it, the time out period won't have any effect on the drain.

Sent from my Galaxy S4 running SlimKat 4.4.2

 

[eric002]

thanks. I'll have to look into that app as well...

 

[Golfdriver97]

ohh so you mean that for your screen time out period, that's se =t to 30 seconds and not 2 minutes? Wow, that's what I have mine set to. I'll probably wind up trying to change that setting as well .Thank you.

Exactly.
Mine is short because I look at it this way: If I haven't touched my screen between 15 and 25 seconds I don't need the screen on any longer than that for inactivity.

 

[eric002]

Exactly.
Mine is short because I look at it this way: If I haven't touched my screen between 15 and 25 seconds I don't need the screen on any longer than that for inactivity.

you know something, that does make a lot of logical sense. THank you! I just also changed up that setting on my phone between the display brightness, and the screen timeout, hopefully that'll help me and allow me to gain some nice battery power on this awesome phone that we all own here! I just love the way stock vanilla kit kat flies on these phones here. I even turned off all my my screen window transition animations to make it seem even faster!

 

[Golfdriver97]

you know something, that does make a lot of logical sense. THank you! I just also changed up that setting on my phone between the display brightness, and the screen timeout, hopefully that'll help me and allow me to gain some nice battery power on this awesome phone that we all own here! I just love the way stock vanilla kit kat flies on these phones here. I even turned off all my my screen window transition animations to make it seem even faster!

I forgot to mention that I am stuck on 4.2. So I don't have the benefit of running 4.4.

 

[eric002]

I forgot to mention that I am stuck on 4.2. So I don't have the benefit of running 4.4.

ah ok gotcha, and i'll repeat that I am on 4.4.2. the latest and greatest from our lovely Mountain View company of Google. haha

 

[Golfdriver97]

ah ok gotcha, and i'll repeat that I am on 4.4.2. the latest and greatest from our lovely Mountain View company of Google. haha

Let us know how tomorrow's battery use goes. Post similar screenshots and we can probably adjust more from there.