Droid 4 Battery worry

[motorcycle_monkey]

All,
I pulled the trigger on the Droid 4 after a lot of time listening to podcasts and doing research. It was on sale last week for $99. Over the weekend I thought the battery was discharging quickly, but spent a lot of time on USB charging, so was hard to tell. Yesterday I was at my desk for about 6 hours before plugging it in and went home without checking after it was on a charge via USB for about 3 hours. I was on a call for an hour and lost 30%. I shut off the display while on the call. This morning I took it off at 0515 and by the current time 0915, I am at 58%. I have barely touched my phone this morning. This seems to mean that even idle it losses 10%/hr. Is anyone else seeing this? Do I possibly have a defective battery? Or do I just need to give it a week of normal use/charging to "condition" the battery? I have 14 days to send it back, and would hate to do that, since this is a great phone. Thanks in advance.

 

[Kmcferrin]

I just received mine last night, charged it, then configured it. I put it on the charger this morning before leaving for work and took it off the charger about 4 hours ago. I'm down to 80%, and that's after several 5-10 minute calls over my car's bluetooth connection, some moderate "lets see how fast LTE really is" web surfing, and installing a few more apps. Your battery use for 4 hours seems a bit high. That being said...

Step 1, determine what's using the battery. From the home screen hit the MENU button, then BATTERY INFORMATION, then BATTERY USE. You'll get a breakdown of who is using what. My biggest is the display at 28%, followed by Dolphin Browser at 18%, Android OS 16%, and so on. I believe that these stats are reset at power on.

Step 2, tweak your phone to conserve power (if possible). I sync with 4 GMail accounts and 1 Corporate Sync account. I use push notifications for all of them rather than polling on a regular interval. I have several social networking accounts set up, but I don't have them constantly polling/synching with the service. Very important here, I am using the "official" Twitter, LinkedIn, etc apps downloaded from the market instead of the Motorola built-in apps. If you added all of your social accounts when you first configured your phone as part of the "Device Setup" wizard, then you are using the built-in apps. They may be set to sync more often, or sync with a consolidated identity/social service from Motorola. I've never bothered to work through how the Moto versions of the apps work, but there seems to be some element of centralization to them. Be sure to disable any sort of automatic upload actions that you don't want, such as automatically uploading photos/videos to the web or in social apps. Also, be sure to shut off services that you are not using all of the time, i.e., I only turn on GPS when I am using it with an app that needs it, only turn on wifi when I am at home or someplace where I know there is wifi that I can use, only turn on bluetooth when in the car, etc. You can use Smart Actions to configure some of these things to happen automatically for you, saving you effort and power.

Also, what kind of signal strength do you get? If you're in a poor reception area then your phone has to work harder to get a connection, and that will eat up more battery.

 

[motorcycle_monkey]

I have been trying to monitor the battery use. Currently at 52% after being on battery for 4.5 hours. The Android OS is at 38% and the Display is at 23%. Many others to make up the other %s. I have one Gmail, a Yahoo (using Yahoo's Mail app) and one Corporate set to sync only every 15 minutes. I have full LTE service at the office and only surfed the web for 15 minutes. I had the screen initially set up to auto adjust, but have since put it to the lowest setting. Display shows it was on for only 35.5 minutes. Thanks.

 

[mobrules]

I set up the smart actions to shut down data connection when the screen times out at 2 minutes. I have had it unplugged for 18 hours and have 60% battery. I have connected it to wifi and that seems to drain the battery faster.
I was really concerned coming from a Bionic, having swappable batteries. But so far it seems with the smart actions app it lasts even longer than the Bionic extended battery.

 

[Kmcferrin]

I set up the smart actions to shut down data connection when the screen times out at 2 minutes.

If you do that, don't you lose all of the background sync/push email?

 

[mobrules]

It doesnt seem to, and it syncs whenever I turn the screen back on. The main thing i was worried about was having battery life that would at least get through the day. I dont push any email. If i need to do something it connects and works fine.
I was sent the 4 after going through the 3g/4g lockup issue with 4 different Bionics. So just being able to connect when I need to is a big upgrade. I was really worried about the battery life with the 4 and not being able to swap batteries but I actually get almost 24 hours with moderate use. Calls, checking emails, texts, internet.
If anyone has any suggestions please share them. Ive had the phone for about a week.

 

[Kmcferrin]

I was really worried about the battery life with the 4 and not being able to swap batteries but I actually get almost 24 hours with moderate use. Calls, checking emails, texts, internet.
If anyone has any suggestions please share them. Ive had the phone for about a week.

Somehow I think that everyone has a different definition of "moderate" use. I get about 14 hours with what I consider moderate (some light surfing during the day, push emails from multiple accounts, bluetooth to my car's handsfree, calendaring, etc). That's pretty good, and since I already had chargers at home, at work, and in the car from my D2 I never worry too much.

The only time where I have run into battery problems was this past weekend when I went for a 3-hour long bike ride. I use the "Move! Bike Computer" app that uses the GPS to capture mileage and other telemetry. I didn't have a full charge when I left, and when it got down to 25% Smart Actions disabled my GPS and totally screwed up my tracking. Next time I'll be sure to have a full charge and disable the 4G radio, etc. In fact, I should probably make a Smart Actions profile for running the bike app.

EDIT: I guess you can't do that, since Smart Actions (for some incredibly poorly thought out reason) doesn't allow you to use an application launch as a trigger. Do I really have to buy Tasker to make this go?

 

[Rory.Gibb]

EDIT: I guess you can't do that, since Smart Actions (for some incredibly poorly thought out reason) doesn't allow you to use an application launch as a trigger. Do I really have to buy Tasker to make this go?

Nope. Try Llama, a Tasker-like app that's free.

 

[Kmcferrin]

Nope. Try Llama, a Tasker-like app that's free.

Err...too late. But I'm really happy with Tasker.