Battery Problem?

[jdivers03]

Is anyone else having a problem keeping a decent charge on their Droid X?

I went from a full charge to a dead battery in about six hours yesterday. I downloaded the upgrade and fully charged the phone overnight. I took it off the charger at 8:30AM this morning, and an hour later I'm at 70%. I don't have a ton of widgets (weather, calendar, power, ESPN, facebook), and bluetooth and wifi are off. I'm not using a live wallpaper, and I'm not signed into any accounts except for my gmail.

I noticed that I was on a 1X connection about 20 minutes after unplugging, upgraded my roaming tower, and did get a full 3G connection (4 bars). I've probably had only moderate usage over the last hour or so (some google talk, twitter), and I've got "Smart Mode" on for my battery settings. I love this phone, but I can't deal with only getting 5-6 hours out of a full charge without even making any phone calls. Any suggestions as to what could be draining the battery here?

 

[Eloquence]

Reboot your phone!!

OK. Here's the scoop. I was just like you -- I thought this phone had crap battery life. Now I am finding out that it's a software bug. One that, unfortunately, the update yesterday DID NOT fix.

Here's what you do: reboot the phone. Yes, it's a bit of a pain, but when it extends battery life I'm willing to do just about anything.

Yesterday I got to about 50% battery life at 4pm after being unplugged since 6:30am. Not bad, I thought, but could be better. This was moderate to light usage for me (25 mins of calls, 10 texts, push email, updating apps, looking through facebook and twitter, and watching some youtube). I'm doing this under smart-mode performance in Battery Manager.

After the reboot: 80% or more battery life!! It took another 6 hours or so to get it back to 50%!! That's with continued moderate usage pattern! By the time I went to bed at 11pm it was 40% and holding!!

Needless to say, I've NEVER had a smartphone with a battery as good as this one. And if the battery meter could be fixed it would be an even more AWESOME device.

Hope this helps! Let us know what happens.
-Elo

 

[Matt Kline]

I noticed the battery getting better everyday since I got the phone on 7/15. I think the upgrade helped with the meter also.

I got 15+ hours on the phone yesterday with some pretty heavy usage at the end (3 hours of trying to kill it off with browsing and slacker radio) I only got to 20% when I went to bed.

The first day I was lucky to get 6 hours before it shut down on me.

 

[jdivers03]

I just rebooted my phone and it came back at 60%, exactly where it was when I powered it down. I just downloaded the Advanced Task Killer, so hopefully that will help some...

 

[Matrix_Prime]

I had VERY good battery life until I installed the upgrade. I was able to make it 28 hours from 100% down to 20% with pretty heavy use. After installing the update, the battery seems to be going down (at least the indicator), much quicker. I rebooted my phone yesterday, and the percentage went from 50% back up to 80%. It does seem to be a software issue. Also, how come there is no individual percentages reported on the phone, only 10's? ie. 90%, 80%, 70%, etc....

 

[ottscay]

You can see the percentage under Settings -> About Phone -> Status

And there are apps in the market that replace the battery icon with numbers if you want to see it at a glance.

 

[Rickgsx]

Ottscay... do you have some of the names of these apps..? ones that you've found to work well and be accurate...?

 

[Matrix_Prime]

You can see the percentage under Settings -> About Phone -> Status

And there are apps in the market that replace the battery icon with numbers if you want to see it at a glance.

The percentage in the settings still isn't accurate, it only shows it on the 10's, like I said, you'll never see something like 93%, only 90%

 

[Mister869]

This battery issue could be a deal breaker, which I can't believe I'm saying because I love this phone, for the past several days I have taken my phone off charger at 6:30am (charge it full during night) and I am red/to dead before noon.

When I look at the battery use, it shows that the display is the big offender. I have never seen it below 77%, and right now it shows 98%. Am I missing some settings? I have backlight set to auto, 30 seconds to time off, no live wallpapers.

Any ideas?

 

[bart151]

This battery issue could be a deal breaker, which I can't believe I'm saying because I love this phone, for the past several days I have taken my phone off charger at 6:30am (charge it full during night) and I am red/to dead before noon.

When I look at the battery use, it shows that the display is the big offender. I have never seen it below 77%, and right now it shows 98%. Am I missing some settings? I have backlight set to auto, 30 seconds to time off, no live wallpapers.

Any ideas?

I know exactly how you feel bud. I feel the same way unfortunately. Time for me to make a call to Walmart to see if they have any extras in.

 

[showson1]

I was having really bad battery life so I went in to see what was using it and 'Beautiful Widgets' was responsible for 60% of the battery usage.
I tried killing it, but it would just start chewing up the battery again.

I deleted it from the phone and so far today after, 3.5 hours of fairly heavy use, I'm only down to 90%.

 

[jdivers03]

I charged mine back up to 100% and took it off the charger at 12:30. By 12:45 it was at 90% with no use. At 2:15 I hit 40% and had to put it back on the charger for the third time today. I called Verizon Wireless and was told to take my phone and charger in to a Verizon Wireless corporate store so they could test them.

Something is clearly wrong here.

 

[DaRkL3AD3R]

Hmm I have Beautiful widgets as well, am only using the Smaller Home widget.

Last couple days I've been experimenting with the battery. Basically I plug her in at night, wait till she's at 100% and then I put her in Airplane mode and disconnect it. Put it on my nightstand, mind you I literally unplug and put down with absolutely no use inbetween those 2 actions, and when I wake up in the morning its down from 100% to 70%... I mean wtf? 8 hours later, airplane mode so its using absolutely NO cell standby and drop 30%? Really?

I checked the battery manager and it said 7% Display and 93% Phone Idle. I take it Phone Idle is the cpu sitting there running minute background tasks. Pretty absurd if you ask me to drop 30% over an 8 hour span of doing absolutely nothing whatsoever. I mean it absolutely nothing lol. Airplane mode = NO networking at all. So I have no clue what gives here, as I could be USING the darn thing for that much time and be around the same battery usage

Might try killing Beautiful off to see if it helps, but I doubt it.

 

[rjdangerous]

I was having bad life like like you for a few days then all of the sudden the day before the update it was awesome. Now it continues to be awesome after update.

It was so bad after 5 hours on battery saver mode without even touching the the phone went from 100% to 50%.

Now I heavily use the phone with texts, browsing, calls and a full movie and it lasted 10 hours.

 

[rion_j]

I was having really bad battery life so I went in to see what was using it and 'Beautiful Widgets' was responsible for 60% of the battery usage.
I tried killing it, but it would just start chewing up the battery again.

I deleted it from the phone and so far today after, 3.5 hours of fairly heavy use, I'm only down to 90%.

where do you see how much an app is taking up in battery usage? i also have beautiful widgets and battery life has been ok, not great like i was expecting.

 

[elvisofaces]

The results??

I charged mine back up to 100% and took it off the charger at 12:30. By 12:45 it was at 90% with no use. At 2:15 I hit 40% and had to put it back on the charger for the third time today. I called Verizon Wireless and was told to take my phone and charger in to a Verizon Wireless corporate store so they could test them.

Something is clearly wrong here.

So what was the out come? Did they give you a new battery/charger?

 

[jdivers03]

So what was the out come? Did they give you a new battery/charger?

Haven't had a chance to get to the store yet, as my wife is out of town and I'm running the whole house while she's gone. I'm not sure how she does it... I'm going to try to make it out to a corporate store today. I'm still not getting more than 2-3 hours on a full charge. A guy I worked with just put in 8 hours on his of almost constant web surfing, videos, games, etc. and still had a 50% charge.

I'll let you know what they say.