thinking about getting a droid, how is the battery life?

[matt9484]

Hi, i have a palm pre plus and have 2 days to decide if i want to keep it before my 30 days are up. i like the phone but wow does the battery suck. i see the droid as a good alternative to the pre and im looking for some feedback on the phone.

im not a power user and basically the phone drains at about 3% an hour when not using (idle). i generally send about 20 txs a day and use the net for about an hour. i can get about 15-18 hrs out of this phone before it goes dead basically if i needed to use the phone heavily i could probably get 6-8 hrs out of it.

hows the battery life on a droid? what are your complaints about it and what do you like about the phone? is this a phone that you can really use through out a day and not worry about being near a charger?

 

[scodoublet]

I had a Sprint Palm Pre before my Droid and the Droid's battery life, while not the greatest phone battery life ever, is much better than the Pre's was. The Droid's battery life is much better than any other smartphone I have personally had. Those being the HTC Mogul, HTC Touch Pro, and the Palm Pre.

 

[matt9484]

@ Scodoublet
thanks for the quick reply!

So since you had both the pre and the droid, what do you personally like better and how much of a difference did you see in the life? was it like 2-3hr extra or a lot more time before charging?

 

[entwined82]

For me, I'm usually at 70% by the end of the day with a lot of texting and calls in a bad signal area. I could go 2 days on a charge probably

Be warned though, the battery life is abysmal at first. The first 2 weeks will be a major hassle but once the battery gets a few good charges in it improves.

 

[mobilemedic20]

Wow.... really?! My Droid's pretty new, but I'm at 70% right now and i only unplugged it (after overnight charge) 4.5 hours ago. And that's no calls, no apps, no SMS, only a couple e-mails and maybe 10-15 minutes total on the browser. I believe the battery will improve a little, but right now it's pretty poor.

For me, I'm usually at 70% by the end of the day with a lot of texting and calls in a bad signal area. I could go 2 days on a charge probably

Be warned though, the battery life is abysmal at first. The first 2 weeks will be a major hassle but once the battery gets a few good charges in it improves.

 

[entwined82]

Wow.... really?! My Droid's pretty new, but I'm at 70% right now and i only unplugged it (after overnight charge) 4.5 hours ago. And that's no calls, no apps, no SMS, only a couple e-mails and maybe 10-15 minutes total on the browser. I believe the battery will improve a little, but right now it's pretty poor.

Yup but also keep in mind the browser and 3G are gunna be huge drains no matter what. When I'm home I only use WiFi.

Its pretty bad to start, but like I said it does get better. Just takes some time.

 

[matt9484]

@entwined82 so even in a bad signal area your at 70% after a whole day!?!?! wow i have a bad signal at work (goes between 1x and Ev all day with only 1-2bars of each) and im down to 50% since 9:30 with the pre (30min of browser and 10 txt messages)

 

[kalldrexx]

In a decent signal area (sometimes I lose 3g, I have it most of the time though) I end my 8 hour workday between 80% and 70% battery while listening to music for most of the day, text messaging, checking emails, etc.. I end with 60%-50% if using pandora for music. However, I rarely use my phone as an actual phone these days so I dont make many calls.

 

[matt9484]

So how is it when not using the phone? i notice from mine and other pre/ pre plus users that it will drain 2-4% an hour while idle. basically if you dont charge it when you go to bed after 8hrs your looking at 20-30% with it just sitting there.

 

[entwined82]

@entwined82 so even in a bad signal area your at 70% after a whole day!?!?! wow i have a bad signal at work (goes between 1x and Ev all day with only 1-2bars of each) and im down to 50% since 9:30 with the pre (30min of browser and 10 txt messages)

I'm off the charger at 10 am every day. I don't plug back in till Im going to bed (1-2 am typically) and right now I'm at 80%. Wi-Fi on, exchanged about 30 texts with my fiancee, sent a dozen emails and had a 10 minute phone call and its 3:15 eastern.

Some days its better than others. I think wifi is a big reason for this.

 

[mobilemedic20]

I'm off the charger at 10 am every day. I don't plug back in till Im going to bed (1-2 am typically) and right now I'm at 80%. Wi-Fi on, exchanged about 30 texts with my fiancee, sent a dozen emails and had a 10 minute phone call and its 3:15 eastern.

Some days its better than others. I think wifi is a big reason for this.

So are we thinking Wifi is GOOD for battery life? What about if you're in and out of wifi areas though? For example, I will sometimes use wifi in the house, but I always try to remember to turn it off when I'm leaving because I figure it'll drain the battery. Is that true, or can I just leave it on? And would leaving Wifi on in the house improve my battery life?

 

[entwined82]

So are we thinking Wifi is GOOD for battery life? What about if you're in and out of wifi areas though? For example, I will sometimes use wifi in the house, but I always try to remember to turn it off when I'm leaving because I figure it'll drain the battery. Is that true, or can I just leave it on? And would leaving Wifi on in the house improve my battery life?

Wifi is less of a battery drain than 3G I've been told.

I shut it off when I leave the house though as it'll slip to 3G. I recommend beautiful widgets to turn it on/off quickly. Not sure if it'll kill more battery being on and not in use but unless I'm using it, I shut off Bluetooth, Wifi and GPS.

Running Wifi in your house will definitely improve your battery life and not to mention its much faster than 3G.

 

[Argodabar]

My battery life wasn't too good and I needed to charge by the end of the day. I had my email set to search for email every hour. I recently set all my email accounts to foward to gmail and then on the phone set it to never search for new mail. Now I get my email a lot faster through gmail and the battery life doubled. Now I get 2 days of use out of the battery.

 

[WarER4X]

To be clear, I think that WiFi is probably less of a drain than 3G, but only when you actually are moving data. In idle, it seems to me that the 3G connection doesn't drain as much as WiFi. That seems to be my experience, anyway, and it makes sense, considering what each technology is designed for.


I've been rocking my Droid since last Saturday and, provided I'm not playing with it a bunch (which we all know happens a lot with a new phone like this), it seems to last about as good as my Storm did (which was pretty good). If you make sure to leave the screen on auto brightness and set timeout to 1 minute or less, the battery life is quite good for smartphones. The first few days I had it, the screen timeout was set to 2 minutes and the drain was quite a bit faster.

As to your other question about overall satisfaction... I LOVE this phone! I especially love how much my wife likes hers. I've never seen her take so much interest in a tech gadget before. She gave the Storm a good college try, but never took to it. The Android browser always amazes me at how it handles every page I throw at it. I'm still getting used to the physical keyboard (my left hand is a bit cramped) but I quite like the virtual keyboards. I do wish there was a way to copy text from emails without going to the gmail website and there are a couple other quarks, but nothing major.

-SR-

PS: I rarely bothered to write on forums from my Storm because it was a hassle, but I just wrote this whole thing on my Droid and it's practically a book.

 

[Adawg1203]

I am a heavy user when it comes to my phones. I will say for a smartphone the battery lasts awhile (a day). As previously stated the battery gets better over time. Also keep in mind once you get over the newness of the phone that will place less strain on the battery as well. Heavy phone usage, emails and texting I find does not burden the battery much. Throw in some surfing, music and games then its a whole new ball game. At a minimum I keep a charger in all my cars for insurance. The battery charges VERY quickly!

 

[DeeMat]

I think the battery is just fine. As long as it can keep things going when Im out and about, we are good to go. Now, I have grown accustomed to having a charging source nearby whenever I can. At work, I carry an extra USB cable. In the car, I have the car chanrger. At home, I use the cradle and the regular charger. I have seen my battery down to 15% only twice - because I always have power with me.

 

[thebizz]

Stock speeds its not bad better than the pre I had before this and just as good as the 9500 if not a little better

 

[takeshi]

hows the battery life on a droid? what are your complaints about it and what do you like about the phone? is this a phone that you can really use through out a day and not worry about being near a charger?

Depends on how you use it. GPS will kill the battery. The Bejeweled clone game that I have will as well.

 

[kpageisgreat]

ugh i have to find out whats killing my battery then... i take it off the charger at 8 and find myself at 20/30% by 1:30.... i even bought a spare battery and it does the same. I took off the auto updates for twitter, i do a fair decent amount of texting(about 20-30 both ways during that time period) and i recieve about 5 emails during that time period.

 

[entwined82]

Is it fairly new? It may take some time. How much do you use apps? Are you using a task killer? If so, stop.