Battery settings

[jbomb11]

What exactly its the best settings layout for optimal battery life?

Sent from my DX using my fingers.

 

[NickB2005]

I would also like to know this! Someone people respond with the "ideal" battery settings if possible.

 

[GlueFactoryBJJ]

It seems that battery life is very dependent on the widgets, apps, wi-fi, screen brightness, and usage you subject it to. Some widgets appear to drain the battery (the Pure series, some weather). Some weather apps and navigation are other heavy drainers. I'm looking forward to getting mine (this week) and finding out which work best.

Moto (or someone else) REALLY needs to come out with a good implementation of an extended battery with another cover. I've seen some 3000+ extended batteries for the Droid and I hope we get a nice version for the X. I wouldn't mind an extended battery that was flush with the "camera hump" for a 3000mah battery!

Scott

 

[chrisb3]

It seems that battery life is very dependent on the widgets, apps, wi-fi, screen brightness, and usage you subject it to. Some widgets appear to drain the battery (the Pure series, some weather). Some weather apps and navigation are other heavy drainers. I'm looking forward to getting mine (this week) and finding out which work best.

Moto (or someone else) REALLY needs to come out with a good implementation of an extended battery with another cover. I've seen some 3000+ extended batteries for the Droid and I hope we get a nice version for the X. I wouldn't mind an extended battery that was flush with the "camera hump" for a 3000mah battery!

Scott

Seidio is working on a 1750mAh battery that will fit using the existing battery cover and a 3500mAh battery that will require a special cover. Neither are available yet.

 

[ottscay]

I use the smart setting in battery manager. The big thing is to take your screen off of the auto brightness setting (it sounds like a good idea, but all that really happens is the screen is kept at the "blazing" setting until your battery is mostly run down) and manually toggle it to 20% or so unless you are in direct sunlight. Also, avoid the "Pure" line of widgets like the plague at this time.

 

[NickB2005]

I just tried lowering my brightness to about 20%. I don't have any widgets besides the weather one it comes with and the GPS WIFI and bluetooth one. I have all that stuff off but when I unplug from overnight at about 530 am it's almost dead by 3-4 pm just texting.

 

[jlmartinjr]

I am the IT mgr of a mfg. company. Our president has gone from a Blackberry to the Droid X late last week, this weekend he noticed that the unit was very hot when he took it from his hip case and that the battery was very very low even after charging it over night. What are folks using to close unused apps and see what processes are running to be able to turn off the unused items?

 

[ottscay]

You don't need to turn off unused apps, Android kills them itself if they shouldn't be running. If you really must follow that path ATK (Advanced Task Killer) is the one that is commonly used, but your phone will generally run better without it (and you won't see an increase in battery life).

Check to see if the widgets or social networking is set to pull often. Coming from a BlackBerry with push-everything it seems like the pull time should be set as low as possible, but that's a good way to drain the heck out of the battery (and is probably why it's hot).

If he's charging the phone overnight and it isn't charging up by morning there may be a separate hardware problem.

 

[vor]

How do you kill the browser? I had it opened to CNBCs mobile site this morning and reopened it hours later and its still on it, auto updating

 

[schizrade]

FYI: There seems to be a GPS issue with the radio not shutting down. I have confirmed it on mine, not sure if it is an app or OS. Time will tell.

Battery Drain due to Software Bug w/GPS? - Android Forums

 

[rog152]

Who really knows, look at my X performance with the 50% cell standby bug. Phone lasted over 24 hours and still had 30% battery life. with normal useage.


wish my pictures were bigger.

 

[NickB2005]

I just installed the advanced task killer app. Seeing if getting rid of it will make my battery last a bit longer and dropped the screen brightness to 20% or from what I can tell 20% since it doesn't really tell you.

 

[Fabian43]

ATK was one of the first apps I installed and my battery never lasted more than 4-5 hours even after a full charge. After reading some articles on the android platform not needing a task killer I decided to uninstall it and see if my battery life would improve.....4 hours ago I had 70% battery life left and right now I have 50% left! Only 20% used in 4 hours. I'm much happier now. Hopefully tomorrow the battery holds up like it is now. It never dawned on me that ATK could be the culprit

 

[ottscay]

Yeah, ATK really isn't your friend unless you really understand the OS...and even then it's only a moderately useful friend. Sadly I ponied up for the paid version before I realized that.

As a mini guide to battery life issues:

1) Be sure to charge for a decent time past 100%
2) Switch screen brightness from auto to manual and then drop it to 20% unless ambient lighting demands otherwise.
3) Make sure you don't have too many widgets that are pulling data in real time (RSS feeds, weather widgets, all social networking widgets, etc). The ones you do have, make sure they are updating at a reasonable time, not all the time.
4) Don't use anything with the "Pure" brand name from the market (they're great widgets, but they seem to personally track down and murder battery life on the DX).

To do things like control brightness easily, or shut off your GPS manually if it's being run for some reason when it's not needed, get Power Control Widget from the marketplace (it's free) and gives you a bar that is configurable with lots of cool stuff beyond the stock Moto ones (like an adjustment slider for screen brightness).

If you still want to do a little more, download the free version of Juice Defender, turn off your wireless before you do the install, when it installs just accept the defaults and don't bother touching the really poor UI that lets you meddle with things. Just as a default it will automatically switch off 3G data when you are on wifi, which will save you a ton of juice if you spend a lot of your day with a wireless network (like I do).

That's about it for the quick and easy stuff that I can think of.

 

[TurboCam]

what about the pure music widget? Does it drain the battery? Doesn't seem like there would be a reason that would cause the music player widget to drain the battery.

 

[ottscay]

To be honest, there's no reason a calendar widget should either (I even set the updates for 2 hours). Yet there it was. I'd say try see if you can set up the same rough behavior over a couple days (charge it overnight each time, etc). and try it with and without the widget. And let us know if there's a discernible difference!

 

[NickB2005]

Yeah, ATK really isn't your friend unless you really understand the OS...and even then it's only a moderately useful friend. Sadly I ponied up for the paid version before I realized that.

As a mini guide to battery life issues:

1) Be sure to charge for a decent time past 100%
2) Switch screen brightness from auto to manual and then drop it to 20% unless ambient lighting demands otherwise.
3) Make sure you don't have too many widgets that are pulling data in real time (RSS feeds, weather widgets, all social networking widgets, etc). The ones you do have, make sure they are updating at a reasonable time, not all the time.
4) Don't use anything with the "Pure" brand name from the market (they're great widgets, but they seem to personally track down and murder battery life on the DX).

To do things like control brightness easily, or shut off your GPS manually if it's being run for some reason when it's not needed, get Power Control Widget from the marketplace (it's free) and gives you a bar that is configurable with lots of cool stuff beyond the stock Moto ones (like an adjustment slider for screen brightness).

If you still want to do a little more, download the free version of Juice Defender, turn off your wireless before you do the install, when it installs just accept the defaults and don't bother touching the really poor UI that lets you meddle with things. Just as a default it will automatically switch off 3G data when you are on wifi, which will save you a ton of juice if you spend a lot of your day with a wireless network (like I do).

That's about it for the quick and easy stuff that I can think of.

Where is the power control widget? I want to download that, but couldn't find it on the marketplace. Please point me in the right direction. After delete ATK I can see some battery improvement so far.

 

[jbomb11]

Power control widget is an android widget pre installed in the phone

Sent from my DX using my fingers.

 

[TurboCam]

I think it actually called "power widget" in the market place. I was searching for it yesterday.

 

[NickB2005]

I searched power widget and nothing came up. I have the stock one that comes with the phone, but I guess this "power widget" is something a little bit better?