How is your Charge setup and how is your battery life?

[aquajon974]

what does the mobile data do, i see the icon is lite up but have no clue what it means...
and i have found turning off blue tooth and gps until needed also helps with the battery life

 

[deadpenguins]

Questions:

Is it true that killing apps will somehow do harm to our phone as advised by someone on here?


Also, once there is a way to remove Samsung Wiz in the near future and replace with a different launcher should that also improve battery life?

While I am not a seasoned android user, I've heard from many many people (and personally agree) that killers are useless and sometimes even harmful in most situations. Your phone comes with Task Manager, which is perfectly capable of killing necessary apps if you want to free up some cpu, and a RAM clearer as well just in case. It is less extensive than the killers you can download, but while the stock apps on your phone can only be killed with a downloaded killer, they're just going to start right back up. This is not necessarily a bad thing; it is the way android was programmed to operate. You're better off not getting one.

The only way to completely remove TW is to root your phone. You can do your own research to decide whether that option is for you or not (you have to be fairly tech savvy in most cases). I personally have launcher pro and am in love with it. It just masks your TW UI but it hasn't slowed my performance at all. In fact, its even smoother than before.

 

[deadpenguins]

what does the mobile data do, i see the icon is lite up but have no clue what it means...
and i have found turning off blue tooth and gps until needed also helps with the battery life

Mobile data is just your 3g/4g connection. Obviously, when turned off you cannot access the internet/update widgets. I find it useful because I am not always on the internet so it is not necessary to have it sucking my battery dry all the time.

 

[mrblahblah]

While I am not a seasoned android user, I've heard from many many people (and personally agree) that killers are useless and sometimes even harmful in most situations. Your phone comes with Task Manager, which is perfectly capable of killing necessary apps if you want to free up some cpu, and a RAM clearer as well just in case. It is less extensive than the killers you can download, but while the stock apps on your phone can only be killed with a downloaded killer, they're just going to start right back up. This is not necessarily a bad thing; it is the way android was programmed to operate. You're better off not getting one.

The only way to completely remove TW is to root your phone. You can do your own research to decide whether that option is for you or not (you have to be fairly tech savvy in most cases). I personally have launcher pro and am in love with it. It just masks your TW UI but it hasn't slowed my performance at all. In fact, its even smoother than before.

So just using task manager to exit programs, and clearing memory, should be sufficient?


Also, is rooting that difficult? And wouldn't it be better to root to remove all the extra useless apps that come on phone anyways?

 

[Grenex]

My new battery is a bust. Same battery drain with minimal to no use of the phone.
I shut off Bluetooth, GPS, and Wifi. Set my screen brightness to manual at the lowest setting, and still getting same results.

With LTE I drain at 20% per hour (or more) for total of 5 hours or less of life
With 3G I drain at 10% per hour (or more) for total of 10 hours or less of life

My next test is to factory reset and download NO apps, and run no task killers in the same config. If life is still this short, I plan to swap the phone and test again. If all fails, I go to DroidX2 or Incredible2.

 

[deadpenguins]

IMO, task manager is all you'll need. There is a lot of controversy as to whether task killers are really doing harm or good.

I cannot tell you how difficult rooting is because I haven't personally tried it yet. When there is a rom available for the updated Charge I will look into it. Further down the road, devs will make rooting a simpler process for this particular device. I've heard of "one-click" roots for very popular devices like the EVO, so this one might see that one day.

My strongest word of advice to prolong the runtime of your battery is to turn off data transfer whenever you're not using it (text messaging does not apply to data). Once I started doing this, my battery life has increased about 300% - I had 11 hours of moderate-heavy usage yesterday and still had 20% battery left. Pretty impressive, especially after what I was experiencing.

As I said before, my suggestion is to get BatteryIndicator (no space). Super simple/small app that gives you a bubble of your battery % left in the top left of your notification bar, and gives you battery temp/voltage in the drop down notification. This may sound silly, but it's the best app I've downloaded so far because it lets me monitor more accurately what is draining my battery.

 

[jwalkerdds]

intial battery charge

hey guys im getting my charge today.

sorry if this has already been asked and answered, but i just wanted to confirm that i should use the phone until fully dead and then charge fully. i remember we used to have to do this for battery's but at some point we didnt.

thanks

 

[ellje]

This is my first day with the charge and I'm at 50% with 6hrs 15mins of light/moderate use

 

[mrblahblah]

How do I turn off the mobile data feature? I can't seem to find it under settings?

 

[uefcommand]

i am at 10 hours of up time with 61% the screen ussage of bat life. 31% bat life with light ussage, what can i do to get longer battery life. i have made no changes to the phone it is stock i have just installed a few apps including lookout mobile.

 

[deadpenguins]

You find data transfer at the same place you find gps/bt/wifi (which should all be off when not in use).. it's in the drop down of the notification bar (slide your finger from the top of your screen down). I was told that people are getting full day battery life even while leaving data transfer on, which i am definitely not getting. I'm getting a max of 3-4 hours battery life with 4g enabled. Also, my phone is going up to 45+ degrees when in use, so I'm thinking I have a defective battery. I'm going to bring it back this weekend.

 

[lpsquall]

I just returned my 3rd Droid Charge tonight. Two of them from my local Verizon store and 1 from Best Buy. All 3 of them barely gave me 7 hours. This is really a big disappointment. I am thinking of ordering it from Amazon as the last straw. I really do like this phone, and hearing stories of people having excellent battery life while others don't is really frustrating. Hopefully I have better luck through Amazon.

 

[ellje]

I'm hanging on by a thread right now at 3% remaining with 12 hrs and 37mins of usage.

My day went like this:
Using Launcher pro
2 widgets: weather and widgetsoid
first day, but fairly light/moderate usage, I think
4G on all day
Screen: brightness almost as low as it'll go
Display was 74% today.
Found out how to turn off wifi, bluetooth, gps, etc about mid-morning... 4hrs into my day.

I'm running with no updates right now... not sure if those will help or hurt battery life.

 

[lpsquall]

With each phone I owned, when I have 4g on I was losing 20% per hour. With 4g off 10% per hour. Only widget I was using was weather. Made 2 moves in Words with Friends, and used gchat for about 20 minutes. Battery would go down to about 50% in 2 - 3 hours.

I also had Wifi, Bluetooth, and GPS off. Didn't make a difference for all 3 phones.

I'm hanging on by a thread right now at 3% remaining with 12 hrs and 37mins of usage.

My day went like this:
Using Launcher pro
2 widgets: weather and widgetsoid
first day, but fairly light/moderate usage, I think
4G on all day
Screen: brightness almost as low as it'll go
Display was 74% today.
Found out how to turn off wifi, bluetooth, gps, etc about mid-morning... 4hrs into my day.

I'm running with no updates right now... not sure if those will help or hurt battery life.

 

[ellje]

With each phone I owned, when I have 4g on I was losing 20% per hour. With 4g off 10% per hour. Only widget I was using was weather. Made 2 moves in Words with Friends, and used gchat for about 20 minutes. Battery would go down to about 50% in 2 - 3 hours.

I also had Wifi, Bluetooth, and GPS off. Didn't make a difference for all 3 phones.

Wow...crazy... guess I got a good one?

I checked every time I turned the phone on, and it was getting 4G signal with 3 bars. Was your signal as good?

I ended up just shy of 13hrs before it died on me. I'm HOPING 3G will be better, because I don't need 4G for everything, but I certainly need the phone to last more than 13hrs to get through a full day. I'll play with some more toggles and battery saving techniques and report back in a few days.

For what it's worth, I bought this at Costco... but I don't think that should make any difference.

 

[Grenex]

I did it! I went from a 5 hour battery life on a phone to 14 hours today! I am going to create a new thread on what I did.

 

[ellje]

I'll admit... I'm brand new to these things, so my phone is almost completely bare of apps and widgets.

I did run Task Manager (think that's what it was called) and cleared RAM maybe 6 times today. Sometimes it killed as many as 10 things, which I thought was odd... I have no idea what 10 things were open... ?!

 

[deadpenguins]

Hey grenex wheres that thread?
Im getting antsy

 

[lpsquall]

I'm from the New Jersey/New York City area. I have full 4g bars. I wish I could get 13hours. Not even with 2 batteries I was getting 13 hours.
I think New Jersey got the short end of the stick with the shipments. Anyone from NJ or NY have a droid charge and have excellent battery life?

Wow...crazy... guess I got a good one?

I checked every time I turned the phone on, and it was getting 4G signal with 3 bars. Was your signal as good?

I ended up just shy of 13hrs before it died on me. I'm HOPING 3G will be better, because I don't need 4G for everything, but I certainly need the phone to last more than 13hrs to get through a full day. I'll play with some more toggles and battery saving techniques and report back in a few days.

For what it's worth, I bought this at Costco... but I don't think that should make any difference.

 

[Grenex]

I'm from the New Jersey/New York City area. I have full 4g bars. I wish I could get 13hours. Not even with 2 batteries I was getting 13 hours.
I think New Jersey got the short end of the stick with the shipments. Anyone from NJ or NY have a droid charge and have excellent battery life?

Yes! I live in North Jersey (Netcong) and work in Jersey City. I had issues too, but read this post I just made!!
http://forum.androidcentral.com/showthread.php?p=921723#post921723