[Official] D2 & D2G Battery Life Discussion

[ishore99]

I am new to the Droid 2 Global coming from Blackberry. I had battery life issues there but was able to fix that by tweeking the Storm. Now since I got the D2 Global it seems that all I do is charge it. I have installed Advanced Task Killer but I still get poor battery life. I have tried to tweek many of the adjustments as I can but not good.

Any suggestions all will be welcome and tried.

 

[dwaynewilliams#WN]

You must use your phone non-stop. I don't use task killers and I got about 14 hours with battery to spare. You may want to try the extended battery.

 

[Mjv8198#AC]

I have the same problem

when i stop apps they restart. I charged for 8 hrs and it was not fully charged. I can't figure out how to remove the junk pre-installed apps.

 

[Bushido Brown]

Do some inventory of the apps you have installed, check their settings, and make sure they aren't constantly polling for info or updates.

Perfect example:
This one girl was on Twitter, complaining that her G2 had awful battery life. I also noticed she was updating from Tweetdeck. Tweetdeck (for reasons unbeknownst to me) defaults all of its columns to check for updates like every five minutes. I advised her to alter those options, and she said her battery life has improved.

Anyway, you may not use Tweetdeck, but there is a possibility that you have applications that are polling for updates too frequently. Maybe even a mail account that you don't have setup for push.

 

[Papadakis]

You have to root to remove pre-installed apps, and DO NOT USE TASK KILLERS.

 

[marckatz]

Take it off the global network (under wireless and network settings) and change it to CDMA. Only use Global if you are out of Verizon coverage. The global setting eats up the battery.

 

[ishore99]

Root service

You have to root to remove pre-installed apps, and DO NOT USE TASK KILLERS.

I have to admit since I am new here, I don't have the courage to Root my phone myself. I live in North Jersey and was wondering if anyone knows someone who I can pay to root my phone?

 

[Papadakis]

I have to admit since I am new here, I don't have the courage to Root my phone myself. I live in North Jersey and was wondering if anyone knows someone who I can pay to root my phone?

Rooting really isn't hard at all...
Easier 1-2-3 Droid 2 Root for Windows / Linux / Mac - xda-developers

 

[Bushido Brown]

I have to admit since I am new here, I don't have the courage to Root my phone myself. I live in North Jersey and was wondering if anyone knows someone who I can pay to root my phone?

Yea man. Once you have the Android SDK and Motorola drivers installed on your PC, you're literally just one press of the "enter" key away from having a rooted device.

 

[aweber1nj]

I'm having the same issue. I got my D2G on Monday. Installed Android Central widget, Timeriffic and TouchDown.

I had my phone charging in the car all the way to work. 8:30, got out of the car. 1:30 looked at my phone and it was < 15% and telling me to plug it in immediately.

That's no good. Basically just an email app running and I can only get halfway through a work day??? No good at all.

I would take off the RSS feed widgets that came on it, but I don't think they do much all day.

I had all radios off except cell and BT (which I probably could have turned off, but use it in my car in the morning and evening so that's a PITA). Cell is set to CDMA Only.

Maybe it's the 1.2Ghz outpacing the battery? It's bad.

Anyone got any further troubleshooting ideas???

 

[Papadakis]

Im pretty sure an extra 200mhz isn't killing your battery, and i was gonna say turn on the CDMA radio only but if you did that it has to be an app or widget

 

[Rev2010]

I had my phone charging in the car all the way to work. 8:30, got out of the car. 1:30 looked at my phone and it was < 15% and telling me to plug it in immediately.

Unless you have a bad battery the only other possibility is apps that you don't need running endlessly checking for updates. I have a D2 and don't have anywhere near that poor battery life. Even when I had everything running from factory fresh it was nowhere near that bad. For one, Bluetooth does dramatically drain all batteries. I'm an IT Tech at a law firm and every time someone came to us complaining of blackberry battery drain it turned out bluetooth was left on 24/7.

But check your apps. Maybe do a test when you can deal with being disconnected for a bit - use the power widget to turn off bluetooth, wifi, and background data sync. See if the battery then lasts fine. If it does it's probably either bluetooth or some app you have running that is constantly checking for updates. Even on the iPhone email push/fetch drains the battery dramatically. When I first got an iPhone the battery wouldn't even last a full day and it turned out the email was set to constantly fetch mail. Once I turned that off it was fine. At least this way you can narrow it down and change settings accordingly.


Rev.

 

[aweber1nj]

@REV2010
I fully respect your methodological troubleshooting approach. I guess I was looking for "the magic bullet", which more often than not, doesn't exist.

I need near-real-time email delivery, so disabling the background data is absolutely contrary to what I need a smartphone to do (coming from a crackberry Storm which had no issues lasting all day even if it was a huge battery hog compared to other BB's). It would not be a compromise I could make and drive me to another phone.

I'm going to let it run today and see what the battery details say are my top abusers, then run some trials with BT disabled. The problem with disabling BT is that I fully expect my phone to automatically connect to my car's handsfree when I get in. If I have to force myself to remember to turn it on getting in the car, and disable it getting out of the car, I feel like I'm doing the phone's job and (vice-versa) the phone is not doing its job.

Love Android, love the features of this phone, but if it can't last at least 8-10hrs a day, it won't last.

Thanks again for the feedback,
AJ

 

[aweber1nj]

Im pretty sure an extra 200mhz isn't killing your battery, and i was gonna say turn on the CDMA radio only but if you did that it has to be an app or widget

I can't find any settings for how often these news-widgets check for new data. Anyone have any tips/tricks or common places to look? I would be more than happy to set them to only check hourly (or less).

 

[Rev2010]

I need near-real-time email delivery, so disabling the background data is absolutely contrary to what I need a smartphone to do

I wasn't suggesting you should live with manual email fetching. I just suggested disabling it as a test, hence my wording "Maybe do a test when you can deal with being disconnected for a bit" Just figured you can see if it's an app or if it's the email or whatnot draining your battery. If it is draining because of email then I'd say the device isn't right for you. But if it's an app doing most of the draining then there may be an easier solution.

Anyhow, best of luck with it!


Rev.

 

[aweber1nj]

Some add'l info

So running all morning (unplugged since about 7:30AM), thus 6hrs, with Wifi on, and all other radios off. Now at 30% Battery.

Details (Top 5) :
Display = 23%
Android System = 14%
WiFi = 13%
Phone Idle = 13%
Cell Standby = 11%

Unfortunately, there's not a lot I can do about the display. I suppose I could go to manual brightness or something.
Same thing with "Android System". I guess there's nothing I can do about that.
Wi-Fi I could turn off I guess, but I'm connected to my preferred network all the time, I don't like the idea that I should have to manually turn that off and on when I want to use my phone's apps...

There's really no indication that it's the network traffic that is causing my poor battery life (by way of looking at the list).

So that brings me to my big Q's:

What are "Phone Idle" and "Cell Standby" and why the heck are two items that would seem to be very innocuous using almost 1/4 of my battery???​

Anyone know what these are and whether they can be reigned-in somehow?

Thanks again!
-AJ

 

[Rev2010]

Only 6 hours and you're down to 30%? That really sounds like a defective battery. My Android System percentage is usually below 5% on average so I'm not sure what to make of that.


Rev.

 

[Raptor007]

I had my phone running all day yesterday, made a few calls, nothing too long. I do have the extd battery in it and so between 7am to 8pm it used 10% of the battery. I have WiFi off because I am not using it where I am.

 

[aweber1nj]

I shut off all the radios today and after 7hrs, it only went down to about 60%, which is night-and-day better than yesterday's test.

So it looks like the radios (BT or WiFi, and I assume GPS) are the culprit.

But having to remember to turn my BT on just before I turn the car on, and then turn it off when I get out of the car is going to be a real PITA. Need to find a better way...

 

[stevemj@usa.net]

The amazing Droid 2 Global the first of its kind corded cell phone. A battery life guaranteed for 1 call or your money back. WOW does Motorola ever test the design and function of their phones? I am taking my 2nd D2 Global back to Verizon ASAP What a peice of junk. HTC is by far the best Droid Mfg.