[Official] D2 & D2G Battery Life Discussion

[DougFNJ]

Born and raised in NJ Mr Mayor

Just to enjoy a perfect example of my post above, I am on day 3 with the Droid 2 Global. Day one was AWFUL battery life, same results as I had with the X. It seemed like everytime I turned it on it would use 10% battery.

Day 2 I was down to 60% by lunch, 20% by midnite last night. I wanted to kill the battery and had a hard time doing so, with the 20% I played Angry Birds for around an hour and a half and finally dhut doen around 1:30. I plugged it in and pulled it off the charger this morning around 8am, it is now 11:45 and I have 80%. I plan to kill the battery one more time tonight so I will have conditioned the battery properly, and I am hoping to enjoy similar battery life as Droid X.

As far as useage, I am believe I use it a decent amount. Maybe around an hour of internet, 30-40 texts per day, regular emails through the Gmail app, and a secondary POP email that synchs only in Wifi areas and set to retrieve every 4 hours. I periodically play games, read ebooks, navigate, etc. Now as I condition my battery, I refused to charge it yesterday as well as today.

After today I will tend to charge it in the car a little at lunchtime, and on the drive home. With all that, if I could enjoy Droid X like battery life, I will be happy

I hope this all helps.

 

[petaf]

Wow. So glad I looked at this forum feed. I have a Nexus One (AT&T) and was lusting after the D2G, but after seeing all this I think I'll reconsider! I have an extended battery on my N1 and it's been 14 hours and I'm down to 40%. I don't use task killers. And apart from keeping screen brightness to auto, I don't have to monitor what's running. Hmmm...

 

[jbinbi]

peta, not sure if it is too late. came from droid1 and got d2g. battery life was horrible. about to return. then rooted with z4root , incredibly easy, then installed setcpu. cranked display off setting to 300/300mhz, turned normal down to 1ghz from the 1.2.

i get very reasonable battery life. not as good as d1, but d1 is running at 600mhz. much snappier. I am a moderate user, when i first got d2g it wasn't going 8 hours, and that was un acceptable. now it goes 16+ hours, which is just fine. Also , in the androidforums.com several have gotten extended battery and easily going 24 hours of heavy use, 30+ hours of light use. this phone is really fast, and i actuually like the keybd much better than on the d1

 

[Darth Vacho]

I would try the extended battery.For some reason they are putting the Droid1 batteries in D2 and D2G,and they dont last long on the D1.I would look online,Verizon is a pain in the ass.you also need a new battery cover for it.

 

[ydh2323]

i too am having serious batt issues, i bought the extended moto battery and i can barely get half day with less than an hr talk time, some textx and emails on it, i just changed interval updates on twitter and fb to 4 hours and changed from global to cdma on the wireless ill see if that helps, i feel like even if it does, it will be negligible

 

[jocko]

Well its not the D2G, but my R2D2 used to also have horrifyingly bad battery as well. Then I acquired setcpu, autokiller (its not a task killer. That's sure a misleading name) and juice defender, among other things. No taskkillers, and have brightness all the way down. Email etc. Syncs every four hours or wifi. And with moderate use (I play a lot of gameboy on here lol) I can easily crank around 16 to 20 hours out of this baby with the battery it comes with. If that helps anybody lol

 

[smccloud]

Don't use blur if you want better battery life. Wait more than a day before you make judgments on battery life more like a week. I recently got my droid to were it will make ut through a full days of use running at 1.2. I set my phone to maximum battery saver don't have blur and use the facebook and twitter apps. When I would go to work before I would have to shut my phone down after 6 hours due to it sitting at 30% with almost no use. Now i get home and still have 40-50 percent with the same usage

How do you not use Blur?

And I hate the battery life on my R2D2 compared to my Wife's X (I came from an Optimus S on Sprint which had great life). I can make it through a work day without charging most days so its not horrible. I'd turn off GPS, but I use it on my way to work to see how fast I have to drive to make it on time and I have WiFi & Bluetooth off most of the time.

 

[BluePlate]

New D2G owner, suffering as others have with the battery. I came from the Droid X, which even from day one always at least got me through the day with moderate use.

This morning, with what I would call light use, I was down from a full charge to 30% in four hours! Wifi off, BT off, GPS off, data syncing set to lowest for Twitter and never for FB, no other syncing apps that I know of.

Here's my question: Is there something wrong with my phone? I'm all for getting the extended battery (the case I got is designed for it anyway!), but this seems like a seriously crazy battery problem. I don't want to get the extended battery if the problem is with my phone. It runs very hot, which I know others have noted--it won't burn me but it will be uncomfortable to hold. Should I try a new handset first, or get the extended battery?

(BTW, just a random note to say that I ADORE the keyboard on this thing! I was holding out for the Merge, but these keys are wonderfully clicky! The VZW store I got it in had the D2 out on display as the D2G, since they're so similar, but the keyboard is WAY better!)

UPDATE: I discovered that my "words with friends" app was checking every 30 minutes!! Argh! And, even when I set it to manually update, it would run in the background unless shut off. I used the pre-installed task manager to force close it whenever the screen times out, and it's been MUCH better: almost 8 hours! That's with light usage, but still, I no longer feel like there's something wrong with my phone. I'll happily get the extended battery now.

 

[circustravis]

Does anyone else have the problem where certain apps will drain the battery faster than it can be charged?

 

[pastorgadget#AC]

Avoid the BLUR!

How do you not use Blur?

And I hate the battery life on my R2D2 compared to my Wife's X (I came from an Optimus S on Sprint which had great life). I can make it through a work day without charging most days so its not horrible. I'd turn off GPS, but I use it on my way to work to see how fast I have to drive to make it on time and I have WiFi & Bluetooth off most of the time.

I came from a Blackberry Curve, and while my BB's battery life was stellar, it was nothing like my old Samsung dumbphone. And now we complain that our Droids are nothing like our Blackberrys? Sigh. Our laptops don't last all day running at 1GHz or more, so why should our phones?!? Until battery technology catches up, we are still stuck with machines that will drain batteries quickly. That being said, we CAN do something about it--such as getting rid of Motorola's Blur interface.

Fresh from the carrier, the D2G comes loaded with two types of widgets: standard Android Widgets like the really basic social networking and music apps/widgets, and the Motorola Blur widgets. For example, when you long-press on a Home screen to add something, you'll see the Motorola Widgets listed first. The Motorola Widgets are colorful, and they have a consistent interface across the various apps--BUT THEY ARE BATTERY HOGS! Yes, that Picture Frame widget looks cool when you boot up, and we like to check up on our FB friends during breaks at work, and we all like to know the weather and news headlines, BUT... Motorola has yet to make an energy-efficient widget. The worst part is that some of the Motorola Blur widgets (like Social Networking and Weather) still run in the background even when you DON'T have them on a home screen!

So how to get rid of them? Start by asking yourself if you really NEED their functionality. Do you REALLY need that Facebook widget running on a home screen while you're at work? Probably not. I just fire up the Facebook app when I get a break or get home, and the same info is still there. Like others have mentioned, if you really MUST have constant updates, you can set up Facebook email alerts, too.

Also, Motorola has several individual Power Widgets for things like Bluetooth, Wifi, etc. Well, also on your phone is the stock Android Power Bar, which combines them into one handy 5-in-1 widget. There are several weather apps available for free that check weather much more efficiently than the Motorola/Accuweather widget. (I use The Weather Channel app, which puts the temp in my notifications bar.) Get the idea?

I started by removing all widgets from all my home screens (leaving just direct app links), and then I tried living with mostly-blank pages for a couple of days. I gradually added a couple widgets back in. One Blur contact widget for one-button text and calling of my girlfriend, and then I downloaded Folder Organizer from the Market, which gave me some folder widgets for organizing apps on my home screens.

The immediate result was having 20% battery life left over by bedtime, versus the 20% at 5PM I was getting before. Since then I have followed more of the recommendations on this forum--CDMA-only, turning back data sync, auto brightness, turning off GPS, Wifi, and BT when I don't need them, etc. And for those who say "Oh what a pain to have to turn on and off my Bluetooth," I have to reply "Do you have automatic light switches in every place you go?" Seriously, with a simple, flick-of-the-switch widget available for turning on and off Bluetooth, why are people complaining about having to turn it on and off? Spare me!

Now I am rooted (z4root), and I have "frozen" the Motorola Blur weather and social networking apps. I bought the Motorola 1850mAh extended battery--which came with a matching pearly-white battery door to match my phone. I use ADW Launcher for my Home screen, and Minimalistic Text widgets give me on-screen time and weather--and they also de-clutter my home screen. When I get home, I watch an hour or two of streaming video, catch up on Facebook and news, send some emails, talk to my girlfriend, and THEN I still have 20% battery left.

Once again, it all starts with asking yourself what you really need when you are not looking at the phone...

 

[BluePlate]

So, I took the plunge and rooted my phone (z4root) for the sake of using SetCPU, and I'm not really sure I'm noticing a difference. Granted I was on several short (10 minute) phone calls today, but I only made it to about 3 pm before my battery was in the red (and that's with the extended battery!).

I'm underclocking it to a max of 600 when the screen is off, and I underclocked it to an overall max of 1000, figuring that was the speed I'd had on my DX and it was fine for whatever I needed it to do.

Apart the battery issue though, was the fact that I was trying to stop the phone from getting so hot. That part seems to be working, but while it no longer gets as hot as it used to, it seems to be what I'd call "warm" more often than before. Like, underclocking the CPU has brought the hot-and-cold spells to a medium ground of constantly warm. Weird.

Am I way overthinking this? Probably. But I'm excited to have rooted my phone, and I'm interested in any suggestions that anyone might have for using SetCPU to adjust battery life and processor heat.

Thanks!!

 

[KingWaffle]

I'm underclocking it to a max of 600 when the screen is off, and I underclocked it to an overall max of 1000, figuring that was the speed I'd had on my DX and it was fine for whatever I needed it to do.

Apart the battery issue though, was the fact that I was trying to stop the phone from getting so hot. That part seems to be working, but while it no longer gets as hot as it used to, it seems to be what I'd call "warm" more often than before. Like, underclocking the CPU has brought the hot-and-cold spells to a medium ground of constantly warm. Weird.

Am I way overthinking this? Probably. But I'm excited to have rooted my phone, and I'm interested in any suggestions that anyone might have for using SetCPU to adjust battery life and processor heat.

Thanks!!

A hot battery will deplete it faster than normal. You might have some other issue on your battery.

 

[originalcopy]

The battery will get hot if the cell phone is having reception issues. Happens to me, all the time.

 

[LD0ne]

Hey I'm Tony I have a Droid 2 Global that I'm having some issues with and so I'm here to research how come my phone drains my battery so fast. I will definitely search through current posts to make sure my questions haven't already been answered. There seems to be a whole lot of information on here though so if i do ask a question that has already been asked please don't ridicule me.

 

[ub3r_goob3r]

Ive had my D2G for about a year, and experienced pretty crappy battery life. I didnt really want to root and bought both the seido 2800 and gorilla gadgets 3500 extended batteries, both of which had good battery length at start and quickly went back crappy battery life(im a heavy user). I started thinking the phone itself is incapable(at least unrooted) of fully charging the larger extended batteries. Last week I bought a universal charger with a droid 2 global battery adapter and gave that a shot. 1st full charge of the 2800 lasted an impressive time(estimating 20 hours of heavy use, including leaving it playing two movies in netflix so i could drain the battery before in order to get a full overnight charge). The second day after a full charge I could not drain the battery before bed(even playing movies,although not trying real hard to drain). However the next time I put the battery on the charger it seemed to take 8 or more hours to charge.

I plan to switch between the 3500 and 2800 when either is on the charger.

No battery meter really works great...and I got the 2 battery warnings and red blinky light and still had 10 hours left.

I do run a launcher, pandora, dogcatcher, surf a ton use gps every day 1-2 times, bunch of other apps and work in a crappy building where the phones looking for a signal and hot 60% of the time.

Edit: Just wanted to add the gorilla gadgets battery is not as good of a fit as the seido battery in the universal charger and can stop charging if you bump it.

 

[XoomBlogger]

Hey, I've been using my droid for almost a year now and my battery got pretty bad by now. I do have some applications running but I also use task killer, even though it doesn't seem to work very well.

Anyway I can barely get a full day of battery life when I talk and text with it, using some applications occasionally of course, thinking of getting either another battery or a generator. Any thoughts anyone?

 

[kariou]

So, Im new to AC. Also came from NJ but no longer live there. I had bought my D2G in about May-ish. ive been using it unrooted since yesterday, where I gave up and just rooted it. I installed CPUBoost and underclocked my phone to 800/300 when off and normal when on. On top of that I got SuperDim and set the dim'ness to about 5/10/20/50/255. So far it is 4:15pm after pulling the phone off the charger at 6:30am and im at 30% battery life while using the replacement for the A955/A855 Battery (its an extended battery rated 3500mAh I bought online for like $20. Usually it will last me all day, but that is with very light, and Im talking light usage. Browse for at most 5 minutes a day, medium texting via Google Voice, I take maybe 1 picture per week at most. I only make major phone calls during the weekend, and charge the phone while playing music via Winamp.

As for my current battery stats:

Display: 30%
Android Sys: 11%
Phone idle: 10%
AnimGIFLive Wallpaper 2: 10% (Use this for my custom animation background)
Cell Standby: 9%
Browser: 8%
Google+: 5%
Android OS: 4%
Market: 3%
Voice calls: 2%
Go Launcher EX: 2%

Now I get that I have a few apps in there that will auto update themselves but if you think about it they are very negligable. I think the worst I am doing to the phone is the wallpaper which I would rather keep with the lack of 10% usage than without. Other than that I think Ive picked up a few suggestions from here. Any more would be greatly appreciated (especially free alteratives to some of those rooted apps).

Thanks.