Question: Battery Intervals

[DaRkL3AD3R]

Greetings,

As I'm sure everyone knows by now the Droid X updates your battery life in intervals of 10%. I personally find this to be not only annoying, but uninformative. Lets say for example, I plug my phone in and charge it to 100%. 30 minutes later after unplugging it and using it some, the battery now claims to be at 90%. What does this mean exactly? Does this mean its at 99% and rounds down? Does it mean its at 94% and rounds down, but claims 100% when its 95% and higher? Or how about another 5 minutes later, when it still says 90%, is it really 90% or is it somewhere between 80% and 90%?

These are all problems that would disappear and lead to a more informed user on proper battery life had the system shown intervals of 1%.

The reason I bring this up is to ask in everyone's opinion, is this something that can be fixed in a firmware, battery replacement or other possible fix, or are we stuck with this simply due to hardware limitations inside the phone itself?

I'm pretty sure no one in their right mind would prefer this confusing system over an accurate-to-1% indicator so please, if you guys feel the same lets try to report this to Verizon and/or Motorola to get some solid information and possibly get a fix in the works.

Thank you

 

[vicw926a4]

This has been working on my mind recently, especially now that I've resolved most of the big issues setting up my DX. I agree that 10% increments are not very useful, 1% would be much better.

I just loaded Battery Indicator just to see what it would show. It's reporting a round 10% increment, which implies that's what it's getting from the DX, consistent with the Settings reports. It's worth putting the question to the Motorola Forum. They seem to be actively working and feeding back on issues over there.

 

[WAldenIV]

1% intervals would be horribly inaccurate. As it is now the phone needs to learn the battery during the first few discharge cycles to be accurate within a reasonable percentage. I don't think anything better than 5% intervals is even realistic.

 

[Matt Kline]

My iphone 3gs was pretty accurate at 1% intervals.

 

[vicw926a4]

I installed the Battery Left app today, and I'm pretty impressed so far with its ability to learn battery usage, predict remaining time, and provide what hopefully will be meaningful percentages once the learning process is completed.

Along with some other good data, it can give battery intervals of 1% in the Notification Bar, which may prove be a useful alternative to Motorola providing any more precise increments than the current 10%, assuming it really is accurate.

 

[terpitude71]

i used battery left on my OG droid, and could never quite get it accurate. i agree, this is easily the most annoying feature of the moto android phones, and would love to see a fix for it. problem is, most battery apps just pull the info from phone status as vicw mentioned in an earlier post

 

[gafly]

I have battery left and I love it! I don't turn off the "calibrating" feature so that it's always learning and it seems to improve its accuracy every day.

 

[vicw926a4]

i used battery left on my OG droid, and could never quite get it accurate. i agree, this is easily the most annoying feature of the moto android phones, and would love to see a fix for it. problem is, most battery apps just pull the info from phone status as vicw mentioned in an earlier post

I generally agree, but it looks to me that Battery Left is really working the data, and may prove to be able to provide more precision, certainly more than the 10% Motorola display. I'll know better in a few days of use, but so far, I'm pretty impressed.

 

[RayStinkle]

You mean Motorola android phones don't show exact percentage in settings? Nexus does. How about the battery life widget, it shows exact percentage as well as voltage which is what I use anyway. Voltage seems to help me much more once you learn the min and max.

 

[quetzalcoatl]

You mean Motorola android phones don't show exact percentage in settings? Nexus does. How about the battery life widget, it shows exact percentage as well as voltage which is what I use anyway. Voltage seems to help me much more once you learn the min and max.

It only shows in 10% increments for the X. Which makes me think all it does is report what the system tells it not really read anything.

 

[vicw926a4]

It only shows in 10% increments for the X. Which makes me think all it does is report what the system tells it not really read anything.

The DX does also report current finite voltage levels, which apps can use to intelligently learn and use to report more accurate percentages and times . I'm more impressed by Battery Level each day, as I watch it build its history and reporting confidence.

 

[DaRkL3AD3R]

Thanks for the tip vic, I'll definitely give this app a download and try. Worst case scenario, it will always be as accurate as the default battery values. That means it can only be better.