Really would like to hear about battery life & signal strength!

[awood740]

Re: Really would like to hear about battery life & signal strengt

I am a heavy user and have been getting about 8 to 10 hours out of mine. I just wish it would stop re-drawing the home screen after closing apps. any ideas on that? i am not using a live wall paper, but i do have some active widgets like twitter, and facebook.

 

[NormanGC]

Re: Really would like to hear about battery life & signal strengt

Immediately after getting my new D3, i changed the global network setting to CDMA and reduced the display down to around 20%. I plugged in the phone in my laptop USB to charge the phone. While I was doing this, I spent about 4 hours tinkering around the phone downloading apps playing with different software and finally stopped playing with it at 2:30am. When I stopped, I looked at the battery and found that the phone was fully charged. Sweet!

While playing with the phone I noticed the following:
1) Sometimes the screen does not rotate except when I slide the keyboard out. When I push it back in the screen goes back to portrait mode even though I never changed the angle of the phone.
2) When taking pictures with the flash on and using the native software, the pictures turned out to be a blueish tint. I read messages in these forums and someone suggested to use a different app to take pictures. I downloaded camera360 the free edition) and problem is gone. Go figure
3) I've been on Wi-Fi all morning and was wondering why every once in a while I would hear a beep. It turns out to be an issue while holding the phone. The phone was in the palm of my left hand. My thumb and hand basically was covering the left hand side of the phone and my fingers wrapped around to the right hand side of the phone. While doing this, I noticed that the Wi-Fi signal dropped. I released my grip on the phone and instantly the signal returned. This happened even when I was 3 feet away from the router. This does not happen when the phone is on 3G. Only when using Wi-Fi. It seems that the Wi-Fi radio is not very strong.


Once the phone was charged it unplugged it and took it with me to bed and then played Shoot the Duck for about 1/2 hour, browsed through the market for about another 1/2 hour and downloaded 2 other games. I spent the entire morning playing with my phone and here are the results on the battery life:
8:44m48s on battery

Cell standby 27% Time on8H 44M 39S Time without signal 0%
Wi-Fi 18% Wi-Fi Running 5H 49M 45S CPU total 3s (Not sure what the 3s represents)
Phone Idle 16% Time on 5h 12m 19s
Display 14% Time on 3h 22m 29s
Shoot the Duck 11% CPU total 51s
Android System 6% CPU Total 5m 24s
Compass 6% CPU total 31s
Android OS 2% CPU total 14m 11s

My phone is now sitting at 40% remaining.

 

[OhioG]

Re: Really would like to hear about battery life & signal strengt

Wow you guys are lucky, I have the Thunderbolt and on average at the end of the battery (at around 10%) my display has used around 75% of battery.

 

[NormanGC]

Re: Really would like to hear about battery life & signal strengt

To add to my previous post:

I ended up charging my phone at 3:00 today due to the fact that I was going out for 4+ hours and I did not want the phone to die on me when I was out and I had just finished playing angry birds for about 1 hour. Anyhooo... My phone was at 30% when I plugged in at 3:00. This means that in approximately 12 hours (3 + 8h 44m) and I used my phone a lot in that 12 hours, I only used 70% of my battery. Pretty good for what I would consider fairly heavy use.

My wife's phone, which was purchased at the same time as mine for FREE, was taken off charge last night. Today, she had a very light day with 7 phone calls and approximately 15 text message and browsed the web for a few minutes. At 9:15 tonight, her battery was still at 60%!!! That's almost 24 hours. By the way, I changed her network setting to CDMA and lowered the brightness on the screen. Everything on this phone is stock! Nothing downloaded and nothing installed or removed.

 

[NormanGC]

Re: Really would like to hear about battery life & signal strengt

I have about 70% of full charge after 14 hours of use.

I probably don't use it the usual way, though - I have G3 turned off by default, I only turn it on when I need to check my email, surf, remote in to the office, etc. As long as I get calls and texts at all times (which I do with G3 off), I'm fine.

Alexis, how did you turn off 3G? I'm assuming that you're using 1x.
Also, is there a widget that you use to turn it on or off?

If I can do that, I will be able to control when 3G is on or off just like the GPS, Wi-FI and others, there will be substantial saving in battery life. My buddy has a thunderbolt and he now turns off 3G and 4G and is getting over 48 hours of battery life. If he needs to access the web then he only enables the 3G.

 

[NormanGC]

Re: Really would like to hear about battery life & signal strengt

This is to let you know that I purchased Juice Defender yesterday $4.99. I installed, set it up and then charged the phone until it was fully charged. The phone has been off charge now for 17h 39m and has just changed to 50% battery life two minutes ago!

This is great so far.

 

[dirt4444]

Re: Really would like to hear about battery life & signal strengt

Maybe I will try to paid version of juice defender because the free version didnt help at all. Im hoping someone here can help me because I have been on the phone with verizon tech support and they cant figure it out.

I fully charge my phone by midnight, and when I wake up at 7am some days the phones battery is down to 10%, thats without using it at all. The other days it doesnt drop that fast overnight it still only lasts me till about noon and this still with very little use. I only have a few apps downloaded and I dont use any widgets on my home screens. My cell standy is always around 47% and my phone idle is around 44%. This is also my second D3 that has had this problem.

 

[YourMobileGuru]

Re: Really would like to hear about battery life & signal strengt

You guys do realize this phone already has a battery saver installed in it right? All you have to do is turn it on....

 

[dirt4444]

Re: Really would like to hear about battery life & signal strengt

You guys do realize this phone already has a battery saver installed in it right? All you have to do is turn it on....

Ive tried nightime saver and also maximium battery saver and I didnt notice much of a difference in my battery life.

 

[NormanGC]

Re: Really would like to hear about battery life & signal strengt

Ive tried nightime saver and also maximium battery saver and I didnt notice much of a difference in my battery life.

I tried the phone's battery saver, but found that juice defender to be better with more options and flexibility.

BTW, I finally plugged in my phone after 29 hours being off charge. It had 10% battery left and I would say that Juice Defender definitely helped. This is using the standard battery. I'm impressed!

 

[GigaFish]

Re: Really would like to hear about battery life & signal strengt

I am not sure if I have a bad battery of I am just not used to the battery life of a Droid since I am used to my Voyager and iPod Touch, but it seems like my battery life so far has been really bad.
Right now I am at 20% with 5h 44m 40s on the battery. I have done no games, about 30 mins of music from my library, and about 2 mins of google maps. I got the phone on the 19th, and I would think the battery would be "broken in" by now. On usage it shows:
Cell standby 36%
Phone Idle 24%
WiFi 10%
Display 10%
Maps 8%
Android Sys: 4%
Browser 2%
Does this seem about right, or is it low? As stated before this is my first smartphone so I'm still getting used to what is normal.