The Official Battery Life Thread

I use the original charger and LTE all the time. No I won't change it to WiFi. I shouldn't have to. I get 4 hours and 30 minutes of battery life independently of the background processes running and during all five full charges I've given this battery.

Ordered the end extended one tonight.


something's not right
 
See Page 54 in the 875 Bionic Manual (bottom right under "Battery Charging"):

"Motorola batteries and charging systems have circuitry that protects the battery from
damage from overcharging."

I suggest you do use all Motorola branded usb chargers and docks

ill stick to my BlackBerry Charger, been using it since i got my Droid X-
same output Voltage - LONGER Cable FTW
 
Anybody use Juice Defender?

I just installed it and I am not sure if it makes any difference. It seems to have slowed my phone down just a tad (slight lag now on some things whereas before I had zero lag on anything).

I am still getting over 15h on moderate use with WiFi and 4G. VERY happy.

Katherine
 
Things are getting better now. I know a few charging cycles helps but the key seems to be wifi/3g/4g. Using wifi doesn't seem to turn off the cell data. Make sure to only have one on at a time. U can use a widget go quickly toggle mobile data off or setup Tasker to handle this automatically when connected to wifi.

Still testing things to see how different situations and usage affects my battery.
 
latest charging cycle:

15 hrs, 20% left (but 6 hrs were while i was asleep with the phone on 3G, so i don't really even count this as much)

45% cell standby
40% phone idle
6% display (1hr 45 mins on; brightness at minimum)
5% android OS
2% game i downloaded (literally played it for about 10 mins)

i would call this light usage. 3g on the majority of the time while in my room; only turned on 4g for about an hour or two while i was out

also, it bothers me a little that the phone doesn't show all of the apps i've used. for example, i downloaded a fantasy football app and used it for at least as long as the game, but it shows up nowhere on the battery stats. also, i had music playing while driving for ~10 mins, yet the music player appears nowhere on my list.

with as little as i actually used my phone (vs. having it sitting on the desk with the screen off and 4g off), i expected longer life, especially given that it's being used "mostly" as a last gen 3G phone
 
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You can turn off data services, but I wasn't trying to artificially extend time. What I was showing was my normal useage for the day. On my X if it got down to 5 or 10 percent battery it would be turning off almost immediately. With this phone on extended battery it stayed on for litterally 2 to 3 hours after hitting 10% on the battery. Granted I didn't do a whole lot of stuff after that, but that is pretty amazing (or the calibration is off and it wasn't really at 10%)

Sent from my DROID BIONIC using Tapatalk

I kid you not, my phone was on 1% for the past two days for 30 minutes each time before it died. I couldn't kill it for anything! I was on 4G and kept loading issimo (twitter), facebook, netflix and it still took 30 minutes to shut off. I was pretty impressed. My X wouldn't even make it to 1% before it shut off. :D
 
Phone finally shut off, 17 hrs. ~2hrs display time on. what did it in was virtually no reception for the last hour or so. I had it on wifi, but that seemed to kill the battery even faster which makes me think that wifi does not disable the 3G/4G radio.
 
People keep posting 15 to 19 hrs battery life with only 1 to 2 hours screen actually being on. This is rather misleading as many people get caught up on the 15 to 19 hours. That is completely irrelevant. In 5 hours I killed my battery but I had 3 hrs 45 mins of actual screen on. So 19 hours with phone not being used for 17 hours doesn't impress me, nor should it anyone else. Pay attention to hours the display was actually on and forget about any other hours posted.
 
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People keep posting 15 to 19 hrs battery life with only 1 to 2 hours screen actually being on. This is rather misleading as many people get caught up on the 15 to 19 hours. That is completely irrelevant. In 5 hours I killed my battery but I had 3 hrs 45 mins of actual screen on. So 19 hours with phone not being used for 17 hours doesn't impress me, nor should it anyone else. Pay attention to hours the display was actually on and forget about any other hours posted.
it wasn't meant to impress. if anything it was meant to show that the battery life sucks. sorry if you misinterpreted the data.
 
Lots of it depends on what you do. Mon-Fri I'm sitting in my office and maybe have my screen on for 1-2 hours at most, so my battery tends to last a lot longer (I have 4G flipped on and Wifi off completely, I've considered switching this and seeing how it runs).

Sat-Sun I'm normally out or something along those lines and using my phone a lot more texting, etc.

I could easily get long usage numbers during the day with my phone sitting idle most of the time, so I'm guessing that's what gets some people those numbers.

Battery seemed to be fine for me for a while, but on the longer days I do find myself having to charge it before the night is over. I'm contemplating the extended battery which is currently on sale...
 
Phone finally shut off, 17 hrs. ~2hrs display time on. what did it in was virtually no reception for the last hour or so. I had it on wifi, but that seemed to kill the battery even faster which makes me think that wifi does not disable the 3G/4G radio.

it should shut it off. download quick settings and check when you're on wifi. it will say data disconnection is off. on my phone when data is on 4G LTE is in blue. when I'm on wifi the wifi signal is blue and 4G LTE is white.
 
I bought my Bionic on Saturday, and have gone through 2-3 full battery cycles. I am at about 20% battery life right now on the regular battery.

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I have made about 30 minutes of phone calls, played about 30 minutes of games, have had full 4g and cell service the entire 7 hours, and had my screen on for about 2.5 hours of the time. I also use juice defender.

Is this normal for my battery life??
 
Battery life hasn't been too good for me so far, even when not using the phone at all. I suspect there is a bug in the OS that has the 4G radio still working while I'm connected to Wifi.

Here's one scenario that troubles me that just happened this morning.

I wake up at 5:30AM to go to the gym. I take the phone off the charger immediately.

I get back from the gym around 7:30AM.

So, other than clearing out the notifications I received overnight while I slept, the phone hasn't been used at all. While at home it's always connected to wifi.

When I wake the phone's screen at around 7:30AM, there is 70% battery life left. 30% gone with virtually no usage over 2 hours. I click on battery stats and it's been off charger for 1hour49min, top 3 power usage is coming from Cell Standby, Phone Idle and Social Location (?).

For me that is definitely not good enough. I have to figure out if this is an issue because of the 4G radio constantly searching, me swapping out batteries after each cycle or what.

Brandon
 
it should shut it off. download quick settings and check when you're on wifi. it will say data disconnection is off. on my phone when data is on 4G LTE is in blue. when I'm on wifi the wifi signal is blue and 4G LTE is white.

I just checked and mine 4G indicator is currently white, but I'm pretty sure in the past it's been blue when wifi was also connected. I'll monitor this though.

Another thing I just thought about is the fact that I de-selected the wifi advanced setting to keep wifi on while the screen was turned off. I will re-enable that and do further testing.

Settings>Wireless & Networks>Wi-Fi settings>(Capacitive Tough Menu Button)>Advanced>Wi-Fi Sleep Policy--->Change to "Never"

I had it on "Never when plugged in" which probably means once the screen turns off and you're not plugged in, the 4G radio kicks in and the wifi-radio turns off.

Also, is there an app (Quick Settings?) that tells us what is using up the most power with detail? I used PowerTutor for my OG Droid, but it's not compatible with the Bionic yet because it doesn't recognize the 4G radio.

Brandon
 
I just checked and mine 4G indicator is currently white, but I'm pretty sure in the past it's been blue when wifi was also connected. I'll monitor this though.

Another thing I just thought about is the fact that I de-selected the wifi advanced setting to keep wifi on while the screen was turned off. I will re-enable that and do further testing.

Settings>Wireless & Networks>Wi-Fi settings>(Capacitive Tough Menu Button)>Advanced>Wi-Fi Sleep Policy--->Change to "Never"

I had it on "Never when plugged in" which probably means once the screen turns off and you're not plugged in, the 4G radio kicks in and the wifi-radio turns off.

Also, is there an app (Quick Settings?) that tells us what is using up the most power with detail? I used PowerTutor for my OG Droid, but it's not compatible with the Bionic yet because it doesn't recognize the 4G radio.

Brandon

Quick settings will tell you what is using the most battery power. You click on the battery in the upper right hand corner and it will take you to the usage screen!
 
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Social Location is using 97% of my battery. I went from 100% to 80% in 22 mins...with no other usage.
 
Yeah I'm about ready to root just to get rid of Social Location, but C Streater is saying it may be integrated into our contact app, so I'm holding off for now.

I'm also ready for a 4G/3G widget toggle switch. I'm thinking that the 4G radio, even if not using data, is actually drawing power while wifi is on. The reasons are two-fold:

1) Even if it's not blue because it's not using data, it may still be drawing power in the same way that if I have my laptop connected to wifi but also connected to an ethernet cable, the data transfers over wifi but the ethernet cable is still lit up to show it's being powered on.

2) When I'm connected via Wi-fi, there are still moments where the 4G signal goes away and the 3G signal shows up. That leads me to believe the 4G radio is still polling for a connection to the tower, along with the 3G radio. I was hoping they would be disabled when wifi was connected, even though I'm not sure if it's possible or not.

Brandon
 
I would assume there will be a 4G toggle widget shortly.

Currently at 9 Hrs 51 Mins running 4G the entire day:

Cell Standby: 44%
Phone Idle: 36%
Display: 11% (1 Hr 53 Min)
Android OS: 5%
Android System: 2%

Don't know what you call that (I'd say "light" usage since it was responding to texts, some apps, etc), but not as long as I like but also not nearly as bad as others. I've had Wifi off all day, GPS on all day too.
 
in 8hrs Im down to 60%.....rarely using the phone....a few texts and emails here and there. total screen time is about 20 min. 4G on all day. no wifi, no bluetooth.

dont you think thats a little too much?

tomorrow I am going to try with no 4G

bplewis, you can download a toggle switch from the android market.....its a quick link shortcut to the menu where you can switch between LTE and CDMA.
 

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