The Official Battery Life Thread

[rgarling]

Re: YIKES, on battery life!

Definitely get the extended battery. I've had mine off the charger since 6:30 am and now it's 2:00. I'm at 90% and have been playing with it most of the morning. Streamed internet radio to and from grocery shopping, played with wallpapers and ring tones, usual texting and messaging.
Have only made two fairly short phone calls though.
It does make the phone a little bulky...like a 90's Sat phone :/

so the extended battery is like that of the charge and the t-bolt? bulky? ick. i was hoping it would be like the X and barely a difference.

they do have a charging dock available with an extra battery so you can charge both at once. has anyone purchased that?

 

[1812dave]

Re: YIKES, on battery life!

they do have a charging dock available with an extra battery so you can charge both at once. has anyone purchased that?

yes, I bought the extra battery/charger. it has a short charging cable (less than 2") to charge the phone at the same time.

 

[carzaddict]

Re: YIKES, on battery life!

unplugged my phone at 9am and now im at 70% now (3pm) with moderate usage....plus 1 hour of being in sleep mode.

i hope it gets better =X im going to try a pure CDMA test tomorrow and compare

 

[rgarling]

Re: YIKES, on battery life!

yes, I bought the extra battery/charger. it has a short charging cable (less than 2") to charge the phone at the same time.

i know you haven't had the phone for a long time yet, but the extra battery/charger it worth the purchase? it didn't take very long at all for me to kill my battery out of the box on this thing...

 

[irl Panda]

Re: YIKES, on battery life!

Yeah it needs to go through several full charge/dishcarge cycles before it reaches maximum battery potential. Also I would suggest using the bult in task manager. It has an option to auto-kill aps you are not using. I have had mine on since 7 am this morning and it is now 2 pm , 70% life left.

A task manager is only going to kill your battery faster. You don't need one for Android 2.2 and above. If there is an app you find bothersome, you need to just delete it. It's going to repeatedly open, and having a task manager repeatedly close it is just draining more battery. Also, if you go into your running programs, you can kill apps yourself.

 

[1812dave]

Re: YIKES, on battery life!

i know you haven't had the phone for a long time yet, but the extra battery/charger it worth the purchase? it didn't take very long at all for me to kill my battery out of the box on this thing...

yes, for the cost, vs the cost of the phone, I think it's essential to have another battery u can charge outside of the phone. I just hit 20% at 11:40. phone was turned on at 6AM. I was streaming Pandora for the last 45 minutes or so, over 4G. Put it back on charger and switched to wifi in hopes phone charges faster (as well as shut of Pandora).

 

[shadowsjc]

Re: YIKES, on battery life!

A task manager is only going to kill your battery faster. You don't need one for Android 2.2 and above. If there is an app you find bothersome, you need to just delete it. It's going to repeatedly open, and having a task manager repeatedly close it is just draining more battery. Also, if you go into your running programs, you can kill apps yourself.

i think he means the built in android task manager that comes stock with the phone.

 

[shirokuro]

Re: YIKES, on battery life!

Got my phone yesterday, went back and purchased the dock in the evening. I charged it all night to 100% and took it off the charger around 8:30 AM. It was down to 90% within minutes, without touching it.

When I got to work after 9:00 AM it was around 80%. I barely touched it, although a friend played with it for maybe 5 minutes, doing a little bit of websurfing and watched one short Youtube video. A few minutes after he was gone, the battery was at 60%.

By 11:30 AM, again, barely touching it, the battery was at 30% !!! Charged for 10 minutes then drove to lunch. During the 10-minute drive to lunch (in my pocket, not being touched) the battery lost another 10% and was down in the orange.

I have great LTE coverage at home, although at work it's in the 1-2 bar range (although even with 1 bar I still get 8-9 Mbps).

I dont use any of the Blur social networking stuff - only the standalone Google+, FB and Twitter apps. I've turned syncing down a bit, so will see if that helps. My screen is a low as it will go.

I'll give it a couple of charging cycles to break in, but so far this is by far the worst battery life I have seen on any phone ever (and this is me coming from a Thunderbolt....)

The phone is often very warm, even after no usage, so I'm thinking there's some rogue app somewhere. I may try a factory reset also.

PS I do NOT seem to have any headphone whine problem. There is a very very faint electronic whine, but no worse than any other electronic device I've ever used.

 

[shirokuro]

Re: YIKES, on battery life!

Got my phone yesterday, went back and purchased the dock in the evening. I charged it all night to 100% and took it off the charger around 8:30 AM. It was down to 90% within minutes, without touching it.

When I got to work after 9:00 AM it was around 80%. I barely touched it, although a friend played with it for maybe 5 minutes, doing a little bit of websurfing and watched one short Youtube video. A few minutes after he was gone, the battery was at 60%.

By 11:30 AM, again, barely touching it, the battery was at 30% !!! Charged for 10 minutes then drove to lunch. During the 10-minute drive to lunch (in my pocket, not being touched) the battery lost another 10% and was down in the orange.

I have great LTE coverage at home, although at work it's in the 1-2 bar range (although even with 1 bar I still get 8-9 Mbps).

I dont use any of the Blur social networking stuff - only the standalone Google+, FB and Twitter apps. I've turned syncing down a bit, so will see if that helps. My screen is a low as it will go.

I'll give it a couple of charging cycles to break in, but so far this is by far the worst battery life I have seen on any phone ever (and this is me coming from a Thunderbolt....)

The phone is often very warm, even after no usage, so I'm thinking there's some rogue app somewhere. I may try a factory reset also.

PS I do NOT seem to have any headphone whine problem. There is a very very faint electronic whine, but no worse than any other electronic device I've ever used.

An amendment to my comment about the whine: I'm noticing it more now, it's definitely there.

I'm not sure if it's a dealbreaker for me. It's not noticeable at all whilst music is actually playing, but I hear it once the sound ends, followed by a faint pop a few seconds later (as the audio powers off).

It's not awful, but I just did a quick comparison with an iPhone 4. The iPhone does not exhibit this AT ALL. Could this just be Motorola using cheap audio components? If so, shame on them, for such an expensive phone! I can totally see how this would turn some people off.

 

[bkircher]

Re: YIKES, on battery life!

Dang u guys are heavy phone users, im only at 60% after 13 hours of moderate use...

 

[shadowsjc]

Re: YIKES, on battery life!

Dang u guys are heavy phone users, im only at 60% after 13 hours of moderate use...

if you read the previous post, the phone died while essentially being unused. that's hardly a "heavy phone user".

my own experience has been very similar to the last poster's. the phone will run warm (not hot) while in my pocket. i've used it very little and it's at 50% after about 4hours.

i think the culprit is the signal strength. i've been in class most of the day, and i regularly have 1 bar of reception. i might switch out of 4G on my next charging cycle (or maybe just leave wifi on the whole time)

i'm also curious if the task killer (stock, android one) is doing more harm than good. i might remove all apps from the 'auto end list' and see if battery life improves then.

 

[Mikeyw88]

Re: YIKES, on battery life!

A task manager is only going to kill your battery faster. You don't need one for Android 2.2 and above. If there is an app you find bothersome, you need to just delete it. It's going to repeatedly open, and having a task manager repeatedly close it is just draining more battery. Also, if you go into your running programs, you can kill apps yourself.

this is not some task manager I downloaded it was built in. I have never and will never download and use a market task killer app.

 

[ManBearPig618]

Re: YIKES, on battery life!

this is not some task manager I downloaded it was built in. I have never and will never download and use a market task killer app.

Are applications like Advanced Task Killer actually detrimental to battery life?

 

[Mikeyw88]

Re: YIKES, on battery life!

Are applications like Advanced Task Killer actually detrimental to battery life?

Yes, they often use more CPU and Memory than all the tasks they kill. The stock one on the bionic is fantastic though. Minimal reasource usage.

 

[nlowhor]

Re: YIKES, on battery life!

if you read the previous post, the phone died while essentially being unused. that's hardly a "heavy phone user".

my own experience has been very similar to the last poster's. the phone will run warm (not hot) while in my pocket. i've used it very little and it's at 50% after about 4hours.

i think the culprit is the signal strength. i've been in class most of the day, and i regularly have 1 bar of reception. i might switch out of 4G on my next charging cycle (or maybe just leave wifi on the whole time)

i'm also curious if the task killer (stock, android one) is doing more harm than good. i might remove all apps from the 'auto end list' and see if battery life improves then.

This sounds like my experience today. 3-4 hours off the charger and was down to 30-40%. I didn't have a good signal so I was using wifi....which also had a poor signal. However, the phone was hot...reading over 100 degrees F. Something was working too hard for sure. I've used the TBolt in the same location w/o battery drain anything like this. Actually my battery life on the Tbolt was solid.

 

[dmcman73]

Re: YIKES, on battery life!

if you read the previous post, the phone died while essentially being unused. that's hardly a "heavy phone user".

my own experience has been very similar to the last poster's. the phone will run warm (not hot) while in my pocket. i've used it very little and it's at 50% after about 4hours.

i think the culprit is the signal strength. i've been in class most of the day, and i regularly have 1 bar of reception. i might switch out of 4G on my next charging cycle (or maybe just leave wifi on the whole time)

i'm also curious if the task killer (stock, android one) is doing more harm than good. i might remove all apps from the 'auto end list' and see if battery life improves then.

If your phone is getting warm while in your pocket then one of two things is happening:

1. The phones radio is "hunting", basically switching back and forth through all of its connections (1X, 3G and 4G) trying to find a strong signal to lock onto. This WILL drain your battery fast and cause your phone to get warm.

2. You have an app that is constantly updating essentially turning the radio on and off all day, again this would cause your phone to get warm.

 

[pudding 82]

Hey guys, I was wondering if anybody would know why 51% of my battery has been used by the app Maps. If anybody has an answer, I would appreciate it. Thanks!

 

[Mikeyw88]

Hey guys, I was wondering if anybody would know why 51% of my battery has been used by the app Maps. If anybody has an answer, I would appreciate it. Thanks!

It may be using your phone GPS heavily.

 

[anon(392870)]

As an update,

I'm at 40% after having my phone from 7 am - (almost) 5 pm. That's about 10 hours of usage and still running good.

During that time I've downloaded apps, ran programs updating in the background (twitter, etc), texted, etc. Spent from 4-5 changing some skins, apps around etc.

I've still been running wifi and 4G the entire day, so tomorrow I plan on flipping off Wifi and seeing how it runs, I'll use GPS on the way home to see the effects.

Seems like usage may be the key, still trying to decipher what I'm doing differently than others.

 

[shadowsjc]

mine actually seems to have regressed. 6.5 hrs of usage so far, and i'm at roughly 35% battery left. I live in a 4G market and regularly get 3-4 bars outside, but inside the building i only get 1 bar at most

Cell standby: 43% (time without signal 0%)
phone idle: 34%
display: 13%
android OS: 4%
contacts 2%

not sure i'm very happy, but as was mentioned a few posts up a poor signal strength seems to be the real killer. I'm going to shut 4G off next time to see if that does anything