Where did my battery life go?

[uglyyeti]

I've had the fascinate about 6 weeks now. Until Monday, the battery life was nothing to complain about. Plugged it in overnight, used it all day, and had about 30% left when I plugged it back in at night. That all changed on Monday.

Now, the battery lasts about an hour if I'm using it, six hours on standby - no calls, no nothing - just sitting there unattended. It's pretty well useless as a phone without being plugged in. Every morning this week the phone I've found it shut down on the charger.

Monday I installed Lookout (when I had the email pw issues - discussed in another post) and ran a scan that was clean. Battery started plummeting by lunch. I uninstalled Lookout (just in case) along the few less important apps I'd pulled from the market. The next day I uninstalled ATK.

Yesterday I went into Verizon and they gave me new battery and insisted I run ATK until Froyo is released. (Just for sport, I asked him what their latest word was on release and he told me "last December".) Battery didn't solve the problem after a recharge last night. My phone is telling me the display is consuming 80% of the power - even though it's barely been on the past few days. I don't have any odd apps on the phone.

I don't have anything on the phone I didn't have a week ago when the battery was kicking butt. I've tried a few different chargers at home and the office, including the OEM one, the Verizon car charger and my wife's moto droid AC unit. Any ideas?

 

[Landshark]

I've had the fascinate about 6 weeks now. Until Monday, the battery life was nothing to complain about. Plugged it in overnight, used it all day, and had about 30% left when I plugged it back in at night. That all changed on Monday.

Now, the battery lasts about an hour if I'm using it, six hours on standby - no calls, no nothing - just sitting there unattended. It's pretty well useless as a phone without being plugged in. Every morning this week the phone I've found it shut down on the charger.

Monday I installed Lookout (when I had the email pw issues - discussed in another post) and ran a scan that was clean. Battery started plummeting by lunch. I uninstalled Lookout (just in case) along the few less important apps I'd pulled from the market. The next day I uninstalled ATK.

Yesterday I went into Verizon and they gave me new battery and insisted I run ATK until Froyo is released. (Just for sport, I asked him what their latest word was on release and he told me "last December".) Battery didn't solve the problem after a recharge last night. My phone is telling me the display is consuming 80% of the power - even though it's barely been on the past few days. I don't have any odd apps on the phone.

I don't have anything on the phone I didn't have a week ago when the battery was kicking butt. I've tried a few different chargers at home and the office, including the OEM one, the Verizon car charger and my wife's moto droid AC unit. Any ideas?

I don't have any ideas, sorry about that. Just wanted to let you know that 80% on the display is normal. If you look at all the things in that same display, all the percentages add up to about 100%. All the 80% is telling you is that of the things currently drawing power, the display is drawing 80% of what is being drawn. So if 2% of your battery's juice is being drained at that time, the 80% next to display simply means your display is drawing 80% of that 2% drain. It doesn't mean your display is sucking out 80% of your battery's juice.

 

[lbrenes]

Do you have any widges running updating stuff, like weather, facebook, tweeter, system resources, etc? dont run ATK, is not necessary and actually will drain more battery than what it saves. Make sure screen brightness is set to auto.

Have you dialed *22899 in order to update your roaming tables?

My 2 cents

 

[uglyyeti]

That makes sense. I was thinking it was a cumulative report.

 

[uglyyeti]

Do you have any widges running updating stuff, like weather, facebook, tweeter, system resources, etc? dont run ATK, is not necessary and actually will drain more battery than what it saves. Make sure screen brightness is set to auto.

Have you dialed *22899 in order to update your roaming tables?

I have the samsung weatherbug clock widget, but I think it only checks in every 3 hours. I use sound manager, but I've had that running since day 1 - don't think that eats much. The guy at verizon reinstalled ATK, then I took it back off when I left. I just set the screen brightness to auto and it dimmed slightly - it was previously set to about 20%. Just did the *22899 - I think they did that at Verizon yesterday too.

 

[uglyyeti]

Still no progress with battery life. It won't survive more than 90 minutes of moderate use and about 5.5 hours on unused standby from a full charge. Unrooted 2.1 (updated to EA28 two weeks before the battery problem started,) reloaded Lookout a few days ago - all scans clean. Location services, GPS, WiFi and Bluetooth are all OFF. Auto screen brightness ON. Battery is a week old. Using stock mail app with Exchange and K9 with one IMAP acct. No weird apps.

Any more ideas? Getting desperate.

 

[Landshark]

Still no progress with battery life. It won't survive more than 90 minutes of moderate use and about 5.5 hours on unused standby from a full charge. Unrooted 2.1 (updated to EA28 two weeks before the battery problem started,) reloaded Lookout a few days ago - all scans clean. Location services, GPS, WiFi and Bluetooth are all OFF. Auto screen brightness ON. Battery is a week old. Using stock mail app with Exchange and K9 with one IMAP acct. No weird apps.

Any more ideas? Getting desperate.

Have you tried the app Juice Defender? It's helped me and a lot of people have raved about it. There's a free version and a paid version. I'm using the free version.

 

[lbrenes]

You might have a bad battery. I would go to the store you got the phone from and get a new battery. If you are under warranty they should give you over for free. I think you've done everything you can via software, specially if you are unrooted.

 

[uglyyeti]

Landshark - just installed Juice Defender - I'll see how that goes - thanks.

lbrenes - did exactly that a week ago - brand new warranty battery - no difference in battery life - even on the first charging cycle. The phone is sucking it dry. Have tried several different chargers, too.

This thing worked like a champ - easily all day on an overnight charging - until 2 weeks ago. Now it sucks.

 

[Landshark]

Landshark - just installed Juice Defender - I'll see how that goes - thanks.

lbrenes - did exactly that a week ago - brand new warranty battery - no difference in battery life - even on the first charging cycle. The phone is sucking it dry. Have tried several different chargers, too.

This thing worked like a champ - easily all day on an overnight charging - until 2 weeks ago. Now it sucks.

Cool. You should see a little shield icon on the left side of your notification bar. That let's you know Juice Defender is working. If you don't see the icon, open JD, click on the status tab and even though enabled may be lit up green, click on it. When you close JD, the icon will appear. And in the about tab in JD, you will see an indicator bar showing by how much JD has increased battery life. And if you use the built in Task Manager to stop running apps, don't click on "end all." That will shut down JD, even if you don't see JD in the list. Just end each app individually. Phew! Did I give you enough info to digest?

 

[uglyyeti]

Did I give you enough info to digest?

Thanks - noticed the icon next to the Lookout icon on the task bar. Does the red dot that flashes on the icon mean it's doing something? Haven't spent any time with it since it loaded - phone had to go back on the charger!

 

[lbrenes]

Have you tried switching the WIFI policy to "never WHEN PLUGED IN"? THis always makes a big difference on my phone battery life too. Dont know why, but it does.

It is under SETTINGS / WIRELESS / WIFI SETTINGS / ADVANCED / WIFI SLEEP POLICY

 

[joebob2000]

Sounds like you have two options: 1) rom it with a fresh OS install and see if that helps, 2) take it back to the store and demand a new one.

 

[xeroslash]

Have you tried switching the WIFI policy to "never WHEN PLUGED IN"? THis always makes a big difference on my phone battery life too. Dont know why, but it does.

It is under SETTINGS / WIRELESS / WIFI SETTINGS / ADVANCED / WIFI SLEEP POLICY

i'll be doing this myself.

 

[Landshark]

Thanks - noticed the icon next to the Lookout icon on the task bar. Does the red dot that flashes on the icon mean it's doing something? Haven't spent any time with it since it loaded - phone had to go back on the charger!

Open up JD and scroll down the page, there is an icon legend to let you know what the different looks mean.

 

[uglyyeti]

Landshark - just looking though the JD log - is this normal while charging?

 

[Landshark]

Landshark - just looking though the JD log - is this normal while charging?

Mine does not say that. Not sure if that is because of the lookout or perhaps this will help us figure out the source of your battery drain. If there is a way to turn off lookout, do so, and see what happens.

 

[uglyyeti]

If there is a way to turn off lookout, do so, and see what happens.

Uninstalled Lookout and cold booted. Still hammering away with that same sequence up to a few dozen times a minute.

 

[Landshark]

Uninstalled Lookout and cold booted. Still hammering away with that same sequence up to a few dozen times a minute.

Sorry, I disappeared for a while. Dealing with a slew of phone calls. Obviously it wasn't lookout based on your last post, plus I downloaded and enabled lookout, plugged my phone in, checked the log several times and I'm not getting those messages. It's going to take a long time depending on how many apps, widgets, etc. you have, but you can use the JD log to figure out what is causing that by removing one at a time and rechecking the log to see if it stops. Eventually you may see a change and that would identify the cause. Depending on what it was, it may turn out to be the cause of your battery drain.

 

[Unknown User]

Speaking of battery life on a Fascinate, maybe someone can verify this for me. My girlfriend has the Fascinate, and battery isn't lasting that long, about 2 to 3 hours max. So she goes to our local VZW store and they tell her that she's been charging her battery wrong. The "Device Specialist" they had there told her that she needs to charge the battery for a full 7 to 8 hours. That when her Fascinate tells her that the battery is completely charged it's actually a "false reading" and that it just means it's "almost got a complete charge." The device specialist wouldn't ok the exchange for a new battery and just told her to charge it for a full 7 to 8 hours and she'll see a drastic improvement over the battery life.

So does this sound right? Honestly I think it's a load, I was shocked when she called me and told me what their so-called device specialist said. I'm going to go down tomorrow and speak with the store manager about this, but before I do. I just want to know if this is true. I'm not all that techie but I would think if a device tells you it's got a complete charge, it's got a complete charge.