Why is my battery life draining so fast with so little use?

[incessance]

Hi guys!

I picked up a Droid Turbo Ballistic Nylon 64g 5 days ago. Previously I used a Droid Razr Maxx which even after over two years still had great battery life. I haven't used my new phone much but find it is dropping battery at an alarming rate. With only 1 hour and 13 minutes of on screen time, 23 hours on the battery, my phone is at 12-13%. My Screen used 32% followed by Cell Standby at 30% of the battery used thus far. Brightness is set to around 65-70% (my previous phone I had it set to 78%). I feel like I have barely used the phone relative to how I would sometimes use my old phone, especially for work where I will need to be able to download and view short video clips while onsite.

Any insight into why it is draining like this with so little use? Do I need to let it die so the battery can calibrate and know it's capacity? I have a task manager running and have disabled many of the apps I didn't feel were necessary and don't use. I haven't used Bluetooth nor Wifi during this period. I do have location on and set to high accuracy but I left this on on my last phone always. I only have 2 gmail accounts and 1 corporate/exchange account syncing right now, previous phone had 9 gmail accounts and 1 exchange. Not sure what else to add!

Any ideas!?

 

[bizzyqu]

how is your cell signal? Poor signal tanks my battery, can you show your graph in battery settings showing the depletion relatively to signal quality?

 

[incessance]

Is this what you're looking for? Phone's about to die now at 1% after 1 hour 40 minutes on screen time, 36% used by screen 27% by cell standby 13% android os etc.

 

[incessance]

Also to answer your question - I'm at 2-3 bars of 4g in my home. Never noticed an issue with old phone in this house (keeping phone resting in same spots). I've been places with depleted signal killing battery I don't think that's what is going on here :/

 

[doogald]

I would think about using either automatic screen brightness, or try using the app Lux to manage automatic brightness. That high a brightness is probably draining battery. Also, get rid of the task manager and see if that makes it better. It should - task managers are worse for battery than letting Android manage tasks.

Tap on the "cell standby" on the battery usage screen and see if you have any time without a signal. That's a pretty high cell standby figure, considering you have so many gmail accounts and an exchange account running. As others have said, cell standby that high usually suggests that you have a poor signal at some point in the day. (You can also tap the graph on the battery usage screen to see a different display which shows a bar graph of mobile signal - if you see a lot of red, you have a lot of time in poor to no signal areas.)

Ok, all that said, all I need for my phone to do is to get from the time I take it off the charger when I wake up in the morning to when I go to bed and put it back on the charger. If your phone is doing that, forget about the 48 hour advertised time and just run your phone that way. It is much, much better for the battery to have a lot of small charges than fewer big charges, so if you are at a point that you can charge the phone - commuting to work in the car, etc. - take the opportunity to charge and you'll be all set.

 

[incessance]

Thanks! I'll try ditching the task manager - I really just wanted it to see what bloatware was running initially so I could disable it. I usually prefer fixed brightness to variable cause I'm picky about how it looks (I don't like it changing) and considering my last phone was ok with it hopefully this one will be too.

I tapped on cell standby and didn't have a graph. Does this mean I had signal throughout the last 24 hours? I don't think I've had no signal or even a low signal during that time. Right now I only have 2 gmail accounts syncing, I would like to get up to 8 or 9 for work.


I don't care about hitting a 48 hour mark with the phone but I do need it to function for a full day. Occasionally I'll end up working 20 hours straight in back to back events and my old phone was able to keep pace. If this one is gonna die with light use in 24 hours hopefully it is something fixable. I know batteries get worse over time and it is alarming to see it die after a day when all I really did was a little browsing and some text messaging.

Why is it better to do lots of small charges instead of big charges? Just curious.

Thank you!

 

[bizzyqu]

if you tap the first graph it will display a bigger graph showing cell usage relative to battery drain

 

[doogald]

Why is it better to do lots of small charges instead of big charges? Just curious.

The best way to answer that is with a link to battery university and its how best to manage lithium ion batteries page.

http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries

The answer, I think, is that lithium ion batteries deteriorate more with bigger charges than they do with smaller charges, and the rate of deterioration is higher when the amount of charge is higher.