Droid Charge Battery Life? Is this normal?

[jmg002]

I'm sure I'm posting this in the wrong forum, or there's to many of them, but whatever. I'm new to AndroidCentral and new to Android. I just picked up the Droid Charge, and it's my first android phone. After reading lots of reviews, I decided to pick it up since people were saying it had acceptable battery life. Some people claim 12-15 hours moderate to high usage, with widgets and syncing on. I thought this was right up my alley. However, I think my battery performance has been less than stellar, (this being my first android phone, i'm not sure what to expect). I turned the screen all the way down, stopped all syncing I could, turned off wifi, bluetooth and GPS, no widgets. I live in Houston, so yes I am in a good 4g area. No, I'm not rooted...yet. Here's my performance based on the data speed I allowed each day:

4G - 11 Hours - 14 minutes of calls, 15 minutes on Words with Friends, 5 minutes Angry Birds, 10 minutes Youtube, 30 minutes Iheartradio (music streaming), sent 7 texts, received 3 texts.

3G - 11 Hours - 16 minutes of calls, 16 minutes Words with Friends, 25 minutes Angry Birds, 5 minutes Youtube, 60 minutes Iheartradio, sent 4 texts, received 3 texts, 35 minutes Browser, 10 minutes Facebook, 13 minutes mousetrap, synced Gmail once.

As expected, 3G gave much better life than 4G. However, I was hoping for a little bit better performance than that. Are my results good, bad or average for an Android device? A big reason I bought the phone was the awesome screen, but if I have it turned all the way down all the time, what's the point? Should I consider returning it for a Droid Incredible 2? I was hoping to get a device where I can have a few widgets updating every once in a while, screen on at least half brightness, play some games and browse the net a little, while still making it home from work with a living phone. You know, get a good android experience, not the everything-off-and-super-dark experience I have now. Any suggestions or insight is extremely appreciated.

 

[lv2bsilly]

I'm sure I'm posting this in the wrong forum, or there's to many of them, but whatever. I'm new to AndroidCentral and new to Android. I just picked up the Droid Charge, and it's my first android phone. After reading lots of reviews, I decided to pick it up since people were saying it had acceptable battery life. Some people claim 12-15 hours moderate to high usage, with widgets and syncing on. I thought this was right up my alley. However, I think my battery performance has been less than stellar, (this being my first android phone, i'm not sure what to expect). I turned the screen all the way down, stopped all syncing I could, turned off wifi, bluetooth and GPS, no widgets. I live in Houston, so yes I am in a good 4g area. No, I'm not rooted...yet. Here's my performance based on the data speed I allowed each day:

4G - 11 Hours - 14 minutes of calls, 15 minutes on Words with Friends, 5 minutes Angry Birds, 10 minutes Youtube, 30 minutes Iheartradio (music streaming), sent 7 texts, received 3 texts.

3G - 11 Hours - 16 minutes of calls, 16 minutes Words with Friends, 25 minutes Angry Birds, 5 minutes Youtube, 60 minutes Iheartradio, sent 4 texts, received 3 texts, 35 minutes Browser, 10 minutes Facebook, 13 minutes mousetrap, synced Gmail once.

As expected, 3G gave much better life than 4G. However, I was hoping for a little bit better performance than that. Are my results good, bad or average for an Android device? A big reason I bought the phone was the awesome screen, but if I have it turned all the way down all the time, what's the point? Should I consider returning it for a Droid Incredible 2? I was hoping to get a device where I can have a few widgets updating every once in a while, screen on at least half brightness, play some games and browse the net a little, while still making it home from work with a living phone. You know, get a good android experience, not the everything-off-and-super-dark experience I have now. Any suggestions or insight is extremely appreciated.

I think thats about average I suppose. I text on mine frequently, browse the web a little, run a few apps that use the internet throughout the day and I get about 10hrs before it goes to yellow on the battery meter. I do have my brightness all the way down and do not have email or facebook auto syncing.

For a smartphone I still think this is good battery time.

 

[BrianTX]

If you want battery life get a droid x! The charge is good for a 4g device. I use auto brightness, imnuts kernel, altered beast rom, and get 12-16 hours depending on how long I can use wifi.

 

[trebores]

I doubt you'll get much better battery life from the incredible 2. Android or any modern smartphone for that matter just drains battery. I have noticed that battery life is especially bad when you have marginal signal for any period of time.

Anyway, my solution - and the one that I have found that keeps me the most sane is to just buy a spare battery (or 2) and an external charger. You can spend days/weeks/months tweaking and replacing kernels, but really you can only get so much out of that.. the hardware really dictates battery drain (for the most part).. the spare battery is the best way to end battery problems imo.

 

[Robert Calhoun]

I'm on a BB Storm 2 at the moment and I'm considering a Droid... I would have already gotten one if it weren't for the battery life and a couple of other issues...

I will say that my brother has a Driod X and, as one of the other posters suggested, he can get almost 2 days with moderate to heavy usage... The more I read in these forums the more I am starting to lean towards an X myself...

 

[ellje]

I think you're getting about what is to be expected with your usage. Note that the music or video streaming has the greatest effect on battery drain of anything I've done in the past two weeks. I can just sit and watch my battery drain while doing so.

I've had a few days with very light use that leave me with 35-45% remaining at the end of a day (6am to 10pm), but a moderate use day only gets me from 6am to about 8pm. I am pretty light on use at work (3-4%/hr, but hit it harder when I get home... the difference between light to moderate use days is how much I am using the phone after ~4pm) As you noted, 3G does save a fair bit of battery over 4G, and wifi is even better. I will say this, I'm nowhere near the power-user as most of these guys... I've used 1.2GB of data in the two weeks that I've owned the Charge.

Some things that have helped my battery life:
Screen Brightness: I typically have this at 10%-30% in the office, crank it to 100% when outside.
Wifi, Bluetooth, GPS toggled off when not in use
Play downloaded music instead of streaming to conserve battery (HUGE difference)
Auto-Sync off (I toggle a manual sync when I start my phone up to fetch emails)
Stopped using the stock Email app - this constantly pushes data
4G - I toggle this off unless I'm downloading something large or web browsing. 3G seems to be just as fast at Apps like gmail, gtalk, tapatalk or iheartradio, which is most of my usage.
(Download 'widgetsoid' from the app store, you can build a custom widget to toggle all of these things on and off from your homescreen)
I don't run auto-syncing widgets... I can look outside to see what the weather is right now, and I can pull it up once a day for a report if needed
I don't auto-sync anything. I haven't found anything that is important enough to notify me instantly while at work. I check in every 45-60mins on average, and sync at that time.

This probably seems extreme for some, but the truth is, it's less distracting when at work, and there's no reason to have functions toggled on when you aren't using them. I can understand your interest in having the screen brightness higher, but truthfully... at 10%, I can see everything clearly in the office. It doesn't have the brightness WOW factor, but it's still extremely clear and worthwhile having the Super AMODLED + in my mind.

 

[cltatenza]

My phone is 3 days old and I've got 2 email accounts being pushed to my phone, along with Weatherbug following me and updating every hour. I use WiFi while at home, and leave bluetooth and GPS on all the time. I'm getting between 14 and 16 hours right now, and I expect that to get better with age.

I don't know if it helps, may be a myth, but I did try the battery "training" my first night fully charging the phone. I let the phone die until the battery turned yellow, plugged it in and charged it until it read 100%, turned it off and charged it for another hour, unplugged and turned it on and off again then charged for another hour while off. Some people say this is supposed to train the battery to actually charge the full 100% instead of 75-80%.

 

[barrycinti]

I doubt you'll get much better battery life from the incredible 2. Android or any modern smartphone for that matter just drains battery. I have noticed that battery life is especially bad when you have marginal signal for any period of time.

Anyway, my solution - and the one that I have found that keeps me the most sane is to just buy a spare battery (or 2) and an external charger. You can spend days/weeks/months tweaking and replacing kernels, but really you can only get so much out of that.. the hardware really dictates battery drain (for the most part).. the spare battery is the best way to end battery problems imo.

Ditto on the marginal signal. I have poor signal at my house no matter what phone I have had over the years. When I use VZ's network instead of WIFI my Charge heats up alot since the transmitter/receiver has to run at full gain. I can run WIFI at home for a long period without the phone heating up. You may want to periodically check your signal strength during the day, it may be for a portion of time you are in a weak signal area.

I personally keep everything off except for bluetooth and WIFI, it has made a significant difference. The reason for keeping bluetooth on is I like to receive-make calls using my car's blue tooth setup nad do not want to toggle bluetooth on and off. When I am in area where there is a strong signal I use 4G.

I also have had a signal extender from VZ for making calls from home.

 

[superstar1213]

I don't know if it helps, may be a myth, but I did try the battery "training" my first night fully charging the phone. I let the phone die until the battery turned yellow, plugged it in and charged it until it read 100%, turned it off and charged it for another hour, unplugged and turned it on and off again then charged for another hour while off. Some people say this is supposed to train the battery to actually charge the full 100% instead of 75-80%.

There is absolutely NO need to train Lithium Ion batteries. They do not have a memory. Instead know this. Each battery has so many charges built into it.. and with that the battery will continue to work as intended. After about 500 charges, then the battery will start to see a decrease in performance.

 

[deadpenguins]

Hmm..

I used to have an abysmal battery life of about 4-6 hours with moderate usage (I consider moderate to be more than what you do in a day). After replacing my battery, I can get about 8-10 with extremely heavy usage (100+ texts, phone calls, playing nintendo 64 for a half hour to an hour, browsing/downloading 200+ mb, streaming video for up to 20 mins). If I used the phone as little as you do, I would easily make it past 24 hours. I have my brightness at 50% at all times. The longest I've gone without a charge is about 28 hours, and that was with usage comparable to yours.

The two things I've done to see a massive improvement (along with replace my battery) is to turn off background data whenever not on android market and turning off data transfer (notification bar) when I know I won't be using data for a half hour or more or if I'm in a shaky data area.

If you're big on the syncing and don't want to manually do it, then these options obviously are not for you. It's more of a convenience for me to have my phone last hours longer than to have to wait 5 seconds for it to obtain data signal again every once in a while. Still, it's possible it could be a battery issue. Try swapping it out and check for improvements.