After many days, my #1 complaint is...

[FoxKat]

There is something odd going on that I noticed the last 2 days. I work 12hr nights and just keep my phone on a charger while at work (streaming music). Two days ago I left work at 100% batt, went home slept, used the phone a couple of times, returned to work and noticed the battery was at 51% (horrible for virtually no use in 12 hrs). This is even worse when you consider I had the phone programmed to recognize that I sleep from the moment I leave work until I return to work. So to try to do something about the high drain for the same sleep cycle today, I shut off the phone briefly, turned it back on, put the GPS in normal location mode vs high accuracy, disabled a couple of meaningless apps from notifications, and went to sleep with the phone facing down instead of facing up like I did the previous night. Tonight the battery was at 91% when I arrived at work.

So, now I will change up a few of the variables (esp. the GPS and phone facing up vs down while I sleep) one at a time until I find which one(s) created the previous huge drain. I'll report back what I find...

Excellent information! Please update us when you reach a conclusion.

 

[xeene]

I had the same battery drain on droid maxx when I enabled high accuracy GPS(WiFi triangulation) thanks to Google now recommendation. Turned it off and battery went back to normal.

 

[FoxKat]

Made that ^^ change last night. Let's see how it goes. Also changed from default Global to LTE/CDMA.

 

[kodiak799]

Something defintiely wonky with the battery. Set my phone down tonight with about 50% battery left (or at least 30%), and 5 hours later it was dead. And I was home on wifi.

 

[turbodave]

Which is it? 50 or 30? That's a huge difference! Being on WiFi makes no difference, look at your cell signal strength bars. If it's very low that'll eat your battery fast. Lotta folks don't understand that even sitting doing nothing, the phone is almost constantly "talking" to the network.

Sent from my QMV7A tablet via Tapatalk.

 

[Ollie]

Most of the screen shots I see show the cell radio as being the largest violator of battery life. Maybe a future radio update will fix it.

 

[turbodave]

Updates won't help anything if the signal is weak.

Sent from my DROID RAZR HD using Tapatalk

 

[Ollie]

I understand that. However, it could just be a radio issue that needs tweaking instead of a cell tower proximity issue.

 

[turbodave]

That's possible, but unlikely. Stuff like that would likely be caught in pre production testing.

Sent from my DROID RAZR HD using Tapatalk

 

[kodiak799]

Which is it? 50 or 30? That's a huge difference!

Doesn't matter - in either case my battery drained 30% or 50% in just 5 hours with no use and screen off (supposedly). That's a burn of AT LEAST 3X what it should have been, and possibly 5X.

Might have had an app acting up in this scenario (ended-up locking up and I REALLY struggled to get it into fastboot). However wifi consistently chews battery, even when off, and I'll bet it's the location services.

 

[bsweetness]

That's possible, but unlikely. Stuff like that would likely be caught in pre production testing.

I wouldn't say it's unlikely. A wide variety of things slip through the testing cracks with various devices quite often. If it is a radio issue, that's something that a future radio update can easily address.

 

[FoxKat]

Folks, the truth is that sometimes these phones will exceed your expectations and sometimes they will fall short. What I do want to make perfectly clear here to everyone is that when a manufacturer makes a claim (in marketing material), that a device will achieve "up to 48 hours of mixed use", it is based on best case scenario environment and configuration. What this means is a STOCK phone with NO third party apps installed, ONE email account activated (whether it's Gmail or otherwise), NO widgets running for news or other things such as social networking, and just the basic functionality. This would be things such as....wait for it...PHONE CALLS, web access for surfing, listinging to music whether streaming or on the device, watching video - again either on the device or streaming, taking photos, some - and I do mean SOME syncing of things such as photos and video, and overall "mixed use" but NORMAL mixed use. This also means a strong and stable signal level that doesn't overtax the OS and radios.

The phone will use less or more power depending on what is installed, whether it's running in the background or not, whether there is an app which is constantly pinging the web for updates, whether there are widgets pulling down data such as weather, news, Facebook, Twitter, et. al., whether the screen is set to dim and go black with no use in a very short timeframe or is set to stay awake longer, whether the phone has good cellular coverage or marginal, whether you have just the cellular radio on or are also running WIFI, Bluetooth NFC, etc., whether you are on WIFI or not (cellular is still awake and being attentive to the network so it's still using power), and a whole lot more things I can't even begin to explain here.

There are plenty of apps that will work fine and use little to no power on one manufacturer's phone, but will run rogue and suck the life out of the battery on another phone. This seems to be an issue not with Android but with the Kernel and how it's adapted to run on the hardware itself. In other words, the hardware is capable, the OS is capable, but if the job of the programmer(s) is performed poorly the instruction set that the OS gives to the CPU/GPU and other componentry is not communicating with the greatest efficiency it can cause a minor bobble in programming for an application to result either little to no issues or in a major interruption of the phone's operation. It can also then cause the CPU/GPU to remain "AWAKE" even with the phone screen off and no user intervention. This is like a car's gas pedal stuck down to the floor on a running engine while the car is parked in your driveway and you're sleeping. You're going to wake to an empty tank.

Cellular coverage, or signal strength and quality can greatly affect power consumption, even when the phone is at rest. The phone's job is to always have a cellular connection and be at the ready to make a call. This is actually a Federal requirement per the 911 Emergency Response System. If the phone isn't ready to make a call, someone can die unnecessarily. I am in an area where 4G is spotty and overall signal level is between 2 and 3 bars at most times. As a result, I am using FAR more battery power than I would if I were living next to a cellular tower. When I had a Samsung Galaxy S4, I had 3, count-em, 3 spare batteries and there were days I needed all three to get through a day.

If your phone seems to be sucking down power and you can't be sure it's not an app gone rogue, restart it in Safe mode and run it that way for a day or so. See how that affects the power consumption before you go and make an assumption that the phone is flawed in some way.

From Verizon's website:


Restart the Device in Safe Mode - DROID TURBO by Motorola
[Device-Specific Instructions]
Safe Mode puts your phone in a diagnostic state (returned to default settings) so you can determine if a third-party app is causing your device to freeze/reset / run slow. Our Troubleshooting Assistant can help you with other device issues if you aren't currently using the tool.

1. Press and hold the Power button (at the right edge of the device; above the Volume buttons) until the options menu appears then release.
2. Touch and hold Power off until the 'Reboot to safe mode' prompt appears (approximately 1 second).
3. From the 'Reboot to safe mode' prompt, tap OK to confirm.
   
   
   The process may take up to 30 seconds to complete.
   
   
   Upon reboot, 'Safe mode' appears in the lower left of the unlock/home screen.

Notes:

• With Safe Mode enabled, test device and app functionality. If the previous issue fails to occur, the cause has been isolated to a third-party app and all recently installed or updated apps should be uninstalled.
• Power cycle the device to disable Safe Mode, reinstall then test each app, one at a time, to identify which is causing the problem.

There's lots more to what I've said above but I wanted to keep this in an abbreviated edition version rather than the full 32 Volume set with the 2 Volume Reference Index Guides. Those of you who know me know that I can write novels, so I struggle to try to keep them shorter for everyone's benefit.

 

[cr6]

That was quite the novel.

S5 tap'n

 

[FoxKat]

Stop!!! LOL!

 

[cr6]

It WAS very informative and that's what matters.

S5 tap'n