Battery life is horrible

[Inky1216]

I was struggling with the battery life issue on the Razr (not Maxx) with ICS, too. I bit the bullet the other day and did a FDR the other day and it has improved the battery significantly! Can't wait to do FoxKat's battery training soon, too!

 

[jsilveronnelly]

References?

(snip!)...To keep things simple, use your phone's battery meter similarly to how you would use your car's gas gauge...(snip!)

References?

Thanks

 

[geeman002]

I have to charge my phone twice a day now with ICS. It's miserable, anybody want to trade a IPhone for a droid razr? :icon_evil:

 

[joshxdroid]

I have to charge my phone twice a day now with ICS. It's miserable, anybody want to trade a IPhone for a droid razr? :icon_evil:

Follow the instructions earlier in this thread. the advise of foxcat has helped many

 

[MAzing87]

Well, your phone's problems may be resolved by doing what is known as a Factory Data Restore (FDR for short). If you perform an FDR, what happens is the phone essentially wipes from its long-term memory all the basic files and structure that make up the Operating System, then re-writes them from an archival storage, and recreates all the necessary configurations to perform all the functions it was designed to do from the Factory (hence Factory Data Restore).

It has been found that many times problems which have arisen from the Over The Air (OTA) update to Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) have been resolved by performing the FDR. Some have found that performing a wipe of the Cache (performed from the Recovery Menu) can have an additional overall beneficial effect. Some have also reported that the first time they've performed the FDR, the problems resurfaced, but upon performing the FDR a second time, the problems have gone and appear to have remained permanently resolved.

Finally, although you indicated that the battery will heat up and shutdown to reboot, which would certainly contribute to excessive battery consumption, it is advised that after the OTA update, you perform a Meter Training as it is believed that during the update certain high and low battery level "flags" are wiped and returned to factory defaults and these defaults may not accurately represent the true charged and discharged levels of the battery except at the time of manufacture, which can result in the charger not properly or fully charging the battery, and/or in the meter not accurately reflecting the true state of the battery's discharge levels at any time. This can manifest itself as batteries that seem to discharge rapidly from a full charge over relatively short time frames, and also in batteries that seem to be holding a charge one minute, but suddenly will go dead without warning. It can even result in batteries that will not respond to the charger and phones that will not power on or will bootloop rather than powering up fully.

When you have the next opportunity where you won't need the phone for 3 hours (Droid RAZR), or 5.5 hours (Droid RAZR MAXX), please perform the following Meter Training.

1. Power the phone off (press and hold Power, then select "Power off" from the menu)
2. Plug the phone into the STOCK Motorola Wall Adapter and STOCK Motorola Charging/Data cable (the phone will respond by booting into a "Charge Only" mode)
3. Once the large animated battery appears (Green liquid for Gingerbread, Blue floating level for Ice Cream Sandwich), it will display a "liquid" level and percentage of charge.
4. Allow the phone to remain on charge uninterrupted for either the 3 or 5.5 hours depending on the Droid RAZR model, or if you wish, you can briefly tap either Volume up or down to activate the large animated icon, and you can check the progress. Make sure you do not disconnect until the phone is reporting 100% charge level.
5. Once fully charged, remove from the charger, power up normally and use as you would routinely during the day.
6. Please pay close attention to the battery levels as they near 15%, as you will be repeating the initial charging process above just one more time soon.
7. Once the battery reaches 15% (Gingerbread), or 10% (ICS), and the display pops up a notification of "Low battery" and recommendation to place the phone on charge, repeat steps 1 through 5, after which you are good to go for the next 2-3 months.

If you ever sense that the battery seems to not be providing the expected performance through a day, and the phone isn't otherwise exhibiting any signs of excessive power consumption such as heat up, or a rogue application or service that suddenly appears to be using huge percentages of total power consumption, you can perform the above training again. However, it is generally recommended that you perform this training procedure about once every 2 months (Droid RAZR), or 2-3 months (Droid RAZR MAXX). This should keep things moving along nicely and you should be able to depend on the phone providing you with the needed day's worth of power.

Finally, if you ever expect to need an assurance of the maximum charge the phone can handle, such as when you expect to be away from any power sources for the coming day and it's critical that the phone last, power the phone off before charging and you will start fresh with a battery that is truly holding 100% of its capacity and the meter will be representing accurate levels going forward.

You seem to know a lot about cell phones. Perhaps you can give me your honest opinion about task killers. I created a thread some time ago about having battery and overheating issues with my original razr. To make a long story short, ever since I installed a task killer, the overheating issue hasn't been as frequent. But I see threads that says using task killers isn't a great idea. And I don't have that many apps. Id say I have about 25 apps total. I am not sure if your method on charging/discharging matters to me much as I've had this replacement phone for about a month now. Like the OP, I have had a battery issues with the razr. I've bit the bullet and just tried to adjust to the faulty battery. I didn't have such issues with my Droid X. While driving, once my Droid X died, the moment I plugged in the charger, it would instantly turn on and I'd be able to use the GPS or work the internet easily during traffic stops. With the Razr, I have to wait till it reaches 5% to turn on but even then it'll eventually die again and start to charge. This is even with the charger plugged in. I had a bad experience once when I relied on my GPS to find a location and the phone died on me one night. I had to pull over and wait till the phone was at 15% to continue my trip. As more and more threads like this pop up, it just confirms my reality that the razr, while a great device for what it can do, battery life is just plain bad. Which makes sense why big brother Razr MAXX came out. I wished I waited for that or simply get another droid.

 

[jjcisn82]

I am glad to see that my thread is helping others with the same issue. I also want to give FoxKat a huge thank you for helping me and everyone else out. I thought I would update you all on my results... I did a wipe back to the stock OTA 4.0.4 update using Matt's utility 1.8 because of a weird issue I was having with trying to keep the volume level consistent from one song to the next with the Elpicse 1.3 ICS rom. After doing so I now continue to get the battery life that I am happy with and my songs don't blast my eardrums when playing the next song. I have smart actions set up to kill cellular data, wifi, and GPS when the screen goes off. It works good for me. Now after a full days work I still have 90% battery life. I hope those of you who are still having issues try the advice that FoxKat gives and or bite the bullet and do a factory default reset and cache wipe. Good luck to you all!

 

[jaybogg]

You seem to know a lot about cell phones. Perhaps you can give me your honest opinion about task killers. I created a thread some time ago about having battery and overheating issues with my original razr. To make a long story short, ever since I installed a task killer, the overheating issue hasn't been as frequent. But I see threads that says using task killers isn't a great idea. And I don't have that many apps. Id say I have about 25 apps total. I am not sure if your method on charging/discharging matters to me much as I've had this replacement phone for about a month now. Like the OP, I have had a battery issues with the razr. I've bit the bullet and just tried to adjust to the faulty battery. I didn't have such issues with my Droid X. While driving, once my Droid X died, the moment I plugged in the charger, it would instantly turn on and I'd be able to use the GPS or work the internet easily during traffic stops. With the Razr, I have to wait till it reaches 5% to turn on but even then it'll eventually die again and start to charge. This is even with the charger plugged in. I had a bad experience once when I relied on my GPS to find a location and the phone died on me one night. I had to pull over and wait till the phone was at 15% to continue my trip. As more and more threads like this pop up, it just confirms my reality that the razr, while a great device for what it can do, battery life is just plain bad. Which makes sense why big brother Razr MAXX came out. I wished I waited for that or simply get another droid.

I have trained my battery and seem to get good battery life, but I have experienced (and others have reported here) that when using my GPS-Google Navigation, that my phone battery either barely holds its own or very slowly discharges. I am using a motorola car dock, and the phone shows a "charging" lightning bolt on the battery icon. The phone is also very warm when I remove it from the cradle. It might be that I leave my phone on 4G LTE all the time and/or the GPS and processor are taxing it this much in the Nav app. An example would be driving from Houston to Dallas. Phone shows 60% at start and 40% five hours later.

All this said, I know this is expected behavior based on others having the same results and make sure my phone is showing over 50% charge when I use the GPS. I guess I should turn off 4G LTE one of these days I am on a long trip and see if this modulates the problem. Since the phone has good battery performance all other times, I have just considered it one of the quirks of my phone and haven't really pursued a fix. Let it kill my phone and I am sure I will be singing a different song!!:biggrin:

 

[joshxdroid]

I have trained my battery and seem to get good battery life, but I have experienced (and others have reported here) that when using my GPS-Google Navigation, that my phone battery either barely holds its own or very slowly discharges. I am using a motorola car dock, and the phone shows a "charging" lightning bolt on the battery icon. The phone is also very warm when I remove it from the cradle. It might be that I leave my phone on 4G LTE all the time and/or the GPS and processor are taxing it this much in the Nav app. An example would be driving from Houston to Dallas. Phone shows 60% at start and 40% five hours later.

All this said, I know this is expected behavior based on others having the same results and make sure my phone is showing over 50% charge when I use the GPS. I guess I should turn off 4G LTE one of these days I am on a long trip and see if this modulates the problem. Since the phone has good battery performance all other times, I have just considered it one of the quirks of my phone and haven't really pursued a fix. Let it kill my phone and I am sure I will be singing a different song!!:biggrin:

The other thing you could try is pre caching maps so it doesn't have to be loading maps the while trip.

 

[jaybogg]

The other thing you could try is pre caching maps so it doesn't have to be loading maps the while trip.

How would I do that? I probably will try to modulate the problem next long trip I take and report the results. No trips planned right now but know I have a 3 hr trip coming up sometime in Aug. Back road trip away from the interstates, good time to try something different.

 

[joshxdroid]

How would I do that? I probably will try to modulate the problem next long trip I take and report the results. No trips planned right now but know I have a 3 hr trip coming up sometime in Aug. Back road trip away from the interstates, good time to try something different.

Are you using google maps? They just added that feature

 

[jaybogg]

Are you using google maps? They just added that feature

I assume it is Google Maps as I select Google Navigation and it is NOT a sattelite or sky view on the screen.

 

[joshxdroid]

I assume it is Google Maps as I select Google Navigation and it is NOT a sattelite or sky view on the screen.

Ok, you go into the actual maps app, go to the area you want to download, then tap the menu key and select "make available offline"

 

[MAzing87]

That's interesting, because i found when i set use lte on/off it changes it back to global automatically when i change to cdma auto prl

I hated how they changed the option to choose between 3G and 4G. I turned off my 4G because the battery performance was slightly better.

 

[joshxdroid]

I hated how they changed the option to choose between 3G and 4G. I turned off my 4G because the battery performance was slightly better.

I actually found out i was wrong. I was selecting "gsm/cdma auto prl" instead of just "cdma auto prl" when you choose the later, it will change you're phone settings to "cdma only" just like you want. The lte on/off app is working just fine for me now.

 

[MAzing87]

I actually found out i was wrong. I was selecting "gsm/cdma auto prl" instead of just "cdma auto prl" when you choose the later, it will change you're phone settings to "cdma only" just like you want. The lte on/off app is working just fine for me now.

The options I have is Global, LTE/CDMA, and GSM/UMTS. LTE is 4G right? And I want CDMA but they are combined.