Bad battery life on gb .607...thoughts?

[nola]

so after doing the root calibrate, letting it die, charging it full, and taking it off the charger it's around two hours off the charger and i'm at 60%. i HAVE had the display on a lot in that two hours but still, 40% drain??

if i do a factory reset what does that entail? will i have to update to the .607 again (either OTA if available or leak if not)?

 

[Byakushiki]

Display eats power, end of story. If you play with it constantly in that two hours, no wonder it's dying. Use the onboard task manager (it works, don't even try to dispute it) and freeze all that social networking crap. Don't forget to freeze data collection too; this is the tether guard. Also end any running services that aren't Data Manager, Settings, and Google services framework. Aside from your apps that require services to be running. And no, you won't have to update again. Factory reset only wipes the data partition. Everything else (boot, sys, system) is left alone.

 

[nola]

Display eats power, end of story. If you play with it constantly in that two hours, no wonder it's dying. Use the onboard task manager (it works, don't even try to dispute it) and freeze all that social networking crap. Don't forget to freeze data collection too; this is the tether guard. Also end any running services that aren't Data Manager, Settings, and Google services framework. Aside from your apps that require services to be running. And no, you won't have to update again. Factory reset only wipes the data partition. Everything else (boot, sys, system) is left alone.

thanks a lot man, i really appreciate it. i wouldn't try to dispute you on the onboard task manager mainly because...well...i'm naive and didn't even know it was there. i thought i HAD to use titanium backup or something similar. will try freezing that stuff when i get off work and see if i see an improvement. i know the display swallows battery life whole, i'm just used to hexen where i could fiddle around for an hour or two and still be at 85-90%. i understand that's a whole 'nother monster though. if freezing that stuff isn't helping i'll try the factory reset and see if that helps. thanks again man dancedroid

 

[NoBloatware]

so after doing the root calibrate, letting it die, charging it full, and taking it off the charger it's around two hours off the charger and i'm at 60%. i HAVE had the display on a lot in that two hours but still, 40% drain??

if i do a factory reset what does that entail? will i have to update to the .607 again (either OTA if available or leak if not)?

40% drain after 2 hours with the screen on sounds about right. Things to consider:
- if the phone reports 40%, it may actually be at 45% as it reports in 10% increments
- is the battery very old? Maybe it's time for a new battery...get an extended one

 

[nola]

40% drain after 2 hours with the screen on sounds about right. Things to consider:
- if the phone reports 40%, it may actually be at 45% as it reports in 10% increments
- is the battery very old? Maybe it's time for a new battery...get an extended one

i'm a lot more familiar with the average life of a laptop battery than a phone battery. i got the phone in may of this year and usually only connect to the charger when i know it'll be there for awhile...no 10 minute charges or anything.

i'm just really hesitant to fork out for an extended battery when i know this one is capable of crazy good life (as seen on hexen, as aforementioned around 50+ hours with average moderate use). although my coworker has an OG droid with an extended battery and he said he'd let me have it once he gets a new phone. that may be an option but i'm not putting all my eggs in that basket. i just want to work with the battery i have and get it back to the life i had as recently as a week ago.

thanks again for the help, advice, and feedback

 

[maxwellag]

My battery life with gb is terrible.

Sent from my DROID2 GLOBAL

 

[Gasai Yuno]

Updating PRLs makes your phone aware of the best, closest towers. Don't ask me why this isn't done automatically, cuz I don't know.

Unlike GSM, CDMA doesn't have support for auto discovery. It's a “feature”.

 

[NoBloatware]

Unlike GSM, CDMA doesn't have support for auto discovery. It's a “feature”.

OK, but why is it that when I go across the country, the phone is able to connect to a network? There must be some auto discovery, no? Perhaps what you are saying is that CDMA is not capable of determining the optimal tower(s). Is that correct?

 

[Gasai Yuno]

The PRL includes all towers within the country, and all the towers of affiliated CDMA carriers around the world.

 

[SteveIrv]

Apparently Verizon recommends updating PRLs every month or two. I don't have a deep technical understanding of what happens but: Verizon adds and removes towers all of the time. If you don't update your PRLs periodically, your phone could be trying to connect to towers that aren't the best for your area.

I've updated PRL's on all my phones on a regular basis for years, it's the way the phone "knows" which towers are where.

Worst case of battery "suck" I ever saw was to a friend of mine on a motorcycles trip we were on, he'd left his phone on and in about 2 to 3 hours his battery went from 100% to zero while it was constantly searching for a tower to connect with as we roared down the highway at 85mph (he had NEVER updated his PRL). I know this is an extreme example, but just imagine your phone doing that, searching for towers...instead of having it built in that it knows where they are.

 

[Kimo91]

I just rooted my phone this morning (which was easier than I thought) and froze some apps so we'll see if my battery life improves. Last night I put a fully charged battery in and didn't touch my phone at all and it drained 30% in 2 hours

Sent from my Boeing sponsored rooted Gingerbread D2G

 

[nola]

update

after doing root battery calibrator, battery life from 100% to zero was 16 hours and some change. very much improved from the under 4 hour life i had yesterday morning dancedroid

as of now i've frozen quite a few services/apps going off of 13thangel's list on rootzwiki and am charging full again. i want to see 30+ hours as i'm not always around a charger at night so hopefully i'll see those kind of results!

 

[silver6054]

The PRL includes all towers within the country, and all the towers of affiliated CDMA carriers around the world.

I thought the PRL was really a prioritized list of "systems" (bands) per area, basically saying which providers to look for, rather than a list of towers. So, if carrier X installs a new tower in area Y, the PRL doesn't necessarily change, but if X is high priority, it makes it more likely that the phone will connect to X in that area. Is that not true?

 

[Gasai Yuno]

Just read Preferred Roaming List - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia or something.

 

[silver6054]

Just read Preferred Roaming List - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia or something.

Yes, I had read that and others, and that is what makes me think it is frequencies/bands and systems rather than individual towers! As in:

The PRL consists of two tables (along with some header and overhead information):

• Acquisition Table – An indexed list of frequencies on which the device may search for particular systems. The idea behind the acquisition table is to optimize the acquisition time by identifying only the frequencies that should be searched, rather than searching the entire frequency spectrum. The information contained in each acquisition table entry includes an index, the network type, and associated channel blocks.

• System Table – A prioritized list of systems that the device is permitted to access (Preferred Systems) and those that it is explicitly forbidden to access (Negative Systems).
  

Each system table entry belongs to a geographic area known as a GEO. These GEOs are listed in priority order. Each IS-95/1xRTT system is identified by either SID/NID or, in the case of enhanced PRL, SID/NID or MCC/MNC. Each 1xEV-DO system is identified by a Subnet ID. For hybrid mode operation (i.e. IS-95/1xRTT and 1xEV-DO), association tags are used link an IS-95/1xRTT system with one or more 1xEV-DO systems. Hybrid systems always attempt to select an IS-95/1xRTT system first, then use the association tag to attempt to select an associated 1xEV-DO system.
Each entry also provides an acquisition table index where the frequencies associated with that system are identified and a roaming indicator that dictates what type of indication should be displayed to the user when they are receiving service from that system.

I am (maybe wrongly) interpreting this to mean that the PRL says: "in this GEO, look first for Sprint, then for US Cellular," rather than a complete list of towers. The effect might be similar of course, so if say a Sprint tower was added to an area where there previously wasn't one, without an updated PRL the phone wouldn't know to look for one. But I still think that is not the same as the PRL being a list of towers!