Best methods for conserving/extending Droid 4 battery life?

[D.McCaslin.CMC]

Hello all!
This is my first post but I have been reading the Droids Forums for a while and many of you are very knowledgable and
helpful!

Anyways, I recently bought a Droid 4 and it definitely has the lowest out of the box battery life of any droid I have used.

I have played around with battery saving apps such as JuiceDefender, as well as Smart Actions, the built in Task Manager, Advanced Task Killer, and GSam Battery Monitor to view battery stats but these have all seemed to have little effect, some more than others.

Thoughts so far:

*Battery saving apps work decently at first but then they start to mess up the data connection so I uninstall
*Smart Actions is limited and has helped minimally by disability Data Sync when the screen is off, as well as disabling the mobile data connection (3G/4G) when Wifi is connected.
*I cannot tell if the built in task manager or advanced task killer is helping - however: Android OS has gone down from about 30-40% of the battery use to 10-20% of the battery use - this could be helping but it doesn't seem to make much a
difference
*The battery stats show that the Kernel is taking up to 15% of battery life and even Text Messaging takes up to 10% of the battery life
*I almost always have bluetooth and GPS disabled... and wifi when I'm not at home
**I understand that the battery drains because I use my phone a lot however my friend has a Droid Razr (NOT MAXX) on
ICS and the battery life is much much better than my Droid 4

Any and all help, advice, and tips would be greatly appreciated!!

I would like to know which apps, built in apps, or setting to use/change to make battery life battery or more efficient.

 

[electricman58]

Looks like you've got 20 views already! Sounds like you pretty much know what your doing with a smartphone! Lol. With what you've already stated, its kinda hard to touch this question!? Your doin it all right.
Different phones/ Different people using them, your mileage is gonna vary! While your waiting for another answer to your question, you can browse the Battery threads!? Might even think about a Mophe Juice Pack ext.bat.
Oh yea! And Welcome to The Forums

 

[podspi]

I find it difficult to give people generic battery suggestions, because everyone's use is different. My suggestion is to get CPU spy and make sure the phone is going into 'deep sleep' mode when idle. Another thing you can do (or to track down an issue where it isn't going idle) is to buy better battery stats and see what is causing wake locks. I recently just doubled my battery life doing this, which isn't as impressive as it sounds because I was getting like 8 hours...

 

[D.McCaslin.CMC]

UPDATE:
This morning i woke up and left my phone idle for about 3 hours. The battery drain was down to 92% when i checked and that was without me even using the phone. What bothered me is that Android OS was taking up 60% of the battery use and the Kernel specifically was responsible for 50% of the overall battery use (this means 50% of the total 60% came from the Kernel.)
I have heard that there is a bug with the "Suspend" function and I believe that could be the culprit as Suspend is at the top of the list under Kernel battery use.

Thanks for the replies so far! Could this be the cause of the phone not going into "deep sleep" mode as mentioned in the previous post.

 

[electricman58]

Just an FYI, That's about the exact same battery stat that I get on my Bionic! When your phone goes into sleep mode its constantly pinging the cell tower for a signal along with the OS doing what it does in the background! The operating system is already designed to shut down most of what it doesn't need already to conserve on battery life!
So in my opinion task killers are pretty much useless on new phones today.
Only other thing I can think of is to get a task killer , like "Juice Defender" and put it into "aggressive mode" to shut down everything!
That just makes it inoperable to my taste!

Sent from my DROID BIONIC using Droid Forums

 

[bdsullivan76]

Sometimes i think apps like juicedefender do more harm than good. I don't use any type of battery saver and I get 20+ hrs with light usage and around 8-10hrs with moderate to heavy usage.
I got the same results on GB and the ICS leaks.
Sent from my DROID4

 

[tutorialbs]

Sure, I'll sort mine by how much I think it saved my battery life.

0. Upgrade. Upgrade to stock 219 from 215 (via OTA or fastboot) (if you are still on it). This upgrade basically doubled my battery life. I'd be curious to hear if battery life is any different on Eclipse or ICS?

1. Display. Brightness: Automatic Brightness Enabled. (Huge. I've a feeling the reason the 219 upgrade helped so much is because it manages Automatic Brightness a lot better).
2. Wifi. Wifi: Enabled. Notify me: Enabled. Open Network: DISABLED. Secure Network: DISABLED. (Disabling Open and Secure is also huge. The only time your phone should be searching or using Wifi is when you directly use it for data).
3. Sound. Silent mode: Enabled. Vibrate: Always. (doens't save battery but allows me to not have to use ring-tones, not sure which is better, actually)
4. Display. In-Pocket detection: DISABLED. (This is disabled for 2 reasons: #1 You should get in the habit of turning off your screen the very second you stop using your phone. #2. So you don't get into the habit of forgetting to turn it off! There are many times where you won't be putting your phone in your pocket after you're done using it, and precious battery life will be draining if you forget to turn off the display.)
5. Display. Screen timeout: 10 minutes. (Always turn your screen off when not using it and you can set this to 10 minutes, which is nice when online.. The only exception would be actual phone calls...perhaps set a hotkey so you don't have to unlock the phone to do this...?)
6. Bluetooth. Bluetooth: DISABLED. For best battery life, remember to turn bluetooth on only when using it, then turn it off immediately after use, or, install apps that do this for you (best choice, imo!).
7. Data manager. Background data: DISABLED. (You only need to enable this for a few apps, and, some of them can enable/disable it automatically. Also, if this is disabled, you may set Advanced Wifi Settings, Sleep Policy, to "Never" without worrying about it because we also set Open&Secure network searching disabled)
8. Display. Animation: No animations. (why delay your life half a second every time you click something?)
9. Call. Voice Privacy: DISABLED.
10. Display. Wallpaper: (Non-Live wallpaper)
11. Privacy. Back up my data: DISABLED. (shouldn't even matter if you have Background data disabled).
12. Location. VZW location services: DISABLED. (Google and Standalone OK).

If you need to save battery in an emergency, or have a call you must make in an hour but aren't sure if you battery will last that long: The phones default Sleep feature is handy for this... think of it as a Hibernate feature for laptops/notebooks: Uses only slightly more battery than having the phone be completely off. Turns it on almost instantly, just like unlocking it. Downside is that your phone is essentially off while Sleeping, and it takes a tiny bit of time to shutdown to sleep mode, and recover from it.
Also good for emergency battery saving: Display Brightness to lowest setting. All Wifi disabled, all Bluetooth disabled, Silent mode with all vibration disabled, no data, and switch into 3G only by going to: Mobile Networks, Network Mode: CDMA Only.(Disables LTE/4G, only allows CDMA/3G).

 

[bosshog85]

All I do is that I download a data toggle widget and I simply turn my data connection off until I need to use it. I easily get 15 hours battery on my D4 with moderate text messaging and turning the data on for Facebook and such.

 

[cthunder]

That's exactly what I do. Plus I follow steps 1, 2, 6, 8, 10 and 12.

 

[AMTrombley0924]

Sometimes i think apps like juicedefender do more harm than good. I don't use any type of battery saver...

What makes you say that? I've never had a bad experience with JD, and I have the ultimate version

 

[TisMyDroid]

I also have the ultimate version, which I no longer use... only because I have found that smart actions actually has done the same job more efficiently. JD worked okay for me and improved my battery life but for some, it may actually make it worse because you really have to know what to set up, how to set it up and understand the possibilities.

The same holds true for task managers. They can be effective but only if you use them in a few specific ways. Many people will set them to auto kill and what happens is the app constantly runs to kill apps and processes that immediately start back up again...using a lot of battery in the process. I do think task managers can be helpful to see exactly what is running at any given time and to individually kill a run away app but other than that they can be more harm than good.

IMVHO.

Sent from my DROID RAZR Maxx using Droid Forums

 

[johenkel]

I un installed JD again. It seemed to make the data connections worse. It wouldn't connect and also once made my phone have no signal at all for over 45 minutes. I didn't even know it until my voicemail kept coming in and I checked the bars - no bars and the crossed-out circle icon. Had to reboot.
While it was working it showed battery improvement of 1.12 - all the data connection hassle wasn't worth it.

Johenkel

Sent from my DROID4 using Tapatalk 2

 

[craigayl]

I too have been chasing erratic battery problems on my Droid4. My problem appears to have been the auto update settings in the Google apps store. My solution was to go to the apps store, tap on the Android menu, then settings then uncheck all boxes

Hope this helps someone

Craig

 

[amishdude01]

Download a custom rom then turn off 4g when you don't need it.

 

[Inundated]

You don't need a custom ROM to toggle 4G.

It's not a regular menu option anymore, but you can use one of two free apps - LTE OnOff or Phone Info - to get into the internal menu for the phone.

Then, scroll down to the menu which should be set for "LTE/CDMA/EvDo" if the phone is in 4G.

Selecting "CDMA only (PRL)" gets you into 3G after a short wait, and go back to "LTE/CDMA/EvDo" to 4G.

This has made battery life actually reasonable. The phone is still pretty fast in 3G, and I don't need it to be in 4G if it's in my pocket doing background syncing.

I generally stay in 3G on battery all the time, unless I know I need 4G for something. I turn 4G back on full time if I'm plugged in.