Convince me to NOT get an iPhone...veteran Droid user and I'm sick of the issues

[Budarooski]

OK, here's the deal: I've been a Droid user since day one and consider myself an educated user of Droid phones. I've rooted phones in the past and over clocked the CPU, I'm familiar with all the tips and tricks to keep a Droid running, BUT...here's my gripe. Why can't the $%#$#!! battery make it through the day with minimal use??

I use Fast Reboot and Advanced Task Killer to constantly kill apps, my email polling is once an hour, and screen brightness is 40%. The problem is the damn apps just re-start and suck the battery life right out. I rarely use my phone, yet the moment I do I can literally watch the battery meter go down. And before you say I have a bad battery, EVERY Droid phone has been like this. I literally use my phone for calendar appts, phone calls and text messages. In my opinion it's all the running processes that kill the battery and heat up the phone.

And while I'm ranting, why can't an app just "shut down". For example, if I'm in Chrome looking at a website and I've gone several links deep into the page, I can't just kill the browser to exit...I have to press Back, Back, Back, Back, until I'm out (or just kill it via ATK).

I love the customization of the Droid OS, but honestly, I'm so fed up with the battery issues and what appears to be a form of "Win-rot" (Droid-rot) in the OS that I'm ready to get an iPhone (I have an iPad and my daughter has an iPhone...so far I'm happy with the battery performance and how quickly the camera launches, unlike my POS Droid Razr).

Thoughts?

 

[harrellj]

OK, here's the deal: I've been a Droid user since day one and consider myself an educated user of Droid phones. I've rooted phones in the past and over clocked the CPU, I'm familiar with all the tips and tricks to keep a Droid running, BUT...here's my gripe. Why can't the $%#$#!! battery make it through the day with minimal use??

I use Fast Reboot and Advanced Task Killer to constantly kill apps, my email polling is once an hour, and screen brightness is 40%. The problem is the damn apps just re-start and suck the battery life right out. I rarely use my phone, yet the moment I do I can literally watch the battery meter go down. And before you say I have a bad battery, EVERY Droid phone has been like this. I literally use my phone for calendar appts, phone calls and text messages. In my opinion it's all the running processes that kill the battery and heat up the phone.

And while I'm ranting, why can't an app just "shut down". For example, if I'm in Chrome looking at a website and I've gone several links deep into the page, I can't just kill the browser to exit...I have to press Back, Back, Back, Back, until I'm out (or just kill it via ATK).

I love the customization of the Droid OS, but honestly, I'm so fed up with the battery issues and what appears to be a form of "Win-rot" (Droid-rot) in the OS that I'm ready to get an iPhone (I have an iPad and my daughter has an iPhone...so far I'm happy with the battery performance and how quickly the camera launches, unlike my POS Droid Razr).

Thoughts?

Try turning off ATK for awhile and see how things go. Modern Droids don't need a task killer anymore.

Sent from my SCH-I545 using Tapatalk 4 Beta

 

[pc747]

iphone?

I have one suggestion: Note 2.

The screen size helps with typing since it do not have a physical kb. The battery can go about a day and a half. And no lag.

 

[Budarooski]

Try turning off ATK for awhile and see how things go. Modern Droids don't need a task killer anymore.

Sent from my SCH-I545 using Tapatalk 4 Beta

But w/out ATK, how will I kill the apps that keep starting and draining my battery? BTW, I have zero games on my phone and nothing more than the bare minimum apps...no internet radio, facebook, etc. How will removing ATK save on battery power? Does it suck that much juice?

 

[tcrews]

Any task killer is wrong to use. Android attempts to load a certain percentage of free ram with apps as apps sitting in RAM use no additional battery or resources as apps not sitting in RAM (code is 0's and 1's. holding a bunch of 0's in ram (no apps loaded) takes no more power than holding mix of 0's and 1's (apps loaded)). Each time your ATK kills an app, the OS thinks something failed and relaunches the app...this constant freeing and filling of ram does use resources (CPU/Battery).

Basically the more you try to control the OS, the more trouble, lag, loss of battery, etc..you'll have. The OS is designed to operate a specific way and you are fighting against it's design.

If you really have particular system apps you do not want loading or "running", use something to freeze them (titanium backup) as this marks them in the system's OS as not available.

So ATK being a running process is consuming battery/cpu cycles/etc....and each task it kills the OS tries to start again...killing even more battery/cpu cycles and repeat, repeat repeat.

Task killers are bad.

 

[dezymond]

No wonder you're frustrated, you're still using ATK. ATK is a thing of the past, and was never really necessary in the first place. ATK causes conflicts of how Android is supposed to naturally work, completely unnecessary especially with today's version of Android, even on your Razr.

If you are still rooted, I highly recommend an app called Greenify. It hibernates apps so they are no longer active, but will pick up right where you last left off, similar to how apps work on iOS (to my understanding at least). I'm also using BatteryGuru but that's a Snapdragon specific app that freezes system apps, something Greenify doesn't do. I have found a modded version of BatteryGuru meant to work with other makes of phones, just head over to XDA and search for it. I can't say if you'll see the same results or not though.

Battery life, I get through a whole day with moderate use on my s4, easily. I'm running stock rooted and have no intentions of putting a ROM on this thing anytime soon as everything that I ROMed for is now built into Android or with TouchWiz and 3rd party apps.

First thing I would do if I were you is uninstall ATK and grab Greenify (again if you're rooted). You should notice a difference in battery life after doing so.

 

[bkdodger]

If you want battery life Iphone is not where you want to be my friend...I can see you connected to a wall charger once you start using the phone like countless friends and people I deal with everyday....Android is not perfect but it runs as intended...your issue is not Android but (POS Droid Razr)....get yourself a better phone than Iphone ...There is a list of really good phones for Android...I'm biased but Note 2 and you won't be complaining ...but smaller and new phones out now and coming will take care of your issues...Good Luck with your decision...we are here to help along the way...

 

[WestOkid]

ATK can kill battery life becuase it is fighting apps that want to stay in memory. Android is now sophisticated enough to manage resident apps quite well. They don't suck a lot of juice unless something is wrong. They are barely sipping. That's the case on any platform. I buy iPhone for my wife becuase they are admittedly simpler for the most part, and her 4s does not get better life than my S3. Plus I can keep a spare battery handy just in case. This has happened to us in the Sandy aftermath. Batteries were draining fast due to lost cell towers. She was dead, but I was able to stay alive because I had 2 extra batteries charged.
The lag is usually due to all the customizing by the consumer or manufacturer. If you buy a Nexus and keep it stock there is no lag. I have friends with nexus 4s that have never experienced lag.

 

[Budarooski]

No wonder you're frustrated, you're still using ATK. ATK is a thing of the past, and was never really necessary in the first place. ATK causes conflicts of how Android is supposed to naturally work, completely unnecessary especially with today's version of Android, even on your Razr. If you are still rooted, I highly recommend an app called Greenify. It hibernates apps so they are no longer active, but will pick up right where you last left off, similar to how apps work on iOS (to my understanding at least). I'm also using BatteryGuru but that's a Snapdragon specific app that freezes system apps, something Greenify doesn't do. I have found a modded version of BatteryGuru meant to work with other makes of phones, just head over to XDA and search for it. I can't say if you'll see the same results or not though.Battery life, I get through a whole day with moderate use on my s4, easily. I'm running stock rooted and have no intentions of putting a ROM on this thing anytime soon as everything that I ROMed for is now built into Android or with TouchWiz and 3rd party apps. First thing I would do if I were you is uninstall ATK and grab Greenify (again if you're rooted). You should notice a difference in battery life after doing so.

To everyone that replied, thanks for the the valuable lesson on ATK...I promptly uninstalled it. I remember reading awhile ago to NOT use it but I guess when I changed phones two years ago Google re-installed it and I unwittingly resorted to using it again. My current phone is not rooted (I only rooted my previous phone so I could use it as a free hot spot). I'm with Verizon and up for a new phone...can't decide between Samsung Galaxy S4, Samsung Note 2, or (out of frustration) the iPhone 5.I appreciate your valuable feedback...looks like I'm leaning towards the S4. I co-worker as a Note 2...just looked at it...very nice.

 

[dezymond]

To everyone that replied, thanks for the the valuable lesson on ATK...I promptly uninstalled it. I remember reading awhile ago to NOT use it but I guess when I changed phones two years ago Google re-installed it and I unwittingly resorted to using it again. My current phone is not rooted (I only rooted my previous phone so I could use it as a free hot spot). I'm with Verizon and up for a new phone...can't decide between Samsung Galaxy S4, Samsung Note 2, or (out of frustration) the iPhone 5.I appreciate your valuable feedback...looks like I'm leaning towards the S4. I co-worker as a Note 2...just looked at it...very nice.

As an s4 user who was a former "flash-o-holic" this is hands down the best stock experience I've ever used. Root only makes it more enjoyable and allows me to continue to use my favorite rooted apps, Titanium Backup being one of them.

If I were in your shoes, I'd give the s4 or note 2 a shot before trying the iPhone 5. Both provide an excellent stock experience and their battery life can easily get you through a day of moderate to heavy use. You won't believe the improvements made on Android from your Razr to these current gen devices. If you're still not happy then go for the iPhone and see how that works out for ya. However, what I can say is you've been ruining the experience for yourself by going against what Android was meant to do by using ATK. Leave ATK and any other task killing apps with the exception of Greenify and BatteryGuru, and I think you'll be happy. There are other tasker type apps such as JuiceDefender, but I've never had much luck with any others compared to the combination of Greenify and BatteryGuru.

Good luck

 

[pjkump]

If battery life is a big concern I really love the option to replace the battery. I still have the Galaxy Nexus (due for upgrade in August) and this has been a big plus numerous times. Normally I don't have a problem getting thru the day but when I go to a game or someplace that I take a ton of pictures/videos or use the phone a lot, and don't have access to a charger, it is priceless to just pop in a fresh battery. Something to think about.

 

[mountainbikermark]

If you want to monitor what is using your battery besides screen and signal check out Watch Dog Lite. It's free and you can set it up to alert you if anything goes rogue it will alert you by the cpu% you set it to trigger the alert, thus catching a battery hog before it starts hogging the battery. What you'll see is a lot of stuff running but using no cpu ( battery) whether in the foreground or background and you can find those pesky little vampire apps that keep using a little cup when not being used as an aid to decide if you want them or not. I always run a session after app updates to make sure they're still playing nice with my system after the update. Most do but sometimes bugs show up and I can catch them before they become a problem.

Support Our Troops!!!
<><
A Rezound phone was used for this Tapatalk post

 

[Adam74]

The responses to your battery life concerns and ATK use have been answered in simply outstanding fashion. On another note, my employer supplied me with an Iphone5 for work. let me tell you, if you though battery life was bad with android, you will not be satisfied with Iphone. My work phone is used minimally. A few calls (which I can't hear, drop constantly) about 100 emails a day and 20 or so texts. I am running low by noon, have to kick on an aftermarket battery pack just to get through the rest of the day. It has had it's positives mind you. I can guarentee that my personal phone will ALWAYS be ANDROID.

 

[morcguy]

If you are looking for battery life the various MAXX phones have it.

Jeff Gude

 

[wcjeep]

I know one person who is happy with the Iphone 5 battery life. He works at the Apple store. All others I know with the Iphone 5 are not happy with the battery life. We're now about one month out from the Note III. Recommend waiting to see if it's worthy. The New Ultra Maxx appears to have a nice battery. After my DX and Xoom I've soured on Motorola.