Dreaded Battery . . .

[Skizz135]

Hey all,

So got this phone two days ago and love it . . . but the battery life is a real concern for me. Today I unplugged with a full charge from the outlet at 12:30 pm and with some browsing, music playing, a couple 5 min phone calls, my battery was dead by 5:30 pm!!!

This is just a little ridiculous to me . . . wondering if this is typical or if I drew the short end of the stick and should try to replace for a new battery??

 

[tu3218]

no, that doesn't sound right at all. I would try it out a couple more days with bluetooth/wifi/gps off and see how the battery handles. I'm guessing though with such little usage you have a bad battery or phone.

 

[JayMonster]

Certainly sounds like a bad battery... unless you are in an area with bad reception. Constant searching for a signal will kill a battery quickly.

 

[Lee3Boys]

Same thing was happening to me. Barely made it 4 hours. I searched every forum on the internet. Found one that suggested to let it completely die. Where it shuts itself off. Then charge it overnight. At that point make sure whenever you are around a charger, either car or home plug it in. When you get to 50% power, if you can, plug it in.

I did this for two days. Now I can go from 7am-3pm and still have 50% power by 3. I plug it in, takes less than 30 mins to charge to full power and its good until the next day. I do shut it down at night.

Hope it helps

 

[bergdev]

Hey all,

So got this phone two days ago and love it . . . but the battery life is a real concern for me. Today I unplugged with a full charge from the outlet at 12:30 pm and with some browsing, music playing, a couple 5 min phone calls, my battery was dead by 5:30 pm!!!

This is just a little ridiculous to me . . . wondering if this is typical or if I drew the short end of the stick and should try to replace for a new battery??

Dicey cell signal (this drains any phone's batter very quickly) will kill your battery very quickly. The display is the biggest drain of all. Are you running full brightness, always on, etc.? I've also found that having the GPS continuously on is also draining - in a navigational situation, I would assume you would need to be connected to power (same for the constantly on display, required for navigation).

I unplug at 7 AM and after playing hours of Panda, the battery has barely budged. This is in addition to a number of phone calls, some web browsing, and GMail and calendar syncing.

However, other apps syncing may chew up battery, too. Are you running FB, SportsTap, Outlook sync?

 

[LordKastle]

Yeah and pigs can fly.

 

[kastj]

I had a similar problem, took it to verizon and they gave me a new battery. Now I'm good as new.

 

[bergdev]

oink oink - flap flap

 

[cc16177]

It took my battery about 3-5 days to really reach it's full potential. At this point I can go pretty much an entire day without charging it at all and I use the phone quite a bit... When I say a full day i'm talking about waking up at about 730am and going to bed around 11pm or so.

I do leave the brightness ALL the way down unless I need it any higher than that and I turn off GPS/Wifi/Bluetooth whenever I am not using it, but other than that I don't do anything special at all and like I said I get about 15 hours out of the battery on a consistent basis.

 

[ldimick]

My experience has been that the GPS is a HUGE battery drain.

 

[JohnAP2]

After coming from other "smart" phones I think the Droid has the best battery life I've ever seen. I watched a full 2 hour movie and it barely touched the battery...

 

[bbtkd]

My experience has been that the GPS is a HUGE battery drain.

I had heard that so the first week or so I had it off. One day just for the heck of it I turned it on and measured the impact. It did not show up on the list of things using the battery - or is it part of something else? Anyway, having it on does not seem to impact battery usage at all. Wonder why it zaps some phones and not others - perhaps depends on how or if apps are using it.

 

[ldimick]

It may have to sdo with using the Maps app while driving around. I had a trip to downtown LA I had to make a couple of weeks ago. On the way I was on the phone with no GPS for 1:20. Battery use was only 20%. Next day I used the GPS and the battery use was 60% after 1:20.

Tonight I went to a motorcycle show and left the GPS on while doing tracking and the battery was down to 30% in less than 3 hours.

 

[takeshi]

This is just a little ridiculous to me . . . wondering if this is typical or if I drew the short end of the stick and should try to replace for a new battery??

Have you looked at Settings->About Phone->Battery Use at all?

As stated above, poor coverage will also kill your battery as well as active use of GPS. I wouldn't recommend using the latter in the car without a car charger attached.

 

[Caindris]

Considering you say you got your phone just two days ago have you really given it time to charge? I got mine earlier in the week and I've been struggling to keep a charge all week giving it just small charges here and there for 2 hours at best. Sadly charging my phone at night isn't an option, ah well