Droid X battery problems discovered!!!!!!!

[Dr.Dad]

mysterious droid drain

I woke up this AM with a fully charged phone..... then it started draining and draining. I thought "well I use it a lot when I first get up in the morning, it's OK."
by 10am I was down to 60%.

I looked up battery usage (which has since stopped working by the way) and it gave this odd name for an app that had used 85% of my battery power since I unplugged it....

I called my wife bc I hadn't downloaded anything special

"Did you play with my phone last night?" "Yes, I got connect four and played a couple of games."

That was it folks....connect four will kill your battery if not exited properly.
"Some people claim there's a woman to blame......"

 

[aminaked]

There's more than one poorly designed app in the market that will drain your battery. Uninstall task killers and antivirus. Dial *#*#4636#*#* to identify problems.

For the droid X, avoid the no sleep bug by turning off "use wireless networks" in phone settings > location & security

(although, maybe turn off GPS when done using, turn off WIFI when done using, reboot after charging is the solution that'll work for you)

 

[Super Turtleman]

What exactly do you do to find out how long your phone is awake/asleep and what's affecting it? (a step-by-step would be helpful for us droid newbies)

 

[darethas]

Just checked Network Usage Under spare parts, I was expecting Browser or Facebook to be #1, but media is taking the cake. I can't believe it, what is causing this? Media? Is it a widget? Get it off now! lol

 

[Valyrian]

Hey all, thanks for all the research going into this thread.

I have a Droid X on 2.1, rooted. I have followed all the instructions here on how to up my battery life. I've turned off my GPS, I've turned off "use wireless networks", I use the automatic brightness, and I even let my battery drain down yesterday before fully charging it overnight (it got down to 10 - 15%). I stopped using a animated wallpaper. I removed the facebook widget. I was running ATK until yesterday, when I deleted it on the advice of this thread. I'm not running any sort of anti virus.

I woke up this morning at 6:00 AM, unplugged my phone, and immediately rebooted it. I checked an email, watched about 2 minutes of video, and let it sit till ~7:30 AM. I then listened to google listen for the 45 minute drive into work. I then checked my battery usage in spare parts, and it seems like it is actually sleeping, because "Active" was only at ~54%. I read a few tweets and did some web browsing for ~15 minutes, received one MMS and sent one SMS. It's now 9:15 AM.

My battery is now sitting at 70%. Is it possible I have a bad battery? Can anyone think of anything else that could be eating up my battery life? I am running a custom launcher, ADW, because I like it much better than the stock blur-esque, but not so much that I'll let it chew through my battery. That said, I only installed ADW 2 days ago, and I have been having poor battery life since I got the DX on 8/23. I didn't do any of the other battery saving features until yesterday when I found this thread.

I really REALLY love this phone, but I don't like that if I don't charge it at my desk during the day, it will be dead by the time I get home from work at night. Is it possible that I am actually one of the poor guys who has a bad battery? It would be my luck! If anyone can think of any other tests or solutions, I'm certainly open to it!

Thanks in advance,
-Valyrian

EDIT: I also tried pulling the battery when it was at ~30% last night, and putting it back in to see if I would get the "magic" bump in battery life, but it came right back at 30%.

 

[droidphreak]

I would just call Verizon and have them send you a new battery. For peace of mind. Keep your current battery as a backup. I just recieved my X and on this first day I took it off charge at 6am. Used the phone with medium use though the day. GPS for about 40 min. Watched about an 1 1/2 hours of youtube vids and some minor web surfing. It died at 11:30 PM. I was trying to kill it to get a full charge for today. It sounds like your battery either is bad or you live/work in a area where your phone is struggling for signal so its killing your battery. I would just contact Verizon.

 

[Amagine]

Wait for the 2.2 update. I swear my leaked version fixed my bat usage issues. I can go a decent 12 or maybe 18 hour day (if not streaming) after that up date. That said not all batteries are the same so a bad one is entirely possible. But I usaully can get 12 hrs on a full charge with decent usage including using slacker and stuff.

 

[Jeanette]

Running Services on Droid X. Looks like I have a lot of them. What ones are important to keep?

 

[the5barrons]

Pardon this somewhat repost. Still trying to get an answer.


First things first. I switched from Storm I to DX. Ordered on 8/4/10, received on 8/17/10. So far, very, VERY pleased. It's a nice switch to get away from RIM and their OS. I'm extremely happy with the DX on almost all fronts. It's faster, more capable, and just a better phone.

My only issue started today, or yesterday. I'm pretty sure it's from an app I installed (runkeeper). But, I don't know if my finding is valid or not.

I read somewhere (on another forum) that if the app will "prevent phone from sleeping" that it can be the ultimate battery-kill. This morning, for instance, I ran RunKeeper from 6am to 7am. It did what it was supposed to do and by 9:30 am my battery was down to 15% (from a 100% overnight full charge up).

So, now I've gone through every single aspect of the phone to try and find the killers. Most polling widgets are gone, I've gone to mostly manual pushes for linked apps, and short of knocking off the weather and mail, I think I've got it to the basics. Now...

I'm looking in the applications manager, and noticing that there are a couple apps that have "prevent phone from sleeping" in the system tools list (written in orange)...what exatly does that mean?

Does that mean that when the app is running, it prevents the phone from sleeping and when it's off, it doesn't? /cause, that makes sense.

Secondly, how do you shut off an app if you don't run a task killer. I don't believe in running the task killer cause it just makes the OS run tat much harder to do what it was designed to do. So I don't run ATK.

Third, when I run for a while (regardless of what) I feel the bottom of the phone get pretty hot. Like surprisingly hot. I'm an electrician by trade and know heat kills battery life. I am cool with it if that is normal. I think it's normal but I can't remember it getting that hot on a normal basis. It's not like melting or anything...just noticably hot.

Again, I truly love the phone and have no complaints. Just a little worried that there is a battery issue. Mind you I have read the other posts on DX battery life...this not so much covered.

Thanks.

Andy

***EDIT***....ok an hour later and 18 pages of this thread. Seemed like I had pretty much done everything that summed this thread already. Since this morning (full charge). Me and the wife took the same walk we did yesterday, but no RunKeeper. Haven't turned anything on, no GPS, no wifi. I have gone through pretty much every setting I can find to try and stop it from auto-polling i.e. Facebook for Android & Yahoo Mail are the only two that I actually use to do anything (at the moment). Weatherbug widget is set to pull only when I hit it. Youtube widget gone. So, I've been unplugged since 8am...now 1215 and I under 15%.

I am now seriously confused.

 

[Mac56]

Back up battery

Motorola Droid X Extended Battery Life Package (5 Star Rating): Google Checkout available.



ordered from phone, getting three, anyone have one, or interested in buying one or two. Do they work.

 

[Mac56]

Task killer

from the app store will keep apps from draining the battery.

 

[n0m0n]

Motorola Droid X Extended Battery Life Package (5 Star Rating): Google Checkout available.



ordered from phone, getting three, anyone have one, or interested in buying one or two. Do they work.

Isn't it a little strange that the amperage is nowhere to be found?
I was looking for the spec's but couldn't find them.

Anyone know what they are or where to find them?

 

[meishkov]

I've been running the droid since December, and I always leave GPS turned on. Since it's in that Power Control widget on my homescreen, it's easy to control. But for WiFi, you definitely want to TURN OFF. Unless you plan on using it. Leaving wifi flipped on will undoubtedly drain your battery quicker. Wifi is constantly scanning the area trying to pick up a network. Though some ROMs increase the amount of time between these scans, it's still a bad idea to leave it on when you're not using or don't plan on using it soon. Plus I don't want my phone randomly connecting to networks that I have connected to before, unless I'm the one who wants to connect to them!!

 

[Scubamike]

Clear things up for those who haven't read the whole thread...

I've read the first hundred or so posts in this thread and I didn't see my question answered in there. Maybe it was and I was doing to much skimming. I haven't read the last 7 or 8 pages of posts so, again, my this was covered. Here it goes:

Before I got my DX I wanted to know if the no-sleep problem continued after the GPS was shut off or if I had to reboot the phone. To clear this up for anyone else who has this question, the DX will sleep after the GPS is shut off. You don't need to reboot it. If you fail to shut the GPS off after using it the phone won't sleep. Hit the GPS toggle switch and it sleeps just fine. No need to reboot.

The phone gets a GPS lock so quickly it doesn't matter if you don't leave the GPS running. A quick tap on the toggle switch and the GPS has your position in less than 30 seconds, sometimes much less. I would like to leave it on always, but having to toggle it when needed is no big deal.

This bug is good to know about, but isn't a big deal. If you're a non-DX user looking to get one, don't let this little bug stop you. Besides, it's already fixed in 2.2 as this thread states.

 

[G h o s t]

I am new to the Droid X. Y'all mention something called SPAREPARTS, where is this and how can I get to it to check running apps?

Thanks!

Just search for spare parts in the market. When downloading apps, be careful what privileges the app is asking for. Why would a wallpaper app need access to your contacts and the internet? Read the comments before installing. DON'T USE A TASK KILLER OR ANTIVIRUS.

i hope im not bumping this thread, but "dont use a task killer" why not? mine is set to auto kill "aggressive" every half hour. because junk like skype and other junk like KINDLE turn on without me knowing....dancedroid
sure wish vzw would kick down a special price on the 1880mAh batterys for the X:icon_eek: