How to conserve battery life on Droid X?

[nacho220]

Along with the Motorola Droid it seems the Droid X's battery is draining like crazy. I set up ATK on my Motorola Droid and it didn't seem to make that much of a difference. I noticed that when I installed it on my Droid X and pulled it up there are dozens of apps running that probably are doing the draining. In the settings menu I also pulled up the tab that shows what applications are running. It looks like a lot more of applications that need to be running than the Motorola Droid. I guess they all don't need to be running, but that's why I am posting this thread...I'm not as advanced as most of you out there. So I guess my question is, what should I leave running and not leave running or what else can I do to conserve battery life? In 4 hours of leaving the phone sit there and occasionally txt'ing a few here and there the battery went from 100% to 30%.

Thanks for any help in advance.

 

[barski]

wow, thats a major problem.

Here are some things you can do with out going to overboard:

• Go to Settings>Batter Manager>Battery Profile>Smart Mode
• Go to Settings>Batter Manager>Battery Profile Options

-Set your Off-Peak hours and Data Timeout.​

• Turn off Wifi, Bluetooth, and GPS when NOT in use.
• Go into Advanced Task Killer and select what applications you want it to kill.
• Finally and probably most important run it completely dead and set it on the charger over night.

 

[WorldOfJohnboy]

wow, thats a major problem.

Here are some things you can do with out going to overboard:

• Go to Settings>Batter Manager>Battery Profile>Smart Mode
• Go to Settings>Batter Manager>Battery Profile Options

-Set your Off-Peak hours and Data Timeout.
​

• Turn off Wifi, Bluetooth, and GPS when NOT in use.
• Go into Advanced Task Killer and select what applications you want it to kill.
• Finally and probably most important run it completely dead and set it on the charger over night.

Two things that I have done in direct conflict with what you suggest would be:

-Battery Profile = Power Saver

-UNINSTALL the app/task killing app. (It actually chews more battery up running the app and will make your Droid run very buggy.)

Also, I didn't set any off-peak setting and have many widgets on and have seen quite an improvement in battery life.

You may want to also check to make sure that your email is set to PUSH instead of Polling. That can often kill the battery.

 

[barski]

wow, thats a major problem.

Here are some things you can do with out going to overboard:

• Go to Settings>Batter Manager>Battery Profile>Smart Mode
• Go to Settings>Batter Manager>Battery Profile Options

-Set your Off-Peak hours and Data Timeout.
​

• Turn off Wifi, Bluetooth, and GPS when NOT in use.
• Go into Advanced Task Killer and select what applications you want it to kill.
• Finally and probably most important run it completely dead and set it on the charger over night.

Two things that I have done in direct conflict with what you suggest would be:

-Battery Profile = Power Saver

-UNINSTALL the app/task killing app. (It actually chews more battery up running the app and will make your Droid run very buggy.)

Also, I didn't set any off-peak setting and have many widgets on and have seen quite an improvement in battery life.

You may want to also check to make sure that your email is set to PUSH instead of Polling. That can often kill the battery.

I got mine on Smart Mode and its seems fine, but if they were there they would see all 3 options and change it to what he wants. the option to set off-peak times isnt available if you were to choose power saver mode. so in smart mode i would advise that you set the off-peak settings up. Mines 11pm-5am.

 

[heycow]

• Finally and probably most important run it completely dead and set it on the charger over night.

This just isn't true anymore with modern batteries. You don't need to do this.

The SINGLE most important thing is to set the screen brightness to Auto. My screen uses 86% of the battery as I have it set to 100% brightness (it just looks so pretty!).

 

[WorldOfJohnboy]

I can't setup off-peak hours... I work in IT as a network engineer and if I miss an email, etc. then my boss would kick my behind! Besides, during off-peak, don't you have it charging most of the time?

Smart Mode vs. Power Saver is small potatoes compared to the App Killer point, however. The day after I unistalled my App Killer, my battery acted like a brand new extended battery!

 

[gonnadie4thegov]

How about put the phone down?

Thats the best way to conserve battery life

And yeah dont run the phone dead, i dunno how the DX reacts but when my phone gets below 10% she doesnt act right and then when its time to recharge her if its not a moto cord pluged into the wall the phone bootloops

 

[WorldOfJohnboy]

How about put the phone down?

Thats the best way to conserve battery life

And yeah dont run the phone dead, i dunno how the DX reacts but when my phone gets below 10% she doesnt act right and then when its time to recharge her if its not a moto cord pluged into the wall the phone bootloops

The first few days I had it, it was plugged in whenever I had the option to... I knew that I would be "playing" and downloading a ton.

I have two batteries for my DX and drained both until the phone shutdown itself. I then charged them to 100% and haven't looked back. You can tell me that I don't need to do it with the new batteries, but in my case, I noticed it did seem to last longer after I did so... just sayin'

 

[tmoney2007]

• Finally and probably most important run it completely dead and set it on the charger over night.

This just isn't true anymore with modern batteries. You don't need to do this.

The SINGLE most important thing is to set the screen brightness to Auto. My screen uses 86% of the battery as I have it set to 100% brightness (it just looks so pretty!).

The point of this isn't to condition the battery, it is to train the battery meter so that you get accurate readings.

 

[Grifter]

All I can do is speak from my own experience. I can't say that anyone else is right or wrong from their own experiences.

ATK saved my battery on my new DX. Plain and simple. It was running all sorts of applications that it didn't need to be like Amazon MP3, Maps, Music and several others. I had ATK on my Moto Droid, but didn't want to install it on the DX until I saw how it was running. Plain and simple - all the running apps were draining the crap out of the battery.

I installed ATK onto my DX and have had zero issues. It's preserved a better battery life for me and I have zero issues running the task killer. I select which apps I want it to ignore, and when I close it it kills what I want it to. Even checking just now, Music is running along with Amazon MP3. Why? I dunno. I haven't used either of them since getting the phone on launch day.

I also work in IT as a network Administrator, and even your operating system comes with a Task Manager that allows you to kill the applications you want. My feeling is that with your smart phone, you should have the same thing.

It's a free app. In the end, if you try it and it doesn't work for you - then you've lost nothing. But if it does work for you, then you're better for it.

Just my 2 cents, nothing more.

 

[barski]

I'm not so sure about the battery thing, it seems to me when i leave it on the charger a couple hours after the phone says charged i get a longer lasting battery. The memory thing I believe tho. I'm on day 2 with 50% battery remaining. Moderate use yesterday, normal use today.dancedroid but what i consider moderate might be normal for some people..lol

 

[gonnadie4thegov]

All I can do is speak from my own experience. I can't say that anyone else is right or wrong from their own experiences.

ATK saved my battery on my new DX. Plain and simple. It was running all sorts of applications that it didn't need to be like Amazon MP3, Maps, Music and several others. I had ATK on my Moto Droid, but didn't want to install it on the DX until I saw how it was running. Plain and simple - all the running apps were draining the crap out of the battery.

I installed ATK onto my DX and have had zero issues. It's preserved a better battery life for me and I have zero issues running the task killer. I select which apps I want it to ignore, and when I close it it kills what I want it to. Even checking just now, Music is running along with Amazon MP3. Why? I dunno. I haven't used either of them since getting the phone on launch day.

I also work in IT as a network Administrator, and even your operating system comes with a Task Manager that allows you to kill the applications you want. My feeling is that with your smart phone, you should have the same thing.

It's a free app. In the end, if you try it and it doesn't work for you - then you've lost nothing. But if it does work for you, then you're better for it.

Just my 2 cents, nothing more.

How was it draining the crap outa your battery? Idle apps use extremely little memory and dont use the cpu. You're draining more battery opening up your task killer and closing the apps that Android itself is most likely going to reopen in the background anyway

 

[WorldOfJohnboy]

Here are my settings:

-Auto Brightness on screen
-Power Saver battery profile
-All email (including Touchdown for Exchange) set to push.
-3G only at work, 3G + WiFi at home

So far, I have be up 6.5 hours on this charge. Battery meter shows 60% life left. (82% Screen, 11% standby, 8% voicecalls... 101%, lol!) I have not activated WiFi as of yet as I have been working all day to this point.

I have a few basic Widgets that might grab some battery... Weather, Social Networking, and News Feed are the ones I can think of offhand.

I have a feeling that the biggest difference is that App Killer... I was worried that going without one would kill the battery uptime, but the phone lasts longer and there have been no "glitches" on the phone since I did so.

 

[WorldOfJohnboy]

I also work in IT as a network Administrator, and even your operating system comes with a Task Manager that allows you to kill the applications you want. My feeling is that with your smart phone, you should have the same thing.

I get it, I used to be a Network Engineer before getting promoted, and before that I was a Help Desk dweeb...

While a PC OS comes with a task manager, it typically is only used if a program hangs. Also, when you end a task on your own, it even throws up a disclaimer that you may cause other issues with other tasks running. So, while you don't know why Amazon and the Music apps run, when you kill them, you may be causing one of the necessary core services to fail or produce some other performace issue.

PS: There is a free "app killer" on your Android phone... Go to: Settings>Applications>Running Services You can kill things in there and that "app killer" was written by the same people that designed the OS of the phone, not a 3rd party developer.

As I have seen lots of other places (not just this forum), "Let the phone handle the applications naturally, it does a fantastic job on its own."

 

[gonnadie4thegov]

PS: There is a free "app killer" on your Android phone... Go to: Settings>Applications>Running Services You can kill things in there and that "app killer" was written by the same people that designed the OS of the phone, not a 3rd party developer.

As I have seen lots of other places (not just this forum), "Let the phone handle the applications naturally, it does a fantastic job on its own."

And what you said is the exact reason of why it is there. To force stop/close an app that is hanging or malfunctioning