Minimal droid use, battery drain experiment

[dannydoes]

I keep my phone at the lowest brightness setting (and use a quick toggle to 50% if i need to see it better in bright light).

I use for email all day (20-40 messages read, 10 replied)
text all day (20-30)
2-3 navigation sessions
5-10 phone calls (30-90 min total)
some web browsing, occasional video
newsrob RSS reading
and even some slacker streaming (30-90 min)
and the screen on a 10 minute time out (i manually sleep it, but hate it when it fades when I'm looking at it)

my stats show screen on over 50% of the time (51%) and phone on ~10% of the time since last unplugged, and I'm getting 9 hours before the 15% warning. very happy.

the key was to turn on facebook sync, set the bright to 10% (still bright enough for most times), and manually lock the phone whenever i stop using the screen.

How does turning ON Facebook sync conserve the battery? I think the screen at 10% is key. It's made the most difference for me. It's always the biggest drain in the stats.

 

[suzukimethod]

that's definitely a typo.

I turned off facebook sync b/c i had heard that it's pinging could impact the battery life.. (note: I'm talking about facebook contact syncing, not facebook app syncing)
And i appreciate the facebook profile photos for my contacts, but i figure I'll turn on the sync 1-2x/month to update everyone, and keep it chill the rest of the time.

The other thing i did (just today) was to scale back significantly some of the network access ... e.g. in NewsRob (RSS) - which was set to check every 5 minutes. Realistically, it works better for me anyway, to manually sync my feeds when I open that program (1-2x/day) than to have it constantly polling the interwebs to update. . this might not help battery life but it makes me feel better.

 

[Mongoose]

This makes sense...I recall that Weatherbug on my Storm was updating every 5 minutes or so and my battery life wasn't so hot. I set it to check every 4 hours and that made a hell of difference. My News Feeds and Market checks only pinged on my direction so I think Weatherbug was the battery killer....but then...this was well over a year ago. :icon_ devil: Yeah...!! Hey suzukimethod...thanks for making me recall that little bit of phone wisdom. I am relearning the process of outsmarting my smartphone...:icon_ devil:

 

[Dave12308]

Nope, doesn't work. Can't turn off 3g on droid (verizon) since I think all voice calls are made over 3g since verizon's whole network is 3g.

Nope, i've been in areas with lousy 3G reception, and it's dropped into 1X mode (my basement)

Browsing is quite slow, but the device still works fine. I believe 1X is a 2G technology.

However, i'm pretty sure 3G is only able to be toggled on GSM Android devices.

 

[bikerboy]

My phone doesn't last few hours if i am using it, and stays an hour something on charging to get to full, how can i test my battery ?
or what should i do to fix it ......
Thanks

 

[Mongoose]

Settings > About Phone > Battery Use

See what is using the most power. In my case, it is always my display. Do a long touch on Display and then touch Sound and Display then touch Brightness and reduce it to minimums...trust me here and just do that.

Now...touch your second key from the left...it's the little bars stacked on top of each other...I forget what it's called....then press Add > Widgets > Power Control. Once the power control is up...play with it and watch the green lights. I keep EVERYTHING off unless I am using it or planning on using it. I still get email notification, text message notification, etc etc. BTW...the last control on the right is for screen brightness. If the screen is to dim...touch that and Viola...let there be light.

See if that helps your battery life. My phone will go 36 hours with moderate use before I feel "compelled" to recharge. It might go longer but I'm to chicken to run it out of juice.

Hope this helps...:icon_ devil:

 

[bikerboy]

Settings > About Phone > Battery Use

See what is using the most power. In my case, it is always my display. Do a long touch on Display and then touch Sound and Display then touch Brightness and reduce it to minimums...trust me here and just do that.

Now...touch your second key from the left...it's the little bars stacked on top of each other...I forget what it's called....then press Add > Widgets > Power Control. Once the power control is up...play with it and watch the green lights. I keep EVERYTHING off unless I am using it or planning on using it. I still get email notification, text message notification, etc etc. BTW...the last control on the right is for screen brightness. If the screen is to dim...touch that and Viola...let there be light.

See if that helps your battery life. My phone will go 36 hours with moderate use before I feel "compelled" to recharge. It might go longer but I'm to chicken to run it out of juice.

Hope this helps...:icon_ devil:

Hey thanks alot for the advice
I did what you said, my phone was off charge 15 min ago, i'll keep watching to see what's gonna happen, i always get stupid battery life on my phones, hope my luck will change

 

[Mongoose]

Whew...glad you could follow what I said..:icon_ banana:...hope it works for you. The next thing I did was take a look at my weather programs. If you have Weatherbug...it pings every 5 minutes to update. Change that to every 4 hours or so...if WB will still let you do that. I use "The Weather Channel" and it doesn't even show up on my battery use bars.

I think what I'm getting at here is that you should see what you have running and reduce it. The only other big battery saver that I did was this:

Settings > Sound and Display > Screen Timeout and set that from 10 minutes down to 2 minutes. Thats kind of irritating but it sure does add time to battery life. Once again...hope it works.

If not then I'd be talking to mother VzN and requesting a new battery first and then a new phone...:icon_ devil:

 

[New2u]

Nope, doesn't work. Can't turn off 3g on droid (verizon) since I think all voice calls are made over 3g since verizon's whole network is 3g.

Nope, i've been in areas with lousy 3G reception, and it's dropped into 1X mode (my basement)

Browsing is quite slow, but the device still works fine. I believe 1X is a 2G technology.

However, i'm pretty sure 3G is only able to be toggled on GSM Android devices.

You can turn verizon off all together, just not 3g only. Airplane mode does this.

 

[poqonos]

I have set up all the above you have mentioned and still drains in 4-6 hrs. No gps, wifi, bluetooth. My wife loves the phone but hates the battery, she is to a point ready to return the phone.

 

[New2u]

I have set up all the above you have mentioned and still drains in 4-6 hrs. No gps, wifi, bluetooth. My wife loves the phone but hates the battery, she is to a point ready to return the phone.

If your battery is draining that fast, i would call someone and see about a replacement. Tell them no matter what, with everything turned off your max battery is only 6 hours. From what i've seen this isn't normal.

 

[suzukimethod]

is the phone brand new? and are you playing with lots of different (new) apps?

and have you checked the power use
Settings -> About phone -> Battery use..

it should show the time since last unplugged, and then a listing of all the services/programs that have used battery power and their percentages. It would be interesting to see what this list says after the 4-6 hours of use.


Another thing you could try is to install "spare parts" (app)
-open the app
-click 'battery history'
-choose 'partial wake usage' and 'since last unplugged'
I had a couple rogue apps that were using more juice than "Android System" which was not good.


You could just take it back and swap it, but it would be interesting to know for sure. yr call.

 

[bikerboy]

Whew...glad you could follow what I said..:icon_ banana:...hope it works for you. The next thing I did was take a look at my weather programs. If you have Weatherbug...it pings every 5 minutes to update. Change that to every 4 hours or so...if WB will still let you do that. I use "The Weather Channel" and it doesn't even show up on my battery use bars.

I think what I'm getting at here is that you should see what you have running and reduce it. The only other big battery saver that I did was this:

Settings > Sound and Display > Screen Timeout and set that from 10 minutes down to 2 minutes. Thats kind of irritating but it sure does add time to battery life. Once again...hope it works.

If not then I'd be talking to mother VzN and requesting a new battery first and then a new phone...:icon_ devil:

I normal manually turn off the screen once i am done with it
Any way i will see now and try , hopefully i will be satisfied with the battery, other than that, i will contact verizon without a thought, and i m waiting for the language pack to show up with the update next 2 weeks ,if i didn't get the lang i want, they are probably getting the phone back too.

 

[bikerboy]

Down to 90% already , only did 10 texts so far, brightness at 0 or lowest whatever that is, and it still uses 43% of the battery uses
Is that ok ? normal ? not ?

 

[New2u]

My display never has gotten over 5% of battery usage, and it's at around 30% brightness.