Minimal droid use, battery drain experiment

[D3C4F]

I have phone brightness off or at 10%. Sync and everything are off. Just unplugged 26 minutes ago... we'll see how this goes. It still says 43% of battery is being used by the display. Is there any way to get the display usage down?

I have it auto sleeping at 15 seconds, and I lock it manually after every usage. All I'm doing is texting right now, and I have email notifications off...

 

[New2u]

I have phone brightness off or at 10%. Sync and everything are off. Just unplugged 26 minutes ago... we'll see how this goes. It still says 43% of battery is being used by the display. Is there any way to get the display usage down?

I have it auto sleeping at 15 seconds, and I lock it manually after every usage. All I'm doing is texting right now, and I have email notifications off...

That % represents the whole usage since it's last reboot. If you turn it off and turn it back on, you should see the number reset.

 

[D3C4F]

I have phone brightness off or at 10%. Sync and everything are off. Just unplugged 26 minutes ago... we'll see how this goes. It still says 43% of battery is being used by the display. Is there any way to get the display usage down?

I have it auto sleeping at 15 seconds, and I lock it manually after every usage. All I'm doing is texting right now, and I have email notifications off...

That % represents the whole usage since it's last reboot. If you turn it off and turn it back on, you should see the number reset.

Oh, I see, thanks. I'm still learning everything about Droid and the Android OS so this forum has been great for me so far.

 

[bikerboy]

how do i check the usage of the phone since last charge only ?
i went into setting and battery usage thing, it says up for 18 hours something , but i am sure it was on charge 14 hours ago and charger to full , can someone please tell me how to check the usage ? Thanks

 

[Mongoose]

Bikerboy - Here ya go

If you are really worried about your battery and don't mind doing something a bit beyond what might be your comfort level you can do the following:

1: Open Phone Dialer, enter the following using the keypad:
Code:
*#*#4636#*#*
2: This opens a diagnostics menu with 4 options: Phone information, Battery information, Battery history, Usage statistics. Select Battery information, this brings up your battery information such as temperature, status, type and various technical information. You want the lines in the middle titled "Battery scale" and "Battery health".

3a: If Battery health reads "Good" and Battery scale reads "100" then your low battery life is likely related to how much you use the Battery intensive options and features. In that case return to the Home screen (You can either press the Home button or press the Back button until you have reached the Home screen) and press Menu > Settings > About phone > Battery use. Look at what items are at the top of the list (Display will always be near the top but shouldn't read higher than about 50-53%). Try turning these features off (if GPS, Bluetooth, WiFi are high on the list) or try reducing how much you use particularly battery intensive programs.

3b: If Battery health reads something other than "Good" and Battery scale reads less than "100" then you might want to take the phone into Verizon and tell the techs that you are concerned about your battery and you would like it replaced (don't tell them that you used these menus as they might try to use it to deny you service).

A wealth of information...also, I was looking at your posting times and response to your battery being down to 90%. Your first post that I counted was at 6:10p. The next post that I saw was at 7:45p which is where you said you had done 10 texts and you were at 90%. You asked if that was normal. A 10% loss over 1½hrs (90min) would mean that your phone would last about 900min or 15hrs...or so...at your current use levels. This is using the crudest math, not taking any battery drain formula into acct and approximating times, but it seems that you are definitely on track. I'm kind of interested in your progress....BTW...dont forget to set the amount of time your phone pings for emails to something other than every 5 minutes. :icon_ devil:

BikerBoy -

 

[bikerboy]

Bikerboy - Here ya go

If you are really worried about your battery and don't mind doing something a bit beyond what might be your comfort level you can do the following:

1: Open Phone Dialer, enter the following using the keypad:
Code:
*#*#4636#*#*
2: This opens a diagnostics menu with 4 options: Phone information, Battery information, Battery history, Usage statistics. Select Battery information, this brings up your battery information such as temperature, status, type and various technical information. You want the lines in the middle titled "Battery scale" and "Battery health".

3a: If Battery health reads "Good" and Battery scale reads "100" then your low battery life is likely related to how much you use the Battery intensive options and features. In that case return to the Home screen (You can either press the Home button or press the Back button until you have reached the Home screen) and press Menu > Settings > About phone > Battery use. Look at what items are at the top of the list (Display will always be near the top but shouldn't read higher than about 50-53%). Try turning these features off (if GPS, Bluetooth, WiFi are high on the list) or try reducing how much you use particularly battery intensive programs.

3b: If Battery health reads something other than "Good" and Battery scale reads less than "100" then you might want to take the phone into Verizon and tell the techs that you are concerned about your battery and you would like it replaced (don't tell them that you used these menus as they might try to use it to deny you service).

A wealth of information...also, I was looking at your posting times and response to your battery being down to 90%. Your first post that I counted was at 6:10p. The next post that I saw was at 7:45p which is where you said you had done 10 texts and you were at 90%. You asked if that was normal. A 10% loss over 1½hrs (90min) would mean that your phone would last about 900min or 15hrs...or so...at your current use levels. This is using the crudest math, not taking any battery drain formula into acct and approximating times, but it seems that you are definitely on track. I'm kind of interested in your progress....BTW...dont forget to set the amount of time your phone pings for emails to something other than every 5 minutes. :icon_ devil:

BikerBoy -

Thanks alot for this, it helped really much, my battery read good and 100
it's on 50% at the moment , reading 19 hour 45 min since unpluged, display setting is on lowest, and email is on never
i should do it to 20 min i think i just wanted to see how long will it servive doing as little as possible
So i think my battery is ok, but i am being a noob droid user yet ?
probably i am messing around with the phone too often
or maybe because i am used to phones without 3g connection all the time
what do you think ?
Thanks

 

[cereal killer]

Another important thing that nobody has brought up (or I didn't see it covered in this thread) is that the battery only represents discharge/charge rates in 10% increments.

So it really is not a good barometer for measuring battery life. The battery will start at 100% drain a little then show 90% when in actuality it's at 96%.

10 points is a huge gap. I'm not a programmer so I don't know how hard it is to show battery levels in 1 point increments but that would better serve the end user.

 

[Mongoose]

I set my phone to check my email every 60 minutes. Personally, if it wasn't for the wife and kids emailing me and texting me I'd just turn the stuff off. I'm more interested in the navigation and browsing features of the phone. I stll haven't even sync'd it with my vehicle's bluetooth systems...that should be fun.

Anyway bikerboy...I think you are well on your way to resolving the battery issue. There are all types of posts on the forum (and debates also) about how to break in batteries and make them last forever etc etc...bottom line...enjoy your phone. If it needs a new battery before the "next superphone" comes out...then buy one. By then they should be about $10....but I suspect that the Droid will be superceded well before your battery croaks. Keep an eye on your charge levels...give the battery a few days to "break in". Seems you are looking good....or at least right there with the vast majority :icon_ devil:

 

[D3C4F]

Used my phone today a normal amount. Had backlight on lowest setting, WiFi off, Bluetooth off, Sync on. Email notifications were only on half the day. Used the GPS a little bit. Texted throughout the day and made and received multiple phone calls. My batter lasted 10.5 hours before completely dying. Pretty good if you ask me...

 

[poqonos]

It looks like my battery issue is resolved. I still don't have the root cause. I got frustrated and about to return the phone back and I wanted to delete the data before I do so. I reset the phone back to factory settings and rebooted. For some reason I decided to re-activate and re-register. I configure settings as I had it before and recomended in this thread, and since then I do not have the battery issue anymore. I am getting 1.5 days worth of battery use for normal usage(receive/send calls, facebook, text, email, some browsing etc..), offcourse bluetooth/wifi/gps turned off.

 

[dyinman]

I also posted in this thread: http://www.droidforums.net/forum/dr...date-badly-drain-your-battery.html#post541976

If you don't feel like reading that post, I'll sum up.

My (and my wife's) culprit was Google Voice. Not GTalk, Google Voice. We used it for voicemail. I even turned syncing off and I was getting 10-12hrs uptime with it just sitting there, doing nothing. As soon as I uninstalled Google Voice, I was getting a full day and a half out of a single charge with moderate use. Maybe a day and a quarter even with using Google Maps for an hour on the road with heavy browsing and even some Pandora streaming. The day and a half includes syncing 4 email accounts with Gtalk running a few hours a day as well.

I don't know what it is. But that was it for us. Check for it on your phone and try uninstalling it for a day.