For those on this thread, I've been communicating with chocula via PM as well on this. I believe the battery is NOT the problem. There is something deeper here and it's likely related to the metering. Again, batteries of this variety don't do things like take hours to charge to 10%, followed by jumps to 100%, nor do they discharge to 50%, then jump to 5% under normal circumstances, so the problem must be related to the actual versus reported battery levels, and this all comes back to the meter divergence or error issue.
There was a member who posted a while back that his phone ran for 8 hours watching videos while showing only 5%. You tell me, was that a "bad" battery, or "bad" battery level information?
Tis mentioned the issue of power suck due to inability to pull a signal, and that will certainly deplete a battery quickly, but what it WON'T do is cause the strange large gaps between reported levels only minutes apart. When a battery is being depleted quickly, it is because the power is being consumed, and it MUST go SOMEWHERE. In the case of poor signal, it goes to the circuitry responsible for identifying a signal and also to the circuitry responsible for sending out a homing signal to local towers requesting acknowledgement. It is pretty easy to identify this by two methods.
First, the battery information you get on the Android battery meter. To get there, press the menu button, then select <Battery> (see below, first pic - added tonight). Each of the items below show bar graphs of the portion of battery power used so far by each of the individual apps and services. You can click on each individual bar graph and it will give you even more "Use Details", information about that specific app's consumption stats. The back button will bring you back to the main Battery screen. Now, there's another revealing screen to view. Once on the main Battery screen (first pic), press your finger on the gray graph at the top, and the "History Details" screen should appear (see below, second pic). This sub-screen is little known but provides even more important information about battery usage, specific to the hardware.
Look below the graph on that History Details screen, where it shows the quality of the cellular mobile signal. It's the first line (in mostly Green but with some Yellow just below the large graph). The other items below it show GPS time on, WIFI time on, CPU Awake time, Screen on time, and any charging taking place during the same timeline. In my case, the phone has been powered for 7 hours, 25 minutes, and has used less than 20% of the battery power (at least 80% remaining). My Mobile network signal was somewhat poor the first hour or so, but thereafter was full-on rock solid. GPS was on for a couple blips but not more than 5% of the time in total. WIFI was on nearly 100% of the time with a VERY short break where it was shut off by the Verizon WIFI Auto On utility as I traveled between my home and office. The CPU was Awake 100% of the time, and other than a couple short bursts, the screen was off nearly 100% of the time. You may also notice that when the signal level was low was when the greatest portion of power was used, indicated by the drop from 100% to 90% and then to 80% which took place in the Yellow range. Once the signal stabilized, the power consumption slowed to a crawl, indicated by the long flat line to the right on the graph (2/3 of the time).
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The third pic (below), shows the "Use Details" I just pulled down which match the first pic, the middle pic was this evening when I first posted. It shows that although the Mobile network signal has been less than optimum in the recent few hours, the phone has also been in a "resting" state, rather than being "Awake" so the consumption has been minimal again. Currently I am at 60% remaining with 13 hours, 27 minutes consumed.
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Second, and perhaps even more revealing is how warm the phone is. Remember, energy is neither created nor destroyed, it only changes form (Einstein). So if we have power stored in a battery, and we use it to run electronic equipment, it can either go to producing light (screen), sound (movement of the coil over the magnet in the speaker), vibration (the vibrator), wireless telecommunications (Radio Frequency Transmission), or heat (and heat is a byproduct of all of the above as well). SO, if the phone is cool, there is likely very little power being consumed. If the phone is mildly warm, you are probably dealing with either wireless RF transmission such as background syncing and such or searching for a tower, etc., or an app is going rogue and tying up the CPU. If the phone is moderately warm, it could be the previous issues as well, but is more likely something really pushing the radios (Radio Frequency Transmission), since they use a good bit of power, but could also be a rogue application really working the CPU.
If it's HOT - especially if the heat is centered in one spot on the phone, such as near the top left corner on the rear (opposite side from the camera), there's little doubt it's an RF issue, since generating a strong transmission signal for the radios requires a lot of power, and one big byproduct is heat. Heat is produced both by the radio transmitters' transistors (called Final Transistors), and also by the battery itself which results from all the electrons racing through the internal structure of the battery and heating up due to the resistance (like the warmth you feel when you rub your hands together). If the heat is more centrally located in the back of the phone, then the bulk of heat is being generated by the battery itself. Either way, the battery is doing its job and is NOT the cause, but the victim of the problem.
Just in closing, one very important fact. Over 90% of all batteries returned as "defective" by mobile phone users test out to be perfectly functional and well within the targeted values for their age and expected lifespan (2 years to 80% of original capacity). This of course means that when you get a CLNR phone (Certified Like New Replacement), you are very likely getting a phone that has one of these 90/100 batteries that someone else thought were defective (since they don't put new batteries in CLNR phones). Even the batteries that test to be less than 80% of original rated capacity are not DEAD, they just don't hold more than 80% of what they did when new.
This means, if it lasted for 24 hours with a full charge when new, once it's only able to hold 80% it would now last only 19.2 hours. Frankly most of us wouldn't even recognize that reduction in capacity over the 2 years, and if we did we'd likely attribute it to what we're doing with it, network problems, or it would simply go un-noticed. Finally, since many of us are on the 'new every 2' (or sooner), routine, you are most likely to have replaced the phone BEFORE its battery no longer serves a useful purpose and requires replacement.
))