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Razr battery life help

What are some good ways to save battery on the droid razr?

Sent from my DROID RAZR using DroidForums

The attached list was compiled for the Bionic, but most of it will apply to the Razr too:

If you are having short battery life here’s a list of things that can help. Just read through the list and select the items that fit with the way you want to use your phone. Not all items will work for everyone and this list was written for the Droid Bionic but should work for your phone too:


- Don't use an automatic task killer--not even the one that comes with the phone. Reboot your phone and look at what's running. If anything that you've installed is running and there's no reason for it, then uninstall it and find an alternative that behaves. Ignore any stock apps that run on boot as I've found them to be more or less benign.

- Weather widgets, live wallpapers, news/social feeds, any app or service that you use that runs--do without it if you can. If you can’t do without it, lengthen it’s refresh time.

- Don't use antivirus

- Set your WIFI sleep policy to never. The default is "turn off when screen turns off". This will cause the wifi to reconnect every time you open the phone. From any Home Screen select Menu/Settings/Wireless & Networks/ and then use the Menu button to see some new options - select Advanced. Then select Wifi Sleep Policy and set it to Never. Home key to return to Home Screen.

- If you have access to wifi, leave it toggled on as it is more efficient than 3G. Wifi consumes less battery power than 3G.

- I leave GPS toggled on too by the way. Apps use it as needed. When I'm done with Maps or an app that uses it, I'm sure to return to the home screen so GPS can stop. Under wireless settings turn on "Google location services" so that an app is able to use network resources to get your location instead of GPS. I have "VZW location services" turned off--don't know why that option is even there. By the way, I increase the speed of voice output > text to speech > speech rate because I like the directions to get spit out faster. That saves a bit of battery. Turning off the display and just listening for directions help. Also, often I just get the directions and then exit back to the home screen: GPS uses so much battery I try to get it over with ASAP.

- When you get a 1) new battery, 2) do a factory reset, or 3) an OS upgrade - run your battery all the way down until the phone shuts off and then charge the battery all the way up. This will calibrate the phone's understanding of the battery's capacity. Do this once every month or two also, but don't do it too often if you can help it.

- I have my battery set to "Performance Mode" and data is on all the time because I am on call 24x7. If you don't mind, try out a more conservative battery profile to save more gobs of energy. (this may not be available on the Razr)

- Set screen brightness to "Automatic"

- Under Accounts, click on any account listed and turn off sync for any items that you're not interested in syncing. For example, Google Books if you don't use it. Don't use Backup Assistant--I prefer syncing my contacts with Google. You don't need both. Also go into your contacts > menu > display options > backup assistant > UNCHECK. Also do contacts > menu > more > settings > contact storage > and select your Google account and "remember this choice"

- Turn on Bluetooth only when you are going to use it.

- Consider turning off voice privacy. This may not be a big deal but it will save some processing (and therefore battery). It may also improve call quality.

-Turn off haptic feedback, animations, and any un-needed sounds in Android settings and in your apps

- Set your screen timeout to as low a time as you can stand (I use 1 minute) and manually turn the screen off when you’ve finished using the phone.

- Turn off in-pocket detection. In-Pocket Detection has been the source of many issues already. (this may not be available on the Razr)

- Keyboard: turn off vibrate on key press and sounds for any keyboards you use

- Use a red or black screen background. On the original Droid screen--not sure about this Bionic screen--red was the most efficient color that could be displayed.

- Camera app: I like keeping location on and flash on auto. Consider turning location off or at least returning to the home screen ASAP when using camera if location for camera is on.

- In stock browser the default home page is Google and it uses your location. This is a bad idea as it can waste your battery for no reason. Make something else your home page and make sure to close any web page that uses your location when you're done viewing it.

- Charge your phone via the wall charger instead of computer USB as it is faster. Also, don't use long USB cords--use regular power extension cords instead. I stick with the charger that came with the phone. Put the phone on charger when you go to bed every night.

- Consider install the Home Replacement app Zeam. It is basic app that uses very few resources and will help with battery power.

- Emails: I don't know what email app you use, but try this. It saves battery power and in some cases emails arrive quicker. This scheme will have you using only the Gmail app on the phone for all email accounts whether they are pop3 accounts or Gmail.

- If you are using Live Wall Papers, stop!
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This is a link to some very good videos about saving battery power on the Bionic (there are 4 parts and the other parts will show up as available videos when part 1 finishes):

Battery Saving Video

Part 1: [video=youtube;cvWg7SbUgsI]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=cvWg7SbUgsI[/video]
 
Download Gemini app manager and hit the one key optimize button once a while.

Turn off 4g and keep it only in 3g.

Download juice defender. If you don't have a messenging app(text plus..) and don't need your email to sync automatically, then set to aggressive and set the background data to turn off when screen turns off in smart action

If you need your email and messaging, get juice defender ultimate and customize it. I need my email to I set it to 5 min.

Lower your android os. To do this, go to market, setting, uncheck automatic updates and check for updates. Just go to the market, my apps and manually update them. This will cut your android os by half! Now my android os is lower than phone idle!!!" Only 13 percent.

Turn off automatic brightness, set it to less than 30.

Turn off animations in display.

Lastly don't use task killers, they eat up too much battery. Use the Gemini app manager, it will save a lot of battery!

Before I only used to get couple of hours of battery with only light use. But now I easily get around 15-18 hours with heavy use!!!
Sent from my DROID RAZR using DroidForums
 
One more thing.. download sync setting from market and when you go in the app, uncheck auto sync, or just uncheck the ones you don't need. There are a lot of useless apps that auto sync and waste alot of battery. This will help you manage them.

Sent from my DROID RAZR using DroidForums
 
You have some great tips, here. Pay particular attention to those advocating using 3G only when you don't need 4G speeds; this alone has saved me enough battery that I don't have to use Smart Actions for anything other than convenience uses.

Sliced from my RAZR
 
What are some good ways to save battery on the droid razr?

Sent from my DROID RAZR using DroidForums

Just use smart actions works better already built into your device no need to install anything there are plenty of posts out with suggestions, my suggestion is to just play with rules till your happy I get 13 hours of heavy usage all day.. No 3rd party apps and I run lookout.. So not installing AV software or phone location software is just bad advise

Sent from my GT-P7510 using DroidForums
 
I have juice defender but one of the biggest things I did was to use the stock app "smart actions". I set it up to turn of 3g/4g (cell data, GPS, bluetooth, background synce ... etc) whenever the screen is off. This alone allowed me to get a full day of use 10 hours.

I also use Juice Defender (which you don't need necessarily) and now I get 18 hours or more. Of course you are playing gmaes for hours and watching video allot nothing is going to help besides staying plugged in

What are some good ways to save battery on the droid razr?

Sent from my DROID RAZR using DroidForums
 
THANKS you all so much it has helped me alot and im sure this will help many others.

Sent from my DROID RAZR using DroidForums
 
I've been finding that with my wifi off I get better battery life than with it on. I used go always have it on at my house with the smart actions but now I just use the 4g cause its so much quicker.
 
I've been finding that with my wifi off I get better battery life than with it on. I used go always have it on at my house with the smart actions but now I just use the 4g cause its so much quicker.
WiFi will save battery if it's in use, but it will kill battery if it's not (the WiFi antenna will be powered and the OS will be searching for a network). If you want the best of both worlds, just put the power control widget (I think that's the name; it's a stock Android widget) on your homescreen and toggle WiFi on when you're in range of a network you use and turn it off at all other times.
 
WiFi will save battery if it's in use, but it will kill battery if it's not (the WiFi antenna will be powered and the OS will be searching for a network). If you want the best of both worlds, just put the power control widget (I think that's the name; it's a stock Android widget) on your homescreen and toggle WiFi on when you're in range of a network you use and turn it off at all other times.

What you're saying is true, but I just wanted to chime in that I leave my WIFI toggled on 100% of the time and I've found that it does not burn much battery. The trick is to make sure that your WIFI sleep policy is set to "turn off when screen turns off". You access this setting by going to the WIFI settings and then hitting your phone's menu key to bring up the advanced options menu.

I don't know about the RAZR but my D3 came with WIFI sleep policy set to "turn off when screen turns off". HOWEVER, if you open the DLNA app the first thing it does is pop up this weird dialog box. If you press OK, it will set your WIFI sleep policy to "never". This is not cool in my opinion and I think that quite a few people are experiencing undue battery usage because of that stupid DLNA dialog box.
 
What you're saying is true, but I just wanted to chime in that I leave my WIFI toggled on 100% of the time and I've found that it does not burn much battery. The trick is to make sure that your WIFI sleep policy is set to "turn off when screen turns off". You access this setting by going to the WIFI settings and then hitting your phone's menu key to bring up the advanced options menu.

I don't know about the RAZR but my D3 came with WIFI sleep policy set to "turn off when screen turns off". HOWEVER, if you open the DLNA app the first thing it does is pop up this weird dialog box. If you press OK, it will set your WIFI sleep policy to "never". This is not cool in my opinion and I think that quite a few people are experiencing undue battery usage because of that stupid DLNA dialog box.
This is also true, but it's better to have your WiFi sleep policy set to "Never" if you're wanting to actually use WiFi. For example, if you're using WiFi at home and you turn your screen off, it'll revert you back to 4G until you turn your screen back on, then it'll hook you back up to WiFi. Not only is this inefficient, but it's incredibly annoying.

You basically have to choose between poor battery life (WiFi on all the time, sleep to "Never"), slightly better battery but clunky (WiFi on all the time, sleep to "Screen Off"), or best for battery but manually intensive (WiFi off, toggle on when needed, sleep to "Never"). It's not a failing with Android, either; it's just the nature of the beast.
 
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