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Continued Battery Issues - Help!

It's been a couple of weeks with the Extended Battery and I still can't make it through a whole day with a charge. I charge it every night while I'm asleep, and it's at 100% at 6:30am. By about 3:00pm, I'm around 40% and that's with minimal to moderate usage. Read about 20 emails. Check FB once or twice for about a minute or so. Check "Twitter" about five to ten times...each time less than a minute. No media (video, music, etc.) No games. (But oddly enough, when I do view a You Tube video or two, or play a game, or listen to Pandora, the battery does not seem to drop as quickly.)

I found a "Battery Graph" app, and today - for example - from 12:02 until 12:07 (five minutes) the battery dropped 10% (from 88% to 78%)!! During that time, I was not using the phone at all; it was simply on my office desk. Then from 1:07pm until 1:12, it went from 73% to 65%! Again, I was not using the phone. When I got home about 5:30 this evening, it was at 30%. I charged it up to 50% (which took until about 7:00pm). Now, at about 10:30pm, I'm at 20% (but I have been using it a lot tonight).

I have shut off everything I can think of (GPS, WiFi, etc.) I have no widgets updating on a regular basis. I have ATK set on "Crazy" and to 'kill' when the screen is off. Signal strength is very good - 95% of the time, I have full bars. I have the Battery Mode set on "Maximum Battery Saver".

When I check Battery Manager, my Display always is the biggest drainer - at least 50% or more. The next two are usually "Android System" (less than 10%) and "Cell Standby" (usually around 5%). I've set the brightness at 0%. (Yes...zero percent.) Screen timeout is set for 30 seconds, even though I usually turn the screen off manually.

What else can I do?

Comments

crb79

Are you by chance using a Live Wallpaper background? I see a lot of people having outrageous issues with their battery life. I'm sure I'm the odd ball, but my average battery life before recharging is 60-70% left after 12+ hours. When ever I check my battery usage stats, it always shows my display down near 10-15%.

Have you tried one of those nearly black backgrounds I've suggested in the past? I'm sure they are contributing to my increased battery life. If all else fails, I'd think your display has an issue that's sucking the juice from your battery.

LoydroidX

Hey crb!

I used live wallpapers only once for a couple hours when I first got the phone, then I realized it was sucking the battery.

I have downloaded the black wallpaper apps, but haven't set any yet. I am, however, using a predominantly black wallpaper.

I WISH I could have 70, 60, or even 50% after 12 hours of use...i would be one freakin happy camper! That is apparently the norm for everyone I know that has this phone...and they have the regular battery. For me, I'm usually at 70% after about five or six hours.

demmo86rt

As crb79 alluded to, bright colors and anything moving on your screen will drain your battery faster while you are using it. I would also try disabling ATK. Android does not like to have empty memory so, as you kill apps, your phone will reload that memory. The added cpu cycles needed to do this will cause more battery drain than letting your phone sit in its preferred state. One more tip is to take your phone from full charge to near death (less than 5%) 3 - 4 times in a row. While current Li-ion barriers don't have a charge memory, your battery meter does and with tossing in a bigger battery, your phone may need to relearn where 100% and 0% are.

crb79

demmo86rt wrote:
As crb79 alluded to, bright colors and anything moving on your screen will drain your battery faster while you are using it. I would also try disabling ATK. Android does not like to have empty memory so, as you kill apps, your phone will reload that memory. The added cpu cycles needed to do this will cause more battery drain than letting your phone sit in its preferred state. One more tip is to take your phone from full charge to near death (less than 5%) 3 - 4 times in a row. While current Li-ion barriers don't have a charge memory, your battery meter does and with tossing in a bigger battery, your phone may need to relearn where 100% and 0% are.

I know WinMo phones had a bit of an issue with the battery state needing to be learned. However, dropping the voltage too low in the Droid X could KO your battery. I think 15% would be pretty safe and accomplish the same goal. It's just one of those things where I wouldn't tempt fate more than you have to.

Just for reference here are my stats:

Very light usage day: 80% battery left

10h 48min since unplugged:

28% phone idle

26% display

22% cell standby

10% Voice calls (30m)

5% Browser (12m & 11mb)

I read about 8 emails via Gmail, maybe 15 txt and checked 20-30 facebook msgs + 20 news feeds.

As you can see my display is actually top drain today, it's generally down around 15% or so when I make a lot of calls or web surfing. My signal stays pretty high, lowest I usually notice is 3 bars on 3G.

mortb

Given all that has been said, it just may be that you have a bad battery.

rickwhoo

Loose the task killer. You dont need it on the X. It kills the battery. I get up to 2 days on my X.

TaeSong

Most of the battery life is consumed by the 4.3" LCD display, maybe as much as 80%.

Set screen to shut off after 30s or 1 min of inactivity.

Settings -> Display -> Screen timeout

30 seconds

1 minute

demmo86rt

TaeSong wrote:
Most of the battery life is consumed by the 4.3" LCD display, maybe as much as 80%.

Set screen to shut off after 30s or 1 min of inactivity.

Settings -> Display -> Screen timeout

30 seconds
1 minute

One app I found helpful with this is called Screebl. I got sick of my screen turning off while waiting for web pages to load, or while I was reading something on my phone. Screebl prevents the screen from timing out while the phone is held in a position of normal use. While it probably uses some extra battery while active, it allows me to set the screen timeout to the minimum without having to worry about it shutting off on me. Then, I don't have to always remember to shut off the screen when I set it down.

LoydroidX

Okay.....here's today's update. ATK was set on Crazy and to kill when screen is off (however, by about noon, when the battery had dropped to about 60%, I uninstalled ATK). Disabled all widgets. Display brightness was set to 0%. Time out was set to 30 sec. Rare Black Wallpaper. No video. Read a few emails...didn't send any. No texts. No calls. Checked FB a few times. Signal strength was at the highest all day. Took off charger at 6:30am - 100% charge. By 3:00pm it was at 30%.

I went to a local Verizon store on the way home. (This store didn't have a specific "tech" person, so I ended up talking to an ordinary store employee.) I explained the problem and told the guy I had the Extended Life battery. He immediately removed the battery without even looking at the screen, and said, "This isn't the extended life battery". I told him it was (I KNOW it is...it says right on it BH6X), but he said the extended battery is "much bigger". Then he replaced it, looked at my apps, and immediately removed my anti-virus app. He looked at my other apps and said he didn't know what they were. He messed around with it for a while, then called a tech in another store. That tech suggested I install ATK and suggested that there may be some settings that needed to be reset. I decided to head over to the store where that tech was.

This tech reset the SID, removed a battery monitor app I had and replaced it with "Battery Booster". He added ATK and said that I should "Disable" the "Auto Kill Level", and disable "Kill when screen is off". He did say that the greatest drain on my battery is probably my e-mail - specifically my work email ("Good For Enterprise"). I told him that on "Battery Manager", the greatest drain appeared to be "Display" - regularly at 50% or above - and my email (K9, Good and Gmail) are always around 5%. He said that these email programs continually run in the background, checking the email server. I told him all my accounts are set for "Push" and not "Poll" (or whatever makes them go out to the server). He just sort of smiled and nodded.

Well, we'll see what tomorrow brings. Thankfully these two Verizon stores are sort of on my way home from work. I may need to keep visiting them until I can get through one day with at least 30% charge remaining.

rickwhoo

Read this

In response to the vast amount of questions regarding Task Killers, I find this to be a valuable article/video in making a determination in whether or not to use a task killer on 'auto-kill' or manually killing apps just because they're open. A task killer is meant to shut down unresponsive apps, not EVERYTHING open.

Good explanation of how the Android OS is designed to handle applications.

Make your decision from there

PLEASE READ THIS!!!

*quick cut

PLEASE READ THIS!!!

SystemPanel Documentation | android.nextapp.com (smalltowngirl13 posted @ DxF, but I wanted to put it here as well)

*quick cut & paste from the link*
from the developer who designed System Panel.

" Please read this section FIRST. There are a great many misconceptions about how Android works with regard to
starting and stopping applications.

How to Use a Task Manager
Android was designed from the ground up as an operating system (OS) for mobile devices. Its built-in application and memory-management systems were engineered with battery life as one of the most critical concerns.
The Android OS does not work like a desktop operating system. On a desktop OS, like Windows, Mac OS X, or Ubuntu Linux, the user is responsible for closing programs in order to keep a reasonable amount of memory available. On Android, this is not the case. The OS itself automatically removes programs from memory as memory is needed. The OS may also preload applications into memory which it thinks might soon be needed.
Having lots of available empty memory is not a good thing. It takes the same amount of power to hold "nothing" in memory as it does to hold actual data. So, like every other operating system in use today, Android does its best to keep as much important/likely-to-be-used information in memory as possible.
As such, using the task manager feature of SystemPanel to constantly clear memory by killing all apps is strongly NOT RECOMMENDED. This also applies to any other task killer / management program. Generally speaking, you should only "End" applications if you see one which is not working correctly. The "End All" feature can be used if your phone/device is performing poorly and you are uncertain of the cause.

Process Types
The SystemPanel process listing groups applications into three categories: "Active", "Inactive", and "Internal":

Active applications are actually running at the present time on the device. An active application may be running in the background and not have any information currently displayed on the screen.
Inactive applications have been preloaded into memory, but are not actually using up any system resources. Such applications will not consume any battery power whatsoever. The memory used by these applications can be immediately reclaimed should other applications require it. As such, there is no need to manually remove these applications, as you will see no tangible benefit from doing so.
Internal applications are those which are part of the Android operating system itself. Some of these applications may be terminated manually, but they will be immediately restarted afterward by the OS."

from the developer who designed System Panel.

Active applications are actually running at the present time on the device. An active application may be running in the background and not have any information currently displayed on the screen.
Inactive applications have been preloaded into memory, but are not actually using up any system resources. Such applications will not consume any battery power whatsoever. The memory used by these applications can be immediately reclaimed should other applications require it. As such, there is no need to manually remove these applications, as you will see no tangible benefit from doing so.
Internal applications are those which are part of the Android operating system itself. Some of these applications may be terminated manually, but they will be immediately restarted afterward by the OS."

crb79

Something just doesn't seem right. Your email won't check for new emails automatically if you have it set for manual push.

Just for the heck of it, try out a free app called battery E.T.A. It will show you your discharge rate and an expected time of 0% battery. With this you can play with some settings and watch the discharge rate and see if you can get it to cut itself down.

Have you tried to old charging trick where you charge to 100% (4.23v) with the phone on, then turn it off and connect it to the charger again until you get the fully charged notice, then back on and charge it again? I haven't done this on the X, but I remember it helping extend the life on my old WinMo phones.

wheel

This battery issue is very similiar to what I was experiencing several months ago. I was using black wallpaper, display set to 0, no email push, all manual, no gps, no wifi, screen timeout after 30 seconds, custom battery saver mode. You woule think I would get excellent battery usage, never made it an entire day. I woke up one night and noticed my screen was glowing, very dim, but it was definitely glowing. I would press the power button to bring the screen on, then turn off again. I then noticed it several nights later.

I posted this in the forum and a Verizon employee emailed me that it was definitely abnormal and to contact verizon for a replacement. Two days later I had a new DX and now using the same strategy, I usually get two days or more on a charge.

Not sure what the glowing was all about, but that was really draining my battery.

crb79

wheel wrote:
This battery issue is very similiar to what I was experiencing several months ago. I was using black wallpaper, display set to 0, no email push, all manual, no gps, no wifi, screen timeout after 30 seconds, custom battery saver mode. You woule think I would get excellent battery usage, never made it an entire day. I woke up one night and noticed my screen was glowing, very dim, but it was definitely glowing. I would press the power button to bring the screen on, then turn off again. I then noticed it several nights later.
I posted this in the forum and a Verizon employee emailed me that it was definitely abnormal and to contact verizon for a replacement. Two days later I had a new DX and now using the same strategy, I usually get two days or more on a charge.

Not sure what the glowing was all about, but that was really draining my battery.

I think you may be onto something here. I was thinking this may have been an issue but it was never described.

wheel

I was unable to see the glowing during daylight, so it was definitely killing my battery. It was a strange glow, the screen was black and it appeared the glow was coming from around the back of the screen. I am glad I woke up in a dark room and noticed it.

crb79

It's the back light, my phone has done this a couple of times, but sorted itself after a battery pull reset. It happened to me a couple of months ago I noticed it because I sleep in total darkness and it came on in the middle of the night after I got an email and didn't turn off when the screen did.

LoydroidX

I haven't noticed a glow at night, but I have noticed sometimes when I unplug the phone in the morning after charging overnight, the screen does sometimes glow dimly.

I'm actually at the Verizon store right now, waiting to see a tech. Battery today was a bit worse today.

smithfam

I too am experiencing battery issues with my new Droid X. In addition to what you have posted, mine will beep about every hour and say "preparing SD card" it will also just turn itself off, then back on. Has any one else's done this? I'm wondering if it's just defective? This has to be draining the battery.

YoungSong

TaeSong wrote:
Most of the battery life is consumed by the 4.3" LCD display, maybe as much as 80%.

Set screen to shut off after 30s or 1 min of inactivity.

Settings -> Display -> Screen timeout

30 seconds
1 minute

I said 4.3" LCD display... I should have said 4.3" LCD touch screen. It draws more power than conventional LCD display.

easton714

I'm always surprised when I hear about people with batter issues on the X. I've never had an issue with that at all. When I do hear, it makes me wonder if they have a defective battery.

I don't have a black wallpaper but I do have animations disabled. I have several email accounts pushing. I regular surf on Dolphin, use weather apps (incl GPS), Ebay, etc.

I have a regular ole battery (not the extended life one) too and I do not use battery saver mode.

Heck, I was traveling on business the last couple days and used the active navigation for several hours a day and still had plenty of battery left.

I do have some friends with Android phones (one with an X) who says Facebook zaps their battery...but I don't Facebook.

mrslowpwr

I would have to say the problem could be facebook. I have a X and use the facebook app. I was having battery issues as well. I use the app spare parts and I seen my phones running time was very high. I went into my phones setting> applications>manage applications>running... I would have to force close facebook every time I opened it. I also had to do the same thing while using the browser for the internet. Both facebook and browser seemed to keep my phone from sleeping. So my suggestion to you would be after using facebook or the browser, is to force close each app. I know its a pain but it might just work.

lovetoride00

You say get rid of the task killer....

my battery life was very short til i got the task killer...

what do you use to kill them ?

I am confused

plz help

why do i not need the task killer on the x:

lovetoride00

You say get rid of the task killer...(.Rickwhoo)

my battery life was very short til i got the task killer...

what do you use to kill them ?

I am confused

plz help

why do i not need the task killer on the x:

Cody21

There are 2 camps regarding Task Killer(s) - One that encourage their use, and one that does NOT encourage their use. I do not nor never have used one. I am in the 2nd camp. My belief is that Operating Systems are SUPPOSED to know how to manage their own memory Think about your home PC or Laptop. Do you use a TASK KILLER on those? Granted we're talking apples and oranges given today's multi-processors on PC's. But still, I believe the OS in the Android system does a sufficient job of managing it's own memory - especially in FROYO. When I start chewing battery life unexpectedly, I being my own diagnosis to figure out what I did that introduced the problem? What APP I installed? or what Service I started that may be running? There I use an APP called SYSTEM PANEL that is excellent at diagnosing problems - the PAID version of it is even better as it provides a Monitor that can be started to track the TOP CPU usage APPS over specific times (e.g., 2 hrs, 4 hrs., 8 hrs, 1 day, etc). I know my phone's battery life on a "normal use" day. So when I suddenly see it extremely dropping, I use that tool to figure out what's going on. Now granted, Task Killers *seem* to benefit some people by just KILLING APPs (or Services) that are not being used, thus freeing up CPU and thereby giving more memory (performance) to truly needed ones. the *downside* of TASK KILLERs, if there are any, is that if you don't know what you're doing in their configuration, you can make the situation much worse.

I think the short of this is that it really is which camp you wish to be in. If Task Killers work for you, then great. There will likely be a lot more opinions posted on this subject, so just take it all in before you decide.

Good luck.

LoydroidX

Cody21 wrote:
There are 2 camps regarding Task Killer(s) - One that encourage their use, and one that does NOT encourage their use. I do not nor never have used one. I am in the 2nd camp. My belief is that Operating Systems are SUPPOSED to know how to manage their own memory Think about your home PC or Laptop. Do you use a TASK KILLER on those? Granted we're talking apples and oranges given today's multi-processors on PC's. But still, I believe the OS in the Android system does a sufficient job of managing it's own memory - especially in FROYO. When I start chewing battery life unexpectedly, I being my own diagnosis to figure out what I did that introduced the problem? What APP I installed? or what Service I started that may be running? There I use an APP called SYSTEM PANEL that is excellent at diagnosing problems - the PAID version of it is even better as it provides a Monitor that can be started to track the TOP CPU usage APPS over specific times (e.g., 2 hrs, 4 hrs., 8 hrs, 1 day, etc). I know my phone's battery life on a "normal use" day. So when I suddenly see it extremely dropping, I use that tool to figure out what's going on. Now granted, Task Killers *seem* to benefit some people by just KILLING APPs (or Services) that are not being used, thus freeing up CPU and thereby giving more memory (performance) to truly needed ones. the *downside* of TASK KILLERs, if there are any, is that if you don't know what you're doing in their configuration, you can make the situation much worse.

I think the short of this is that it really is which camp you wish to be in. If Task Killers work for you, then great. There will likely be a lot more opinions posted on this subject, so just take it all in before you decide.

Good luck.

After the Verizon tech installed ATK in response to my poor battery life, I 'killed' apps after each time I used the phone for anything. Recently, I've been evaluating not using ATK to see if there is any change to battery life. After about a week or so, I see no significant change to battery life, nor processing speed. So, I'm going to leave ATK installed, and leave it set to "manual" and 'kill' apps only when I feel it might be needed (like if I feel an app didn't end correctly, or the OS becomes sluggish).

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