I am do for an upgrade(since October) and I have been looking at the droid eris, but I have also heard alot of complaints about the battery life. So I have a couple of questions...
1. How long did the battery last you?
2. Did you download any app killer, or something of that nature, and did it help?
3. Would you recommend getting the Eris, Droid, or the Blackberry Storm 2.
Any help is very appreciated
I have the Eris. Battery life is the pits. I carry my home charger and have a car charger as well.
That's because I'd rather have the Eris than the Moto Droid or the Storm 2. I had the Eris for 4 days and thought I'd like the Storm 2 better. WOW, what a mistake! I went back the next morning, BEGGING the Verizon guys to please take the Storm 2 and give me my Eris back. They weren't supposed to, and I would have accepted this, but they exchanged the Storm back for the Eris. And now, finaly, I'm happy!
Can't speak for the Moto Droid, but I didn't want a slide-out keyboard.
So get that Eris and a couple of chargers. You'll be happy you did!
Geri O
Oops, forgot your questions. Look around here for a thread and "Droid App Killers not Necessary" or something to that effect.
I charge mine over night. Then I put it on the office charger around 2 or 3 PM. Then at 6, whether it needs or not, I use the car charger on the 50-minute ride home so it'll be charged until I hit the rack.
Geri O
I've had the Eris since it came out. I absolutely love it. If you don't have a widget running that eats up the processor, like a stock ticker, then it's very fast. The battery lasts me fine, easily 15-20 hours with moderate use, but that's only after I got rid of WeatherBug. What a battery drain that app is!!! Too bad, as it's a nice app. But Weather Channel does pretty much the same without the fancy graphics without draining the battery.
No task killer for me. They eat up the processor and drain the battery and slow down the phone. Mine has plenty of memory available and I do plenty of browsing and apps. I do have Spare Parts, and recommend it. Very nice to be able to view CPU and battery usage.
I don't have the Droid, but there seem to be many and loud complaints from those who do. The SenseUI on the Eris is wonderful. Love the multitouch! Really love everything about it. I had the TP2 for a while. Liked the UI but hated WinMo, so I sold it and got the Eris. It's definitely my phone for a good long while.
>WeatherBug
similar experience until I moved it to only update once per hour - haven't had an issue since. in fact, I notice that Weather Channel widget, even though I was selecting it to run, was "background/foreground" app when I checked running apps. never did figure that one out, but I installed and no issue. I came across that fact by full charge battery by midnight, shut off, powered back on and then let sit overnight. I checked with Spare Parts app in the AM and the battery had drained about 30% or so AND when I checked what consumed most of the usage overnight it was in fact Weather Channel NOT WeatherBug.
As for the batteyr life in general, I've down some extensive test of batteyr life over past few days and here are my observations :
I've kept a detailed log of Uptime/AwakeTime/Awake%/BatteryLevel - the conclusion - the best I've been able to manage is about 3.5-4.0 hrs of total awake time (ie., actually using the phone as well as any apps running while phone is asleep) with a Awake% of roughly 25-40%. That eqautes to about 10-12/13 hrs of total battery life. Not surprising results considering that the speced battery life for talk time is 214 mins (3 hrs 34 mins)
I haven't tried playing music for an extensive period of time. I'd be curious to know if anyone has and what the battery drain was?
I bought this as a possible iPhone "replacement" since I did not want to switch to AT&T. I know someone that has an iPhone and he says he rearely if ever has connection issues, dropped calls and he gets at least 5-7 hrs (compared to the 3.5 hrs on this Eris, though I wouldn't call my usage "heavy" at only about 30%) of heavy use out of it over a typical 18 hr or so period between charges.
Thoughts, commments?
Coming down to decision time and either going to stick with the Eris and its shortcomings or bite the bullet and switch to AT&T iPhone
Hey, thanks for all the help. I guess the real selling point will be on wether I like the feel of it or not. I would like to get the eris, but I just cant afford that kind of battery life. We will just see.
Thanks again
BG, I just left AT&T for Verizon because of the steadily deteriorating service offered by AT&T, even here in Armpit, America. Be VERY sure to check the AT&T service in your area and where you travel. Based on what I see and know, AT&T simply isn't keeping the bandwidth capability up to speed with the seemingly-ever-growing number of iPhone users. Maybe that will change. And it'salso possible that Verizon would, as the AT&T Spinmeisters proclaim, have the same problem if they introduce a phone that exploded onto the scene as the iPhone did. But for now, it is absolutely..."THE NETWORK" for me.
As for the Eris, no, it's not an iPhone. But there's definitely things about it that I like better than the iPhone (and I was an iPhone user from Day 1). It's a keeper.
Geri O
I can't speak for anyone but myself, but it almost seems that my Eris battery life is improving over time. On the first couple charges, it barely made it through a day, with usage that I wouldn't consider anywhere near heavy. Now, with a fair amount of data transfer and usage throughout the day (corporate and personal email, widgets updating themselves, installing some new apps, playing some games, a little web browsing, etc.), it seems to be fairly comfortable making it through a day. For instance, it's 4:30 PM right now, and I've been installing a bunch of new apps and stuff, had one phone call of around 13 minutes, and it's still at 60% battery life. It's mainly a personal phone, so I don't hardly use it for voice calls during the day.
The only thing I've done is let it drain down to yellow or sometimes red battery level, and then fully charge it up overnight. Oh, and I'm now running the Weatherbug widget too, which doesn't seem to bother it much. Of course, I haven't done much playing of music with it as of yet, so I don't know how much of a drain on the battery that will be, but for my current usage, I think the biggest juice drainer is the screen itself. I set my screen to sleep after just one minute, and of course the proximity sensor for turning if off while on a voice call is a bonus. Oh, I also don't do texting at all, so that's not a factor. I do wish it had a bigger battery (Verizon, why, oh WHY did you have to chop it down from 1500 to 1300 mAh?), but it's adequate for now. I'll be doing some heavy music playing soon, so I'll see how well the battery lasts then. I'm hoping the OTA update coming in December will help improve battery life as well, whether it's directly or indirectly.
I was going to post about this very thing. It DOES seem that my Eris' battery life has improved over the last 2 or 3 days. I've noticed this a few other times, too (NOT with the various iPhones I USED to own).
Geri O
I'm a former iPhone user as well, and I thought that ate up a lot of battery. The Eris is much worse, and I find that I use it much less because of that. I can't get past 3pm without charging the phone (imagine what a pain that would be if you were traveling), and generally have to charge it 2-3 times per day with minimal use. I'm finding that my battery drains more when I'm not using the phone than when I am using it. If you check out other Android Forums there are lots of posts about how to extend your battery life. What I find most frustrating about the Eris is that you have to babysit your phone to extend the battery enough to get through an 8 hour workday with the darn phone just sitting on the desk.
I loved the iPhone, but the reason I left AT&T was dropped calls. I've been very disappointed to learn that I'm dropping 1-2 calls a day on Verizon as well. My husband thinks I have a metal plate in my head - it must be me! For what it's worth, I'm going back to AT&T. If I'm going to drop calls anyway, I might as well have the best phone on the market. I like the Eris, it's the closest thing to iPhone that I've met (and I tried out the Droid for a week as well), but the battery babysitting issue and dropped calls are just to much for me to deal with.
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