Beginner Help Needed

[Jshack]

Hi all, I have been reading this board since I decided to get the Droid X and have learned a lot.  Thank you.  I got my phone brand new 8 days ago.  I have had a few issues that I have noticed are fairly common but I thought I would post as much detail as I could to see if I have a setting or something that is causing these problems before I try to exchange the phone for another X.  I don't want to wait too long for warranty sake.

1. The day I brought my phone home, I didn't know how to wake it up so I hit the power button on the top and accidentally powered it off.  For the next hour it kept powering itself on and off until I took the battery out and back in.  It was fine then so I put it on the charger to get a full charge before bed.  I took it to bed and over 6-7 hrs it completely drained the battery and turned itself off.  I put it on the charger and waited a little bit to boot it up.  When I did it rebooted itself repeatedly, even dropping a two calls that came in when it was on.  Pulled the battery again and it was fine.  Went about 7 days with no mysterious reboots. I went to the hospital so I powered it down (using the top button) and when I turned it on it started it's rebooting cycle again until I pulled the battery. It seems I can not turn it off without having to pull the battery afterwards. 

2. Battery life, I know that because this phone is so awesome, the battery is not going to last forever.  That being said, a full charge on my phone lasts between 6-7 hours everytime.  Right now my phone is at 40% after 3 hrs and 25 min.  I have used it very little this morning.  My husband got a CPO Droid X a couple of days after I got my new one and his battery is amazing.  Right now it has been off the charger for 15 hrs and 19 min and still has a 60% charge left!  Since his is doing so well, last night I tried to go through all of our settings and mimic his, thinking that I have something that is a huge power drain.  We were basically the same already so I made a few small changes and it made no difference in battery life.  The only differences right now in our phones that I can find are a few aps.  He has 5 or six games and Facebook.  I only have Facebook.

Here is something strange I notice while looking through our phones side by side.

Our usage statistics in the battery manager are way different.

Mine (bad battery)                                 His (excellent battery/no odd reboots)

Android OS    88%                                Display                33%

Display             5%                                Android System 23%

Phone Idle       2%                                Voice Calls         21%

Android System 2%                             Phone Idle          11%

Swype               2%                               Cell Standby        9%

Cell Standby    2%

I have tried WiFi on/Wifi off and it makes no difference, I never have GPS on, I tried manually killing the aps, I've tried leaving them running.  So I don't know.  My gut tells me that there is some strange glitch that makes it reboot and causes the Android OS to run way to much, but I really don't know much about this phone and want to be armed if I have to go argue for a new phone.  I got this phone because my BB Storm's screen quit working after an update.  The techs loaded my contracts from backup assistant to my new phone, but I knew that I hadn't run that in a long time and I was missing  a ton of recent contacts.   I went back later with my Storm to see if they could transfer just the missing ones or delete the contacts in my X and pull all the old ones off the Storm.  By the time they were done, I had three of every contact on my phone, we did a factory reset and loaded the again and when I got home, I had two of all of them again, what a pain! So anyway, I am not that confident in my local store.  Plus, I have this one set up the way I like it and am not really looking forward to starting over.  So if anyone has any suggestions or needs more info to help please let me know OR feel free to say that I need a new one if that's the case, I don't want to wait too long on that.  I just need a little more battery than 6 hrs out of the box!

Jessica, and you are a saint if you read all this!

[jfigura · Accepted solution]

After looking at your stats, it is not the battery itself causing the issue but rather, something going on with the OS. If your phone is new and has been rebooting itself over and over, then there is an issue with the phone. What you can or should do first just to make sure it isn't something you setup and forgot, is do a soft reset.

Go to settings, privacy, factory reset. You will lose your messages and other things and have to reset the phone, BUT, most likely Verizon will make you do this anyway. Try it and see, or go back to the store and ask for a new phone. If you bought it from an online dealer, get in contact with them and ask for a replacement. Your husbands stats look normal and are comparable with mine. The first X I got last November had not been updated yet to Froyo and and when it was, it had all kinds of issues. Better to just ask for a new phone if you are able to. 

[Wildman]

From what I am getting from your description:

1. You are probally using a task killer (Make sure to exclude system apps and Set apps to only be killed when the backlight is powered off) 

Note:  Others may consider task killers are not needed but the work well for me...

2. Lower Backlight

3. Disable Wifi, GPS and bluetooth when not in use.

4. Select Performance option under Settings/ Battery Manager / Battery Mode

You can usually improve battery life if you start with these rules..

If all falls a Hard Reset my help...

This has been verified as being the best way to stop a number of the issues that has developed after doing Froyo update, the system seem to keep the app and settings during installation process and this seems to cause a number of incompatible issues with a number of devices....

Follow these settings during restore to avoid issues being restored automatically.

1. Uncheck "Back up my data" under Settings/Privacy

2. Click Factory Data Reset/Reset Phone

3. After reset is complete only Active Phone but do not input Google Email information

4. Once phone is at homepage go back into Settings/Privacy and make sure the Automatic Restore option is unchecked, even if grayed out, activate "Back up my data" and quickly disable "Automatic Restore"

5. After being sure that the Automatic Restore option is off it will be safe to log into Google and you can continue installing preferred apps and custom settings.

This process will stop all applications and settings from restoring automatically and restoring original issues that usually resolve a number of issues.

[Jshack]

Thank you guys for your suggestions.  I did try several times to reset the phone and the battery never got better but that did aggrivate my random rebooting problem.  FYI, in case anyone is having the same issues, when my X was plugged into the charger the Android OS went way down to 2%, within 5 minutes of being ubplugged it shot back up to 88%.

Anyway, I went to Verizon and thankfully I had a great guy who didn't give me a hard time and within minutes I had a new phone in my hand and all seems good so far!

Once again thank you.