Poor Battery Life with Droid X?

**johnpaul191** · 07-17-2010, 10:02 AM

I'm not impressed so far, though yesterday was the first full day. I went into airplane mode in the afternoon because I was worried about having power to make calls when I'm done work. Bluetooth and WiFi were off. I only turned on GPS a few times while I was using it, then turned it back off. I will give Android lots of points for how easy it is to turn those things off and on. The blackberries require sub-menus.

Yesterday was a decent example of my work day. I show up at a location and we start filming. At some point we jump in a car and drive for an hour, get to another location film, drive, film etc. I'll do that for 13+ hours... sometimes as much as 16 or 17. Sometimes we just show up at spots and film all day, but are constantly moving so I can't use a wall charger or anything.
Yesterday a friend of mine was in town and I wanted to try to meet them after I was done work. I was also really hungry. Not having any juice at the end of the day means I can't find my friend, or even order take-out.
I needed my phone on because I am working for 3 different clients next week and we are shooting emails back and forth nailing down specifics of the jobs, as well as any possible future jobs. I tackle those during little bits of downtime.

There is an incredible irony that those of use that NEED smart phone capabilities, can not get them for a whole day in many cases. We are told to put a dock on our (non-existant) desk. If I had a desk, I would have a computer and would not need the phone. If I was driving in a car all day (like a traveling salesman), I would dock my phone, but obviously not be sending emails on the run. When I am in a vehicle, it is often with 3, or 5 or 10 other people so you can't count on using the one vehicle charger (that probably has the driver's GPS in it anyway).

This is not an anti-X rant... more of a general frustration at smartphones. I might be jaded that my first smartphone was the Palm Treo 650, and I could get 3 days of charge out of that. I usually charged it every night, but if I forgot my charger or something it did not matter. Heck, I never even bought a vehicle charger. I know this phone does a lot more, but the fancy 3-D animated wallpaper doesn't mean squat when the battery died. The race for thin phones outpaced the battery development, or they are out speccing the components or something.

/rant

otherwise, I am liking this phone! It is a generational leap from the Blackberry.

**mush10** · 07-17-2010, 12:16 PM

I am getting some pretty solid battery life thus far. I can't complain for the size of the screen. To me it beats my Nexus One and my 3GS. The Iphone 4 has impressive battery life but the X seems to holds it's own. If you are constantly in spots without the ability to.charge, you should seriously consider a back-up to carry with you. It always helps my battery anxiety

.

**johnpaul191** · 07-17-2010, 01:49 PM

Originally Posted by mush10

I am getting some pretty solid battery life thus far. I can't complain for the size of the screen. To me it beats my Nexus One and my 3GS. The Iphone 4 has impressive battery life but the X seems to holds it's own. If you are constantly in spots without the ability to.charge, you should seriously consider a back-up to carry with you. It always helps my battery anxiety

.

How do you charge a second battery? keep swapping them in the phone? I remember having an old old old Verizon phone with a desktop charging dock that had a slot for a second battery. Kind of brilliant, though I always thought it created the perception that you *needed* two batteries. The Android seems to boot up really well, but with my Blackberry a battery pull (or swap) actually put a good 10% dent in the battery if not more.

it's 14:30 here in Philly and my phone has been off the charger for maybe 3 or 4 hours and I'm at 70%. no GPS and no WiFi on, one 5 minute call. most of what I have been doing is trying to figure out how to get all my twitter contacts out of my address book. shouldn't hog the processor too much.

I hope the bigger battery comes soon. I know FroYo for X won't be out in 30 days. I got the Storm, and kept it past the return window on the promises of an impending software update that will fix everything. That update fixed some minor issues and took 3 months to be released. I'm buying a phone (and extending a contract) based on what they sell me, not what they think they can do in the future.

I guess the iPhone has an advantage that there is 1 model (effectively) every year, so something like the Mophie http://www.mophie.com/ can exist for a very reasonable price. My housemate uses one on his iPhone 3Gs and it's brilliant. I don't think any one specific Android phone will sell enough for these to exist.
The iP4 does seem to have amazing battery life. My friends are getting great real world results. I can only hope that technology hits everyone quickly, though a lot of it seems to be Apple designing their own chips. Combining something like 5 or 6 chips into one custom chip saves a Lot of energy (and space for battery room).

**klzemx3** · 07-17-2010, 02:48 PM

I got 4 hrs the first time, then I turned down brightness, used advanced task killer. Now I get around 7 to 8 hrs. I hope they come up with an extended battery soon.

**wanimal** · 07-17-2010, 03:15 PM

I've had mine on since noon. Its 4 pm and I've been using modestly.my battery is know down to 60 percent.if they don't put out a software fix soon then I'm probably goin back to my droid.also as a side note swype is awesome and the speaker sucks.

**Ray229** · 07-17-2010, 04:54 PM

I been charging mine 2-3 times day. Got wifi gps and bluetooth off. Just been playing with it figuring everything out.

**cedjunior** · 07-17-2010, 05:22 PM

This is my first smart phone, so I don't have much to compare my current experience to. Last night I surfed the web while watching 3 back to back episodes of House and the battery went from about 70% to 40%. Not bad, I would think. This was with WiFi, GPS, BT all active. I also did a lot of messing around with Google maps, enough that it accounted for 25% of the battery usage.

**johnpaul191** · 07-17-2010, 05:53 PM

Originally Posted by wanimal

I've had mine on since noon. Its 4 pm and I've been using modestly.my battery is know down to 60 percent.if they don't put out a software fix soon then I'm probably goin back to my droid.also as a side note swype is awesome and the speaker sucks.

So is this worse than the Droid, or about the same?

OT, but how does the speaker compare to the og Droid? I'm wondering if there might be a software issue, or if that's just how it is. I have not had a Moto phone since the E815.

I guess we won't know how battery life is under the X version of Froyo is till it actually is released, which will be after the 30 day return window (so we can't count on it fixing anything). There is supposedly a newer software version, but phones are not recognizing it unless you do a system reset or something. No idea if it helps battery life. Software bugs can destroy battery life if they let errant processes run on and on. Let's hope that's the case here.

**kevlo911** · 07-18-2010, 10:40 PM

When the batt gets around 40-60%, turn off the phone and turn it back on. Mine jumped to 80%. I think it is calibrating it self or something.

Mine is fine now and doesnt drop to 90% after a few min of use like it used to. I charged mine in the morning and it is at 60% 14hours later with moderate use.

**FeTTo** · 07-18-2010, 10:46 PM

You might be onto something here sir. I was at 20% just now when u saw your post in my email. I rebooted phone and went from 20% to 50% now. Wonder what is going on here.

**kevlo911** · 07-18-2010, 10:51 PM

Vhange the screen dimmer/dimness thing to 15sec instead of 1min. Saves me from pushing lock all the time from the screen being on too long and saves batt life

Also, I took mine off auto brightness, the dimmest setting is pretty bright so I have mine set a lil bit above the min.

**EGainer** · 07-19-2010, 12:12 AM

agree on the off and back on thing. I was downloading a few apps through 3g and it killed the battery from 50% down to 30% from only downloading and installing. I turned off and back on, and it was back in the green at 50%. It's almost like it gets ready to lose the battery because it thinks you are using too much too fast. wonder if it will be fixed with froyo 2.2

**dbdynsty25** · 07-19-2010, 02:23 AM

Originally Posted by EGainer

agree on the off and back on thing. I was downloading a few apps through 3g and it killed the battery from 50% down to 30% from only downloading and installing. I turned off and back on, and it was back in the green at 50%. It's almost like it gets ready to lose the battery because it thinks you are using too much too fast. wonder if it will be fixed with froyo 2.2

Well the update that's supposed to come out tomorrow (or at least start pushing to phones) mentions the battery signal calibration, so it might be a known issue that they've already addressed. I was in the desert the other day and I had barely any signal...phone literally when from 80% to 10% in like 2 hours of me not even touching the phone. Turned it off so I'd have some juice for the drive home and when I turned it back on it went to 70% where it stayed from that point on (then drained normally after that)...so there is obviously an issue somewhere.

**johnpaul191** · 07-19-2010, 07:57 AM

Originally Posted by dbdynsty25

Well the update that's supposed to come out tomorrow (or at least start pushing to phones) mentions the battery signal calibration, so it might be a known issue that they've already addressed. I was in the desert the other day and I had barely any signal...phone literally when from 80% to 10% in like 2 hours of me not even touching the phone. Turned it off so I'd have some juice for the drive home and when I turned it back on it went to 70% where it stayed from that point on (then drained normally after that)...so there is obviously an issue somewhere.

Interesting. So maybe it has something to do with anticipation of how much time you have left (at current usage/location) and the math is wrong.

**213ninja** · 07-19-2010, 09:17 AM

Originally Posted by dbdynsty25

Well the update that's supposed to come out tomorrow (or at least start pushing to phones) mentions the battery signal calibration, so it might be a known issue that they've already addressed. I was in the desert the other day and I had barely any signal...phone literally when from 80% to 10% in like 2 hours of me not even touching the phone. Turned it off so I'd have some juice for the drive home and when I turned it back on it went to 70% where it stayed from that point on (then drained normally after that)...so there is obviously an issue somewhere.

i saw that too on BGR, looking forward to said update.