Is Severe Battery Drain on LTE Normal? - Verizon Droid Charge

Verizon turned 4G on in my area Tuesday and I have noticed significant battery drain since it has been on. I just did the battery calibration on my Charge Monday and with the network setting on CDMA and it lasted 27.5 hours. When 4G went live I changed the network setting to LTE auto and it lasted all of 6.5 to 7 hours with very similar usage. Is this typical? My phone has been on for an hour and 15 minutes this morning and the battery has already dropped about 10% and I haven't even used it.

Welcome to the dark side of 4G
This seems to be the pain point for those of us who must be early adopters of the latest and greatest - in this case, the significantly improved speeds offered by LTE. The initial crop of phones just don't seem to have the efficiency or larger batteries (and therefore increased thickness and weight) needed to be able to use 4G all day.
At the risk of bringing the anti-Apple fanatics down on me, this sounds like the period not so long ago when there was no 3G iPhone because it would have made the iPhone either too bulky or too short-lived.
I am guessing we will need to wait a year or two for radios and battery technology to jump ahead before the promise is fulfilled.
In the meantime, get LTE Switch on the Market and spend most of your time on 3G...

Very good point. I wont complain much because I am fortunate enough (or unfortunate) to be by a PC all day to charge it if needed. Today is better than yesterday though as I am currently at about 6.5 hours and am at 67%. Thanks for the input.

I live near LA so I get pretty good 4G coverage, perhaps that means my radio's not switching back and forth all the time... I get ~12 hours with moderate usage
tapatalked from my VZ Droid Charge

I as well live near LA and get approximatly 18-24 hours but I keep wifi on when I am at home (from 5:00PM -7:00AM). That significantly reduces the battery drain, especially at night. BUt when im out on the go on the weekends I get around 12-14 hours.

I have 4G coverage where I live, but not where I work (20 miles away). I also don't have a wireless network to use at work, so every morning and evening I'm switching wireless on and off, and turning 4G on and off.
It's worth the effort though... battery life if acceptable that way and when I have 4G coverage, it's fast!

Hmm, doesn't sound too normal..I getting better batter life on 4G LTE all day..I get around 17 hrs..sometimes 26 hrs..with light to moderate use.
Two things that I know kill the battery for sure...One Blue tooth..if I turn bluetooth on it drops faster then having the display on...almost..I will only get 8 hrs to 10 hrs with blue tooth on.
Second..if my phone starts switchng between 1 EDVO, 3G and 4G because I am in a fringe area..my battery drains very fast..I get about 7 hrs a day if that happens.

6.5 to 7 hours seems really short. I'm in 4g all day, every day, and my battery will easily last 12-14 hours with moderate use.3
What apps are you using the most?

jpog said:
Hmm, doesn't sound too normal..I getting better batter life on 4G LTE all day..I get around 17 hrs..sometimes 26 hrs..with light to moderate use.
Two things that I know kill the battery for sure...One Blue tooth..if I turn bluetooth on it drops faster then having the display on...almost..I will only get 8 hrs to 10 hrs with blue tooth on.
Second..if my phone starts switching between 1 EDVO, 3G and 4G because I am in a fringe area..my battery drains very fast..I get about 7 hrs a day if that happens.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It switched a lot yesterday so maybe that was the problem. I am hoping that they were working the bugs out and that it was just a fluke. It hasn't switched at all today and I am on track for 16-18 hours.

Related

Battery poll

How long do most of you go on battery ??
My Fuze with NATF's ROM goes for 2 days easily with medium-heavy data use on a H connection with 15 min auto refresh of 2 email accounts and moderate GPS use with Google Maps.
That's incredible! My old Hermes (8525) didn't make it through the day some times with 1 hr auto email refresh!
Just another happy TP user.
Is TF3D enabled?
Yup - all fully functioning
Just an amazing device...(Or mine is freekishly good...which would be quite nifty)
same here.. it lasts a lot longer than my tilt with its Manilla2d
for me on heavy usage, probably 5 or so hours of internet, games, and calling, i last roughly 12 hours or less... maybe it's the phone adapting to the charge or maybe i screwed up something nasty when i did the original conditioning
My battery life is about the same as my Tilt was. I get about a day's worth of use out of the phone. I am pretty heavy email user (3 accounts, including MS Exchange) and texter. If I don't charge my phone when I go to bed, I'd get an hour or two into the next day and it'd be dead. I was hoping for a better battery life, but at least it's not any worse than the Tilt...
I'm lucky to get a whole day using an hour of wifi and an hour of gps along with about an hour of voice, some texts and some 3G browsing.
I have the touch pro and it lasts about 15 hours with moderate use. 10 calls, 20 text, auto receive email ever 2 hrs, 45 mins to an 1 hr web surfing.
Actually is probably closer to 12-14 hours with moderate use. 20 calls, 30 texts, 45mins to 1 hr of web surfing. auto email receive every 2 hrs.
I use 50 percent battery per day rarely more and i use all of its features thoroughly.
I've gotta say, the GSM version of the touch pro (fuze) has WAY better battery life than the sprint version! What a difference! Returned the sprint one!
would the posters mention how they charged their device upon receiving the unit? the posters with high battery life may be doing something we are not doing resulting in low life
I am around 12 hours during the week with emails calls blueooth active sync. Weekends I get 48 hours easy as.
It's hard to get the most acurate time during the week as I charge the phone over night and never know when it's fully charged and and if it stays fully charged or stops charging.
I'm also using NATF's 1.1 ROM and getting great usage, about 2 days of average use before getting to 20%.
But even before the new ROM the battery was way better than my TyTn. I wanted to run the battery from full charge to dead battery auto-off and I ended watching YouTube videos for about 3 hours straight (to keep the 3G going a full speed). I made it through one full MST3K movie and lots of youtube surfing before it finally died; I got better power usage than my laptop watching DVDs.
Overall I'm a moderate user, and if I forget to charge over night I'm good the next day but will get low batt messages that 2nd night.
Wow, I wonder if there is a quality variance on the batteries that are shipping with the units?
I'm running the stock AT&T ROM still, and will get a 30% drop in battery in 3 hours without even making a phone call. Battery life is worse than with my Tilt. I'm in area that has spotty 3G coverage - it could be some strange interaction while switching between 2G and 3G over and over.
Or maybe there is something NATF is doing in his ROM that is helping battery life?
I'm getting about 15-16 hours with heavy use. I like to text, average at least an hour websurfing on HSDPA, maybe half an hour on WiFi, maybe 2 hours talk time, two e-mail accounts on refresh, and add maybe half an hour to an hour of random organizer/tasks/random crap usage.
If I don't charge at night, I'm pretty much screwed for the next day.
ATT Fuze
ROMeOS 1.4
Batt lasts approx 10hrs. Seems like it could last weeks in standby mode...I'll hit power button on top and come back hours later to find same batt %. During heavy use I can watch the % drop like a lead foot on a V8 throttle.
-No auto sync of emails (I manually dl 4 to 5x's per day)
-Very little GPS use (avg 10mins per day)
-30 mins of phone calls
-40 texts
-1 to 2 hrs web surfing
When I bought the device the battery had approx 40% charge. I ran it down to 10%, then fully charged and ran it down again, then fully charged.
Might try NATF's rom to see if there's an improvement.
thedogger said:
Wow, I wonder if there is a quality variance on the batteries that are shipping with the units?
I'm running the stock AT&T ROM still, and will get a 30% drop in battery in 3 hours without even making a phone call. Battery life is worse than with my Tilt. I'm in area that has spotty 3G coverage - it could be some strange interaction while switching between 2G and 3G over and over.
Or maybe there is something NATF is doing in his ROM that is helping battery life?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Same for me. I can pull it off a charge and 12 hours later it will be 55% with no useage? I am running standard softwae minus bloatware using the trick. Installed Advanced config, Total commander, AE buttons Plus.
I've got a 1.93 rom.use my phone for only calls/sms.with and without tweaks, the battery lasts 24 hours-nothing more-thinking of getting an extended battery
I think that besides the usage, the battery time might also depend on the radio version which control the way your device interact with the service network. There're several radio versions which from: HTC, service providers (At&t, T-mobile...) but it's all compatible with the device. Then would it be possible that we take a look on our radio version and vote on which is the best one for battery life but must adapt all other usages (GPS lock, good signal strength...)?

What kind of battery life are you getting?

I am getting absolutely horrible battery life on my MT4G. I took it off the charger at 9:30am, I have since made one 5 min phone call and sent maybe 5 texts, and checked a couple emails that i just deleted, other then that screen has been off the whole time, its now 4:40 and im at 35% battery. On my Vibrant with this sort of use I would still be in the 70s.
Under accounts and sync:
facebook updating every hr (just changed it to every 4 hrs)
google syncing just gmail, no contacts or calender
news every 4 hrs
stocks not syncing
t-mobile syncing (tried turning off but it just turns itself on again)
qik video chat syncing
weather every 3 hrs
yahoo syncing
Are you on wifi or 3g? Brightness? Screen timeout? I have an N1 and the battery life is pretty poor so I'm just curious apples to apples in terms of what else you have turned on.
negreenfield said:
Are you on wifi or 3g? Brightness? Screen timeout? I have an N1 and the battery life is pretty poor so I'm just curious apples to apples in terms of what else you have turned on.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I leave 3g on but i always left it on on the vibrant as well, brightness is at 20%, screen times out within a couple seconds
wifi, gps and bluetooth off
I get great battery life. Then again I am coming from a Vibrant, my battery was horrible on that device. I take it off the charger at around 8 am and by 6 pm I still have 50%
Sent from my HTC Glacier using XDA App
ever thought about turning off 4G? You don't alway have to have it on.
I get around 12-15 hours with heavy usage. My G2 usually gets 15-24 hours.
I saw this article the other day. I was thinking about trying it tomorrow.
http://androidspin.com/2010/11/06/double-your-battery-life-on-htc-droid-incredible-sprint-evo-google-nexus-one-and-possibly-others/
Don't bother with that battery charger hack, it's not going to do anything but waste your time...
I just installed SetCPU on my phone just for fun and have found that it recognizes a few lower clock cycles...I added a profile to lower the CPU when the screen is off otherwise at 1024-245 On Demand and I'm still plugging away at 20% battery when I would normaly be on the charger by now...could be a fluke, but so far so good...I'll keep this for a few days to see how it does.
oh, one other note, my battery life has continued to improve with every charge...the first few days I couldn't get through a full day and now I have battrey to spare...just had to get it conditioned with a few charges I guess.
I let the phone completely die last night and then charged it and at midnight I unplugged it. At 8:30 this morning when I left for work it was at 94% which was great but from 8:30 until now it has dropped to 83% and ive had one 3 min phone call and deleted some text messages, no browsing web, no listening to music, nothing. It seems like the phone will go through the 100-95% slowly but after that its in a marathon to get to 0%
I don't know how you guys are getting so many hours daily on heavy use. I get 7-8 hours on heavy texting, some web browsing and about an hour plus on the phone almost every night. 9 hours would stretch it and it would be on 10%.
I have my brightness all the way down and all the way down is just 11. Screen times out in 2 minutes and I have power saving on. I did the battery thing 3 times where I would let it go down to less then 14% or so then charge it fully without taking it off charge. Hopefully it improves as days go by, I'm just tired of carrying my charger to work.
myTouch4G (Glacier)
Down to 69% now at 11:15, have made no phone calls or texts since then, have just downloaded opera mobile but havent even played with it...lol this is riduculous
I can recommend that you guys take a look at what might be pinging the CPU. Watchdog (Lite) is great for this task. You can have it alert you when an app exceeds a preset threshold for CPU usage. Some apps just go rogue on you like Palin from time to time.
I've also noticed that there's wide variability in terms of how apps go into either idle or background states. Some apps will go into idle only if you hit the back key to go back to the home screen and will enter a background state (more active) if you hit the home instead. I've also noticed that the free, ad-supported apps require more CPU time. That's right. Hitting Google's ad servers, at least for some apps, and scrolling those ads, requires more CPU time than other apps, which do the same. I don't know whether to fault the devs in this case when coding for the ad retrievals or not. Just some things to consider.
I just got mine. I came from a Blackberry 8900 and an old 2g iPhone. Battery life on both of those was significantly better. I could talk for 8 hours a day on the BB and it would last until midnight-1am or so. The iPhone would only last until 10pm.
Using the MT4G, my battery life is REALLY bad compared to these other two devices. I can get about 5.5 hours of continuous talk time, tested yesterday on a conference call for work. But even with only calling for about an hour and some basic email checking, I can't go past 6pm without putting the phone on the charger.
Wifi is off, screen at 50%. Someone please make a big fat 2800mah battery for this thing. I use this thing for work, and I make over 4000 mins a month of phone calls. It's really annoying to have to plug it in whenever I have the chance.
im getting roughly about 15-17 hours and im using it (camera, blogging, facebook uploading)
this destroys the EVO i had
Heavy usage, I'll get around there, 7-8 hours...regular usage gets me around 20 hours..I'm using setcpu w/ profiles..
Sent from my HTC Glacier using XDA App
did you have similar battery problems with your old phone while at work?
i notice my nexus 1's battery is significantly worse when i'm at work since getting a signal is a bit spotty (35th floor) so it keeps searching around. when i'm at home the battery lasts literally twice as long while idle.
dinan said:
did you have similar battery problems with your old phone while at work?
i notice my nexus 1's battery is significantly worse when i'm at work since getting a signal is a bit spotty (35th floor) so it keeps searching around. when i'm at home the battery lasts literally twice as long while idle.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes definitely right about that. I have better battery usage when I'm off work. My department at work is in the basement. So the signal switches on and off the whole time I'm there.
myTouch4G (Glacier)
dinan said:
did you have similar battery problems with your old phone while at work?
i notice my nexus 1's battery is significantly worse when i'm at work since getting a signal is a bit spotty (35th floor) so it keeps searching around. when i'm at home the battery lasts literally twice as long while idle.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think I only brought my G2 into work a couple times so cant really comment on that but in the 3 months ive owned the vibrant, if i used the phone a lot during the day....i mean play games, texts, web, etc..id leave with percentage in the 50s, normally in the 70s, at 4 today i was in the 30s with the mytouch with barely doing anything, since i want it to last until the night i just threw it on the charger. it shows I have full signal (4th floor by window)
My wife just got an mt4g (I have a nexus one). I've noticed that her battery life seems to be just over half what mine is, and I actually use mine more!
When I looked at her Battery Usage display, Android OS was near the top with almost 2h CPU time after being unplugged for 6h. For comparison, on my nexus one, CPU time for Android OS is 4m13s after almost 8h.
Any good way to break that number down more and find out the source of this crazy battery usage?

Is it just me or is the Thunderbolt battery life... kinda good?

So, I was well informed from many different sources that the biggest drawback to the Thunderbolt was the horrendous battery life (people complaining in the 4 hour range). I came from a Samsung Fascinate, which would most of the time get me through the day, but just barely, and the Battery Use was almost always 70-80% screen (even at the lowest brightness). I primarily got the Thunderbolt for the possibility of 4G tethering, so the first thing I did was buy an external battery charger pack (extended battery was sold out).
Well, I've had it for a few days now and despite geeking out on the phone, tethering whenever I can, using it probably more than my Fascinate, I haven't had any issues with battery. I pulled it off charge about 8am this morning, it's currently 9:45pm, I've been using it pretty heavily all day, tethering on the train to work, using it at work, and using it the whole train ride home, and it's currently at 33% battery. 6:18:00 Awake time. Where is this horrendous battery life I heard about?
I'm not using any battery saving utilities (Juice defender etc), have it set to Auto Brightness, just letting it be on WiFi when WiFi is available. I'm using the bone stock HTC Android 2.2 that came with it, not root etc.
So far this phone has much better battery life than my Fascinate and I'm pretty impressed, especially since I believe it has a slightly smaller battery. If I check battery use today, it's 59% Display, with the next highest being 9% Cell Standby.
I haven't used it as a 4G hotspot for more than maybe 30 minutes at a time, but even then it doesn't seem to die too quickly. Am I just missing something that other people are doing that drains their batteries like crazy or is it just that I'm careful about not using stuff the indiscriminately uses 4G for no reason? (I removed all the auto updating widgets like the Friend Feed etc).
Anyone else had a similar experience?
Ummm, yah, well, it's just you...
JK... the battery is ok for me I haven't had it die on me yet but when ever I drive it goes in the charger so I'm sure that adds up.
Darthus said:
So, I was well informed from many different sources that the biggest drawback to the Thunderbolt was the horrendous battery life (people complaining in the 4 hour range). I came from a Samsung Fascinate, which would most of the time get me through the day, but just barely, and the Battery Use was almost always 70-80% screen (even at the lowest brightness). I primarily got the Thunderbolt for the possibility of 4G tethering, so the first thing I did was buy an external battery charger pack (extended battery was sold out).
Well, I've had it for a few days now and despite geeking out on the phone, tethering whenever I can, using it probably more than my Fascinate, I haven't had any issues with battery. I pulled it off charge about 8am this morning, it's currently 9:45pm, I've been using it pretty heavily all day, tethering on the train to work, using it at work, and using it the whole train ride home, and it's currently at 33% battery. 6:18:00 Awake time. Where is this horrendous battery life I heard about?
I'm not using any battery saving utilities (Juice defender etc), have it set to Auto Brightness, just letting it be on WiFi when WiFi is available. I'm using the bone stock HTC Android 2.2 that came with it, not root etc.
So far this phone has much better battery life than my Fascinate and I'm pretty impressed, especially since I believe it has a slightly smaller battery. If I check battery use today, it's 59% Display, with the next highest being 9% Cell Standby.
I haven't used it as a 4G hotspot for more than maybe 30 minutes at a time, but even then it doesn't seem to die too quickly. Am I just missing something that other people are doing that drains their batteries like crazy or is it just that I'm careful about not using stuff the indiscriminately uses 4G for no reason? (I removed all the auto updating widgets like the Friend Feed etc).
Anyone else had a similar experience?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's you.
Seriously though. Go to any one of the Thunderbolt forums or read any Thunderbolt review and you'll see the battery being discussed prominently. There is definitely an issue with it. Who knows what it is though..
The thing that really bothers me is the battery isnt consistently bad. Like the last two days Ive gotten 24 hours of use out of my phone. Normally that's unheard of.. but next week something will happen and it will be back to being dead within 6-8 hours with barely any use.
You are correct that this issue is oft-cited in regards to the TB. However, I think the 4 hour data points may be slightly exaggerated. I wound up buying the oem extended battery because I wasn't make it past 6.5 hours with regular use. I travel pretty far to get to work every day, switching between many towers over the course of my commute, constantly going from 4g to 3g to 1x and back. Besides the screen (which will be the biggest battery drain on any phone with a modern touchscreen) data should be your next highest drain, and the biggest variable you are capable of tweaking to change your battery performance. My 6.5 hour experience was with a pretty abusive data usage scenario, and I don't see many people inflicting much more upon the battery in actual, real-world use. That said, with the extended battery, the TB has the best battery life of any phone I have owned in the last five years, and I couldn't be happier.
I'm getting about 12 hours with pretty heavy use. Running BAMF 1.6.2 with kernel overclocked. I'm pretty happy with battery life...it's just as good as it was on my droid incredible.
I have learned thru experience that all HTC phones with 4.3 inches screens are bad at battery life. When I say bad, that's comparing it to a smaller less powerful device. But take in account all it does and to me battery is ok. I mean the HD2, and EVO when I owned them were battery hogs. But I always had a charge. Ppl want bigger and faster phones,Well there's a trade off until battery technology catches up, the bigger phones will consume more battery. Its like saying I want a better car more sporty and trendy but I don't want to pay that much. Not goin to happen.
With just 3G available to me and using everything stock...I get slightly better battery life than I did with my incredible that was on CM7. Compared to a stock incredible, much better. I'm a bit scared for when I do get 4G seeing all the posts though =)
Rooting gave me an extra 2% per hour usage. I can go 15 hours and still have 40% left on my battery. I'm happy with this battery.
Thunderbolt has better battery life than my Samsung Epic had. Stock, my battery wasnt all that great. However, changing some settings and finding a suitable kernel has helped with my battery life.
I have had the same experience. Coming from a Fascinate, the Thunderbolt is so much better on battery life. Mind you, I do not live in an LTE area. This is what I do:
- Juice Defender (Balanced settings)
- Brightness - half way
- GPS only on when I need it
- Wifi on almost 100% of the time (at home and work I use only wifi)
- Non-Rooted
I even have 100+ apps installed including leaving Google Talk and Yahoo Messenger on almost 24/7. I have about 8 or 9 widgets as well. Most that pull info.
The terrible battery life comes when the phone tries to hold a bad 4g signal drains the battery at an insane amount. If you're in strong signal expect much better battery life but because 4g is so new I expect a lot of people to be in areas with low 4g signal as Verizon has not even turned up 85-90% of the towers past 45% power.
I've had the TB for 3 days now and am coming from a rooted Eris (running xtr rom). I have noticed that with the same amount of usage I am also getting better battery life on the stock TB than I did on my Eris. I am in an area that does not have 4G so I have that turned off.
afallucco said:
The terrible battery life comes when the phone tries to hold a bad 4g signal drains the battery at an insane amount. If you're in strong signal expect much better battery life but because 4g is so new I expect a lot of people to be in areas with low 4g signal as Verizon has not even turned up 85-90% of the towers past 45% power.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
where did you get this info about the power of the towers? btw what power do they normally work at? 100W?
afallucco said:
The terrible battery life comes when the phone tries to hold a bad 4g signal drains the battery at an insane amount. If you're in strong signal expect much better battery life but because 4g is so new I expect a lot of people to be in areas with low 4g signal as Verizon has not even turned up 85-90% of the towers past 45% power.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'd love to see some sources backing this info up.
When I bought my TB I left the store with the extended battery in. The battery easily lasts me all day. After reading all the complaints about how bad the stock battery is I decided to try using it and I'm actually surprised by how long it lasts. I was expecting much worse. It's easily lasted me 8-12 hours with my normal everyday use. I'm going to stick to the stock battery from now on. I was getting annoyed by the heft and bulkiness of the extended battery. My phone feels so sleek with the stock one.
Yeah, I'm with the "it's just you" crowd.
Pretty bad battery life for me here in NYC (plenty of good 4G around).
Not a heavy data user (less than 20min browsing per day).
Not a lot of long calls.
Accounts update once every hour (FB, 2 email accounts).
Brightness at min.
No video playing, no music playing.
No speakerphone used.
Rooted, BAMF 1.3.2
GPS and WiFi rarely on at all.
I'm lucky, --LUCKY--, if I get like 6 hours out of a fully charged battery.
daniel178 said:
Yeah, I'm with the "it's just you" crowd.
Pretty bad battery life for me here in NYC (plenty of good 4G around).
Not a heavy data user (less than 20min browsing per day).
Not a lot of long calls.
Accounts update once every hour (FB, 2 email accounts).
Brightness at min.
No video playing, no music playing.
No speakerphone used.
Rooted, BAMF 1.3.2
GPS and WiFi rarely on at all.
I'm lucky, --LUCKY--, if I get like 6 hours out of a fully charged battery.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Just curious, why are you still using BAMF 1.3.2?
running Bamf 1.6.1 and Imoseyon Lean Kernal set at 1.4Ghz with SetCPU on Smartass, along with ATK set to kill every 30 mins(oh I know they are the devil, yet my battery life is always better with one, so no comments about how they are bad.) I also always have 4G on, and usually fluctuate between -82 to -94dB in signal strength, and wifi is never on, as my home network is strained enough as it is. GPS is always off unless I need it.
I also use WPClock Live Wallpaper at the same time.
Yesterday I was at 18% with 2 days since last plugged in.
Of course I also calibrated my battery, after flashing Bamf 1.6.1.
I use my phone alot for facebook, angry birds, browsing the web and a crap ton of texting, I probably hit near 1000 text a month, I know that isn't what the high school brats are pulling, but still, for me, that is insane.
On my Evo 4G, with 4G off, I could hit 3 days running CM7 underclocked to 750Mhz max. That was with a bigger battery as well.
I am very exited for CM7 to go into a beta, or nightly stage, and the kinks worked out, as I am sure with 4G on I can hit near 3 days with the Thunderbolt as well.
nosympathy said:
running Bamf 1.6.1 and Imoysen Lean Kernal set at 1.4Ghz with SetCPU on Smartass, along with ATK set to kill every 30 mins(oh I know they are the devil, yet my battery life is always better with one, so no comments about how they are bad.) I also always have 4G on, and usually fluctuate between -82 to -94dB in signal strength, and wifi is never on, as my home network is strained enough as it is.
Yesterday I was at 18% with 2 days since last plugged in.
Of course I also calibrated my battery, after flashing Bamf 1.6.1.
I use my phone alot for facebook, angry birds, browsing the web and a crap ton of texting, I probably hit near 1000 text a month, I know that isn't what the high school brats are pulling, but still, for me, that is insane.
On my Evo 4G, with 4G off, I could hit 3 days running CM7 underclocked to 750Mhz max. That was with a bigger battery as well.
I am very exited for CM7 to go into a beta, or nightly stage, and the kinks worked out, as I am sure with 4G on I can hit near 3 days with the Thunderbolt as well.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Update your sig, brah. Still says your running Tesla Coil.
Overall battery life is a lot better than my cm7 Incredible, and on mostly standby it lasted quite awhile before I had to charge it (I couldn't use it for a few days because vzw wonked up on activating my TB somehow), so it lasted almost 3 days with only occasional data use/seeing if the phone was working (I couldn't send texts or make/receive calls, but my data was working)
dbisch said:
Update your sig, brah. Still says your running Tesla Coil.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I know, I am a lazy ass, haha.

Battery Life... Compare to T-Bolt.

So I have the thunderbolt and thinkin of switching. Can someone comment on the battery life of this phone only if you live in a 4G area, preferably LA. Also if you owned the thunderbolt before the the D-Charge, can you compare the two?
I live in Baltimore in a 4g area. Coming from the Thunderbolt I can say this thing last about 3 times as long. The only time you will see massive battery drain is if you are in a bad lte area. The Thunderbolt would last 4 hours sometimes and 20 hours at times. With the Charge I have yet to not go over 15 hours or so. My highest uptime is over 2 days.
2 days??
Can you comment on your setup, what you're syncing (email, twitter, facebook?), and other settings?
I get about 12 hours, tops, with moderate use. That's fine by me though because I expected it. Even with the 3000mAh extended battery, lowest brightness, and an undervolted kernel on my Fascinate I could only go 1 day.
I know you are asking for thunderbolt comparisons in 4g areas, but I can tell you personally, coming from a HTC Incredible where I would charge multiple times a day with normal use, I now only charge at night and probably wouldn't even have to.
From the reviews and tests I have seen online even with 4g data usage its getting over a day of use.
burningembers said:
2 days??
Can you comment on your setup, what you're syncing (email, twitter, facebook?), and other settings?
I get about 12 hours, tops, with moderate use. That's fine by me though because I expected it. Even with the 3000mAh extended battery, lowest brightness, and an undervolted kernel on my Fascinate I could only go 1 day.
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If you are on 2.2 on the fascinate I noticed it had much worse battery life then 2.1. On my Fascinate I could go 2+ days as well. For my setup I have 1 gmail account pushing, 1 email account fetching, 1 facebook account updating every 4 hours, auto brightness, beautiful widgets weather updating ever 4 hours, and gps turned on at all times. I am also in a good lte area. If I go into a bad coverage area my battery will see very heavy drainage. My Charge is also rooted with all of the bloat frozen.
Droid Charge has great battery life... easily besting my bro's thundrbolt
Got both in hand
After tinkering the Bolt I get acceptable battery life. About 10-12 hours with fairly heavy use. When you just simply are using it as phone, the life is terrific but I like to track the weather, update 3 email accounts every 30 minutes or so, do about 30 message per day and use Places often (uses the GPS). I only use about 100 minutes of talk time a month but as a data device - a lot.
Now to the Charge. Overall a little better - but please note!!!! - that is with ZERO tinkering via root and freezing the battery pig apps. I believe as custom ROMs come out that should improve this performance similar to the Bolt. Given that the Sammy's battery time should go up to probably 18-24 hours.
I wish I was as gifted as those that have gotten 24-36 hours of use. I have Bolt battery envy.
There is nothing scientific in my post - just experience of a life long hacker.
Hope that helps.
My Thunderbolt undervolted got half the uptime that my Charge did. My highest uptime on the Thunderbolt was around a day while on the Charge it was around 2.
Interesting.
Unfortunately my Charge was given the update while the clerk activated it (sigh). So I can't root it just yet, but will definitely be de-bloating it so-to-say as soon as root becomes available again.
I sync 3 gmail, 1 corporate exchange, 1 hotmail, facebook (30 minutes), and twitter (1 hour). So that could contribute a bit to the drain.
There is no LTE in my area yet, so I switched the Mobile setting from LTE Auto to CDMA.

Is the battery that awful???

I have a Droid Inc 2, but I wanted to switch to the Tbolt, but have heard the battery is awful. As of right now I am in a 3G only area, but will have 4G soon. I see the Tbolt has a 1400mah battery while the Droid Inc 2 has a 1450Mah battery, so would the difference on 3G be that much??
My battery life is good...usually get 2 or 3 days on a full charge ..push exchange mail. Gmail. Friendstream.phone calls texts etc?
Sent from my ADR6400L using XDA App
On 3g the battery is not that bad. I don't have 4g where Im at and when I was on a froyo rom the battery would last all day no problems.
When I go into SanFran I get 4g and it seems to way more battery if Im using the phone but it doesn't seem too bad. I just have to keep a charger handy butt that doesn't bother me.
Benefits of the thunderbolt are a bigger screen (part of the battery "problem"), 4g radio, and the development is here unlike with the dInc2.
Stock for stock I think the thunderbolt still wins for me. I was thinking about getting my wife a dInc2 but the lack of a development community kills it for me. Maybe it will pick up at some point but IMO its a step backwards for Verizon to release new phones without 4g.
If youre not going to root and stuff then it's not such an easy choice. If you are then IMO the choice is clear, get a thunderbolt.
Hope this helps.
Sent from Gingertits, I mean itis...
my thoughts
Yes, on 3G or WIFI the battery life is solid. I get a full day easily with gmail constantly syncing, gtalk on constantly and widgets such as beautiful widgets, calendar, twitter and face-book on constantly. Also, I work in a hospital and access patient data frequently on my phone. This is via the internet and data is refreshed at each access (50+ times per day). BTWI take the phone off the charger at 0530 and don't get home till 1930, and still have some juice left for the ride home. And I don't use any battery savers, or task killers.
But when I turn the 4G radio on, and there is frequent hand-off from 4G to 3G, the battery is dead in 6 hrs with the use stated above.
That said, when I go into the city where 4G is very strong and consistent, I can get a full day (8-10 hrs on 4G).
What I suspect happened when people first got the phone, is that they were so enamored with it; speed, screen, etc...(myself included), that the battery took huge hits, and everyone cried at how terrible the battery life was.
As with everything, wait for the dust to settle and you find the truth is somewhere in the middle.
Nevertheless, I still would like an 1800mah battery that fits the standard door.
Until 4G is fully developed in your area this phone isn't worth it. I've been through two of them that are frequently heating up when they're doing nothing but sitting in my pocket with auto sync off, brightness as low as possible, no notification LED, etc. It's pathetic. It over heats and drains into yellow by noon. 4G is amazingly fast, but since the outages it hasn't been the same. It comes and goes in areas where it used to be four bars.
If you're not in a 4G area then you should be good. Those of us with 4G are having a tougher time with battery. If I leave 4G running then my battery will die in less than 6 hours if with light use.
I most often turn off my mobile network though, letting me get around 8-10 hours.
On 3G, with the normal battery, it was much better than my old Fascinate.
With LTE, I went to the extended battery, and I struggle to get through the day on moderate-heavy use. (On LTE with the Regular battery your toast).
BTW, I am unrooted and am using Juice Defender.
There are apps on the Market which allow you to switch between 3G and 4G. I leave my Thunderbolt on 3G unless I am checking the internet, Facebook or Twitter. I usually get a full day on the stock battery. That is better than my battery usage on the LG Ally.
Well with the bamf gb remix i get 6 hrs full power all the time,everything possible running, slacker,maps,fb mail all syncin 10min,thats about 2 hrs better than my imagio, about 12hrs with just moderate use,i think thats pretty good.
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I live in a 3g area but I'm only a few miles away from 4g. As long as I'm in a 3g area my battery is good. But as soon as I enter a 4g area its not so good. It doesn't bother me too much since I have a car charger and have about ten usb cables and micro usb chargers laying around. But I probably will invest in an extended battery once VZW deploy 4g in my area a bit more.
Some good tips to get more out of the battery are...
1. For a good 10 - 15 days be sure to drain the battery all the way and then fully charge it.
2. When the phone is fully charged remove it from the charger. You may notice that if you leave it on the charger for a while after its fully charged it will go from 100% to 97% usually within minutes.
3. Screen protectors decrease the battery life due to holding heat into the phone.
brandoid said:
Some good tips to get more out of the battery are...
1. For a good 10 - 15 days be sure to drain the battery all the way and then fully charge it.
2. When the phone is fully charged remove it from the charger. You may notice that if you leave it on the charger for a while after its fully charged it will go from 100% to 97% usually within minutes.
3. Screen protectors decrease the battery life due to holding heat into the phone.
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You sure about that last one? I don't think screen protectors cause excess heat. Good tips otherwise.
I came from the Droid 1 and I think that the battery life is about the same. I have no complaints about it. I do live in a 3G area though.
Why do you suggest to fully charge and drain the battery for 10 - 15 days? I deained the battery fully a couple of times when I just got the phone. Do you think I should repeat the procedure?
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fully draining the battery shortens its life span. and once it reaches 100% charge, it stops charging and begins to drain--taking it off/leaving it on are the same.
These batteries don't need to be "conditioned" by fully cycling them. All that'll do is help calibrate your gauge.
iastonish said:
You sure about that last one? I don't think screen protectors cause excess heat. Good tips otherwise.
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This is all information that came for HTC about the phone.
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I trialed the DInc2 for 2 weeks and switched to the Thunderbolt while my wife stuck with her DInc2, after rooting and installing Das Bamf 1.6.3 remix with adrynalyne's kernel, I easily make it through the day with moderate usage (autosync on, several hours of gaming, hundreds of txt, hour of phone calls) on 3g/wifi. DInc2 will get a couple extra hours in a day with the same usage, but you get a phone with 4g capability for the future, a larger screen, and all the support of the devs here for your rooted device while my wife's waiting for her DInc2 to still be rooted.
Best thing to do is just buy some cheap ebay batteries. I use those and I keep a few in my pocket just in case
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Classick206 said:
Until 4G is fully developed in your area this phone isn't worth it. I've been through two of them that are frequently heating up when they're doing nothing but sitting in my pocket with auto sync off, brightness as low as possible, no notification LED, etc. It's pathetic. It over heats and drains into yellow by noon. 4G is amazingly fast, but since the outages it hasn't been the same. It comes and goes in areas where it used to be four bars.
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Sounds like you have got a rogue app you need to take care of, more so than the phone being bad.

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