Wifi - Battery life - Verizon Droid Charge

Interesting observation, perhaps the coding Guru's can take into account. I noticed that at home where I seem to have perfect 4g signal, my battery lasts nearly 20+ hours and seems great.
My wife, who works at a hospital also noticed that at work she barely gets 6 hours and has to swap batteries constantly. Her phone also seems to always been warm and the battery info reports the same data that it always does(Blaming the screen). She's been complaining to me for a while, threatening to want to go back to the iphones and I've been trying to look for a solution.
So fast forward some time, I notice that when I go to an area with spotty service(an Office in Delaware that I occasionally visit), I'm lucky to get 6 hours of life on my phone. It also was exhibiting the same luke warming heating that my wife had been complaining about. I disabled data and got it to straggle by, but then I also experimented with wifi.
The wifi in that office is super strong and when I connected to wifi with my phone instead of having it constantly search for Edge/3G/LTE, it would just sit on wifi and never bother searching for signal.
This boosted the life from the 6 hours to 14 hours. I also recommended the same to my wife and she went from 6 hours to 18 hours(Better Wifi signal and no 4 hour train ride with spotty signal searching)
So, perhaps the radio logic is way too aggressive on these phones and if there was a way to make them just calm down and not look for 5 minutes if it doesn't find signal, perhaps they wouldn't burn themselves out.
Is there a way to reduce the radio aggressiveness? Cause quite frankly, if I don't have signal the second I walk out of the subway, I could really care less. Polling every 5 minutes is totally fine by me and it would be even better if it was configurable.
Anyways, perhaps others who are suffering with terrible battery life could experiment and see if enabling wifi extends their battery longetivity.
Cheers!

Er...I think everyone knows that WiFi increases your battery life substantially. However, user defined polling times might not be a bad idea.
Sent from my Droid Charge running Humble 1.4

I know wifi increases battery life, and and on the flipside if you don't have a strong wifi signal it will keep trying to find one... But my question is how much drain?
I drove to work in Queens from central new jersey (about an hour and a half and the battery drained about 60% with the wifi switched on. Is this the fault or do I have another problem?
Running latest humble fe
Sent from my SCH-I510 using XDA Premium App

I want to say that it drained purely because it was trying to find any signal, even if Wifi was off, I'd be willing to wager that it would have still lost that much battery life on the drive in.
All this still makes me think that if the devs could find the logic that controls the radio probing and allow it to be set based upon configurable options, our battery lives would be tremendously better.

superslow said:
I want to say that it drained purely because it was trying to find any signal, even if Wifi was off, I'd be willing to wager that it would have still lost that much battery life on the drive in.
All this still makes me think that if the devs could find the logic that controls the radio probing and allow it to be set based upon configurable options, our battery lives would be tremendously better.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So it is reasonable to assume the wifi search drained it that much? I I doubt it was general lte/data searching -new york is pretty covered
Sent from my SCH-I510 using XDA Premium App

Related

Getting frustrated with unreliable battery life

Ok. Android phones are not blackberries, and I'm well aware of that. This Thunderbolt is not my first android device, so I am very familiar with setting it up and using it in such a way to make the battery last.
I'm not posting this to complain of the battery life sucking. I'm complaining that the battery is fine one day, and horrible the next.
So here's what happens. Yesterday, i unplugged my phone at 730am like i do every day. By 3pm with light usage, i was down to 40% or so. Charged it up before I left work, no big deal, lasted the rest of the night.
Today, unplug the phone at 730am, phone is completely dead, as in, won't even boot by 11am. Same apps, same usage, same location, same strong 4G signal, same everything. It has happened multiple times on consecutive days when i was rooted on the stock rom, and still on VirusRom. I just dont get why this happens. I am doing nothing different and my phone either lasts all day, or a few hours. It's getting to the point where I am finding it very hard to rely on this phone when i'm out and about. It makes no sense. Especially if i'm not really using my phone, just checking for texts once in a while, there is no reason why it should die. What if i need it? I couldn't even call or text my gf tonight while I was working because my phone battery was ZERO only a few hours after leaving the house with a 100% charge.
Is anyone else experiencing this?
yesterday I had abnormal drain on my battery. I get 18 - 24 hours on a charge normally, but yesterday I went from 100% to dead in 5 hours. Called VZW and they said it was a documented problem and they were working on it.
IDK, they are pretty good about pushing updates. Also, yesterday I kept dropping out of data. bizzare....
I burned through the extended battery in 9 hours yesterday, really hope they figure out some better power management soon,
Switch it to 3G cdma rev.a and see if that helps. The 4G radio is always being searched for. I love the tb so I can deal with no 4G til they get the bugs out.
Sent from my ADR6400L using XDA Premium App
You have to use current widget and see how much power draw your phone is pulling. Then use system panel monitoring to track apps using the highest CPU.
Definitely an issue and I'm glad that Verizon is aware of it. I've had this unusual drain happen four times now, all on 4G. Last time I noticed it (seeing the battery percentage drop like 2% every five minutes or so), went to the Market and snagged System Panel.
The offending process is "system." Had my CPU spiked at 100% for over an hour before I rebooted, which does fix it, at the cost of another 10% of your battery, of course.
Hope they get this ironed out soon. Love my Thunderbolt, but this is a major issue and seems to be happening to a lot of people.
The best thing to do is dial *#*#4636#*#* and turn the radio to CDMA auto (PRL) mode.
I am already seeing much better battery life, as I am in a non 4g area.
Thanks for the suggestions. I'll have to give that a try. I got into the radio settings, and after flashing VirusRom, my phone defaulted to LTE mode only. I put it to cdma/lte auto, to see if that helps. If not, i'll just disable LTE unless i really need it.
No need to dial all of that crap. TeamAndIRC has a toggle app called "LTE OnOFF TeamAndIRC" that allows you to toggle between CDMA and CDMA + LTE/EvDo auto.
I found out two things dealing with my massive nighttime battery drain. One, wifi doesn't seem to work correctly. I've never had the problem before but for some reason it doesn't sleep correctly. What I've done is changed the sleep policy to "15 minutes" which allows it to switch back to 3G fifteen minutes after I turn off the screen. That allows me to have wifi while I'm using it but 3G while it's idle. This has seemed to fix my problem along with... Second, I am on the fringe of 4G/3G here on the outskirts of Cincinnati. At work I am solid 4G but at home it can't make up it's mind. Well, that has certainly played into the battery issue as it is constantly searching. So, what I do is as I walk in the door from work I use the app listed above to switch to "CDMA auto (PRL)" and it sticks to 3G. When I get to work I switch to "CDMA + LTE/EvDo auto".
So, to summarize:
I have eliminated my nightime drain by doing two things:
1) I use the Y5 app to automatically start wifi as I walk in the door but have changed the sleep policy to "after 15 minutes".
2) I use the app above to switch from 4G/3G auto to 3G only.
ridobe said:
No need to dial all of that crap. TeamAndIRC has a toggle app called "LTE OnOFF TeamAndIRC" that allows you to toggle between CDMA and CDMA + LTE/EvDo auto.
I found out two things dealing with my massive nighttime battery drain. One, wifi doesn't seem to work correctly. I've never had the problem before but for some reason it doesn't sleep correctly. What I've done is changed the sleep policy to "15 minutes" which allows it to switch back to 3G fifteen minutes after I turn off the screen. That allows me to have wifi while I'm using it but 3G while it's idle. This has seemed to fix my problem along with... Second, I am on the fringe of 4G/3G here on the outskirts of Cincinnati. At work I am solid 4G but at home it can't make up it's mind. Well, that has certainly played into the battery issue as it is constantly searching. So, what I do is as I walk in the door from work I use the app listed above to switch to "CDMA auto (PRL)" and it sticks to 3G. When I get to work I switch to "CDMA + LTE/EvDo auto".
So, to summarize:
I have eliminated my nightime drain by doing two things:
1) I use the Y5 app to automatically start wifi as I walk in the door but have changed the sleep policy to "after 15 minutes".
2) I use the app above to switch from 4G/3G auto to 3G only.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
LTEonoff is just a shortcut to the menu. In essence, it saves no time because you have to download it. If you're flipping it on and off all the time, then yeah, it might behoove you to just dl the app. But, as a one time thing, it's unnecessary.
^You are correct. I switch daily but I didn't see earlier that you were not in a 4G area.
I would highly suggest this to anyone who sees their data connection switch back and forth as I was in my house.
Battery life has been strong the past couple days now. I haven't had any unusual drains since i switched from LTE only mode to EVDO/LTE auto mode. I dont know if this was for sure the issue, but it seems to have made a huge difference. I haven't been plugged in for 2 hours and i still have 92% battery left.
Here's my interpretation of the issue:
There seems to be some kind of problem or bug with the radio which makes it drain an enormous amount of power from some towers (700mA+ is shown on current widget). Even with good signal, I'll repeatably drain a lot of power in certain areas. The "fix" is to disable mobile data or switch to wifi. This lowers the power usage back down to (slightly lower than) normal levels.
For some reason, the radio will not admit to drawing practically 90% of your battery in the battery use menu (nothing does, in fact ... it just looks like normal battery use).
I'm glad to hear that they are aware of an issue that maybe causing this.
I can't stand the battery life either other than that I love the phone
Sent from my ADR6400L using XDA Premium App
Yeah i'm still at 83% battery after being unplugged for 4 hours, light usage.
Another thing i noticed is that when my battery was draining stupid fast, the phone would be warm to the touch even when it was just sitting on my belt clip. All seems well for now.
Mine is good
Sent from my ADR6400L using XDA Premium App
My battery life has recently become terribly inconsistent. Last week I was actually getting through a 16 hour day with light usage, but this weekened I must have installed something because now the phone is lasting 3-4 hours with hardly any usage at all.
The battery information is pretty worthless because it's not showing anything except display using the battery and the display has only been on maybe 8 minutes.
Checked the partial wake info and nothing seems to be running in the background. The battery is just discharging like crazy all of a sudden. Guess Ill start uninstalling stuff to see what might be causing it
I am also having a weird battery experience today. I am rooted running Adrynalyne 1.9. Last few days I was doing great, moderate usage and was staying charged for 16-18 hrs. Today my phone has died twice during my 8hr shift at work. I KNOW something is wrong there. Hopefully a fix is found soon.
On all my Androids (4 of them currently in daily use), I've found that Words With Friends is often a HUGE battery killer...and I don't mean because you play it a lot, I mean leave it running and put your phone down, walk away a while, come back to the phone and it is HOT to the touch! Obviously killing the battery. Something to look at for sure.
I've got the extended battery and just went over 48 hours, with moderate to heavy use by my standards on a single charge. Pretty amazing and I guess I'm not in a bad radio area.
hammer4203 said:
Switch it to 3G cdma rev.a and see if that helps. The 4G radio is always being searched for. I love the tb so I can deal with no 4G til they get the bugs out.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The only thing I love about the TB is the 4G...everything else on it, been there, done that. I wouldn't keep the TB if 4G had to be turned off to make it usable in terms of battery life. Hopefully it will be fixed quickly!
Zshazz said:
Here's my interpretation of the issue:
There seems to be some kind of problem or bug with the radio which makes it drain an enormous amount of power from some towers (700mA+ is shown on current widget). Even with good signal, I'll repeatably drain a lot of power in certain areas. The "fix" is to disable mobile data or switch to wifi. This lowers the power usage back down to (slightly lower than) normal levels.
For some reason, the radio will not admit to drawing practically 90% of your battery in the battery use menu (nothing does, in fact ... it just looks like normal battery use).
I'm glad to hear that they are aware of an issue that maybe causing this.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for that analysis. With that in mind, if it's accurate, could a Tasker app profile be set up that does your fix if the drain works that high? Would be a nice safety feature for those who aren't willing to have to look at their phone frequently to check battery life.
You have to use the current widget to record your idle power readings, its the only way to know what's going on. Then use system panel monitoring to see which app CPU is highest.

Getting great battery life on my TB... :)

Keepin' it clean by keepin' smooth...
Ok finally after a few days of using my phone it has finally leveled off. My phone has been off the charger since 6am and I am at about 70% charged. Couldn't ask for more out of a smart phone. This is right in line with my Nexus One so I am no longer disappointed.
There are a few tweaks I did make to get this working this way.
(1) Screen brightness set at about 20% - The TB's screen is way to bright to begin with and making this adjustment is something that is not very hard to get used to.
(2) Screen Time out at 30 seconds - Setting to low will get frustrating if you like reading the news on your phone or browsing the web, 30 seconds seems just right for me.
(3) WIFI when not in car (triggered on and off by loss of Blue Tooth Connection and Not In Dock) Using WiFi instead of relying on your data connection will help save some juice while in a WiFi enabled building since your phone will not be trying to constantly search and connect to a data connection.
(4) Blue tooth off until docked - Saves battery by not transmitting a BT signal constantly. I only use Bluetooth in the car so triggered by the dock seemed logical.
(5) Syncing Facebook every 8 hours, News every 12 hours and Stocks (Who really needs this)
(6) I love widgets on my home screens so these get updated as I found necessary to me. Im not a major facebooker that needs to be on the bleeding edge of everyones life so 8 hours is probably even too much but adequate. News doesnt really update very often and compared to a daily news paper 12 hours is more than ample. Stocks, need I say more seriously I am not an investor and could care less.
(7) Over clocking your phone is not necessary right now, 1 GHZ is definitely more than you need on this phone. I am scoring about 1700 on quadrant which is pretty good for a 1ghz phone. My phone has never lagged and has functioned as expected since birthed to my hand. Keep in mind Over clocking will increase the performance of your phone but will tear at your battery as well and may cause heating issues.
(8) Not using an animated wallpaper. Even on my nexus one this was a major contributer to poor battery and phone performance. Animated wallpapers are very often poorly programmed or simply over bloated. Not too mention on the severe end of the priority list of needs. All though cool.
I am not over clocking or installing a custom rom on my phone quite yet because honestly the roms are not stable enough as expected this close to birth, and really don't offer any additional functionality that I find very useful as of yet. I am using Tasker to accomplish a few automated switching routines to toggle WIFI and Bluetooth. I am also using Folder Organizer to keep my apps categorized in a humane manor. I am a widget-aholic and have not really found a downside to having too a lot of widgets running.
How much do you use your phone a day?
Not everyone is willing to cut out their social networking. A big part of smartphones now is always being connected. This includes social networking, sharing pictures, sharing locations... some people get into all of this and some do not.
Also, some people like weather updates, stock updates, news updates, etc. Everyone uses their device differently to fit their needs.
I think it is common sense that the more services you use which consume radio/data/processing time then the quicker you will drain your battery.
Thank you for sharing the setup that works for you and affords you such great battery life. I have been having great battery life too. I am currently not in a 4G LTE area, but the device on 3G has been great on battery. You would never know there are any "issues" if people did not post about them!
What is your uptime, display on time, and partial wake usage?
I didn't check that deep in to it, but I had it plugged in to some speakers at work for about 3.5 hours playing slacker radio from wifi so I could rock at work. I used the phone to call tech support for my wifes phone which took a while and other shorter calls through out the day. Right now my up time is about 65 hours, awake time is at 26 hours. Not sure where to get partial awake. My display on timer only says 1 min. But honestly today was not a big phone use day and it sat in the dock on the ride home so all those stats are irrelevant today. But still my battery it at 83%. A lot of people were complaining about there phones dying with no or little use half through the day. So hopefully this brings a little light to the end of the tunnel.
Dang what were your settings
Sent from Snarf with an Epic
I have basically the same things running on my phone. Only, my folder organizer keeps fc every time I attempt to edit a folders contents... Anyone have a suggestion?
Sent from my ADR6400L using XDA Premium App
I've been getting great battery life as well, got 36 hours on my last charge. Have Perfect Storm 1.0, trip's 1.5ghz oc kernel (but don't actually run it that high). I have SetCPU set at 998/245 for normal, 245/245 for screen off and use smartass governor. I was also using my phone a moderate amount but had the 4g turned off as I'm in between 3g and 4g so it just keeps dropping and switching.
Glad to see someone is getting decent life.. I'm about to set a record for battery death.. phone has been on for 1 hour and 20 minutes and down to 65%.
On the bright side I am getting 20mbps down here at school.. SDSU..
4 bars of LTE flies
Do you have it on LTE only mode?
rnot said:
Do you have it on LTE only mode?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yah.. I am surfing pretty heavily though.. down to 58% now..
Guess ill have to sit in a different seat for the rest of the classes.. I see power outlets along the walls
It sucks though because on the Droid x, I could surf during the whole 3 hr class and walk out with 50% left.. guess this is the price you pay for this kinda power and speed lol
from 6am to 2pm phone is dead
music for a hour and half while on airplane mode
3g only
gps,bluetooth,wifi off
half hour of web browsing on 4G
about 15 messages on live Profile app
about 40 text messages
auto sync and background data off
One thing I dont understand is..When my phone is idle the battery is still draining.
6am to 6pm...
3g only (off when not using it)
gps,bt, wifi - off
games for about half an hour...
a couple calls
>20 txts
screen at 15%ish
autosync and background data off...
and now i'm at...89%
I have also found that in the first couple of days (2 or 3 days) after a reset... the phone does a BUNCH of funky things. First night after a reset...VZwireless said at 3AM i had 130MB of transfer... not possible - i was sleeping. it wasn't me. but...i did wake up with >30% of the battery gone. I think the background data off is a good place to start...but definitely wait after a couple of days.
I seem to be getting about 36 hours of up time on a charge. Mostly on wifi at home/work. I have 4G turned off as its not available here yet.
Sent from my ADR6400L using XDA App
Ok.. 4 hrs .. done for ... Did make it through class.. 8% left
There will be a patch soon to help with the idle 4G battery drain. Lady on the phone told me its in the works. Either way I just got the extended battery today. I actually dont mind the extra size.
Hmm... whats the anecdotal battery life for an extended battery given these settings? I've gotten to the point of running my display at 5% when indoors ==;;;
Also, I've heard of people getting free or heavily discounted extended batteries.... Any tips for this?
I am using an app called fastbright which really helps with the display battery drain...I just use it o bright when i cant see if i am outside....post #10!!! yay!
I've used my phone a decent amount today and battery is still at 62%. Running Das bamf at 1.2 ghz and screen brightness at 100%
crazed_z06 said:
Glad to see someone is getting decent life.. I'm about to set a record for battery death.. phone has been on for 1 hour and 20 minutes and down to 65%.
On the bright side I am getting 20mbps down here at school.. SDSU..
4 bars of LTE flies
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I feel the same way... if you are playing around on the tb while it is pluged in it will take a good 4-6 hours to charge to 100%

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.

[Q] Battery life?

How is the battery life on the MT? If it's poor (stock), have you found a good utility app to help it last longer?
I usually get about 24 hours of battery life on mine. I have gps turned off most of the time and I'm on wifi a lot with light to moderate usage. I did notice that if I have the GPS on, that the battery does go down much quicker. I assume that's because it keeps trying to get a location even when I'm indoors and it's having a hard time.
Although, I've read a lot of people complain about poor battery life so YMMV.
It depends greatly on whether data is working or not. Usually, I'll have around 90% battery 2 hours into the day. But if data isn't working, like today, I'll go down to 80% in as little as 20 minutes.
Usually, I'll have around 20% after 12 hours. Been giving it a charge in the afternoon, and it hasn't been an issue.
I use Juice defender, and it does wonders for my battery life.
I've found battery life to be comparable to other Android devices; with effective battery management, mine gets me through the work day. My wife has the Optimus V and I have coworkers, one with a Droid X, the other with an Evo; my battery life is no better and no worse than any of those devices. With any smartphone you're going to have to turn off unused radios and turn down screen brightness if you're going to be away from a charger for a long period of time.
Sent from my MOTWX435KT using Tapatalk
Heavy use is the real killer on the Triumph. With just the screen on (minimal brightness) and network on (bad coverage), I can drain the battery by about 1% every minute. And that's no exaggeration -- Battery Indicator Pro keeps track for me. I'm working on a spreadsheet to help chart battery drain during different scenarios.
Thanks for all the replies. Basically what I was expecting, but like to have confirmation
Now to find a good place to buy one. Will probably hit Bestbuy due to return convenience and policies.
Edit: Purchased at Bestbuy, and actually ran into Sprint rep who had one I could look at. We exchanged a few geek tips.
One thing I noticed: I have an LG brand microUSB charger, and the phone would not charge from it when turned on, tho it would charge when turned off. I had an older Motorola microUSB charger and it works fine either phone on or off.
I am getting a whole day of battery life with heavy use. I turned off the background data and turned off all sync. Using the email client with one hour pull with imap instead of the gmail client... Couldn't be happier with the phone...
Sent from my MOTWX435KT using Tapatalk
Yeah, I have also found that turning off sync can get you through the day with less battery used.
Depending on how much I use the Triumph, I can run the battery down in about 2-3 hours (with constant use) or have it run all day long and in to the next day (if I only use it for 1 or 2 short calls during the day.)
My motorola Triumph's Battery Life
I have waited months to post my reviews. I had a Virgin Mobile Intercept and upgraded to this the day after it came out.
Battery life is HORRENDOUS. Not sure how anyone can possibly say its "OK". Sure if you are sitting at home or in the office all day, You can continually have it plugged in and charged. My lighter socket doesn't work in my car ATM so thank GOD I don't drive a lot, and for long periods, I would be SCREWED.
Essentially yes if you turn off GPS, Wi-Fi, Syncing your emails and such, etc etc, then your battery will last longer. But what good is the phone then? I have owned many other androids and they worked for almost a full day with moderate usage with ALL of those things turned on and sync'ing (including Latitude and automatic check-ins). I have lost all of that. I have google talk catching up for hours-old conversations whenever I hit a wifi spot that's saved in my phone.
Juice Defender was my "solution" But it has rendered my phone practically useless for anything besides just having a phone handy when needed. No apps, no moe use of all the bells and whistles that I loved about android in the first place!
I am dealing with it. It just sucks. Sure there are other smartphones with similar issues, and poor battery life, but this has to be possibly the worst or one of the worst. It just is highly unfortunate that this is the case.
Also: Bluetooth syncing works 50% of the time. Constantly have to turn it off and on to get my jawbone(s) to sync. God forbid you answer a call and want to switch over to bluetooth. In those cases it works about 20% of the time.
This is not a good phone for people who are out and about all day or drivers of any sort, unless you have it plugged in the entire day. Forget about using it as a GPS unless its plugged in either, that will drain you battery to 0% in less than an hour.
People say this is due to poor design and rushed to market with crappy signal reception and GPS reception, same with bluetooth antennae. This might be the case, I ALSO have mine suddenly have NO BARS for no reason and I have to power off and on the phone to get a signal back.
ALSO half the time I am out and about and need data connection over 3G, even with bars I get NOTHING. It's very frustrating not to be able to use the phone for what I want to use it for.
I will be getting rid of this puppy as soon as possible and I would do it sooner if I didn't want to avoid a 2year contract.
The good part about the phone is it is MUCH faster and responsive than the Intercept and Optimus. Much better camera (has a flash - FINALLY!) and HD video. Front facing camera is nice to have but of course weaksauce in the resolution dept. Overall A+ for effort, D- in execution.
kneel said:
I have waited months to post my reviews. I had a Virgin Mobile Intercept and upgraded to this the day after it came out.
Battery life is HORRENDOUS. Not sure how anyone can possibly say its "OK". Sure if you are sitting at home or in the office all day, You can continually have it plugged in and charged. My lighter socket doesn't work in my car ATM so thank GOD I don't drive a lot, and for long periods, I would be SCREWED.
Essentially yes if you turn off GPS, Wi-Fi, Syncing your emails and such, etc etc, then your battery will last longer. But what good is the phone then? I have owned many other androids and they worked for almost a full day with moderate usage with ALL of those things turned on and sync'ing (including Latitude and automatic check-ins). I have lost all of that. I have google talk catching up for hours-old conversations whenever I hit a wifi spot that's saved in my phone.
Juice Defender was my "solution" But it has rendered my phone practically useless for anything besides just having a phone handy when needed. No apps, no moe use of all the bells and whistles that I loved about android in the first place!
I am dealing with it. It just sucks. Sure there are other smartphones with similar issues, and poor battery life, but this has to be possibly the worst or one of the worst. It just is highly unfortunate that this is the case.
Also: Bluetooth syncing works 50% of the time. Constantly have to turn it off and on to get my jawbone(s) to sync. God forbid you answer a call and want to switch over to bluetooth. In those cases it works about 20% of the time.
This is not a good phone for people who are out and about all day or drivers of any sort, unless you have it plugged in the entire day. Forget about using it as a GPS unless its plugged in either, that will drain you battery to 0% in less than an hour.
People say this is due to poor design and rushed to market with crappy signal reception and GPS reception, same with bluetooth antennae. This might be the case, I ALSO have mine suddenly have NO BARS for no reason and I have to power off and on the phone to get a signal back.
ALSO half the time I am out and about and need data connection over 3G, even with bars I get NOTHING. It's very frustrating not to be able to use the phone for what I want to use it for.
I will be getting rid of this puppy as soon as possible and I would do it sooner if I didn't want to avoid a 2year contract.
The good part about the phone is it is MUCH faster and responsive than the Intercept and Optimus. Much better camera (has a flash - FINALLY!) and HD video. Front facing camera is nice to have but of course weaksauce in the resolution dept. Overall A+ for effort, D- in execution.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This post is harsh. But I agree with most of it. Overall, the Triumph fits with a prepaid phone reputation: niggly bugs, poor battery life, poor service quality when compared to a higher end device.
The main problem here is that you'll be totally dependent on the community for real bug fixes. Every phone has bugs. But the bugs on the Triumph affect core usability and are on a totally different level. I would not count on Motorola to fix these bugs. If you're the tinkering type and a patient person, this may be worth it. But anyone who thinks that they are getting "something for free" is sadly mistaken. You are paying $25 a month for cell phone service, which is great . But all these bugs will make you pay with your time. How? Time looking for new roms, apps to fix bad battery life, time wondering why the touchscreen response is poor, time working around the bugs in every day life. If that is fun to you (and it may be for most people on this forum), fine. But you are paying with your time. Lesson learned is not to be so quick to fall for the specs. The company offering the phone and their track record of pushing out updates should play a large part in my decision next time.
I usually have WiFi turned on all day, and sync. I use the phone on my breaks and at lunch. When I get home I troll forums heavily and watch netflix occasionally. Not to mention Pandora for at least an hour per day. The battery will last if I dont plug it in until the next morning. Bottom line is that a lot of these issues can be fixed with quality software, and a battery cycle of 18-24 hours is something I can definitly live with. Compared to my Ascend, the Triumph is soooo much better in battery dept.
Sent from my rooted Moto Triumph
Battery issues
I am not sure why a lot of people have issues with battery, I unplugged my phone over 7 hrs ago and right now have 57% battery left, now before you hang your head at this look at my usage:
-Over 1 hour of talktime out of 7 hours.
-50+ texts back and forth
-10+ emails back and forth
-5-10 youtube videos
-5-10 pages of web browsing
-dl and install apps
-facebook at least 2-3 times every hour
And some more fiddling around so basically I have been on the phone non stop for 7 hours and its lost only 43%
That said, most of that usage came from the first 4 hours where it lost 36%(1+ hour of talktime, youtube videos im not really shocked there)
6th hour i texted and browsed etc only 5% battery used.
7th hour I just sent back and forth a couple of texts and only 2% battery used.
All this when i dont use any applications like task killers etc..i just let them run the way they want. Also no wifi, everything over 3g.
so imo if it gives that kind of battery its good enough for me. I was really scared when i bought cuz people were complaining so much about its battery but im fairly surprised. One factor that could be though is that I am not running the GPS, no need for it yet, when I do ill update what kind of usage i got.
I get 23 hours battery life with HEAVY usage and 30 if mostly idle. Many may disagree but if you live or work in a Wifi zone, keeping wifi on and setting it to never sleep greatly INCREASES battery life. 3G radio uses more juice especially if low signal or always searching. If you click on Battery Use and see your "time without a signal" is anything over 20% then you will most certainly see increase on battery life if you leave wifi locked on while in a wifi zone.
Also, side note: I have a 1500mah Anker battery that also increases juice time I recommend it!
Sent from my Rooted MOTWX435KT using XDA App
23 hrs with heavy usage? Unless yours came with a 2300ma battery and not the paltry 1380ma battery, there's NO WAY you're getting 23 hours under heave usage.
I'm using a 1500mah calibrated battery and yep, its true I leave wifi on and set to never sleep when I'm at home or work. If not, 3G absolutely murders my battery. My phone drops between 3% and 5% per hour.
Sent from my MOTWX435KT using XDA App
Well today I am having less luck with battery life. I watched two movies on Netflix and constant Facebook. I unplugged at 10:30am and it is now 4:48pm and I am at 52%.. still using 1500mah battery.
Sent from my MOTWX435KT using XDA App
troll somewhere else
I just came from a Samsung Epic 4G. I have to say battery life it at least the same but probably better on the Triumph. The battery is also quicker to swap out on the Triumph. Between the already better battery life and ability to quickly swap, I'm more than happy.
garrmack said:
I just came from a Samsung Epic 4G. I have to say battery life it at least the same but probably better on the Triumph. The battery is also quicker to swap out on the Triumph. Between the already better battery life and ability to quickly swap, I'm more than happy.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
As horrible as the Triumph batt life is then I'd hate to think how bad the Epic 4g's life was...wow!

[Q] Battery Troubleshooting/Feedback

I am currently using a Galaxy S3 SCH-I535, stock, unrooted, and have noticed decreased battery performance over-time. I have already viewed many similar threads to try and pinpoint particular issues (wakelocks, troublesome apps, etc.). I was hoping for some perspective whether my battery life is up to snuff.
I have seen many describe their phone life with ~3+ hours of screen time with moderate usage. I use my phone intermittently throughout the work day to chat (Text messages, Hangouts), check e-mail, and browse the internet. I do not use Wi-fi, aside from when I am home in the morning or at night, and make sure to turn it off if not connected to a network. I have sync turned on, but the only accounts I have syncing are Google Now and Gmail. I have location services/GPS/Bluetooth turned off, and run in Power Saving mode with brightness at ~50% and haptic feedback turned on. My reception is subpar, usually about 2 bars and spotty 4g connections at work. I do not stream music, play games, or watch videos during typical use. No facebook, weather apps, etc. that can be culprits some times. At best, with the usage habits described, it is typical that I get 2 hours screen time over a single day (~16 hrs) before I get in the single digit battery %.
I've attached some screen shots I took of battery stats at ~50% drained (I didn't get a screen grab for it but at that battery % I had probably 1:05 to 1:15 hours of screen time). I just started using Wakelock Detector to find any problem apps - after tweaking some apps last week this has been pretty typical behavior. I have even swapped batteries with my wife's S3 to see if it was a battery problem, but did not notice a difference.
Any feedback would be greatly appreciated. Are my expectations for battery life too high? Is this typical, or am I running lower than I should be?
That is pretty good but this comment is by someone who is rooted with a custom ROM and custom kernel since I bought the phone 7 months ago. I can't really say that is the average battery life for the device.
This looks pretty normal to me. You said you had spotty 4g coverage, while your phone is coming in and out of 4g service you'll get decreased battery life. Same happens with your mobile data and Wifi signals if they aren't strong connections.
It looks like your phone is running pretty well. People getting 3+ hours of battery life are either using their phone all the time and hit that threshold in something like 8 hours, have amazing coverage, and/or have no syncing services turned on. A key to run away Wakelocks are having a high battery usage that is coming from something other than your screen, such as media and android system. Other Wakelocks you can't do too much about. There's a thread that is titled the noobs guide to Wakelocks that gives you a pretty good direction trying to isolate Wakelocks and finding fixes for them.
I routinely get about 2-3 hours of battery life in a good coverage area in 16 hours, if I'm in a spotty area my battery will drop much faster. At a friends house with worse coverage I'll be lucky to hit 2 hours. I pretty much use my phone the same way as you.
Sent from my SCH-I535 using Tapatalk 2

Categories

Resources