03/21/2011
Austin FraktGot me a Droid X yesterday. That’s one fancy little machine!
Anyway, I decided to enter the modern age and not turn off my cell phone at home. With the Droid doing so much work, alerting me to all manner of electronic communications that might have anything to do with me, I left it on. All night.
Upon waking this morning I found the battery drained. It went from a 90% charge to 0% charge in eight hours, during which I received a whopping three emails. I had it on the most conservative battery management option. WTF?!?
Is it because I left it on WiFi mode? Is there something else running in the background I should turn off? What did the Droid X do all night?
Tonight I’ll power it down, perhaps plugged into the charger. Still, it’s a bit odd to me that the thing can’t sit idle for 8 hours and not waste itself.
While I’m talking Droid, some other questions for readers: What’s your favorite app for reading PDFs on the device? What’s your favorite app for reading news? Any other apps I must know about?
by pck on March 21st, 2011 at 07:28
Austin,
Get Beeston
by pck on March 21st, 2011 at 07:37
Whoops sorry about last post my phone misbehaving now.
Get NewsRob if you use google reader, lets you read rss (like say TIE) without needing to have a net connection.
Get Juice Defender for battery life.
And from what I understand wifi actually uses less battery than the data networks but still more than turning data off entirely.
by Austin Frakt on March 21st, 2011 at 07:47
Other readers write me to recommend:
“ColorNote” which is free and is just a ‘sticky pad’ type system.
Shortyz (crosswords), Runkeeper, Gasbuddy, Doubletwist
by Emma on March 21st, 2011 at 09:17
Droids update themselves at night I’m pretty sure. Since you just got it, it probably had several updates to complete.
iPhones are better.
by Austin Frakt on March 21st, 2011 at 09:40
@Emma – Your first two sentences are logical. iPhones are different. I tested. 🙂
by emilswift on March 21st, 2011 at 14:18
Wi-Fi is constantly sending out a signal (call it “search/receive) and is one of the highest energy consumers — as well as your GPS signal search. You don’t need to leave Wi-Fi on since 3g doesn’t use nearly as much energy and any Net interactions will happen over the 3g net. I don’t see why you don’t just leave the Droid plugged into its charger anyway at night and that way, first thing in the AM it’ll be 100%?
by Austin Frakt on March 21st, 2011 at 14:32
@emilswift – Advice received! My behavior was shaped by my prior phone. Though I used it for email and web, it could go a week or so on one charge. I did not imagine one night would drain the Droid no matter what its settings. I was wrong!
by Michele Swift on March 21st, 2011 at 16:28
I was just reading the OP and I thought…”my husband should reply to this email”. So I start reading the replies and there is his reply. I had to laugh to myself about that. He is my #1 techy geek!
by Austin Frakt on March 21st, 2011 at 17:32
First confirmed husband and wife commenters. Next, I want two people to meet in the comments, fall in love, and marry. Then I will consider this blog to have been worth the effort. 🙂
by Aaron G on March 21st, 2011 at 18:23
Your Driod apps probably have the polling setting rather high. Messaging service is still not widely adopted on a lot of Driod apps.This drains the battery really fast. I have a Galaxy S on Froyo. If I do not touch my phone, the battery will last all day. If I use it lightly, I will have to charge it at about 8pm.
I adore Flipboard, but it is hard to keep track of articles I like to reread or for future research.
It is funny that smart phones die so fast. I was at SXSW and my phone died about mid afternoon everyday. My friend’s razor phone (yes that is a 2004 phone) lasts for 4 days without a charge.
by Ravi on March 22nd, 2011 at 01:55
I use both Acrobat Reader (free) and Repligo Reader (paid) for reading PDFs. Acrobat is the most faithful to the original PDF, but Repligo has a “reading mode” that tries to extract the text of a PDF and make it easier to read on a small screen. Depending on what I’m looking for I use one or the other.
As for news, I tend to just browse to Google News rather than using an app.
In terms of other non-obvious apps, my favorite is ShopSavvy (free). It can scan barcodes of what you’re looking at and tell you if there are better local or online deals. Ringdroid (free) is cool for free custom ringtones (it’ll take any mp3 you have and edit it down – it works with other formats as well but in some cases like Ogg Vorbis, you’ll need to pre-edit the sound clip).
One other tip – make sure you set Flash to load on-demand in the browser. That way you can run Flash apps when you want to, but they don’t get in the way when you’re not interested.
by Austin Frakt on March 22nd, 2011 at 05:30
@Ravi – How do you set Flash to load on-demand?
by Ravi on March 22nd, 2011 at 05:50
From the browser Settings menu go to Enable plug-ins. They’re strangely vague about it, but plug-ins effectively means Flash (I don’t know if there are any other Android browser plug-ins). Your choices are Always on, On demand and Off.
On demand will make Flash apps appear as empty boxes with little arrows in them – and you’ll have to touch them to execute them. It is pretty-much how things look if you use Firefox with some of the flash-blocking extensions, which I tend to do on the desktop anyway.
by Austin Frakt on March 22nd, 2011 at 11:18
A friend writes me:
by emilswift on March 22nd, 2011 at 11:39
Thanks, Ravi! Didn’t know about that browser setting… I’m sure it’ll help a lot! (NOTE: I was confused, thinking at first Ravi meant the Settings on the homepage — but he said “browser” and that’s just what he meant…!)
by Mary L on March 24th, 2011 at 11:30
My Droid X will last a couple of days with light use. Turn off Wifi, GPS & Bluetooth when not in use. I also have my screen setting to low. I only charge the battery when I get the low battery notification, and don’t leave it on the charger more than 2 hours. I was told leaving it on the charger will shorten the battery life. I’ve only had it for 6 weeks, but so far so good.
Good info on the browser setting , I’ll give that a try!
by Austin Frakt on March 24th, 2011 at 12:10
@Mary L – It’s sort of impossible to leave it on for only 2 hours if one puts it on before going to bed. What a nuisance!
by Mary L on March 24th, 2011 at 12:17
Yes, I know – but I usually put it on the charger around 7pm and take it off the charger before lights out… works for me…
by Austin Frakt on March 24th, 2011 at 13:05
@Mary L – Yeah, but my recent experience is that I cannot leave it on all night. It will drain. I could power it down, but I thought it likes to do updates. I do wonder how big a deal this is. How long until I see serious degradation in battery performance? How much does a new battery cost? Got any links or insights on this? Any hard data?
by Austin Frakt on March 24th, 2011 at 13:12
See http://www.droidxforums.com/forum/droid-x-faqs/4929-charging-droid-x-battery.html . I’m not convinced there is a problem charging all night. Got anything to the contrary?
I did some more searching. It is a little hard to get a clear, unambiguous statement about leaving an lithium ion battery in the charger. I’ll say this, it is clear that that is not among the most important pieces of advice. See http://www.wikihow.com/Make-Your-Cell-Phone-Battery-Last-Longer .
If this were a big deal, a lot of people would say so.
by emilswift on March 28th, 2011 at 07:56
Leave the Droid X on the charger as much as you want — the Verizon Wireless User Guide reads: “Motorola batteries and charging systems have circuitry that protects the battery from damage from overcharging.”
A basic error is made when one thinks of the Droid as a mobile phone — it’s actually a mobile computing platform and performs many, simultaneous processes in the background. Most of these you can control — but you have to educate yourself on what they are and which ones to turn off when not in use.
by dustin on March 31st, 2011 at 14:29
I had the same problem with my droid x but mine was older I just took it in and received a new one but yours may be a manufacturers defect why don’t u go get it replaced and another thing invest into the extended battery it last quite a bit longer
by Erich on April 1st, 2011 at 14:41
I switched to the Droid X from a Blackberry, and spent a lot of time swearing. Mostly about the performance and battery life. However, the following 3 things made the world of difference for me, and I’m happy with it now.
1. Update to the latest firmware. Settings > About Phone > System Updates. Wipes your phone, but I saw a TREMENDOUS improvement going from 2.2 to 2.3.
2. Keep WIFI off. As mentioned above, I’ve found it to be a big battery drain unless:
3. Select “Maximum battery saver” in Settings > Battery Manager. Turns off data if not used every 15 minutes, but all of my apps I care about for data have refresh buttons.
HTH,
Erich