Comments on: Motorola Droid: Battery Life Review

By: Ruth

Ruth — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 18:21:35 +0000

We just upgraded our phones and I was a little disappointed in the battery life I love the phone! I just wish the battery lasted longer then a day. I am used to my media phone and I could go at least a few days without charging.

By: George

George — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 03:30:30 +0000

Interesting, but I’d like to see what’s the battery life when you download file in 3G.

By: Stephen Carmona

Stephen Carmona — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 21:54:10 +0000

I have decided that purchasing an extra OEM battery from Amazon is the easy way to deal with this power situation. It cost me $20. The extended battery they sell does not fit the car mount or the desktop mounted charger. Us Droid heads can carry an extra battery unlike our I phone brothers.

By: Derka

Derka — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 20:23:32 +0000

Obviously, a lot of you have upgraded from dumb phones or BlackBerries (both of which have excellent battery life).

Check it out people. 3G data uses a crap load of your battery. Check your settings and make sure you set your fetching to what you’ll be able to stand. If you need reliable e-mail, get a BlackBerry. If not, then set your fetch time to over an hour. It will still check to see if you have new mail every time you open the application. USE Wi-Fi if you are going to be doing anything that is data intensive because it doesn’t use 3G when Wi-Fi is on. Use GPS only when you need it. The Droid has a really bright screen even on the lower settings. Don’t use auto dim because it changes every time you tilt your phone. A day of battery life is more than acceptable in a smartphone these days.

Another thing to remember is that when you get a new phone, you are constantly playing with it. NORMAL use is going to be measured after you have settled back into your normal use with the phone.

For all of you peeps that might be heading over to Apple, you are in for a big surprise. Turning on 3G absolutely cripples that phone. Not to mention you are going to be dropping 1/3 of your calls.

Battery life when you first get the phone is definitely going to be an issue because it is constantly updating all of your contacts, emails, FaceBook, plus any other service that you might be using. Use the phone for at least a week before you come to any conclusions.

Bad batteries have been an issue in the Droid. If you do all of this and it’s still bad, Verizon should not have a problem replacing it, if you use some tact.

I guess what I want to say is that a smartphone user should be smart. If you want awesome battery life (not to mention -$30 on your bill, get a dumb phone).

By: Ed

Ed — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 14:54:53 +0000

When I first got my Droid on 11/7, battery life seemed to be an issue. I have done several full discharges and recharges and suddenly life is much better. I am an average user with 10 to 15 calls per day, several texts and several web-browsing sessions. The phone will go all day and into the next day before it needs to be recharged. The battery meter does not seem to be particularly accurate.

By: Anne-Marie Brown

Anne-Marie Brown — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 13:00:10 +0000

I have a new DROID – and it took my battery 4 HOURS to charge from 30% to 100% – not using it while it was charging other than to check the time a few times.

I’m confused – why would it take so long?

By: Aaron

Aaron — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 08:20:28 +0000

Ok so I have had my Droid for close to a month and a half. I have gone through the process of rooting, unrooting, and just about everything under the sun with this phone in the last month. One tool that I use and hold dearly to my heart is Battery Left BETA: found on market. It logs all your usage and makes its best guess as to what your battery % is. not by 10% increments. However it does take a long time of using you phone so that it can get used to how you use your phone. If you are a battery eating machine like myself it will begin to see that and it will let you know depending on what is going on with your phone.
Because of my use it would gauge that I have anywhere from about 15-20 hours of battery life. I never completely tested this to see if it was accurate, but it gives you the time at which you battery will die. ei: if you keep using your phone as it is, it will die at say 5am without a charge.
Some recommendations for getting a very accurate reading are: (1)keeping you brightness set to what you are comfortable with. (2) make sure that you install the app when you have full battery (3)go about using you phone like you normally would. and after about 3-6 weeks you will get a very accurate reading.
Until you get to that final 3rd week or so the readings that you see will not be extremely accurate but you will have a pretty good idea. The data will continue to change the longer you use the app.
Best word of advice for everyone is to use taskiller or what ever app closing program it is you use, and makes sure that the services that you are not using are closed that will help save you battery immensely.
Hope this helped some of you out.

By: Alvin

Alvin — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 04:40:25 +0000

I tried using skype mobile and basically it ate my battery from 60%-15% with in 2 hrs? is it the application or my standard battery fault?

By: eric

eric — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 14:41:58 +0000

In many ways the battery life of my Droid is comparable to my previous smart phones. The one exception is if I have the phone with me and don’t use it. My old phones would last a long time with no use, the Droid seems to get depleted even if its in my jacket doing nothing.

I assume this is due to the constant syncing with Google and other apps, as well as the wireless functions (GPS, bluetooth, wifi). If I am out of the house overnight the only sure fire way I’ve found to conserve the battery is to turn the phone off.

I recently installed the power widget and an app called ‘advanced task killer.’ I’m going to experiment with these and see if I can get a decent battery life without turning the phone off which defeats the point of having a phone and being able to receive calls.

By: dsmith

dsmith — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 22:23:08 +0000

oh by the way – a couple of cool things that I picked up researching the battery:
1. Download a free app called spare parts. It has a much more detailed and complete battery status listing.
2. The power control widget is very useful. I use bluetooth from time to time and it is much easier to use this widget to turn it on/off as well as GPS, wifi, etc. Touch and hold the screen in any blank spot, select Widgets and install the power control widget.

By: dsmith

dsmith — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 22:18:07 +0000

First off, I couldn’t be happier with my Droid phone. I never thought that I needed a smart phone, but this thing does absolutely everything.

I do think that there is a battery issue going on here, but I think it has something to do with software. I have had my phone for about a month now. I take it off the charger at 6:30 AM and put it back on at around 11:30 PM. Typically, it never reaches orange on the indicator. I am not an extremely heavy user, but I do have my GPS always on, use the mail, gmail and gtalk often and use the media player when I am in the car, and the I actually use the phone as well. So not all the time on, but good usage.

Now, the strange thing is, that there has been other times when the battery will go from an 80% charge to 15% at the drop of a hat. Exact same usage as above. This has happened 2 or 3 times. Finally yesterday, it went from 80% to completely dead without warning. It was so dead that the USB charger would not charge it and I had to plug it in the wall. Verizon did replace the battery after telling me that I should turn off everything including mail and gtalk (what is the purpose of having a smart phone???)

Anyway, my point is that the battery life typically is amazing in my opinion, but there seems to be a glitch or a short somewhere. Maybe 2.1 will fix this?

By: Droidz

Droidz — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 05:08:20 +0000

My new Droid lasted 4 hrs with heavy texting and downloading. Sleeps every 15 seconds and brightness set to the lowest.

By: ak

ak — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 18:27:49 +0000

With regards to battery, what is advisable? Is it good to let the battery run down and then charge it or is it good to keep continuously charging it. Some devices like sony camera,the manufactures recommend running down the battery to continous charging.

By: Jim Powell

Jim Powell — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 18:30:10 +0000

I am having severe problems with the battery life on my Mot Droid. It is only a month old and Verizon has already given me a new battery. It drains itself FAST! Form 100% charge to totally deat in a couple hours. And I use the App Killer every time I pick up the phone! Keep all the GPS, Blutooth, background data, etc turned off except when I am using that function. Last night I charged the phone around 6PM to 100%. Unplugged it as usual. Went to check some data on the web at 10PM and the battery was HOT! Internal temp according to battery monitor was 107deg. And it was at 5%. Nothing running. This is a big problem with what should be just a PHONE!

By: that iphone guy

that iphone guy — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 17:41:55 +0000

I have had my iphone 3g for about a year now and the average battery life is 28 hrs but i really want the droid.I want to know if i should give up my iphone for the droid.i am in high school i only text about 25-35 times a day and i am a heavy internet user will this phone support my lifestyle?