Best Verizon Android battery life?

You will probably get the best battery life out of a Motorola Droid 2 with the extended battery. The HTC Incredible is not known for its great battery life.

 

It's been my experience with the Droid X that, considering how much it does, the battery life is pretty good. If I left it alone in stand-by, I could get up to two or three days. With minimal use, probably a day and a half. Even with calls, I still have a good amount of battery left. Keep in mind that signal strength, data use, app use, and active apps all contribute to battery life.

I would recommend (when/if you purchase an Android phone) downloading a task killer app. There are several "automatic" apps Verizon locks on there. You can't remove them (uninstall) and they always go active even if you don't use them (on my phone Skype, Amazon MP3, and a few others do this).

Expect to have less battery life on an Android phone than a regular phone. The amazing screen resolution, processor speed, and other things drain the battery much quicker than normal use on a non-smartphone.

One way I combat this is having a car charger, and regularly charging it at home or on the road. I also turn my phone off at night. If turning your phone off wouldn't work for you, place it in "Airplane" mode. I have found this helps battery life when I don't need the phone, and I can still use the alarm (which won't work if the phone is off).

You can't go wrong with the Droid X, Droid 2, or the Incredible. You're just not going to get 10 days of stand-by battery life (like I use to get on my old LG Voyager). Android phones are just too powerful. Expect less battery life and that way you might be surprised with the battery life you DO get, which surprised me on the Droid X.

 

mike, are you sure the alarm doen't work when the phone is off? i thought it did, but now i'm not sure. i ha e to try it...

 

It didn't on mine the first time I tried it. I'll have to check it again, though...

 

I have to agree that the battery on the Incredible isnt great at all! I had to get an extended battery to get any kind of standby/use out of it. I am lucky that I have 2 regular batteries and an extended battery to keey me happy

The standard battery on it is 1300 mAh vs. 2100 mAh for the extended battery.

 

Just did another test, and no, the standard alarm on the Droid X does not go off if the phone is off. Unless there is an alarm app that works even with the phone off, it's a no go. Not sure if this is just a Moto thing or all Android devices?

 

The standard alarm does not go off when the phone is off on mine either.

Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 2.1-update1; en-ca; SonyEricssonX10a Build/2.1.A.0.435) AppleWebKit/530.17 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile Safari/530.17

 

This is fairly common question with Androids and iPhones...and the answer that I have always found is 'no', the phone being off, means that, off. Not a design flaw, just the way that it is.

Unlike the simple Nokia's we had 10 years ago, where the alarm would work with the phone off.

P.S. Charlyee, you asked me some weeks ago what I meant by 'fragmentation' and Google not being happy about the situation...uneven battery life and the need for 'app killers' is one the examples given by Google CEO...for a given battery size and other hardware, each mgfr, Carrier or App developer will write code that can affect the phone battery life - partly a consequence of 'being open' and lack of integration of OS with hardware, but also the poor way that Android handles multitasking with battery usage (according to webxperts): hence the question from the Original Poster as to which Android phone gives the best battery life.

 

​

"The need for app killers" coming from the Google CEO. When? What article?

http://forums.wirelessadvisor.com/android-phones/78339-myth-android-devices-need-task-killers.html

 

I think that the Google CEO is smart enough not to say that, and I did not intend to imply that he did. The recommendation for app killers comes from Android users I know...and Mobile Mike's post above.

What was said by Google is this:

""I have noticed there are a few people who have phones where there is software running in the background that just sort of exhausts the battery quickly."

"The primary consumer of the battery life on these phones is the transmit/receive circuit. So tuning that and obviously figuring out a way to not use too much of that extends your battery life," added Google CEO Eric Schmidt.

"And people bring in applications that are not particularly smart about that, which is what Larry is trying to get at."

 

App killers are typically not recommended or encouraged, they do more harm than good. The best control is to isolate the rogue app that is a battery hog and delete that.

The post by SteveW, that budney linked to is very informative.

I believe Mike was referring to Motorola bloatware running in the background, these are more irritating than battery consuming. They are basically dormant and ready for action when needed.

When I look at my battery stats, the biggest draw is the display and the Android system is way down the list.

Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 2.1-update1; en-ca; SonyEricssonX10a Build/2.1.A.0.435) AppleWebKit/530.17 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile Safari/530.17

 

I assume carrier bloatware = carrier apps?

Seems to be more than a few highly rated task/app killers on the Android Market, so one assumes that they are useful to some...to preserve battery life...judging from the reviews as recently as March.

To sssster, good luck with your choice on the Verizon android phone selection...you are in good hands with all the WA users here and their expert advice!

And Welcome to WA.

 

I went ahead and uninstalled the free task killer app I've had for a while. I saw other friends with the app and thought it would be useful. Though I haven't noticed any discernible difference in battery life having had it for about a month now, after reading the link budney referenced, I'm going to try life without it for a while.

And yes, Verizon bloatware is annoying... Especially because you can't delete those apps. :rant:

 

A poorly coded app will drain battery life, that's a fact on any phone/OS. Not sure how "fragmentation" comes into play there I've coded apps for BlackBerry, Symbian and Android and never saw or heard of any case where the app ran more "efficently" on one particular phone than another due to differences in the way the software interacted with the hardware.

I think these are very general statements, and can be applied to just about any phone on the market today, not just Android but iPhone/iOS, Symbian/Nokia, etc. Fortunately in Android, there is a "Battery Use" display built into the OS so you can see exactly what is draining your battery. This kind of negates any need for any "app killer" program, since you can decide for yourself which apps to terminate if something is using more battery than you expected.

App popularity doesn't necessarily reflect usefulness. If I recall correctly, the "Fart App" was one of Apples most highly downloaded and highly rated apps of all time.

 

Thanks Mike. Here are some useful pointers from PCMag on how to preserve Android battery life.

Most apply to any smartphone. Except for the recommendation to turn off adobe flash- a big power hog- that Apple isn't allowing in it's devices. And another one about Widgets- which is new to me

http://mobile.pcmag.com/device2/art.../www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2367542,00.asp


Sent from my iPhone 4

 

Thanks for that! I didn't realize Flash could be set to "On Demand". That's very useful, as you have the option to choose when to load Flash content and when not to:

In Android you can choose which icons ("widgets") you want to have displayed on your main screen, which is very nice to have quick access to your most commonly used apps. This is something I was wishing Symbian and BlackBerry would have implemented, but didn't. Well, they did in a sub-menu, but not on the main screen. I assume Apple doesn't give this option either then?

 

You are welcome...why not give me an 'official Thanks for posting' point?

 

You're welcome!

Thank you for coming back and saying so. Many newbies post, get advice and are never heard from again.

Welcome and stick around!


Sent from my iPhone 4