I have had the same problem happen now once every 2-3 weeks or so (usually overnight) that something rapidly drains my battery where it goes from a near-full charge (80% or so) down to 0% within a few hours on my Motorola Milestone. Usually it happens overnight, but once it happened in the morning (ie: 90% at about 8am and then 20% around 11am). I looked at the Android settings tab that says whats using the battery, but there was nothing unusual there. I think it said a 5 minute phone call I made was responsible for most of my battery usage , which is impossible, I'm in good coverage. And of course when this happens overnight, there's no phone calls going on (and I don't think the phone is making any software download/uploads behind my back, since I monitor data usage and everything looks normal) I was thinking maybe some app I have installed is misfiring and causing the battery drain, or something with Androids OS (2.1) but this battery-drainage never happened on my HTC G1 (OS 1.6) that has exactly the same apps installed on it. So I'm trying to narrow it down to maybe a hardware issue with the phone itself or the battery (altho I have 2 batteries and the problem happened with each of them), or then something with OS 2.1? Has anyone else heard or had the same happen to them? This happening once every 2-3 weeks now is really becoming too much.
That's a weird one you have going on over there. I do not think I have encountered that on my Droid 2, however, I keep it plugged in every night. The only battery drain I have seen is some game I downloaded kept the GPS running the entire time for no reason. Do you see anything on the phones dedicated forums, like androidforums.com?
Any chance you have Background Synch enabled or Google Latitude enabled to report location? Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 1.6; en-us; SonyEricssonX10a Build/R2CA016) AppleWebKit/528.5+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.2 Mobile Safari/525.20.1
Another possibility is that your local tower was off-line for an hour or so for maintenance on the nights you noticed the big battery drain. Your phone would be constantly scanning for a signal while the tower was off-line and that would quickly consume the battery. royc
I see it with a poor signal strength areas. I know the forums say to vet your apps well - a poorly written app will cause all sorts of issues if it doesn't close properly.
Check to see if you have Wifi engaged, or any apps running in the backgroud. If Wifi is on, and not able to connect it will keep polling and it is just like having poor signal it will drain your battery. I assume you have good signal? One other thing you can try is turn your phone off, then back on that way if anything is still running in the background it should stop. BTW have you downloaded any new apps, games etc? If so, maybe one of them is still running in the bacground even though you may not think so.
Thanks for all the feedback, but I'm really not sure what the reason is still. If a tower went down at night, it could be a possible reason. But then this "battery drain" happened one morning in my office where reception is excellent.. I know my wifi is off, I have a widget that shows when it's on, so it's not that. Don't think it's GPS either, since that little satellite thing appears when the GPS is active. I don't think apps are the problem, I only have a few, and I vet them pretty good, but you never know. A re-boot is always a good idea. I took the Otterbox case off a week or 2 ago and it hasn't happened since then, but that could just be a coincidence.
it happened again: this morning I woke up and my battery was at 80%, I charged it 20min or so to 100% then went out the door. After a 5min phone call, I looked and my battery was 5%!! I plugged it into a charger on my USB port, and with the low voltage on the USB port, it usually takes 1 hour or so to fully charge. But after 5-10min it was fully charged again I'm beginning to think the battery meter on the phone is whats actually flakey. I think I need to power-cycle the phone at least once every few days to keep the battery meter in-line.
I wipe my battery stats (Rooted) when I flash a new OS. And they say to drain all the way down after that, and charge to 100% while turned off. Unplug, use 5%, plug back in to 100%. Helps the OS learn the battery.
WIFI, 3g, google map, bluetooth...all the smart functions on your smartphone are battery killers. But if you stop use these functions to save your battery life, then why do you buy a smartphone at the first place?! So, a better way to copy with the battery problem is to get a usb charger to make sure your phone can be charged frequently, or to get a backup battery to standby so you can keep your cell phone alive.
Actually, wifi helps battery life. A decent wifi signal will do wonders for your battery when compared to a weak cell signal.
you have to always closed your apps if it is running or may be coz of playing games or internet usage
