Droid Phone Battery Tips: 8 Tricks to Reduce Battery Drain
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Below are eight Droid Phone battery tips and tricks to reduce battery drain. Today we’ll answer the question:
“What tips do you have up your sleeve that will help me save battery life?”
(Watch this tutorial as a video at Droid Phone Battery Tips Video.)
The following 8 tips will help you better understand how your Droid phone is draining your battery and what settings you can change to reduce battery drain. Ultimately, the more you ask your Droid to do, the more battery life it will eat up. That said, you can optimize certain Droid phone settings to meet your requirements.
Droid Phone Battery Tips: 8 Tricks to Reduce Battery Drain
Trick #1 – Adjust Brightness Setting
Adjust Brightness Slider
The first of the Droid phone battery tips is to adjust the brightness setting on your phone’s display by moving the brightness slider.
- Press Menu
- Press Settings
- Press Sound and Display
- Scroll to and Press Brightness
- You have two options for brightness:
- Move the slider to the right or left for more or less brightness. The farther right you move the slider, the brighter your diplay (screen) will be and the more battery the phone will use.
- Press on Automatic Brightness and allow your Droid to control the brightness of your display based upon the amount of ambient light.
Droid Phone Battery Tips: 8 Tricks to Reduce Battery Drain
Trick #2 – Adjust Time Out Feature
This second of the Droid phone battery tips is another modification you can make on the disply. This is the “Time Out” adjustment. With this feature, you set how long you want your phone display to stay light before it automatically shuts itself off.
Press the Screen Timeout Option You Want
For instance, you finish a phone call and set your Droid down to make yourself a note. Then you decide to make another call. If you took your sweet time writing the note…your phone most likely turned itself off. This is the function of the “Time Out” feature. You can change this setting to be short or long. With the understanding, of course, that the longer your phone is on, the quicker your battery will drain.
- Press Settings
- Press Sound and Display
- Scroll to and Press Screen Timeout
- Press the time duration you would like. Options range from 15 seconds to 30 minutes.
You will want to experiment with this feature to see what time delay works best for you – it truely is a balancing act between ease of use and and battery drain.
Droid Phone Battery Tips: 8 Tricks to Reduce Battery Drain
Trick #3 - Update Settings on the Power Control Widget
Special Note: Some of these settings will override other settings you may have made…such as the display brightness from tip #1 above.
GPS Symbol on HTC Incredible
GPS Symbol on Motorola
The 5 features of the Power Control Widget (from left to right) are: Wifi, Bluetooth, GPS, Sync and Brightness. You can turn these items off to save battery life simply with the press of their buttom.
We have a couple of tutorials on the Power Control Widget. You can read or watch the videos:
What does the Power Control Widget Do?
Watch the Video Read the Tutorial
(click links above or thumbnail to the left.)
How to install the Power Control Widget
Watch the Video Read the Tutorial
(click links above or thumbnail to the left.)
Droid Phone Battery Tips: 8 Tricks to Reduce Battery Drain
Trick #4 – Kill Running Apps
Our fourth of the Droid phone battery tips deals with apps (Phone Applications). Your phone runs apps even when you aren’t using them. You simply leave and go to a different screen when
Kill Apps with Advanced Task Killer
you’re finished with an app, which means it’s still running, waiting for your return. Apps may close eventually (but certain ones never do), but you can force them to close with an app made just for that purpose. We recommend the Advanced Task Killer App. It’s FREE from the Android Market.
To install the Advanced Task Killer App
- Press Market
- Press Apps
- Press All applications
- Press Top Free
- Scroll and Press Advanced Task Killer
- Press Install
To Access the Advanced Task Killer App (you may want to create a shortcut on your home screen for easy access, since you’ll use this one a lot!)
- Open All Programs
- Press Advanced Task Killer
- Select or Verify the Apps you want to kill are selected (most are selected by default)
- Press “KILL selected apps” up top
Droid Phone Battery Tips: 8 Tricks to Reduce Battery Drain
Trick #5 – Turn OFF Live Wallpapers
Use a Static Wallpaper to Save Battery Power
If you wait to reduce battery drain, the 5th of the Droid phone battery tips is a must. Turn OFF live wallpapers!
They sure are fun and pretty to look at, but they definitely reduce your Droid battery life faster than a static wall paper will (sorry!). We recommend that you find a static wallpaper that you can live with or use pictures of your family or pets.
- Press Menu
- Press Wallpaper
- Press Wallpaper Gallery (Motorala) or HTC wallpapers (HTC)
- Select the static wallpaper you like best
- Press Set wallpaper
Droid Phone Battery Tips: 8 Tricks to Reduce Battery Drain
Trick #6 Turn Off Apps That Need Constant Updating
The next of our Droid phone battery tips deals with Apps that need to be constantly updated. As you may surmise, apps that frequently update will be draining your battery life with each update.
Apps for games, investments and stocks, weather and the like frequently update so they can provide you with the latest and most current information. If you don’t need constant updates, turn them off. You can use the Advanced Task Killer from Tip #4 above to help. You may be able to adjust the settings of the app itself to limit the amount of updating it performs.
Droid Phone Battery Tips: 8 Tricks to Reduce Battery Drain
Trick #7 – Use Airplane Mode
Lucky Trick #7 in our Droid phone battery tips series deals with “Airplane Mode”. To increase battery life, you can place your phone in airplane mode. This will disable your Droid from sending or receiving calls and will disable your cell phone from sending or receiving data.
Use Airplane Mode When You Are Off the Grid
You may want to use airplane mode when you are in a location with poor reception. Your phone will quickly use up your cell phone battery just searching for reception. (note: this is a good setting to use when you are using your Droid on a plane)
You may also want to use airplane mode if you don’t want calls and want to conserve your battery to listen to music, play games or to use other apps. Getting “off the grid” will allow you more time to use your Droid for its non-communication features longer.
- Press and hold down the power button a little longer than usual.
- Select Airplane Mode
The airplane icon will appear at the top of your display indicating that airplane mode is on.
Don’t forget to turn airplane mode off (disable it) when you are ready to receive calls and data again. Follow the steps above to turn airplane mode off — the on/off function is a toggle.
Droid Phone Battery Tips: 8 Tricks to Reduce Battery Drain
Trick #8 – Monitor Battey Usage
Monitor Your Battery Life
Droid phone battery tip #8 is about monitoring your battery usage. Did you know that you can monior your Droid battery usage to see which Droid phone functions are using your battery the most? This handy feature will help you make adjustments to the above mentioned tricks!
- Press Menu
- Press Settings
- Scroll and Press About Phone
- Press Battery Use (Motorola) or Battery (HTC)
- Press Battery Use (HTC)
The first summary screen will tell you in percentages what features are using up your battery life. Press on an item to see more information. When you select Display, for instance, your Droid phone will tell you details about your Display and backlight functions.
(Watch this tutorial as a video at Droid Phone Battery Tips Video.)
Use My Droid "Power Tip"
Use My Droid “Power Tip”
There’s good news and bad news about cell reception. If your phone isn’t getting good reception it will search and search and search for reception. This is great if you’re talking on the phone and don’t want to have calls dropped. But this is bad for the battery life on your Droid. All this searching drains your battery life, and fast.
One thing you can do is make sure your phone and network are paired up as best as possible.
- Dial Star 228
- Press Send
- Press 1 and wait for programming to finish
This helps your phone lock into a better signal, thereby saving your battery life.
Droid Phone Battery Tips: 8 Tricks to Reduce Battery Drain
Conclusion
Now you have at least 8 tips and tricks to improve your Droid phone battery life. And all of them are free! Experiment with making adjustments as needed, turning things on and off or adjusting how long they are on, etc. See what settings work best for you and see how much battery life you can save.
You could also get another battery to keep handy for when you need it! Click here for info:
(Watch this tutorial as a video at Droid Phone Battery Tips Video.)
Droid Phone Battery Tips – Feel Free To Comment
Has this Droid phone battery tips tutorial been helpful? Let us know – leave a comment below.
Tags: Battery, battery life, droid, droid phone, Power Control, power control widget, Widget
42 responses to Droid Phone Battery Tips
hi i was lookin at ur vid on youtube bout savin battery think its very good nd helped me out but just wonderin bout the dialin *228 and pressin one thing im usein a galaxy s gt 19000 mobile nd when i try this it wont work wonderin why nd im liven in ireland if that makes ne difference
@Tony I do think that the country you are in may have a different way to interface with your Cell Towers. My video addresses cell phones in the USA. You may need to check with your local service provider to see how to re-register your phone on the network.
I’ve read elsewhere that *228 is for Verizon only. Comments?
@william, this is true, *228 may only be for Verizon. You can always check it by dialing it to see if it takes you to the proper menu/reset options. Other providers may use the same code to perform the same function, try it out.
Thanks. This is all very helpful. Some tips were good reminders and others were new. I found you when I was trying to move apps around from screen to screen. That was very helpful.
I love your tips, it’s very helpful. I’ve noticed on some websites and videos, people have their droid display running at 5 – 15%, whereas mine is running at around 68% (down from 87%). Do you know other ways to get down to that point, other than tips you mentioned? I appreciate your help.
@Ray, the display is a battery hog, no doubt about it. You can make the display go dim quicker, or make it less bright… both are ideas that help reduce its drain on the battery.
I have the brightness at 0, and have the screen timeout at 15, yet my display is still at 86%! I don’t know what to do!
@Caroline I’ll have to assume that screen timeout at 15 means 15 seconds. The screen is usually the largest battery drain… it could be you’ve done all you can do. Remember, the “Battery Use” indicator is showing you a “Percentage” – it is simply stating that among all the other items using the battery, the Display is using it the most. That is normal.
I’m slowly but surely getting to like me new Droid phone. I’m a standard cell phone user, this is all new to me and confusing..your videos are helping me tremendously. Right now, I’m trying to stop the battery from draining. I’ve installed the app killer and the power control widget. Now I’m trying to reduce Cell Standby, as it’s the culprit (along with Phone Idle) of my battery usage. I try to use the *228 trick and it take me to MetroPCS’s (my provider) auto call handler and option one is to activate or reactivate an account. That doesn’t help me…my account is activated…Do you have any advise on this?
@Anthony… Glad you are finding help on my site! My advice re. the *228 issue is to contact your provider (MetroPCS) and ask them if they have a way to reset your phone’s location (to tell the local towers where your phone is). That was the goal of *228 – to make it as efficient as possible for the cell towers to find your phone and vice versa.
compared to the Droid X and Droid X2? My sister has the Droid X and hers lasts longer than mine and she is on it all day. I barely use mine and when I do, the battery goes from green to orange in like an hour…I even have the brightness all the way low. I was just fixing the home screens around, not using the internet or anything and it still dies so fast. Can I turn off some extra things that are running in the background?
@khalid we have various article here on the site showing you how to get better battery life. I hope at least one of them can help you. Also look here for tips on Advanced Task Killer (i.e. Tip #1) – or look around/browse here “By Topic” and click on the “Battery Management” link.
I had set the brightness at zero. Yesterday I touched the wrong Icon which I think was to switch brightness to manual which was already at 0. Now my screen has gone black. No display at all. The phone works perfect except that the screen is blacked out. How can I get my screen back? I have HTC T mobile my touch. Thanks in advance
@Muj I’m not sure what you could have touched to make your screen go totally black. But if you just can’t see anything, then I’d try shutting the phone off (hard to do if you see nothing), or Pull out the battery and wait a bit, put it back in , then turn on your phone, see if that resets the screen brightness.
Talking on the phone is my greatest battery drain. Any way to reduce call/phone use battery drain?
@chuck be sure you are not always roaming.
I buy yesterday my new phone..it is Samsung galaxy ace but it last only 2days with…how can my cell stand by and my phone idle be low..because my cell standby is 50% and my phone idle is 44% so it drain fast in my battery..
you have any solution to it??plss
Sir i bought my phone last week its Samsung galaxy ace… but the battery life is only like 2 days only..i saw in youtube some Adroid phones are likely only 2% of their cell standby use but my cell standby is 50% and my phone idle is 44% but in youtube i saw only 2% of their cell standby, how could that be??
you have any solution on that??
and you have some application so i will download it..i have a advance task killer but only to kill task.. not to long last battery life..
please
help help!!
@John… we have plenty of ideas on how to increase your battery life right here on the site. (Turning off GPS, dimming your screen, etc.) Please realize that the percentages you are talking about are showing percentage of power usage on your phone… if you are not using the phone for much then the % for standby will of course be higher than if you were using the phone for other things (like phone calls, or Apps, etc.) – that is the point of Percentage. A smart phone (like yours) will not normally last beyond 1 day without re-charge. You may need to adjust your expectations.
@Jdmiron/John ATK kills tasks that may be using extra battery life – for many that increase battery life. Some have found that using ATK makes things worse for the newer phones like yours, so you might try the other adjustments we talk about here on the site like turning off GPS, WiFi, dimming your screen, etc.
A smart phone will not usually last longer than 1 day without another charge. If you think it will last longer then you may need to lower your expectations. It is possible that your network is causing the phone to “work a lot” just staying ready to receive calls. See if checking with your service provider re. how to be sure your phone is efficiently using the network can help.
When you say you’ve seen other videos with lower percentage uses for certain items, that is not related to your usage if you are not using the phone for other tasks (i.e. making calls, using Apps, etc.). If you don’t use the phone much, then the percentages for stand-by of course will be some of the higher ones because the phone is not in use for anything else.
Thanks a lot..
Hi, Thank you for creating such a good helful website. Can you please advise me on how I can prevent my Sony Ericsson Xperia battery using 20% cell standby and 17% phone idle. Display is 52% which seems reasonable. Thank you for spending so much of your time helping out this technopobie!!
@Lisa, The percentages are just that… percentages. If you were using other things (apps) on the phone, then the % used for cell standby would likely reduce as an overall percentage of what is going on. You can always try dialing *228, then pressing 1 to reset the tower signals, that may help a bit. That *228 (Verizon + others) trick should be done about 1x per month to update your network info. Good luck, glad you like the site.
I have an android Gingerbread phone with metro pcs and I have charged my phone last night and the battery is half way down any ideas on how to do this i have the task killer on my phone and I have used it but it helps… any advice and if to when charging the phone is it okay to play things on it and text or games on it when on charger? Also is it okay to charge my phone on the computer when I am working from my usb cord that i got with the phone or is that not recommended? Help I need ideas also i have games such as angry birds and ABC games down loaded for my little girls will that kill your battery to do u recommend downloading things with a 4.5 star rating or what help me please! Thanks Brittany
Also is it a good thing when having kids to draw a pattern on your phone so that they can not unlock it?
I was told by another android user not to do this becuase if your try to much it can lock you out of your phone and erase all data in your phone…. I have the brigtness set to the lowest setting and the time to 30 seconds for screen time out…. what would you recommend?
Also another Question I have is when you go into your setting page is there a way that you can get the phone Idle time to lower and the call stand by time and the voice calls to go down I have the automatic voice dialer thing on my phone would you recommend having that?
Sorry I have alot of questions another one is when you are on a call and you answer another call that comes threw and it places the other person on hold how do you go back to the pervious call with out ending both calls?
@Brittany you should have some kind of ‘manage calls’ button that allows you to switch between calls… this varies from phone to phone, but look for something like that when you have that situation come up again.
@Brittany, Phone Lock, it is fine but yes if the kids try too often it may risk your phone getting locked out (I think). Not sure about loosing data though. You might look into ‘smart actions’ to help in conserving battery life. I no longer recommend Adv Task Killer for the newer phones… better to leave that off now.
@Brittany… Hi again! I no longer recommend Adv Task Killer for the newer phones… better to leave that off now. Leaving the phone plugged into your USB charger cable via your computer is fine… that is how I charge mine every night. I don’t keep it charging all the time though, better to let the battery try to cycle (I think).
Do some or all apps draw power when not in use or when your phone is off? Should you turn off all active applications every time you turn off your phone?
Another important one is tur. CDMA only on(3g)
@David, yes some apps do draw power when your ‘screen is off’… generally apps that work ‘in the background’. You do not need to turn them off, as the phone is supposed to manage them for you.
you can close background apps by pressing and holding down the home key and it will give options for closing waiting apps.
@looloo thanks for the tip… I think that only works for the newest ICS operating system.
hello
i am waiting for ur response is it important that we ROOT DROID X Or any Android Mobile PHone ,,,
i have a droid x2 and i will charge it all night and day it usually stays on the charger. but when i take it off and play music on it, it dies in like 30 minutes or less. and also when it dies and i put it on the charger it displays a battery to tell you how much you have and its usually 50% but it still dies. Any help or do i just need a new phone??
Can you try getting a new battery? that may be all you need.
No it is not important that you Root any Android phone IMO. I have used Android for many years and have never rooted 1 time. Depends on how ‘geeky’ you want to get. and if you don’t mind voiding your warranty (which Rooting will do). & this is not the site you want to be on if you Root, can’t help you here!
Hi,try Battery Drain Analyzer to understand, what is going on:
https://sites.google.com/site/androidapplicationsmichals/battery_drain_analyzer
Administrator
The backlight of my Samsung Galaxy Ace keeps going on and off throughout its standby time..please help
I bought new HTC ONE V 20 days back…..i have adjusted the automatic brightness option….the battery life of this mobile is very low….it dont last longer than 6-8 hours if used ( playing games or using apps)
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