Stupid android battery ran out at the tail end of a KGS game.

To make matters worse, the battery died while charging. That's right, it was PLUGGED IN, and died because the Droid X can suck power out faster than the plug can put it in.

Thanks motorolla.

I really wish that the computers here at work weren't draconian firewalled.

The only one of my friend who used a Motorola mobile phone gave it back because it caused nothing but problems. Now they are all using HTC phones. One nexus and many Magic's. Mostly with cyanogen.

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Sanity is for the weak.

Perhaps if it's in use it doesn't charge? I'd be surprised if it actually used power faster than it could charge.

And, to be fair, it's not an "Android" battery, but a Motorola battery...

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My blog about Macs and more: Kirkville

Well, to be fair, the Droid X comes with a 800mA charger. USB from the computer is throttled to 500mA, so, having it plugged in to the computer was, admittedly, not as effective as you might hope.

All the same, Motorola has real issues with their battery tech. I bought spare batteries and a battery charger for it, because it takes so long to charge (2.5 hours with the phone off). That's a good third to one half of the battery life time.

Motorola phones are unfortunately bad on battery/efficiency. Other than the fact that it kills my battery in 5-7 hours, I love the phone. The battery charge time is frankly obnoxious though.

And yes, I'm certain that it was sucking battery out faster than it was charging, and that it was charging. Unfortunately, I knew that it could do this from reading some tech forums.

But, I really shouldn't whine too much, it's my fault for forgetting to carry my spare batteries.

I've noticed on my MT4G that using Gingerbread has drastically improved battery life.

Don't blame yourself for the failures of the technology. Given the way battery life is on other smart phones, Motorola is letting you down. And while a spare battery is a nice option, it's bad if the device practically requires one.

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If battery only lasts about 5-7 hours I think the device really sucks or your usage is exceptionally power-consuming. My HTC Legend doesn't have an exceptionally good battery, and it lasts one day with no problem, often two days.

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Honestly, I've been happy with my battery life as long as I've had my Droid 2 (got it last October). At that time, I was pulling a ten hour day, with no charging, and coming home with 10-30% battery left. That included leaving GPS, bluetooth, and 3G on all the time, and having some things auto-refresh (calendars, etc.)

However, I did disable all the stuff I didn't need, and made sure things weren't refreshing more frequently than was necessary, for example, my calendar is set to autorefresh once every six or twelve hours (don't remember which exactly). I also find that using bluetooth headphones instead of wired headphones saves a ton of battery; because I tend to skip songs a lot, when I used the wired headphones, the screen would be on a lot longer (screen use is generally one of the main battery killers), any decent bluetooth headphones should have media controls built in, so I can skip tracks and adjust volume without having to turn the screen on.

Anyway, anyone getting only a few hours really needs to look at what they have running, and try to optimize, because you CAN get a lot more life out of the battery, without needing a spare, or an extended battery. Unless of course, you mostly use your phone for things that need the screen to be on for a long time; KGS, web-browsing, etc. In these cases, an extended battery is probably necessary. :/

(A handy hint for anyone with multiple launchers installed, but only uses one of them: At least the default launcher will always be running in the background, along with any widgets left on it. This right here can cause unnecessary battery drain, so be sure to remove the widgets from any unused launchers. )

I use my Droid X as a small portable laptop. I IM and KGS and web browse and game on it.

The same activities with my Iphone 3g (ancient, I know) would give me 6-8 hours, but charging the Iphone, during continued use, took a great big hour-1.5 hours. Charging it with the phone off was even faster.

Given this, the Motorola battery doesn't seem to live up to a 2 year old battery. It takes a significant portion of its battery life to charge when off, and charges significantly slower when in use.

I've given up doing things like playing KGS and listening to Pandora at the same time, since this simply kills the battery dead.

I really do like the phone, but the battery life is a painful limiter for me. So I invested in batteries, and it bothers me far far less.