Improving battery life for a Droid 3: energy management or rooting

April 12, 2015 3:07 PM

I have a new-old Droid 3 (bought new, only started using it recently) and it's not holding a charge very long, even when I'm not actively doing anything with it (it can drop from 100% to 70% over night). I looked at its battery usage, and the bundled apps that I didn't want or use were using a lot of battery (YouTube was the worst, at 27%). Should I try some cellphone management apps (examples), get a new battery, root it to uninstall bundled apps I don't want or need, or root it to run a custom OS?

If I should look into custom OSes, are there good reviews of current builds for older phones, or an OS that is liked well across the board?

One final note: I'm using this phone because I lost my new phone, went back to using my really old original Droid until it just about died, then started using this Droid 3 I had. I still have a year before I can get a wholly new phone subsidized through my Verizon plan, or I can get a refurbished phone now, but I'm not too comfortable with that and would prefer to tough it out for a year with this phone.

posted by filthy light thief to Technology (8 answers total)

Get some sort of free battery monitoring/optimizing app.

If you haven't already, see if you can go into settings and turn off things like automatic updates, geolocation and so on. You may not need to uninstall the apps you aren't using. It may do wonders to just tell the phone to stop whoring its battery life out to their constant demands for attention and updates and blah blah blah. Also look at turning down screen brightness.

If that doesn't help enough, then look into measures that are riskier and what not.
posted by Michele in California at 3:59 PM on April 12, 2015

A quick and easy way to test whether it's apps or radios is to put it into airplane mode overnight. That will kill the wifi, data connection, bluetooth, etc. All of those things will use some battery, even if you aren't actively using them. I'm not familiar with your particular phone, but it's extremely likely that it already has this feature buried in the Wifi settings somewhere.

Also, set the screen brightness to automatic. If you're in the dark, you don't need a high-contrast screen to see what's going on.

The next thing to do is to disable any apps you're not using. You can do this for non-system apps without rooting. For stuff like Google Maps or Youtube, you'll have to take further measures, like rooting and installing App Quarantine. But try the above first, just for the sake of ease.

By disabling the radios when I'm not using them, and disabling apps that I'm not actively using, I have a power loss of about 1% per hour on my Moto G. I don't use any battery saving apps at all.
posted by Solomon at 4:03 PM on April 12, 2015 [1 favorite]

That phone is several years old! Even if you never used it, the calendar life of a Li-on battery is still ticking away, and you're losing capacity even when it sits unused. A new battery is probably the way to go. You may even be able to find newer replacement batteries with a higher mAh capacity than the original one.
posted by 1adam12 at 4:12 PM on April 12, 2015 [1 favorite]

Everybody and their dog has a pet theory of how to manage charging and discharging a Li-ion battery to stop it wearing out, but the simple fact about this battery chemistry is that their usable life has a lot more to do with how they're made than how they're used, or even (as you're finding out now) whether they're used at all.

Put a new battery in it and it should work like new again.
posted by flabdablet at 5:49 PM on April 12, 2015

Best answer: If it sat that long without being used the battery is toast. I was recently talking to someone who got a NOS iphone 5, still shrinkwrapped from 2012 and the battery lasted like an hour.

If you're going to get a new battery anyways, get the extended battery. It fits under the stock cover, and from the reviews seems to perform a lot better.

These phones(and the original droid, i remember) had decent battery life. And good to great battery life with the extended batteries. The performance you're describing is likely just a sad, failing battery from sitting for so long.

Looking here it looks like roms top out at 4.2.2 builds of jelly bean for that device. I'd probably try and get that, if you can find one that lists no major bugs simply to have compatibility with most newer apps. Running gingerbread in 2015 SUCKS, and a lot of things dropped support or only have crappy older versions.

If i was in your situation, i'd look in to buying a used or new verizon motorola G for $50-80. You'll get the latest OS, massively higher performance with double the ram, a nicer display, excellent battery life, and the general improvements in phone tech that have happened in the past 3-4 years.
posted by emptythought at 6:29 PM on April 12, 2015

I have a OnePlus One. On the forums there, there seem to be some people experiencing battery problems. It had something to do with Google Play services. I would either see if you can turn that off and/or check the XDA forums for guidance.
posted by AugustWest at 8:35 PM on April 12, 2015

The Droid 3 has a user replaceable battery. Really, it's not worth your time doing anything else but buying a new battery.
posted by devnull at 12:45 AM on April 13, 2015

Best answer: Apparently the YouTube/Wavelock issue is somewhat common. My current solution is to disable WiFi and data connections, severing my connection to the internet, and with that my phone has only drained 40% of its battery in two days. I have a battery widget that allows quick toggling of these features and more, so it's not a hassle to re-enable WiFi or data to check websites or email. At this point, I'm happy with this solution, but I'll keep the replacement battery option as my next step, when this battery gets (even) worse.
posted by filthy light thief at 4:23 PM on May 17, 2015