[Q] Sudden Unexplained Increase in Battery Drain

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Stock 2.3.6 with no changes to or updates in settings or installed software and I have been taking pretty good care of the battery in a 5 ½ month old Atrix 2 directly from Motorola and not previously used.

Several days ago battery drain when in standby when from approximately 0.5% per hour to 2.5 to 3% per hour. I did the following, although not necessarily in the order listed:

• Bench tested battery at a battery shop – no problem found.
• Verified settings and software. Cannot find anything that appears to be draining power, initiating communications, etc.
• Pulled battery.
• Hard data reset and tested drain rate with no additional software and had same problem as when normal software was installed.
• Several deep cycles from 3% or less to full charge. In all cases mV appear in normal range of about 3542 mV at 3% to 4347 mV at 100%, again per Circle Battery Widget.
• Broke down and called Motorola and although they tried to be more helpful than normal, the only suggestion that they could offer was to try another battery, which I do not currently possess and AT&T would not allow a short term lending even had they had one available.
• 99% of all charging is via stock wall charger, spot use of car adapter with appropriate specs when using GPS.
• Typically recharge starting in range of 5-15% and charge to 100% as indicated by Circle Battery Widget.
• Battery usage in standby shows about an even split between Cell Standby, Phone Idle and Bluetooth each about 32% of usage when in standby. Have always left Bluetooth on 24/7 except when charging and battery drain was only about 0.5% per hour. I even tested for several hours with bluetooth off and this did not affect the rapid drain.
• Contacts are clean.
• I even use Motorola USB cables both from my PC for data transfer and also with the wall charger.
• No exposure to excessive heat/cold.

If anyone has any thoughts, I would greatly appreciate any help. Otherwise my next steps are to call Motorola back Sunday morning (U.S. time zones) and probably order an OEM battery from a reputable source allowing for U.S. holiday on Monday. Unsure how Motorola will treat this as warranty since 1) this phone is a replacement for Atrix 4G problems whose warranty would be expired, and, 2) batteries have weak warranty coverage anyway since so much of that is beyond their control.

Thanks

Same here recently.

My battery life has gotten a lot shorter (and cell reception worse). Most of my 'battery usage' is coming from cell stand-by.

Overcharged Battery

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How long are you leaving the A2 on the charger? MTL you may have "overcharged" the battery, overloading the memory in the battery itself, therefore resulting in less usage time from a "fully charged" battery.
Typically, as a sales rep, I recommend my customers only charge their phone for the full 4-8 hours, when it is the FIRST time they charge their phone. typically after that, it takes only 2-2.5 hours to provide the phone with a full charge. Over charging will fry the memory and make the battery hold less charge and over a period of time eventually kill the battery, making you have to buy a new one.

P.S. If I am completely off base please let me know. Yes I am noob, but this info was actually part of my training courses so I'd love to tell them they're wrong. Hope I was helpful.

Originally Posted by FalConn232

How long are you leaving the A2 on the charger? MTL you may have "overcharged" the battery, overloading the memory in the battery itself, therefore resulting in less usage time from a "fully charged" battery.
Typically, as a sales rep, I recommend my customers only charge their phone for the full 4-8 hours, when it is the FIRST time they charge their phone. typically after that, it takes only 2-2.5 hours to provide the phone with a full charge. Over charging will fry the memory and make the battery hold less charge and over a period of time eventually kill the battery, making you have to buy a new one.

P.S. If I am completely off base please let me know. Yes I am noob, but this info was actually part of my training courses so I'd love to tell them they're wrong. Hope I was helpful.

The phone electronics will not actually allow overcharging. you will have problems if you do overcharge it but you can't do that while it is in the phone.

Sent from my MB865 using XDA

Thanks but in addition to any designed protection against overcharging I also pull the phone off the charger as soon as practicable after hitting 100% per Circle Battery with the exception being when using GPS which means that the phone will charge very slowly to 100% and remain connected to the charger until the next stop in my trip. The phone charges more slowly on the car adapter because the screen is constantly on along with running GPS and music software and streaming music via bluetooth.

I also try to make sure that I always disconnect the charger before starting or turning off the vehicle's engine. It may not be necessary anymore but that is an old habit.

Happening to me recently, before the battery lasted very long, but the past few days I arrive at night with 20% left. I tried doing a factory reset but it still the same. Also, the "cell standby" is the biggest consumer? I don't know what does that mean...

Originally Posted by nahuelarg86

Happening to me recently, before the battery lasted very long, but the past few days I arrive at night with 20% left. I tried doing a factory reset but it still the same. Also, the "cell standby" is the biggest consumer? I don't know what does that mean...

As far as I know 'cell standby' is basically your phone searching for a signal.

Remove any app that u suspect. If u have installed battery indicator pro, that's the culprit. Same happened to my phone when i had battery indicator pro. Install juice defender ultimate. Works a bit. Clear off d ram and reboot

Sent from my MB865 using xda premium

For what little it may be worth replacing the battery showed the same problem and motorola now admits that this might be a motherboard issue and wants me to send the device to them for repair. They had their level 3 contract tech support review what I had done for troubleshooting and they agreed that the above steps plus replacing the battery had exhausted all possible options that can be taken outside a repair depot.

Those with similar problems may want to do the same and finally call motorola.

Originally Posted by goodgulf

For what little it may be worth replacing the battery showed the same problem and motorola now admits that this might be a motherboard issue and wants me to send the device to them for repair. They had their level 3 contract tech support review what I had done for troubleshooting and they agreed that the above steps plus replacing the battery had exhausted all possible options that can be taken outside a repair depot.

Those with similar problems may want to do the same and finally call motorola.

Wonderful, I am on my 3rd Atrix 2. Returned two previous because of the sd card reader/compatibility problems. The third one I received hasn't had the problem but now I can't go more than 8 hours without the battery going dead.

Cell standby is normally over 33% and Phone idle is normally at 30% or higher.

This happens whether I leave wifi on all day or turn it off.

Stock 2.3.6

I work from home and I have 5 bar signal strength from my house so there is no reason for my phone to constantly be searching for network signal.