[HOW TO] Fix Battery Life: Ultimate guide (calibrate + post#2 -FIXES) UPDATED 25Aug

Standart disclaimer: I am not responsible if you break things by following this guide, though I will be genuinely surprised if you do.

Credits: This fix is a combination of battery management techniques discussed in the Atrix forums + a technique that I originally found in a Milestone forum (I didn't invent it, but I am too lazy to search who originally posted it ).
This worked in fixing the problem for me (the same problem that I see many others are writing about on the forums), but I can't guarantee it will work for you.



Who should use this? (aka your battery problem symptoms are
1. Battery life on 2.3.4 is significantly worse for you than before.
2. Battery stats are jumping and showing inconsistent information.
3. Your phone loses 30%-60% just by sitting there overnight.
4. Phone idle draining 30%-60% of battery just by sitting there overnight.
5. After flashing a couple of roms, your battery stats got messed up and the phone thinks it's at 100% charge while it's not.

I personally started having battery problems after flashing a couple of roms, applying 1% battery mod and despite flashing jug6ernaut's CWM battery fix.
When I went to bed with a 100% charge, I would wake up to a 50% charge, with Phone Idle process showing up as massacring the battery. The steps below successfully fixed the problem for me.

Prerequisites:
1. Atrix on one of the rooted 2.3.4 roms (ideally,- deodexed and with unlocked CWM)
2. Wall Charger
3. jug6ernaut's CWM battery fix (put it on your SD card you will need it later!) I have also attached it to this post.
4. Battery Calibration app from the market
5. Watchdog Lite or Full from the market

Instructions:
It's best to complete this procedure in the evening before going to bed, so you can leave it at 100% overnight and check in the morning if the drainage issue is fixed!!!
The whole procedure along with recalibration might take up to 5-6 hours!

1. Take the case off your Atrix (one of the latter steps involves taking the battery out from the phone while it's plugged in. Make sure your case won't stand in the way.)

2. Install Battery Calibration app from the market

3. Plug in your Atrix to charge while it's on, wait till it gets to a 100%

4. When the charge is 100%, open the BatteryCalibration app and lookup what the charge is in MV while at 100%. (Explanatory pic, needed number circled in red). Write it down.
My Atrix was showing ~3400MV while at 100%, which is definitely not the maximum capacity.

5. Discharge your Atrix completely until it shuts off.
A good way of doing this quickly is by turning on wifi, and a video player.

6. Without turning on the phone plug it into a wall charger and let it get to 100%

7. When it's at 100%, without unplugging it from the wall charger, take off the battery cover, and take the battery out.
Your phone will "reboot" and show a Missing Battery icon.

8. Without unplugging the phone from the wall charger or turning it on, put the battery back in and wait until the phone recognizes the battery.

9. Your battery should now be recognized by the phone, and showing a charge % significantly lower than 100%.
Mine showed only 5%. Back when I used a Milestone, it usually showed 60% after doing this.

10. Let it sit there charging for 2-3 hours.
My phone wouldn't charge past 10%, but yours might. The numbers don't matter much as the phone is definitely getting additional charge that could have been lost while flashing ROMs, etc.

11. After 2-3 hours, turn the phone on while holding the volume down button and get into CWM.
Do not disconnect it from the charger still!

12. Install jug6ernaut's CWM battery fix (even if you had it installed before), do not reboot yet.
Do not disconnect it from the charger still!

13. Wipe battery stats in CWM, reboot.
Do not disconnect it from the charger still!

14. When the phone turns on, go into BatteryCalibration app again and look up your MV numbers
- if you were like me, they should be significantly higher than before. After this whole process I had 4200MV at 100%, comparing to 3400MV before calibration.
Do not disconnect it from the charger still!

15. Before going to sleep - Install Watchdog from the market. Go into it's preferences, set CPU threshhold to 20%, check "Include phone processes", check "Monitor phone processes", check "Display all phone processes", set system CPU threshhold to 20% as well.
Do not disconnect it from the charger still!

16. Make sure your wifi and data connections are off. Now finally unplug the phone from the charger.
Go to bed, let your phone sleep too.

17. Success! Next morning check where your battery % is at and if you followed the instructions correctly / got lucky like me, your battery life should be 90% or more.
I went to bed with 98% and woke up to 94%. So, I consider this mission a success.
(Your general battery capacity should have increased, even if something still was draining the battery, you will be able to find the infringing process in WatchDog with the settings we've set up in step 15 )


That's all folks! Please report your success / lack of such here. Also, feel free to ask questions, and I along with other users with answer them according to our ability.
I will later add a section on "good practices for battery usage" with tips and tricks.
Cheers!


Attached are screenshots of my results after calibration: This was under moderate usage. Pretty damn good if you ask me.

Post-calibration methods of improving Battery Life

Updated: Post#2 will explain how to solve battery drainage problems when recalibration wasn't enough. It will also explain how battery reporting works, common practices, tips, tricks, etc.


Battery Tips / Tricks / Common Practices

Important things to know:

1. It's important to understand how battery indicator on Android works and how Android manages / reports your battery life. Please read this article:
Your Smartphone’s Battery Gauge is Lying to You (and it’s not such a bad thing)
http://phandroid.com/2010/12/25/you...is-lying-to-you-and-its-not-such-a-bad-thing/

2. Li-ion batteries used in modern smartphones don't have "charge memory". Partial charges won't hurt the battery (e.g. charging from 60% to 80% or from 10% to 50% etc). Feel free to give your phone small charges whenever you have time and need the phone to last longer.

3. Smartphone batteries don't like to be completely discharged or to be kept at 100% capacity for extended periods of time (this actually damages batteries over time). But worry not, the battery software prevents this from happening for you. That's why some of your phones never get to 100% or drop from 100% to 90% minutes after you disconnct the phone from a charger.

4. All batteries gradually lose a small percentage of their capacity after a certain amount of charge cycles. It's a natural part of life. It's always nice to have a spare battery or to purchase a replacement when your current battery isn't to the task anymore.

5. Don't pay much attention to the battery %, just use your phones. I know it's very tempting to track your battery usage every 15 minutes and try to find problems. Been there myself. Thing is, if you do this, you might start thinking you have problems, when you don't have any.
Bottom line - just try to use your phone and not mess with the battery unless problems become really apparent.


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Other proven ways to improve Battery Life

If you have re-calibrated to a full capacity (4200mv) but your battery still drains terribly - follow these steps to pin point the problem.


1. Find which app / process is draining the battery.
If you get lucky, the infringing app will show up directly under the stock "Battery Usage" statistics. However, in most cases "Battery Usage" isn't very informative. Most people report that they only see "Phone Idle" consuming most of the battery without much insight into the details.

Things to do:

- install Watchdog, go to preferences, set CPU threshhold to 20% (or even lower if it's not enough), check "Include phone processes", check "Monitor phone processes", check "Display all phone processes", set system CPU threshhold to 20%(or even lower if it's not enough) as well. Run it for a couple of days.
If you start getting frequent Watchdog notifications about a certain app breaching the threshold - uninstall it, find an alternative.

- install BetterBatteryStats from here -
http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=1179809 run it for a couple of days and monitor apps / processes that are using up more wakelocks than they should.
Once you find the infringing app - uninstall it, if it's a process - find out if it's safe to stop / freeze before doing anything.


2. Freeze bloatware aka "stop the problem before it becomes a problem."
Unless you are running CM7, your rom is based on stock 2.3.4 and still has blur in it. Blur apps and processes might be running without you even using them and sucking out precious batter life while they are at it.

Things to do:

- Get TitaniumBackup, freeze all bloatware that is mentioned as "safe" in this thread -
http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=1182663
Use your phone for a couple of days afterwards and watch for improvements.


If these software tweaks aren't enough, the problem might be with your system setup. Go through these steps which should hopefully fix your setup in favor of awesome battery life:

3. Flash a custom kernel, set up battery saving profiles.
Many people have reported success with this step. Custom kernels are not just for overclocking. A custom kernel with smart profiles will definitely give definitely extend your phones operating life during the day.

Things to do:

- Get a custom kernel., the popular choice on here seems to be faux'es kernel, so I recommend it -
http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=1156040
Get one of the battery saving SetCpu profiles along with it. Basically, a good battery saving profile looks something like this:
- absolute minimum CPU clock with screen off (something like 275 Mhz)
- lowering CPU clock with temperature > 50C (something like ~800Mhz)
- lowering CPU clock when battery < 30% (something like ~800Mhz)

Many people reported success in using such profile for lowering "Phone Idle" drain.


4. Flash a different radio.
WARNING: Be extremely careful with this. Flashing a wrong radio is the right way to hard brick your phone.

Although some people are reporting to have fixed battery drainage by trying out a different radio, I seriously wouldn't recommend going on a flashing spree unless you know what you are doing.

My advice here: flash the latest 2.3.4 for your carrier if you haven't yet. From there on, experiment at your own risk.


5. Disable Data and Wifi when idle either manually or with an app."
I seriously get surprised every time someone says they have a horrible battery life, when they keep an internet connection on at all times. Constant data always = battery drain.

Things to do:

- use apps like Green Power to disable data / wifi for you when you are not using it
- learn to turn off your internet connection manually


6. If all else fails - start over from scratch (read: clean install a rom).
I've heard reports of people getting better life with Froyo than GB, or that a specific custom ROM solved their problem for them. A million dollar question: if it works for you, why not use it?

Things to do:

- try a ROM without blur, like CM7
- try Ninja Speed Freak (developer and many users reported great battery life)
- if battery life is your top concern - try Froyo

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FAQ

....coming soon...

... ask away!

No need to do the pull off battery anymore. Just delete the file inside battd folder (/data/battd) and then reboot. Before that, charge your battery until it doesnt increase anymore for example at 94%...

Sent from my MB860 using xda premium

v.k said:

Hi, 4170mV of course, eg 4.17V The problem seems to be gone after the next recharge - now I have 100% -> 95% overnight, that is acceptable for me But I get 4200mV only when the phone is plugged in for a long time, and after unplug voltage drops to ~4160mV. Is this normal? My phone is not overclocked, data and wifi connections are off and cpu speed is limited to 216MHz when the screen is off

Click to expand...

Click to collapse

That's normal, after 95 I believe you only get a "trickle" charge so it will take longer to go from 95-100 than it did 90-95 for example.

You want that drop off after unplugging. Keeping the battery charging for too long can deteriorate the life of the battery.

eklam said:

Many thanks! Have pass about three days reading about the battery issues/solutions, and I was getting confused by so many info! Will try it tonight!

PS: Does the jug6ernaut's CWM battery fix works for the Orange 2.3.4 ?

Click to expand...

Click to collapse

Are you using stock Orange 2.3.4 rom?
If yes, your Rom might not have the battery jumping problem. You can still use this guide without the battery fix to recalibrate.

Let's wait for someone with Orange 2.3.4 to confirm if jug6ernaut's CWM battery fix can be used or not.