yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Atrix 4G General] ccrows:
That's the thing, it comes down to what you compare this phone to...

I'll take the Atrix over ANY HTC phone 24/7/365. (and I've used plenty)

If you compare it to Samsung, Super Amoled and all, it's much closer. (especially if you get the SGS Armani battery 1650 mAh)

Then again if you really want a smartphone with Killer Battery performance, you might as well get the Nokia E6. (Non Android and phasing out Symbian OS).

The bottom line - For an Android phone, this phone has good results, but it could be much better. The large battery and the TFT screen definitely helps, but Motoblur IMO hurts the overall battery life.

Fortunately you can root the phone and Freeze the unnecessary MB Crap, and maybe we can get a cyanogenMod for this thing down the road if Moto does indeed unlock the bootloader...
[Atrix 4G General] joyo22:
My phone has been on with 3G on for 21 hours and it still has 51% battery left. Display has been active for just 1hr and 23 mins but it's great to have more than half of it left when I was used to get 14 to 17hrs only when I had my Milestone.
[Atrix 4G General] ccrows:
That was my stats on my Milestone running on Eclair.

Froyo usually made it through each day for me... (and that was even with overclocking)
[Atrix 4G General] asesino:
Can't complaint about my battery life since Im getting almost the same as my MT4G running fusion ROM with Faux's Kernel.
[Atrix 4G General] joyo22:
Well, almost 2 days of moderate use and there's still 13% battery left. Display usage was only 1hr 46 mins but 3G was always on with some wifi at home.
[Atrix 4G General] iOSlulz:
I use 'screen filter' from the market. Have mine set to 35% at night.
[Atrix 4G General] jjwatmyself:
64 hours and counting

It is Wednesday at 11:00 PM. I took the Atrix off the charger on Monday at 7:00 AM... 64 hours and I'm at 6%. This test was with radio set to 2G with cellular data off. 3G, cellular data and wifi were enabled on an as needed basis. While looking at the attached picture from SystemPanel, you will see quite obviously when I used the "fancy" phone features. I can only compare the battery consumption changes to taking a bath full of water and pulling out the plug all the way out when performing tasks that use data and or CPU.

I am very happy with these test results. I think what we can see from this is that 2G (data disabled) does consume less juice than 3G (data disabled). People have been telling us this for years though. We can also see that turning data off has a significant impact on juice consumption. I did some tests with navigation on 2G and I have to tell you it pretty much works flawlessly. Not as good as 3G, but VERY close!! I have tested applications that manage data on/off based on usage but manually flipping beats them hands down. The entire test cycle described here was done with auto brightness enabled... YES, there is some more squeezing possible here. BUT in my opinion, auto brightness is a solid feature, which maintains a practical screen brightness at all times. I do tend to leave wifi, BT and GPS disabled, although I think their impact is minimal providing that they are DISCONNECTED from devices. My opinion is the BT audio uses less juice than wired headset audio, although I have not measured this to prove. Watch for applications that decide all by themselves to use CPU. LATITUDE is teh number one offender of this. Other applications can get stuck. I used Autostart to stop my phone from loading up stuff at power up. This is not to minimize running applications, as this has ABSOLUTELY NO IMPACT ON BATTERY CONSUMPTION. Instead it minimizes the exposure to perfectly good applications that misbehave. SystemPanel enables me to add boot time applications to an exclude list and "END ALL" periodically to keep non boot-time applications from having an opportunity to misbehave. Imagine a class room full of 4 year olds and asking them to be quite... yeah it doesn't happen.. that is the reality of android code developers... they are good, but they are not always perfect little children when it comes to testing their code. What do you want for an application that cost you $0.00 or $0.00 or $4.99?!?!?!? Ok, so where is all this going? Who knows... maybe it's an attempt to not be slaves to our phone chargers... whatever works right!?!?

BTW I'm thinking of updating my signature to something like "If you like what you just read, please consider sending me a beer via paypal: jjw@myself.com"
[Atrix 4G General] RogerPodacter:
i suddenly have some interest in maybe picking up an atrix, so started reading this topic. battery life seems excellent, but i have one question.

does the atrix output battery info, specifically voltage and current readings? does currentwidget work?

at an att store floor model, i could not locate ANY batt info in dmesg logs or logcat.
[Atrix 4G General] Pat123:
^^I use Battery Widget Pro and can see the current and voltage readings on it!
[Atrix 4G General] stewartsoda:
That won't lower the battery consumption at all on LCD's. That app just makes the pixels darker, it doesn't make the backlight darker.

That being said, for any kind of OLED screen it will help battery life.
[Atrix 4G General] jjwatmyself:
SystemPanel shows the % charge, battery mV and device temp. It currently tracks the % charge, usage, cpu and cpu per app. What is battery widget pro providing that would help track battery usage? Just curious.
[Atrix 4G General] Tennis11:
It seems like switching mobile data to 2G is one of the best ways to get better battery life. What's the easiest way to do this? What's the code you "call"?

Also, what are the other things that most improve battery life?

I usually get about 22 hours with 4 hours of screen on time.
[Atrix 4G General] jjwatmyself:
Here is my preferred method as it enables the greyed out menu options. http://xdaforums.com/showpost.php?p=14494826&postcount=24

There is an alternate method by dialing *#*#4636#*#* and switching from GSM auto (PRL) to GSM only. Another method is with Anycut to shortcut to a 2G check box menu option which I believe has since been superseded by the above link. I mention all three methods, as there are a couple of folks who were unable to get the native greyed options to show up. They ultimately write data into the same places, however, the GUIs operate independently from each other. There are other threads dedicated to switching between 2G and 3G, and this isn't one of them. ;)

In terms of "what else can I do..." this entire thread should offer some good bed time reading to answer your question. Everything I know is already written here.

If you like something I wrote, remember I like beer, and my paypal is jjw@myself.com. If you don't like something I wrote, send me an insulting note of sorts and tell me what you really think of me. :D
[Atrix 4G General] Pat123:
From app description:

As the name suggests, it is just a battery manager and not a task manager (like System Panel is). I am not sure if System Panel has all of these features already. If it does, you should stick to it :)
[Atrix 4G General] RogerPodacter:
thanks guys. unfortunately i dont think the atric puts out current mA readings, only voltage mV readings, since currentwidget doesnt seem to work.

battery monitor widget is a great app which i use too, but for devices that do not output mA, it guesstimates current readings for you, which is not quite the same as actual readings thru the battery's sense resistor.

either way, what are some sample readings it gives, maybe highest and lowest?
[Atrix 4G General] Pat123:
On my Gingerblur it shows around 5-7 ma on idle!
[Atrix 4G General] top_banana123:
I tried this but it won't change what type of network I use. The only way to change it for me is to use the normal Settings/ Wireles & Networks/ Select Network. When I pick 3g, 2g or whatever using *#*#4636#*#* it doesnt actually change it. Why do you use *#*#4636#*#* instead of the normal way?
[Atrix 4G General] jjwatmyself:
The Atrix has 'Settings/ Wireles & Networks/ Select Network' disabled by default at the latest Froyo build/version. So there are a few methods to switch. I have since enabled by manually editing xml files and use the native menus now, just like you.
[Atrix 4G General] top_banana123:
That explains it. I'm on T-Mobile UK and I'm probably on an old version of Android. Mine says Firmware version 2.2.2 ?
[Atrix 4G General] jjwatmyself:
2.2.x = Froyo

2.3.x = Gingerbread

Fun, fun, fun! :D
[Atrix 4G General] Xenocyde:
I used GPS and Wifi Pretty much all day for NAV and I got to say for that

much use i charge once daily. I have noitced battery stats being off making it

look like it low when it wasn't fix CWM Clear battery stats :)
[Atrix 4G General] top_banana123:
What's CWM? No worries found it ClockWorkMod. For rooted devices I think.
[Atrix 4G General] RogerPodacter:
Anyone know why there is no 1% battery percent increments, but then somehow system panel correctly DOES show 1% with no problem? How is the app getting this info?

This is on a stock atrix at the att store.
[Atrix 4G General] OSNPA:
My minimalistic text battery widget on my lockscreen shows 1% on 2.3.4, but other widgets only show 10% increments.
[Atrix 4G General] RogerPodacter:
That's encouraging for me if I buy the atrix. Where are you able to pull the info from for your widget to read that data?
[Atrix 4G General] James62370:
Unfortunately in 2G, if your phone is receiving any type of data, your calls go to voice mail. You cannot send/receive data and be on a call at the same time. Can someone correct me if I am wrong?

Also I use Google Voice for text messaging. If I set my phone to maximum battery, would I still get my text messages that are supposed being pushed?

Any information would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!
[Atrix 4G General] jjwatmyself:
Max battery mode is designed to turn off data (wifi and cellular) after 15 minutes of inactivity. Use custom to control the peak hours data inactivity timer. Max battery vs. Max performance makes little difference otherwise. All my test are using max performance. I'm not sure if 2g favors voice over data or if it is based on usage. You should be able to test quite easily with a 2nd phone. Glad you made the point as I didn't realize that 2g was not simultaneous voice and data. http://www.wireless.att.com/businesscenter/business-programs/government/technology/voice-data.jsp. Google Voice requires data for most actions: voice mail notifications, outbound dialing. I think this is true of for GV SMS unless you configure your cell as a SMS forwarder destination in the web GUI. This then exposes the unique phone number that google assign to the contact. I have not tested SMS using the Android Google Voice app to confirm that SMS is a pure data function or if it's clever smoke and mirrors with SMS. I have tested the Android GV app with out dialing and can confirm that data is needed. So in summary, if you enable that extra check mark on the GV website for your mobile you will receive GV SMS via 'SMS' on your cell from this funny number with the number of the sender in the first few characters of the message. Replying to the funny number will deliver the text as being from your GV number. This is an alternate method for using the Android GV app and dies not utilize data. Anyway, this isn't a GV thread so if you'd like to talk more on the subject, send me a good GV discussion thread link and I'll talk some more with you in it.
[Atrix 4G General] RobUncorked:
Circle Battery Widget also shows 1% increments.
[Atrix 4G General] OSNPA:
I don't know where the data comes from, I made the widget with Froyo and was surprised to see it working on 2.3.4 unmodded.
[Atrix 4G General] Pat123:
I can confirm that Minimalistic Widget does show 1% increments on 2.3.4! However, I am not sure if it is just approximation or based on actual data that it is reading!
[Atrix 4G General] James62370:
Thanks for your reply... I only have a limited amount of text per month with my provider, which is why Google Voice for text messaging has been awesome. As you stated, data is required to receive Text Messages. When I set my phone to Max Battery, I did not receive any of my SMS Messages. Thus, I have my phone set back to Maximum Performance. Will have to look for other ways to maximize battery usage.

FYI, when using wifi at home, I've noticed it actually drains the battery less... I have quite a few apps which update often. It's strange, but keeping wifi always on, is actually improving my battery performance.
[Atrix 4G General] jjwatmyself:
You may find that an app like Green Power Premium is of interest. With your phone set to max performance, it will give you granular control of turning data off immediatley upon sleep and periodically turning data on while sleeping for your apps to 'check in with the mothership'. The advantage of this is you get to blend the power saving benefits of data being turned off with a reoccuring schedule of data being enabled. The software offers other features too. Anyway, you'll find it in the market. I did some testing with it and sent some suggestions to the developer for 2g/3g switching. Great app all in all.
[Atrix 4G General] RogerPodacter:
You are absolutely right. Wifi uses much less power than using only 3g data, so its always better to use wifi. Counter intuitive as it may seem, wifi latency is so incredibly lower, that it far outweighs the 3g use. And you will see this all over the device forums here.

In fact, look at official specs.

IPhone 4 3g browsing - 6 hours

IPhone 4 wifi browsing - 10 hours

Nexus one 3g browsing - 5.5 hours

Nexus one wifi browsing - 7 hours

All devices have higher wifi times, officially, from manufacturer specs.
[Atrix 4G General] Myeeek:
There was one point last month where I was able to get a little over 48 hours of battery with minimal usage (used only for calls and text messages). I have brightness set on automatic, minimal widgets, along with almost no programs running in the background (closes automatically through the task manager). I also have juice defender installed. But lately, my atrix has been struggling to get 24 hours under the same minimal usage, so I let the battery drain all the way until it turned itself off. Afterwards, I let it charge overnight, and now I'm able to get the same amount of battery life under minimal usage. Looks like I'll probably have to do this once in a while, so no big deal to me overall.
[Atrix 4G General] top_banana123:
So are you saying that in Settings/Battery manager/Battery Mode you set the phone to Performance mode and then adjust Green Power with what you think is suitable?
[Atrix 4G General] jjwatmyself:
That is a good starting point, otherwise you have two layers of logic that potentially counter-act eachother. I ran into this issue when streaming audio and the OS was shutting off data after 15 minutes despite Green Power being configured to leave data on when it detected data throughput was above a specific point (i.e. streaming audio on an otherwise idle phone). I can't remember if Green Power has a night time setting, so that at night it would shuts data off, but if it does, I would suggeset configuring it. The point is that you want Green Power and Battery Mode to compliment each other. Hope that helps.
[Atrix 4G General] True2TheGame:
Shows it's been running only 50% of the time, when i go to partial wake usage it shows UID 1001, and Handcent SMS as taking up the most, but they are not out of control which leads me to believe i have a defective battery if i can't even make it last for 8 hours.
[Atrix 4G General] NonovUrbizniz:
I leave ALL the radios on all day (gps, BT, WIFI,), I do like 30min-3hrs of calls a day, stream BT Audio to my car for a 45-1:15 commute, and browse/post/read on it at every break I get. I have not killed the battery in a day yet... 8am-11pm with ZERO charging and I was at 30pct... couldn't wait to play with the Laptop dock so I didn't kill it.
[Atrix 4G General] DuoM:
What's this? MotoBLUR?
[Atrix 4G General] xenbomb:
Coming from an iphone 4 im disapointed. .. I will just keep a charger handy. I do love the fact this has 2 times the processing power and android is fun to mess with!!
[Atrix 4G General] snlu178:
Phone Idle and Cell Standby are what keep your phone running when the screen is off. They are why you can have background processes and get phone calls.

Their time should be roughly equal to the time your phone has been turned off minus phone calls.
[Atrix 4G General] AJerman:
Just so you guys know, none of you have had the phone long enough to be sure what the battery life is. Anyone who would be a member of a community like this, obvious enjoys playing with phones, and I can assure you you have been playing with your phone more since you got it than you normally would. For the first few days expect your battery to be low since you will be playing with the phone a lot more than you think you are, and doing things that would take more battery life out of it (like installing applications, flipping it on to show it off, etc). Without fail, I've done this with every phone I've ever purchased. Give it a week or two before you really gauge the battery life.
[Atrix 4G General] eallan:
Typically I would agree, however I literally haven't been able to play with it as much as I want due to the horrible battery. It's honestly really disappointing for me. My nexus one lasted longer, and i thought it was bad.
[Atrix 4G General] MrLeon:
Well, i'm happy especially coming from an N1

After 16 hours, i have roughly 40% battery left, with a steady data connection being used. (Meebo).

I did let my phone die at least once though
[Atrix 4G General] snlu178:
This has been the same experience for me.
[Atrix 4G General] tomit12:
Ultimatejuice ftw here so far. Took playing with the settings a bit, but thus far it has really extended the battery for me.
[Atrix 4G General] wookiebush:
Coming from an Evo, the Atrix battery is awesome.

I"m an extremely heavy user. I run my business entirely from my phone, so lots of data, voice and text. I leave bluetooth, gps etc on at all times. Since day one with this phone, after 12 hours off charger its been at 20-30%. Also, this battery charges VERY quickly compared to my Evo.

Other than a few random reboots, I'm 100% satisfied with the Atrix.
[Atrix 4G General] lpsi2000:
Battery on this phone is great, better than all of my previous phones.
[Atrix 4G General] airognol:
Battery is good so far, but does it drain in increments of 10?

I check my stats, and it will go from 90-80 but no in between.
[Atrix 4G General] MrLeon:
TS, you might have a defective battery. It's been at least 30 hours and now i am TRYING to kill my battery. Its at 10%. (I drain battery on new devices at least 3 times)

Its quite annoying when you're actually trying to drain the battery
[Atrix 4G General] hotleadsingerguy:
Actually that's really impressive...he's saying his phone was using a data connection almost constantly and still ends up with around 25-30 hours. That's incredible.
[Atrix 4G General] True2TheGame:
Finally went and traded in my atrix for a new one and now the battery life is great.
[Atrix 4G General] shea-bird:
First full day with the atrix...ran battery out of box down to 30% last night. turned off and charged til full this morning. unplugged at 7am. have been using it pretty moderately to heavy today and just plugged it back in at 7pm with 40%. To me that is AWESOME coming from an iphone 3g and Crappy.

gonna be out late tonight so I decided to throw it on the charger until I leave just to be safe :cool:

I will prob cycle down to 10-20% again tonight/tmrw, turn off and fully charge again, I seem to have luck doing that. I feel when the phone is off it is getting a "truer" charge. could be all in my head but it works for me.
[Atrix 4G General] Rred:
"...he's saying his phone was using a data connection almost constantly and still ends up with around 25-30 hours. "

Bear in mind, data isn't data. Most phones will burn more power if they have a 4G or high speed 3G data connection, than if they are connected in one of the older slower modes. Some of them list the different expected times in their specs.
[Atrix 4G General] Kaaji1359:
Note: to all the people posting how good their battery life is: STOP. We don't care. This is a post on how bad "some" of our phones battery life is. My battery life was great the first few days, but now it's worse.

For me, I was at 70% and went to bed at 3am with an alarm going off in SIX hours (9am). I wake up at 10:30am and miss a very important day because my phone is LITERALLY TURNED OFF hence my alarm didn't go off.

I've read all the posts on battery life. It's been a week and the battery has been "calibrated." I've read about how lithium-ion batteries act from the XDA-Developers themselves. Et cetera, et cetera, I've done my research.

I don't care if my phone inaccurately displays the battery usage; but TURNING OFF is unacceptable. Again, it's been a week so this should not be the damn case. The battery has gone from amazing to horrendous.
[Atrix 4G General] ryanthered:
That doesn't sound like a hardware problem. When you turned it back on did you check the battery status to see what was causing battery drain?
[Atrix 4G General] James62370:
Thank you very much for your suggestion. Sounds like a good plan, will check out Green Power Premium when I have some free time :)
[Atrix 4G General] James62370:
Thank you for your explanation. I didn't realize latency was that important. When AT&T started with HSPA, I noticed latency was much better, receive better download and upload speeds, however did not see much of an improvement in battery performance. As you stated, a clearly noticeable difference when using wifi.

Very informative, thanks again.
[Atrix 4G General] jjwatmyself:
Wow, the second most read thread in XDA's General for Atrix category and it isn't even sticky!

Mr. Clown, please make this thread sticky.
[Atrix 4G General] hem.acharya:
After I unlocked and put gingerbread the battery usage shows more than half if it is used by "phone idle" . phone idle used to take just about 10% in froyo before.
[Atrix 4G General] Rred:
Not surprising (with a Homer SImpson d'OH!) in hindsight. If you have a cellular data connection open, 2g, 3g, 4-g-ish, whatever, your phone can be running at up to 600mW power in order to reach the tower.

Compare that 600mW with the maximum power in most WiFi radio chips: 25-50mW in most laptops, and from what I've seen my Atrix is not as strong as a 25mW laptop WiFi connection. although I have no idea what the actual spec is.

So, the WiFi data connection may be burning 25mW or less, while the cellular data can be burning 600mW of power. No wonder the battery life is shorter, huh?
[Atrix 4G General] jjwatmyself:
Thanks for the numbers. I typically have cellular data turned off and run on Edge for this very reason. This gets me 2 to 3 days of use per full charge. I was interested to see this morning that when I started Navigation up in my driveway (Wi-Fi connected), that everything worked great for the entire journey. Then I realized, that this was despite cellular data being disabled. "Prefetch" is the option in Maps that allows you to control if prefetching is used with wifi only or wifi and cellular. Wow, working as designed!! I then confirmed that data is required for route planning as was not able to navigate to another address without a data connection. The point I am trying to make is that Navigation has some slick optimizations built in that work well for the battery conscious. I believe that the next release of navigation will have a more complete offline mode and I hope that the per route data requirement can then become optional.
[Atrix 4G General] beatphreek:
I get the same... I froze all the social networking bloat and now its down to about 30 percent. But still way higher than before.
[Atrix 4G General] hem.acharya:
Let me try freezing those unwanted services
[Atrix 4G General] MCWood:
I bought an atrix for my girl and ether battery life is horrible. Mine took about a month to finally get running well. I get just shy of 2 days. On hers maybe 12 hours.