Verizon DROID 2 plagued by antenna issue, poor battery life?

The Droid 2 has been in the hands of the public for less than a week and reports of antenna reception problems and poor battery life are surfacing from users and reviewers alike. The first report appeared last week over at Mobile Crunch in a post that surveyed the early Droid 2 reviews. More than one review reported poor signal quality and fluctuation in coverage:

Engadget, in its Droid 2 review, noted that its four review handsets show:

a wildly fluctuating meter while the phone’s sitting still, weak or no reception in places where you’re usually fine on Verizon, and a complete lack of data service (which was actually how we noticed the problem the first time).

Mobile Crunch had two review units which exhibit a similar problem:

The signal on one of the two units we received is all over the board, dipping from full signal down to nearly none whilst sitting in the same spot (and no, we’re not holding it wrong).

Folks following-up in the comments and on forums are also reporting antenna problems including the aforementioned signal fluctuation and poor coverage in areas that are known to have coverage. Other folks are reporting poor battery life but some of this may stem from the antenna problem. Most smartphone owners know that when a phone is straining to get a signal, battery life will go down the tubes.

While a vocal crowd of owners are speaking out about this signal issue, many are reporting absolutely no problems with their handset. With these contradictory reports, it is difficult to discern whether this issue is a limited hardware problem affecting early production run handsets or a more widespread issue stemming from a firmware glitch that degrades the antenna’s performance. Hopefully, the underlying problem is the latter and can be easily addressed via an OTA firmware upgrade from Motorola and Verizon.

So DROID 2 owners, it’s your turn to chime in. Is your handest performing as well as expected or is it plagued by this troubling antenna problem?

[Via Mobile Crunch and Phone Arena]

About The Author

Kelly Hodgkins

Kelly spent the last three years covering mobile technology at places like BGR, Gizmodo and The Unofficial Apple Weblog. Before writing, she spent a few years working with and teaching others how to use Adobe Flash and Macromedia Director. Even earlier than that, she spent six years working on her Ph.D in Microbiology. When she's not writing, she can be found fishing the lakes and hiking the mountains of Western Maine with her husband and children.

Ill

seems like bitter iPhone users and known iPhone cult members are the only people reporting this antenna issue.
Kevin

Battery life is insanely terrible. Not only that, it takes forever to charge. I took the phone off the charger last night when I went to bed — 100% charged — woke up this morning with 50% charge. And, the phone was in "night mode," a setting that supposedly conserves battery life.
xraytedjim

My signal and battery life sucks. I had full battery and in 3-4 hours I was down to 15% in a weak coverage area. It's gotten so bad I had to fork out for the network entender so I could get coverage in my home. I knew I would have worse battery life than my blackberry, but this is rediculus!!
Stephen

My droid 2 has been amazing. Battery life has been awesome and there is also a battery save feature that turns off 3g just go to the data manager in the settings. I also like that the original droid battery worj son this phone.
Ill

sounds like some bitter iPhone users/reviewers want a person to lie in the "bad product" bed with them. True or not.
Matt

Yep just got my Droid2 yesterday, used it for a few hours last night and then charged it overnight for 12 hours. I have used it infrequently today aside from occasional checking of my gmail accounts. I turned it on around 8 am this morning and as of 12:45pm I'm down to 30% battery life. Will probably be returning this phone this week if problem is not resolved.
Paul

Love the phone, but agree with the spotty antenna and battery won't last a day its driving me crazy.
2tru

Got the Droid 2 the day it was released. I like the phone a lot — but the battery life is the worst I have ever experienced. I have owned and used multiple models of various phone including multiple Blackberry phones (just upgraded to the Droid 2 from the Tour). But even when using the other phones heavily, I only had to recharge at night, and sometimes once every 2 days. After fulling charging the new Droid 2 overnight the first night I got it, the phone lasted less than 5 hours with light to moderate use. I removed every pre-installed widget except time and date, and turned off Wii Fi and GPS, I minimized the screen brightness, and the battery still drains within hours. I've been a Verizon wireless customer for many years — and reception is always good and the signal is strong. This is really disappointing. I wanted to really like this phone — and I like the features. But I'm going to have to return it unless I hear that there's a software or firmware fix available right away.
Mike

The battery life is pretty bad. I have Taskiller, which is supposed to close all running programs and they just reboot automatically, what's the point??
Droid2Fan

hard to say about antenna since i'm new to Verizon but I've had a lot of battery issues.

Love the phone alot, but I literally had a fully charged phone at 12 noon, and by 5PM, it was completely drained, and all I did was just look at a few webpages and check my mail a few times.
Steve

Love the phone but the battery life is poor and there is a bug in the keyboard. When entering a 0 (zero) for a contact's phone number another app is opened. Could only enter the 0 by using the on screen keyboard.
Firstsmartphone

I got the phone on the release day, and have already traded out the battery (thinking it was defective) and today traded the whole phone & battery (again, thinking it was all defective). I have not gotten more than 6 hours out of the battery thus far, and that is after setting everything to the lowest levels possible and rarely using it. It seems that the voice calls are the biggest drain – I went from 90% to 50% after a 37 minute call…the battery meter showed that 67% of the drain was from the voice calls. I know that this has all the bells and whistles, but it's still a PHONE. Shouldn't voice calls be the least likely thing to cause issues?

This is my first "smart" phone. This dumb thing is driving me nuts. Luckily, I have 30 days to trade it out, and if this doesn't improve in a few days (after killing the battery & recharging) I'm going to get the Incredible or original Droid. My friends have those…they conned me into getting this one. They tell me they've never gotten less than 12 hours on a charge. That sounds reasonable. 6 max, with 4 being the norm, is ridiculous…regardless of what the Verizon employees tell me ("oh, that's completely normal for a smart phone")
Chris W

I got my Droid2 the day it came out and I, too, am experiencing dismal reception issues and VERY short battery life. At 100% charge, I can get – at most – 5 hours before the phone is down to 20% charged, and that's without using GPS or update services. And the phone reception goes from full 3G reception to 1X with one signal bar and back again constantly, even when the phone is resting on a table. I wonder if the two issues are related… the battery is draining quickly because the radio is constantly searching for a decent signal. This is my first Android phone after years of BlackBerry use, and although I *LOVE* the interface, I don't see myself sticking with this phone for long if I can't figure out a way to resolve the battery and reception issues.
Dreamer

I agree the battery life is horrible so I'm going to buy the extended battery that Verizon offers. I really enjoy the phone so the money I'm spending on the extended battery is worth it. I haven't had any signal issues thus far.
tim

Will completely agree with the other posts, battery life is terrible. My blackberry storm could last days and now with my droid 2 im limited to hours of moderate use. i just unplugged my phone at 650 AM drove to work, sent two text messages, its now 730 AM and im at 80 percent battery life. i love this phone and waited for it to come out but something has to be done about this battery problem.
lovemydroid2

ive been using mine pretty heavily, and i absolutely love the phone, but the battery can become a problem. luckily i have enough chargers for home and work, and im getting the car dock. but if i take a trip into the city for a day, by the time im on my way home the phones dead. i wonder if the extended battery works cause then i'll just get that.
also one problem, when im using the phone heavily WHILE its charging, the battery still slightly drains, that could be a problem
Chris

I love my Droid 2. Maybe if all of the people who have experienced battery life problems actually charged the battery the way it's supposed to be charged, as in let it drain all the way, and as soon as it's 100% charged, take it off the charger (leaving it on for 12 hours will NOT help you at all), they wouldn't have these problems. After charging it the correct way, my phone stayed on for well over 24 hours with continuous messaging, web browsing, and even playing a game for an hour.

Also, go into your battery manager and personalize the settings. If you don't need a bright display, turn it down. Turn off WiFi when you're not using it, and same goes with BlueTooth.
Chris

Taskiller actually sucks even more battery life. just power down and turn it back on, and choose which programs you want running.
Nick

I agree… I just got it yesterday and it is horrible. My reception is bad too. It's a huge difference moving from a Voyager to this!
Eric

I've had the phone for 3 days now….went from a Verizon 6900 (Basically, the HTC Touch) to the Droid 2. I took the phone off the charger this morning at 8:15am. It is 3:42pm as I am writing this, and the battery level is at 70%. I have made several calls totalling about 30 minutes. I have txted several times, checked my mail a number of times, passed the phone around the office several times for the tech hounds in my office to check out. While the battery life isn't great (my old HTC would last a couple days without me needing to worry about charging it), 70% charge remaining after 7.5 hours of use, seems somewhat acceptable.

It is, by no means, something to tout as "Great battery life" but so far, it seems okay.
Fred

Before making unwarranted accusatory group comments,
at the very least, consider the fact that maybe it actually Is
the phone/battery/whatever. I'm very aware that overcharging
your phone or laptop or any other piece of technology will
only do harm to your battery life, but I'm still having the
same problems.

Furthermore, Chris, even if some of us don't charge at a
dead battery (maybe like 10-20% battery, which is Okay),
please remember that this is very likely not anyone's
first smartphone. A mere comparison with another
Verizon smartphone's battery life shows that in Consistent
battery charging practices, whether done correctly or poorly,
the droid2 is not keeping up to par.
diar

I just returned my Droid 2 yesterday and I'm back to the original Droid. The phone overall was great and the stock browser with Flash is really freakin' fantastic…I can't stress that enough (I hated giving it up). I didn't have any signal problems, but the battery….oh, the battery. I know some folks here say they've gotten 12 to 24 hours out of it. I just don't see how. I followed the traditional conditioning: fully draining the phone until it shut off, then fully charging it. I repeated that four or five times in a row. That did improve battery life slightly, but it would still drain way too quickly. After the conditioning, one time I still lost 20 percent of my battery life after just 10-15 minutes of web searching and texting. Rogue apps weren't to blame since I have the same set up on my original Droid. I liked the phone so much I thought about just lugging around the battery from my old Droid as a backup, but I just decided to wait for the storm of Android phones coming this fall/winter.
Dreampink21

I have the same issue. I recieved the phone on monday and activated it but didnt make a call until tuesday and today. The reception sounds horrible. Lots of background noise and the call goes in and out. Even when you watch the status bar the signal goes from 1 bar to 4 bars and then no bars, and thats when you're sitting still. This could also be why the battery is draining so fast. I had to remove the facebook account in order to save the battery life. The battery has gone from 100% to 80% in 4hrs and thats just from sitting on the counter but thats definitely an improvement. Idk wats up but I really want it fixed. Whats the point of having features you can't use…
T. B.

Droid 2 Issues abound. Battery life seriously bad. Noticed something interesting though: Plug in the phone, get the battery level to 100%. Take out the battery and put it back in and the level is at 60%. Been an hour and still at 60%. Very disconcerting…
tyler

I’m having the same issues, with no apps or notification services running the phone literally sits on my desk in maximum battery saver mode and uses nearly all the charge by days end. Turning on notifications or running pandora kills it in super speed. Just called verizon and requested a droid x exchange
janet

i am having the same batter and antenna sign issues. How frustrating!
Davidbiz

Phone is basically great but battery life is dreadful! One of the reasons, I believe, are the number of built-in apps that insist on running continuously. Even after an application “kill” program, within seconds, they’re all running again. Slows everything down too. And many of them are completely unnecessary like Amazon MP3, Blockbuster etc…I mean how often are you actually going to use these apps? Let US be the ones to decide when to run them…when we need them, we’ll start them….promise!!!
Adam

I am not having trouble with the antenna, but my battery lasts less then 2 hours and I am not doing much with it. Also the battery is hot. I think there might be an issue with mine, but it is actually hot to the touch
Mike

There is a bug with the GPS staying on even when apps are no longer using it. This is what causes the battery issues. There are several forums with a lot of good info on the issue. Hopefully VZW and Motorola will have a software update soon.
Walter Gulley

I started with a Droid X but returned it because the virtual keyboards just did not fit my fingers. During the time I owned it there were no problems with signal strength in my home, car, or shop.
I bought a Droid 2 on the day it came out. Love the keyboard, but the Verizon service flat out does not work. Now I frequently drop from 3 bars to none with the phone sitting by a window and not being touched or moved. I routinely miss calls and don’t know until the phone beeps long after the call.
Verizon & Motorola have about 1 more week to fix this or the Droid 2 goes back before the 30 day trial period ends. This is a real bummer because I spent a lot of time setting up Apps the way I want them. At least my ancient LG phone WORKS for crying out loud.
Juliette

New phone, I have had it about a day. I am so frustrated that I must risk redundancy by agreeing with the others: the battery life is abysmal. I won’t touch the thing, with few to no apps running, and it drops huge percentages. It is totally ridiculous. My battery is also very hot. I wonder if firmware updates can even fix that?
Ted

same problems here. I Love the phones features, but cannot tolerate
The poor reception. Last night I called tech support from my wifes blackberry. I had five bars showing on the blackberry, and one bar on the droid.
Elizabeth

I have not had any reception issues on my Droid2 yet, but I rarely use it for calls so it would not seem as obvious if it were happening. I am, however, having serious issues with my phone shutting off completely when it is charging. Not every time, but about 50% of the time when the battery is at 10% or less, I will connect the phone to a charger and discover an hour later that it’s no longer even on. Very frustrating…
CK

I am loving my Droid 2, except for the battery usage. I’ve turned off most all the widgety services and can squeak 9-10 hours of life out of it. Call quality is fantastic, for me. I do have my phone charging throughout the day, and i’ve ordered a spare battery just in case. It’s a small annyoance, but i really like this phone
alex

Got the phone yesterday and it was lagging heavily between screens. The battery went from 70% to dead in 2 hours of mild usage. I told myself the phone is just getting used to itself and ignored it. Charged the phone that night for 11 hours. Took it off and it went down to 60% after 1 hour of very low usage. The battery is just ridiculous. The qwerty keyboard isn’t as great as I expected so I no longer see a use for a physical keyboard. Other than the lag and battery/reception its been alright.. I’ve just never trusted motorola and to me they make garbage handsets. Its not android its motorola. Thinking about going to a droid incredible before my 30 days, HTC has always made great handsets and I’ve never had an issue with them in the past. Sense UI seems to fluid and responsive to pass up. I’ve noticed these same lag issues on the X as well. Anybody else thinking about switching to an incredible as well?
mj

this is far and away the worst battery I have had in any smart phone..i have done everything Verizon and folks on the web have suggested to curb battery usage. maybe 60 minutes of talk time and the battery drained within 6 hours at night… the reception has been good
Goldie

I just got my Droid 2 on Aug 27th. Was SOO excited to get it. I loved my LG touch Envy, but it was time to step into the “smart phone” arena! Ha! I’ve been so frustrated with this phone this entire weekend I can’t even tell you! The battery life as we ALL KNOW..plain out stinks! I’m lucky to get 3-4 hours a day and that is with VERY light usage. Checking email, a couple texts maybe a phone call or two. That is it! I’ve tried what everyone else has on here too with the ATK and decreasing the backlight and tweaking things down to a bare minimum. Nothing works! I’m very disgusted with this phone and it’s high praise they touted all over. I went out and brought the car charger, hard case and screen protectors.. now if I take it back I’m not sure the Verizon store would even take the charger/case back with my receipts! I don’t know what to do as this is truly my first experience with a smart phone and I’m not having a good experience at all thus far. I like the features and being able to d/l apps and play around with different things. But I can’t be glued to a darn charger all day just to be able to have my phone work! I was willing to accept that I had to charge my phone by the end of each evening (after a day of full usage).. NOT every 3-4 hours! Totally unacceptable! They better do something about this Droid 2 or they are going to have a bunch of useless plastic laying around that Motorola floor very soon, if not already!
mbb

In response to the task killer comment:

The Android OS does not work like a desktop operating system. On a desktop OS, like Windows, Mac OS X, or Ubuntu Linux, the user is responsible for closing programs in order to keep a reasonable amount of memory available. On Android, this is not the case. The OS itself automatically removes programs from memory as memory is needed. The OS may also preload applications into memory which it thinks might soon be needed.
Having lots of available empty memory is not a good thing. It takes the same amount of power to hold “nothing” in memory as it does to hold actual data. So, like every other operating system in use today, Android does its best to keep as much important/likely-to-be-used information in memory as possible.
As such, using the task manager feature of SystemPanel to constantly clear memory by killing all apps is strongly NOT RECOMMENDED. This also applies to any other task killer / management program. Generally speaking, you should only “End” applications if you see one which is not working correctly. The “End All” feature can be used if your phone/device is performing poorly and you are uncertain of the cause.

But I do agree, battery life sucks BADLY.
Steve

I have the same experience. Poor reception — I can live with it because Verizon has such a great network. Extremely low battery life. This is unacceptable as I am constantly looking for places to plug in my phone. Last weekend I took a trip and used the GPS. It drained the battery fastery than the car dock could charge it. The batter also gets hot. 5 minutes of email with take 10% of the battery. Ugh. I wish I had stayed with my BlackBerry. The only other Motorola phone I ever owned was a dud. I should have known better.
josay

I’ve had the droid 2 for about a week now. The phone has frozen twice while trying kill some apps. As far as battery life, it sucks lol. It only lasts about half a day. God forbid I use the gps. I have yet to have any signal issues.
pdroid

Battery life seems just like the incrediblel , you gunna need an extended life battery or a car charger to get a full days use, I went from the incredible to the droid 2 and I didn’t see much of a difference in battery life between the,but all in all I love, y droid 2 and I didn’t notice any reception problem
Adam C

I bought the Droid 2 about 5 days, ago. I previously owned an LG Dare. I’m a telecommunications technician by trade. Here’s what I’ve got for you in terms of comments…

With regard to battery life, I don’t know where people are getting the data that 3-4 hours of “light” usage completely drains the battery. Either they have a different definition of “light” than I do, or their phones are bunk. Can you completely kill the battery in less than 4 hours? Yes. You can. I know because I purposely tried to do it. When I did, I had to put myself in a bad signal area for an extended period of time while running a bunch of background data, texting my friends and playing games. (I went back and forth between a fishing game and “shoot u.” It made for a very geeky afternoon.)

The battery is good enough to get you through the work day with default settings in place, unless you’re a person that spends A LOT of time on the phone. You can even play a few minutes worth of low-impact games without having to charge the phone on the way home from the office. The single biggest killer of battery life is actually the display. 40% of battery life goes to that. If you mitigate it by adjusting the default settings to “blank screen” the phone after 30 seconds, (rather than the 1 minute default setting) you can cut down a significant amount of power usage. Also, if you turn down the brightness level, you can help yourself out.

I don’t have any comments regarding the effect of bluetooth on battery life. However I CAN say that the screen will turn itself off while talking over an ear piece. Since I know the display uses up most of the battery power, I would expect that the battery use isn’t going to be all that bad with the radio on. I haven’t noticed anything significant.

With regard to the signal issue: I’ve seen it. While sitting in a meeting room I watched the phone go from 3G to 1X without moving. I didn’t notice any correlation to the opening of doors, or the movement of people or the use of electronics (like a microwave) in the immediate area. I also noticed that, in this same room, I get an occasional failed text message. I didn’t have an appropriate antenna, spectrum analyzer or power meter on hand, so I can’t absolutely say that it was the phone rather than the environment. However, it did strike me as odd that it was happening. Only seems to happen indoors.

Long story short: The phone is great. It does everything I ask it to do, in spades. You just have to be smart about how you use it. As much as people want it to be a cool toy, it’s actually a pretty impressive and complicated machine.

My two cents.
rikent

I have had my Droid 2 for two days and I am very disappointed. First I noticed the battery was draining very quickly and I was making a few short calls and looking at a few web pages. After being off all night I could not get the phone to wake up, finally having some luck after several minutes pressing the unlock button. Now the phone is shutting down, saying it is going into cooling mode. And I wasn’t using the phone it was just sitting in my phone case, I pulled it out and tired to unlock, it went into cooling mode. Now after sitting for 3 hours I tried unlocking and it went into a Droid loop. I pulled the battery, waited and put the battery back in. The phone started up and I let it sit without trying to use it and after 5 minutes it went into cool down mode again. This is going back, what a POS.
http://www.smallmiraclesphoto.com Keri

I have to say, I am incredibly disappointed with the Droid2. I had a Blackberry curve before and loved it. It fell to the bottom of a lake so I upgraded to the Droid2.
What a mistake. This phone has given me nothing but a headache. I knew going into it the battery wasn’t great, but this is ridiculous. I have to charge it 2 to 3 times in a day, and I barely use it. What is the point of having a phone that does fun stuff, if you can’t do the fun stuff because your battery only lasts a few hours?
The reception is awful. I get a lot of feedback…I hate this phone. Yes, it does fun things, but it can barely make a phone call and hold a charge for a few hours. Returning tomorrow.
John

Same boat, my battery life sucks, antenna issue is a pain, but noticeable. My next choice after this is going to be the incredible. Idk about other people but i have 2 family members who own the-original droid and love it. droid 2 = fail. I plan on returning…
Curt

Bought 2 Droid 2′s at Costco and took them back the next day. Very poor and irratic reception. It was heartbreaking, because the device is an amazing piece of gear.
Petersisejr

maybe you should stay off the phone texting while driving, and walking into people while texting, and USE A PHONE for what it is meant for , PHONE CALLS, my droid last 2 days on a full charge, and rarely use it the way most idots so, just for fun. Stay on the PC for fun, use a phone for calls.
Rolopez2011

the droid incredible has an even worse battery life
Guest

Yes, my Ferrari gets excellent gas mileage. I don’t know what you idiots are talking about, I mostly try to go downhill and never exceed 20mph.
http://www.facebook.com/bmp0014 Blake Perritt

I’m not sure what you are doing to your phone….but I use my phone frequently throughout work and at home and it lasts me all day. By the middle of the day it is down to about 40%. Before you boot up your phone you are supposed to charge it OFF for at least 12 hours. That will give it a good memory….yes batteries have memories. IF you do that the first time, you should get pretty good use out of your phone before it dies. I bought a used Droid 2 and I don’t like having a phone die at the end of the day….SO, I purchased an extended life battery for it. I did the same with the Droid Incredible I had previously and it lasted at least a day and a half, depending on my usage. If you’re in a poor signal area, your battery will die FAST. The reason being is it is constantly trying to get reception, therefore draining the battery. My advice to you is, buy an extended life battery, charge it for AT LEAST 12 HOURS, then come back and give us a follow-up. My predictions are you will be satisfied with this awesome phone. I love it, I have been a smart phone user for 5 years now and this is, by far, the best one. And yes, I have owned the iPhone, it did not impress me because you were limited to certain things, ie iTunes. With the droid the possibilities are ENDLESS.
http://www.facebook.com/bmp0014 Blake Perritt

Very strange how people are having issues with the battery. My Droid 2 works PERFECTLY fine. It holds a charge throughout the day. I charged it fully last night and took it off the charger at 6 AM today….used it throughout the day and it has 60% battery left and it is now 5:22 PM, almost 12 hours later and it’s not even halfway drained! This is a standard battery too….I think that you guys just aren’t charging them right when you first get them. Most people don’t know to charge your battery WITH YOUR PHONE OFF (the first time) for at least 12 hours. This will set the memory in the battery to last longer than if you were to power it on before charging and charge it when it died.
ladiism0ov

u have to download the task killer app. when u open apps they remain opened unless manually closed, as this drains the battery. if u occasionally do the task killer, it closes everything at once..and since someone told me that, my battery has been lasting alot longer..hope that helps
Kathy

It would have been nice if the sales clerk had told me this! If you haven’t had one, how are you supposed to know?!?! I have had mine for three days, is it too late to do this now or would it even matter???
Kathy

It would have been nice if the sales clerk had told me this! If you haven’t had one, how are you supposed to know?!?! I have had mine for three days, is it too late to do this now or would it even matter???
Bill N

Whether hardware or software problems, mine was dead in 6-7 hours, no calls, wi-fi and bluetooth off. All I did was sync with e-mail. My Blackberry 8830 would run for 2-3 DAYS in this mode. Either I had a defective unit or selling this as a phone is fraud.
F_droid

First I was all excited about my new droid 2. Turns out the phone is piece of crap. Since day 1, problems with SIM card, battery drained within a day. This is bullsh*t, my wife bought the phone of the shelf, this is what we get? You’re better of buying a different phone.
Bongmanding

thanks for the advice.I will try them.
Galanz

Just got mine last week. I am taking my Droid 2 back to get somethings else. Battery will not keep a charge 24 hours with almost no use. You basically have to keep it on a charger all day so that by morning its not dead.
Mestoll1

I’ve had the battery replaced once and traded out the whole phone once. Thinking I might be better off with a Nexus S Google phone.
Mestoll1

I think you are very lucky. I was getting between 2.5 to 4 hours on a full battery charge with light use and killing all apps.
Droid User

I love my Droid 2 but if I don’t charge it overnight, the battery will die by the end of the next day. I plan to buy a back-up battery for those heavy use days or if I forget to charge it at night. I have a problem with downloaded ringtones. Every once in awhile they stop working. If I do a soft reset (remove battery) they start working again. Very strange.
cvmcgaha

I am having the same problem with the battery not staying charged for very long….I have noticed that every thirty minutes the battery drains down 10%. For example at 8pm, the remaining battery life was at 60%. At 8:30pm is drained down to 50%….then at 9pm, it was at 40%. When I received the replacement battery from Verizon for this phone (Droid 2) it was at 60% battery life. I did NOT turn the phone off while charging the first time. Within about an hour, it was fully charged to 100%. If I turn the phone off tonight before going to bed and charge the phone for at least 12 hours, do you think it will remedy the problem with the battery? Does this only work if it is the FIRST time you are charging the battery?
Tehee10

Droid’s don’t even have a SIM card
Jayne C

I live in an area with a bad signal. I purchased a network extender. Had a lg and signal was speratic but had some signal. I got a droid 2 and my signal can change from 4 bars to 1x to 0 without moving. My husband has a flip phone and has 4 bars at all time. in the same area. I am really frustrated.the battery goes down also without using the phone. I have to charge it frequently without using it except to check emails. my phone was a replacement so can’t take it back. what is the deal.
Jason

Just like any high end smartphone rivaling the processing power and memory of many peoples computers not many years ago it is understandable how much power it requires. Its like owning a Ferrari or a prius, personally I would take the Ferrari. There are always sacrafices to a better product, but to me they are justified. Phone technology has grown so fast but battery technology has not. Personally I make it through the day and I do get on the web occasionally. I just charge it on my way to and from work which is no different than what I did with my other non smartphones. For the people with less than 4 hours you have a bad battery, phone, or charger. Faulty products happen all the time. My tips: Have screen auto turn off after 30 sec or 1 min and very low brightness(mines all the way down because it was way too bright before) and if you still have issues get another battery.
Poohcuddler777

Love the phone, the battery sucks! It does not even last eight hours and i do not even use it. I am going to buy a relpacement battery, and if that doesn’t help I will trade in the entire phone.
Tobrentfrom-guest

Turn off the map bluetooth and wireless if you are not using them Use a task killer also, and you could see all day use.
Be aware of how weak your signal is as the weaker the signal the more your device will try to increase its signal strength to compensate. That will draw more
power from your battery.