Extremely bad battery life on my Xperia ray.

[#1]

Hi, I recently purchased a new Xperia Ray, used it for a week but the battery life is extremely poor if I use the phone. No point spending £200+ on a smart phone when I spend more time conserving the battery than using it was a smart phone right?

I've contacted Sony via E-mail but they gave me the vaguest response ever, so I'm here appealing for better answers. I'll copy my e-mail and the reponse here:

Hi, I recently bought a new Xperia ray, and I am a bit concerned about the battery life.

People has claimed 2-3 days of battery life with light usage, but I can't even get one full day of light usage.

Activities include just leaving phone on standby with music in the background and sending the odd text/facebook message.

I checked the battery use, and to get to 20% battery, it took 12 hours.

38% music

14% display (which is very strange because screen has only been turned on for 5 short times)

10% wifi, 9% Media server, 7% trackID (7% from track id-ing 1 song????), and so on.

To see how much the display would consume, I turned the display on to roughly 50% and to not time out - idle.

After 30 minutes, battery dropped down to 10% with the percentage on the display from 15% to 30% usage.

Is there a fault with my machine? I flashed to build number 4.0.2.A.0.58 from an earlier build, it seemed to have improved slightly (the battery life was much worse, the previous build only gave me literally 6 hours use before dying)

What can I do? I am really disappointed with the battery life, it seems much worse than the battery I had on my Apple iPod Touch - which I thought was already quite bad.

If the battery life doesn't get fixed soon, I am really considering a refund because the battery life just doesn't work for me. Being forced to limit the tasks you can do on your phone because you don't want the battery to die too fast really isn't on.

And the reply:

Dear Ben,

Thank you for contacting Sony Ericsson Xperia™ Support.

    In regards to your inquiry about the inconveniences you are expeirencing with the battery life of your phone. I am sorry that you are experiencing this inconvenience with the battery life of your phone. You may download and install a Task Killer application form the Market in order to help you close/kill all aplications that are not being used on the phone in order to save battery power. You may also try reinstalling/repairing the software of the phone using a program called PC Companion which you can download from our website. You will need access to a Microsoft® Windows® computer and to the original USB data cable of the phone. If you require further assistance you can contact tehcnical support in your country at +44 08705 237 237.

As part of Sony Ericsson's commitment to excellent customer service, we offer a wide variety of mobile products to suit your lifestyle. If you require more information, or have any other questions, please visit our website at SonyEricsson.com/Xperia.


Best regards,
Raul

Anyone can give me any suggestions?

I've even tried to install cynomod 7 but the user interface is just sooo bad I cannot use it.

Thanks, BEN

[#2]

For that day, I unplugged my phone at 8:30, and went school, listening to music till 9.

phone was idle for 2 hours, then i had music with double twist on for roughly 30 minutes.

Then I played 2 short games of reckless gateway.

2-3pm, more music

4pm check facebook

then from then after, till 8, idle.

Screen only been on for only 30 minutes in total roughly.

[Uliwooly]

it doesn't seem that you have a bad/faulty phone, it lasted more than 12hours on one charge, but it'll be great to get some official feedback on this

you should've tap on each of those options on the screenshot you took, to see how long the screen was on and the rest too

[#4]

If this doesn't seem that I have a bad/faulty phone then I think it is appalling for SE to quote this as their battery life for this phone

Networks
Talk time
(up to)
Standby time
(up to)
Video call
(up to)
UMTS/HSPA 850/1900/2100
7 hours
440 hours
UMTS/HSPA 900/2100
7 hours
440 hours
GSM/GPRS/EDGE 850/900/1800/1900
6 hours 50 min
430 hours

compared the the iPhone 3GS

Talk time: Up to 5 hours on 3G, up to 12 hours on 2G
Standby time: Up to 300 hours
Internet use: Up to 5 hours on 3G, up to 9 hours on Wi-Fi
Video playback: Up to 10 hours
Audio playback: Up to 30 hours

when my iPhone lasts a whole 24hours longer, on much more intense usage.

Thanks for your help anyway but haven't found a solution yet.

Will phone SE and update this thread if anything exciting happens.

Edit-

I'm pretty sure it's nothing to so with software though, all I know is that when my screen is on and in use, the battery life just drops so fast.

[Uliwooly]

that's on standby, and I disagree about the iphone, it doesn't last that long, it last the same or less, I know that for a fact, just this weekend I was comparing the iCrap 4S  and the 3GS w/ my Arc and battery life it's the same for all I do

[#6]

No, that's on my own normal usage, on my ray I limit everything just to save battery, whereas on my iPhone I didn't need to do this.

You can disagree all you want and stick up for SE, I don't care. All I know is that if I didn't have an issue with the battery life (or the amount of power the display uses in particular), I wouldn't be raging here.

Going to try the following.

Get a replacement or just sell the damn thing and revert back to Apple - which is a shame cos I took such an advantage of the Android Marketplace the last week.

But then the way Android handles music is also so poor, so I wouldn't miss it much.

[Uliwooly]

to each its own

[Markus1]

Sorry to hear you're giving up on Android and Sony Ericsson.

Personally I'd take any Android phone before going for the iOS.

12 hours and 10% left is not that bad. It sounds pretty normal to me actually.

What you can do if you are determined something is wrong is to update/repair the software or hand in the phone at a service centre for examination and battery testing.

[#9]

Sorry to hear you've had such a problem! I used to only get around 13 hours of battery life (I agree, it's terrible), but there is a solution, albeit, one that requires you to fiddle with your device and will involve you breaking Sony Ericsson's ToS and voiding warranty. If you are willing to do so, then keep reading . aire from the xda-developers forum has created a customised kernel which is heavily voltage optimised, therefore tremendously increasing battery life. However, in order to use this kernel, it will require you to do a bit of fiddling and unlock your bootloader, but there are two ways of doing so. Using SE's official method, you will lose DRM and the use of TrackID, so I highly recommend you use the unofficial method. More details and instructions can be found in this comprehensive thread made by hansip87, and also contains the link to aire's kernel: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1426912

Using this kernel, my battery life lasts around a day and a half, which is a drastic improvement! Hope this information isn't too late, and hope it helps.

[MarkMRL]

Your battery life is extremely bad, and I think your Ray might be defective. I think Ray has some of the best battery life out of any smartphone, it even beats the iPhone 4s imo.

First of all, make sure you haven't installed any malicious app that drains your battery. Make sure you don't leave WiFi, GPS, Data and Bluetooth enable if you don't need them. Reduce screen brightness to 50-70%. Do not use a task killer obsessively, use it only to close a crashed app, but do not kill everything over and over. Also, you may try to set it to use only GSM networks. Don't bother to install kernels or custom roms. Stock rom is stable and fast enough for everyday use.

If you already follow those basic hints to maximize battery life and you can't get it to last over 12 hours, you have a defective battery. Mine lasts a full day with moderately heavy usage meaning

• a few hours of browsing on desktop pages with flash
• lots of music with headphones
• a few calls
• a few SMS
• a few minutes of gaming (3d games mostly)
• WiFi constantly enabled
• 65% screen brightness
• taking a few photos
• I also use a 3D live wallpaper
• Sometimes I also use Google Maps

This is how I use my ray on an average day.

See here for proof. I charged it a bit about 6 hours ago, but you can see yourself that it lasted over 24 hours on one charge.

[#11]

To everyone struggling with battery life on the Ray,

Download the free "easy battery saver" application. It really does work. I used to get around 24 hours on 1 charge.

See my screenshot below after installing and running it on "Advanced Mode". (which allows background data on at timed intervals. Mine was set for every 5 minutes, for 15 seconds.)

Phone was at 20% when taken.