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]

I will try and download this application too as I am close to throwing my Xperia Ray down the toilet!  I have been a loyal Sony user for a couple of years now, having had the X10 prior to my Ray but both have behaved excatly the same.  The battery used to last for an acceptable 12-24 hours for about the first 5 months of ownership and then suddenly falls significantly.  Before I got rid of my X10 (I had it for nearly 18 months) I could only get 3 to 4 hours out of the battery.  In December 2011 I upgraded to the Ray and was so pleased to be able to go out for the day with my phone without it going flat.  Now, 6 months in and I'm lucky to get 8 hours between charges.  My usage hasn't changed at all.  Maybe Sony purposely fit the devices with short-life batteries in order to maximise their profits by owners having to replace them if they wish to get full use of their phone for the duration of a mobile phone contract.  For the battery to have less than half the power up time within 6 months is despicable.  I certainly don't think this will encourage me to own a thrid Sony smart phone!

[muswell]

I have started to get the same problem. After four months of 36 hour battery life, suddenly it went down to 10-12 hours. Try turning your phone off overnight and noting the battery level change. Mine is discharging at about the same rate when OFF. This has got to be a fault, and I am in the process of sending it back for repair. Don't be fobbed off. If I get a positive resolution I will post again.

[#4]

Well once again I forgot the username and passward to my account, nor do I rememeber which e-mail it is linked to.

Nonetheless, totally unrelated but just an update, I sold my phone on eBay and reverted back to iOS and upgraded to iPhone 4, and no more problems anymore.

Got rid of my ray in December or something.

[#5]

That's too bad, it really is a great phone if you tweak it right. Here is my current usage at this point in time just to demonstrate this, with wifi constantly on.

[Uliwooly]

can you take some screenshots of the battery usage (the list prior to the graph) and share the amount of hours/minutes each item was on? thank you

[#7]

Wi-Fi: 3d 1h 28m 8s

Display: 3h 22m 23s

Cell Standby: 3d 1h 28m 8s

Phone Idle: 2d 22h 9m 42s

Block Puzzle 2: Keep awake - 1h 2m 8s

Voice Calls: 5m 44s

The custom kernel I am using in case you wanted to know: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=26118025&postcount=533

ROM is stock gingerbread (4.0.2.A.0.62), I manually removed most of the CPU eating bloatware services that came with the stock ROM (eventstream stuff & crashmonitor etc).

Display brightness ~15%

Hope it helps

[Uliwooly]

nice, data plan/3G has been off correct? that helps a lot

[#9]

Yeah, data access disabled, not sure if that disables 3G though.

[Uliwooly]

it only dissables 3G/2G data but that's great that your battery last that long

[#11]

Yeah, it's definitely the kernel that does it, it deep sleeps almost all the time and even when the phone is awake, the CPU is undervolted so it barely takes any battery away. When I first got the phone, I was getting 12hrs tops with moderate usage - really sucked. I edited my original post, not sure if you saw, but my display is on ~15% brightness which also helps when my display is on.