User Complaints

There have been many reports of poor battery life for the Backflip. As little as 4.5 hours before needing a charge in one case.

My Experience

During the first week and a half of owning the phone I have been using it much more than normal for me while learning about it and testing things so my use has not been normal for me.

I would say that the last 24 hours or so has been normal so I will focus on that.

My Use

I do not use any social networking sites or IM.

I have my gmail account, Google calendar, contacts set to autosync.

I have two IMAP e-mail accounts set to check for new e-mails every 15 minutes. If I could set the preferences for each account individually I would have one set to 15 minutes and the other to 6 hours or so.

I send receive about 6-8 texts in a normal day.

I talk on the phone between 30-60 minutes a day, with 30 or less being the norm.

I use the phone through my blue tooth device in my vehicle radio. This serves as hands free and as a music player. The music player is playing through the blue tooth almost all of the time I am driving. How much I drive is from zero to 4 hours a day. I have 6 GB of music files on my SD card.

I use WiFi about 30 minutes a day.

I turn off WiFi, Bluetooth, and GPS when not in active use.

My 24 - March 18, 2010

In the last 24 hours I:

• drove about 2 hours using blue tooth for hands free and music
• had 8 texts total (in and out)
• talked about 30 minutes on the phone
• used WiFi about 30 minutes

The battery went from 100% to 41% in this time.

30 Hour Update

At 30 hours after driving with the blue tooth connect for about an hour (no music this time), got a couple more texts and viewed 4 or 5 more e-mails the battery was down to 28%. I knew I was going to be at a job for about 3 hours, so I plugged the phone into the car charger.

Update - March 23, 2010

In the last 24 hours I have:

• 2.5 hours driving time with bluetooth on and playing music
• 20 minutes of call time
• 1 hour of WiFi on
• A few minutes of browsing and checking stuff in the Android Market
• 10 text messages

The battery is now at 42%. I can probably get through the day without charging until bed time tonight.

Update - March 26, 2010

I have switched to K9 mail and all of my accounts are set up using IMAP. K9 supports IMAP idle so the polling of my e-mail accounts is now off. I notifications for my IMAP e-mail accounts just like I do for my gmail account with no polling.

I am getting about 1 1/2 days from each charge.

As stated above I use the phone as my music player while driving which can vary from 1 to 3 hours per day.

I use WiFi at home for a total of about 15-30 minutes per day.

Update - April 9, 2010

I didn't use the bluetooth to stream music at all (it's baseball season, so the I had a game on the radio) and my Backflip lasted two days on a charge.

I am now leaving bluetooth and GPS on all the time and seeing no significant battery drain.

The bluetooth on all the time makes connecting with my vehicle's bluetooth easier.

I was leaving the GPS on to test the Motorola locate phone feature and have just kept it on since it does not use any noticeable power unless you are actually running a gps related app.

I did not agree to allow Google to collect anonymous location data from my phone. If you did your GPS may be used for that even when you are not in a GPS app.

Update - April 14, 2010

Phone has been off charge for 26 hours and has 27% left. GPS and bluetooth on all the time. WiFi on whenever I am at home.

Battery life seems to be at 1 1/2 to 2 days right now.

Summary

I will continue to monitor the battery life, but for me I can get through a typical day with some reserve battery.

My Samsung Eternity did everything except the Google syncing, e-mail fetching, and WiFi. I usually went at least three days between charges on it. I can't see more than two being normal with the Backflip and with one being the usual case. Since Li-On batteries have a finite life it means I will probably be replacing the battery at least once in the life of this phone.

I have never had to replace a cell phone battery that wasn't defective before.

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