Razr M battery life severely reduced by KitKat upgrade
ozatm
Enthusiast - Level 2

I have a Droid Razr M that has had its battery life severely reduced by the recent update to KitKat (4.4.2).  I see that many other people are also experiencing this problem.  I've tried clearing the cache partition to no avail.  When can we expect a fix?

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Re: Razr M battery life severely reduced by KitKat upgrade
vzw_customer_support
Customer Service Rep

I'm sorry you're having issues with your Razr ozatm. I know its frustrating and we will do all we can to get this issue resolved. Have you tried a hard reset without an automatic restore?

KinquanaH_Vzw
follow us on Twitter @vzwsupport

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Re: Razr M battery life severely reduced by KitKat upgrade
vzw_customer_support
Customer Service Rep

I'm sorry you're having issues with your Razr ozatm. I know its frustrating and we will do all we can to get this issue resolved. Have you tried a hard reset without an automatic restore?

KinquanaH_Vzw
follow us on Twitter @vzwsupport

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Re: Razr M battery life severely reduced by KitKat upgrade
WhiteJulip
Newbie

Hey, I too am having severe battery drainage.  I have installed a battery app to help but it is still ridiculous.  On JellyBean, I was able to go all day and only loose about 20% of my battery life, on average.  Now I am losing 50% to 60% a day and I am not using my phone any differently.

I want to go back to Jelly Bean.  Is there a way to do it without rooting my phone? Very dissatisfied and angry.  I drive a long way to work and I shouldn't have to worry about my phone going dead the same day I charged it!!!!

I am also experiencing some of the other issues: apps crashing, black screen, hate the text messaging lack of color, having to turn my wifi on and off to save battery life, etc...

Did anyone from Google or Motorola actually put this Android version through it's paces before releasing it on the Razr?  If you did, fire them because they did a lousy job and the test design sucks.

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Re: Razr M battery life severely reduced by KitKat upgrade
stef7
Master - Level 2

Unless you do the Factory Data Reset, abbreviated FDR (a.k.a. hard reset), you won't know if there is something else messed up causing the severe battery drain.

You need to back up the files that are important to you (music, photos, videos, ringtones, other downloaded files) to a PC, write down your email (incoming / outgoing server settings), perhaps your most critical contacts and some idea where to put icons for stuff, write down the programs you use most...

Then you need to perform the FDR and reconfigure your device. It will be a hassle, but the Android platform doesn't guarantee that you can do an update and not have to reset your device in this way. Bizarre behaviors can and do result when people don't perform the FDR post-update. If you've used Android for a number of years, you plan for this. You've done it before. It gets easier and easier. It's also a good opportunity to thin-out the apps you no longer use.

In my experience over the years, getting maybe 10updates on 3 or 4 devices, 40% of the time I didn't need to do a FDR, but 60% of the time I did.

Good luck.

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Re: Razr M battery life severely reduced by KitKat upgrade
ozatm
Enthusiast - Level 2

I finally bit the bullet and did the FDR.  Super-annoying, especially as auto-restore put the problem back as well, but it seems to be working now that I'm restoring manually.  The screen is once again the main battery drain and not the OS.  Major design flaw in Android if this needs to be done with every major update (also what's the point in auto-restore if it restores the bug as well?).  Reminds me of the old PC days when it was routine to completely reformat your harddrive just to keep your computer working.

WhiteJulip,

To be sure KitKat has several other problems, but they're mostly a matter of preference.  The battery drain was what was making my phone almost useless.  I'd try the FDR without auto-restore and see if it makes a difference for you.  It's something we shouldn't have to do routinely, but c'est la vie.

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Re: Razr M battery life severely reduced by KitKat upgrade
stef7
Master - Level 2

Glad it's working better fit you. What was the auto restore you circumvented? Maybe this is why others post FDR aren't experiencing relief in bizarre behaviors.

Yep, having to do FDRs is a fact of life with Android, but sometimes people get lucky and seem to have good results. It's good medicine though and people with experience just do it.

First time is a pain, but it becomes easier.

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Re: Razr M battery life severely reduced by KitKat upgrade
ozatm
Enthusiast - Level 2

When you're going through the initial setup after FDR it'll ask if you want to restore from your online backup.  Tell it no (I think it was a checkbox that had to be unchecked) and then once your phone is up and running you can restore your data from the online backup (contacts, texts, photos, etc) and manually reinstall your programs.  Like I said, it was a real pain, but I've got easily 10x the battery life from what I was reduced to after the update.

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