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Samsung Captivate on the Quest for the Greatest Battery Life!

I'd love to hear how people are finding the battery life on the Captivate, and what their usage patterns are. I don't have many apps on the phone to begin with, but on the train to work I can easily knock out a third of the battery just listening to music. While using the phone for five or ten minutes, I'll sometimes see the battery dop 2-3 percent!
For tomorrow, I'm going to try using the stock launcher instead of LauncherPro, no widgets. I got rid of the Android Central app just in case it was fetching data in the background. But my hopes aren't terribly high, I'm afraid.
I have rooted the phone, but the battery life was bad before rooting. Once rooted, I tried some apps like JuiceDefender, and there seemed to be no change.
If I continue having these problems, I may unroot and bring the phone to an AT&T store to see what they say. I've heard it mentioned that Samsung is sending out new batteries that are better than some current ones, but I don't know if that's true.
I'd love to hear any suggestions. I want to use my new phone, not worry about it all day!

I too have been getting very poor results. I have talked on the phone for less than 3 minutes, went to maybe 15 different website pages, one 3:00 youtube video, 10 minutes of GBC emulation gaming, and regular texting, and I'm at 10% with 8 hours. I've probably only used the phone for 30 minutes total today.

Smartphones always drain battery, if you want a phone that can be heavily used for like 4 or more days on one charge cycle, get a feature phone....the samsung captivate has given me the best battery time overall, against all my past smartphones.

I don't think it makes sense, though, that it should run out halfway through the day like mine is. My former devices were a feature phone and an iPod Touch. The feature phone lasted a week or so, and the iPod Touch with heavy heavy use lasted three days at least. So even if I had both pulling from the same battery source, and with light usage, shouldn't it last at least a full day?

Weird, I had wireless on almost all day, with push mail and doing tons of market downloading and I was only down to about 50% by early afternoon.
Seems about the same as my two year old HTC Touch Pro to me.

My battery is running fine too, even after streaming music from my house with subsonic, testing out a couple videos, messing with the gps, push email a bunch of app downloading, and a live wallpaper and i was still at 33% by the time I got home, even seems to be getting better.

"On the train to work..."
There's a bit of your problem, methinks. The 3G radio is burning a lot of power trying to connect to towers inside a metal box that moves to a new tower on a regular basis. Unless you need to get calls on the train, put it in Airplane mode during your commute.
Have you actually let the battery die completely yet?
My first battery burn-down, (starting with the charge on the battery as it was unboxed) I was showing zero percent battery for almost two hours before it actually shut itself off, moderate usage with WiFi on.
The next charge-up burn-down, it was showing zero percent about fifteen minutes before the end.
And the charge-up burn-down after that, it showed 0% about twenty seconds before it died.
See where I'm going here? The software needs to be calibrated at zero and 100, and it can't do that if you don't let it reach zero a few times. Once you're sure the meter is accurate, then you can start making informed conclusions about battery life.
And like I've posted elsewhere, you've got 'Newshiny-itus', which is proven to suck extra life out of a smartphone battery. And it's hard forcing your new toy to die...for one thing, if it's dead, you can't play with it. Tough it out, kill it. At least twice.

Well if you want to find truly terrible battery life try the EVO.
I had one for a month and that thing really ate the battery fast. The capti is stellar in comparison.

smitty1 said:
Well if you want to find truly terrible battery life try the EVO.
I had one for a month and that thing really ate the battery fast. The capti is stellar in comparison.
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Yea I had one for two weeks and it was horrid. I would lose 6% just in standby time in between waking up and getting out the door to work in the morning!
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using XDA App

I've had great results with the battery and I find it to be much better than my HD2. I watch quite a bit of youtube, text message a lot, and browse the web and the market on and off, not to mention all the time my wife plays solitaire, and I still have 30% battery at an uptime of 41:46. I don't use gps or live wallpapers, and I keep my display as low as possible, since it is still bright.

Bit better by the end of the day. 13 hours and 15 minutes

Croak said:
The software needs to be calibrated at zero and 100, and it can't do that if you don't let it reach zero a few times. Once you're sure the meter is accurate, then you can start making informed conclusions about battery life.
And like I've posted elsewhere, you've got 'Newshiny-itus', which is proven to suck extra life out of a smartphone battery. And it's hard forcing your new toy to die...for one thing, if it's dead, you can't play with it. Tough it out, kill it. At least twice.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
+1
Definitely agree with the last part. I've been doing my best to kill it, but I don't want it to be dead. Been noticing the inaccuracy of the meter quite a bit, especially when it's charging, but I'm sure it'll get better over time.

Thanks for the informative replies! It hadn't occurred to me that the battery meter might be uncalibrated - I've been charging once it reached 10% or so. I'll try letting it die fully today.
One thing that seems to have helped, too, is the brightness settings. Turning OFF the "power saving" auto adjust ing brightness option allows the brightness to stay low, and a brightness control widget lets me set it lower than stock controls allow. I've seen some definite improbement from this alone!

These are Li-ion batteries, DO NOT let them die completely before charging.

Ok, so...is there a safer way to make sure the battery gets calibrated? I'm reading in a lot of places that Android phones fairly often misreport battery info unless calibrated.

The lowest I can get on battery status is 60% after a full days use. Admittedly I'm not a power user but I had my phone unplugged for 16 hrs and still had 95% I'd like to know what you have to do to get such low battery levels , start your car

All I've done today is listen to music for an hour (used 25%) and texted/browsed the web for perhaps two hours (another 5/% down.)
I read that LIons can be occasiomally discharged, since they have undercurrent protection circuits. One guide for Android phones suggested leaving the phone on until it shuts itself down, turning it on again, and then letting it shut itself down again. Then, with the phone off, charge fully. The guide said once a month or do is safe and beneficial. How does it sound?

Battery is good today. Been sending a few texts, checked email, facebook, and surfed these forums a bit. I'm at 2 hours with 98% battery left.

i hope the battery doesnt suck, i plan on getting this phone soon and want good batt life!!!

tysj said:
These are Li-ion batteries, DO NOT let them die completely before charging.
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Click to collapse
I agree with you, however, the phone's hardware will NOT let the battery completely die.
So I wouldn't worry about that all to much.
Basically though, Li-ion batteries are 'memory' free so they can be recharged on a whim partially.
They also prefer partial charges vs deep charges.
There are questions about this that I don't have answers for such as: When the phone displays 0% or shuts off due to low battery, how LOW is the battery?
Obviously the phone battery can't be dead dead, but it is low enough for the hardware to take precautions.
Anyway Li-ions will at max last 500 charges.. If you want it more than that, You're going to have to buy a new battery anyway. =)

25 min cost 27% battery

I unplugged the phone and got onto the bus. I read news with Captivate. Nothing fancy, just NY Times, Fox News etc. I got off the bus later, I only have 73% battery.
Yes, I just started my day and it's only 70% of battery.
#FAIL.

There are a few simple things you can do to increase battery life. Turn the screen brightness down and use a solid black background as a wallpaper. The screen uses the majority of the batter. so dimming the screen helps, when using a black background the amoled display does not light up black pixels so there is power drain.
I've been running on the same charge since 4pm yesterday. I've streamed music through pandora for about an hour while exercising, browsed the xda forums using the XDA App for 30 mins, made a few calls, browsed Facebook for 30 mins, surfed the web for a couple of hours before bed. Its now 10AM and I'm sitting at 36%. Not to bad really! The phone functions exactly the same at 36% as compared to 100%.

I wonder why everyone says to use a solid black background? Do most people use their phones primarily by staring at the home screen? I'm never at my home screen more than perhaps five seconds while switching apps
I've had pretty poor battery life as well, even after discharging, recharging, and deleting batterystats.bin. There are small tips here and there, like black background and screen brightness, but even following them all, my phone lasts me barely ten hours, and most of that time it's idle. For instance, I listened to local must (no streaming) with the screen off for about an hour and lost 10% of my battery life. What's up with that?

TimF said:
I've streamed music through pandora for about an hour while exercising, browsed the xda forums using the XDA App for 30 mins, made a few calls, browsed Facebook for 30 mins, surfed the web for a couple of hours before bed. Its now 10AM and I'm sitting at 36%.
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I am also shocked and confused by how people can use their phone so heavily.
I already killed those unnecessary processes (e.g., all AT&T crap). I have a static wallpaper. I have screen brightness at 60%. And all I have been doing is just reading news and surfing the web. It literally cost me 1% of battery for every 1 min of use. It's just ridiculous.

You are probably on your home screen a lot more than you realize.
Anyway it's a smartphone, they all eat through battery time. you will never get superb battery life unless you crowbar a 3000mah battery into your device.
edit:
set the screen on its lowest brightness setting, the only time I've had to increase the brightness is when I am outside in the sun.
if you are on a bus, if you are not using wifi, turn off the radio.

TimF said:
Anyway it's a smartphone, they all eat through battery time. you will never get superb battery life unless you crowbar a 3000mah battery into your device.
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Click to collapse
You just said your phone is at 36% eighteen hours after charging! Compared to the 0% I'm at ten hours after charging...I'm not looking for superb battery life at all, just somewhat decent. I'm actually bringing a backup feature phone with me to college this semester in case I can't resolve this issue, because I will need to use my phone both in the morning and at night some days

TimF said:
edit:
set the screen on its lowest brightness setting, the only time I've had to increase the brightness is when I am outside in the sun.
if you are on a bus, if you are not using wifi, turn off the radio.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have Wifi, BT always off. And I don't listen to Pandora.
I think the key is you have the lowest brightness on your phone. It is going to save you a lot of battery 'cause half of the battery is for the screen.
But I just couldn't stand it. I wish I can set to 100% all the time. It looks so much better.

The phone radio is a huge consumer of battery - especially in weak signal areas. The bars are not that accurate either. that coupled with 3rd party apps that don't always behave nice, can equal rapid battery drain.
Putting the plain in Airplane mode is good way to see what battery life is like without the Cell radio always doing its thing. It is not a fix, but it can show that the battery/phone are not broken. There probably can be improvements and tweaks made by samsung, but I don't think the phones are defective.

mwxiao said:
I think the key is you have the lowest brightness on your phone. It is going to save you a lot of battery 'cause half of the battery is for the screen.
But I just couldn't stand it. I wish I can set to 100% all the time. It looks so much better.
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Click to collapse
This is what you would call a trade-off I like the bright screen also but I like having longer battery life more.
The screen is still pretty bright on it lowest setting and you gt used to the lower brightness after a while.
magicdanw said:
You just said your phone is at 36% eighteen hours after charging! Compared to the 0% I'm at ten hours after charging...I'm not looking for superb battery life at all, just somewhat decent. I'm actually bringing a backup feature phone with me to college this semester in case I can't resolve this issue, because I will need to use my phone both in the morning and at night some days
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
how are you using your phone? What apps are you running, are you using any emulators.

There's an app called Spare Parts, which will show you what is using your battery when the screen is off. Open it up and choose "Partial Wake Usage" from the drop down to see.
My Captivate appeared to drain battery very quickly, but with moderate to decent usage throughout a day I was trying to kill the battery it lasted me over 13 hours. I think it's a matter of the battery reporting taking a good while to calibrate properly.

I've had an issue twice now with absurd battery usage. Both times I charged the phone to full and disconnected it; after doing that the phone would lose 10% charge every hour sitting completely idle! Using the phone during that time drained it even faster. Both times powering the phone completely off and back on resolved the issue.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using XDA App

magicdanw said:
I wonder why everyone says to use a solid black background? Do most people use their phones primarily by staring at the home screen? I'm never at my home screen more than perhaps five seconds while switching apps
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Click to collapse
In AMOLED, black pixels dont use power. This is different from LCD where even black pixels still use power.

Have you guys tried fully charging, then fully discharing then repeating this step 3 more times? It helps with the battery life tremendously.

You gotta do a factory reset. Many people as well as myself had the same issue. For me, a side effect was also that the att start up swoosh was stupidly loud.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using XDA App

I only did the discharge thing once, last week, and today I am going on a 21 hours with 28% left.

2g app
I was told there is a 2g / 3g application. Has anyone tried this? Apparently it puts the phone in 2g when no data connection is needed and then updates to 3g when a data process is required...

i'm on day two of not charging mine... and i'm at 25%...
i unplugged it from a full charge yesterday (monday) morning before i left for work and today (29 hours later) i'm at 25%... this is with advanced task killer auto killing tasks when screen is off as well as being aggressive about it. i've been listening to music from my sd card, browsing facebook and taking some pictures (and uploading them to fb). i guess i'm either super lucky not to have any problems with GPS or the battery, or i'm a very light user.

I dunno what happened to the main battery thread?
I just got a new phone two days ago because of the restart issue. This one has the same battery issue. Drains 2-4%/hour just being idle. I have nothing beyond launcher pro and google voice installed. Everything is on lockdown in terms of batt usage. The only thing I haven't done is turn off the cell antenna.
I've tried the tricks I knew: factory reset, calibration trick. These didn't help at all. My last phone just needed a factory reset and it was all good. Now I'm sad again :-( will it just improve itself when the phone "learns" the battery or something? I wish I could teach it

Several things you can do.
1) Use WiFi if you can use it, it uses less power. If you don't have somewhere to use WiFi, leave it off.
2) Same goes for BT- leave it off if possible.
3) Use this to get rooted and remove all the ATT crap that sucks battery life. Applying the lag fix also means you spend less time with the screen on, so that can also help you out.
4) Use Auto Brightness
5) Disabling haptic feedback and the tapping sounds (I find it more annoying regardless)
6) Use a static black wallpaper- or something really dark. IMO it looks great black and plus the AMOLED... Black doesn't use power.
7) Use Advanced Task Killer. I have mine on Aggressive and Moderate security every half hour. This will make sure hung apps, etc get killed and apps you haven't ran. Make sure you whitelist the apps that run your widgets and such though.
That's the best things to do to.
Edit- above all, remember this is a SMART phone, not a feature phone like the iPhone is. The simple fact this full blown SMART phone can even begin to rival just a feature phone like the iPhone speaks volumes to how much more efficient it is than what you think it is.

starwolf256 said:
I've had an issue twice now with absurd battery usage. Both times I charged the phone to full and disconnected it; after doing that the phone would lose 10% charge every hour sitting completely idle! Using the phone during that time drained it even faster. Both times powering the phone completely off and back on resolved the issue.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I too have had issues with battery life but quickly realized what had been causing the issues, twice it had been snesoid not closing down all the way after use, and this combined with an app that was hurting battery life (word feud), I realized what my problem was.
I leave the brightness jacked all the way down. I believe the lowest it goes on the stock rom is like 15%, but there are ways to go lower than that.
I've not used my phone much the past two days since charging it, and i'm currently down to 35%, but most of my battery use is cell standby, with display being 3rd or so on the list.
You can always use a program like tasker to make the phone go into airport mode between certain hours of the day (IE: while you're sleeping) to help conserve the battery life.
There are also tons of other good tips in this thread.
And trust me, the phone can last; i've managed 3days on one charge

TBH very disappointed

Hi
Have had this phone for just a day.
Been struggling to make up my mind whether I want to get it because of the limited memory.
But finally decided to go ahead because it has good reviews on its performance and battery life.
No complain about the performance, but the battery life?....
Played Tripple Town for just about one hour and 30 mins and the battery goes down from 66% to 35%, the majority of which is comsumed by the screen.
So here is where I am. 5 h 47 m on batter, 32% left, 69% of the power drain is because of the god damned screen.
Seriously HTC, how can you manage to get so screwed up with such a decent processor.
you get rid of the removable battery, ok, nowadays the battery lasts reasonably long.
you get rid of the Micro SD card and force us to use the rubbish dropbox. 50GB 1 Yr cost $99. Why don't spend that money to get us a decent bigger memory? But ok I want the performance, I am willing to give up a bit of space for that.
But Finally SUPER AMOLED. Seriously, what kind of dump decision is this to fit a more-than-a-year old technology to such a decent new processor?? when we know all the bad thing about this screen.
It alone kills all the power efficiency the 28nm processor can offer us.
So now this phone's battery cannot out perform (when you are actually using it) neither of my previous phones: Dell Streak and Atrix. Don't tell me I have to compare the battery life by switching off the screen and just let them sit there.
I am very disappointed. very disappointed.
This will be the last phone I buy from HTC.

It sounds like you don't know about how to manage phones.
You prob was running lots of applications at once and brightness all the way up it still won't go from 66% to 35% sounds like a bad unit you have.

no... the brightness is at it's lowest level.
I use anrdoid assistant to kill process once an hour.
There is very unlikely this is a bad unit. Nowadays these manufacturers control the production quality very good that the chance I get a bad unit is probably as low as winning some lotto.

For starters, your device is BRAND NEW so battery will take about a week or so to break it in, just be patient. Also, killing tasks will only end up using more resources since Android will most likely just start them back up once it gets the chance. Run your battery down the first couple of days and charge it overnight and you will start to notice it getting much better.

unclespoon said:
For starters, your device is BRAND NEW so battery will take about a week or so to break it in, just be patient. Also, killing tasks will only end up using more resources since Android will most likely just start them back up once it gets the chance. Run your battery down the first couple of days and charge it overnight and you will start to notice it getting much better.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Kill Process runs only once an hour. So during the time I was playing, it probably just ran once. I doubt it will cost much power at all.
I understand it needs time for the battery to warm up. But even with that taken into account. it is not looking good. It reminds me the suffer that Desire caused my friend.

Hopefully this doesn't turn into a bigger issue; keep us posted!

yuan_1202 said:
Hi
Have had this phone for just a day.
[...]
I am very disappointed. very disappointed.
This will be the last phone I buy from HTC.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
sorry mate but this is just stupid. first of all the battery meter is not calibrated in a new phone meaning the reported battery state is not accurate. you have at least to charge the phone once to 100% and discharge it fully to calibrate the 2 extrem states. before that everything displayed is just a rough approximation. at the first discharge i had ~20% left and the phone was down to 0 in just some minutes of heavy use. after 2 cycles i get ~-10% for an hour of heavy use. so stop crying and give the phone some day's to adjust

yuan_1202 said:
no... the brightness is at it's lowest level.
I use anrdoid assistant to kill process once an hour.
There is very unlikely this is a bad unit. Nowadays these manufacturers control the production quality very good that the chance I get a bad unit is probably as low as winning some lotto.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think you have a bad unit.
Android Assistance/Android Task Killers only mess up your battery more.

jodue said:
sorry mate but this is just stupid. first of all the battery meter is not calibrated in a new phone meaning the reported battery state is not accurate. you have at least to charge the phone once to 100% and discharge it fully to calibrate the 2 extrem states. before that everything displayed is just a rough approximation. at the first discharge i had ~20% left and the phone was down to 0 in just some minutes of heavy use. after 2 cycles i get ~-10% for an hour of heavy use. so stop crying and give the phone some day's to adjust
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well I sincerely hope you are right. Because I will be much happier. Let's see in a week time.

Adjust said:
I think you have a bad unit.
Android Assistance/Android Task Killers only mess up your battery more.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well I hope jodue is right: the battery needs time to fix itself.
I will give it a week to see whether things will improve. If not I will go to store to get a new one.
I have been using Android Assistant for my Streak and Atrix. It turned out to be just alright.
Anyway I will remove it and see how it goes.
Ppl have wrong idea that AMOLED is more power efficient. I remember reading a review some time ago on battery life of smart phones. It tested a number of phones and the outcome is that actually on average the AMOLED (at that time there wasn't SUPER AMOLED yet) devices last less than others.
But anyway...

yuan_1202 said:
I use anrdoid assistant to kill process once an hour.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is the most stupid thing one can do. The processes will likely be restarted by the OS and you consume more power than you would have consumed by letting android do his things as designed.
Google itself suggests not to do it. Even the most honest task manager apps suggest not to do it. (e.g., http://android.nextapp.com/site/systempanel/doc/autokill ).
Anyway, before judging battery life wait few days. I own a One X, and battery life improved suddenly after few recharging cycles. ;-)

About the display. I readed somewhere in this or X forum, that:
1. LCD does consume less power, but for X version, since its bigger screen, it takes more
2. AMOLED screen power consume depends on what it have to display (colors). Black/dark colors need less power to be shown while white takes the most power...

You get 25GB free on dropbox with all one series phones plus a further 25 per referal
Mod or Die

Stiflerlv said:
2. AMOLED screen power consume depends on what it have to display (colors). Black/dark colors need less power to be shown while white takes the most power...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This. Many people don't know/forget about this. Using a dark theme on apps you use most on an AMOLED phone can save a lot of juice, much more than all those stupid Juice Defender/task killer/manager apps can ever hope to.

snowwhite007 said:
...plus a further 25 per referal
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
250MB per referral

Leviathan2k said:
This. Many people don't know/forget about this. Using a dark theme on apps you use most on an AMOLED phone can save a lot of juice, much more than all those stupid Juice Defender/task killer/manager apps can ever hope to.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You cannot ask all the website to go dark background can you?
Ppl use the phone to do different things. Games, Browing internet... thats the whole point, the phone should perform consistantly for all tasks, not just looking at dark home screen. HTC hasn't even figure this out yet??

yuan_1202 said:
You cannot ask all the website to go dark background can you?
Ppl use the phone to do different things. Games, Browing internet... thats the whole point, the phone should perform consistantly for all tasks, not just looking at dark home screen. HTC hasn't even figure this out yet??
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
in browser-setting you can invert white background/black background

no battery issues here
No battery issues, with slightly higher than average use (downloading loads of apps, playing some games, using google maps and a half hour driving nav and some music lsitening) over the first few days I've averaged 24-36 hours which I'm pretty happy with.
There are a few software things I don't like though
First, I miss having settings in the notification tray, it's one less tap of the screen. Also, the tweaked recent apps list seems pointless, you have to flick from one to another... the Stock android 4 recent apps scroll is much better, it let's you see/do more with less interaction. I also noticed a bug where the wireless signal will appear as null in the notification bar but if you view the the details in settings it says that the wireless signal strength is excellent!
Don't let any of this put you off though it really is a great phone and feels great in the hand... CM9 may rescue all!

Have the One S now, arrived a short while ago. The most annoying thing is that a stock device only has 9GB of that 16GB free when you get it.
This is nuts, I will not be using dropbox, there are many nefarious reasons why HTC want people to use dropbox or any cloud storage, this does not work well while I am roaming folks. This is not good for a business phone, I maybe sticking with my DesireHD.

Its sad, that many ppl who consider themselves technophiles do not even understand the battery of their devices.
ANY device with a modern battery should be initially charged overnight or 7-8hrs at least even of the little green light tells you it is all OK after 4 hrs. Do that, and give it a week to break in and I assume there won't be anything to complain about anymore.
Somy link to a decent site discussing these battery care tips and characteristics should be auto-pinned to each new device subforum cause the first complaints are ALWAYS about the battery life it seems...

The Battery Life ROCKS

So, I flashed Black Dragon 4.0 last night, and I gotta say, the battery life is pretty incredible. I've used it a good bit this morning for texting, a call, and a music app, and I've barely gone 15%. The idle life is what's truly impressive. I think it dropped only 1% overnight (8 hrs).
Even WITH sense, it's still pretty good. But it's nice to have all those useless HTC and T-Mobile services/apps gone. It definitely makes a bit of difference on performance and batt life.

Is there anything broken on that ROM or is everything up and running? GPS, Camera, gallery, etc etc.

i'm on the stock batter, it's 3 here, i've used it regularly, texts, calls, internet, maps, and i'm at 76%. it's so nice having a battery that lasts

One of the advantages of having a non-user-replaceable battery is the fact that they can make them bigger and in different shapes. Apple's laptops are this way, and when they made the switch, the increase in batt life was pretty drastic.
It'll be interesting to see this thing taken apart on iFixIt or somewhere else.

Is there a way to know if the battery is done charging with the phone off? The orange LED just seems to stay on forever...

I would suggest it hasn't fully charged or there is a fault - I charge mine overnight and it's always green in the morning
Mitigation - I never switch it off: screen off, phone on.

SFP said:
I would suggest it hasn't fully charged or there is a fault - I charge mine overnight and it's always green in the morning
Mitigation - I never switch it off: screen off, phone on.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Literally 5 minutes after I posted that, it went green. First time it's had a proper full charge, when I tried to charge it while on the battery meter just fluctuated up and down all over the place! Gonna let it run down and charge it again before I get worried that there's something wrong.

I got mine from T-Mo yesterday on my way to school and i must say the battery life on this phone is crazy good. After my second charge cycle, i really think this phone was design for raw power and most of all great battery life. I'm also enjoying the beauty this piece of equipment. . Right now i have the screen on auto-brightness, gmail, yahooo, hotmail, facebook, dropbox and weather on auto sync. I'll say no more results in the pictures below.

cyberchuck9000 said:
Is there a way to know if the battery is done charging with the phone off? The orange LED just seems to stay on forever...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
yup, def turns green after its full

NYC1992 said:
I got mine from T-Mo yesterday on my way to school and i must say the battery life on this phone is crazy good. After my second charge cycle, i really think this phone was design for raw power and most of all great battery life. I'm also enjoying the beauty this piece of equipment. . Right now i have the screen on auto-brightness, gmail, yahooo, hotmail, facebook, dropbox and weather on auto sync. I'll say no more results in the pictures below.
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Click to collapse
Not sure which phone you've been using but the stats that you've posted aren't impressive in the least... pretty bad if u ask me.

viper_79 said:
Not sure which phone you've been using but the stats that you've posted aren't impressive in the least... pretty bad if u ask me.
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Click to collapse
I'd tend to agree with this. I'm sure you meant well with the pictures, but my Nexus S beats this and the battery in it is old. I don't think that was a great metric right there. My real world use has been drastically different.
I was going to post a pic, but my ROM crashed or something (no biggie, it's expected with new ROMs) and my battery usage got reset. I took it off the charger ~10 hrs ago and have used it for quite a bit of twitter, text, calls, web, and fiddling around, and I'm just down to 73%. The stand-by life is what will truly impress you, at least from what I've seen.

The screenshots seem very impressive to me. I have an HTC Amaze with the 1900 mah Anker battery and I'll get around 2 hours of on screen time. And the One S is getting almost four!? If anyone is getting better then that I would love to see screenies of it. Only screen on time though as I could get very high numbers as well by not using my phone. Can't wait till my One S gets here!

Love this phone...S4 ftw

Yesterday I got.
12 hours and 50 min with 2 hours and 40 minutes screen time and I still had 41% left.

Off topic: didn't want to make a new thread, and I've searched but nothing found.
I'm really considering this phone but when the battery reaches the end of its life how much will a replacement battery be likely to cost fitted?
I know I'll probably have a new phone by this time but I keep all my electronic devices well looked after and don't sell them so just curious as it seems like a pretty deep task.

Horrible battery life. Typical or bad phone?

First off, yes I realize that complaints about the Skyrocket battery are very common, and coming from a Nexus One I'm no stranger to the nightly charging, but I feel like my phone may have a real issue with proper battery management. For example, I'm looking at my phone now. It's been on for 4hrs 43 mins and is down to 73%. Screen is 61% usage and then the typical other stuff below it. For the record the screen has been on for MAYBE 20 minutes total for answering texts and checking Facebook/twitter updates. I should also note that I am using the Galaxy Nexus extended battery. I feel like every time I turn on the screen I lose 1-3% of battery. For the record, I've tried multiple Roms (Stock, SuperStock, NexusMod, Sky ICS, and running CM9 RC2 currently) and multiple radios (running RUXLF3 currently). I've tried underclocking my CPU with SetCPU and that doesn't seem to help. I just installed JuiceDefender but I don't see that doing much as I can't really turn off data with the screen off because I'm connected to my company's email (refreshes automatically every hour.) The only stuff I get pushed to me is Gmail (and I consider a very busy email day to be 5 emails in a given day). I don't get Twitter or Facebook updates sent to my phone. And yes I have Wifi/BT/GPS off as I don't need them. I'm not in an LTE market and thus am using HSPA+. However, when I WAS in an LTE area (NYC and Atlanta) the battery drain was almost to the point where I almost hoped I DIDN'T get LTE in my market if it meant my battery life would be as atrocious as it was.
Within about a 8 hour period it is not uncommon at all to be around 50%, sometimes dipping as low as 30% depending on how boring my day is thus resulting in more FB/Twitter checks than normal. I know that the Galaxy Extended battery isn't going to give me life on par with a Razr MAXX, but the difference I've noticed between the OEM and Extended seem almost negligible. Is this considered "Typical" performance or am I doing something wrong either software/hardware wise? Could I just have a bad phone and try and get it replaced since it's still under 1 year warranty? I'd prefer to not have to do that unless necessary as it means I need to back everything up and then wipe out my data and go back to Stock and reset the flash counter and then do the ICS update via Kies (because I know AT&T will fire back and say "Try out ICS first and then return if that doesn't work!") and all that fun junk.
Thanks

Sounds about right to me. Just turn off data when you aren't using it is all I can say.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I727 using xda premium

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1759541
My thoughts:
1. 50% in 8 hours of moderate use is, imo, not terribly unusual for a Skyrocket without a ton of fine-tuning done to it. The Skyrocket, in general, is not a marathon-runner of a phone. It's better for short sprints, although you can (as I have) make it a marathon runner with extensive tweaking.
2. I haven't tried all the ROMs you've listed, but I can tell you that CM9 on my Captivate and my Skyrocket had severe wakelock issues. My Skyrocket's battery would drain off at twice my usual rate when I tried it, and the ROM prevented my Captivate from sleeping at all (I was lucky to get six hours out of a charge--at best). It's not my favorite ROM for battery life. SkyICS, in my experience, is the absolute best battery life of any ROM.
3. Get rid of JuiceDefender and SetCPU. JuiceDefender works primarily by preventing applications from doing what they want to do. Common sense dictates that when a computer program is unable to do an assigned task because its primary method of doing so is blocked, it will try something else. That "something else" may or may not result in a series of wakelocks. SetCPU is designed for single-core processors. The changes it makes will usually affect only one of the two cores in a Skyrocket's CPU, causing the second core to do weird things. I do, however, recommend using System Tuner. All you need is the free version, because all you need to do is lower your min to 192 and change your governor to ondemand or conservative (I use conservative). You're not forcing new profiles onto the phone's CPU, just giving it a little "attitude adjustment".
4. Get rid of the Facebook app and replace it with Friendcaster. Like, now. The Facebook app uses battery and data even if you tell it not to.
5. Have you downloaded BBS? If so, are you using it to track down your wakelocks? I've got a post inside of the above thread that explains how to do so and, well, explains just about everything else I've already said here or would say if I continued. So, yeah, just read that thread. It's not terribly long, and there's a ton of great info in the OP and throughout.
For reference, I'm a light-to-moderate user of my phone, not as heavy as you by any means. I'm not in an LTE area, which helps. That being said, with the Nexus extended battery, I'm now at 2 days, 5 hours and still at 23% charge. I used the phone very heavily while traveling a couple of days ago, starting at 7:00 AM Eastern at 100% and ending at 11:45 PM Mountain with 11% left, 4h45m of screen-on time.

I just find that odd since I find people giving great stories with the SKY ICS and others in terms of battery life. Ironically, I've found that SKY gave me some of the WORST battery life which really made me feel like a dolt. Here's the latest battery stats attached. Perhaps my view of things is skewed though because my day starts at 6am and I'm at work by 7 (with my phone typically turned on at 6:30) so I still have a good portion of my day left by the time I get home and my phone is typically less than 50% by that time. It's weird to know you have about 7 hours left in your day and your phone is saying like 40% power left.

What's your screen-on time in those screenshots? The frequent wake-ups make me think that you've got some rogue apps syncing when they shouldn't be.

Hello OP, I have exactly the same problems as you except i'm still running stock (rooted with frozen bloat). I tried the Galaxy Nexus Extended Battery and from stock it was more horrible. appox 1 hour less than the stock battery. I did try not using my phone like normal (about 25 mins of screen on time) which was a PITA because mobile internet is my only way to sneak down time while watching my toddler son. The battery lasted 11 hours. With stock battery, I would've lasted around 10 hours. A lot of people say it might be bad battery BUT how can I have such terrible luck to get a bad stock and a bad GNEX ext batt??? lol. So I ordered the qcell 3800mah extended battery and boy I won't be looking back!!!! I am currently still at 25% battery, 17 hours 20 mins with 3 hour 38 mins screen on!! I watched two Naruto episode last night and didn't have to worry about my phone dying while I'm sleeping and end up not getting important calls from husband early in the morning. The hump doesn't look great but it does not bother me when I'm holding the phone and I have small hands. The weight is a little bit on the heavy side but for so much more battery hours, I don't think you'd mind. Now, if you are the type who is always out and can't find sockets all the time, I suggest you try this qcell ext batt. for $20 you can't go wrong. I know you'd hate spending another $20 but trust me the battery works wonders.
On a side note, i also ordered a charger for my standard and GNEX battery from ebay so I can charge them independently if i ever have to go on long long trips and need super juice. That's another $4, takes two weeks to get here from China. There's a hack here in XDA somewhere to make it a really fast charger because it is really a SLOW charger despite what their ad claims.
Good luck!!
PS: I also bought the SetCPU since everybody swears by it. I never saw any difference.

T.J. Bender said:
What's your screen-on time in those screenshots? The frequent wake-ups make me think that you've got some rogue apps syncing when they shouldn't be.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I just checked and it says 1 hour 4 minutes. There's NO way it's been on that long, or at least not with me looking at it, and I usually turn off my screen when I'm done as opposed to letting it go to time out, which is 60 seconds anyways. I'd say 30 minutes would be it AT MOST.

Is it in your pocket a lot or out of sight
Sent from my SGH-I727 using Tapatalk 2

droidbabyxda said:
Hello OP, I have exactly the same problems as you except i'm still running stock (rooted with frozen bloat). I tried the Galaxy Nexus Extended Battery and from stock it was more horrible. appox 1 hour less than the stock battery. I did try not using my phone like normal (about 25 mins of screen on time) which was a PITA because mobile internet is my only way to sneak down time while watching my toddler son. The battery lasted 11 hours. With stock battery, I would've lasted around 10 hours. A lot of people say it might be bad battery BUT how can I have such terrible luck to get a bad stock and a bad GNEX ext batt??? lol. So I ordered the qcell 3800mah extended battery and boy I won't be looking back!!!! I am currently still at 25% battery, 17 hours 20 mins with 3 hour 38 mins screen on!! I watched two Naruto episode last night and didn't have to worry about my phone dying while I'm sleeping and end up not getting important calls from husband early in the morning. The hump doesn't look great but it does not bother me when I'm holding the phone and I have small hands. The weight is a little bit on the heavy side but for so much more battery hours, I don't think you'd mind. Now, if you are the type who is always out and can't find sockets all the time, I suggest you try this qcell ext batt. for $20 you can't go wrong. I know you'd hate spending another $20 but trust me the battery works wonders.
On a side note, i also ordered a charger for my standard and GNEX battery from ebay so I can charge them independently if i ever have to go on long long trips and need super juice. That's another $4, takes two weeks to get here from China. There's a hack here in XDA somewhere to make it a really fast charger because it is really a SLOW charger despite what their ad claims.
Good luck!!
PS: I also bought the SetCPU since everybody swears by it. I never saw any difference.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
My goal is to avoid the super extended battery because then it means I need to buy a whole new case as well. I'm one of those people that "needs" a protective case because the only reason I have the Skyrocket is because last December my 1 year old took my beloved Nexus One and threw it down 16 flights of stairs. The phone then entered a vegetative coma state and never recovered. I can't have that happen again. So basically I'd have to buy the new phone then buy the new case. I'm trying to spend as little extra money as possible.

dvandam said:
My goal is to avoid the super extended battery because then it means I need to buy a whole new case as well. I'm one of those people that "needs" a protective case because the only reason I have the Skyrocket is because last December my 1 year old took my beloved Nexus One and threw it down 16 flights of stairs. The phone then entered a vegetative coma state and never recovered. I can't have that happen again. So basically I'd have to buy the new phone then buy the new case. I'm trying to spend as little extra money as possible.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
well, there are hacks floating around with otter box to fit the hump back. I'm sure you will find other cases from ebay that can be hacked this way too. I don't have this problem since Ii use my phone naked because i only got it for $10.00 and my other line is due for upgrade soon. anyhow, it really depends mostly on what you would rather have, battery life or case. It could be the phone but most likely AT&T will tell you that smartphones consume a lot of energy and if you are not within that 30 day period anymore they'll probably give you a refurbished one and you might end up with a more dud one than the one you already have.

Illnevertell said:
Is it in your pocket a lot or out of sight
Sent from my SGH-I727 using Tapatalk 2
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I try to keep my phone out of my pocket because I don't think cell waves near my "area" is a good combination. When I am at work it's on my desk for about 7 hours, and then at home I usually leave it out (at a high elevation away from my daughter of course.)

Does your screen kick on when you get notifications do you know
Sent from my SGH-I727 using Tapatalk 2

dvandam said:
I just checked and it says 1 hour 4 minutes. There's NO way it's been on that long, or at least not with me looking at it, and I usually turn off my screen when I'm done as opposed to letting it go to time out, which is 60 seconds anyways. I'd say 30 minutes would be it AT MOST.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's still a little high. I was going to ask if your volume rocker wakes your phone, as that can be a big phantom screen-on culprit, but if your phone's on you desk most of the time...
Download BBS and pin down your wakelocks and alarms (which cause wakelocks) from there. If your phone's not suffering any extreme drain from a rogue app or process, then you might just be at the best you're going to get for your usage.
Have you tried different radios at all? I've heard those can have a minor effect on battery life, depending upon your area.

Illnevertell said:
Does your screen kick on when you get notifications do you know
Sent from my SGH-I727 using Tapatalk 2
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No but the 4 buttons do as it is a CM9 feature. Honestly though they aren't on for very long as I usually am near my phone and notice such things rather quickly.

T.J. Bender said:
That's still a little high. I was going to ask if your volume rocker wakes your phone, as that can be a big phantom screen-on culprit, but if your phone's on you desk most of the time...
Download BBS and pin down your wakelocks and alarms (which cause wakelocks) from there. If your phone's not suffering any extreme drain from a rogue app or process, then you might just be at the best you're going to get for your usage.
Have you tried different radios at all? I've heard those can have a minor effect on battery life, depending upon your area.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't use the volume rocker for waking just FYI.
I got BBS. It looks informative but I'm not really sure what I should be focusing in terms of statistics and what, if anything should jump out as problematic. Any tips?
I have tried at least 4 different radios but I haven't noticed any major difference between them.
I just saw that CM9 has now been officially released in stable form. Maybe that will help. I'll try that ROM now. I hope CM9 is not the issue, as I've always been a "Vanilla Android" kind of guy and I really like how ICS is designed. I never liked how the other ROMS still had touches of Touchwiz in them. I especially don't like how it mimics iOS styles so much. I mean, I'm definitely pro-Samsung in the major lawsuit, but Apple has more than a few valid points in their argument. Having similar icons and a SMS theme that basically mimics iOS isn't going to help Sammy in the big lawsuit.

True, it's a well-known problem. You may find some rom with better battery life (here is the rom I'm using: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1436854). You can also download some apps that save your battery. Try to turn off GPS, Wi-fi and data when you're not using, and also do not keep the brightness of your screen too high. I hope these would be helpful to you.

Check the link in my sig for details on how to really use BBS to improve your battery life. You're not that far off of a normal battery life for moderate to heavy usage, so just tweak it and go from there.

T.J. Bender said:
Check the link in my sig for details on how to really use BBS to improve your battery life. You're not that far off of a normal battery life for moderate to heavy usage, so just tweak it and go from there.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The thing is though is that I don't consider myself to be a moderate to heavy user, but more of a light to moderate. As I said, on a typical day I answer maybe 5-15 text messages, check Facebook/Twitter a handful of times, almost never get emails sent as I have no life, do almost no web browsing, and maybe take a phone call or 2. I very rarely play games and even less often stream media. My gmail is push but that's about it. I also use Touchdown for Exchange but that queries only once an hour. Am I still being unrealistic with my expectations on my battery?

Something definitely seems off, and you may well have a bad battery or even a bad phone. Try to go through and clean everything up in terms of wakelocks and any possible rogue apps. If you're still in bad shape after cleaning up your phone, something seems off. Mobile data does chew up more battery than Wifi, but not THAT much, and especially not in an HSPA area.

T.J. Bender said:
Something definitely seems off, and you may well have a bad battery or even a bad phone. Try to go through and clean everything up in terms of wakelocks and any possible rogue apps. If you're still in bad shape after cleaning up your phone, something seems off. Mobile data does chew up more battery than Wifi, but not THAT much, and especially not in an HSPA area.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't think it's a battery issue. I've used the OEM and the Galaxy Nexus extended battery and both are delivering similar performance (although GN is slightly better obviously.) And as I mentioned, when I was in an LTE area my battery was getting beat down like Homer Simpson in a fight with Drederick Tatum.
Would it be advisable to try a FULL wipe of my phone? When I was installing CM9 today I saw the option to format EMMC. Should I try doing that or wiping other stuff or would that just do more bad than good? Should I try wiping that and/or the SD card?