New Idea for helping save battery... - Captivate General

I have a friend that sent me this message today, which sounds like a great idea:
I've been messing with setcpu and trying out some underclocking profiles. Underclocking while the screen is off as well as reducing the CPU power has gotten me 75% battery left after 8 hours. This is with constant emails but no wireless, bluetooth, or gps. This is better than I was getting under windows mobile.

Using a complete black background as your desktop background screen also helps with battery life. The black areas dont use battery power.

If you install one of the cpu meters, it will show that there is automatic underclocking... mine says it has been running at 100MHz for 76% of the time (1 day uptime).
Android System Info will tell you this.
Now, I'm not sure if this is the same as what you are doing though.

You know, I believe that is correct. I don't know if he is getting any advantage or not. I'll forward the info to him and see what he thinks.

ConceptVBS said:
Using a complete black background as your desktop background screen also helps with battery life. The black areas dont use battery power.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That only helps if you spend a significant amount of time on your phone's home screen or hit buttons a lot when the phone is in your pocket.

I've found that the best way to save battery life is to use manual brightness. Auto brightness is just too bright. In fact some newer firmware hidden on samsung's site does make auto brightness a bit dimmer.
Using manual brightness I get about one hour and fifteen minutes of screen time per 10% of battery. I get about an hour per ten percent at work, where it's brighter. I get about half that with auto-brightness.

I think one good way to test which i am going to do to tonight is charge your phone and right before you go to bed unplug it and let it run through the night and in the morning see what sucks the most battery. i'm going to assume it should be "phone idle" but if its cell standby then something is sucking data, someone correct me if im wrong .

Just flash to jh2 out jh3. I'm on 16 hours and have 50% left
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using XDA App

I know my 8525 (a precursor to the tilt) had excellent reception. It was far better than average. This captivate is not as good. In my experience the captivate has average reception. I've had much worse.

Well, my buddy that told me about the topic I used to start this thread just stopped by.
He is playing with an Android 2.2 ROM that has been installed on his HTC HD2, which also is undervolted a bit. And of course, tweaking with SETCPU>
He said he is getting email and messages etc as normal; has full CPU and good power when using it (BTW...the Quadrant readings on his phone is coming in at over 1700). His phone has been up for 24 hours, 15 minutes when he stopped in, and he had 58% battery left. Before he started tweaking (and I think before the undervolted ROM), he was getting 11-12 hours on a charge.
Sounds pretty good to me.

Related

Battery Life Claims vs. Reality

I stopped by an AT&T corporate store to get a hands on with the Captivate. The salesperson there tried to tell me that the standby time on the device was 15 days if you kept apps from running by downloading an app killer. I asked if he really meant 15 days if no radios were running. He said "nope, 15 days is pretty easy".
Really, folks... what is reality here? Is it similar to other smartphones, where a day with moderate use is reasonable?
There is no way the phone will last 15 days in standby even with a good task killer. How can the sales rep tell you this if he only had the phone in store for 2 days?
That's a very good point... but he was very sure of his claim. I pulled out the "I'm very skeptical" response and walked away. Oh well, looks like once again, truth is in the internets somewhere, not in someone who should know such things.
Another element to this is whether an upgrade to 2.2 will increase battery life. I work away from any ability to charge and really need a phone to hold up all day.
ekruse said:
That's a very good point... but he was very sure of his claim. I pulled out the "I'm very skeptical" response and walked away. Oh well, looks like once again, truth is in the internets somewhere, not in someone who should know such things.
Another element to this is whether an upgrade to 2.2 will increase battery life. I work away from any ability to charge and really need a phone to hold up all day.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, my N1 holds charge for about 1 day with moderate use. As soon as I play with the GPS and google's built in nav system I get maybe 4 hours worth of usage. Another issue I have with my N1 is that my car charger cannot keep up with the drain, so even plugged into the charger the battery percentage is decreasing. Sure hope the Captivate is better in that respect.
Froyo did increase battery life a bit but it is not earth shattering. The advantage of this phone is the larger capacity battery and hopefully a less power hungry samsung processor than the qualcom snapdragon.
I am sure within the next few days we will have some folks with more concrete consumption estimates.
i don't know... while the 15 day claim is a bit much, mine was fine with heavy usage all day yesterday on the half charge that it came with from AT&T... given that, i think that it should last 2-4 days easily with only light-moderate usage.
My battery lasts me all day. It's just marginally worse than my 3GS I think... My 3GS always had extra at the end whereas my Captivate seems to run out when I'm going to bed.
So... It lasts all day. That's really all that matters to me.
My battery has not been able to make it through the day. Don't know why yet. I have my email accounts set to 30 minute sync schedule, have Wi-Fi and bluetooth off. Don't know what is going on. Still researching. Will see how it goes for a week. Might be a bad battery.
i find that dark backgrounds help. Also keep unecessary things off and dl an app killa. I had a new captivate today at 10am and with its half charge and heavy usage it lasted me till 6
by heavy usage i mean constant surfing and dling shiz. I didnt use gps wifi or play a movie. also played that free mario game for bout an hour.
After about 11.5 - 12 hours of very light browsing (maybe like 1/2 hour 3g surfing, no calls, all apps killed with task killer every once in awhile) with Bluetooth and Wifi off I am at 68% left. This is with auto brightness.
I'd say if you don't do anything you might be able to get 3-4 days out of it. According to my battery stats 78% of all my battery usage has been the screen. Keep that thing off / or low brightness and you are going in the right direction.
i bet by standby att means the phone being not used and turned off for like 4 days lol
systoxity said:
i find that dark backgrounds help. Also keep unecessary things off and dl an app killa. I had a new captivate today at 10am and with its half charge and heavy usage it lasted me till 6
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks systoxity, I will try that
systoxity said:
i find that dark backgrounds help. Also keep unecessary things off and dl an app killa. I had a new captivate today at 10am and with its half charge and heavy usage it lasted me till 6
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
By dark, he means a background that has a lot of black in it. This is really helpful because the Super AMOLED screen on this phone turns off power to pixels that are black, so basically that part of the screen isn't using any power. A black background is almost like turning the screen off.
magicman0 said:
By dark, he means a background that has a lot of black in it. This is really helpful because the Super AMOLED screen on this phone turns off power to pixels that are black, so basically that part of the screen isn't using any power. A black background is almost like turning the screen off.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
this, thanks for clarifying.
note: it further helps if you apply a static one.
I was able to listen to music for 6 hours at work, show off my phone (I only showed it directly to one co-worker - I had 5 other guys come to check it out after he told them about it lol!), did some light surfing, downloaded a few apps and generally fiddled around with the phone and ended up at 43% battery. Not great, but not terrible either. Screen was the big killer here. GPS and WiFi off except to test Layar.
We'll see if battery life improves, but it enough to make it through one day easily for me. Forget to charge it and it'll be flat early into the next day though. I'm a bit disappointed, considering benchmarks on the Galaxy S came up with nearly 8 hours of constant video playback. I think they had brightness at 50% and I kept setting mine to max to show off the screen and then forgetting to set it back, so that could be part of it. I was definitely expecting more though. I'm clearly not the most demanding user here, so I was hoping to potentially eek out two days of usage (just in case I forget to charge it).
One of the reasons I went with the Captivate instead of waiting for the Epic is that the form factor seems to be a bit more amenable to adding an extended battery. Hopefully we'll start to see some 2500mAh or even 3Ah batteries show up - even if it means getting a new backcover. THAT should just about do it
anosis said:
Well, my N1 holds charge for about 1 day with moderate use. As soon as I play with the GPS and google's built in nav system I get maybe 4 hours worth of usage. Another issue I have with my N1 is that my car charger cannot keep up with the drain, so even plugged into the charger the battery percentage is decreasing. Sure hope the Captivate is better in that respect.
Froyo did increase battery life a bit but it is not earth shattering. The advantage of this phone is the larger capacity battery and hopefully a less power hungry samsung processor than the qualcom snapdragon.
I am sure within the next few days we will have some folks with more concrete consumption estimates.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Also the Super AMOLED Screen sucks alot less Juice as well...
My friend has the Vibrant and has had it for about 4 days. He is a power-user like me, and he said with his task killer, he can run the phone for 2 days on a full charge. This is outstanding for a smart phone... I ordered my Captivate today, should be here on Wednesday so I'll also put this to the test!
better battery life is coming once devs hop aboard. Also, your phone will need training over the next few days so it can only get better from here for you. I also recommend just leaving brightness on auto detect. You wont have to play with it as much and forget it on super bright.
Some more tips:
idk if you guys like haptic feedback but i think its annoying as all hell. Turn it off to save an iota of battery.
Also tone responses for menu clicks? ANNOYINNGG turn that shiz off for a squirt of juice.
Lastly, unless you live by your email, turn sync off and only sync manually when ur curious about it.
I wonder about some of the widgets. I have Weather And Toggle Widget (which I prefer over Beautiful Widget), and have it set to update the weather every 30 minutes. Wonder if that's too often. The weather in Iowa can be very unpredictable and change quickly, but I'm inside all day so it doesn't really matter. I guess it's just eye-candy mostly.
I also wonder how WATW compares to BW in terms of battery consumption.
I turned haptic off (I agree, it was annoying). I turned the tones off, though I doubt that will affect battery life. I wish I could keep the tones for dialer and kill it for the keyboard.
EDIT: I keep reading about this idea that you train your battery (or device) to your usage, but I'm not sure that I understand/buy it. I could see perhaps something to do with the memory effect if these batteries are susceptible to it, but this idea of "training" it strikes me as very odd. Does Android have some kind of battery optimization algorithm that adjusts services based on your usage or something?
from what i understand, calculating battery life is like a guessing game. calibrating your device by letting it drain out and then fully charging it and draining it out again completely gives your phone an idea of just how long it can last on a single charge. Until you do a few cycles like this it will incorrectly display batter life percentage giving the user a false sense of security or panic. There may be more to it that has to do with the actual battery itself but idk the rest of the details.
and 30 min updates is a bit much lol. u should update like once a day and manually refresh if you need to know b4 u go out.
I'm getting very good battery life on my phone. As good as any iphone I've had and better than any of my windows mobile phones before that. I don't have any widgets constantly pulling down data though and only have my google account syncing contacts and calendars and an exchange account running.

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%.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
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.
Click to expand...
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.
Click to expand...
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
Click to expand...
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

Getting great battery life on my TB... :)

Keepin' it clean by keepin' smooth...
Ok finally after a few days of using my phone it has finally leveled off. My phone has been off the charger since 6am and I am at about 70% charged. Couldn't ask for more out of a smart phone. This is right in line with my Nexus One so I am no longer disappointed.
There are a few tweaks I did make to get this working this way.
(1) Screen brightness set at about 20% - The TB's screen is way to bright to begin with and making this adjustment is something that is not very hard to get used to.
(2) Screen Time out at 30 seconds - Setting to low will get frustrating if you like reading the news on your phone or browsing the web, 30 seconds seems just right for me.
(3) WIFI when not in car (triggered on and off by loss of Blue Tooth Connection and Not In Dock) Using WiFi instead of relying on your data connection will help save some juice while in a WiFi enabled building since your phone will not be trying to constantly search and connect to a data connection.
(4) Blue tooth off until docked - Saves battery by not transmitting a BT signal constantly. I only use Bluetooth in the car so triggered by the dock seemed logical.
(5) Syncing Facebook every 8 hours, News every 12 hours and Stocks (Who really needs this)
(6) I love widgets on my home screens so these get updated as I found necessary to me. Im not a major facebooker that needs to be on the bleeding edge of everyones life so 8 hours is probably even too much but adequate. News doesnt really update very often and compared to a daily news paper 12 hours is more than ample. Stocks, need I say more seriously I am not an investor and could care less.
(7) Over clocking your phone is not necessary right now, 1 GHZ is definitely more than you need on this phone. I am scoring about 1700 on quadrant which is pretty good for a 1ghz phone. My phone has never lagged and has functioned as expected since birthed to my hand. Keep in mind Over clocking will increase the performance of your phone but will tear at your battery as well and may cause heating issues.
(8) Not using an animated wallpaper. Even on my nexus one this was a major contributer to poor battery and phone performance. Animated wallpapers are very often poorly programmed or simply over bloated. Not too mention on the severe end of the priority list of needs. All though cool.
I am not over clocking or installing a custom rom on my phone quite yet because honestly the roms are not stable enough as expected this close to birth, and really don't offer any additional functionality that I find very useful as of yet. I am using Tasker to accomplish a few automated switching routines to toggle WIFI and Bluetooth. I am also using Folder Organizer to keep my apps categorized in a humane manor. I am a widget-aholic and have not really found a downside to having too a lot of widgets running.
How much do you use your phone a day?
Not everyone is willing to cut out their social networking. A big part of smartphones now is always being connected. This includes social networking, sharing pictures, sharing locations... some people get into all of this and some do not.
Also, some people like weather updates, stock updates, news updates, etc. Everyone uses their device differently to fit their needs.
I think it is common sense that the more services you use which consume radio/data/processing time then the quicker you will drain your battery.
Thank you for sharing the setup that works for you and affords you such great battery life. I have been having great battery life too. I am currently not in a 4G LTE area, but the device on 3G has been great on battery. You would never know there are any "issues" if people did not post about them!
What is your uptime, display on time, and partial wake usage?
I didn't check that deep in to it, but I had it plugged in to some speakers at work for about 3.5 hours playing slacker radio from wifi so I could rock at work. I used the phone to call tech support for my wifes phone which took a while and other shorter calls through out the day. Right now my up time is about 65 hours, awake time is at 26 hours. Not sure where to get partial awake. My display on timer only says 1 min. But honestly today was not a big phone use day and it sat in the dock on the ride home so all those stats are irrelevant today. But still my battery it at 83%. A lot of people were complaining about there phones dying with no or little use half through the day. So hopefully this brings a little light to the end of the tunnel.
Dang what were your settings
Sent from Snarf with an Epic
I have basically the same things running on my phone. Only, my folder organizer keeps fc every time I attempt to edit a folders contents... Anyone have a suggestion?
Sent from my ADR6400L using XDA Premium App
I've been getting great battery life as well, got 36 hours on my last charge. Have Perfect Storm 1.0, trip's 1.5ghz oc kernel (but don't actually run it that high). I have SetCPU set at 998/245 for normal, 245/245 for screen off and use smartass governor. I was also using my phone a moderate amount but had the 4g turned off as I'm in between 3g and 4g so it just keeps dropping and switching.
Glad to see someone is getting decent life.. I'm about to set a record for battery death.. phone has been on for 1 hour and 20 minutes and down to 65%.
On the bright side I am getting 20mbps down here at school.. SDSU..
4 bars of LTE flies
Do you have it on LTE only mode?
rnot said:
Do you have it on LTE only mode?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yah.. I am surfing pretty heavily though.. down to 58% now..
Guess ill have to sit in a different seat for the rest of the classes.. I see power outlets along the walls
It sucks though because on the Droid x, I could surf during the whole 3 hr class and walk out with 50% left.. guess this is the price you pay for this kinda power and speed lol
from 6am to 2pm phone is dead
music for a hour and half while on airplane mode
3g only
gps,bluetooth,wifi off
half hour of web browsing on 4G
about 15 messages on live Profile app
about 40 text messages
auto sync and background data off
One thing I dont understand is..When my phone is idle the battery is still draining.
6am to 6pm...
3g only (off when not using it)
gps,bt, wifi - off
games for about half an hour...
a couple calls
>20 txts
screen at 15%ish
autosync and background data off...
and now i'm at...89%
I have also found that in the first couple of days (2 or 3 days) after a reset... the phone does a BUNCH of funky things. First night after a reset...VZwireless said at 3AM i had 130MB of transfer... not possible - i was sleeping. it wasn't me. but...i did wake up with >30% of the battery gone. I think the background data off is a good place to start...but definitely wait after a couple of days.
I seem to be getting about 36 hours of up time on a charge. Mostly on wifi at home/work. I have 4G turned off as its not available here yet.
Sent from my ADR6400L using XDA App
Ok.. 4 hrs .. done for ... Did make it through class.. 8% left
There will be a patch soon to help with the idle 4G battery drain. Lady on the phone told me its in the works. Either way I just got the extended battery today. I actually dont mind the extra size.
Hmm... whats the anecdotal battery life for an extended battery given these settings? I've gotten to the point of running my display at 5% when indoors ==;;;
Also, I've heard of people getting free or heavily discounted extended batteries.... Any tips for this?
I am using an app called fastbright which really helps with the display battery drain...I just use it o bright when i cant see if i am outside....post #10!!! yay!
I've used my phone a decent amount today and battery is still at 62%. Running Das bamf at 1.2 ghz and screen brightness at 100%
crazed_z06 said:
Glad to see someone is getting decent life.. I'm about to set a record for battery death.. phone has been on for 1 hour and 20 minutes and down to 65%.
On the bright side I am getting 20mbps down here at school.. SDSU..
4 bars of LTE flies
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I feel the same way... if you are playing around on the tb while it is pluged in it will take a good 4-6 hours to charge to 100%

Normal Battery Drain?

So after 2 hours and 3 minutes...my battery is at 25% ...since starting to write this message it has dropped 3%. The display is taking up 80% of use. Screen brightness is about a centimeter from the far left side. Screen has been on about 90% of the time...however...after only 2 hours and now at 23%...I'm a little concerned. Any suggestions?
Sent from my SCH-I510 using Tapatalk
Change your screen timeout to 30 seconds...
ITGuy11 said:
Change your screen timeout to 30 seconds...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I like to have my screen on while at work. It would be easy to just turn it off ...I'm hoping for another workaround. I thought these screens were supposed to pull less power.
Grillrd said:
I like to have my screen on while at work. It would be easy to just turn it off ...I'm hoping for another workaround. I thought these screens were supposed to pull less power.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I does pull less power but having it on all the time while at work will still drain your battery pretty quickly and why want you have this on all the time?
Poloasis said:
I does pull less power but having it on all the time while at work will still drain your battery pretty quickly and why want you have this on all the time?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It was more of a test to see how long it lasts with the screen on. I am a little concerned though because lets say I'm sitting in an airport or on a plane watching a movie(I travel for business). My old Droid X could get me through that. But I'm thinking that it wouldn't be an option if my battery is dieing after 2 1/2 hours with the screen on.
Coming from the droid x, kernels weren't an option so I don't know much about them. Would an enhanced kernel be able to help with this drain or am I SOL?
I'm having battery issues as well and hoping someone can help. I heard people are getting great battery life with this device, but so far mine is about the same as the thunderbolt was. My charge says its mostly the display taking up the battery life, but I've done all I can to help this. My screen time out is at 15 seconds and my brightness is at about 20%. I am running ADW EX but I wouldn't think that would cause this. Anyone have any other ideas?
Sent from my Xoom using XDA App
ghettomuffin said:
I'm having battery issues as well and hoping someone can help. I heard people are getting great battery life with this device, but so far mine is about the same as the thunderbolt was. My charge says its mostly the display taking up the battery life, but I've done all I can to help this. My screen time out is at 15 seconds and my brightness is at about 20%. I am running ADW EX but I wouldn't think that would cause this. Anyone have any other ideas?
Sent from my Xoom using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I am on the same boat as you. I thought rooting my phone and freezing apps would help with my battery but it seems to be about the same.
Never worry about battery drain anymore with this thread:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1096167
BOOM.
yyhd said:
Never worry about battery drain anymore with this thread:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1096167
BOOM.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
lol...yeah. I had an extended battery for my Droid X...but it didn't triple the size of my phone haha
The screen does use less power, but a significant amount of the power savings comes from displaying black, as black uses no power on the display, where it does for LCD displays. For me, the Display is usually responsible for 65-80% of the power drain, so your usage seems somewhat normal. Custom kernels can help with drain some, but what can be tweaked with a kernel won't help with the display draining the battery.
imnuts said:
The screen does use less power, but a significant amount of the power savings comes from displaying black, as black uses no power on the display, where it does for LCD displays. For me, the Display is usually responsible for 65-80% of the power drain, so your usage seems somewhat normal. Custom kernels can help with drain some, but what can be tweaked with a kernel won't help with the display draining the battery.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you for the explanation. Looks like I'll be using dark wallpapers.
Sent from my SCH-I510 using Tapatalk
Potential Solutions?
So besides reducing screen timeout to minimum, turning off background data, and cutting off literally every single connection (wifi, BT, 3g/4g, gps, everything) except 1x for calls and texts, removing bloat, are there ANY other measures one could take to enhance the stock battery life? I find myself talking on the phone for roughly 1hr per day but I do send nearly 500 text messages daily thus my screen is on a good portion of the time. I have to charge this phone twice per day at 2.5hrs per charge, it sits near an outlet for 5 hours a day heh... In fact even though I live in a 4g area I can't really use that feature because it beast's the battery down like a ravenous monster even with ALL other services disabled, not making calls, just texting and syncing email.
Task killers:
To me the task killing programs (ATK, ATM, etc) do actually kill background tasks and sometimes even services depending on your particular settings but since they just restart automatically does it not use MORE cpu time to re-run the damn things than just leaving them in the first place?
Launchers:
I have found no significant difference whatsoever between battery life under TouchWiz and LauncherPro. If anything its worse with LP because of the nifty graphical effects.
Kernels:
I'm pretty sure I read somewhere people were experiencing better life with the v4 voodoo kernel however I've noticed no difference at all there either with regard to battery life.
Running the phone with no services and charging it twice daily seems fairly extreme, eh? The extended battery is tempting, but one thing that attracted me to this device was its slim design. I don't care if its a little thicker and all but that ext battery is a freaking monster! Forget having a case with it too, at least for now.
Thoughts, suggestions?
hok
hokulus said:
I find myself talking on the phone for roughly 1hr per day but I do send nearly 500 text messages daily thus my screen is on a good portion of the time. I have to charge this phone twice per day at 2.5hrs per charge, it sits near an outlet for 5 hours a day heh...
Thoughts, suggestions?
hok
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
500 text/day? Wow, you must be under 20 with thumbs/pointing fingers of steel! If your average text message takes 30 seconds, your screen is on and the screen/keyscan interrupts are running full bore about 4.5 hours a day just texting...when do you have time for Angry Birds?
Maybe a thin white text on black background for your screen theme? Just kidding (sort of), but I'm amazed at the talk/text times; gettin old, I guess!
imnuts said:
The screen does use less power, but a significant amount of the power savings comes from displaying black, as black uses no power on the display, where it does for LCD displays. For me, the Display is usually responsible for 65-80% of the power drain, so your usage seems somewhat normal. Custom kernels can help with drain some, but what can be tweaked with a kernel won't help with the display draining the battery.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Seems like this explains while some report great battery and others terrible times...depends on what somebody considers "normal" to "light" usage and while some consider "texting" light usage if the screen is on black text on white background the whole day, there goes the battery stats. Same with screen on sitting doing nothing (maybe displaying time)...
Should "Battery Life" be normalized or adjusted something similar to "Time Between Charges" divided by ("Time Screen Display is On" times "percent White pixel counts")? Are there any battery stats / device stats / display stats that can help figuring out a "Battery Life Index"?
Sorry for the random thoughts....
rmanaka said:
500 text/day? Wow, you must be under 20 with thumbs/pointing fingers of steel! If your average text message takes 30 seconds, your screen is on and the screen/keyscan interrupts are running full bore about 4.5 hours a day just texting...when do you have time for Angry Birds?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Actually I've been keeping track and the screen is on 3-4 hours per day, plus the haptic feedback, interrupts, etc. Doesn't take me anywhere near 30s to send a text message, few seconds TOPS for most of them and I never said it was light usage haha. Just asked if anyone knows of other measures I did not list which I may employ to extend it more.
hok
The vooodoo kernel will help a bit as it uses a much more optimized file system so your phone will spend less time cache thrashing and reading/writing large downloads.
Essentially though it is down to how long your screen is on and how many accounts you have syncing in the background, also if you don't need full 1ghz for texting/calling smoothly then use setcpu with an ondemand or interactive type scheduler and set the max to like 700-800mhz...
rmanaka said:
Seems like this explains while some report great battery and others terrible times...depends on what somebody considers "normal" to "light" usage and while some consider "texting" light usage if the screen is on black text on white background the whole day, there goes the battery stats. Same with screen on sitting doing nothing (maybe displaying time)...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This....
BUT i will say that the battery life on this phone takes a great big dump on the TB`s battery, now thats a bad battery life, i would consider myslef a heavy user i make around and receive around 100 calls a day, around 100 emails and around 75-125 texts per 8 hour working day
i can get through my day putting my charge on charge ONCE for around 30 mins, my thunderbolt had to be plugged in most times, 2-3 hours max for total battery death ( 3 hours is extreme generous, was more like 2 hours ), i carried 3 batteries with my thunderbolt.
The charge for me is great, on a par with my old galaxy S for battery life, if only they coukd give me iPhone battery life, for as much as people dont like the iPhone, it sure does sip the juice
Myphone ie ed2 stock, no rooted.....YET im waiting for a stable CWM

let's talk battery..

so as it may be known, i came from an iPhone 4S and traded that for an HTC One X, i've had it for a little over a week and i really like it a lot BUT (you knew that was coming i think..) the battery is below par, i get about 3, on a real good day 4 hours of usage from a full charge. i only auto sync mail, screen is on 25% (also tried auto for a few days), when at home it's connected to WiFi, data off and when i go out the other way around, GPS and Bluetooth are off at all times. the main thing i do on my device is Twitter, Google+, Facebook and Instagram, + some light browsing the Internet. i understand the screen and processor take quite some battery but it's not cool to only be able to use the device about 3-4 hours before running empty. emailed the guy i traded with and he said he got about 7hrs, which would be awesome after dealing with 3-4 ;}
i am using Nova Launcher Prime, but prior to that when i ran Sense the battery was about the same. may just revert to stock to see how that will affect the battery, even though i will miss my widgets and setup. i also emailed HTC and was considering going to AT&T but since i traded the device i doubt they'll be much help.
what do you guys get... and what if anything did you do to improve it ?
thanks.
How much screen on time? 4 hours is nuts. I easily got 24 hours on stock, with light usage, maybe even a day and a half. The 2.2X versions firmwares seem to get better battery life. Just this morning I had just under 50% battery left after 24 hours, with 1 hour screen on time.
If screen brightness in on "Auto" turn that off, and set it to something like 40-50%. That should save you some, but doesn't account the type of battery drain you are talking about.
Might be some runaway processes. Or any possibility you are in a fringe LTE area?
on screen time is what i was reporting, round about 4 hours -which yea is pretty horrible i'd say. i even have the screen brightness lower; 25%. checked the processes and for what i know nothing out of the ordinary, but i'm a novice Android user so.. prior to yesterday i only used 4G when out, so at home i stayed on WiFi.
battery stats now:
- 76%
- 5h 8m 54s on battery
- screen on 59m 28s
Screen on time of 4 hours very normal, and its good for a smartphone. Everyone uses their phone differently, of course. But 4 hours of screen time gets most people through a day, and charge overnight. What type of screen on time did you get with the iPhone?
roeiboot said:
on screen time is what i was reporting, round about 4 hours -which yea is pretty horrible i'd say. i even have the screen brightness lower; 25%. checked the processes and for what i know nothing out of the ordinary, but i'm a novice Android user so.. prior to yesterday i only used 4G when out, so at home i stayed on WiFi.
battery stats now:
- 76%
- 5h 8m 54s on battery
- screen on 59m 28s
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Your stats are very normal for this phone model. The One XL screen is gigantic, but isn't AMOLED and as such uses much more battery life to power than some other Android devices. I get ~3 hours of screen on time in a days use of battery, and that is about 10-15 hours away from a charger. From what I can gather of your usage, if you are looking to extend your battery life, the only thing to do is leave the screen off more.
Do you flash custom ROMs? If so, try a custom kernel that allows you to change the CPU governor and clock speeds. The processor in the One XL maxes out at 1.5GHz by default, but you can underclock it to 1.2GHz with no noticeable detriment to performance. Also you can set the minimum frequency to an even lower clock speed, which allows the phone to use even less power when idling. Finally, make sure that the CPU governor is set to Ondemand. Powersave actually doesn't save as much power as you would think!
my favorite part was when he compared a tiny 3.5" screen to a 4.7" screen and expected the same battery life, even though it is roughly the same
Firstly, 4 hours screen on time isn't bad at all. I'm sorry your only reference is an iPhone.
To get 6+ hours of onscreen time with this phone like I and many others get you will need to do two things. Firstly, flash a custom ROM. CleanROM 4.5 is a good one that's as close to stock as you're gonna get. The second thing you need to do is turn off auto brightness. Leave the brightness set at 35% - 40%. This will improve battery life immensely. And no, 40% brightness is not dim.
Happy flashing!
10-12 hours up
5hrs 15mins screen on
Everything synced
Sent from my HTC One X
redpoint73 said:
Screen on time of 4 hours very normal, and its good for a smartphone. Everyone uses their phone differently, of course. But 4 hours of screen time gets most people through a day, and charge overnight. What type of screen on time did you get with the iPhone?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
with my iPhone (GPS on always, WiFi always, screen on about 70-80%) i got an average of 6 hours with peaks of 7. 4 hours with the HTC One X is on a good day.
i did not flash a ROM since i can not unlock the phone (yet). where i compared, referred to the iPhone is based upon the previous owner who said he usually got 6-7 hours on screen per day. it's uncool that people not live by the rule if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say nothing... i'm only trying to get some help here (luckily most members are helpful... i'll try and ignore the others) and my other reference would be a BB Storm, which lasted very long, but the device wasn't very exciting
i'm following the thread where rooting is discussed but i believe there's little progress. AT&T is also not pushing Sense 4.1 (yet, mine has 4.0) and ICS 4.0.4.
just spoke with HTC and they agree it's too short and are willing to exchange battery... downside i would be w/o a phone for 7-10 business days. might swing by AT&T and discuss, "issue" is i was not the original buyer.. he (HTC rep) stated they might give you a loaner (i doubt it..) we shall see.
thanks to those with positive feedback.
so far..
click here for today's results --16% left.. slightly over 3hr on screen time.
roeiboot said:
just spoke with HTC and they agree it's too short and are willing to exchange battery...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It really depends on how you use your phone, and not all screen-on time is the same. 4 Hours is screen time is pretty good, and pretty on par with what other users on here have observed. The phone is new to you, so I bet you are using it like crazy. If that use includes a lot of internet, playing video, or games, its going to use more battery than some other activities. I don't know if a replacment is going to make you any happier.
You also have to consider, aside from a much larger screen, its also much higher resolution than the iPhone. Pushing all those pixels by the GPU takes power. The CPU is also much faster than the iPhone (and just about any other smartphone except the Galaxy S3), again using more power. Screen time may be less, but its doing so much more in that time.
4 hours, if I made would be somewhat acceptable, yesterday I had a little more then 3. I do not play game, I manly do social media & a little surfing..
Sent from my HTC One X using XDA Premium HD app
my battery would last over 24hrs until the OTA 2.20 update now im lucky to get 12hrs out of it. Did they change something in the update?
leighton1245 said:
my battery would last over 24hrs until the OTA 2.20 update now im lucky to get 12hrs out of it. Did they change something in the update?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The 2.20 OTA has an new radio. So its possible that the new radio happens to result in worse reception (and therefore battery life) than the previous one. Newer radios do not always get better results for all people, as its very geographically dependent.
redpoint73 said:
The 2.20 OTA has an new radio. So its possible that the new radio happens to result in worse reception (and therefore battery life) than the previous one. Newer radios do not always get better results for all people, as its very geographically dependent.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you for the reply and yes the radio looked like it was a new one and in PA i dont get that great of service everywhere.
Yeah, 4 hours of screen on time is normal so I definitely don't think you have any sort of defect. Signal strength also has a lot of impact on battery life. Keep brightness as low as possible while still being comfortable to your eyes (battery life isn't worth putting extra strain on your eyes). I use an app called display brightness that allows you to change brightness by swiping across the statusbar. I keep mine at the lowest level and just swipe a bit to increase it when I need it and then swipe it back down when I'm done. A custom rom could help some. If nothing else, root so that you can use something like better battery stats to give you more info on what's happening behind the scenes so you can make some adjustments. Although I'm not one to push using this, you might want to install something like juice defender to see if it helps. Verify you don't have some app running in the background unnecessarily chewing up cpu use. Note though that just because an app is running in the background doesn't mean you should kill it. As long as it's not doing anything, it's better for it to be running than to have to load it up (especially if it's an app you use frequently). A couple of other things to verify, don't use push notifications / syncing (I keep background syncing off a manually sync (well, I use Tasker to sync things at different times of the day)). If you can, use wifi. If wifi isn't available, turn it off. Also make sure wifi notifications are off and that you aren't using 'best wifi performance' (both under wifi advanced settings).
I'm sure there are some others I missed but hopefully these help and at least give you a starting place. No matter what though, enjoy your device and don't obsess too much with the battery. Once you've gotten over the 'new toy' syndrome, you should get a days use out of it. I pretty much take mine off charge in the morning and put it on charge before going to bed with around 30‰ left. Sometimes more, sometimes less. 3-4 hours average of screen on time, 30-60 minutes of calling.
Sent from my One X
^^^^Thanks for the tip on that brightness app. Very impressed.
Sent from my HTC One X using XDA Premium HD. In between Force Clo...
Vendetta-NY said:
^^^^Thanks for the tip on that brightness app. Very impressed.
Sent from my HTC One X using XDA Premium HD. In between Force Clo...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Np. Been using it since early on and it continues to improve. One of those handy must have apps.
Sent from my One X
update.
went to the AT&T Device Center (did not know it existed until the regular AT&T store told me about it...) they played with my phone and concluded that the battery was draining too fast while using it, so w/o discussion they exchanged it.
got a follow up question since AT&T did not know, with the iPhones i would let them drain all the way down at least and then fully recharge and leave it on the charger for an extra 2 hours after it being 100%, i *think* that helped condition the battery.. anything you guys can suggest anything for me to to now that i have a new device to maybe improve/condition the battery ?
thanks.

Categories

Resources