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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. =)

What kind of battery life are you getting?

I am getting absolutely horrible battery life on my MT4G. I took it off the charger at 9:30am, I have since made one 5 min phone call and sent maybe 5 texts, and checked a couple emails that i just deleted, other then that screen has been off the whole time, its now 4:40 and im at 35% battery. On my Vibrant with this sort of use I would still be in the 70s.
Under accounts and sync:
facebook updating every hr (just changed it to every 4 hrs)
google syncing just gmail, no contacts or calender
news every 4 hrs
stocks not syncing
t-mobile syncing (tried turning off but it just turns itself on again)
qik video chat syncing
weather every 3 hrs
yahoo syncing

Are you on wifi or 3g? Brightness? Screen timeout? I have an N1 and the battery life is pretty poor so I'm just curious apples to apples in terms of what else you have turned on.

negreenfield said:
Are you on wifi or 3g? Brightness? Screen timeout? I have an N1 and the battery life is pretty poor so I'm just curious apples to apples in terms of what else you have turned on.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I leave 3g on but i always left it on on the vibrant as well, brightness is at 20%, screen times out within a couple seconds
wifi, gps and bluetooth off

I get great battery life. Then again I am coming from a Vibrant, my battery was horrible on that device. I take it off the charger at around 8 am and by 6 pm I still have 50%
Sent from my HTC Glacier using XDA App

ever thought about turning off 4G? You don't alway have to have it on.

I get around 12-15 hours with heavy usage. My G2 usually gets 15-24 hours.

I saw this article the other day. I was thinking about trying it tomorrow.
http://androidspin.com/2010/11/06/double-your-battery-life-on-htc-droid-incredible-sprint-evo-google-nexus-one-and-possibly-others/

Don't bother with that battery charger hack, it's not going to do anything but waste your time...
I just installed SetCPU on my phone just for fun and have found that it recognizes a few lower clock cycles...I added a profile to lower the CPU when the screen is off otherwise at 1024-245 On Demand and I'm still plugging away at 20% battery when I would normaly be on the charger by now...could be a fluke, but so far so good...I'll keep this for a few days to see how it does.

oh, one other note, my battery life has continued to improve with every charge...the first few days I couldn't get through a full day and now I have battrey to spare...just had to get it conditioned with a few charges I guess.

I let the phone completely die last night and then charged it and at midnight I unplugged it. At 8:30 this morning when I left for work it was at 94% which was great but from 8:30 until now it has dropped to 83% and ive had one 3 min phone call and deleted some text messages, no browsing web, no listening to music, nothing. It seems like the phone will go through the 100-95% slowly but after that its in a marathon to get to 0%

I don't know how you guys are getting so many hours daily on heavy use. I get 7-8 hours on heavy texting, some web browsing and about an hour plus on the phone almost every night. 9 hours would stretch it and it would be on 10%.
I have my brightness all the way down and all the way down is just 11. Screen times out in 2 minutes and I have power saving on. I did the battery thing 3 times where I would let it go down to less then 14% or so then charge it fully without taking it off charge. Hopefully it improves as days go by, I'm just tired of carrying my charger to work.
myTouch4G (Glacier)

Down to 69% now at 11:15, have made no phone calls or texts since then, have just downloaded opera mobile but havent even played with it...lol this is riduculous

I can recommend that you guys take a look at what might be pinging the CPU. Watchdog (Lite) is great for this task. You can have it alert you when an app exceeds a preset threshold for CPU usage. Some apps just go rogue on you like Palin from time to time.
I've also noticed that there's wide variability in terms of how apps go into either idle or background states. Some apps will go into idle only if you hit the back key to go back to the home screen and will enter a background state (more active) if you hit the home instead. I've also noticed that the free, ad-supported apps require more CPU time. That's right. Hitting Google's ad servers, at least for some apps, and scrolling those ads, requires more CPU time than other apps, which do the same. I don't know whether to fault the devs in this case when coding for the ad retrievals or not. Just some things to consider.

I just got mine. I came from a Blackberry 8900 and an old 2g iPhone. Battery life on both of those was significantly better. I could talk for 8 hours a day on the BB and it would last until midnight-1am or so. The iPhone would only last until 10pm.
Using the MT4G, my battery life is REALLY bad compared to these other two devices. I can get about 5.5 hours of continuous talk time, tested yesterday on a conference call for work. But even with only calling for about an hour and some basic email checking, I can't go past 6pm without putting the phone on the charger.
Wifi is off, screen at 50%. Someone please make a big fat 2800mah battery for this thing. I use this thing for work, and I make over 4000 mins a month of phone calls. It's really annoying to have to plug it in whenever I have the chance.

im getting roughly about 15-17 hours and im using it (camera, blogging, facebook uploading)
this destroys the EVO i had

Heavy usage, I'll get around there, 7-8 hours...regular usage gets me around 20 hours..I'm using setcpu w/ profiles..
Sent from my HTC Glacier using XDA App

did you have similar battery problems with your old phone while at work?
i notice my nexus 1's battery is significantly worse when i'm at work since getting a signal is a bit spotty (35th floor) so it keeps searching around. when i'm at home the battery lasts literally twice as long while idle.

dinan said:
did you have similar battery problems with your old phone while at work?
i notice my nexus 1's battery is significantly worse when i'm at work since getting a signal is a bit spotty (35th floor) so it keeps searching around. when i'm at home the battery lasts literally twice as long while idle.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes definitely right about that. I have better battery usage when I'm off work. My department at work is in the basement. So the signal switches on and off the whole time I'm there.
myTouch4G (Glacier)

dinan said:
did you have similar battery problems with your old phone while at work?
i notice my nexus 1's battery is significantly worse when i'm at work since getting a signal is a bit spotty (35th floor) so it keeps searching around. when i'm at home the battery lasts literally twice as long while idle.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think I only brought my G2 into work a couple times so cant really comment on that but in the 3 months ive owned the vibrant, if i used the phone a lot during the day....i mean play games, texts, web, etc..id leave with percentage in the 50s, normally in the 70s, at 4 today i was in the 30s with the mytouch with barely doing anything, since i want it to last until the night i just threw it on the charger. it shows I have full signal (4th floor by window)

My wife just got an mt4g (I have a nexus one). I've noticed that her battery life seems to be just over half what mine is, and I actually use mine more!
When I looked at her Battery Usage display, Android OS was near the top with almost 2h CPU time after being unplugged for 6h. For comparison, on my nexus one, CPU time for Android OS is 4m13s after almost 8h.
Any good way to break that number down more and find out the source of this crazy battery usage?

Love my G2x, But the battery is worst ever.

Have had my rooted stock rom g2x since day 1.
Love phone. I am comming from H2 customed. I thought it had worst battery I have ever had.
That was till the g2x. I hate running a task killer. But am about to do just that to see if I can get anymore battery,.
Its to the point where I fully charge phone and yesterday with only 12 minutes of talk. Maybe 20 minutes of Web use and some emails. Battery was yellow.
This is a joke right? My only thought is that by having my Gmail auto refresh every 10 minutes possibly that could be some cause. But I if not in my car to keep on charger phone last barely a day.

Sounds like you have a bad battery, I get great battery life with the phone
G2X & Nexus S

I get 13hrs on this battety with wifi on all day.
Sent from my LG-P999 using XDA Premium App

iceshark said:
Have had my rooted stock rom g2x since day 1.
Love phone. I am comming from H2 customed. I thought it had worst battery I have ever had.
That was till the g2x. I hate running a task killer. But am about to do just that to see if I can get anymore battery,.
Its to the point where I fully charge phone and yesterday with only 12 minutes of talk. Maybe 20 minutes of Web use and some emails. Battery was yellow.
This is a joke right? My only thought is that by having my Gmail auto refresh every 10 minutes possibly that could be some cause. But I if not in my car to keep on charger phone last barely a day.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Did u calibrate?
Sent from my LG-P999 using XDA Premium App

do u really think that is the standard performance of the G2x battery or is it more likely you got a bad unit ? Come on now people, stop posting this crap and just exchange your phone when you only get an hour of battery life. Why start a freaking thread ? You could have used that time to go exchange your phone.

mapin0518 said:
do u really think that is the standard performance of the G2x battery or is it more likely you got a bad unit ? Come on now people, stop posting this crap and just exchange your phone when you only get an hour of battery life. Why start a freaking thread ? You could have used that time to go exchange your phone.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Totally true.
For those of you with problems, your phone is still new, it will be replaced either under buyer's remorse (15-20 days) or directly through tmobile after that period.
Just get a new phone and be done with it.
My first hot potato of a phone would get good battery life, until it cooked itself alive. My second phone was on for over 27 hours and was still at 50%. I'm still surprised.

First off guys. I am not a newbie to XDA or phones. No its not a bad battery.
Remember I am the Costco Manager so I can exchange phone as much as I want for 90 days.
This is my third as I wanted a perfect screen.
I have had this problem with all 3. So the battery is fine.
I use batt apk and I show about 5%loss per half hour after taking off charge
There is no way this is normal. Now I do have lots of apps. But I have froze some in Titanium. However I can blow out this charge in an hour with web use.]
No I did not calibrate. Did not read that till after. However I did charge initially correct.
My HD2 would gobble batterys. But this phone while I love it. Is not a great everyday use phone if not able to be on a charger during day.

iceshark said:
First off guys. I am not a newbie to XDA or phones. No its not a bad battery.
Remember I am the Costco Manager so I can exchange phone as much as I want for 90 days.
This is my third as I wanted a perfect screen.
I have had this problem with all 3. So the battery is fine.
I use batt apk and I show about 5%loss per half hour after taking off charge
There is no way this is normal. Now I do have lots of apps. But I have froze some in Titanium. However I can blow out this charge in an hour with web use.]
No I did not calibrate. Did not read that till after. However I did charge initially correct.
My HD2 would gobble batterys. But this phone while I love it. Is not a great everyday use phone if not able to be on a charger during day.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Huh.. some people are getting awesome battery time. When it first came out, people were having success with doing factory reset on their phone. Idk.. I personally didn't buy it.. but they swore it worked. Give it a try.

iceshark said:
First off guys. I am not a newbie to XDA or phones. No its not a bad battery.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So what you're saying then, is those of us with good battery life are the ones with the bad batteries? You really didn't think this through, did you?
I find my battery life was OK on the stock ROM. Nothing I'd get excited about, but I'd gotten used to insanely poor battery life running CM7 on my vibrant. Since I flashed the GB leak (no wipe, fixed permissions, erased battery stats) I'm seeing 18+ hrs with moderate usage.

gingerbread in general gets good battery life, cm7 for galaxy has problems due to samsung not following the google standards, those guys are basically shooting in the dark with that project, yet they have made huge improvments. recently people report decent to improved battery life on the latest builds.
to the op, what are your sync options? i find facebook sync and facebook contact sync are big culprits. also i only use google contact sync to get my contact list initially then turn it off. also if you have your gmail on the stock email app and the gmail app it can increase useage, if you prefer the email app id turn off google sync all together, if you like the gmail app id turn off fetch on the email app.
another culprit is weather apps using the location service, for me beautiful widgets is a battery hog on a vibrant rom but not on a captivate rom so results can vary from phone to phone.
and last of all i dont agree with calibration proceedures, i get some funky results with them, i just delete batstats and then charge to full. i find it takes 3 day minimum to get a good calibration, 5 days is sometimes needed.

I get very good battery life with mine and have been since day one. It lasts almost twice as long as my Vibrant and N1 did.
Sent from my LG-P999 using XDA App

I use juice defender to turn on/off my data for me when its not being used and the screen is off. It seems to work less than on vibrant.
I'm running stock rom and my battery life varies TREMENDOUSLY from when I'm at work and seldomly using it to when I'm home surfing the web on it ( tablets too far from couch I'm surprised I got the cookies )
Sent from my LG-P999 using XDA App

I was getting really bad battery life when I first got the phone (about 7hrs ) I ended up finding out that the touch led notification app was the culprit so I deleted it and also calibrated my battery and now my phone last all day easily and that with me playing guerrilla bob and the samurai game at work for like 2 hours lol
I recommend you download the where's my Droid power app from the market and see what's killing your battery
Sent from my LG-P999 using XDA App

Also keep in mind that it could be a certain app draining your battery. I downloaded the NFL apparently for draft day and even after exiting the app it took my battery down 15% in a matter of 10 minutes. Not to mention it had my battery's and CPU running super hot. On average I get about 12 hours out of a full charge with moderate to heavy usage.
Sent from my LG-P999 using XDA App

My last charge i got 36 hours of light use so I dont know what everyone's problem is lol

paxton said:
So what you're saying then, is those of us with good battery life are the ones with the bad batteries? You really didn't think this through, did you?
I find my battery life was OK on the stock ROM. Nothing I'd get excited about, but I'd gotten used to insanely poor battery life running CM7 on my vibrant. Since I flashed the GB leak (no wipe, fixed permissions, erased battery stats) I'm seeing 18+ hrs with moderate usage.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No wonder your a newbie and no listed thanks. What an asswade comment.
NO!!!!!!!!! What I am saying is that is has to be an internal issue with either synch times or possibly an APP be it internal or external that is causing MANY of us to have terrible battery times vs. others with good. Not saying anthing negative about those who are functioning ok.
I have been rooting and modding for 2 years. This is the worst battery usage yet. My Galaxy S 4g. Could last with same synch times and apps for 18 hours.
Now for those others who have there head inserted other then in there behind.
Okay ran some tests today,
1. Charged phone to 100percent.
2. Left everything the way it has been and no adjustments.
Battery at 84 Percent sitting tableside no text, app, wed or voice use after 2 hours. After 4 hours at 64 percent. After 6 hours at 51 percent. After 8 hours at 39 percent. This is with no usage. This is terrible.
Okay, Now have done following based on others test here and other forums.
1. Loaded Setcpu and made profile for sleep using stock 216 usage.
2. reluctently loaded Taskmanager Pro and killed all but needed apps.
3. Loaded Battery calibration app and after charge calibrated phone.
Left my email synch at every 10 minute as its needed for work.
We will see if this brings better test times now and report back.
What may be my culprit from studying this and other forums is I am in Seattle. We are Tmobiles home office corp and full test market for 4g and every change before rest of USA. I get full 4g at all times. In fact my speed tests are off the board. ave of 12 down 1.3 up speeds.
From what I am finding out, those of us in best 4g coverage (and Seattle is listed best) are finding much more drain on battery in standby and in use.
So my theory is that with this phone and its dual proccesor and my 4g, this is why myself and others in like markets are seeing much faster drain then others. Some dispute this possibility. however other experts say its fact.
Will report back findings tomorrow.
Thanks.

Dani897 said:
to the op, what are your sync options? i find facebook sync and facebook contact sync are big culprits. also i only use google contact sync to get my contact list initially then turn it off. also if you have your gmail on the stock email app and the gmail app it can increase useage, if you prefer the email app id turn off google sync all together, if you like the gmail app id turn off fetch on the email app.
another culprit is weather apps using the location service, for me beautiful widgets is a battery hog on a vibrant rom but not on a captivate rom so results can vary from phone to phone.
and last of all i dont agree with calibration proceedures, i get some funky results with them, i just delete batstats and then charge to full. i find it takes 3 day minimum to get a good calibration, 5 days is sometimes needed.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
May be some of my issue vs. others.
I do have sync on for FB and Google mail 2 accounts. and I use Fancy Widgets for my Weather and news feeds. However I also used these on my HD2 a known battery hog running cm7 and it had even better life then the phone. I run them on my other Galaxy s 4g as well and it has awesome battery life.
But I will freeze these in my next test after running this test.

iceshark said:
No wonder your a newbie and no listed thanks. What an asswade comment.
NO!!!!!!!!! What I am saying is that is has to be an internal issue with either synch times or possibly an APP be it internal or external that is causing MANY of us to have terrible battery times vs. others with good. Not saying anthing negative about those who are functioning ok.
I have been rooting and modding for 2 years. This is the worst battery usage yet. My Galaxy S 4g. Could last with same synch times and apps for 18 hours.
Now for those others who have there head inserted other then in there behind.
Okay ran some tests today,
1. Charged phone to 100percent.
2. Left everything the way it has been and no adjustments.
Battery at 84 Percent sitting tableside no text, app, wed or voice use after 2 hours. After 4 hours at 64 percent. After 6 hours at 51 percent. After 8 hours at 39 percent. This is with no usage. This is terrible.
Okay, Now have done following based on others test here and other forums.
1. Loaded Setcpu and made profile for sleep using stock 216 usage.
2. reluctently loaded Taskmanager Pro and killed all but needed apps.
3. Loaded Battery calibration app and after charge calibrated phone.
Left my email synch at every 10 minute as its needed for work.
We will see if this brings better test times now and report back.
What may be my culprit from studying this and other forums is I am in Seattle. We are Tmobiles home office corp and full test market for 4g and every change before rest of USA. I get full 4g at all times. In fact my speed tests are off the board. ave of 12 down 1.3 up speeds.
From what I am finding out, those of us in best 4g coverage (and Seattle is listed best) are finding much more drain on battery in standby and in use.
So my theory is that with this phone and its dual proccesor and my 4g, this is why myself and others in like markets are seeing much faster drain then others. Some dispute this possibility. however other experts say its fact.
Will report back findings tomorrow.
Thanks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
those are shocking results man... I dont know what to tell you... If I literally dont touch my phone for 6 hours i will drain no more than 10% of my battery, closer to around 6 or 7% based on my battery monitor widget...
I pulled the phone off at 6 this morning and didnt touch it until 12 and I was at 92%... Chelsea got ****ing spanked this morning and I got a barrage of **** talk text messages that I did not want to deal with haha so my phone wen untouched for a good 6 hours...
I will say though, when I first got the phone my battery life was pretty wonky... first drain was great, second one was mediocre, the third and fourth ones were horrible, drained in 6 hours flat of light-moderate use... I did a factory reset at this point to try and change things up... Calibrated once after that and I have run it up and down to get a good read and I have not looked back since, like i said i can get 20-30 hours of moderate to light use no problem at all!

Great battery on my g2x
I had battery problems with my G2x, only lasted about 7-8 hours on moderate use and cell stabd by was like 50% of battery use.
After i installed the leaked official Gingerbread ROM is like a new phone, ofter 16 hours of use i still had 43% last night. In idle mode it uses about 1% in 2 hours.
I think the battery probles come from Froyo not getting along with the dual core processor.
This phone is awesome!

iceshark said:
Okay ran some tests today,
1. Charged phone to 100percent.
2. Left everything the way it has been and no adjustments.
Battery at 84 Percent sitting tableside no text, app, wed or voice use after 2 hours. After 4 hours at 64 percent. After 6 hours at 51 percent. After 8 hours at 39 percent. This is with no usage. This is terrible.
.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Iceshark, you're not crazy. This is the same exact battery drain I get not even touching the damn phone! This is my second phone in less than 2 weeks, the first had the same results, both brand new.
Today I unplugged my phone at 12:45 pm, gave my mom a call for mothers day (less than 2 min talk time) Got to work and browsed web for maybe 5 minutes then clocked in at 2 pm. Took a 15 min break at 4pm battery was down to 80% (did some web browsing for 5 min). Took my 30 min lunch at 6pm (battery was down to about 60% (did some browsing for about 15 min). Took my last break at 8pm, and battery was down to 30%. I clocked out at 10:30 and I only had 20% battery left. The only timeI touched the phone was on my breaks, the rest of the time my phone was in my pocket. I had juicedefender running on balanced.
It's now 12:01am and I only have 14% battery left, that's not even 12 hours yet, and I only used the phone and it's features for less than an hour, all the other drain was sitting in my pocket. This is unacceptable. And I'm starting to think all the other people who claim to have great battery life are exaggerating or lying through their teeth.
Although I did a test yesterday using auto airplane mode, which automatically enables airplane mode when the screen shuts off, disabling any data, and then it turns data back on when you unlock the screen this helped very much with battery draining and at the end of an 8 hour work shift I still had 70% battery, but without data you can't receive calls, which sucks.
This battery drainage or bleed while the handset is not even being used needs to be fixed. And isn't it false advertising since the G2x specs indicate standby time is 400 hours?

Battery Life, Oh?

I think it's crazy how many people are downing the battery life on the Sensation. I used my phone a bit today. Off the charger at 10AM, used GPS to go to work with Bluetooth activated as well. Forgot to turn them both off while at work. I used my phone like ever 5 minutes checking Twitter updates(also weather/news/facebook/email/etc updates are automatically updating as fast as the app allows. So quick updates for all my apps, GPS and bluetooth turned on all day. Home around 5, watched a few episodes of South Park on Netflix with my phone. Read some news. Played a few different games for about 5-10min each just trying out new games. It's now almost 1AM the next day, and I'm above 40% battery life. I manage my screen brightness, that may be the only thing I remembered to manage well today. While outside/in car, full brightness, inside, as low as possible.
It's shocking to me when I see threads of how the battery life stinks. I'm using the stock battery, I don't even seen the need of getting a larger battery because this already gets me through a day full of activity. Anyone else find the battery life on this device, quite handy? Mine is rooted, but it's stock ROM. I'm also using a skin posted by a member of our forum, the transparency. I'm running the stock T-MOUS(why is it called tmous..? are people that lazy to spell out t-mobile?) ROM, because I accidentally deleted a few apps I discovered I needed back, and did not do a backup. Oh, and I'm also using the battery mod, for the battery icon in my notification bar.
I guess I'm just praising the battery life, is all

I have only had my sensation for about 5 days and battery life is amazing! Im still stock too.. I came from an evo 4g rooted running cm7 and or miui and battery life doesn't come close to being as good as my sensation. Not only is battery life awesome, this phone is awesome. I moved to Southern California a couple weeks ago and Sprint out here is horrible.. so I switched and couldn't be happier. Plus I like this phone was better than the evo series. Battery life is sweet!
Sent from my HTC Sensation 4G using XDA Premium App

You would have to post a screendoor shot of your battery usage and screen on time to completely determine how much the phone was used and how long the screen was on.
Bluetooth and GPS don't use any battery or have low usage (depends on the chipset because some completely turn off) during standby since they're not being used at all.
So we can all praise our phones for having good battery life, but it all depends on usage. If you don't use your phone a lot (you could turn on your screen every 5 minutes but at the end of the day have only like 45 minutes of screen on time and like 70% battery left.) Then you get good battery life. Use your phone a lot and quite simply battery life sucks.
Sent from my LG-P999 using XDA App

I think it can largely depend on how you use your phone, not just how often or for how long. For example my Fiance also has the Sensation and on her first charge she got 3hrs52minutes before hitting 10% battery. Since then she has only gotten ~2hrs each day now that she has Twitter and Facebook for Sense accounts set up.

That's not good. There's gotta be something wrong with either her phone or something. 2 hours of battery life warrants an exchange.
lokhor said:
I think it can largely depend on how you use your phone, not just how often or for how long. For example my Fiance also has the Sensation and on her first charge she got 3hrs52minutes before hitting 10% battery. Since then she has only gotten ~2hrs each day now that she has Twitter and Facebook for Sense accounts set up.
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Sent from my LG-P999 using XDA App

enoch861 said:
That's not good. There's gotta be something wrong with either her phone or something. 2 hours of battery life warrants an exchange.
Sent from my LG-P999 using XDA App
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The phone lasts longer than 2hrs, that's 2hrs of the screen being on. my sensation get's about the same. This is with Gmail on Autosync and Twitter/Facebook for Sense accounts enabled too.

If I do what u did, my batt will be flat in 6 hours. Somethings just not right with my sensation.
xSeany said:
I think it's crazy how many people are downing the battery life on the Sensation. I used my phone a bit today. Off the charger at 10AM, used GPS to go to work with Bluetooth activated as well. Forgot to turn them both off while at work. I used my phone like ever 5 minutes checking Twitter updates(also weather/news/facebook/email/etc updates are automatically updating as fast as the app allows. So quick updates for all my apps, GPS and bluetooth turned on all day. Home around 5, watched a few episodes of South Park on Netflix with my phone. Read some news. Played a few different games for about 5-10min each just trying out new games. It's now almost 1AM the next day, and I'm above 40% battery life. I manage my screen brightness, that may be the only thing I remembered to manage well today. While outside/in car, full brightness, inside, as low as possible.
It's shocking to me when I see threads of how the battery life stinks. I'm using the stock battery, I don't even seen the need of getting a larger battery because this already gets me through a day full of activity. Anyone else find the battery life on this device, quite handy? Mine is rooted, but it's stock ROM. I'm also using a skin posted by a member of our forum, the transparency. I'm running the stock T-MOUS(why is it called tmous..? are people that lazy to spell out t-mobile?) ROM, because I accidentally deleted a few apps I discovered I needed back, and did not do a backup. Oh, and I'm also using the battery mod, for the battery icon in my notification bar.
I guess I'm just praising the battery life, is all
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Sent from my HTC Sensation Z710e using XDA App

Oh! Makes sense..
But 2 hours with screen and dead in 6 hours? I'm glad I have a G2x then. Cause I get 3 hours and like between 13 and 16 hours.
lokhor said:
The phone lasts longer than 2hrs, that's 2hrs of the screen being on. my sensation get's about the same. This is with Gmail on Autosync and Twitter/Facebook for Sense accounts enabled too.
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Sent from my LG-P999 using XDA App

You can go by statistics and on screen time and what not. but I just got home from work, and I literally used my phone for about 2 hours straight calling carriers for a customer. I'm above 80%. So from 9AM-4PM, only saw a 20% drain. Once again, keeping BT and GPS on just to see how it goes. ALL of my autosyncs are once again, on, and set to the most frequent can be.
Compared to any other stock phone, this is amazing. Compared to my Cyan N1 and my Cyan NS, it's not a huge difference. Although, at this rate I may give the lead to the Sensation, since I'm leaving all these extra features on throughout the entire day.

good
I get two to three days out of my Sensation, and I'm a relatively heavy Internet user... don't phone much.
At first I wasn't getting great mileage - having to re-charge after only 10 hours or so, but did two things to improve it dramatically...
First, charge the battery once using the following method:
1. charge battery to 100% and leave on charger for an extra hour
2. unplug the cable, turn off* the phone, and plug the charger back in. leave charging for another hour.
3. unplug the phone, turn it on for two minutes, turn the phone back off*, and plug in the phone again. leave charging for another hour.
* when I say "turn off", I mean completely, without fastboot. so either disable fastboot before switching off, or turn off the phone and pull the battery then put it back in.
Second:
Turn off automatic screen brightness, and set the brightness manually to what you need. Ideally, I'd like to have an auto-screen brightness adjustment that automatically sets it, say, 25% lower than what the built-in function does.

That's pretty exceptional. I usually get 13-14 hours with 5+ hours of screen time before I'm at 20%. Using the chichitec battery, btw.

My chichitec battery went 18 hours yesterday before it got to 10% and I charged it. That was with a lot of web browsing, some phone calls, music, games. Id say, medium-heavy usage.
Matt

Same here I have had several Android phones with different carriers and this is hands down the best, on par with the iPhone I had previously with Verizon. No problem getting through the day with Exchange and 2 IMAP accounts and heavy phone use, the only mod is I set screen brightness, battery is stock.
Sent from my HTC Sensation 4G using XDA App

no one is complaining i watch sparticus on netflix and game of throne on hbo go for 5 hrs straight while facebooking random hoes . and i am out of battery..
we are complaining that the 4g drains the phone while on idle.

this is the best battery life i've ever had on a phone. i can't complain at all... i even have gps on and i could never do that before. lol!

Guys, having GPS on doesn't use any battery. It only uses battery when it is active. So for most of you 99% of the time your GPS is off aka standby or whatever you wanna call it.
Sent from my LG-P999 using XDA App

One reason many people complain about bad battery life is that it seems some Sensation models are actually faulty. Best evidence: TechRadar review.
http://www.techradar.com/reviews/phones/mobile-phones/htc-sensation-943466/review?artc_pg=9
UPDATE: We've finally managed to get our hands on a new review model of the HTC Sensation, and the good news is the battery life is definitely improved.
It seems that a combination of data-hungry applications and a slightly dodgy model caused the odd readings from before, although we're not entirely convinced the above scenario isn't one power users will face, which is why we've left it in.
But in normal use, and by that we mean sending 42 texts, spending 49 mins on the phone, watching an hour and bit of video and using the music player constantly, plus a few minutes spent using GPS to track ourselves and browsing the internet for roughly 45 mins, the battery pretty much lasted the day, although it was often in the yellow zone come 11PM.
However, what was more impressive (and a relief) was the sleep state of the HTC Sensation. Where before the phone would get very hot and start spewing out battery life in our pocket for no reason, if you leave the phone locked up for around 10-15 minutes on our new model the power consumption dropped to almost nothing.
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The battery life thread

Every smartphone has this thread so I thought I might start one!
This devices is famous for having below average battery life, let's find out if this got better with MM since reviews were made with LL?
Please use BBS or GSAM battery to show uptime, screen on time, wifi or mobile data (really important). Also describe your app usage.
Thanks!:good:

I've never found battery life to be all that bad. In fact, as far as I'm concerned, I find it quite good most of the time.
Personally, I find these claims you read about all the time, where people claim to get a full day (or two!), and have 4-6 hours of screen on time, very hard to believe, and I call b.s. most of the time on those claims.
As far as GSam goes, I've used it on and off throughout the years, since my OG Droid in 2010, and I found that the information in GSam differed, or contradicted the information in the stock Android battery stats, and I questioned its accuracy, so I ended up uninstalling it LOL.
In general, though, I'd say my battery life is pretty good. Here's a typical day for my X Pure, and you all can tell me if you agree or disagree:
My phone comes off the charger at around 7 AM, just before my 40 minute train ride in to the city. During my train ride, I send a few texts, then I tether my X Pure to my Nexus 9 so I can get online with the N9 during my commute. Tethering lasts about 30 minutes. After the initial train ride comes the subway ride where I use the phone for reading articles on Google Play Newsstand and checking work emails for about 10 minutes. Once at work, I leave it off the charger, and throughout the day, check emails (work and personal), send/receive texts throughout the day, miscellaneous other usage, etc. By around 4:00, I usually have to put in on the quick charger. At that time, my screen-on time is on average between 1 to 1.5 hours, with 9 hours off the charger. Usually 35-40% battery left by that time.
Now, 9 hours off the charger, 1.5 hours of SOT, 30-40 minutes of tethering, and moderate usage throughout the 9-hours off the charger, I say that's pretty damn good! Weekends I can go 15-17 hours off the charger. Thoughts?
Sent from my Nexus 9 using Tapatalk

Well tethering does use a lot of power but 1.5h of SOT is pretty bad IMHO.

-sandro- said:
Well tethering does use a lot of power but 1.5h of SOT is pretty bad IMHO.
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Normally I would agree, but I factor in the time off the charger as well. If it was within a few hours, definitely. But over 9 hours--with moderate to heavy usage, I'm happy with that. I also forgot to mention I probably have a lot of crap going on in the background. I have 3 different weather apps right now (I'm a weather geek), one of which is a lightning strike detector that alerts when lightning is nearby. We are expecting thunderstorms later so it may keep the phone awake. Once I get through today (hopefully I will remember lol), I will post screen shots of battery usage. But overall I am happy with what I get. Over the years, I've had the OG Droid, HTC Rezound, 2013 Moto X, and now the X Pure. The Droid and Rezound's battery life was pretty bad, but has been much better with both the 2013 X and the X Pure. Maybe my standards are lower due to having 2 prior phones with notoriously bad battery life.
Sent from my Nexus 9 using Tapatalk

Yes one's impression depends a lot on what you're coming from also. You should check how much the phone is kept awake in standby

-sandro- said:
Yes one's impression depends a lot on what you're coming from also. You should check how much the phone is kept awake in standby
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It is kept awake more than you would think, but I blame the on apps, and that's unfortunately the chance you take if you want those apps. I will post a few screen shots later this evening if I can remember.
Sent from my Nexus 9 using Tapatalk

This topic is already adequately covered HERE.
Please avoid creating duplicate threads.
Closed.