I've heard in multiple ROM threads that you basically can only get four hours of screen display out of the captivate battery. The concept is that the screen is the single largest drain on our battery. I'm not sure that's the case, as the following screen caps show.
The first pair was run a couple days ago (wifi and data off). I charged the captivate to full, and turned the screen on permanently, set the screen filter program to 25% (darkens the screen - supposedly saves battery), ran "Desk Home", and went to sleep. I woke up, and the battery still was not drained. In the end, I was able to minimize usage until 11am or so, and took screen shots before the battery drained completely, and ended with over 12 hours of screen display on 80% of the battery (and some trivial usage).
To see if it was the screen filter program was the cause, I repeated this last night. This time, I didn't run desk home, but just turned the lit up phone upside down. Again, there was still significant battery when I woke up. I had to turn the screen off at 9am (as I was going to be away from the phone), and checked back and screen captured at 11am again. In the undimmed (but lowest brightness setting), I got 9 1/2 hours of display usage on somewhat less than 80% of the battery.
Conclusions I draw are that the screen filter program does extend the life of the battery a small amount - say, 7% per hour vs. 8% per hour with no external dimming program. In the past, I've had similar results playing games or reading ebooks (about 8-10% per hour usage). But it seems obvious that 4 hours of indoor (lowest brightness) screen display on my captivate should only be using a third of the power. Where is the rest going, and why doesn't the battery usage display show what is really drawing down the power?
I have my theories - all related to the modem functions: connecting to the data network, connecting to wifi, and connecting to cell phone towers. Perhaps when I have time to move some massive file across a good wifi connection, I'll see what kind of battery drainage that gives me.
This is on Continuum 6 RC1 with the JVQ modem and talon 0.3.1 - 1400, for reference.
Huh ? who comes up with stupid myths or why would you even believe that when review sites like gsmarena did a review and they tested media playback they got 7:25 hours of media playback with screen at 50%.
Alot of things can drain battery radio , cpu , screen.
Ya I have to agree. It is meaningless when like you did you turned brightness down l left screen on doing nothing. It in no way tests actual usage
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App
The 4 hour limit is one I've hit on ever rom since 2.1. It is not based on the phone/cpu sitting idle. It's based on actual usage (browsing the internet, playing games, texting, etc.). When you are actually using it the cpu clock ramps up and that along with the display being on is what eats the battery.
ghost77 said:
Huh ? who comes up with stupid myths or why would you even believe that when review sites like gsmarena did a review and they tested media playback they got 7:25 hours of media playback with screen at 50%.
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Criminy. First of all, the "four hour limit" is mentioned in multiple ROM threads, as well as by nybmx in the post above. So I'm surprised that you are inferring this is new to you.
And if you try a little reading comprehension, you'll see that I specifically tested this out because I didn't believe it.
I hadn't heard of a 7 hour test. I've heard of some roms lasting 5 hours or so, running a single task. Which, in theory, could be consistent with a "four hour display life" and a days worth of other stuff - random calls, messages, etc.
Alot of things can drain battery radio , cpu , screen.
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Which, coincidentally, is how the conclusion I came up with at the end of my post. Except for the CPU. In normal phone usage (for me at least), the CPU isn't under constant strain. Does anyone have actual data about what the CPU is doing under typical tasks, like talking on the phone or listening to music? I have looked at CPU usage with the GPS test program in Froyo, and the cpu usage was always at 100 and 200 Mhz (i.e. not topped out at 1 Ghz, or more if OC'd).
crystalhand said:
Ya I have to agree. It is meaningless when like you did you turned brightness down l left screen on doing nothing. It in no way tests actual usage
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It's called the scientific method. You test each variable separately. If you know how much power the display draws per hour of use, and how much the phone draws, and how much wifi draws, etc. you should be able to figure out what kind of use you will get in any scenario.
Do you know how much battery is used when GPS tracking alone? If you don't, then you won't know if you can track constantly during a 6 hour hike or whether that will drain the whole battery. I do, because I've tested it separately. If you gave me a scenario where you said I would track GPS while listening to music, and checking my position occasionally (say an hour of screen time) over the course of four hours, I'd be able to give you a pretty good idea of what my remaining battery will be, because I've tested those variables multiple times. On my phone, that scenario would drain the phone about 64%. [I imagine I'd give it a plus or minus of 8%].
For my money, that's "actual usage". If you are trying to figure out battery drain without controlling conditions, you'll never have accurate information.
nybmx said:
The 4 hour limit is one I've hit on ever rom since 2.1. It is not based on the phone/cpu sitting idle. It's based on actual usage (browsing the internet, playing games, texting, etc.). When you are actually using it the cpu clock ramps up and that along with the display being on is what eats the battery.
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First of all, thanks for confirming to ghost77 that such a limit is "known".
Reread my post. I think it's clear that I'm not saying that I think the 4-hour limit is based on an idle phone. The point I hope I'm making (explicitly in the 3rd to last paragraph) is that, even though "the cpu clock ramps up" and is used in whatever program you are using, the battery monitor is reporting that it is the display that is using the battery. It does not seem to credit the program (messaging, phone, internet, game, etc.) with the boost in CPU needed to do whatever you are doing.
After all, if we can all agree that the display uses 8-10% of the battery per hour, then having the display on while idle or when displaying a web page shouldn't make a difference to how much energy the display is using. In reality, if your phone is good for 5 hours of surfing, it's not the shiny display that has drained your battery, it is the transfer of data and rendering of the data as you manipulate the pages - all usages that should be credited to your internet program, not your display.
And if I've got you to agree that far, then it's a short step to reiterate what we've both said - it's the actual usage on the phone, not the display time, because the phones are more than capable of more than four hours of display. In which case, the four hour display limit is really unrelated to the display, but is a proxy for how much time you've spent using your phone for other stuff.
And then we can agree that you can get maybe eight hours of doing something simple like using a book reader program like Aldiko.
And then maybe you can see why I called the four hour limit a myth.
It's not a myth... Your taking a statement out of context. And wasting a lot of white space in the process.
Soccer_Dad said:
After all, if we can all agree that the display uses 8-10% of the battery per hour, then having the display on while idle or when displaying a web page shouldn't make a difference to how much energy the display is using.
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Actually it might, depending on the colors the screen has to show.
It's a well know fact that for OLED screens showing white uses up a lot more power then any other color. Most articles even say that showing white is the one area that LCD screens end up using less. Unless the screen actually contains white OLEDs (which ours does not, but whatever comes after the SuperAMOLED+ most likely will)
A second way that color matters is that for our SuperAMOLED screens the number and size of the green OLEDs is different then the blue/red. Without the specs on them no one can say just how much electricity is being used, but it is a factor.
Also, I recall reading that red LED/OLED use the least amount of electricity then any other color (given that all other details of comparison are equal) So there may very well be a difference between a screen that is using mainly red then blue, even tho they are the same in size and number.
Since the vast majority of web sites are a white background and black text, or a similar bright screen and dark txt, they are gonna use up a good deal of power (in comparison to any showing any other screens). This is also why there are no white, light gray or other such bright themes made for our phone.
I'm pretty sure that "Screen" includes the Display, multi-touch sensors, tilt sensors, GPS, compass, and all other sensors/input devices.
Hey, this is to anyone, but i saw Soccer_dad's graphs/ battery usage, and I noticed my battery stats dont reset when i plug in to charge and unplug. Even if i reboot my phone it still keeps past charges and discharges. Right now it says my phone has been on battery for 4 Days and 7 hours, when clearly Ive been charging every night. Is this a bug?
noside12123 said:
Hey, this is to anyone, but i saw Soccer_dad's graphs/ battery usage, and I noticed my battery stats dont reset when i plug in to charge and unplug. Even if i reboot my phone it still keeps past charges and discharges. Right now it says my phone has been on battery for 4 Days and 7 hours, when clearly Ive been charging every night. Is this a bug?
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Looks like TasKilla is abusing it's launch on startup power. You should remove that app. No app should be using that much over a 4 day period unless you had it running for that long.
Yes it's a bug.
Four hours of use is not the same as four hours of screen time.
Sent from my Infuse 4G
AdamOutler said:
Looks like TasKilla is abusing it's launch on startup power. You should remove that app. No app should be using that much over a 4 day period unless you had it running for that long.
Yes it's a bug.
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sent from a piece of plastic and glass It says CPU usage is 1 hour
sent from a piece of plastic and glass
noside12123 said:
sent from a piece of plastic and glass It says CPU usage is 1 hour
sent from a piece of plastic and glass
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out of a total of 11 hours of processor usage. Just sayin... As a rule of thumb, good android software spends 99% of it's time dormant. That thing is using more processor then it should.
Related
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.
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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
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
I unplugged the phone and got onto the bus. I read news with Captivate. Nothing fancy, just NY Times, Fox News etc. I got off the bus later, I only have 73% battery.
Yes, I just started my day and it's only 70% of battery.
#FAIL.
There are a few simple things you can do to increase battery life. Turn the screen brightness down and use a solid black background as a wallpaper. The screen uses the majority of the batter. so dimming the screen helps, when using a black background the amoled display does not light up black pixels so there is power drain.
I've been running on the same charge since 4pm yesterday. I've streamed music through pandora for about an hour while exercising, browsed the xda forums using the XDA App for 30 mins, made a few calls, browsed Facebook for 30 mins, surfed the web for a couple of hours before bed. Its now 10AM and I'm sitting at 36%. Not to bad really! The phone functions exactly the same at 36% as compared to 100%.
I wonder why everyone says to use a solid black background? Do most people use their phones primarily by staring at the home screen? I'm never at my home screen more than perhaps five seconds while switching apps
I've had pretty poor battery life as well, even after discharging, recharging, and deleting batterystats.bin. There are small tips here and there, like black background and screen brightness, but even following them all, my phone lasts me barely ten hours, and most of that time it's idle. For instance, I listened to local must (no streaming) with the screen off for about an hour and lost 10% of my battery life. What's up with that?
TimF said:
I've streamed music through pandora for about an hour while exercising, browsed the xda forums using the XDA App for 30 mins, made a few calls, browsed Facebook for 30 mins, surfed the web for a couple of hours before bed. Its now 10AM and I'm sitting at 36%.
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I am also shocked and confused by how people can use their phone so heavily.
I already killed those unnecessary processes (e.g., all AT&T crap). I have a static wallpaper. I have screen brightness at 60%. And all I have been doing is just reading news and surfing the web. It literally cost me 1% of battery for every 1 min of use. It's just ridiculous.
You are probably on your home screen a lot more than you realize.
Anyway it's a smartphone, they all eat through battery time. you will never get superb battery life unless you crowbar a 3000mah battery into your device.
edit:
set the screen on its lowest brightness setting, the only time I've had to increase the brightness is when I am outside in the sun.
if you are on a bus, if you are not using wifi, turn off the radio.
TimF said:
Anyway it's a smartphone, they all eat through battery time. you will never get superb battery life unless you crowbar a 3000mah battery into your device.
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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.
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I have Wifi, BT always off. And I don't listen to Pandora.
I think the key is you have the lowest brightness on your phone. It is going to save you a lot of battery 'cause half of the battery is for the screen.
But I just couldn't stand it. I wish I can set to 100% all the time. It looks so much better.
The phone radio is a huge consumer of battery - especially in weak signal areas. The bars are not that accurate either. that coupled with 3rd party apps that don't always behave nice, can equal rapid battery drain.
Putting the plain in Airplane mode is good way to see what battery life is like without the Cell radio always doing its thing. It is not a fix, but it can show that the battery/phone are not broken. There probably can be improvements and tweaks made by samsung, but I don't think the phones are defective.
mwxiao said:
I think the key is you have the lowest brightness on your phone. It is going to save you a lot of battery 'cause half of the battery is for the screen.
But I just couldn't stand it. I wish I can set to 100% all the time. It looks so much better.
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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
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Click to collapse
how are you using your phone? What apps are you running, are you using any emulators.
There's an app called Spare Parts, which will show you what is using your battery when the screen is off. Open it up and choose "Partial Wake Usage" from the drop down to see.
My Captivate appeared to drain battery very quickly, but with moderate to decent usage throughout a day I was trying to kill the battery it lasted me over 13 hours. I think it's a matter of the battery reporting taking a good while to calibrate properly.
I've had an issue twice now with absurd battery usage. Both times I charged the phone to full and disconnected it; after doing that the phone would lose 10% charge every hour sitting completely idle! Using the phone during that time drained it even faster. Both times powering the phone completely off and back on resolved the issue.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using XDA App
magicdanw said:
I wonder why everyone says to use a solid black background? Do most people use their phones primarily by staring at the home screen? I'm never at my home screen more than perhaps five seconds while switching apps
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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
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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
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.
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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.
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...
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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?
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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
What is everyone thinking about the always on display? Will you be using it knowing that it costs 15% battery per day? Tbh, that sounds really high to me to light up such a small amount of the screen but I guess I don't know really
Sent from my HTC One A9 using Tapatalk
I'll be shutting that feature off
Sent from my SM-G920T using Tapatalk
I'll keep it myself... awesome to be able to see that time and notification without turning the scren on
km8j said:
What is everyone thinking about the always on display? Will you be using it knowing that it costs 15% battery per day? Tbh, that sounds really high to me to light up such a small amount of the screen but I guess I don't know really
Sent from my HTC One A9 using Tapatalk
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Click to collapse
Where did you read that it's going to use as much as 15% battery per day? That sounds quite ridiculous given the fact that LG stated that their Always on Display implementation drains 0.8% per hour. Which is around 19% per day (24h - day and night), but the G5 uses IPS panel. There's no way if an LCD is using 19% per day an OLED screens showing primarily black to be draining 15% a day...
What you need to factor in before you start saying how high battery usage is...... How many times per day do you check your phone for notifications etc??? If you are constantly checking for texts / Facebook updates or whatever then AOS is for you. Whilst it may use X amount extra per day of battery if uses LESS power than powering on the whole screen and taking the device out of idle to check if you have any missed calls etc. If you are one of these people you are better off using AOS.
Sent from my XT1580 using Tapatalk
ZeroCGTI said:
Where did you read that it's going to use as much as 15% battery per day? That sounds quite ridiculous given the fact that LG stated that their Always on Display implementation drains 0.8% per hour. Which is around 19% per day (24h - day and night), but the G5 uses IPS panel. There's no way if an LCD is using 19% per day an OLED screens showing primarily black to be draining 15% a day...
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Click to collapse
Samsung said 1%/hour. Also, LG made some adjustments to be amoled-like: “To minimise power consumption,” said LG, “we redesigned the display driver IC memory and power management function so that the display’s backlight only illuminates one small part of the overall display. Thanks to this technology, the Always-on Display requires only 0.8 percent of the battery’s full capacity per hour to operate. With consumers turning on their smartphones up to 150 times a day mostly to just check the time, the G5’s Always-on Display will make a notable difference in the life of the battery over the course of the day.”
stierney said:
What you need to factor in before you start saying how high battery usage is...... How many times per day do you check your phone for notifications etc??? If you are constantly checking for texts / Facebook updates or whatever then AOS is for you. Whilst it may use X amount extra per day of battery if uses LESS power than powering on the whole screen and taking the device out of idle to check if you have any missed calls etc. If you are one of these people you are better off using AOS.
Sent from my XT1580 using Tapatalk
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Click to collapse
You also have to keep in mind that when it is face down or the screen is covered the screen is off until you turn it over or take it out of your pocket or purse.
Samsung said the feature will use 1% PER DAY, not per hour. http://www.androidcentral.com/galaxy-s7-and-s7-edge-have-always-display
gtg465x said:
Samsung said the feature will use 1% PER DAY, not per hour. http://www.androidcentral.com/galaxy-s7-and-s7-edge-have-always-display
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Everywhere else I saw said 1% per hour which makes a lot more sense.
What's weird is it seems we cannot set it to turn off at night for example
Sent from my SM-G930T using Tapatalk
km8j said:
Everywhere else I saw said 1% per hour which makes a lot more sense.
What's weird is it seems we cannot set it to turn off at night for example
Sent from my SM-G930T using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
LG said their always on display uses 0.8% per hour and it's an LCD, so how does it make sense that an AMOLED display would use more power? LG only lights up a third of the display for it to save power compared to a regular LCD, but that should still use a lot more power than lighting up just the pixels necessary. Frankly, I trust Android Central on this more than any other site. They got behind the scenes time with Samsung at MWC and they are typically very reliable. The sites I see reporting 1% per hour (phonearena, Android Authority, etc.) are sites that I find very unreliable as I spot mistakes in their articles and videos all the time. Just one site probably got it wrong and then every other site copied them on the wrong info.
Here's another source that says 1% per day, so it's not just Android Central. And I know I heard it from a third source too before Android Central even wrote about it, but I can't find that now.
https://youtu.be/JtPBBil56a8
Edit:
Here's another source: http://www.uswitch.com/mobiles/features/samsung-galaxy-s7-always-on-display-faq/
Anyways, I guess we will know for sure when a lot of people start getting the phone. I will test it and will definitely turn it off if I find that it is using 16-20% of the battery in a day, but I really doubt it will use that much.
i think its going to be closer to the 1% per day because if you look at the s5's untra batter saver mode they have proven by reducing what the display has to show and reducing the processor power they can make the phone last a hell of a lot longer on the same charge
LG has an IPS display, Samsung has SAMOLED.
Samsung said that it should save battery because you only check the notofocations on the screen and didn't need to turn it on.
I'm not scarried from battery but from burning the display.
libb said:
LG has an IPS display, Samsung has SAMOLED.
Samsung said that it should save battery because you only check the notofocations on the screen and didn't need to turn it on.
I'm not scarried from battery but from burning the display.
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Click to collapse
Worried about screen burn-in? Samsung has thought of this, too. Though the information displayed looks to often be a static image, the software is actually regularly shifting the pixels ever-so-slightly so that the same ones aren't used over and over again. This eliminates worry about those pixels "burning in" the lock screen image, and it's one you won't even notice happening. The phone also won't display the information when it detects it's in a pocket or a bag, and if you just don't like the feature you can always turn it off completely
That is a quote from the android central
km8j said:
Everywhere else I saw said 1% per hour which makes a lot more sense.
What's weird is it seems we cannot set it to turn off at night for example
Sent from my SM-G930T using Tapatalk
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Click to collapse
1% per hour seems to be quite a lot, don't think that it's accurate.
Sent from my LG-D851 using Tapatalk
does anyone know what triggers the always on display to be dim some times and bright the next? i've been trying to find a cause and i dont see any. it will be dim one minute and just become bright for no reason it seems. this is with a black background and unplugged from the charger. i would like for it to stay dim to use even less battery.
Turned it off 2nd day. Uses too much battery. I only turn it on for when connecting to charger. It's definitely near 1% per hour. I Just have the lock screen wallpaper completely black so it doesn't drain batt just to see time.
Plus always on display is pointless when it doest tell me anything more than time.
freebee269 said:
does anyone know what triggers the always on display to be dim some times and bright the next? i've been trying to find a cause and i dont see any. it will be dim one minute and just become bright for no reason it seems. this is with a black background and unplugged from the charger. i would like for it to stay dim to use even less battery.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Mine does the same, i'm guessing it's designed that way to keep any sort of "burn in" or similar from happening after long term.
insang-droid said:
Turned it off 2nd day. Uses too much battery. I only turn it on for when connecting to charger. It's definitely near 1% per hour. I Just have the lock screen wallpaper completely black so it doesn't drain batt just to see time.
Plus always on display is pointless when it doest tell me anything more than time.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Maybe it's pointless to you, but I use it a lot just for the time. If your's is using close to 1% per hour, I suggest you get your phone replaced.
the always on display is definitely eating up around 1% battery an hour on my phone. this is with most of the bloatware disabled. i can look at my battery every hour and it will be down 1% some times 2%. i tested this with turning always display off for a couple hours and not turning my screen on and after 3 hours i lost 1% battery. i'm thinking it has something to do with the always on display becoming too bright at times and i dont know how to get it to stay dim.
Always on seems to turn off in pocket but not in the night. Is possible turt it in the dark and in the night automatically?