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

Keepin' it clean by keepin' smooth...
Ok finally after a few days of using my phone it has finally leveled off. My phone has been off the charger since 6am and I am at about 70% charged. Couldn't ask for more out of a smart phone. This is right in line with my Nexus One so I am no longer disappointed.
There are a few tweaks I did make to get this working this way.
(1) Screen brightness set at about 20% - The TB's screen is way to bright to begin with and making this adjustment is something that is not very hard to get used to.
(2) Screen Time out at 30 seconds - Setting to low will get frustrating if you like reading the news on your phone or browsing the web, 30 seconds seems just right for me.
(3) WIFI when not in car (triggered on and off by loss of Blue Tooth Connection and Not In Dock) Using WiFi instead of relying on your data connection will help save some juice while in a WiFi enabled building since your phone will not be trying to constantly search and connect to a data connection.
(4) Blue tooth off until docked - Saves battery by not transmitting a BT signal constantly. I only use Bluetooth in the car so triggered by the dock seemed logical.
(5) Syncing Facebook every 8 hours, News every 12 hours and Stocks (Who really needs this)
(6) I love widgets on my home screens so these get updated as I found necessary to me. Im not a major facebooker that needs to be on the bleeding edge of everyones life so 8 hours is probably even too much but adequate. News doesnt really update very often and compared to a daily news paper 12 hours is more than ample. Stocks, need I say more seriously I am not an investor and could care less.
(7) Over clocking your phone is not necessary right now, 1 GHZ is definitely more than you need on this phone. I am scoring about 1700 on quadrant which is pretty good for a 1ghz phone. My phone has never lagged and has functioned as expected since birthed to my hand. Keep in mind Over clocking will increase the performance of your phone but will tear at your battery as well and may cause heating issues.
(8) Not using an animated wallpaper. Even on my nexus one this was a major contributer to poor battery and phone performance. Animated wallpapers are very often poorly programmed or simply over bloated. Not too mention on the severe end of the priority list of needs. All though cool.
I am not over clocking or installing a custom rom on my phone quite yet because honestly the roms are not stable enough as expected this close to birth, and really don't offer any additional functionality that I find very useful as of yet. I am using Tasker to accomplish a few automated switching routines to toggle WIFI and Bluetooth. I am also using Folder Organizer to keep my apps categorized in a humane manor. I am a widget-aholic and have not really found a downside to having too a lot of widgets running.

How much do you use your phone a day?

Not everyone is willing to cut out their social networking. A big part of smartphones now is always being connected. This includes social networking, sharing pictures, sharing locations... some people get into all of this and some do not.
Also, some people like weather updates, stock updates, news updates, etc. Everyone uses their device differently to fit their needs.
I think it is common sense that the more services you use which consume radio/data/processing time then the quicker you will drain your battery.
Thank you for sharing the setup that works for you and affords you such great battery life. I have been having great battery life too. I am currently not in a 4G LTE area, but the device on 3G has been great on battery. You would never know there are any "issues" if people did not post about them!

What is your uptime, display on time, and partial wake usage?

I didn't check that deep in to it, but I had it plugged in to some speakers at work for about 3.5 hours playing slacker radio from wifi so I could rock at work. I used the phone to call tech support for my wifes phone which took a while and other shorter calls through out the day. Right now my up time is about 65 hours, awake time is at 26 hours. Not sure where to get partial awake. My display on timer only says 1 min. But honestly today was not a big phone use day and it sat in the dock on the ride home so all those stats are irrelevant today. But still my battery it at 83%. A lot of people were complaining about there phones dying with no or little use half through the day. So hopefully this brings a little light to the end of the tunnel.

Dang what were your settings
Sent from Snarf with an Epic

I have basically the same things running on my phone. Only, my folder organizer keeps fc every time I attempt to edit a folders contents... Anyone have a suggestion?
Sent from my ADR6400L using XDA Premium App

I've been getting great battery life as well, got 36 hours on my last charge. Have Perfect Storm 1.0, trip's 1.5ghz oc kernel (but don't actually run it that high). I have SetCPU set at 998/245 for normal, 245/245 for screen off and use smartass governor. I was also using my phone a moderate amount but had the 4g turned off as I'm in between 3g and 4g so it just keeps dropping and switching.

Glad to see someone is getting decent life.. I'm about to set a record for battery death.. phone has been on for 1 hour and 20 minutes and down to 65%.
On the bright side I am getting 20mbps down here at school.. SDSU..
4 bars of LTE flies

Do you have it on LTE only mode?

rnot said:
Do you have it on LTE only mode?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yah.. I am surfing pretty heavily though.. down to 58% now..
Guess ill have to sit in a different seat for the rest of the classes.. I see power outlets along the walls
It sucks though because on the Droid x, I could surf during the whole 3 hr class and walk out with 50% left.. guess this is the price you pay for this kinda power and speed lol

from 6am to 2pm phone is dead
music for a hour and half while on airplane mode
3g only
gps,bluetooth,wifi off
half hour of web browsing on 4G
about 15 messages on live Profile app
about 40 text messages
auto sync and background data off
One thing I dont understand is..When my phone is idle the battery is still draining.

6am to 6pm...
3g only (off when not using it)
gps,bt, wifi - off
games for about half an hour...
a couple calls
>20 txts
screen at 15%ish
autosync and background data off...
and now i'm at...89%
I have also found that in the first couple of days (2 or 3 days) after a reset... the phone does a BUNCH of funky things. First night after a reset...VZwireless said at 3AM i had 130MB of transfer... not possible - i was sleeping. it wasn't me. but...i did wake up with >30% of the battery gone. I think the background data off is a good place to start...but definitely wait after a couple of days.

I seem to be getting about 36 hours of up time on a charge. Mostly on wifi at home/work. I have 4G turned off as its not available here yet.
Sent from my ADR6400L using XDA App

Ok.. 4 hrs .. done for ... Did make it through class.. 8% left

There will be a patch soon to help with the idle 4G battery drain. Lady on the phone told me its in the works. Either way I just got the extended battery today. I actually dont mind the extra size.

Hmm... whats the anecdotal battery life for an extended battery given these settings? I've gotten to the point of running my display at 5% when indoors ==;;;
Also, I've heard of people getting free or heavily discounted extended batteries.... Any tips for this?

I am using an app called fastbright which really helps with the display battery drain...I just use it o bright when i cant see if i am outside....post #10!!! yay!

I've used my phone a decent amount today and battery is still at 62%. Running Das bamf at 1.2 ghz and screen brightness at 100%

crazed_z06 said:
Glad to see someone is getting decent life.. I'm about to set a record for battery death.. phone has been on for 1 hour and 20 minutes and down to 65%.
On the bright side I am getting 20mbps down here at school.. SDSU..
4 bars of LTE flies
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I feel the same way... if you are playing around on the tb while it is pluged in it will take a good 4-6 hours to charge to 100%

[Q] Help with battery usage / drain, how to increase battery life

Ive searched around and this seems to be a common issue, I tried the factory reset even the htc battery conditioning where you charge fully turn off then another hour back on for 2min off again and charge for another hour with no positive results, I read online some ppl are getting -1/-2 mah an hour I have never seen single digit in my phone.
I included screenshots of my battery drain even adjusted the app to read 1500mah, anything else i missed in settings? Also went into phone information in the Tests menu set it to auto instead of GSM, also with SetCPU I tried underclocking with little change to mah usage, running out of ideas...
Currently its rooted with GingerBreak, and CM7 with #48 nightly installed, any help would definitely be appreciated.

How many hours is your phone lasting on a single charge?

Lately between 5-7hrs one had about 8 and half hours a handful of times

it's true that if you constantly use the phone nonstop like watching youtube, browsing, playing games, etc. the battery won't last longer than 4 hours without getting an extended battery, heck just using moderateley the battery will be about 50% by the end of an 8 hour workshift, but what I found that will extend the battery life with moderate use are these...
1. Turn of wifi, bluetooth, gps, sync. (contrary to what ppl say on this forum I find that wifi eats way more battery than being on 4G)
2 Disable background data. (The only thing I actually need background data checked is to use the android market or maps when I need to, with it off it's a huge battery saver)
3 In settings choose to use only 2G (This will increase battery life 4x and Tmobile 2G is pretty fast, just like 3G)
4 Download Opera Mini (Since you'll be using 2G to save battery you'll want to surf the web with a browser that is super fast using slow connections, and Opera mini is second to none. You can always turn on 4G when you want to have fast video streaming but then you eat alot of battery again.)
5. Install Auto Airplane Mode (you can turn auto airplane mode on when you're not gonna be expecting calls such as at work or when you don't want to be disturbed, hell, if you just want to save as much battery as possible. Since Auto airplane mode disables the radio and data completey which is the number 1 cause of battery bleed with it on from a full charge unplugged you'll still have a 100% when you wake up your phone after a day.)
6 Install juice defender (free is fine)
7 Don't use Lookout Antivirus (I've found Lookout drains the battery quick, if you want an antivirus that doesn't eat the battery try AVG. I prefer AVG because I notice it does not drain my battery like Lookout.)
This has made my phone last more than a day on stock battery with moderate to light use. If I think of more tweaks I'll add later

This is ridiculous. If you have to turn off all those features, then don't even bother getting a smartphone.
My tips are:
1- Set brightness to auto.
2- Avoid Skype and other apps that usually appear as On going on the status bar.
3- Get rid of any task killer. They actually make the battery life worse. Don't worry about tasks running in the background, the OS takes care of them. If you wanna quit an app, try to look for a quit button by pressing the settings button when the app is on the foreground. Otherwise, just press the back button below the screen until you get back to the home screen (for some reason this seems more efficient than just pressing the home button.)
4- If you don't use IMs, get juice defender and set it to disable data when screen is off. It will turn data automatically on once you turn the screen on by pressing the lock button on the top of your device. Note that this is different compared to auto airplane mode, with Juice Defender you can still receive phone calls and text messages when the screen is off.
Last but not least, consider purchasing an extra battery and/or car charger.
Mine usually lasts for about 12 hours with moderate to high use. Almost all smartphones have short battery life if used heavily.
Sent from my LG-P999 using XDA App

risho said:
Lately between 5-7hrs one had about 8 and half hours a handful of times
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yea that's awful. Do you by chance have your brightness set extremely high? And how is the cell coverage where you usually use your phone?

I think all of the advice above is valid and will save your battery. The question is to what extreme do you want to go? I tend to agree with donatello88 that there comes a point when you get so paranoid about battery life that you may as well not have a smartphone because you've turned off most of its features.
Get rid of any task killers, battery monitors, etc. They are simply churning thru clock cycles and that uses more battery. Set email, Facebook, etc to check for updates less frequently. Either use auto brightness or manually set your brightness to about 25-30%. That should b bright enough for everyday use unless your in bright sunlight a lot. Use juice defender if you like. And be wary of antivirus apps. I've heard some can suck ur battery dry.
If you do those simple things and are still getting only 5-6 hours then I'd be taking it back to T-Mobile ... unless of course you're on your phone without ceasing. In that case, what can you expect? Lol

Ok with the tips I just mentioned above, I got a chance to put it to real world test. I caught the bus to my son's grad ceremony and reached there at 4pm ceremony didn't start till 6pm so those 2 hours just surfing the web reading articles and forums I was down to 90% battery. Didn't know how long the ceremony was gonna be so called my sister on video chat using tango and spoke to her for about 20 minutes. Did some more browsing using opera mini set to only use 2g for another 2 hours, my don came out, I took some pics and video of him turned on 4g to video chat again with my duster for about 5 minutes, and after 4 non stop hours of consecutive use with screen on, I'm now at 71% battery life. I'm at the bus stop now on my 12 mile commute home and I'm confident the battery will give me more entertainment until I get home. Awesome! You don't have to believe me, just try out my tweaks and you'll be amazed.

Everyone thanks for all of the help and tips, today was the first day I saw 10hrs+(included screenshots), I had my screen on auto and after some reading saw that with CM7 it doesnt work well so I have changed it down to 20-40% depending on where I am, turned off background/auto sync only turn it on when I need it and uninstalled the app killer I was using also changed a few of the SetCPU profiles.
Im not really a heavy user just wondering if having 3email accounts set to update every hour would be a battery drain too? I mostly text/email during the day and talk about 1-2hrs depending how busy I am at work.
Again I thank everyone for pointing me in the right direction...unfortunately at home I have 1bar to none for service so I do depend on Wifi calling which im sure drains more juice, also at work since it in a high rise not too much cell signal so wifi on most of the day...

[Ultimate GUIDE] Increase your battery life on Android
risho said:
Lately between 5-7hrs one had about 8 and half hours a handful of times
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hello risho,
I was having the same kind of battery life... After 3 months of research, I collected all valuable tips.
"Valuable tips" means: tips that do not need constant involvement from your side (you don't need to go switch on/off things, etc..) and also that leave you with a very functional phone (you have location when you need it, you have e-mails flowing regularly enough, etc...)!
With these tips, I am now lasting from 6am to 11pm and at 11pm, remaining battery is 10% at least!
Go and check my thread: [Ultimate GUIDE] Increase your battery life on Android!
Enjoy!

Battery Life: 1d 12h?

Using Faux rom (Kernal version 2.6.32.41-CM7-Faux123-v0.2.3)
I was able to get a crazy amount of life out of the G2x! Anyone else able to get some times like this?
When I first got the phone it would only get about 4 hours.

i've been on 11 hours, Nexus AOSP, and am at 85%

With SetCPU and underclocking when idle or on calls?
Is Juice Defender involved?
Exclusively on GSM?
Are Auto Sync and GPS off at all times?
Please provide context.
Sent from my LG-P999 using Tapatalk

jabhome said:
With SetCPU and underclocking when idle or on calls?
Is Juice Defender involved?
Exclusively on GSM?
Are Auto Sync and GPS off at all times?
Please provide context.
Sent from my LG-P999 using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, setcpu and some UC, phone goes to min processor on screen off
Juice defender set to standard
data set to auto
auto sync gmail, gps only on demand
note today was a very, very light day of use. Yesterday I used it moderately, checking emails, maybe a call or two and several hours of music and was at 50% after about 14 hours.

Zspy1985 said:
Using Faux rom (Kernal version 2.6.32.41-CM7-Faux123-v0.2.3)
I was able to get a crazy amount of life out of the G2x! Anyone else able to get some times like this?
When I first got the phone it would only get about 4 hours.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have tried virtually every ROM and kernel combination for the G2X and for my phone and usage pattern I have had the best luck when I returned back to CM7, currently RC1 without OC/UV kernels, without SetCPU/PimpMyCPU, and without Juice Defender, or any similar such programs. My gains appear to be achieved by better efficiency with the screen off. The only modification that can be responsible other than CM7 itself is that I have the phone 2G only unless I need 4g at which times I turn it on manually. I think this is the actual cause of most of my better battery life.
Recently I went 32 hours of light usage (maybe an estimated 3 hours of phone calls and 2 hours of actually performing some task in Android) and was at about 35% battery life (although I believe battery percent is totally meaningless on this or any GB Rom for the G2X). I can easily make it sun-up to sundown with moderate to heavy usage unless it involves lengthy playing 3d video games or similar cpu/video intensive tasks.
When I first had the phone (completely stock) the battery would run out before 8 hours even if I didn't use it at all. I think I was getting great battery life with the AOSP ROM (Faux) and Eaglesblood ROM without modification. I am came back to CM7 rather than those others for purely aesthetic reasons.
My conclusions are merely based upon extensive trial and error and subjective impressions. I am not an expert at anything, except perhaps backgammon, lol

2g only is not a fix in my opinion. I purchased a 4g phone for a reason. The software and drivers are still an issue. I get a solid day (12 - 16 hours) out of a single full charge with 3 email acounts checking every 30 min. Surfing the web and a little game play for fun. The screen is the biggest draw on the battery. My battery monitor shows a direct corolation to battery draw and the screen on.

jcbofkc said:
2g only is not a fix in my opinion. I purchased a 4g phone for a reason. The software and drivers are still an issue. I get a solid day (12 - 16 hours) out of a single full charge with 3 email acounts checking every 30 min. Surfing the web and a little game play for fun. The screen is the biggest draw on the battery. My battery monitor shows a direct corolation to battery draw and the screen on.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I understand your point, but how often are you actually using 4g. It is not necessary for syncing email or other background tasks, in fact on my phone Pandora runs the same on 2g as 4g. And when you do need the performance of 4g it is 2 clicks away, one swipe to pull down the notifications and another to toggle from 2g to 4g. It connects in about 10 seconds, for me anyway a shorter period of time than it takes me to figure out what I'm doing. 4g appears to be the biggest battery draw with screen off. If you use JuiceDefender you can program it to turn on 4g whenever particular programs are launched.
You are right about the screen it is certainly the biggest draw with screen on. I run a bike computer with gps program. I run it with screen at full bright constantly on, gps running, plus using whatever small amount of use the program uses to operate. At this rate the battery runs out before 4 hours are up.
Oddly making phone calls appears not to drain the phone at all compared to other activities. I've taken my phone of the charger and made a 1.5 hour phone call and hang up and the phone is still at 99%.

23 hours and counting on this charge...

i can get that time on my stock rom one time my phone lasted 1 day 15hrs on stock rom.

rvdangel630 said:
i can get that time on my stock rom one time my phone lasted 1 day 15hrs on stock rom.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have no doubt, there is nothing inherently wrong with the stock rom as long as you root it and get rid of the bloatware. Getting bad battery life is more a matter of something being wrong, instead of a particular rom being right.
I don't really understand the battery info built into Android, my uptime right now is just over 16 hours and I am at 25%. Which is good as anyone can expect with normal usage. But what is confusing is the usage breakdown, it lists most items at exactly 19%, Cell Standby, Wi-Fi, Dialer, Android System, and Phone idle. Voice calls is the only other item at 6%.
What the heck is Dialer doing with 19% of my battery!?!?

16 hours so far with 20% left.
8 hours of that was while I was sleeping.
While there was some screen-off time for the other 8 hours, the tasks I was doing included redownloading ALL of my apps manually, applying themes, configuring widgets, browsing xda, email, light texting, and a couple short calls.
I am running CM7 with stock kernal. I have like 40 widgets running (probably an exaggeration). I'm running Juice Defender set to disable data/wifi when screen turns off, and enable it for 2min every 15 min. I also have setcpu running. I increased the min to 456 instead of the default 216 because it seems to keep me from experiencing the black screen of death when I leave it higher. My screen-off profile is 456/456, and my in-call profile is 608/608.
Overall, considering that I keep all syncs set to auto so I get instant notifications of gmail and sms, and it takes all of about 3 seconds to turn the data/wifi back on when I turn the screen on, and I don't have to constantly go back and forth messing with 2g/3g. I am extremely pleased with this phone now.

Been unplugged since I woke up this morning...13H 57M and have 40% left.
That's sending many texts, tweets, and using the GPS app for my round of golf today.

currently at 2 days (actually 1d, 23h, 44m) and I still have 30% left. I would say light to moderate use.
Currently running cm7 on nightly 65 with the stock kernal. No setcpu/pimpmycpu or any juice defenders.

Hows your battery life?

I got my HTC One Mini yesterday and I'm getting pretty good battery life so far, how is it for you guys?
I'm using jmz's Stock Rooted Odex WWE Rom and Jmz M4 Kernel 9-04-13. I unplugged my phone around 9 AM this morning and it's now 1:45 AM and I'm at 48%.
I installed 12 apps, torrented a 315MB file using uTorrent @ about 600 kb/s, watched 23 minutes of 720p video using MX Player with hardware decoding, watched about 15 minutes of YouTube videos, went on Facebook for about 20 minutes, browsed the internet for about 5 minutes, browsed a forum using Tapatalk for about 15 minutes, made about 5 minutes of calls, sent/received about 20 texts, read a manga chapter, used it as a flashlight for about a minute, used it as a remote for XBMC for about 2 hours, flashed a kernel, and took a couple of pictures, a 30 second 1080p video, and a Zoe to test out the Camera. All of this was over Wi-Fi.
I think I could easily get 2 days out of the battery as my typical usage would be lighter. How is the battery life for you and what Rom/Kernal are you using?

Stock UK Vodafone Rom recently updated with the it's package.
Well...I am sadly unimpressed by the battery. I've had mine now for just under a month and don't get a day.
I use it to surf the BBC website (in mobile mode) over 3g and at other tines WiFi.
I make calls about 30-60mins a day and play a version of bubble breaker.
I can literally see the power drain when surfing the web. This us the single most draining activity...much worse than when I used my desire.
I have configured all power save options, disabled all non essential apps, and ensured the phone is not burning background or unnecessary apps.
Still it goes rapidly. It's a shame but I like the phone so will live with it.
2 days...yes if all you do is make calls. Anything more demanding not a chance I'm afraid. I have tried, a lot.
So it is now 1.10pm and I have 52% and at 9 am I had 100%. No video no gaming but a mix of BBC on WiFi and 3g (i have a femtocell so no burning power while looking for a signal).
Nice phone in so many ways but battery life, in call quality and control, are very poor.
All the best,
Sam

I am planning to buy HTC one mini, Wanted to get real idea of battery life, so this was helpful. Could you laso tell me if that 1GB RAM is a problem maybe once you have 60-70 apps ? I thinking of 2 years life at least so was concerned?

zopeon said:
I am planning to buy HTC one mini, Wanted to get real idea of battery life, so this was helpful. Could you laso tell me if that 1GB RAM is a problem maybe once you have 60-70 apps ? I thinking of 2 years life at least so was concerned?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
For me it isn't too much of an issue, but they really should have equipped it with 2 GB of memory, 1 GB has been the standard for about 2 years. I have 42 user apps installed and most of the time I can have multiple apps open without any slow downs. Occasionally if I have multiple heavy apps running (Maps, Facebook, Pandora, Chrome ect.) it can slow down due to the lack of memory, but if I close one it speeds right back up. If you read any reviews you'll hear something along the lines of it's stupid that they only gave this phone 1GB of memory, but for most people it won't be a problem which I agree with. I'd suggest trying it out at a local store before buying it. Different people will see things differently, to some the HTC One Mini and S4 Mini will seem slow compared to the regular One and the S4, to others it will seem very fast.

ok guys please keep in mind that your mobile connection eats your power rly ****ing bad. I did a lot of tests with the mini and i'm was even able to get 5days with 25% left. Camera or wachting videos coast a lot of power as well but music is ok that does not need that much power.
Its all about your connections and how good the signal is, so if you want a longer battery life only use wifi.

The device has smaller screen size, lower resolution, half the number of cores, lower clock speed, lower powered GPU, half the RAM, no NFC or OIS. It should get *better* battery life than the full-sized one all things considered, though the smaller battery will definitely even this out somewhat. I wouldn't be surprised if under typical moderate-high usage involving CPU and screen this device should hold out similarly to the HTC One but in standby, etc it will be a bit lower.
Notebookcheck and GSMArena have done thorough battery testing, though notebookcheck doesn't test standby time and GSMArena's standby time testing method is a bit suspect.
Anandtech haven't published a review of the Mini yet but in their review of the Galaxy Note 3 you can see some battery tests they did of the HTC One Mini and it holds out pretty well considering it's not a phablet.

I bought mine two weeks ago. On the first week, my battery just last 10 hours at least and after a few days of experimentation of various settings and process monitoring, I can last 24 hours with still 20% remaining.
My daily usage can be define as quite conservative as I'm busy at work most of the day.
Here's my activities to give you an idea:
Call - at least 3 minutes a day
SMS - least 20 messages a day
browsing via HSPA / 3G - at least 1 hour a day
browsing via wifi - at least 1 hour a day
playing games - at least 30 minutes a day
reading / composing / sending emails - I set this to manual, at least 5 times a day (when I'm at home)
Frequently Used Apps:
Chrome
stock Calendar
stock Mail
Keep
stock Music Player
Cordy
Twitter
ES Task Manager
ES File Explorer
Google Play
Youtube
System Panel
Disabled Apps:
Facebook
Linkedin
SoundHound
7 Digital
Google Search
Google+
Hangouts
Kid Mode
Maps
Plurk
Hope this can help somebody to have an idea.

No matter what the phone, you tend to see battery life tests showing 8+ hours of web browsing battery life. However, real life never matches up to this expectation, with 3 or 4 hours of web browsing much more typical. This is the case with all smartphones - even a device like the Note 2 or Note 3 (albeit with higher expectations to begin with: - a Note 2/3 may tests 11+ hours web browsing but typically get 4.5+ in real-life conditions).
Unfortunately this leads many to believe that their brand new device (or its battery) is faulty. But in most cases this is not true.
I'll attempt to explain the real reason for the discrepancy.
Most importantly, the battery life tests are exclusively limited to that activity or task. For example, fully charging the smartphone, continuously web browsing for 8+ hours until the phone dies. In reality when we use our phones, the phone will be on standby, or doing other tasks, at other times. For example, 8+ hours of web browsing from a full charge is not the same as getting 8+ hours of web browsing over a 16 hour day. Those other 8 hours, even if the phone are on standby, are going to use up some of your battery, too.
The single biggest battery drain of a device is usually going to be the screen, unless you have specifically forced the screen brightness to a low (<33%) amount. At full brightness, a smartphone may burn through battery after only 3.5 hours of web browsing even if it could last 8+ hours at 40% screen brightness (the brightness control is not usually linear in terms of power draw). Review sites tend to standardise on a particular brightness level that is relatively low (the reason for this is often that allows fair comparison with devices that just can't get as bright). The bottom line is that 8+ hours of screen on time at lowish brightness might drop to half that or lower if you let auto-brightness bring up the brightness during the daylight hours or when outdoors, or if you prefer higher brightnesses.
Often, battery life tests will be done over wifi with mobile phone reception disabled entirely. This is not realistic as with a smartphone you're usually connected to a cell tower even while you're using wifi, so that voice calls and texts can still come through. Also, cellular uses a lot more energy while idle than wifi does. So even if you set the brightness really low and do nothing else with the phone, you still shouldn't be surprised that you can't get 8+ hours of web browsing if you also have the phone connected to a cell tower in the background. Some sites will conduct battery life tests over the cellular network instead of wifi, and typically these will get much lower battery life ratings (eg. 4+ hours, even with the same brightness level as for the wifi test).
Bottom line is, don't head back to the shop if you only get 3 to 4 hours screen on time during the day with web browsing. This is entirely normal for *some* usage patterns. You can improve it by:
Disable auto-brightness and set the brightness to a low-ish value, say 30%-40% of maximum. This might be able to double your screen-on time compared to full brightness.
Avoid using the phone much in direct sunlight. For the brightness to be high enough to read in direct sunlight, you'll be burning through your battery quickly, and if you've set the brightness manually to a low level as advised above, you won't be able to read it in direct sunlight.
Connect to wifi (but of course, only if you trust the wifi network to be secure and respect your privacy).
Realise that if you ever play CPU- or GPU-intensive games (most casual games shouldn't fit in this category) then a beefier battery or external battery booster may be a good investment. There's not much you can do about their battery use.
Only after considering the above should you hunt through battery usage analysers and wakelock detectors. In many cases even a misbehaving wakelock that keeps your phone partially awake all day has a low impact compared to having the screen on full brightness for just 20 or 30 minutes.

Shocked at the great battery life on my ATT S4

I have to say I am very very impressed with the battery life I am getting out of my brand new S4 from ATT.
I bought it Monday, and Tuesday was my first full day using it, these were my stats at 9:00pm, after being unplugged off the charger from the morning. 15h 44m with 42% battery left, and 3h 22m On Screen time. That just blows me away, and I was not expecting that whatsoever. I am coming from a Nexus 4 that was rooted with a battery friendly kernel, and that phone would maybe do 4h On Screen time, and be dead in 12 to 14 hours. based off these result, I can expect maybe 5.5h to 6h On Screen time total ?
We'll see how today goes, because I just can't believe those stats above, seems like a freak one time thing to get such good battery life.
All I did was Root the phone, and kept the stock OS on it. Rooting allowed me to install Greenify and DroidWall, Root Explorer and AdAway, my favorite apps. Greenify I used to stop a lot of functions from running in the background, DroidWall lets me pick which apps to never connect over WiFi and 3G/4G network, and AdAway stops the adds of course
I also have sync off on my most things, and any apps refreshing set longer, to like 3hour refresh. I keep screen locked at 50% brightness, and 30 second time off. GPS and Bluetooth off, location finder off.
I also used Root Explorer to delete a sh!t ton of ATT and Samsung .apk's in the system file. I couldn't believe how many items I deleted using Root Explorer, maybe too many LOL Seriously must have been like 30 or 40 .apk's I deleted.
So is it this phone, just much better on battery than I thought, or a combination of the way I set my phone up, by deleting lots of .apk's, and using Greenify and Droidwall ?

Now 3 full days with the phone, each night after 15 hours off the charger, I still have 35% to 40% battery left, and typically used 3.5h On Screen time at that point. And majority of it on the 4G network, just a few hours out of 15 on WiFi.
I am shocked getting this kind of battery life, totally unexpected.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337 using xda app-developers app

Thanks for the feedback!

I would say this is pretty good battery life . I should be able to get 5.5h to 6h On Screen time on this phone. That's nearly 50% better than my Nexus 4. No way I would trade this phone in for the Nexus 5 only having a fixed 2,300mAh battery.
Only other phone coming out I would upgrade to is the Galaxy S5 due out in 4 months in February, with metal body like the HTC One and iPhone...the next gen Snapdragon 1,000 processor...a 2,800-3,000mAh battery...4GB RAM...all new screen technology, no longer AMOLED...and redesigned Touchwiz, based off Android 4.4 Kit Kat.
I was on the 4G LTE network majority of the time, only on WiFi a few hours.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337 using xda app-developers app

that's Pretty good battery life I must say myself,but by turning off all those features you're defeating the whole purpose
of having a smartphone. with all those features not being usable you might as well own a razer flip phone
I have bt,location,and all those fun gadgets on and still get a good 12 hrs up time and I use my phone too
I'd like to know what you get with your phone loaded up with all the features enabled,thanks

I just swapped batteries after 51 hours. Over 3 hours of screen time, 90% of which was while using LTE. Other than that there was about 10 hours of LTE standby, 2.5 hours of Airplane mode and the rest WIFI. I use Greenify like the OP, but I use Tasker to enable Bluetooth and GPS when I leave my house and disable it when I return home. I leave my brightness on auto and sync on.
When I was connected to WIFI at home I would get crushed by WIFI related wakelocks, but using a network logger I was able to eliminate the causes, most of them were related to my iMac constantly sending out random packets to everything on my network. Other than that I found Google Now was a huge cause of background web traffic, while still keeping location services on, I turned off location history and reporting in Google Now and that cut down drastically on the amount of background web traffic Google Now uses, but I can still use Google Now for what I need it for. I also found apps that have no reason to access the internet like GSam Battery monitor among others were doing so. With a combination of Greenify and removing internet access permission using App Settings (Xposed framework module) I was able to get those under control.
All this was a lot of trial and error, and it took me a while I figure out a good combination of conditions and applications to use to control the amount of background web traffic (causing WIFI related wakelocks). But now I get great battery life and really no loss of functionality. I think Google needs to do a better job of policing developers when it comes to this sort of stuff, the average person isn't going to go through all this.
Side note, has anyone else notices that at around 40% the battery tends to drop a bit more rapidly than the preceding 60%? If I was able to get 3 hours screen on time over the first 50% I'll probably on get 2 hours on the next last 50%. Its clear as day when you graph battery life vs screen on time after 40%. I have 2 official Samsung batteries I use and it happens on both.

I was on my S4 pretty hard today, all day and night long, surfing the web, reading XDA, watching YouTube, sending tons of texts, keeping up with the sports scores on my favorite teams playing today, using Sportstacular a lot.
I think almost 6h On Screen time is really good, and blows away my Nexus 4, which was getting around 3.5h to 4h On Screen time. Wonder how well the Nexus 5 will do On Screen time when hammering on the phone all day and night ?
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