Database Info

Battery Life Claims vs. Reality

I stopped by an AT&T corporate store to get a hands on with the Captivate. The salesperson there tried to tell me that the standby time on the device was 15 days if you kept apps from running by downloading an app killer. I asked if he really meant 15 days if no radios were running. He said "nope, 15 days is pretty easy".
Really, folks... what is reality here? Is it similar to other smartphones, where a day with moderate use is reasonable?

There is no way the phone will last 15 days in standby even with a good task killer. How can the sales rep tell you this if he only had the phone in store for 2 days?

That's a very good point... but he was very sure of his claim. I pulled out the "I'm very skeptical" response and walked away. Oh well, looks like once again, truth is in the internets somewhere, not in someone who should know such things.
Another element to this is whether an upgrade to 2.2 will increase battery life. I work away from any ability to charge and really need a phone to hold up all day.

ekruse said:
That's a very good point... but he was very sure of his claim. I pulled out the "I'm very skeptical" response and walked away. Oh well, looks like once again, truth is in the internets somewhere, not in someone who should know such things.
Another element to this is whether an upgrade to 2.2 will increase battery life. I work away from any ability to charge and really need a phone to hold up all day.
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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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Click to collapse
Also the Super AMOLED Screen sucks alot less Juice as well...
My friend has the Vibrant and has had it for about 4 days. He is a power-user like me, and he said with his task killer, he can run the phone for 2 days on a full charge. This is outstanding for a smart phone... I ordered my Captivate today, should be here on Wednesday so I'll also put this to the test!

better battery life is coming once devs hop aboard. Also, your phone will need training over the next few days so it can only get better from here for you. I also recommend just leaving brightness on auto detect. You wont have to play with it as much and forget it on super bright.
Some more tips:
idk if you guys like haptic feedback but i think its annoying as all hell. Turn it off to save an iota of battery.
Also tone responses for menu clicks? ANNOYINNGG turn that shiz off for a squirt of juice.
Lastly, unless you live by your email, turn sync off and only sync manually when ur curious about it.

I wonder about some of the widgets. I have Weather And Toggle Widget (which I prefer over Beautiful Widget), and have it set to update the weather every 30 minutes. Wonder if that's too often. The weather in Iowa can be very unpredictable and change quickly, but I'm inside all day so it doesn't really matter. I guess it's just eye-candy mostly.
I also wonder how WATW compares to BW in terms of battery consumption.
I turned haptic off (I agree, it was annoying). I turned the tones off, though I doubt that will affect battery life. I wish I could keep the tones for dialer and kill it for the keyboard.
EDIT: I keep reading about this idea that you train your battery (or device) to your usage, but I'm not sure that I understand/buy it. I could see perhaps something to do with the memory effect if these batteries are susceptible to it, but this idea of "training" it strikes me as very odd. Does Android have some kind of battery optimization algorithm that adjusts services based on your usage or something?

from what i understand, calculating battery life is like a guessing game. calibrating your device by letting it drain out and then fully charging it and draining it out again completely gives your phone an idea of just how long it can last on a single charge. Until you do a few cycles like this it will incorrectly display batter life percentage giving the user a false sense of security or panic. There may be more to it that has to do with the actual battery itself but idk the rest of the details.
and 30 min updates is a bit much lol. u should update like once a day and manually refresh if you need to know b4 u go out.

I'm getting very good battery life on my phone. As good as any iphone I've had and better than any of my windows mobile phones before that. I don't have any widgets constantly pulling down data though and only have my google account syncing contacts and calendars and an exchange account running.

Samsung Captivate on the Quest for the Greatest Battery Life!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Best way to "train" battery

I thought we were done with the battery training but always my biggest issues with Android phones was the piss poor way the battery life is ... to be very frank.
3hrs since full charge i am down a battery meter and 50% has been used with the screen which has hardly been one i haven't made a single call as of yet.. are we in line again for another battery killer?

The 50% screen use is actually fairly normal. You have a lithium-ion battery, so there shouldn't be any learning to be done, but nevertheless, heres a link to get you started:
[Guide] Everything you wanted to know about Li-Ion batteries but were afraid to ask!

I just finished one full cycle with 13 hours run time and just under 5 for screen time. Xda, web, few pics, a little video, some nav. Everything on but bluetooth, everything syncing at stock settings.
Not much in the way of calls as that is a feature I tend to neglect.
Overall seemed fine with me.

Okay fair enough, the only thing i keep on is BT for my car but that was using just 2% idle and connected to the car for a 45min trip to work.
I turned off HTC Sense Facebook

I've been up for 6hours with minimal use till now and I'm two notches down with display being the most. I just train mine to get through a day cause I plug it in every night.
Sent from my Inspire 4G

I guess I just don't feel that I've used mine enough to warrant now being at 50% made some calls yes maybe 35min total and some playing around on the UI but I don't know. Just the battery has ALWAYS to me been an issue with Android phones... just want to get away from the iPhone 4 so bad.

Mine is at 70% after being run down to zero/recharged to 100. It's been unplugged for 17.5 hours and has had what I consider moderate use -- running gmail and exchange sync, a few calls, good amount of texting and surfing. Have killed all the widgets except for beautiful widgets time/battery/weather.
f I did the same on my captivate it would be down in the 50s by now. I think this exhibits great battery life for a phone that is so large.
Run it down till it completely runs out and turns off/charge to 100%. Do two cycles and you'll see what the capacity is.

I have to "break in" the battery too
Sent from my HTC Inspire 4G using XDA app

it makes me laugh everytime I read one of these threads. LOL. There is no such thing.

Training a battery? Umm, sure. Ok.
Like how kernels have to "settle"?
Sent from my Desire HD using XDA App

If you are rooted, you can erase the battery stats through recovery. I just did that earlier today and now I'm running the phone completely dead. Then i'll charge it all the way and let it drain again. Usually does the trick for me.

Tips to GREAT Battery Life!

Here are the settings I'm running on CM7 to get amazingly bananas battery life (with the display being on for about 5 hours!)..
1. Conservative governor: 245mhz - 1017mhz in CM7 settings
2. Install the 'BatteryCalibration' app from the market. This app caused the single biggest improvement for me after having flashed so many roms and never calibrating the battery. If you've calibrated it before though, I don't think it'll be very useful for you.
3. Install 'NoBars' from the market to automatically turn on airplane mode when you have no service. (This might be useless to some of you if you always have a signal; Very useful in NYC subway though)
4. Use a 2G toggle widget to have the phone only use the Edge connection when you only need it to receive calls/ texts and don't need the high speeds. I use the toggle widget in the CM7 notification bar. HUGE battery saver.
Give these a shot and let us know how they work for you

I've reached the end of my day and here are my final stats..
Mmy display has been on on over 5 hours now and I have 5% of the battery left. Seems more than good enough for me. Hopefully it will be for some of you too
Edit - Updated with more recent stats

Aspeds2989 said:
As you can see by my display being on over 3 hours, I used my phone a heck of a lot today and still have over a third of my battery left. Seems more than good enough for me. Hopefully it will be for some of you too
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Question: It's cool that your display was on for 3 hours, but what did you do as far as app usage??
If you did use your phone "a heck of a lot" wouldn't some apps like "internet" "maps" or something show up on the battery use %'s???
For example, currently, other than phone idle, cell standby, voice calls and android, there's also internet, mail, maps, and other apps that I used today alot.

Good observation. I have no idea how android chooses which apps to show on there, but I think it depends on the ROM? I remember on Iced Glacier cell standby would barely use 5% of the battery and on CM7 it uses >40% consistently. Idk.
Maybe what those apps used up here was nothing compared to the display, wifi and phone idle time.. Just a guess.. But I did use the browser and xda app and listened to music via the Rdio app running in the background several times throughout the day, and sent multiple texts and have had my wifi on for about 5 hours now. I can't really find a menu that would show these statistics except in the Spare Parts app, and here you go..

I got 17 hours just yesterday with 9% left with moderate to heavy use (texting, web browsing and ps1 emulation).
I didn't do anything besides use faux's kernel with the smartass govenor. I have the max speed overclocked to 1.8 as well...

Nice. I just got over flashing new kernels for a while since the stock CM7 one has everything functioning perfectly and new kernels would improve on something but mess up something else in my experience.

I can't seem to find a 2g toggle widget that works with Royal Glacier. (one touch, I've found a few that take you to settings) When I was running Royal Ginger I would always use the one that came in the notification bar.

Wifi status is also a good app to remind the forgetful to turn off wifi when they leave the Area.

Aspeds2989 said:
I've reached the end of my day and here are my final stats..
Mmy display has been on on over 5 hours now and I have 5% of the battery left. Seems more than good enough for me. Hopefully it will be for some of you too
Edit - Updated with more recent stats
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is GREAT battery life... i wonder what word i'd use to describe mine.
i Pulled my Phone off the Charger this morning @ 7:20pm EST. Now it is 3:13 EST. and i've got ~50% left. So thats what like. 7 hours

neidlinger tap that 'screen on' tab and lets see how long your screen was actually on for?
Either way congrats, and it's good to see ppl are over the battery issues.

Aspeds2989 said:
neidlinger tap that 'screen on' tab and lets see how long your screen was actually on for?
Either way congrats, and it's good to see ppl are over the battery issues.
Click to expand...
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since my last boot. 8:10AM when i loaded the new CM7. 1h 1m 59s.

Unless I'm missing something, the 'BatteryCalibration' app won't increase your battery life. It will just help to get a more accurate reading of your battery level.
I've played around with different roms and kernels. And yes, they do have a small effect on battery life, but not all that much.
Here's my tip for battery life. Get on ebay and buy one the of the cheap packages from Hong Kong with 3 batteries and a standalone charger. Like this:
http://cgi.ebay.com/3x-New-1500mAh-Battery-Charger-HTC-Mytouch-4G-Merge-/290556738794?pt=PDA_Accessories&hash=item43a687fcea
I bought a similar package a few months ago and now I never have battery problems. Nor do I have to take a chance on wearing out my micro-usb jack like I've seen happen on a lot of other phones.

Maybe. All I know is my battery increased dramatically after running that app once.
I measure battery life by how many hours I am able to keep my display on before it dies rather than how long after it comes off the charger (like nedilinger does). My battery used to die after about 3 hours of the display being on. Now it consistently lasts 5 hours.
Anyway, I was just trying to let others know what I did to get a really good battery life on my phone thinking it might be helpful. Apparently that's not appreciated. Thanks tho.

sundayhustler said:
Unless I'm missing something, the 'BatteryCalibration' app won't increase your battery life. It will just help to get a more accurate reading of your battery level.
I've played around with different roms and kernels. And yes, they do have a small effect on battery life, but not all that much.
Here's my tip for battery life. Get on ebay and buy one the of the cheap packages from Hong Kong with 3 batteries and a standalone charger. Like this:
http://cgi.ebay.com/3x-New-1500mAh-...738794?pt=PDA_Accessories&hash=item43a687fcea
I bought a similar package a few months ago and now I never have battery problems. Nor do I have to take a chance on wearing out my micro-usb jack like I've seen happen on a lot of other phones.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
How long does 1 of those batteries last?
Sent from my HTC Glacier using XDA App

simple way to get awesome battery life without any extra steps is to install RoyalGlacier 1.6, that's all. A couple days ago I ran my phone for one and a half days before charging it again, and it still had 14% battery left. RG is pretty much a polished version of CM7, runs blazing fast and smooth.

erickdj said:
simple way to get awesome battery life without any extra steps is to install RoyalGlacier 1.6, that's all. A couple days ago I ran my phone for one and a half days before charging it again, and it still had 14% battery left. RG is pretty much a polished version of CM7, runs blazing fast and smooth.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
does the royal ginger gets the same battery result?

iambryantho said:
does the royal ginger gets the same battery result?
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Click to collapse
Better than what's reported under CM7. The battery life I posted above was on RG.

you say you don't sacrifice 4g but you admit you have a 2g/edge widget?
To me "not sacrificing 4g" means not ever turning it off, maybe i'm mistaken
I had battery issues, I'd have to charge it mid day else it would die. Juicedefender helped a bit (claimed to do 1.7x battery life) but I uninstalled it, rooted the phone, and uninstalled a bunch of stock apps
For some reason now my battery lasts a very very long time, don't know how or why that is. I also admit I don't use it as heavily as some people, but my habits have not changed and I did have to charge it mid day (like i said) even with little usage

rosebud1 said:
How long does 1 of those batteries last?
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Click to collapse
Obviously, it's hard to say without describing how I use my phone, but I get probably 10-15 hours of medium-high usage. I probably get about 4-5 hours of talk time. I'd say the Chinese ebay batteries probably last 80-90% as long as the OEM battery. Quite decent considering the price.

My earlier thoughts about the BatteryCalibration app could be wrong. I don't really know all the details about how Android battery calibration works. I just assumed that it simply learns about all the bad spots in your battery so that your phone doesn't instantly jump from 80% to 30%. I also assumed that the phone would die when the battery had no power left, as opposed to when it says 0%, but maybe that's not the case. Regardless, if it helps you, more power to you and I appreciate you sharing the app. I didn't mean to come off as an unappreciative ****. If I did, sorry bout that.

Battery Life, Oh?

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

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

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

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

That's not good. There's gotta be something wrong with either her phone or something. 2 hours of battery life warrants an exchange.
lokhor said:
I think it can largely depend on how you use your phone, not just how often or for how long. For example my Fiance also has the Sensation and on her first charge she got 3hrs52minutes before hitting 10% battery. Since then she has only gotten ~2hrs each day now that she has Twitter and Facebook for Sense accounts set up.
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enoch861 said:
That's not good. There's gotta be something wrong with either her phone or something. 2 hours of battery life warrants an exchange.
Sent from my LG-P999 using XDA App
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The phone lasts longer than 2hrs, that's 2hrs of the screen being on. my sensation get's about the same. This is with Gmail on Autosync and Twitter/Facebook for Sense accounts enabled too.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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