Found out what was killing my battery: Auto brightness - AT&T, Rogers HTC One X, Telstra One XL

Since I'm outside a lot all day, auto brightness was killing my battery by constantly cranking up the brightness. I've since lowered it to about 30%, and surprisingly it's still bright enough out side at that level, and I'm at 30 minutes screen time with 90% battery left, which translates to about 5 hours screen time until it's dead.
So for those having battery issues, try this out. Even if you aren't outside a lot, I still think autobrightness kills the battery since it's constantly using sensors to find out what lighting condition you are in.

The auto brightness is too aggressive.. the screen is much brighter than it needs to be for given conditions.
I also always wondered why auto brightness sensors are on the front, because it doesnt make sense. If the sensor is on the front, it sees YOUR background.. if it was on the back, then it would see the actual background that you would be looking at the phone on.

Agree. It consumes noticably more battery with auto brightness. I also noticed that i can have brightness at full blast and get amazing battery compared to auto brightness on and compared to my previous phones in general
Sent from my HTC One X using Tapatalk 2

Same here I work in an outside environment and the screen is vibrant enough for me to see even when the screen is at 40-50%. In fact I turned off auto brightness the very first day I got the phone because it did seem to be a bit too aggressive.
Sent from my GT-P7510 using XDA

1 hr 35 mins screen time and at 70%.
It was definitely the auto brightness eating my battery previously.

Related

Again with the Battery

Is anyone that is having battery issues running Adao Task Manager and Battery Status Pro?
I just factory reset my phone and I got 24hours of batter life. About 8 standby but a good deal of texting, web, some calls and some you tube.
I installed Task Manager and Batter Status Pro last night and my battery this morning went down 15% in about 1hr.
I uninstalled these today and will post again but has anyone else seen big battery drain from these apps or does anyone that is having issues running something similar?
I have been playing with the battery for about a week now.
For me this phone runs pretty good during stand-by. I would have about 2-3% drop for a whole night (7 to 8 hrs), with Google (push), Twitter and weather syncing.
The problem is when you use it, it drops like crazy. When I read news or surf the web, it would drop 1% every 1 or 2 min.
This morning I read an ebook, with black background for about 30 min, it dropped about 3%.
So basically i think the screen, data connection, and non-black background are the ones that kill the battery.
Yea, I agree, the S-AMOLED screen in this thing is an energy hog. OLED's are supposed to be more energy efficient than typical LCD's but I'm just not seeing it. Whenever I look at battery usage stats it shows the display at 70-75% of battery usage. Thats ridiculous. I have until the 18th, but I'm quickly leaning towards returning this and just getting an iphone4. This phone is becoming more and more disappointing the longer I have it.
This morning I have been uplugged 4.75hrs and used 16% no battery monitor and no app killer. Basically done the same things I did yesterday. Some Bebbled,texting, email, phone calls .
I will update tomorrow with total hours battery life for today. Would be happy if I can replicate the 24hours I got the day before installing those apps.
I got like 45 hours of battery with moderate usage during the two days. Seems fine to me, I occasionally used system panel to monitor if anything was using high and constant CPU
This is pretty typical of a 1ghz phone My nexus would last a day of heavy usage, 2 days if i use it lightly. We need to wait for undervolted kernels to be developed xD
Also, it really helps if you disable 3G when you don't use it. This allows me to get 3-4 days of light usage out of my nexus. I haven't played with the Captivate long enough to know how much of a difference this makes on this phone though
when you guys refer to "stand by", what exactly do you mean? Just screen off/phone idle? The battery usage on my phone when I use it seems to be OK even if not amazing, but it continues to sap life from the battery when I'm using it at an alarming rate.
Standby is when the phone is idle/screen off/locked.
The display is definitely power hungry. Using the Power Control widget that comes installed definitely has helped with battery life. It will let you toggle WiFi, BT, GPS, Data Sync, and Brightness (at 3 levels). When I'm not using anyone of those, I turn it off. When I'm indoors, I'll set the brightness to the lowest level. I'm usually at my desk when I'm streaming music, so I'll have it plugged in.
derek4484 said:
Yea, I agree, the S-AMOLED screen in this thing is an energy hog. OLED's are supposed to be more energy efficient than typical LCD's but I'm just not seeing it. Whenever I look at battery usage stats it shows the display at 70-75% of battery usage. Thats ridiculous. I have until the 18th, but I'm quickly leaning towards returning this and just getting an iphone4. This phone is becoming more and more disappointing the longer I have it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Actually they are more energy efficient on black screens, But screens with a lot of white in them suck battery bad.
alphadog00 said:
Actually they are more energy efficient on black screens, But screens with a lot of white in them suck battery bad.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is true the white screens burn the battery etc. I just wanted to let everyone know what I did to make my battery last more that 24hrs.
First, read the Wiki guide and apply some of the battery saving tips.
Second, UNINSTALL a program called "gReader" created by noinnion. This program is a huge battery hog! At least it was for me.
Hope this helps.
Well I guess I am one of the "lucky ones" Im running a live wallpaper and have not run my battery down since the 1st day. Right now Im at 40% life and at 15 Hrs 30m since unplugged. This is with checking facebook, twitter, email, phone calls, internet browsing\video watching and following the steps for the GPS fix. The only thing I have done is install ATK on the phone, besides that its all stock.
One thing I know is a huge battery drain is Time without Service. Check that stat and see if you have anytime at all without service, if so, I am pointing to that as a major drain on the battery. I know currently I have 0% Time without signal, my fiancee however is usually in the 20+% range and her battery drains like many reports I have seen here (she has an EVO).....
Yesterday I only managed 16 hours. Web, Email, A bluetooth file transfer, short bit of gaming. I have about 5% of the cell standby time (26%) without signal. My girlfriend has the Aria which is running Android 2.1 also, has all sorts of widgets, haptic feedback on and can make it at least 24 hours. I get that it has a smaller screen but it is also an LCD. Shouldn't the Super Amoled be saving our battery some display consumption.
i get about 14 hours or so moderate usage and at the end of the day, i have about 35% left at night.
If you detail the "Display" usage in the battery usage details how many minutes has your screen been on? Mine says 1hour 2mins ...this is for 8 hours of running time. My display is using 50% of the battery (which is at 68% now).
W00t W00t today I have reached a new high 2 Days 6 hours and 29 minuts with 12% battery left.....
What I have found is keeping Wifi on while I am at work and home like almost doubled my battery life. Which is great that I can use Wifi all day and not drain the battery so fast like my Fuze. Right now been off charger since 7:30am and I have 84% left. Yesterday after 9 hours I was still over 50%. For me its better than any other smartphone I have owened.
I used manual brightness, (swipe notification bar), turn off GPS/BT. black wallpaper and set Wifi to never sleep. Also the power saving mode in settings is off for other reason and doesn't affect battery.
At 18% right now and it's been off the charger for about 30 hours. I noticed yesterday that while I was connected to wifi at home (with Y5 app), it was draining faster than when I was connected to 3g. Did some tested back and forth and JuicePlotter clearly had a noticeably steeper downward slope for when wifi was connected than when it was using 3g. Weird :\

[Q] Main culprit of Battery Use?

My Nexus S 4G always says that the display is using the most battery. What do y'alls say?
I would hope the display is the most.... if it wasn't you would have a really nasty misbehaving process!
Mine states the following FYI:
7h 45m 30s on battery
28% - Display
27% - Voice Calls
14% - Android system
12% - Cell standby
4% - Phone idle
The rest is 2-3% misc stuff, and by battery is currently @ 66%. I run CM7 w/ matrix kernel @ 1.2GHz and smartass governor
Whoa.. You're lucky.. My display eats up 40-55% of my battery, and that's with the lowest brightness setting. I'm using the SC-LCD version though, if that matters. And I do play with it quite a lot, so I expect the uptime on the display to be quite high.
Still manages to last a day, though, even with an hour of hurling birds and feeding frogs, plus Plume-ing scattered throughout the day.
My Optimus One's display only used to eat 11-17% of battery, though, so there's that. (The Android OS was around 30-40% OTOH..)
Okay, enough about old flames
Bottomline is, it's fine
It varies on the day. I've seen days where I make no phone calls (unlike today) and display is 50+%
What are the max temps you ever got? I get up to 41C when playing some intesive games, brightness set to lowest when in dark enviroments. Is this normal or too much?
Usually I get 40-45% display (LCD). Today after some flight travelling I had 20% display, 35% music and 10% calls.
So everyone worried about 50-65% display use, this is totally normal if you play games, surf the web, do anything where the display is not turned off.

Is maximum brightness bad for your phone? shortandlong term?

I noticed that most phones default setting is not max brightness but maybe one or two levels lower. Aside from having bad battery life, do you think there is anyway having your screen on maximum brightness bad for it? Will the LED bulbs burn out faster in the long run, etc? Just a curious question as it is something I never thought about before.
p.s. Obviously many things that are running on max or pushed to it's maximum wears and tears faster.
led bulbs can last a very long time, over 10 years minimum
chances are you will have a new phone by then
i use lowest brightness at night if i am out as its too bright at night or if im in bed and auto in the daytime, and maximum brightness if its a very sunny day
LEDs tend to last 25,000+ hours active before finally dying, diodes tend to last a while. There is absolutely no negative effect running them at max.
i run at minimum brightness 90% of the day, only in direct sunlight do i use auto only to conserve battery life.
on an aside, i carry around a charger with me, and i'm OCD i only charge when the USB is plugged into the wall to keep the battery from heating up. using lower current through your computer means, lower heat, and your battery should theoretically last longer through wear and tear.

Terrible Battery life recently

Since i got the phone i have had great battery life, according to gsam my average is like 17.5 hours on battery with like 4.5 hours of screen on.
the last week or 2 though, it has been absolutely terrible. not getting more than like 1.5 hours of screen on, max. i havent changed anything, still keep the brightness around 50% (with auto checked). here are some GSAM screen shots, hopefully someone can help me figure out what is going on.
I left my phone off the charger last night and this was the drain over night.
does anyone have an idea of whats going on, looking at the screen shots? today i was off charger for 4 hours, with 1 hour and 20 min of screen on time (set to dim, like 40% brightness) and it used 60% battery. This battery life is crazy low.
Check for wakelocks.

Battery life?

Hi,
I have the s2 classic and I love it. I have read on CNET that they were able to get nearly 3 days of battery life before charging. I can't get 24hrs of usage before charging. I have changed the brightness to 5 (the screen does shut off and is not on the always on mode), I shut off wifi and NFC . I am not using it all that much, what is everyone else getting on average? I just want to know if I might have a lemon.
Thanks
APT_ART
Hey @APT-ART , You can't try to turn off the automatic heart sensor for longer work on battery. Also the black background (pure black, so pixel are not lighted at all for that part of the face) will help to improve it.
For me it depends on how many notifications there are during the day, what applications I am using and how I charged it last time (I recommend to clean both the back part of the watch and the wireless charger as well). Also for some faces the brightness level of 2 or 3 should be enough to use it as a normal watch WiFi on but NFC off, also the automatic heart sensor turned on but less regular setting.
The battery stands for me for about 30 - 40 hours. But for the first two times I've got only about 16-18. Just let it discharged to 0%, then charge it to 100% without turning on. Good luck!
I keep my brightness at 3, keep always on watch face turned on, tilt to wake off, heart rate off, wifi on, nfc off, S voice watch face listening off, get probably 50 notifications per day and after a 16 to 18 hour day have about 40 to 50% battery left.
I think S Voice watch face listening, higher brightness, and tilt to wake (especially at a higher brightness) does the most damage to battery life.
KubixRevan said:
Hey @APT-ART , You can't try to turn off the automatic heart sensor for longer work on battery. Also the black background (pure black, so pixel are not lighted at all for that part of the face) will help to improve it.
For me it depends on how many notifications there are during the day, what applications I am using and how I charged it last time (I recommend to clean both the back part of the watch and the wireless charger as well). Also for some faces the brightness level of 2 or 3 should be enough to use it as a normal watch WiFi on but NFC off, also the automatic heart sensor turned on but less regular setting.
The battery stands for me for about 30 - 40 hours. But for the first two times I've got only about 16-18. Just let it discharged to 0%, then charge it to 100% without turning on. Good luck!
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Really good tip, I am going to let the watch discharge to 0% and see what happens. thanks! :good:
With very light usage I can easily get 3+ days. I turned off nfc and WiFi. I left on the heart rate scanning. I use it as a stand alone watch at work since I can't use my phone. I have the brightness at 3 and ambient display off / tilt to wake on. Not ideal usage for some, but it's a good setup for me.
Sent from my A0001 using Tapatalk
I'm assuming everyone here has the non 4g version and that's why you guys are getting pretty good battery life. Got my S2 yesterday with 4g and fully charged overnight. Took off charger and about 8 hours later the S2 is at 38%. Not happy but going to try that discharge tip. To see if it helps. Also may have to tweak some other settings. I had the Gear S 4g and it didn't drain that much. I can usually get a days worth out of it.
you need several cycles to really know what kind of battery life you can expect; one days worth wont tell you a thing
How do you change the heart sensor setting?
Sent from my Nexus 6 using Tapatalk
phxtravis said:
How do you change the heart sensor setting?
Sent from my Nexus 6 using Tapatalk
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You can change it by going into the s health settings on the watch. Options for auto heart rate are frequent, moderate, or off. These settings are separate from if you actually go in and start and exercise. I have my auto turned off (to conserve battery) but when I go in and actually start an exercise session on the watch, it will monitor heart rate. The auto heartrate is just for random monitoring throughout the day....having it set to off will not impact monitoring when you start an exercise.

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