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Definative guide on how to get amazing battery life

1.Reduce display brightness of your screen
Although Samsung Galaxy S come with Super AMOLED which is supposedly to reduce your battery consumption but ironically it is one of the biggest battery life eater of your phone. Try to disable Automatic brightness and set it to the lowest level will improve your battery life a lot.
2. Remove unused widget in the menu
You must always remember that the more widget you have, the more battery life will be consumed up especially those widgets that use data connection and auto sync based on schedule. PS: only keep those widgets that you really need.
3.4. Turn off Bluetooth, GPS when idle
Only turn on Bluetooth and GPS when you need it, otherwise please disable it as it will consume your battery resources. Or please ensure that the charger is hook on your device when you turn on the GPS in the car.
5. Turn off 3G data connection, use Wi-Fi instead
Always gets connected with Wi-Fi when available. 3G data connection consume more battery compare to Wi-Fi connection. Turn off both of them when not needed.
6. Ensure you phone have a good signal as poor signal consume more battery life
When the phone is at the poor receiving end it will tend to use more power than usual to increase its signal strength with the communication tower. So it is always good to make sure that your phone has a good signal reception. You can try to switch to 2G if 3G connection signal in your area is poor.
7. Try to disable / reduce auto-sync whenever possible
All you have learned, data connection does consume lot of your battery life. By disabling the background scheduled auto-sync applications like Facebook, Gmail and Twitter can save your phone lot deal of battery life. If you really have to turn on the auto-sync feature in the phone try to reduce the frequency of auto-sync will also help to improve your phone battery life.
8. Disable new Samsung Apps notification
You can turn off new Samsung Apps notification if you not using it.
The configuration can be access through ~ >Settings >Application > Samsung Apps > Off
9. Turn off motion sensor
Only enable the Samsung Galaxy S Motion features that you using and try to disable those you not using like turn over, tilt, panning and double tap, turn them off as it might save your some battery life.
10. Use solid black static wallpaper and no live wallpaper
Most of the phone including Samsung Galaxy S Super AMOLED will tend to use less power on just solid black wallpaper than a lively solid white color based wallpaper because there will be almost no backlight on the screen. Please do bear in mind that a lovely animation live wallpaper will even cost you more battery life as ~ CPU power = battery life.
11. Fully close application that not use
Samsung Galaxy S is a super multitasking mini computer that come with dual-core processor but running a lot of applications at the background can actually increase your battery usage because they all require your phone CPU processing power. So it is advisable to fully close all the background applications that you not needed.
12. Freeze unused bundle applications
Too many original bundle software running in your Samsung Galaxy S? Freeze them… Titanium Backup Pro provide a way for you to freeze away all the stock application like Social Hub, Email, Maps that are running and utilizing your phone processing power even when you’r not using them. Ps: Your phone need to be rooted before you can use the Titanium Backup Pro.
13. Undervolt and underclock You 800Mhz GHz CPU
Aside from display, Samsung Galaxy S′s powerful CPU is one of the reason why your battery life eat up so fast. You can just underclock and undervolt it with SetCPU if you don’t need that much of processing power. Ps: Your phone need to be rooted before you can use the SetCPU.
14.Download and install JuiceDefender
With an amazingly over 5,000,000 downloads recorded so far in the Android market, JuiceDefender will definately extend your the battery life of your Samsung Galaxy S. JuiceDefender pack with powerful and easy to use power manager app that specifically designed to extend the battery life of your Android device. It can automatically and transparently manages the utilisation of your S battery like when to enable and disable the 3G/4G connectivity and WiFi.
JuiceDefender is available in the Android Market for free and if you would like to have a more powerful (customisable) version you can download the add-on JuiceDefender Ultimate for a small fee of $6.83.
15. Use custom ROM / firmware
Custom ROM / firmware offer a lot of optimization and tweaks to improve the performance of your battery life. You can try it out if you feel that after you have tried out all the tips above and your battery still draining too fast. But please be reminded that flashing a custom ROM / firmware will be voiding the warranty provided by Samsung.
Please let me know if there are other tips and tweaks to improve battery life of Samsung Galaxy S/Cappy that I have missed out.

I think #14 is not necessary if you are running a custom ROM

why wouldnt it be?

I believe number 11 has been proven untrue in the fact that killing tasks that the phone will reopen soon after actually reduces battery life hence the reason task killers are bad. Also the captivate only has a single core processor.
Other than that nice work it should help people out.

If you use a stock ROM with no voodoo color built into the kernel, then use full brightness, I do and I get great battery life, the screen isn't the biggest battery life sucker.... this isn't the greatest battery saving thread from what I can see.
Sent from my SGH-I897 using xda premium

Generally good tips, but definitely a few holes here and there.
For example, GPS doesn't drain when 'on', only when certain apps use it, making it pretty safe to keep toggled on all the time.
You can go further with SetCPU and other similar apps but underclocking during screen off, and I think that's helping me save battery in my personal experience.
Having a black wallpaper is good and all, but I feel that doing that is a bit too far in optimizing battery life. What's the point of having a pretty decent screen when all you do is use a black wallpaper?

Or flash Darky rom 10.2 Extreme Edition.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I777 using XDA App

Thank you all for the highlights & suggestions. Just wanted to see what I could do to help those out there with battery drain issues.
Samsung Captivate - ICS 4.0.1

b-eock said:
If you use a stock ROM with no voodoo color built into the kernel, then use full brightness, I do and I get great battery life, the screen isn't the biggest battery life sucker.... this isn't the greatest battery saving thread from what I can see.
Sent from my SGH-I897 using xda premium
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Then what is the biggest battery sucker on your phone?

watsa said:
Then what is the biggest battery sucker on your phone?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
on ICS PORT soon to be CM9, android OS is.
Sent from my SGH-I897 using xda premium

b-eock said:
on ICS PORT soon to be CM9, android OS is.
Sent from my SGH-I897 using xda premium
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That is no good, considering the screen should be taking most of the power.
You either arent using your phone or you are crushing batteries in hours.

No I'm using it, Android OS process in ICS includes more than what they do in GB. It last all day (~15 hours with %40 left)
Sent from my SGH-I897 using xda premium

Yeah I have the ICS port, build three, and the battery sucked the first day due to all the downloading and cpu usage, but after that and a full charge and battery diagnostic wipe it was a great life with decent usage on apps and data and messaging with auto brightness

In Point 11, Captivate uses single processor....and killing system apps causes more battery drains....

My limited experience with roms suggests that as roms are works-in-progress their battery life can vary widely. Serenity6.1 has really seemed to be a long life rom.

These steps do make a big difference, also the Beta 2 build for ICS solves a lot of issues that users had with ICS battery life. Honestly if you want even more battery life grab the 3500 mah extended battery off amazon for $10.

jeromechrome1 said:
1.Reduce display brightness of your screen
Although Samsung Galaxy S come with Super AMOLED which is supposedly to reduce your battery consumption but ironically it is one of the biggest battery life eater of your phone. Try to disable Automatic brightness and set it to the lowest level will improve your battery life a lot.
2. Remove unused widget in the menu
You must always remember that the more widget you have, the more battery life will be consumed up especially those widgets that use data connection and auto sync based on schedule. PS: only keep those widgets that you really need.
3.4. Turn off Bluetooth, GPS when idle
Only turn on Bluetooth and GPS when you need it, otherwise please disable it as it will consume your battery resources. Or please ensure that the charger is hook on your device when you turn on the GPS in the car.
5. Turn off 3G data connection, use Wi-Fi instead
Always gets connected with Wi-Fi when available. 3G data connection consume more battery compare to Wi-Fi connection. Turn off both of them when not needed.
6. Ensure you phone have a good signal as poor signal consume more battery life
When the phone is at the poor receiving end it will tend to use more power than usual to increase its signal strength with the communication tower. So it is always good to make sure that your phone has a good signal reception. You can try to switch to 2G if 3G connection signal in your area is poor.
7. Try to disable / reduce auto-sync whenever possible
All you have learned, data connection does consume lot of your battery life. By disabling the background scheduled auto-sync applications like Facebook, Gmail and Twitter can save your phone lot deal of battery life. If you really have to turn on the auto-sync feature in the phone try to reduce the frequency of auto-sync will also help to improve your phone battery life.
8. Disable new Samsung Apps notification
You can turn off new Samsung Apps notification if you not using it.
The configuration can be access through ~ >Settings >Application > Samsung Apps > Off
9. Turn off motion sensor
Only enable the Samsung Galaxy S Motion features that you using and try to disable those you not using like turn over, tilt, panning and double tap, turn them off as it might save your some battery life.
10. Use solid black static wallpaper and no live wallpaper
Most of the phone including Samsung Galaxy S Super AMOLED will tend to use less power on just solid black wallpaper than a lively solid white color based wallpaper because there will be almost no backlight on the screen. Please do bear in mind that a lovely animation live wallpaper will even cost you more battery life as ~ CPU power = battery life.
11. Fully close application that not use
Samsung Galaxy S is a super multitasking mini computer that come with dual-core processor but running a lot of applications at the background can actually increase your battery usage because they all require your phone CPU processing power. So it is advisable to fully close all the background applications that you not needed.
12. Freeze unused bundle applications
Too many original bundle software running in your Samsung Galaxy S? Freeze them… Titanium Backup Pro provide a way for you to freeze away all the stock application like Social Hub, Email, Maps that are running and utilizing your phone processing power even when you’r not using them. Ps: Your phone need to be rooted before you can use the Titanium Backup Pro.
13. Undervolt and underclock You 800Mhz GHz CPU
Aside from display, Samsung Galaxy S′s powerful CPU is one of the reason why your battery life eat up so fast. You can just underclock and undervolt it with SetCPU if you don’t need that much of processing power. Ps: Your phone need to be rooted before you can use the SetCPU.
14.Download and install JuiceDefender
With an amazingly over 5,000,000 downloads recorded so far in the Android market, JuiceDefender will definately extend your the battery life of your Samsung Galaxy S. JuiceDefender pack with powerful and easy to use power manager app that specifically designed to extend the battery life of your Android device. It can automatically and transparently manages the utilisation of your S battery like when to enable and disable the 3G/4G connectivity and WiFi.
JuiceDefender is available in the Android Market for free and if you would like to have a more powerful (customisable) version you can download the add-on JuiceDefender Ultimate for a small fee of $6.83.
15. Use custom ROM / firmware
Custom ROM / firmware offer a lot of optimization and tweaks to improve the performance of your battery life. You can try it out if you feel that after you have tried out all the tips above and your battery still draining too fast. But please be reminded that flashing a custom ROM / firmware will be voiding the warranty provided by Samsung.
Please let me know if there are other tips and tweaks to improve battery life of Samsung Galaxy S/Cappy that I have missed out.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Basically dont use your smartphone as a smartphone. Thats what you're saying by turning off all the good features of the phone.

1, 3, 4, 11 are like NO DUH!!!
5. Are you saying use EDGE? It will save some battery, but you have to consider it may take longer to load something, and thus the screen might be on longer, negating savings. Plus, it's a PITA to change back and forth.
6. Other than switching to EDGE, not really in your control.
7. That's stupid. It defeats the whole purpose of having a smartphone.
9. As long as you lock orientation. I doubt it saves much though...
15. YES, that can be HUGE.
Jeffu said:
Having a black wallpaper is good and all, but I feel that doing that is a bit too far in optimizing battery life. What's the point of having a pretty decent screen when all you do is use a black wallpaper?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I agree. I think a compromise is a better idea. A lot of ROMs have black wallpapers with a small % of extremely brightly colored random or geometric designs, or green android-ish swirls or something that look AMAZING on the AMOLED screen.

Thank you all for your feedback.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using xda premium

thanks, great guide!

Help getting the best battery life

What rom should I use and also what tweaks/scripts should I install to get the best battery life
Sent from my SCH-I535 using xda premium

Hard to answer without testing some roms for yourself....
Synergy Rom is a good start which eliminates bloat from the provider...and then optimize the rom. Add a better kernel over stock like Imo or Ziggy and that took controlling CPU power (depending on your setting) can help gain better battery life...mean over 8+ or 12+ hours of life

30+ hours with almost 4 hours of screen time : cm10
Sent from my SCH-I535 using xda premium

This isn't really a tweak or script, but turning off mobile data and using wifi helps a ton. Constantly searching for 3G or 4G connection is what kills my phone's battery.

Here is what helps me..
-turn off any data that doesn't need to be running in the background while you are using it i.e...gps, 4g, bluetooth. (Use "phone info" from the market to switch from 3g to 4g.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1771840
-make email manual push. when you have email set to constantly search for new incoming messages it can run down more than needed. if nothing else switch to every 15-30 min.
- turn off all notifications that you dont need to be notified about
-screen brightness will be a HUGE battery eater. I have mine set at 1% most of the day which really helps. this screen is bright enough to have it that low and still see well.
-download "widgetsoid x2" free. a fully customizable toggle bar which will allow for easy on off for items like bluetooth, gps, wifi and gives you a brightness option to customize 3 settings. I have mine set for 1, 25 and 45%
-use setcpu or another app alike to control cpu. create a profile for "screen off".I set my profile at 348x486. this drops the processor while screen is in sleep mode and will save battery life.
-I dont know how effective this is, but I heard it helps and makes sense. Choose a dark wallpaper. Having a bright, full white wallpaper takes more battery life to display.
As for ROM's, its hard to say. there are so many things to take into consideration when someone says they got 30 hours on a rom vs the next person who only gets 12 hours. how much are they using it, what do they have running inthe background...etc. I tried both bean and synergy and I prefer bean. He just released R6 yesterday and people seem to like it a lot. I personally prefer R2, his original release. It has been super solid and I have had better results from it over 3.1, V5 and his late R6. My buddy has had GREAT results with synergy, but I did not. I gave it a week and ended up restoring back to bean.

download BatterySaver app from market. My s3 runs 12-15 hours on "Intelligent Mode"

Honestly, you can only do so much with software tweaks. If you're a hardcore power user, I suggest getting an extra battery of a similar size (~2000mah) or getting an extended battery.
As for what you can do to save battery, the only thing I can think of that people haven't already mentioned is turning off animations. It can make things feel a bit choppy, but you'll get things done faster, which means less screen time.

[Q] Viper XL Battery Life

Im running Viper XL and the reason i flashed it is because i heard it has above average battery life, but im getting maybe 10-13 hrs max. I've heard cases of 24 hr battery life, and I cant seem to achieve it. I am running Beast Mode Kernel and have the powersave governor. I am running Stock CPU frequency and have one core active. Am I missing something, because i got better battery life on paranoid android which kind of suprised me.

You really have to drill down on the tweaking and settings. Took me a bit to get what I wanted as well. I completely shut off Google Now, you can toggle off LTE and surprisingly, I raised my min cpu frequency to 594 and ondemand. Shut off HTC powersaver as well. Try a reboot after you tweak up all your settings. I think battery life was better on 2.4.1 but it's pretty well on 3.1 too.
Sent from my HTC One XL using Tapatalk 2

Viper Xl
Alphacall2 said:
Im running Viper XL and the reason i flashed it is because i heard it has above average battery life, but im getting maybe 10-13 hrs max. I've heard cases of 24 hr battery life, and I cant seem to achieve it. I am running Beast Mode Kernel and have the powersave governor. I am running Stock CPU frequency and have one core active. Am I missing something, because i got better battery life on paranoid android which kind of suprised me.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm assuming you're running ViperXL 3.1. In that case, I'm surprised you're seeing such poor battery life. But, usage and settings are everything. Things like Google Now and GPS are major battery hogs. Facebook, Google+ and other push applications can also hamper battery life. Check your background sync frequencies! How long is your screen running? At what brightness? etc.
That being said, what strikes me is your kernel. You should not be using Beat Mode Kernel (last I checked it's not even optimized for the latest android version). I recommend you use the stock ViperXL kernel or Elemental v1.5.
I've ran ViperXL 3.1 yesterday with elemental v1.5 for more than 24 hours, 3 hours screen time while syncing 3 e-mail accounts. YMMV but with proper set up it's definitely possible.
Give us more information about your usage!

Alright, thanks for the information on the kernel, its a shame because i heard good about it. But as my screen time i run low brightness and im pretty heavy on texting, I used LTE for about 40 mins total today. can you tell me the way you disabled google now? I've been tweaking the settings a bit and i guess i just havent found my sweet spot.
Edit: And im running 2.4.1 actually sorry should of put that in first post.

Complaining about 13 hours of battery life. O__o
Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk HD

Not a complaint! I'm Just saying i've heard of better

Battery life is a very elusive thing. There are simply too many variables. For every ROM, radio, etc. where people will say they have much better battery life, you will almost certainly find others that have worse. Its just a fact of life with modding phones.
I've gotten about a day and a half on a single charge ever since the phone was released, and over 48 hours with later firmware versions (stock and custom ROMs) as of 2.2X and newer. Some folks can't even get through a half a day.

Alphacall2 said:
Not a complaint! I'm Just saying i've heard of better
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
CleanRom 5.1 might get a little better, but I've had about the same battery life using Viper XL 3.1. A lot of the other things to look at are certain apps that seem to cause a lot of drain (depending on options). The most frequently mentioned are: Google Now, Facebook, and Maps. Other than that, lower brightness and shutting off LTE are the next biggest contenders.

What is the good Custom ROM and kernel for 5+ SOT?

I used default stock ROM (6.0.1), RR (7.1.1), CM 12.1 (5.1.1) with squid kernel but still my battery don't get even 3 hrs SOT with greenify also. I mostly use it for facebook and whatsapp only. I cant afford a new phone due to this. Plz help me. TIA.

SanRak said:
I used default stock ROM (6.0.1), RR (7.1.1), CM 12.1 (5.1.1) with squid kernel but still my battery don't get even 3 hrs SOT with greenify also. I mostly use it for facebook and whatsapp only. I cant afford a new phone due to this. Plz help me. TIA.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No rom will give you that much of a increase, stock is the best battery in general but there is no way any tweaking will increase that significantly.
Sounds like you need to replace the battery...

uninsall the fb app.........use fb on chrome............fb is the mother of all battery sucker apps

Crimsongrey said:
uninsall the fb app.........use fb on chrome............fb is the mother of all battery sucker apps
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Facebook Lite, way better than on mobile browser.

acejavelin said:
Facebook Lite, way better than on mobile browser.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Completely wrong

Crimsongrey said:
Completely wrong
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That maybe your opinion, but I disagree... Facebook Lite with it's built in Messenger is essentially a specially written browser, uses far less memory than Chrome, removes ads from videos (in general there are less ads throughout) plus you can still get push notifications. I have been using it for months.
If I am "completely wrong" give me some proof. In fact, although the regular Facebook is not the best, it is hardly "mother of all battery sucker apps". It is a space and data hog, but it doesn't use battery any more than REAL hogs like Snapchat, Netflix, Amazon Shopping, SoundCloud, or Outlook, in fact if you do some testing it has less effect on battery than you likely think (granted 2-3 years ago this was different, FB used to be one of the worst offenders).
Regardless, the OP was looking for an app to increase SOT... unless you can lower the battery usage of the display, you are not going to see increases in the magnitude the OP is looking for, from 3 hours to 5 hours, or a 66% increase in SOT. No app change or ROM is going to make a change even close to that.

Crimsongrey said:
Completely wrong
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Comments like that are hardly useful (or credible).
If you feel the need to make comments, please make them constructive and with some substance.

http://www.huffingtonpost.in/entry/facebook-iphone-battery-life_us_56b8b6c5e4b08069c7a7fc54
(It could boost your Android’s battery by as much as 20 percent,)
https://www.androidcentral.com/it-turns-out-uninstalling-facebook-android-pretty-great
(android central)
https://www.theguardian.com/technol...alling-facebook-app-saves-iphone-battery-life
https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/co...eeds_up_your_android/?st=j5c24vbs&sh=4c9b128f
there are too many on the web........

I agree with @ace Sir Facebook lite is good option .... Now u also have an option of Messanger lite
And also Battery Usage/SOT completely depends on ur usage OP .:angel:

SanRak said:
I used default stock ROM (6.0.1), RR (7.1.1), CM 12.1 (5.1.1) with squid kernel but still my battery don't get even 3 hrs SOT with greenify also. I mostly use it for facebook and whatsapp only. I cant afford a new phone due to this. Plz help me. TIA.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
3 hours SOT with greenify is a little off. you need to watch for wakelocks. better battery stats or wakelock detector can be useful to you. and also, if you have greenified the apps that you use the most, it will reopen those apps everytime you open the app, that could do more harm than good. you can try shallow hibernation, or just install naptime and tweak the doze parameters using GeraldRudi's method and quit greenify for some days just to see if this improves.
Then again, your battery could be the culprit, that's always a possibility
about ROM's, every ROM has it's merits, but Motorola really knows how to optimize their ROM, so for now, I think stock ROM gives the best battery life, even if that is marginally better than custom ROMs.
Kernels: Stock moto kernel is very efficient, but you might get a little bit more battery life with squid kernel, it has a great governor that relies on voting mechanism, plus it's just perfectly undervolted to get you some extra battery. probably a 15-20% difference than the stock one.

1) Use AOSP-CAF based ROM like Tesla.
2) Flash squid or Firekernel
3) Reduce the Max Freq to 1152Mhz and Min to 200Mhz
4) Use IntelliPlug Hotplug (Turn off Touch Boost and set Screen off frequency to 400Mhz)
5) Install Force Doze app and add Facebook, WhatsApp and other Battery consuming app to blacklist (Remember you will not get notifications from those app if screen is off).
6) Don't charge too quickly, always charge to 100% and plug when it discharged to below 10% (Recommended to charge at night).
It will improve your overall battery backup and somehow SOT.
At last i am totally agree with @acejavelin Facebook Lite app is made for low memory devices so it consume less memory and also less Battery. Also it's fast and have almost every features.

The real problem here is the device is going on 2, maybe 3 years old... the battery is at it's limit and will need to be changed to get really good SOTs.
My Moto G 2015 used to get 5+ hours SOT easy... not it's barely 3.5... and this is a backup device, it has NOTHING installed in it at all but it was used regularly for 18 months. The battery is just not what it used to be and if I am going to continue to use it as a alternate device I will need to replace the battery. Like it or not, these devices were not designed for more than 2 years of service.

nikhilpal2705 said:
1) Use AOSP-CAF based ROM like Tesla.
2) Flash squid or Firekernel
3) Reduce the Max Freq to 1152Mhz and Min to 200Mhz
4) Use IntelliPlug Hotplug (Turn off Touch Boost and set Screen off frequency to 400Mhz)
5) Install Force Doze app and add Facebook, WhatsApp and other Battery consuming app to blacklist (Remember you will not get notifications from those app if screen is off).
6) Don't charge too quickly, always charge to 100% and plug when it discharged to below 10% (Recommended to charge at night).
It will improve your overall battery backup and somehow SOT.
At last i am totally agree with @acejavelin Facebook Lite app is made for low memory devices so it consume less memory and also less Battery. Also it's fast and have almost every features.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
downclocking the cpu is kind of redundant and saves less power than what it takes. the reason why for some users min-max is a battery saving governor. Besides, the performence hit is greater than the battery gained which is not at all more than 2% probably.
you should not fully charge your battery. you can, but the best practice is to charge upto 80%. And anything bellow 25% is not good.
the issue is either wakelock or dying battery, no tweak is going to save him if the underlying issue is not fixed, moreover, doze is the most sophisticated solution to save battery till now, downclocking, hotplugs these are pointless unless one's usage is known to us. I'd suggest to have doze editor if you must have a doze interface.

You can use aosp caf osprey by Ahmed hady...it will give 6 hrs plus sot from moderate to normal use..

All Browsers destroy my battery

I am currently on stock Android 12. I flashed the unlocked stock image (non-verizon) a few weeks back. With Android 11, Android 12, LineageOS, etc. every browser I have tried including Chrome, Brave, Via, etc. all drain the battery way faster than browsers did on my previous Moto G5 plus. i would say when I am surfing the net on my browser (usually just reading forums, no video), the battery drains about 1% every 5 minutes or less. I have tried 2.4Ghz wifi, LTE, etc. and data connection type doesn't seem to impact anything.
Is this normal for this phone? anything to do to reduce browser battery drain?

If you go into battery usage graph, is the browser the only app listed as using up the battery (and not the screen brightness, or another app that may be contributing to the heavy usage)

JohnC said:
If you go into battery usage graph, is the browser the only app listed as using up the battery (and not the screen brightness, or another app that may be contributing to the heavy usage)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
correct. if I am using other apps the battery drain isn't near as severe. I keep the display setting "extra dim" enabled all the time and I keep it down as low as I can tolerate. I use a pitch black wallpaper use dark mode in browsers so they have mostly black background with white text.
Phone idle is the only other thing that seems to use a sizeable amount of battery according to the battery usage data in settings.

Sounds about right. Came from a Moto G7 Play (15 months back) and saw similar drain rates. All three devices have similar battery specs which plays into the units being used to assess drain. Is what it is.
FWIW - Opera

DB126 said:
Sounds about right. Came from a Moto G7 Play (15 months back) and saw similar drain rates. All three devices have similar battery specs which plays into the units being used to assess drain. Is what it is.
FWIW - Opera
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Not gonna lie, it makes me want to go back to Motorola when this Pixel bites the dust.

badtlc said:
Not gonna lie, it makes me want to go back to Motorola when this Pixel bites the dust.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Many Moto's bring a nice package with unique tricks. Gotta do your homework on what features are most important when the time comes.

DB126 said:
Many Moto's bring a nice package with unique tricks. Gotta do your homework on what features are most important when the time comes.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I definitely did that. I only got the 4a because it was the perfect size and had a headphone jack. I assumed with a newer hardware set and similar sized battery compared to my old phone batter life "should" be better. Nope.

Na, it's more complicated. 4a sports more sensors, brighter/denser display, faster processors, etc. System and personal apps clearly play a role in longevity (behind screen brightness); you'd need to do a detail study to understand what's drawing when and why.
I use to fuss over such matters but find the device lasts a full day for my use case which is all that really matters. Charges up quick from a modest size battery pack when camping/traveling. Just like past Motos.
Not sure who I'll partner with in the next dance. Love Pixel cameras (especially in challenging conditions) and routine updates. Miss some of Moto's innovations, like active display and actions. Needs to be close to AOSP; no Samsung UX butchery. In the end form factor will likely be the deciding factor once non-contenders are ruled out.

badtlc said:
I assumed with a newer hardware set and similar sized battery compared to my old phone batter life "should" be better.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't know what CPU you came from, but if the Moto only had "small" cores then of course it used less battery. "Big" cores use more power. They go faster too, but if you have a constant load, then they'll eat battery faster.
I don't know if there's a non-root way to disable the big cores, but I suspect you can do it with root (but don't know for sure).
Otherwise, you gotta get your browser to stop running JavaScript. If you're watching video you need to make sure the browser is offloading all the decoding to the hardware codecs rather than doing it on the CPU.
And if the screen is on, it might help to try and get it "more black" (eg. Use night mode) or turn down the brightness. The screen is often the primary user of power when a device is being used.

a1291762 said:
I don't know what CPU you came from, but if the Moto only had "small" cores then of course it used less battery. "Big" cores use more power. They go faster too, but if you have a constant load, then they'll eat battery faster.
I don't know if there's a non-root way to disable the big cores, but I suspect you can do it with root (but don't know for sure).
Otherwise, you gotta get your browser to stop running JavaScript. If you're watching video you need to make sure the browser is offloading all the decoding to the hardware codecs rather than doing it on the CPU.
And if the screen is on, it might help to try and get it "more black" (eg. Use night mode) or turn down the brightness. The screen is often the primary user of power when a device is being used.
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Thanks for the suggestions. My power complaints are just limited to the browser so I dont think it is just the larger CPUs. I think my standby consumption issues are related to Stock Android as I am now running GrapheneOS and my standby power consumption now matches my old Moto G5 Plus.
As for browser usage consumption, I have tried everything but disabling Javascript. I will try that and see if it breaks anything I use regularly. Thanks for the idea.
tangent back to general power consumption, I typically disable just about everything behind the scenes as I can. I keep the theme on pitch black. I use the extra dim setting to keep screen brightness as low as I can tolerate. I use night mode in browser to keep as much black background as possible. I disable all tap-to-wake or sensor based features. When I was trying to run Android 12, I disabled all the smart services and removed all the google apps I could. I removed all permissions I could. I restricted all apps I could. I disabled adaptive settings, etc. There is a bunch of stuff running in the background on Android 12 and I just could not

Welcome to the future. Older phones had better battery life

Locklear308 said:
Welcome to the future. Older phones had better battery life
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I dont think it is all the phone. GrapheneOS has 40% better standby battery usage than stock android 12. On graphene, it matches my old Moto G5 Plus. It is either lazy programmers with inefficient coding these days or it is google having the stock OS do waaaay too much by default with no way to disable it.
I'm trying to figure that out now.

badtlc said:
I dont think it is all the phone. GrapheneOS has 40% better standby battery usage than stock android 12. On graphene, it matches my old Moto G5 Plus. It is either lazy programmers with inefficient coding these days or it is google having the stock OS do waaaay too much by default with no way to disable it.
I'm trying to figure that out now.
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I totally agree on the lazy thing. So many devs now days are so lazy. I develope QuickBase databases and constantly run into extremely poorly setup realms/apps. Just basic stuff. Lol