Related
Gday guys ive been wanting to keep my wireless constantly on at some points and figured the only way to do this was to prevent my phone from "Turning off/Sleep" So ive done that. But im not sure how long the battery will last and if it will be significant?
Also is there a quick and easy way to lock the phone by pressing the top button instead of putting it to sleep? Be heaps easier!
Cheers
Depends on rom/radio.. With my current settings wifi kills 10% of battery when connected for 15 minutes..
m0tyrider said:
Gday guys ive been wanting to keep my wireless constantly on at some points and figured the only way to do this was to prevent my phone from "Turning off/Sleep" So ive done that. But im not sure how long the battery will last and if it will be significant?
Also is there a quick and easy way to lock the phone by pressing the top button instead of putting it to sleep? Be heaps easier!
Cheers
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you have already done it, you should know before a day is over. My experience is a few hours at most (maybe 4 if you have very little running).
you could use a Battery Monitoring program (PowerGuard, battery log, TBattery) to find the amperage usage during WiFi...
i.e. when i have a GPS(with GPS enable) program in use, those battery monitoring program says 300-500mAh usage... taking worst case scenario 500mAh and a full battery, 1340/500 = 2+ hours... best case scenario of 300mAh with full battery is 1340/300 = 4+ hours...
when i'm using wifi, tBattery says 233mAh... thats 4-5 hours...
I got about 7 hrs from full to 10%
I get about 30 hrs when phone goes to sleep with light use
I unplugged the phone and got onto the bus. I read news with Captivate. Nothing fancy, just NY Times, Fox News etc. I got off the bus later, I only have 73% battery.
Yes, I just started my day and it's only 70% of battery.
#FAIL.
There are a few simple things you can do to increase battery life. Turn the screen brightness down and use a solid black background as a wallpaper. The screen uses the majority of the batter. so dimming the screen helps, when using a black background the amoled display does not light up black pixels so there is power drain.
I've been running on the same charge since 4pm yesterday. I've streamed music through pandora for about an hour while exercising, browsed the xda forums using the XDA App for 30 mins, made a few calls, browsed Facebook for 30 mins, surfed the web for a couple of hours before bed. Its now 10AM and I'm sitting at 36%. Not to bad really! The phone functions exactly the same at 36% as compared to 100%.
I wonder why everyone says to use a solid black background? Do most people use their phones primarily by staring at the home screen? I'm never at my home screen more than perhaps five seconds while switching apps
I've had pretty poor battery life as well, even after discharging, recharging, and deleting batterystats.bin. There are small tips here and there, like black background and screen brightness, but even following them all, my phone lasts me barely ten hours, and most of that time it's idle. For instance, I listened to local must (no streaming) with the screen off for about an hour and lost 10% of my battery life. What's up with that?
TimF said:
I've streamed music through pandora for about an hour while exercising, browsed the xda forums using the XDA App for 30 mins, made a few calls, browsed Facebook for 30 mins, surfed the web for a couple of hours before bed. Its now 10AM and I'm sitting at 36%.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I am also shocked and confused by how people can use their phone so heavily.
I already killed those unnecessary processes (e.g., all AT&T crap). I have a static wallpaper. I have screen brightness at 60%. And all I have been doing is just reading news and surfing the web. It literally cost me 1% of battery for every 1 min of use. It's just ridiculous.
You are probably on your home screen a lot more than you realize.
Anyway it's a smartphone, they all eat through battery time. you will never get superb battery life unless you crowbar a 3000mah battery into your device.
edit:
set the screen on its lowest brightness setting, the only time I've had to increase the brightness is when I am outside in the sun.
if you are on a bus, if you are not using wifi, turn off the radio.
TimF said:
Anyway it's a smartphone, they all eat through battery time. you will never get superb battery life unless you crowbar a 3000mah battery into your device.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You just said your phone is at 36% eighteen hours after charging! Compared to the 0% I'm at ten hours after charging...I'm not looking for superb battery life at all, just somewhat decent. I'm actually bringing a backup feature phone with me to college this semester in case I can't resolve this issue, because I will need to use my phone both in the morning and at night some days
TimF said:
edit:
set the screen on its lowest brightness setting, the only time I've had to increase the brightness is when I am outside in the sun.
if you are on a bus, if you are not using wifi, turn off the radio.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have Wifi, BT always off. And I don't listen to Pandora.
I think the key is you have the lowest brightness on your phone. It is going to save you a lot of battery 'cause half of the battery is for the screen.
But I just couldn't stand it. I wish I can set to 100% all the time. It looks so much better.
The phone radio is a huge consumer of battery - especially in weak signal areas. The bars are not that accurate either. that coupled with 3rd party apps that don't always behave nice, can equal rapid battery drain.
Putting the plain in Airplane mode is good way to see what battery life is like without the Cell radio always doing its thing. It is not a fix, but it can show that the battery/phone are not broken. There probably can be improvements and tweaks made by samsung, but I don't think the phones are defective.
mwxiao said:
I think the key is you have the lowest brightness on your phone. It is going to save you a lot of battery 'cause half of the battery is for the screen.
But I just couldn't stand it. I wish I can set to 100% all the time. It looks so much better.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is what you would call a trade-off I like the bright screen also but I like having longer battery life more.
The screen is still pretty bright on it lowest setting and you gt used to the lower brightness after a while.
magicdanw said:
You just said your phone is at 36% eighteen hours after charging! Compared to the 0% I'm at ten hours after charging...I'm not looking for superb battery life at all, just somewhat decent. I'm actually bringing a backup feature phone with me to college this semester in case I can't resolve this issue, because I will need to use my phone both in the morning and at night some days
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
how are you using your phone? What apps are you running, are you using any emulators.
There's an app called Spare Parts, which will show you what is using your battery when the screen is off. Open it up and choose "Partial Wake Usage" from the drop down to see.
My Captivate appeared to drain battery very quickly, but with moderate to decent usage throughout a day I was trying to kill the battery it lasted me over 13 hours. I think it's a matter of the battery reporting taking a good while to calibrate properly.
I've had an issue twice now with absurd battery usage. Both times I charged the phone to full and disconnected it; after doing that the phone would lose 10% charge every hour sitting completely idle! Using the phone during that time drained it even faster. Both times powering the phone completely off and back on resolved the issue.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using XDA App
magicdanw said:
I wonder why everyone says to use a solid black background? Do most people use their phones primarily by staring at the home screen? I'm never at my home screen more than perhaps five seconds while switching apps
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
In AMOLED, black pixels dont use power. This is different from LCD where even black pixels still use power.
Have you guys tried fully charging, then fully discharing then repeating this step 3 more times? It helps with the battery life tremendously.
You gotta do a factory reset. Many people as well as myself had the same issue. For me, a side effect was also that the att start up swoosh was stupidly loud.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using XDA App
I only did the discharge thing once, last week, and today I am going on a 21 hours with 28% left.
2g app
I was told there is a 2g / 3g application. Has anyone tried this? Apparently it puts the phone in 2g when no data connection is needed and then updates to 3g when a data process is required...
i'm on day two of not charging mine... and i'm at 25%...
i unplugged it from a full charge yesterday (monday) morning before i left for work and today (29 hours later) i'm at 25%... this is with advanced task killer auto killing tasks when screen is off as well as being aggressive about it. i've been listening to music from my sd card, browsing facebook and taking some pictures (and uploading them to fb). i guess i'm either super lucky not to have any problems with GPS or the battery, or i'm a very light user.
I dunno what happened to the main battery thread?
I just got a new phone two days ago because of the restart issue. This one has the same battery issue. Drains 2-4%/hour just being idle. I have nothing beyond launcher pro and google voice installed. Everything is on lockdown in terms of batt usage. The only thing I haven't done is turn off the cell antenna.
I've tried the tricks I knew: factory reset, calibration trick. These didn't help at all. My last phone just needed a factory reset and it was all good. Now I'm sad again :-( will it just improve itself when the phone "learns" the battery or something? I wish I could teach it
Several things you can do.
1) Use WiFi if you can use it, it uses less power. If you don't have somewhere to use WiFi, leave it off.
2) Same goes for BT- leave it off if possible.
3) Use this to get rooted and remove all the ATT crap that sucks battery life. Applying the lag fix also means you spend less time with the screen on, so that can also help you out.
4) Use Auto Brightness
5) Disabling haptic feedback and the tapping sounds (I find it more annoying regardless)
6) Use a static black wallpaper- or something really dark. IMO it looks great black and plus the AMOLED... Black doesn't use power.
7) Use Advanced Task Killer. I have mine on Aggressive and Moderate security every half hour. This will make sure hung apps, etc get killed and apps you haven't ran. Make sure you whitelist the apps that run your widgets and such though.
That's the best things to do to.
Edit- above all, remember this is a SMART phone, not a feature phone like the iPhone is. The simple fact this full blown SMART phone can even begin to rival just a feature phone like the iPhone speaks volumes to how much more efficient it is than what you think it is.
starwolf256 said:
I've had an issue twice now with absurd battery usage. Both times I charged the phone to full and disconnected it; after doing that the phone would lose 10% charge every hour sitting completely idle! Using the phone during that time drained it even faster. Both times powering the phone completely off and back on resolved the issue.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I too have had issues with battery life but quickly realized what had been causing the issues, twice it had been snesoid not closing down all the way after use, and this combined with an app that was hurting battery life (word feud), I realized what my problem was.
I leave the brightness jacked all the way down. I believe the lowest it goes on the stock rom is like 15%, but there are ways to go lower than that.
I've not used my phone much the past two days since charging it, and i'm currently down to 35%, but most of my battery use is cell standby, with display being 3rd or so on the list.
You can always use a program like tasker to make the phone go into airport mode between certain hours of the day (IE: while you're sleeping) to help conserve the battery life.
There are also tons of other good tips in this thread.
And trust me, the phone can last; i've managed 3days on one charge
I am running current widget. This phone is a beast and eats 250mA while idle while my OG droid only was taking 20-30mA. no wonder this sucker dies in 4 hours
That shouldn't be that high when idle. I'm doing idle power tests right now, all the time in fact, on my nexus. Checked the thunderbolt and inspire at the store. At least they seem more efficient with screen on, hitting around 430mA at max brightness. My nexus will hit 750mA which drives me nuts.
I'm comparing ginger bread idle power, and Google seems to have made enormous improvements. Idle current draw is now at 8 mA, where on froyo for me its around 18mA. More testing needed.
But I feel that slcd screen is way way better for power than the amoled since most uses show white color anyway.
RogerPodacter said:
That shouldn't be that high when idle. I'm doing idle power tests right now, all the time in fact, on my nexus. Checked the thunderbolt and inspire at the store. At least they seem more efficient with screen on, hitting around 430mA at max brightness. My nexus will hit 750mA which drives me nuts.
I'm comparing ginger bread idle power, and Google seems to have made enormous improvements. Idle current draw is now at 8 mA, where on froyo for me its around 18mA. More testing needed.
But I feel that slcd screen is way way better for power than the amoled since most uses show white color anyway.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
well its pretty consistent idle power draw of 200-250. i have 4G on and syncing on as well. When i am using the phone with the screen on i average around 450-500. when i turn of 4G and have good 3G signal i can get the phone around 45mA
45mA is still high. I just wiped my phone because I'm averaging 50mA idle all the time no matter what. On this clean install I'm now at 15mA very consistently. But what's driving me nuts is I loaded stock ginger bread, and that ROM stays dead even at freaking 4 - 7mA. It's beautiful, my battery lasts incredibly long on it. But switching back to cyan7 I can't get below 14mA, and its driving me mad.
I just swapped ROMs again a few hours ago to do more tests. I hacked the nexus battery driver to do some useful tests. Wonder if the thunderbolt uses the same driver.
My idle draw is an average 40 with 4G. I'm using the current widget.
It also draws the same on airplane mode. Something is screwed up somewhere...
Sent from my ADR6400L using Tapatalk
Your posts aren't very informative for someone trying to compare.
What apps are you running background, which services (sync, location, etc), which radios on (wifi sleep policy, BT on, 4G/3G area, etc), screen brightness settings? Even the app will have an impact on draw, since keeping a log file will cause some juice drain each time the log is written, so update interval is probably necessary for the discussion to be meaningful.
You're getting your numbers from the log and when the phone is actually truly idle (ie. untouched, screen off) for a while?
Not criticizing at all, but these kind of discussions can end up just frustrating folks because of ambiguities...kind of like the posts where someone says (I get 5 days on my battery with "moderate use", and it turns out that guy's idea of "moderate use" means it sits untouched all day except a couple of minutes browsing).
I just installed the current widget out of curiosity, so not much data to go on, but with the screen on 50% brigthness, wifi on, BT on, sync on, several apps having been opened I saw about 140mah. Turned the brightness down to minimum and it dropped to 76, then 45. Let the phone idle scree off for a few minutes, and it was showing 32 when I first turned it back on.
My log shows that during the idle period for a couple of minutes, the phone was drawing between 30 and 40 each pull (every ten seconds).
A lolcatz haz rited yor subjekt...
Sent from my ADR6400L using XDA Premium App
distortedloop said:
Your posts aren't very informative for someone trying to compare.
What apps are you running background, which services (sync, location, etc), which radios on (wifi sleep policy, BT on, 4G/3G area, etc), screen brightness settings? Even the app will have an impact on draw, since keeping a log file will cause some juice drain each time the log is written, so update interval is probably necessary for the discussion to be meaningful.
You're getting your numbers from the log and when the phone is actually truly idle (ie. untouched, screen off) for a while?
Not criticizing at all, but these kind of discussions can end up just frustrating folks because of ambiguities...kind of like the posts where someone says (I get 5 days on my battery with "moderate use", and it turns out that guy's idea of "moderate use" means it sits untouched all day except a couple of minutes browsing).
I just installed the current widget out of curiosity, so not much data to go on, but with the screen on 50% brigthness, wifi on, BT on, sync on, several apps having been opened I saw about 140mah. Turned the brightness down to minimum and it dropped to 76, then 45. Let the phone idle scree off for a few minutes, and it was showing 32 when I first turned it back on.
My log shows that during the idle period for a couple of minutes, the phone was drawing between 30 and 40 each pull (every ten seconds).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ill post a copy of my Log later on. Right now the results wouldnt be fair because i am at my parents place and their house is made of some material where you go from 3 to 0 bars of reception when you walk in the door. But usually my general setup is 3g/4g on wifi off, BT on but not connected to anything, GPS on but not actively lookin for sataillites, and then a bunch of my regular apps. I mean let me put it like this. in my first post i discuss the difference i have seen in current consumption between the TB and my OG droid. The phones are set up EXACTLY the same with the same programs running in the background. The only difference is the TB has that extra 4G radio. I live in West LA so generally the coverage should be 100% 3g/4g. anyhow ill get a copy of the log.
my currentwidget is almost always above 100mA and ive got 4g off, wifi off, gps off, BT off, no apps running etc. very frustrating to see this phone die in 6 hours no matter what
This has been my experience also. my history from last night showed a peak of about 400mah discharge and a min of about 120 mah discharge. Not sure what is going on.
I have wifi off, bt off, gps off(using vzw location services though), with words with friends, double twist, battery booster, goog voice, lookout, bat indicator service, myphonemrules, simple service, craigs checker service, weather toggle widgets, nobars, night time service, battery monitor widget, and swiftkey, the rest are vzw bloatware services or htc processes in the background. Backlight is at about 30-40, and timeout is set to about 1 min. Since the last restart I have gotten as low as -50mah and max is about -350. I can't say what all was running during the night because I changed few things this morn to try and fix my drain, which as seemed to help, but not a lot.
Attached is a copy of my history since 3/24.
Once we are able to undervolt our kernel, our idle usage should drop significantly. Until then, I'm keeping a charger handy and waiting for my eBay batteries to get here, lol.
I have the extended battery, which I can't use with my case of course, if I really need it. But I like having a case on my phone because I shattered the screen on my D2 a week after I got my last one. Not trying to do that with the TB.
so to revisit this post a couple months in.. i am on the new GB leak. still idle at 40mA still sucking power like nobodys business.. wtf
In order to save battery life i keep my wifi sleep policy at "off after 15 minutes". So it does not stay connected when i don't need internet. (push mails and stuff go through 3g) No heavy syncing.
My question, can wifi go off quicker? 15 minutes is way too long. I mean , i use my phone every 15 minutes so it really never goes off , except when i sleep. 5 minutes would be better , not?
Is there a way?
WiFi goes off when the screen goes off, unless a download is acitve.
Sent from my Bricked Energy Sensation.
To actually save battery you should have wifi set to never off. It uses much less energy than cellular data.
That is why it is set that way on stock rom as well.
Turn wifi off only when you are outside of range, preferably by widget or quick setting.
Sent from my HTC Sensation Z710e using Tapatalk
really? I always thought otherwise. i will give it a try.. and post results here.
So I finally think I got my phone set up how I want it. I was wondering if you guys think that this is good? As far as screen time and length of constant usage it is the best i have had. I dont know how it will be under normal usage but i am hoping i will be able to go a whole day when i am not TRYING to burn out the battery.
My phone seems to be running awesome and real smooth minus the proximity sensor problem on phone calls... and the occasional wierd little glitchiness from the ICS tiny bugs. like once the white text turn green in lock screen and lock screen didnt sense my touch and kept green flickering. forcing me to pull the battery. With the occasional little glitches that make me turn it off and then on to reset it. Had it since it leaked and have had to restart and pull battery a total of maybe 5 times. With gingerbread I would have glitched maybe once every couple weeks.
MY Phone:
NS4G ICS 4.0.4 IMM26 Stock n Locked.
Some GApps disabled that I don't use. I leave off GMAPS until I use it. Only a couple widgets on my home screens.
Obviously have it setup with a black background. Settings how I like them now. Had the screen on the whole time to test this. Screen brightness around 60%. This is the best battery usage I have had. When checking running apps my Ram usage is right around 140 used with no apps open. Just in case anyone is wondering.
I had 3g on at first 2 bar signal for the first couple hours. I was on the internet cruising forums, groupon, craigslist, watching rock climbing videos. played some bubble blast. a little bit of gt academy racing and some other games.
then turned on wimax with great signal the second half. doing the same stuff. scren on the whole time. playing with my phone the whole time. except for maybe 30+ minutes when i was eating and stuff.
Before this on gingerbread, I averaged about 3 hrs screen on time. Also when I first loaded ICS I BURNED thru battery Under this type of usage.
here are my screen shots. IS THIS GOOD,GREAT OR NORMAL OR WHAT you think?
With my combo i get more than that. Playing all the time, with wi-fi on, 3G always, i get over 7/8hrs.
all depends on rom/kernel selected..
kalitza said:
With my combo i get more than that. Playing all the time, with wi-fi on, 3G always, i get over 7/8hrs.
all depends on rom/kernel selected..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What do you have? I get nwhere near that
Sent from my Transformer TF101 using xda premium
I would say five and a half hours sounds pretty decent even with brightness at 60 percent. I keep my screen on auto brightness but have never tried leaving my screen on nonstop. I should try it sometime lol
kalitza said:
With my combo i get more than that. Playing all the time, with wi-fi on, 3G always, i get over 7/8hrs.
all depends on rom/kernel selected..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for responding everyone.
Jinsoku3g- What setup are you running? About how long do you think you burn thru a battery at those settings i described?
Kalitza-
WOW that is a lot. What combo do you have? What brightness setting? I am trying to compare what i can get before i go the custom rom route to make sure it is worth it.. If i can actually get 2 hours more screen on time with the same screen brightness settings then i would definitley make the switch. Lower brightness settings and auto brightness saves a ton of battery and bumps me around the 7 hour mark.... considering auto bright mode is always around 25-30% when i check it. my screen is never over 70%... it is so bright i cant look at it up close.. lol...
Also, are you OClock'd/UC and/or OVolt'd/UV?
So as long as we are at comparable screen bright levels. It makes me think how much better it could be. Would like to plz know yer stats upon testing? Screen % and Oc/Ov-Uc/Uv. Do you have any screenshots?
Thanks for the input guys. I am always up for hearing more about where i stand in your opinions. I know why/why not to root and all that. Just wanting to see if my stockness tweaked is comparable enough to please my needs.