Database Info

for those that dont want to root

it would be awesome to start a thread with all the information in one place someone would need to maximize the phones potential without rooting it or wrecking the warrenty. i know i will end up rooting my phone but not right away. so im looking to maximize it without doing anything too crazy. so what should i know and what free programs should i get to do this.
thanks so much

Droiddog and places like that have recommended apps and such if you want to stay stock. XDA is a place for modding. Its great that you're learning and on your way.
Remember, that you can always go back to stock for warranty issues with oden. Once you flash, you never go back.
From a phone

Note: Droiddog only has 1 post in the samsung captivate/epic/fascinate/vibrant forum http://www.droiddog.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=87
When searching for captivate stuff, I found most information (even not related to rooting) on this forum.
For my stock captivate I got:
Advanced Task Killer - the free ad based one. I have not tried the auto kill levels since I am scared that my phone will turn off randomly when I want to receive a call.
Launcher Pro - the free one (so i can customize the 4 buttons at the bottom of the home screen)
Home Switcher - so i can switch to touch wiz launcher if I want to use the Kies mini app
Google Map - I heard the one that came on the phone wasn't as good as the one in the app store.
I removed all the AT&T Apps from the home screens.
For music I got double twist to sync music with my iTunes.
I tried the AT&T video/music players and PowerAMP and DoubleTwist and something else but none are really that good - They seem to forget which podcasts I already watched/listened to and are not really good at resuming. This is probably because they think podcasts are songs.
I got Pod Manager to download podcasts - worst UI in the world but gets the job done. I am still almost thinking of using itunes and just syncing with double twist every morning.
The battery isn't the greatest on this thing. Not sure what techniques I can use to make it better. I set my background to black but not really sure if that will help. Also I used the "Power widget" to dim my screen a bit. I really wish I could use the "auto" setting on the light but still tell it to be darker in general. To offset the power even more I bought a couple micro usb cables. 1 for computer, 1 for car, 1 for work computer, and power adapter from box for next to bed. However I had to cut down some of the plastic off the ends of the cable to make it fit. I do generally make it all day with just the nightly charge even when I watch a podcast on the way to work and home from work (about 1 hour each way) on the bus but I like having the cables just in case.
The Kies app and mini app seems to suck - I can't get either of them to work on win 7 x64 even with .net 4.0. On windows 7 x86 the mini version used (without .net 4.0) to work but not anymore since the latest kies mini update.
Other than that I just got a bunch of games and apps. Although it probably based on personal preference.
Hope that starts you off in your quest.

NinjaCoder said:
Note: Droiddog only has 1 post in the samsung captivate
When searching for captivate stuff, I found most information (even not related to rooting) on this forum.
For my stock captivate I got:
Advanced Task Killer - the free ad based one. I have not tried the auto kill levels since I am scared that my phone will turn off randomly when I want to receive a call.
Launcher Pro - the free one (so i can customize the 4 buttons at the bottom of the home screen)
Home Switcher - so i can switch to touch wiz launcher if I want to use the Kies mini app
Google Map - I heard the one that came on the phone wasn't as good as the one in the app store.
I removed all the AT&T Apps from the home screens.
For music I got double twist to sync music with my iTunes.
I tried the AT&T video/music players and PowerAMP and DoubleTwist and something else but none are really that good - They seem to forget which podcasts I already watched/listened to and are not really good at resuming. This is probably because they think podcasts are songs.
I got Pod Manager to download podcasts - worst UI in the world but gets the job done. I am still almost thinking of using itunes and just syncing with double twist every morning.
The battery isn't the greatest on this thing. Not sure what techniques I can use to make it better. I set my background to black but not really sure if that will help. Also I used the "Power widget" to dim my screen a bit. I really wish I could use the "auto" setting on the light but still tell it to be darker in general. To offset the power even more I bought a couple micro usb cables. 1 for computer, 1 for car, 1 for work computer, and power adapter from box for next to bed. However I had to cut down some of the plastic off the ends of the cable to make it fit. I do generally make it all day with just the nightly charge even when I watch a podcast on the way to work and home from work (about 1 hour each way) on the bus but I like having the cables just in case.
The Kies app and mini app seems to suck - I can't get either of them to work on win 7 x64 even with .net 4.0. On windows 7 x86 the mini version used (without .net 4.0) to work but not anymore since the latest kies mini update.
Other than that I just got a bunch of games and apps. Although it probably based on personal preference.
Hope that starts you off in your quest.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you want awesome battery life un-install all that crud( launcher Pro, ATK, fancy music player) use any wallpaper you want and toggle your background data and wifi notifications my cappy gets 12 hours easy.

tylerdurdin said:
If you want awesome battery life un-install all that crud( launcher Pro, ATK, fancy music player) use any wallpaper you want and toggle your background data and wifi notifications my cappy gets 12 hours easy.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Oh sorry I was considering 12 hours (10 hours of sitting in pocket use + some phone calls + 2 hours of video playing) poor battery life.
I picked the black background because I heard the "Live Backgrounds" were a battery drain and I like the black color (its my PC's background color as well).

Auto Task Killer is not needed...does more harm than good IMO.
Also your black background is the best for Super AMOLED (all OLED-based) displays because when a pixel is black it is essentially using no energy.

-Battery life gets better with about 2 weeks of use
-I uninstalled all task killers. This thing multitasks on its own fine
-I figure a full day without plugging into a charger is excellent on any smartphone device.
-However, I bought the samsung external charger and battery on amazon, so I now seldom plug my phone in. I just swap batteries in the evening and charge the battery thats been in the phone all day

My captivate is 1 week old. The battery the first few days was not very good but now it seems to last longer.
This is what I have done:
1- Brightness set the lowest (Phone + Browser) I can see the screen just fine.
2- Black background, but with style so it doesn't look plain
3- All apps. sync manually and background data off. I turn it on when I need it but I am most of the time on wifi.
4- GPS off, I don't need it or use it
As of right now, with moderate use, I am on my 2nd day without charging and I'm pretty sure I will get a 3rd day without charging.
Apps that I can recommend:Fancy Widget,SamServmode, Barcode Scanner, 3G Watchdog

My post about droiddog was about the app reviews and such they do. Basically all unrooted android phones are the same, just different hardware. That's why general android sites are best for unrooted phones. Samsung support forums would be a good place. General public troubleshooting each other. Get where I'm going with this?
From a phone

NinjaCoder said:
Oh sorry I was considering 12 hours (10 hours of sitting in pocket use + some phone calls + 2 hours of video playing) poor battery life.
I picked the black background because I heard the "Live Backgrounds" were a battery drain and I like the black color (its my PC's background color as well).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
oh why didnt you say that If I were you I would buy an ipod touch for video playing and your battery in your phone will last for 20 hours.

I resisted rooting for the longest time, thinking I'd wait till Froyo.
I finally got tired of waiting and did the one click root + lagfix. Didn't try anything else yet but let me tell you, just doing that small amount has made my Captivate experience so much happier

Do you have the link to the oclf you used? I'm just afraid of bricking it. I need to root first then I can use the oclf? Our does the oclf do it all?
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I896 using XDA App

with my usage, my phone lasts me 8 hours, if im lucky. sometimes i go to class at 12 get home by 3 and im at about 60% lol..

messxxxedge said:
Do you have the link to the oclf you used? I'm just afraid of bricking it. I need to root first then I can use the oclf? Our does the oclf do it all?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Don't use OCLF. Use z4root, it works with 2.2

Holy Jeeebus.....I think I finally solved my battery problem. Yours too??

TL: DR - Use Rescan Media, win.
So, I think that I've finally found the source of my constant stress regarding the battery life of my beautiful Samsung Captivate SGH-i897.
I know that a good majority of you have just rolled your eyes in disbelief, or just thought to yourself, "Great....another one of these threads".
If it helps one person get their battery life under control, then roll away.
I've had the phone for about 2-3 months and I've been active on these boards since a few days after getting it.
I've recalibrated, done the on / off / on / off trick, battery stats delete, deleted battery info from CWM, tried a second battery, used battery monitors on the phone, turned off wi-fi, turned off auto-synch, turned off bluetooth, lowered display brightness, and everything else I could think of to conserve juice.
Yesterday afternoon, I downloaded OSMonitor from the market in an effort to try another app in a long line of failures.
Nothing seemed out of the ordinary so I was going to give up hope.
While installed, I had clicked on the box to monitor the app in the notification bar.
I noticed that I would have times where the CPU was being maxed but nothing strange was being reported in OSMonitor.
And then it hit me.....
The entire time I'm watching the OSMonitor, I'm being distracted by the media scanner.
It's running over and over and over and over and over.
When the screen shuts off after 30 seconds, it comes back on, the media scanner runs.
When I update something from the market, the media scanner runs.
When I close a program, the media scanner runs.
It is running constantly and maxing my CPU to 100%.
It finishes fairly quickly, (I have 9.4GB / 13GB available on internal and hardly anything used on my 4GB external SD card) but it just KEEPS....ON.....RUNNING.
I do a quick search, stumble upon the .nomedia file trick from XDA archives, and VOILA ! ! ! !
I'm losing about only one half of one percent per hour while it sits on standby, where I would sometimes lose 10-11% per hour, when the phone isn't even being used by me.
I went to bed last night with 48% at around 3:30am.
It is approx. 11 hours later right now.
I've made approx. 8-10 calls, checked my email a few dozen times, and mostly just let the phone sit.
I'm sitting at 39%.
Previous to doing this, I would have lost that amount in one hour.
So, for anyone who has a phone that is losing battery life like it's going out of style, I highly recommend doing the .nomedia fix.
I did mine using ES Explorer and Super Manager.
Go into your root folder and add a file named .nomedia, then go into your external SD folder and do the exact same thing.
If you do not want to do it this way, you can go the easy route and add a program called Rescan Media that does it for you.
(link supplied)
Hopefully this helps at least one lost soul, I'm so happy to see my phone behave more along the lines of what my expectations were and not have to be fully charged 2 times per day.
For the record, I've tried the following ROM's for the Cappy:
Perception
Phoenix
Assonance
Darkytt3r's port of Darky's ROM
Stock ROM (ODIN Rooted)
Cognition
And the following kernels:
Glitterballs
SpeedMod
SetiroN
Xcalibur

Will this not cause the media scanner to not pick up anything at all then?
IE no custom ringtones/msg alerts, nothing displayed in gallery, playlists wont work with the music player....
Or will it run media scanner selectively instead of all the time?
The only time I notice media scanner running is after rebooting the phone... yet I'm still only getting about 9-10 hours on a full charge with very conservative use.

evoic said:
TL: DR - Use Rescan Media, win.
So, I think that I've finally found the source of my constant stress regarding the battery life of my beautiful Samsung Captivate SGH-i897.
I know that a good majority of you have just rolled your eyes in disbelief, or just thought to yourself, "Great....another one of these threads".
If it helps one person get their battery life under control, then roll away.
I've had the phone for about 2-3 months and I've been active on these boards since a few days after getting it.
I've recalibrated, done the on / off / on / off trick, battery stats delete, deleted battery info from CWM, tried a second battery, used battery monitors on the phone, turned off wi-fi, turned off auto-synch, turned off bluetooth, lowered display brightness, and everything else I could think of to conserve juice.
Yesterday afternoon, I downloaded OSMonitor from the market in an effort to try another app in a long line of failures.
Nothing seemed out of the ordinary so I was going to give up hope.
While installed, I had clicked on the box to monitor the app in the notification bar.
I noticed that I would have times where the CPU was being maxed but nothing strange was being reported in OSMonitor.
And then it hit me.....
The entire time I'm watching the OSMonitor, I'm being distracted by the media scanner.
It's running over and over and over and over and over.
When the screen shuts off after 30 seconds, it comes back on, the media scanner runs.
When I update something from the market, the media scanner runs.
When I close a program, the media scanner runs.
It is running constantly and maxing my CPU to 100%.
It finishes fairly quickly, (I have 9.4GB / 13GB available on internal and hardly anything used on my 4GB external SD card) but it just KEEPS....ON.....RUNNING.
I do a quick search, stumble upon the .nomedia file trick from XDA archives, and VOILA ! ! ! !
I'm losing about only one half of one percent per hour while it sits on standby, where I would sometimes lose 10-11% per hour, when the phone isn't even being used by me.
I went to bed last night with 48% at around 3:30am.
It is approx. 11 hours later right now.
I've made approx. 8-10 calls, checked my email a few dozen times, and mostly just let the phone sit.
I'm sitting at 39%.
Previous to doing this, I would have lost that amount in one hour.
So, for anyone who has a phone that is losing battery life like it's going out of style, I highly recommend doing the .nomedia fix.
I did mine using ES Explorer and Super Manager.
Go into your root folder and add a file named .nomedia, then go into your external SD folder and do the exact same thing.
If you do not want to do it this way, you can go the easy route and add a program called Rescan Media that does it for you.
(link supplied)
Hopefully this helps at least one lost soul, I'm so happy to see my phone behave more along the lines of what my expectations were and not have to be fully charged 2 times per day.
For the record, I've tried the following ROM's for the Cappy:
Perception
Phoenix
Assonance
Darkytt3r's port of Darky's ROM
Stock ROM (ODIN Rooted)
Cognition
And the following kernels:
Glitterballs
SpeedMod
SetiroN
Xcalibur
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So... exactly what did you do to solve the problem? can you describe how do you do the .nomedia fix?? I have exactly the same issue..

Hm, I haven't experienced that bad of a battery drain, but I installed the market app even though it said 2.2... maybe this will make my battery life better! Thanks for the tip.

It's running over and over and over and over and over.
When the screen shuts off after 30 seconds, it comes back on, the media scanner runs.
When I update something from the market, the media scanner runs.
When I close a program, the media scanner runs.
It is running constantly and maxing my CPU to 100%.
It finishes fairly quickly, (I have 9.4GB / 13GB available on internal and hardly anything used on my 4GB external SD card) but it just KEEPS....ON.....RUNNING.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
When you say the media scanner runs when doing all of these actions, does the Media Scanning icon show in the notification bar? If so, then I think it's just an issue with your phone cause I don't think that happens with anyone else's phone.
Unless you are saying that the media scanner runs in the background secretly after every action and there is no icon in the notification bar or anything? If so, I think you can be on to something.
GTIVRon said:
Will this not cause the media scanner to not pick up anything at all then?
IE no custom ringtones/msg alerts, nothing displayed in gallery, playlists wont work with the music player....
Or will it run media scanner selectively instead of all the time?
The only time I notice media scanner running is after rebooting the phone... yet I'm still only getting about 9-10 hours on a full charge with very conservative use.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You could just run Media Scanner manually. SwitchPro even gives you a button to initiate it. The only time Media Scanner runs automatically for me is when the phone boots (and probably some other infrequent times that I can't remember) so disabling automatic media scanning isn't much of a loss at all for me.

GTIVRon said:
Will this not cause the media scanner to not pick up anything at all then?
IE no custom ringtones/msg alerts, nothing displayed in gallery, playlists wont work with the music player....
Or will it run media scanner selectively instead of all the time?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm curious of the same thing. I've only seen the media scanner run when I restart or disconnect my SD card from my computer.

trekie86 said:
I'm curious of the same thing. I've only seen the media scanner run when I restart or disconnect my SD card from my computer.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
trying to get it working... ill report wassup after...

minlee85 said:
evoic said:
TL: DR - Use Rescan Media, win.
...
I did mine using ES Explorer and Super Manager.
Go into your root folder and add a file named .nomedia, then go into your external SD folder and do the exact same thing.
If you do not want to do it this way, you can go the easy route and add a program called Rescan Media that does it for you.
(link supplied)
...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So... exactly what did you do to solve the problem? can you describe how do you do the .nomedia fix?? I have exactly the same issue..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'll be nice... see the quoted paragraph that was in your quote?

Minlee, no need to quote an entire post, especially when you aren't responding to something in it directly.
As others have said, I only ever see Media Scanning in the Notification bar when I do a reboot. If it runs at other times it is transparent to the phone.

This is probably an issue specific to myself and a few others.
Someone above asked me if I saw a lot of activity in the background or if I actually saw the "Media Scanning" icon pop up in my notification bar.
The answer is that I saw the icon pop up and then watched it scan, over and over and over, all day long, dozens....if not hundreds of times.
That little fix, coupled with the battery calibration that I've done a few times, along with getting rid of some of the resource hogs that run in the background (Do I reeeeally need Google Maps to run 23 hours out of the day???) has given my Captivate new life.

evoic said:
This is probably an issue specific to myself and a few others.
Someone above asked me if I saw a lot of activity in the background or if I actually saw the "Media Scanning" icon pop up in my notification bar.
The answer is that I saw the icon pop up and then watched it scan, over and over and over, all day long, dozens....if not hundreds of times.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, I've never seen that kind of behavior. I only see the scanning activity when I first boot and when I do something like take a picture or a screen shot.

Does leaving NFC on drain significant battery?

I believe the title says it all.
How many of you do this and why?
Sent from my HTC One X using xda premium

I leave it on all the time because I have chips on my home desk to silence it at night and then on my portfolio at work to silence it when I go into a meeting. I also have one at my desk to automatically turn on wi-fi and start up the SiriusXM app and set the volume to a certain level so I can listen to music when I'm at my desk at work.
I haven't seen it use up much battery at all. On my phone it's usually the display or whatever app/game I am using throughout the day that drains my phone.

sjmoreno said:
I leave it on all the time because I have chips on my home desk to silence it at night and then on my portfolio at work to silence it when I go into a meeting. I also have one at my desk to automatically turn on wi-fi and start up the SiriusXM app and set the volume to a certain level so I can listen to music when I'm at my desk at work.
I haven't seen it use up much battery at all. On my phone it's usually the display or whatever app/game I am using throughout the day that drains my phone.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Where do you buy the tags? And what app do you use to program them?

Here you are.
http://www.tagstand.com/
:good:

I use the NXP app to write tags. No noticeable difference in battery life leaving it on all the time.

Battery Saving tips? Help!?

I have the droid ultra and was wondering how I could get some extra juice out of my phone? Any help would be appreciated!
Sent from my XT1080 using xda app-developers app

Trade it for the Maxx!!
Sent from my XT1080 using xda app-developers app

1. Turn off Battery Saver under Settings/Battery. This is false hope and more of a placebo. It usually kicks on when you are already really low on battery and it usually just down clocks your CPU and can make your phone sluggish.
2. Turn off Automatic Brightness under Settings/Display/Brightness. When the sensor on your phone reads the light around you, it likes to shift the brightness on your phone from really high to really low. This effects your battery. Turn that option off and leave your phone on half to 1/4 max brightness. 1/2 is usually just fine. You will get used to this brightness.
3. Turn off Location Access. This is probably one the biggest battery wasters out there and you don't need it running all the time. It is located under Settings/Location Access. Turn off or uncheck everything here. If a program needs or wants it on, it will request it when you are using that app. Most of the time it is usually for Google Maps. As you can tell, this also turns off GPS.
4. Let your phone sleep, but not too soon/long! Under Settings/Display click on sleep and change it to 1 or 2 minutes(preferred). Nothing shorter, nothing longer. Nothing longer because if you forget to turn off your screen, you don't want it sitting there for 5
minutes wasting away. Nothing shorter because turning it back on after 15 seconds because you were thinking will only cause the screen to demand more power to get it restarted, thus draining battery.
5. Facebook = Battery Killer. I get it, you love Facebook. That is ok, but your battery doesn't. There is hope though! Open the Facebook app and slide your finger from the left side of the screen to the right side of the screen. Now go all the way down to "App
Settings" and make these changes. #1 Refresh Interval = Never: This will prevent it from waking up your phone/battery and refreshing automatically when the phone is off. When you launch the app, it does this for you, so why have it do it when you are
working/sleeping? Plus you can always manually do this by pulling down on your News Feed. #2 Turn off Messenger location services. You don't really need this on. it likes to activate your GPS(battery hog) and let people know which city you sent that post/message from. Unless you care that people know you are in Butt****, Ohio, you should have this off.
6. Streaming Music kills battery. Do you have 80gb of songs at home on your computer? Then why do you stream Pandora all day? You having unlimited data is not a good excuse. If you can, put all those songs on your SD card/phone and listen to them using Google Play Music app. Buy a bigger SD card if you have to, they are not that expensive. Or just ask Santa.
7. Turn off vibrate on touch/haptic feedback. Usually located under Settings/Sound. That little motor that tickles your finger tips when you touch the screen actually uses a good amount of power. If you are really looking to get the most out of your battery, turn this off. I leave it on because I could always go for a finger tip tickle.
You don't have to use all of those, you can pick and choose if you like. I do. I hope it helps you out. Let me know.
Fun Fact: The takes more power to show the color blue on your screen than any other color.

SupremeOverlord said:
3. Turn off Location Access. This is probably one the biggest battery wasters out there and you don't need it running all the time. It is located under Settings/Location Access. Turn off or uncheck everything here. If a program needs or wants it on, it will request it when you are using that app. Most of the time it is usually for Google Maps. As you can tell, this also turns off GPS.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, well, you need location services for Google Maps. It's nothing something discrete for just one application. (Meaning, if you turn off location services globally, it turns it off for everything. If you turn it on, you can go into individual apps and see if you can turn off location.) However, you can go into Google Now, menu on the bottom right, settings, Privacy & accounts, Google location settings, and turn off location reporting and location history - unless you really want that in Google Now.
6. Streaming Music kills battery. Do you have 80gb of songs at home on your computer? Then why do you stream Pandora all day? You having unlimited data is not a good excuse. If you can, put all those songs on your SD card/phone and listen to them using Google Play Music app. Buy a bigger SD card if you have to, they are not that expensive. Or just ask Santa.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There is no SD card slot in the Droids.

SupremeOverlord said:
1. Turn off Battery Saver under Settings/Battery. This is false hope and more of a placebo. It usually kicks on when you are already really low on battery and it usually just down clocks your CPU and can make your phone sluggish.
2. Turn off Automatic Brightness under Settings/Display/Brightness. When the sensor on your phone reads the light around you, it likes to shift the brightness on your phone from really high to really low. This effects your battery. Turn that option off and leave your phone on half to 1/4 max brightness. 1/2 is usually just fine. You will get used to this brightness.
3. Turn off Location Access. This is probably one the biggest battery wasters out there and you don't need it running all the time. It is located under Settings/Location Access. Turn off or uncheck everything here. If a program needs or wants it on, it will request it when you are using that app. Most of the time it is usually for Google Maps. As you can tell, this also turns off GPS.
4. Let your phone sleep, but not too soon/long! Under Settings/Display click on sleep and change it to 1 or 2 minutes(preferred). Nothing shorter, nothing longer. Nothing longer because if you forget to turn off your screen, you don't want it sitting there for 5
minutes wasting away. Nothing shorter because turning it back on after 15 seconds because you were thinking will only cause the screen to demand more power to get it restarted, thus draining battery.
5. Facebook = Battery Killer. I get it, you love Facebook. That is ok, but your battery doesn't. There is hope though! Open the Facebook app and slide your finger from the left side of the screen to the right side of the screen. Now go all the way down to "App
Settings" and make these changes. #1 Refresh Interval = Never: This will prevent it from waking up your phone/battery and refreshing automatically when the phone is off. When you launch the app, it does this for you, so why have it do it when you are
working/sleeping? Plus you can always manually do this by pulling down on your News Feed. #2 Turn off Messenger location services. You don't really need this on. it likes to activate your GPS(battery hog) and let people know which city you sent that post/message from. Unless you care that people know you are in Butt****, Ohio, you should have this off.
6. Streaming Music kills battery. Do you have 80gb of songs at home on your computer? Then why do you stream Pandora all day? You having unlimited data is not a good excuse. If you can, put all those songs on your SD card/phone and listen to them using Google Play Music app. Buy a bigger SD card if you have to, they are not that expensive. Or just ask Santa.
7. Turn off vibrate on touch/haptic feedback. Usually located under Settings/Sound. That little motor that tickles your finger tips when you touch the screen actually uses a good amount of power. If you are really looking to get the most out of your battery, turn this off. I leave it on because I could always go for a finger tip tickle.
You don't have to use all of those, you can pick and choose if you like. I do. I hope it helps you out. Let me know.
Fun Fact: The takes more power to show the color blue on your screen than any other color.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
1 - Agreed.
2 - This is mostly preference and will not that huge of effect on your battery. Having the display on the brightest setting will always drain more than the lowest setting, but the auto-brightness changing does not hurt the battery, it's when it sets the brightness high that it does. I have auto-brightness set and I'm doing pretty good.
3 - Location services are only accessed and turned on when requested. For example, when you open maps, or have geotagging enabled on the camera. Just leaving it enabled in general will not be that big a deal.
4 - Mostly preference, but setting it too long can have more detrimental effects than just battery usage. For example: forgetting to lock the phone and shoving it in your pocket while the display is still on can result in apps opening or calls being made.
5 - While you're at it, just quit facebook altogether But seriously, the more "social" apps you have running, the more you have apps waking up the phone and hitting data in the background. Instant messaging can cause battery drain as well. As for me and facebook, I do not have an account at all, so I don't use it, and can't really say if it really is a drain on its own.
6 - Agreed. Either put music on your phone or use the caching available in various services like Spotify. I'm a Spotify premium subscriber and it's totally worth it.
7 - This will have a negligible impact on your battery.
I'll add this: If you're into figuring out what's causing battery drain, install an app that monitors wakelocks. I use Wakelock Detector. Wakelocks are going to be your idle time battery killers and apps that abuse them will cause excessive drain. I'm sitting at 8% awake right now and my battery easily lasts the entire day with around half battery remaining on my Mini. You can find apps to blame for battery drain with an app like this easier than an app that just monitors battery usage.

bc760 said:
Trade it for the Maxx!!
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Only if I had the money
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SupremeOverlord said:
1. Turn off Battery Saver under Settings/Battery. This is false hope and more of a placebo. It usually kicks on when you are already really low on battery and it usually just down clocks your CPU and can make your phone sluggish.
2. Turn off Automatic Brightness under Settings/Display/Brightness. When the sensor on your phone reads the light around you, it likes to shift the brightness on your phone from really high to really low. This effects your battery. Turn that option off and leave your phone on half to 1/4 max brightness. 1/2 is usually just fine. You will get used to this brightness.
3. Turn off Location Access. This is probably one the biggest battery wasters out there and you don't need it running all the time. It is located under Settings/Location Access. Turn off or uncheck everything here. If a program needs or wants it on, it will request it when you are using that app. Most of the time it is usually for Google Maps. As you can tell, this also turns off GPS.
4. Let your phone sleep, but not too soon/long! Under Settings/Display click on sleep and change it to 1 or 2 minutes(preferred). Nothing shorter, nothing longer. Nothing longer because if you forget to turn off your screen, you don't want it sitting there for 5
minutes wasting away. Nothing shorter because turning it back on after 15 seconds because you were thinking will only cause the screen to demand more power to get it restarted, thus draining battery.
5. Facebook = Battery Killer. I get it, you love Facebook. That is ok, but your battery doesn't. There is hope though! Open the Facebook app and slide your finger from the left side of the screen to the right side of the screen. Now go all the way down to "App
Settings" and make these changes. #1 Refresh Interval = Never: This will prevent it from waking up your phone/battery and refreshing automatically when the phone is off. When you launch the app, it does this for you, so why have it do it when you are
working/sleeping? Plus you can always manually do this by pulling down on your News Feed. #2 Turn off Messenger location services. You don't really need this on. it likes to activate your GPS(battery hog) and let people know which city you sent that post/message from. Unless you care that people know you are in Butt****, Ohio, you should have this off.
6. Streaming Music kills battery. Do you have 80gb of songs at home on your computer? Then why do you stream Pandora all day? You having unlimited data is not a good excuse. If you can, put all those songs on your SD card/phone and listen to them using Google Play Music app. Buy a bigger SD card if you have to, they are not that expensive. Or just ask Santa.
7. Turn off vibrate on touch/haptic feedback. Usually located under Settings/Sound. That little motor that tickles your finger tips when you touch the screen actually uses a good amount of power. If you are really looking to get the most out of your battery, turn this off. I leave it on because I could always go for a finger tip tickle.
You don't have to use all of those, you can pick and choose if you like. I do. I hope it helps you out. Let me know.
Fun Fact: The takes more power to show the color blue on your screen than any other color.
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I appreciate everything. I deleted Facebook like a month ago because I saw the stats. I did not know about the screen timeout though thanks man:thumbup:
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Music battery drain?

When I play music on my Nexus 5, the battery seems to drain just as fast as screen on. Music shouldn't drain this much battery. It shows as always awake through the time that it plays music, which I don't remember seeing on other devices. I heard the DSP tunneling was supposed to help save battery while listening to music so I really don't know whats going on here. Is anyone else having these problems?

All depends what player you are using? I use Rocket Player with Viper sound and I can go over 12 hours with the super high definition driver. As with any device, everyone will have a different experience depending on how their device if configured.

Default Play Music app uses very little battery for me.

Playing music with Google play music locally has drained 10% in about 20 minutes for me. Its unbelievable
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25 minutes of music (local)
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My newest config uses about 6% per hour when playing music. Happy with it now.

In your battery stats does it show as awake during the time you are playing music? My CPU seems to be running hot while music is playing
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I've noticed the same issue recently. Drained 25% battery in ~45 mins if music playing. Battery stats show the device as awake for the entire time.
Thought it might just have been because I was using a 3rd party media player (PowerAmp), but it did the same thing using Play Music (playing only tracks on device).

This is 100% stock?

shotta35 said:
This is 100% stock?
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Not really, now on stock 4.4.2 with TWRP recovery, root and a couple of Xposed modules active.
I have a couple of ideas for narrowing it down -
1st suspect is Last.fm scrobbling so I'll give it a couple of runs with & without that going and see if there's any consistent pattern there.
Then probably disable Gravity Box (pretty sure none of my other Xposed modules interfere with sound processing in any way).
Will update if I find something.

raolin7 said:
I've noticed the same issue recently. Drained 25% battery in ~45 mins if music playing. Battery stats show the device as awake for the entire time.
Thought it might just have been because I was using a 3rd party media player (PowerAmp), but it did the same thing using Play Music (playing only tracks on device).
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Other people have reported various games leaving wakelocks open (keeping the device awake), also a bad media file can cause Mediaserver problems (this can show up as very high Mediaserver usage on Settings->Battery):
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=47868557#post47868557

Well, uninstalling Last.fm and Gravity Box didn't work, still consistently awake whilst playing music.
All the solid blocks in the awake time where the screen is of are where music is playing, interesting that Play Music has so little CPU time, but is keeping awake so much. Media server isn't responsible for much wake time.
alistairs1 said:
Other people have reported various games leaving wakelocks open (keeping the device awake), also a bad media file can cause Mediaserver problems (this can show up as very high Mediaserver usage on Settings->Battery):
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=47868557#post47868557
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Pretty sure it's not a game, I had launched any games since my last reboot. Didn't see any processes or services running that might be related. Thanks for the link, I'll check it out when I get a chance.