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I'd love to hear how people are finding the battery life on the Captivate, and what their usage patterns are. I don't have many apps on the phone to begin with, but on the train to work I can easily knock out a third of the battery just listening to music. While using the phone for five or ten minutes, I'll sometimes see the battery dop 2-3 percent!
For tomorrow, I'm going to try using the stock launcher instead of LauncherPro, no widgets. I got rid of the Android Central app just in case it was fetching data in the background. But my hopes aren't terribly high, I'm afraid.
I have rooted the phone, but the battery life was bad before rooting. Once rooted, I tried some apps like JuiceDefender, and there seemed to be no change.
If I continue having these problems, I may unroot and bring the phone to an AT&T store to see what they say. I've heard it mentioned that Samsung is sending out new batteries that are better than some current ones, but I don't know if that's true.
I'd love to hear any suggestions. I want to use my new phone, not worry about it all day!
I too have been getting very poor results. I have talked on the phone for less than 3 minutes, went to maybe 15 different website pages, one 3:00 youtube video, 10 minutes of GBC emulation gaming, and regular texting, and I'm at 10% with 8 hours. I've probably only used the phone for 30 minutes total today.
Smartphones always drain battery, if you want a phone that can be heavily used for like 4 or more days on one charge cycle, get a feature phone....the samsung captivate has given me the best battery time overall, against all my past smartphones.
I don't think it makes sense, though, that it should run out halfway through the day like mine is. My former devices were a feature phone and an iPod Touch. The feature phone lasted a week or so, and the iPod Touch with heavy heavy use lasted three days at least. So even if I had both pulling from the same battery source, and with light usage, shouldn't it last at least a full day?
Weird, I had wireless on almost all day, with push mail and doing tons of market downloading and I was only down to about 50% by early afternoon.
Seems about the same as my two year old HTC Touch Pro to me.
My battery is running fine too, even after streaming music from my house with subsonic, testing out a couple videos, messing with the gps, push email a bunch of app downloading, and a live wallpaper and i was still at 33% by the time I got home, even seems to be getting better.
"On the train to work..."
There's a bit of your problem, methinks. The 3G radio is burning a lot of power trying to connect to towers inside a metal box that moves to a new tower on a regular basis. Unless you need to get calls on the train, put it in Airplane mode during your commute.
Have you actually let the battery die completely yet?
My first battery burn-down, (starting with the charge on the battery as it was unboxed) I was showing zero percent battery for almost two hours before it actually shut itself off, moderate usage with WiFi on.
The next charge-up burn-down, it was showing zero percent about fifteen minutes before the end.
And the charge-up burn-down after that, it showed 0% about twenty seconds before it died.
See where I'm going here? The software needs to be calibrated at zero and 100, and it can't do that if you don't let it reach zero a few times. Once you're sure the meter is accurate, then you can start making informed conclusions about battery life.
And like I've posted elsewhere, you've got 'Newshiny-itus', which is proven to suck extra life out of a smartphone battery. And it's hard forcing your new toy to die...for one thing, if it's dead, you can't play with it. Tough it out, kill it. At least twice.
Well if you want to find truly terrible battery life try the EVO.
I had one for a month and that thing really ate the battery fast. The capti is stellar in comparison.
smitty1 said:
Well if you want to find truly terrible battery life try the EVO.
I had one for a month and that thing really ate the battery fast. The capti is stellar in comparison.
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Yea I had one for two weeks and it was horrid. I would lose 6% just in standby time in between waking up and getting out the door to work in the morning!
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using XDA App
I've had great results with the battery and I find it to be much better than my HD2. I watch quite a bit of youtube, text message a lot, and browse the web and the market on and off, not to mention all the time my wife plays solitaire, and I still have 30% battery at an uptime of 41:46. I don't use gps or live wallpapers, and I keep my display as low as possible, since it is still bright.
Bit better by the end of the day. 13 hours and 15 minutes
Croak said:
The software needs to be calibrated at zero and 100, and it can't do that if you don't let it reach zero a few times. Once you're sure the meter is accurate, then you can start making informed conclusions about battery life.
And like I've posted elsewhere, you've got 'Newshiny-itus', which is proven to suck extra life out of a smartphone battery. And it's hard forcing your new toy to die...for one thing, if it's dead, you can't play with it. Tough it out, kill it. At least twice.
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+1
Definitely agree with the last part. I've been doing my best to kill it, but I don't want it to be dead. Been noticing the inaccuracy of the meter quite a bit, especially when it's charging, but I'm sure it'll get better over time.
Thanks for the informative replies! It hadn't occurred to me that the battery meter might be uncalibrated - I've been charging once it reached 10% or so. I'll try letting it die fully today.
One thing that seems to have helped, too, is the brightness settings. Turning OFF the "power saving" auto adjust ing brightness option allows the brightness to stay low, and a brightness control widget lets me set it lower than stock controls allow. I've seen some definite improbement from this alone!
These are Li-ion batteries, DO NOT let them die completely before charging.
Ok, so...is there a safer way to make sure the battery gets calibrated? I'm reading in a lot of places that Android phones fairly often misreport battery info unless calibrated.
The lowest I can get on battery status is 60% after a full days use. Admittedly I'm not a power user but I had my phone unplugged for 16 hrs and still had 95% I'd like to know what you have to do to get such low battery levels , start your car
All I've done today is listen to music for an hour (used 25%) and texted/browsed the web for perhaps two hours (another 5/% down.)
I read that LIons can be occasiomally discharged, since they have undercurrent protection circuits. One guide for Android phones suggested leaving the phone on until it shuts itself down, turning it on again, and then letting it shut itself down again. Then, with the phone off, charge fully. The guide said once a month or do is safe and beneficial. How does it sound?
Battery is good today. Been sending a few texts, checked email, facebook, and surfed these forums a bit. I'm at 2 hours with 98% battery left.
i hope the battery doesnt suck, i plan on getting this phone soon and want good batt life!!!
tysj said:
These are Li-ion batteries, DO NOT let them die completely before charging.
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I agree with you, however, the phone's hardware will NOT let the battery completely die.
So I wouldn't worry about that all to much.
Basically though, Li-ion batteries are 'memory' free so they can be recharged on a whim partially.
They also prefer partial charges vs deep charges.
There are questions about this that I don't have answers for such as: When the phone displays 0% or shuts off due to low battery, how LOW is the battery?
Obviously the phone battery can't be dead dead, but it is low enough for the hardware to take precautions.
Anyway Li-ions will at max last 500 charges.. If you want it more than that, You're going to have to buy a new battery anyway. =)
Hey guys, I'm new here. I've had my phone for nearly a month now and have constantly read the forums but never posted. I tried finding a thread like this, but I couldn't. Sorry if this is repeated.
This is the second captivate I've had. The first one completely bricked after doing an OTA update. Anyways, after getting a replacement model, I've noticed that the new phone has horrible battery life. Sent about 15 text messages and my battery died 10%. With my old one, I was so amazed at how well the battery lasted.
Is it a well known thing that battery life varies between captivates?
EDIT:
Here's some background on my two captivates (if for some reason it can aid in figuring out why my second captivate's battery life sucks):
With my first captivate, I did an OTA update for JH7 and had amazing battery life. This was when I had "new phone syndrome" and played with every app I could find throughout the day and was always amazed at how the battery wasn't dying quickly (so I'm sure it wasn't my imagination that the battery life was better). I spend nights where I purposely tried draining my battery after coming home from work so I could do a full charge.
Then I installed Cognition, but liked the stock version so I switched back using Odin. After restoring it to JF6, I did another OTA update for JH7. The update froze and then bricked the phone.
Once I had my phone replaced, I used Kies to update to JH7 instead. And for some reason, this phone's battery life is substantially different than my original one
I just notice that Launcher Pro drain the battery faster than TouchWiz.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using XDA App
Check your cell standby. I find that sometimes my standby time shows twice as long as my phone has actually been unplugged. During these times, my battery life is much worse. Not really sure what causes it as it does not always happen... I have not noticed a relationship to Launcher Pro. When the standby weirdness is not an issue I get great battery life with Launcher Pro. I have not used touchwiz in a long time, but I find it hard to imagine that I would be getting better than 18 or so hours with it.
pezx44 said:
Check your cell standby. I find that sometimes my standby time shows twice as long as my phone has actually been unplugged. During these times, my battery life is much worse. Not really sure what causes it as it does not always happen... I have not noticed a relationship to Launcher Pro. When the standby weirdness is not an issue I get great battery life with Launcher Pro. I have not used touchwiz in a long time, but I find it hard to imagine that I would be getting better than 18 or so hours with it.
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Standby shows the same time as the time that its been unplugged. I started off this morning with 98%. Sending 20 texts plus 2 levels of angry birds dropped it to 81%.
My original captivate had ridiculously good battery life compared to this one. I used it consistently and by the end of the day, still had at least 50%. I doubt its the battery because when they replaced my phone, they put the same battery I had into the new one.
Have you guys experienced any differences between the battery life of two different captivates?
Battery drain thread:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=8576662
Please add any info you may have discovered about varying battery life, or anything else related.
TheYar said:
Battery drain thread:
Please add any info you may have discovered about varying battery life, or anything else related.
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Thanks, I've read that before when I was lurking the forums. I instantly thought it was my imagination but that's not the case.
Also tried the battery draining. Used it until the phone shut off. Charged it to 100%, shut it off, charged it at 100% again. Turned it on, shut it off and charged it...no change.
Att is sending a new battery so I'll see if its the battery that's causing this poor battery life.
So far though, I really doubt its the battery and something in the system. I got so annoyed with the battery life that I did a factory reset in-case there was some app that was draining it, but that didn't help either.
Just a tip. I was using latitude and wasnt getting the normal battery life i usually was when i wasnt using it.
I didnt know it was effecting it though cause you dont see it in task manager but you will in applications/running services. Anyways i signed out of latitude and battery life is back to normal.
It wont be remarkably better but it was noticeable to me. Just a tip.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using XDA App
My raphael really is working really bad last times and unfortunately i wont be able tu buy a new phone for another 2 or 3 months...
Im using energy rom. Dunno if it matters tho.
1.My problem is my raphael battery or something around it. When i charge it to 100% and then just keep it locked in my pocket it will easily last a day or even more. BUT if i only start doing something it will turn off after a few minutes or even SECONDS... What the hell? I cant use it at all... It has been like that for few weeks... But it was perfectly fine before. What's strange , if i turn it on again after some time it will again have some pretty high battery percentage allowing me to do something for another few minutes. Has anyone experienced this? Is it problem with my battery? I do not want to buy a new battery for those 2 months.
2.Is there any way to lengthen the battery live? I have heard something about putting it in the fridge (0.0) but don't remember what exactly...
3.What's the best way to charge my phone by connecting it with usb to PC? In work i cant use my charger.
I've never really had great battery life with any mobile phone. However, I imagine that you can gain a few hours/minutes by disabling the background data. I usually charge up my phone over night and it lasts till I put it back on the charger. However, I have run it down to about 10% a few times.
Well... I don't know what to do... I switched back to manila ROM , changed radio, disabled 3g, wifi, backlight as low as possible... And it didnt really help much...
It's like that. I load it to 100% , hide it in my pocket and it will last from morning to late afternoon if left unused.
But if only i start to use it will turn off by itself after 5(!) minutes... That's not normal i think... The strangest thing is that it started to be like this so suddenly.
I don't know what else to tell you. It does seem rather odd but if you are just going to get another phone anyway, I'd try to tough it out till then. Do you remember exactly when you noticed this behavior? Has anything changed during that time?
Well... my charger broke like few weeks ago and i started chargingmy phone by connecting it to the pc... Could it be the reason?
Is your battery swollen in any way? If it is, that could be the cause of bad battery life.
Come to think of it, one of my batteries seem slightly swollen and even though it is the oldest of my three batteries, it still works on occasion (when I use it). Now on the other hand, I don't constantly charge my phone via laptop. I hearsay, that doing this somehow *may* change the lifespan (possibly behavior?) of the battery. I can't say for certain as I don't usually charge my phone in this manner. Additionally, I try not to continuously charge my battery to 100% (rather 80% is what I look for) and I also try wait till my battery is at least 30% before I put it on the charger. I have read that this is the "optimal way" to charge and discharge your battery (or li-ion batteries anyway).
Perhaps you can try to do this and tell if there is a difference? I almost want to say that even through this, there is a slight chance that you'll notice an increase of battery life but perhaps, it'll be more consistent instead of the rapid discharge. Also, this could be a telltale sign that your battery is on its way out? You might want to keep that USB cord handy in the meantime and try to keep the battery levels between 80 and 30%.
e334 said:
Is your battery swollen in any way? If it is, that could be the cause of bad battery life.
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Now when i looked at my battery i see it is REALLY swollen. 0.0 Ehhh anyway, i am changing the phone pretty soon so i dont care that much...
@R^7Z
It's not so easy , you know... It will show 3-4 bars of energy (max is 4, windows 6.1) and it will just turn off... Meh, i am glad im changing it soon
Ah, I forgot you were using a stock ROM and not a custom ROM. So, what do you see when you tap the battery icon/top curtain?
my phone was stock and i did the ota update. it was slightly laggy and buggy so i did a factory reset and it waa running smoother. the problem was the battery drained 1% every few minutes. i tried powering off and taking out battery but it didnt help. i tried charging with phone off and that worked but it used 2% just booting up android and losee 1% every few minutes. tried multiple reboots and nothing works.
i am with you. I can see a measurable difference in the battery life after the update.
steve austin said:
i am with you. I can see a measurable difference in the battery life after the update.
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It's pretty common for an Android phones battery to suck for a few days after an update or fresh ROM load. It's running all sorts of services in the background writing cache files, battery stat info, app data, syncing carrier data etc. It'd be down to %60 after just two hours. Pretty much every Android phone I've had I've seen this and I use to get alarmed by it. But after the 3rd or 4th day, it all seems to settle down and last as long as we'd expect. If after 5-7 days and it still sucks, then you should worry. My Note 1, LG G Pro, and now Note Edge have all done this. My Edge did this after updating to Lollipop, but now that it's all settled down, I'm usually at about %70-80 after 12hrs off the charger with light usage. It might be %40-60 after moderate use. I've had it off the charger for 24hrs (but not using the phone at all) and it was at %70.
I fixed it by charging to 15% while phone was off and doing another factory reset. Since upgrading, some apps take a long time to open. Almost as if they're close to force closing.
The battery will not charge with any charger that isn't the stock fast charging one that came with the phone. If I plug in my other charger I've used for months while at work, battery dies even when plugged in.
I kind of regret doing the ota.
christran12 said:
It's pretty common for an Android phones battery to suck for a few days after an update or fresh ROM load. It's running all sorts of services in the background writing cache files, battery stat info, app data, syncing carrier data etc. It'd be down to %60 after just two hours. Pretty much every Android phone I've had I've seen this and I use to get alarmed by it. But after the 3rd or 4th day, it all seems to settle down and last as long as we'd expect. If after 5-7 days and it still sucks, then you should worry. My Note 1, LG G Pro, and now Note Edge have all done this. My Edge did this after updating to Lollipop, but now that it's all settled down, I'm usually at about %70-80 after 12hrs off the charger with light usage. It might be %40-60 after moderate use. I've had it off the charger for 24hrs (but not using the phone at all) and it was at %70.
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I got mine, updated, factory reset, and set it all up again on Monday 5/18. It's been 5 days. Should I be worried? It's still draining battery like nobody's business and making it almost impossible to use.
Yeah, I'd call Sammy about it if I were you. Shouldn't take that long to setting down. Mine's been running like a champ after those first few days.
christran12 said:
Yeah, I'd call Sammy about it if I were you. Shouldn't take that long to setting down. Mine's been running like a champ after those first few days.
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They told me buy a new battery. When I got mad and demanded another rep, advised me to go back to TMO. But since then, its suddenly settled down.
You may have a buggy App that's running in the background. As with anything, try to keep it as clean as possible. Don't install every App under the sun thinking you'll need them someday. Just install what you need at that minute. You can also try to disable as many carrier bloat Apps as possible (the ones that will let you). That always seems to help me.
A lot of people have brought this up and I too felt like I was experiencing it. I can without a doubt say the battery is draining faster on 8.1. Before everyone starts with "check your apps, bla, bla bla", let me explain.
I recently RMA'd my Pixel 2 for a different problem. Prior to the RMA, I noticed that my battery seemed to take a hit after the update. However, I had already installed various apps and my feelings were purely speculative. As part of the RMA, I had performed a factory reset as instructed and over the course of 4 days my battery performance was still at the worsened 8.1 levels. I should also state that over the 4 days spent waiting for my replacement phone, I installed no apps and only updated the official Google ones that came pre-installed on the phone.
I received my new phone and this one shipped with 8.0. Again, I've installed no additional apps and I have paid attention to the battery over the last two days. As the day goes on, it gets difficult to determine if it is draining any faster. Luckily, my morning routine is damn near robotic. I eat a bowl of cereal and read the same news sites while using my phone. I take a shower and drive in to work. With my original phone on 8.0, I would arrive at work with my battery showing 99-100%. With the 8.1 update, my battery had dropped at this point in the morning all the way down to 94-96% (this drop was consistently reproduced for ~2 weeks). With my RMA replacement I am still on 8.0 and following my usual morning routine my phone is still at 100%.
I know that this test is not the most scientific but I think it is controlled enough to be able to say that something is different between 8.0 and 8.1. I know that others have voiced their concern that the battery performance has suffered. Has anyone rolled back to 8.0 and saw the battery go back to normal? I have a theory about the 8.1 update, but at this point I would rather not share it as it may guide the discussion down the wrong path.
I don't know how much truth there is to this, but some were speculating that 8.0 actually did not report battery percentage correctly, whereas 8.1 fixed this to report correct usage. FWIW, I'm getting to the end of the day pretty consistently with around 50% battery left and 4 hrs SOT, and I think that's a much better measure than how long it takes to drop from 100.
I've heard that too about battery reporting.
clcdev said:
I don't know how much truth there is to this, but some were speculating that 8.0 actually did not report battery percentage correctly, whereas 8.1 fixed this to report correct usage. FWIW, I'm getting to the end of the day pretty consistently with around 50% battery left and 4 hrs SOT, and I think that's a much better measure than how long it takes to drop from 100.
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I don't think it's speculating. There was definitely something wrong with the battery calibration on 8.0. I'd have two hours of screen on time after taking it off the charger and it would still say 100%. At first I thought it was stuck and not working at all but eventually it would start to drop. As we all know, there's no way you can have that much SOT and still be at 100%. There's no doubt the battery level indicator drops faster when you first unplug the phone after updating to 8.1 but the bottom line is (at least for me) I still end up at the end of the day with pretty much the same battery left as I did when I had 8.0. That's all that really matters to me pretty much tells the story.
The prior 8.0 battery I believe had a bug where it did not report correctly. I remember before I'd use my phone for a long period before it even moved off 100%;
I did the 8.1 update and my battery is much better than it was on my previous phone. I may have had a bad device.
I think that is a bad way to judge battery. It is more accurate with 8.1 as with 8.0 i would get like 30 minutes of screen time some times and still be at 100-99%. if you do that math on that this would probably last me the whole week. But I used to get ~ 5hours of screen time and now i will be lucky to get 4 hours. My routine and work schedule is the same since the update. 8.1 I for sure lost about 1 hour of screen time.
I just got my Pixel 2 and have had it for 3 days now. I did my first test today against my original Pixel. My original was charged up to about 95% and my Pixel 2 was also charged up to 95%. I left my original sitting at home while I took my Pixel 2 to work with me. If I had had my original with me, my phone would be charging right now because it would be below 15%. Pixel 2 is sitting pretty at 67% As for the original that has been sitting on my night stand doing nothing, it's at 56%.
So if there's a battery issue with 8.1, either i'm not experiencing it or I should be at a higher percentage, lol. BTW, both phones all have the same apps and same configurations. Running for about 13hrs each. And as others have said, I remember also seeing that 8.0 was giving incorrect battery readings on the Pixel 2, which 8.1 fixed.