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[GUIDE] Battery Management for noobs

Hey guys,
So after many months with the XT720 and alot of flashing and trying to get the most out of my battery, i've come up with a few conclusions about battery life in general and how to extend it. I thought I'd share here. This is mostly aimed at people who are new to android and have not experimented like some of the more advanced users we have on this forum. Hope you find this helpful and please feel free to make additions.
General Battery Info
The XT720 was my first android phone, and I came from a long line of typical nokia phones whose batteries would last for ages. I had no idea the kind of power an android device would use. When I started out using it, i was surprised at how quickly the battery would die. You'd think with advancing software we'd have better batteries but sadly batteries are lagging behind in technology. Generally speaking you can expect the following battery life from your XT720.
Heavy use: 10-14 hours
Moderate use: 16-20 hours
Light use: 1 day - 1 day 12 hrs.
Note: New batteries improve with each charge cycle. It is recommended to go through a few complete charge cycles when you buy a new phone. After that, complete discharges are not recommended and its smart to start charging your phone when it hits the 20-25% mark.
How to improve battery life
1: Battery Calibration
If you've ever flashed a new ROM, you must have noticed a sharp decline in battery performance. This is partly due to old battery statistics left behind from your old ROM. Android is a smart OS and collects information over time. The more you use it, the more accurate it gets. In the same way it collects information from your battery usage and reports your battery percentages according to that. When you flash a new ROM, sometimes android thinks that your battery is 100% when its really lower than that and that causes relative reduced battery performance. To deal with that it is recommended that you use a nifty free app called Battery Calibration from the android market. What this does it removes the old battery stats and allows your new ROM to create its own battery stats. Charge your battery to full, use the battery calibration. Drain once till phone turns off by itself and charge to full again. You will notice a sharp increase in battery life.
2. Battery Managment
We all know that android has its own battery management built in but it usually doesnt give complete information about the phone. For that you need to dive deeper into the settings. Usually if you experience battery drain its because of a rogue app and believe it or not some common apps you wont think off drain unnecessary battery. To see your complete Battery Stats input this code into the dialer.
Code:
*#*#4636#*#*
This will take you to a bunch of options. What you're interested in is Battery History. When you tap that it will show you two drop down menu's.
1) Other Usage
2) Since last unplugged
Other usage shows you how long your phone has been running and how long it has been asleep. Also shows you how long your wifi has been on and running and how long your screen has been on. It is important to see how long your phone has been running. For example if your phone has an uptime of 20 hours and its been running 5 hours out of that. Your run time is 25%. Which is very good. Sometimes an app can run even when your phone screen is off. This will represent a longer run time even when you have your phone lying on a desk or something. See this setting and correlate with the amount you have used your phone. Does it seem normal? If no then use the first drop down menu and select
Partial Wake:
Partial wake is basically, any app which takes your phone out of sleep mode to use the CPU even when youre screen is off. These are apps which need to sync or use the phone resources. In this you will see a list of apps and how much they have caused a partial wake lock. See anything unsual? For me one app that caused unsual drainage was latitute. Yes, i had simply signed into it and i didnt know it was updating my location every 5 minutes. Extreme battery drain for me even when my phone was idle. See which app was draining your battery and either tweak the settings or remove altogether.
GPS, Sensors, CPU:
You can also see these in the first drop down menu. Certain apps like screeble use the sensors alot, and hence cause drain. Obviously games, camera, will stress the CPU. See if anything is causing drain in that and adjust accordingly.
Miscellaneous Information
After you have dealt with rogue apps that you don't use that drain youre battery your battery life will depend on how you use your phone. But hopefull these tips will help you with increasing your battery life. I do have some more information on different settings and supposed battery saving applications.
Autosync: When you enable auto sync, you allow google and other accounts to sync on a regular basis. This is important for people who need to use push email etc. It does not drain battery IF you tweak what you need synced. In google for example you can have your contacts, calendar, google+, google reader, gmail all to sync by default. If you just need email, please untick the rest. This will help you save battery life. Increase your update times for facebook and google+ if you dont recieve many updates all the time or turn them off altogether. If you have many services syncing at the same time you will get battery drain.
Wifi Sleep Policy: This is sort of a hidden menu. If you go into wireless & networks >> Wifi settings >> settings key >> advanced >> wifi sleep policy. This has three settings. Never close down wifi, never close when charging, or close with screen off. If you choose never your wifi will always be on, which will in turn crunch the **** out of your battery. If you use it off with screen off, remember it takes about 5 minutes to turn the wifi off. I personally use the never with plugged in. Its an intermediate. So when im plugged in wifi always stays on and when im not it follows the screen off protocol.
Wifi Vs Mobile Data: Having mobile data on all the time, does not drain battery. The only time the battery gets drained is when the data connection is active i.e you have many apps on autosync youll see your battery going down. If you arent doing anything and your phone is connected to Edge or 3G your battery will drain regularly. 2G networks drain less than 3G keep that in mind. If you are actively using your connection, wifi will take less battery because speeds are faster and you will be using it for a little time. Also your signal strength has alot of effect on battery. If you have crappy 3G signals your radio will actively be searching for a connection the same goes for wifi. That is important to keep in mind.
Control Background data: By selecting this option you can allow or disallow apps to connect to data without any permission. Some apps require this like the android market. If you uncheck this apps wont be able to sync automatically in the background.
Milestone Overclocking: This is fairly obvious. The higher you overclock with higher vsel the more battery drain you will have. Some use set cpu with profiles but I found that if i set the setcpu too low while idle It takes time for the cpu to charge up when i recieve a call or turn the screen on. Ringtones lag etc etc. I let android do my CPU management and its fine. and comfortable setting would be 850 MHZ, 56 vsel but you can change according to your phone usage.
Juice Defender/ Screebl / Task killers:
In my personal experience with juice defender ultimate I found that with the above precautions juice defender didnt make much of a difference and actually used more battery. First off theres an extra process going on in the back. Second activating and deactivating the connection everytime the screen goes off uses more juice because your radio has to search for the signal hundreds of times as compared to not having it in the first place. Screebl is good if you dont want your screen to annoyingly turn off while youre doing something but it surely doesnt save battery life. Task killers are a no no for android. They kill tasks which start up anyways, its better to use autokiller memory optimizer which tweaks androids internal memory settings and allows for more free ram without killing processes without reason.
System Apps:
Some system apps run uselessly in the background specially with stock ROM's this is called bloatware. Remove all unused system apps with titanium backup to stop them from running in the background for no reason at all.
A final word
Finally after all this tweaking, just use your phone as normal. Dont worry about the battery all the time checking how much its drained, itll mess your head up and make you enjoy your phone less. Battery temperature also changes battery life. Keep your phone out of the sun or in hot places.

Thanks, good article.

Very detailed and useful
Sent from my Milestone XT720 using XDA App

Thanks for this interessting article!
Could you make a list of the bloatware that can be safely removed?

I figured this would just list all the usual stuff I've heard. I'm glad to say I was wrong! A bunch of useful info here I now plan to put to use. Many thanks
Might want to mention the display being the biggest drain of battery on this phone. Setting it to automatic brightness or lower will increase battery life. I love the screen at full brightness so I don't really follow that, but for those looking to squeeze some extra time and don't mind less brightness...

Thanks guys, glad you people found it useful.
syrenz said:
Might want to mention the display being the biggest drain of battery on this phone. Setting it to automatic brightness or lower will increase battery life. I love the screen at full brightness so I don't really follow that, but for those looking to squeeze some extra time and don't mind less brightness...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes! Can't believe I missed that one out. In the start id use the lowest brightness setting, which would be fine indoors. But outside it was impossible to see the phone because of its insanely reflective glass. Since we have an ambient light sensor I use it on automatic and it does a good job. Full bright strains my eyes abit thats why I dont keep it on full bright So for people really wanting to save the juice you can keep your brightness on the lowest level. Also when you take the phone out of your pocket and use it, its better to put the phone to sleep with the power button than let it timeout by itself. Those 10-15 seconds for each time you use phone count towards many minutes of unused display time in the end and does make a difference.

This is a very gd post with lots o useful info!! ok i have a qn, is using the phone a lot while the charging good for the battery? And if u let the battery charge even though its already 100 percent for an hour good? srry if it is noob qn...

androidlover123 said:
This is a very gd post with lots o useful info!! ok i have a qn, is using the phone a lot while the charging good for the battery? And if u let the battery charge even though its already 100 percent for an hour good? srry if it is noob qn...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
1. Using your phone while charging does not affect your battery life, and is neither good nor bad. It is perfectly normal to use your phone while charging and is sometimes recommended while doing battery intensive tasks for example navigating while driving, wifi tethering, playing memory intensive games and finally outputing video through HDMI.
2. Overcharging was a phenomenom is older lithium ion battery. New batteries have bypass circuits. So when your phone reaches complete charge, it does not charge any further. So you should not be worried about overcharging your XT720.
Hope this helps.

Excelent article and good quality info. Thanks and best regards!

awesome article! Great information. Thanks a lot for putting that together. I have already started using a few of the tips mentioned.

u da maaan dude, thanks for a very detailed and informative article

Ten steps to increase battery life of android phone

Having been an Android user since its debut, one thing which I hate is its battery back up. In fact most smart phones have this issue.
I tried all sorts of tips and tricks given by other post and users to improve the battery power. I would not say that they did not help, but those tips did not maximize the battery life drastically.
Finally with lots of trial and errors, I came up with my own set of tips which has maximized my phone's battery life. I don't think I can expect more than this from Android.
Steps to Save Battery Life:
Reduce screen brightness
Reduce the Screen Timeout
Keep a Black wallpaper or a dark theme
Restart the phone once a day
Switch off GPS, bluetooth, WIFI
Uninstall unused apps
Change Refresh Intervals
Change your charging pattern
Playing videos
Stop staring at your phone
You may want to read the entire article
http://thelunchtalk.wordpress.com/2011/12/26/maximiz-android-battery-life/
Thank me if its helps

And the big one: don't sync accounts which you don't really use: twitter & LinkedIn contacts, active exchange calendar and tasks etc

Leaving wifi on will actually reduce power consumption, unless mobile data is disconnected.
I always leave 3G off during the day, except for when I'm actively using it. Wifi is left on at all times while at home and its battery drain is negligible.

And the part with the Black wallpaper will only apply if you have a LED screen.

Thank you, it may help me

Braneless said:
Leaving wifi on will actually reduce power consumption, unless mobile data is disconnected.
I always leave 3G off during the day, except for when I'm actively using it. Wifi is left on at all times while at home and its battery drain is negligible.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You are right WIFI power consumption is negligible. But when there is no WIFI signal, that is when it best to switch of WIFI. There are some apps which will switch off WIFI automatically when there is no signal.

Stop staring at your phone, haha.

Thanks, hopefuly help.
Thanks, hopefuly help.

Wifi draining battery??

I've only had my nexus for a week now and I'm trying to hunt down the reason I'm getting poor battery life. At first it was nlp wakelocks but that went away on its own somehow. Now its my wifi draining battery, in 8 hours of idle overnight it went from 100% to 79% and wifi was the top usage. I've never seen this before on any phone with any rom so I'm not sure what to do about it.

Hi,
Try Settings/Wi-Fi/Menu/Advanced/ and untick Scanning always available...

This is what I did to improve my battery:
1. Location Services : If you are not in a neighborhood with a lot of wifi spots you will most likely feel this draining your battery life. Under settings make sure that Location Services is set to battery saving and not High accuracy.
2. Widgets : Weather widgets, games eat battery by constantly fetching information . Check the settings for these widgets and make sure they are using wifi and not updating the weather information every 30 mins or so. I keep my settings to update weather information every hour to keep it reasonable. The Gmail widget sometimes eats your battery too. I removed the widget and used an icon in the dock at the bottom to check my email. Another thing I noticed was that some widgets are just more battery intensive than others. For example I found HD widgets consumed nearly twice as much battery as Chronus on the home screen but both displayed the same information.
3. Restart your phone : Sometimes residual processes from closed apps could cause issues. Restart your phone if you haven't done it in a while and it should clear up any unnecessary things.
4. Keep wifi on during sleep : I made sure my phone uses wifi even when its sleeping. 3g / 4g eats the battery like crazy if you turn off wifi when your phone sleeps. This should be a default setting as pointed out by some users. In my case it had been changed probably when I was tinkering with the phone. You can find this setting in the Settings -> Wifi -> advanced -> Keep wifi on during sleep.
You can also use apps like Greenify , Tasker , and Llama.
5. Don't use Automatic Brightness : Turns out if the sensors are constantly looking to adjust brightness it takes up more battery. I set my brightness at around 60% and it works just fine throughout the day.
6. Use wifi over 3G/4G/LTE if possible
7. Switch off wifi when using Data: Android doesnt switch off your WiFi when you use data because Google wants you to use it for Locations and help build their database of networks.Switch off WiFi completely when using data to save a good chunk of battery.
8. Turn off Vibration on touch : Typing uses quite a bit of battery over the course of a day. Try switching Vibration on touch off.
9. Use Franco Kernel: : This will require rooting your device however it makes it a lot more power efficient.
10. Turn down the Facebook refresh rate : Make sure it updates not very often( every 3-4 hours) or never. IMO your phone is better off without Facebook or any other battery hog social networking apps.

11 Tips to Boost Your Android Phone's Battery Life

Today's Android phones pack big bright screens and high-end features that suck plenty of power; here's how to squeeze the most juice out of your battery.
1. See what's sucking the most juice. Navigate to Settings > Battery to see an organized breakdown of what's consuming your phone's battery. Applications and features will display in a descending list of battery hogs. If you see an application you barely use or a feature you never use, you'll want to uninstall the app or turn off the feature.
2. Reduce email, Twitter, and Facebook polling. Set your various messaging apps to "manual" for the polling or refresh frequency, just as a test, and you'll instantly extend your device's battery life by a significant amount. Once you see what a difference that makes, try re-enabling just the most important ones, and possibly reducing their polling frequency in the process.
3. Turn unnecessary hardware radios off. It's great that today's phones have LTE, NFC, GPS, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth, but do you really need all five activated 24 hours per day? Android keeps location-based apps resident in the background, and the constant drain on your battery will become noticeable, fast. If your phone has a power control widget, you can use it to quickly turn on/off GPS (the largest power drain), NFC, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and LTE. On stock Android, swipe down to bring up the Notification bar, and then tap the icon on the top right corner.
4. Use the extra power saving mode if you have it. The aforementioned Galaxy S5 and HTC One (M8) both have Ultra Power Saving and Extreme Power Saving modes, respectively, that limits the phone to texting, phone calls, Web browsing, and Facebook. This can squeeze extra hours or even a day of standby time out of just a few remaining percentage points of battery.
5. Trim apps running in the background. From Settings > Apps, swipe to the left; you'll see a list of apps that are currently running. Tap on each one to see what they're for; you can stop any apps that you don't need running in the background all of the time.
6. Dump unnecessary home screen widgets and live wallpaper. Just because they're sitting on the home screen, seemingly inactive, doesn't mean they're not consuming power.
7. Turn down the brightness and turn off Automatic Brightness. It's probably obvious at this point, but you'll be surprised by how much this one alone helps to improve battery life.
8. Update your apps. Applications often get updated to use less battery power, so you should make sure your apps are up to date. Even if you configured the phone for automatic updates, some apps still require that you manually install updates. Check for app updates in Google Play by hitting the menu key and going to My Apps.
9. Keep an eye on signal strength. If you're in an area with poor cellular coverage, the phone will work harder to latch onto a strong-enough signal. This has an adverse effect on battery life.
10. Check the reviews. We conduct battery life tests on every single Android phone we review. Unsurprisingly, the results vary widely between handsets, even on the same network. When choosing a phone, make sure that real world talk time is sufficient.
11. Buy a battery case or larger extended battery.

Niki Niki said:
Today's Android phones pack big bright screens and high-end features that suck plenty of power; here's how to squeeze the most juice out of your battery.
1. See what's sucking the most juice. Navigate to Settings > Battery to see an organized breakdown of what's consuming your phone's battery. Applications and features will display in a descending list of battery hogs. If you see an application you barely use or a feature you never use, you'll want to uninstall the app or turn off the feature.
2. Reduce email, Twitter, and Facebook polling. Set your various messaging apps to "manual" for the polling or refresh frequency, just as a test, and you'll instantly extend your device's battery life by a significant amount. Once you see what a difference that makes, try re-enabling just the most important ones, and possibly reducing their polling frequency in the process.
3. Turn unnecessary hardware radios off. It's great that today's phones have LTE, NFC, GPS, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth, but do you really need all five activated 24 hours per day? Android keeps location-based apps resident in the background, and the constant drain on your battery will become noticeable, fast. If your phone has a power control widget, you can use it to quickly turn on/off GPS (the largest power drain), NFC, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and LTE. On stock Android, swipe down to bring up the Notification bar, and then tap the icon on the top right corner.
4. Use the extra power saving mode if you have it. The aforementioned Galaxy S5 and HTC One (M8) both have Ultra Power Saving and Extreme Power Saving modes, respectively, that limits the phone to texting, phone calls, Web browsing, and Facebook. This can squeeze extra hours or even a day of standby time out of just a few remaining percentage points of battery.
5. Trim apps running in the background. From Settings > Apps, swipe to the left; you'll see a list of apps that are currently running. Tap on each one to see what they're for; you can stop any apps that you don't need running in the background all of the time.
6. Dump unnecessary home screen widgets and live wallpaper. Just because they're sitting on the home screen, seemingly inactive, doesn't mean they're not consuming power.
7. Turn down the brightness and turn off Automatic Brightness. It's probably obvious at this point, but you'll be surprised by how much this one alone helps to improve battery life.
8. Update your apps. Applications often get updated to use less battery power, so you should make sure your apps are up to date. Even if you configured the phone for automatic updates, some apps still require that you manually install updates. Check for app updates in Google Play by hitting the menu key and going to My Apps.
9. Keep an eye on signal strength. If you're in an area with poor cellular coverage, the phone will work harder to latch onto a strong-enough signal. This has an adverse effect on battery life.
10. Check the reviews. We conduct battery life tests on every single Android phone we review. Unsurprisingly, the results vary widely between handsets, even on the same network. When choosing a phone, make sure that real world talk time is sufficient.
11. Buy a battery case or larger extended battery.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you! It's a good idea

Thanks, great tips!
I had a question, does enabling "double tap to wake" consume more battery because the phone is always on the lookout for a touch or something even when the screen is off?

How to save battery life on your Android device:

Let us not imagine a smartphone without battery. Battery is most important part of a smartphone. There is a few cause to drain battery quickly. Like as big LCD display and luscious AMOLED display, and background apps obviously drain your battery quickly. You can do something to make battery for last longer. Let’s see that how to increase battery on your android smartphone.
how save battery life
How android batteries work:
Have you heard that most smartphones have a lithium-polymer either or lithium-ion battery. Both of actually lithium-ion though, and as like, do not have a 'memory', which means that you can charge them from any level – you don't have to fully discharge it before charging it up – and you don't have to charge them all the way to 100 percent.
In fact, lithium-polymer either or lithium-ion types of batteries affected by low voltage problems, so it's actually better to partially charge it (say, from 20 percent to 90 percent) than to fully charge and fully drain tit. Just explore that is it work for you and you can easily increase battery on your Android smartphone.
how save battery life
Using du battery saver apps:
du battery saver is a most powerfully app for save battery.you can use du battery saver for save battery life.for download click here
Black wallpaper can increase battery:
If your phone has an AMOLED display (like as Samsung devices), use a dark-colored wallpaper for background . AMOLED screens only illuminate the colored pixels that’s why Black wallpaper can increase battery life. Black pixels are unlit, so that less power is needed to light them up.
Doze:
With the entrance of Marshmallow came a new feature called Doze, which is helps you get to reduce drain of your battery. , Doze is the most noticeable addition for android Marshmallow. It is allow default and typically permit your device to enter hibernation mode when it has been lock or unused for a long period of time.
Update your apps into latest version:
Keep update your apps with the latest version. The developers constantly update apps for battery and memory optimization. Keeping your apps updated also means you have the best optimizations available
Using Greenify apps:
There are many Android apps that claim that they optimize performance and increase battery life, Greenify is one of them and it’s actually works by preventing them from operating in the background. , which reduces their impact on the system Greenify stops this by sending those apps into hibernation and saving battery life while improving performance.
Reduce auto-brightness:
The screen is a biggest battery drainer. This is one of the best ways to increase your battery life to use auto-brightness manually to a level that is low but comfortable your eyes. And do not use display as auto-brightness mode.
Turn off vibrate and haptic feedback : For save battery turn-off your vibration alerts for incoming call, and turn-of your keyboard vibration and touchpad sound.
Use 'Do Not Disturb' or 'sleep' schedule :
when you are In a meeting , set your device to not ring, vibrate or connect to the internet when you are sleeping you can enable blocking mode to switch off Wi-Fi and mobile data when you don't need them.
For this purpose many phones have a Do Not Disturb setting.
For example you can use airplane mode.
Trun-off unnecessary service:
Whenever you don't need them turn off, Wi-Fi , GPS, Bluetooth, NFC and mobile data,Turning off location. It’s will increase battery on your Android smartphone.
Explore the battery saving features on your phone:
At first Find out the battery saving option in your smartphone and Trun on your bettery saving mode in your android smartphone when you are out of home and not use the phone.
Turn off auto-sync trap:
If you do not need google account update in every 30 minutes, tap into setting to turn-off google account turnoff auto sync and for these app you do not need update. For example email, Facebook, twitter, reddit Instagram etc. just sync when you actually use the app.
I miss something’s? What you have any idea about battery saving tips? Tell me about them in the comments.

I don't, and will never use gapps or any google's apps.
I am experiencing a high and crazy performance using ntfs as androed installation.
I will never burn my money in ext2/3/4 or any ext device.
I will never pay absurds for unrooted phones to rooting only to purge gapps and gogle apps or any other kind of damned apps that stays cooking battery.
My next device, needs be like this screenshot, with ntfs, rooteable, rom choices, or DEATH!
I hate androids.
This is why i preffer write Androed
Sent from SomeFon