Related
***
Due to further information from both the hardware and OS side of the house, it has been determined that this process is completely unnecessary for the Captivate.
You may still follow this procedure if you like or if it makes you feel good.
Good luck and God bless.
***
So, you are having trouble with your battery seemingly draining too quickly, especially after having flashed many ROMs/Kernels/etc...
It is possible that the problem (or part of the problem) is not necessarily the phone using too much power, but rather the phone not really knowing how much power you have left, or where 100% or 0% really are. If this is the case for you, you should see some results from doing the following:
(Do at your own risk. If your phone runs away and joins the circus I am not responsible)
1. Connect the phone to the charger with the phone powered on, and allow the phone to charge until it shows 100%
2. Disconnect the phone from the charger, and power it off.
3. Reconnect the phone to the charger with the phone powered off, and allow the phone to charge until the battery indicator shows 100% (you can use vol-up/vol-down to make the indicator come back up when the screen goes to sleep).
4. Disconnect the phone from the charger and power it on.
5. Use the phone as normal until it shuts off, then plug it in, turn it on and use as normal, charging whenever you like.
You should only need to use this sequence one time.
Hope this helps.
...
10 char
Thanks for posting this, I remembered seeing it in another topic but I couldnt find it anywhere.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using XDA App
KJPDX said:
Thanks for posting this, I remembered seeing it in another topic but I couldnt find it anywhere.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, I had it in a text file on my computer from a little while back, and was going to bump the topic but I couldn't find it anymore.
This may have to be done again after ROMs and stuff, so either bookmark this post, or copy-paste it into a document on your computer you can refer back to later.
Also, this give creedence to the age-old, often-debated theory that you should give your battery a full charge before turning on your phone for the first time...
It makes me sick when we have to do all this crap.
mwxiao said:
It makes me sick when we have to do all this crap.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sorry, it's a price we pay for messing with the software/firmware on the phone.
Also, if people did an actual full charge before using their phone for the first time, there would probably be fewer "Battery Life Sucks" threads...
Dont forget to boot into recovery after you full charged (adb reboot recovery or Power off the phone and then hold the volume up + Volume down + the power key. When it goes black the 2nd time release the power button and keep holding the volume buttons.) wipe stats Clockworkmod recovery -> advanced -> wipe battery stats.
Question for ya's.when I got this phone the att dude just turned it on and gave it to me without allowing for a full charge.should I go back slap him in the face and get a new battery and fully charge it before first use, cause its almost been two weeks and my batt life still seems kinda poor to me.
Also if I do that should I unroot and restore the att apps or will they not notice or bother to check that
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using XDA App
Recalibrating may help slightly, but the Captivate just has a ****ty battery life. Read here, it was the worst in the entire test. No coincidence, the S-AMOLED's came in last in battery life and the S-LCD's came in first.
http://androidheadlines.com/2010/08/android-phones-battery-tests-are-in-and-we-have-a-winner.html
derek4484 said:
Recalibrating may help slightly, but the Captivate just has a ****ty battery life. Read here, it was the worst in the entire test. No coincidence, the S-AMOLED's came in last in battery life and the S-LCD's came in first.
http://androidheadlines.com/2010/08/android-phones-battery-tests-are-in-and-we-have-a-winner.html
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Without any details of how that test was performed, the results are meaningless.
I get battery life as good as my old iphone with the captivate. I wish it was better but it seems very competitive to me.
derek4484 said:
Recalibrating may help slightly, but the Captivate just has a ****ty battery life. Read here, it was the worst in the entire test. No coincidence, the S-AMOLED's came in last in battery life and the S-LCD's came in first.
http://androidheadlines.com/2010/08/android-phones-battery-tests-are-in-and-we-have-a-winner.html
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Something doesn't make sense since the Epic 4G has better battery life than the Captivate. Me thinks they didn't test these properly.
k2snowboards88 said:
Without any details of how that test was performed, the results are meaningless.
I get battery life as good as my old iphone with the captivate. I wish it was better but it seems very competitive to me.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I can't even come close to the same battery life on this captivate as I did with my old iphone. I have to charge this phone every single night, where with my iphone I only had to charge it 2 or 3 times per week. I take it off charge every morning and by 10pm its down to around 20%. My old iphone I could go 2-3 days, and I do the same things on both phones. Checking facebook and twitter, playing a little bit of kingdoms live, a little websurfing, and checking emails, as they come in.
Same usage and 1/2 to 1/3 of the same battery life. Not so good.
Also, you cant say the test was meaningless because they dont tell you how they tested it. As long as they ran the same test on all the phones then a direct comparison of battery life is very legitimate and meaningful. But I agree, I would like to know what their testing methods are.
derek4484 said:
I can't even come close to the same battery life on this captivate as I did with my old iphone. I have to charge this phone every single night, where with my iphone I only had to charge it 2 or 3 times per week. I take it off charge every morning and by 10pm its down to around 20%. My old iphone I could go 2-3 days, and I do the same things on both phones. Checking facebook and twitter, playing a little bit of kingdoms live, a little websurfing, and checking emails, as they come in.
Same usage and 1/2 to 1/3 of the same battery life. Not so good.
Also, you cant say the test was meaningless because they dont tell you how they tested it. As long as they ran the same test on all the phones then a direct comparison of battery life is very legitimate and meaningful. But I agree, I would like to know what their testing methods are.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
By old iPhone, do you mean 1st gen EDGE only iPhone? If that's the case, you can disable 3G on Captivate and get similar battery life.
k2snowboards88 said:
Without any details of how that test was performed, the results are meaningless.
I get battery life as good as my old iphone with the captivate. I wish it was better but it seems very competitive to me.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you go to the actual Laptop magazine post it explains
The test itself is fairly simple. Avram, our tireless Web director, modified the LAPTOP Battery Test we use for notebooks, and created an Android App that does much the same thing: It opens the phone’s Web browser to one of 60 popular Web sites, remains there for 60 seconds, closes the browser, then reopens the browser to next Web site on the list. It does so until the phone’s battery dies, all while recording the time elapsed.
Here’s how we set up the phones before we tested them:
First, we download My Settings and Advanced Task Killer, two free apps that are useful regardless.
Then, we open My Settings, and do the following:
Turn screen brightness to 40%, and turn off auto brightness.
Turn off Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS location, cell location, and auto sync.
Deactivate screen timeout; that is, make sure the screen stays on indefinitely.
In the Web browser, we turn off Flash support and plug-ins.
We placed the phone in an area that was receiving at least 4 bars of service.
http://blog.laptopmag.com/android-battery-test-reveals-droid-x-lasts-longest-amoled-handsets-trail
Sounds about right to me although I dont think I could get 4.43 hours web. Most screen usaged I have gotten is up in the 3hour range.
I've done this on my captivate.. and I think it made it a little worse..
to be honest.. just leave it be and charge when you can.. lol hope for the best!
maybe other people will have better luck..
Many people also seem to have success with fully discharging their battery before charging it again for the first 2-3 times. Seems the battery learns its 'boundaries'. Many are reporting 20-30 hours after that with moderate usage.
mterrence5 said:
If you go to the actual Laptop magazine post it explains
The test itself is fairly simple. Avram, our tireless Web director, modified the LAPTOP Battery Test we use for notebooks, and created an Android App that does much the same thing: It opens the phone’s Web browser to one of 60 popular Web sites, remains there for 60 seconds, closes the browser, then reopens the browser to next Web site on the list. It does so until the phone’s battery dies, all while recording the time elapsed.
Here’s how we set up the phones before we tested them:
First, we download My Settings and Advanced Task Killer, two free apps that are useful regardless.
Then, we open My Settings, and do the following:
Turn screen brightness to 40%, and turn off auto brightness.
Turn off Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS location, cell location, and auto sync.
Deactivate screen timeout; that is, make sure the screen stays on indefinitely.
In the Web browser, we turn off Flash support and plug-ins.
We placed the phone in an area that was receiving at least 4 bars of service.
http://blog.laptopmag.com/android-battery-test-reveals-droid-x-lasts-longest-amoled-handsets-trail
Sounds about right to me although I dont think I could get 4.43 hours web. Most screen usaged I have gotten is up in the 3hour range.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think that turning all of the screens to 40% brightness invalidates the results. To equal the playing field, the screens should be set to equal luminance.
My battery meter has been flashing 0 for 10 minutes now. Should I be worried? Should I return my phone? True story.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using XDA App
Still here. Battery hasn't died.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using XDA App
We always neglect the way we charge our mobiles, it’s very important to equally take care of your phone’s battery along with your phone. So, when it comes to the charging then you will have to ensure that you never overcharge your phone which means that never put your phone for charging over night as this may hamper the battery’s life very badly due to which you may even end up spoiling battery sooner than expected. It hardly takes 3 hours for phone to fully charge, so never charge your phone more than this time.
Also, many of the users tend to charge their phones regularly, like even if battery goes below 50-40% people tend to haste and put the phone up for charging. So unless and until you are going away from the charging point, it’s not a wise decision to charge it way ahead than the battery zeroing point. Make use of the AC chargers rather than using the USB points for charging the phone as basically the USB charging does the trickle charging which is not good for often charging the phone.
All batteries has the Golden color notch pins and with frequent pull outs these notches become loosely fit and are rubbed with the pins which leads to the wear and tear of the contacts and hence it decreases the life of the battery and the effective charging of the device is not passed on to the phone as the contacts in the form of pins gets loosen up. And also last but not the least never make use of the batteries which are not as per the prescribed specification chart which comes along with the phone and always use original batteries which can be purchased from Samsung.
Never put additional sim cards or anything like that in the compartment of the battery as this may cause some serious issue with the battery and may even explode at an extreme situation as every battery generates heat and it requires space to dissipate that heat and if its interrupted then it can be dangerous for batteries.
Unless and until you are not using the actual 3G Service, it’s better to choose the GSM Mode network rather than selecting Dual mode or the WCDMA Mode which drains the battery faster than the GSM mode.
Make sure that you set the brightness of the device to automatic and not to the fullest which is set by default, since it’s a touch screen phone back light should be not more than 15 seconds as that’s more than enough which can be done by going to HOME > MENU > Settings > Display > Brightness and Screen timeout
Make sure that You Tube, music listening, programs which runs in the background including the Sync option along with Bluetooth should be turned off whenever necessary as these too constitutes fair amount of battery drain.
GPS as well as the Camera eats up a lot of battery, so always remember to switch these both off when not in use or necessary and specially when battery is low then it’s advised to not to use these features which can be quickly done by setting the widget shortcut on the home screen itself, touch and hold on the Home Screen in the blank area and not on any app icon and select Widget>Power Control. Add this Widget to your home screen to choose the express settings
Copy and pasta.
Printerscape said:
Copy and pasta.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
El spamola?
Nice post, incredibly informative!
Sent from my Desire HD using XDA Premium App
OP,
WTF - you can't overcharge your battery. The ROM/kernel doesn't allow it. The closer the battery gets to 100% the voltage is decreased further and further. At 100% there is just a small trickle that roughly breaks even with the demand of the phone. Telling people they shouldn't leave their phone plugged in for more than 3 hours is ridiculous. There was just a thread on here a couple of weeks ago where an AT&T employee told someone the same thing, and everyone was making fun of how stupid that advice was.
^+1 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Sorry, OP. You are passing off bad information.
Thread closed.
Ok, I realize this is beating a dead horse, but the battery life in my Droid Pro is beyond pathetic. I actually burn through a battery (with light to moderate usage) faster than I can charge one lol. I am on my third battery today and it's not even noon. I'm in the red on the third one and the first is still not done charging (using a separate external wall charger). This is stupid.
Androids going through battery really quickly has always been a complaint, actually I hear that complaint about almost every smart phone. In my android experience, If I pull my phone off the charger at 8am, it should be about dead by 8pm, if I have only used the phone minimally. If I'm listening to radio, or playing some games, or just keeping my phone awake for a while, my phone will be dead by 3-4pm.
Your case seems a little extreme, and all I can recommend is using a power widget to turn on and off all your basic stuff. turn the brightness all the way down if you don't need it, or try auto. Keep bluetooth, wireless, and GPS off until you need it. Also, personally, I only let my phone sync while wifi is on, otherwise leaving sync on all the time kills my battery. All I can say is do the basic things people recommend to extend your battery life. I know with my first android phone, I kept everything on, all the time, and the battery sucked horribly, but turning them on and off through settings was really annoying to do everytime, so with a widget on the desktop for that stuff I don't mind it at all anymore.
You also just may have an app or two that's destroying your battery. I can't recommend anything off the top of my head, but there are apps that give you a general idea of where all your battery is going.
Yeah, I keep GPS and bluetooth off. Also, I downloaded the app killer and hit that several times a day. What I don't get (total droid newbie here) is why, when I hit the app killer, it says that it killed 13 apps. 13 apps? Why in the world are 13 apps running? The phone is just sitting there. I'll hit the app killer again (20-30 minutes later) and another 12 or 13 apps get KO'd. It's crazy. But yes, I know I've got something stupid going on but I guess I'm just too dumb to figure it out. I've only had this for a couple of days and, as my ID suggests, I came from Blackberry.
Get rid of app killers, Android 2.2 and beyond do not need it, you're doing your battery worse.
frombb2droid said:
Ok, I realize this is beating a dead horse, but the battery life in my Droid Pro is beyond pathetic. I actually burn through a battery (with light to moderate usage) faster than I can charge one lol. I am on my third battery today and it's not even noon. I'm in the red on the third one and the first is still not done charging (using a separate external wall charger). This is stupid.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This battery life issue is what's going to bring Android down. Google needs to get a handle on it because the more and more people who come to Android from iPhone or something else and experience this issue will inevitably have a less than content experience.
You are right, this could be a deal breaker for me. Yes, the blackberry browser sucks, but I'm seriously teetering on whether or not that is the lessor of two evils. I'm on day four with the droid. Granted, I haven't spent a ton of time dissecting this device, but I don't really have a ton of time to give...nor do I want to carry a half dozen batteries with me
I Am Marino said:
Get rid of app killers, Android 2.2 and beyond do not need it, you're doing your battery worse.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Does the newer software kill the app when you leave it? I know with the Blackberry, you had to close the app or it would keep running in the background. I really have no clue how the droid works. Forgive me for being so droid retarded, but I've had no formal training lol.
And, BTW, this is the first electronic device I've bought that came with no manual. To me, that's super funny!
Android 2.2 only kills the application if the memory goes below a certain threshold to keep the system from clogging up.
yeah...android phones' battery is a bitterly troublesome issue!
Honestly, sounds like some faulty batteries here. I have a Desire HD and I listen to 2 hours of music and play close to an hour of games with another hour of web browsing a day on it. I tend to make perhaps 10 minutes of phone calls and I have autosync on for my gmail (but nothing else) and I dont have to charge it during the day at all. I am however in strong signal areas which makes a massive difference.
I am curious about the battery in the one x, and especially the habits of consumption.
I have been around the block with android development. I had a captivate before this, and managed to get great battery life out of that! That was much more simple however. Flash a rom, cycle the power, cycle, cycle, cycle. Then you're good to go.
I feel like the way that the one x deals with the battery is different, more advanced. Some bootloader level software that is untouched, like the hardware keys and whatnot.
My battery has been hit and miss to say the LEAST. I use BBS to take care of wakelocks, keep data and gps usage to a minimum (my regular use), and I charge my battery when the phone is dead up to 100%.
The back of my one x gets very very hot sometimes. This varies rom to rom. Started with stock sense ICS, took the OTA jelly update, now I am rooted, s-off, and on cyanogenmod 10.2 nightlies (which run insanely well btw). The issue is the same. It reacts the same, and is just as unpredictable. I have read about this, and know its a hardware issue, but I am still curious about it, as I have heard SO many different things. I am usually able to quickly curb the issue by turning on airplane mode, or turning my phone off (for a while, as rebooting doesnt seem to help).
In passing, I also read something about "HTC Charge Mode". I have read forum posts where people say things like "hold both volume keys and the power button for two minutes, this with re-calibrate the battery circuit." There are so many combinations of keys and timings that people talk about that I can't help but believe that it is all garbage.
The heating up is typically caused by camera usage, data (radio, I assume) usage, games (temple run 2, gyro), and sometimes even spotify (offline playlists). Wifi seems ok, not too much of a contributor. When I was on stock sense jellybean, I was able to fix a lot of the heating up by turning off "google location services".
The weirdest part is that if I feel the phone warming up, I can go into airplane mode like I said, and its fine. If I keep perpetuating it, however, it gets very, very hot. Hot enough, im sure, to melt soldered connections. I turn on airplane mode, and it doesnt get much better. This is when I have to turn it off. Sometimes it hurts my leg in my pocket if I absentmindedly leave data on.
So I want to know -
1) what is the deal with the battery on the one x
2) can I cycle the power like I could on my captivate?
3) if you know anything I don't about the heating up issue, please share
Thank you so much for reading! I look forward to the possible feedback!
TL;DR - please read the post! I'd really appreciate it!
One thing I do know is that after doing your initial few charge cycles when flashing a ROM, it's better to not actually let the battery level get too low before charging. I read an article by a battery scientist, he stated that continual full discharging of the battery will decrease the long term battery life. So, it's best to do top-up charges from ~40% to full charge. Obviously you can disregard this when doing your initial charge cycles.
Some of these phones heat up more than others. Having the phone in your pocket or any enclosed space for an extended period of time will encourage it to heat up. I can't remember the technical term, but it's a combination of there not being enough air flow around the device to facilitate its cooling down, and nowhere for the heat to go. So it just gets worse.
So knowing that, there are some steps you can take to mitigate the heat, even if only in a minor way.
Sent from my Evita
There are few things more frustrating than watching your smartphone’s battery life drain away by the middle of the day when you just put it in your pocket with a full charge that morning. And as phones get bigger, processors get more powerful, and data networks get faster, the demand for juice is greater than ever.
1. Dial down the brightness or set it to automatic: Few things will drain your battery faster than a super-bright display. You still want to be able to see your phone, but turning down the brightness to the lowest level you can stand should greatly increase your battery life. Or you can set the brightness level to adjust automatically, which allows your phone to dynamically dial up or down on the brightness depending on your surroundings.
2. Stay cool: Believe it or not, higher temperatures will cause your smartphone’s battery to degrade much more dramatically over time than cooler temperatures will. This doesn’t mean you’re automatically doomed to always suffer from poor battery life if you live in Texas, but keeping your phone away from a sunny windowsill or being hotboxed in a stuffy car should increase your battery life considerably.
3. Don’t worry about overcharging: Many people (myself included) are still used to nickel-cadmium batteries: the kind that you were supposed to fully charge and discharge lest they lose their ability to retain a charge. But lithium-ion batteries, which you’ll find in most smartphones, don’t work that way. A partial discharge on a Li-on battery is totally fine. In fact, you’re actually better off charging your phone whenever possible rather than letting the battery go all the way down to zero. It’ll actually help preserve your overall battery life over time.
4. Turn off the features you don’t need (Bluetooth, GPS, Wi-Fi, LTE): Bluetooth, GPS, LTE and Wi-Fi are all wonderful things, but you don’t need to use them all of the time, and when they aren’t in use they’re killing your battery. Do you only connect to your Bluetooth headset whenever you get in the car? Then turn Bluetooth off for the rest of the day. Going on a road trip with nary a Wi-Fi network in sight? Shut it down. Not going anywhere at the moment? Bye bye GPS. Some phones even allow you to turn your access to LTE on or off. The more your phone searches for a network, the more battery life it uses. So again, if you aren’t using it, lose it.
5. Check for email on your own: Don’t make your phone fetch your email for you. Set your email update schedule to manual and check on it yourself. This way your battery isn’t in constant use as your phone pings the servers every few minutes.
6. Update your phone’s software and apps: If you’ve ever paid attention to the fine print when updating the software on your phone, then you’ve probably seen a line buried in there about improved battery life. The same goes for apps, which are often updated to use less energy. Making sure you’re always up-to-date is one of the easiest ways to save on battery life.
7. Close out background apps: Use your phone’s multitasking abilities to fully close out of any appsyou’re not using. If there are some apps you always use, you can keep those kicking around in the background for faster access, but chances are you have a ton of stuff open that you haven’t used in weeks.
8. Stay out of poor-signal areas (or use Airplane mode)
Searching around for a signal in an area where there isn’t any can be a serious drain on battery life. But it’s hard, if not impossible, to avoid areas with poor coverage. What you can do, however, is activate Airplane modeas you pass through them, which turns off your phone’s cellular radio (along with Bluetooth, GPS and Wi-Fi). You won’t be able to check your email or make and receive calls, but it’s a good trick if you’re running low on battery and passing through a relative dead zone.
9. Use built-in power management software (or download some): Some phones come preloaded with apps designed to increase your battery life — use them. And if your phone doesn’t come with any battery-saving software, you can always download some. There are plenty of apps out there claiming they can double your phone’s battery life if used properly. I’d take claims like that with a grain of salt, but they probably can’t hurt.
10. Get a battery case: If you’ve tried everything else, and you still can’t make it through the day without stopping to charge your phone at Starbucks, you might want to consider getting a battery case. Battery cases are available for nearly every phone out there and many will double your battery life. Some even promise to triple it. Sure, they add some bulk, but wouldn’t you rather have a bigger lump in your pocket than a dead phone?
Thanks for your helpful information.
Krystyna said:
Thanks for your helpful information.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
you are welcome. hope this can help you.
Here’s a list of five of my favorite apps for prolonging the life of your Android’s battery. This collection of apps will not only extend the life of your handset, but could also improve its overall performance.