Help? A few uncommon problems - Vibrant General

Ok so I received my Vibrant on Monday and so far I am in love with it. Their are three things that bug me, however.
1. Battery Life is TERRIBLE. I know, I know-This has been discussed before but I did everything the other threads said and still no difference. On my phone, I will leave it on standby and it will drop 8 percent in like an hour and a half. Somethings wrong. Also, If I play the Sims for two hours (like I did today) my battery goes from 98% down to 45%. Is this normal?
Just to point out what I have going on with my phone:
- Brightness is turned down COMPLETELY. Automatic brightness is turned OFF.
- 3G is always on. Could this be the culprit?
- I have a completely black background.
- Last I checked, it said my display was taking up 60-70% of my battery usage.
- As stated above, Sims DRAINS my battery. Either somethings up with my phone or Samsung should have made sure the Sims doesnt kill the device.
2. The second I take my phone off the charger, the battery goes from 100% to 98%. Can I fix this? Its kind of annoying...
3. Problem with the Sims. Im not sure if any of you have this issue, but whenever I tell my Sim to watch TV, the app shuts down and takes me back to my home screen. Any idea why its happening?

alecjake said:
Ok so I received my Vibrant on Monday and so far I am in love with it. Their are three things that bug me, however.
1. Battery Life is TERRIBLE. I know, I know-This has been discussed before but I did everything the other threads said and still no difference. On my phone, I will leave it on standby and it will drop 8 percent in like an hour and a half. Somethings wrong. Also, If I play the Sims for two hours (like I did today) my battery goes from 98% down to 45%. Is this normal?
Just to point out what I have going on with my phone:
- Brightness is turned down COMPLETELY. Automatic brightness is turned OFF.
- 3G is always on. Could this be the culprit?
- I have a completely black background.
- Last I checked, it said my display was taking up 60-70% of my battery usage.
- As stated above, Sims DRAINS my battery. Either somethings up with my phone or Samsung should have made sure the Sims doesnt kill the device.
2. The second I take my phone off the charger, the battery goes from 100% to 98%. Can I fix this? Its kind of annoying...
3. Problem with the Sims. Im not sure if any of you have this issue, but whenever I tell my Sim to watch TV, the app shuts down and takes me back to my home screen. Any idea why its happening?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
1. Leaving a phone in 3G all the time is not a good idea, if you have WiFi near you you can connect to I'd use WiFi instead, it has less battery drain then the antenna that is constantly searching for 3G signal - unless you are in the area with bulletproof 3G coverage of course.
2. It seems like this bug is common 100% jumps to 98% once you unplug the charger, are there really any accurate battery meters on the market?
3. Can't help you there, not playing the game on my phone.
HTH

lqaddict said:
1. Leaving a phone in 3G all the time is not a good idea, if you have WiFi near you you can connect to I'd use WiFi instead, it has less battery drain then the antenna that is constantly searching for 3G signal - unless you are in the area with bulletproof 3G coverage of course.
2. It seems like this bug is common 100% jumps to 98% once you unplug the charger, are there really any accurate battery meters on the market?
3. Can't help you there, not playing the game on my phone.
HTH
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
alright thanks. im in phoenix here so i am almost always in a 3G area. I guess i'll leave it on since i rarely dont have 3G

I also read on multiple forums including HoFo that 3G generally consumes more energy then WiFi.

sims 3 fix
so my girlfriend was complaining about sims crashing when she watched tv or relaxed on the couch. i fixed this by moving both the sims launcher app and the sims game app to data/app.

I normally use Edge simply because I don't need Wifi or 3G on unless I'm doing some heavy data transferring.
Currently I'm at 61% battery, which means my phone has been off the charger for 16hours. Its not a fluke either because its just normal use for me. I normally take my phone off the charger at 6am and I plug it back in around 11pm.
Prolonged GPS, Wifi and 3G will eat your battery. I'm not saying don't use the services, but you give up one for the other. I personally like to have awesome battery usage until I'm out and about and really need to use my phone.

I'd recommend you call T-Mobile customer service and have them diagnose the problems you are having and issue a replacement if necessary.
Based on my experience, battery life is excellent, probably the best I've seen in any smartphone in this category. Battery usually last easily through the day with heavy use, including:
- having 3G on all the time (and frequently switching to edge and back)
- 2 email accounts using push (gmail and exchange)
- gps on all the time
- google latitude running all the time
- facebook and twitter sync'ing every hour
- fancy widget sync'ing every two hours
- Newsroom harvesting 12 news sites in the background
- occasional picture (3 or 4) a day
- web browsing and searching
- xda app for reading and replying to this forum.
- bluetooth is always on
- wifi is on from 8 pm on.
I charge the phone through the night, unplug it at 8 am, return home at 8 pm and put it to charge around 11 pm, with still 50%. Brightness is set to auto. Phone is not rooted or modified in any way.
You bought a high end phone that should perform as such. You are supposed to get the most out of your phone, not turn off its features. I wouldn't listen to those who claim you should turn off everything and dim the screen. What's next, not using the phone to preserve batteries?
That's just my two cents.
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App

Related

Battery sucks, so I went to the Sprint store and...

I know that battery life has been a hot topic among EVO 4G users. I have seen both sides of the spectrum with some getting an entire day or more out of their phones, while some, like myself, see 5-7 hours at the most. I finally went to my local Sprint Store/Repair Center where I was told that my battery life was "normal" and that EVO users should "except to charge your phone two or three times a day". Then the rep handed me a spare battery at no charge to me and told me to have a nice day.
So, here's the deal. I am a non-rooted, non-anything user. Is the only way to see a 24 hour charge to root my phone and flash a custom ROM? He did mention that Froyo would "increase your battery life a lot". Whenever that's going to happen. Sorry to add another thread on battery life, but I want to make an informed decision, as well as know if this rep was just brushing me off with 5-7 hour being "normal" and then handing me an extra battery for free.
So you got a free battery and all it cost you was having to talk to a fool? Sounds good to me.
I routinely charge every other night with my moderate usage. 5-7 hours would only make sense if I was streaming Pandora all day with 1 bar.
5-7 hrs? are you constantly downloading things? heavy usage? or just on stand-by most of the time? if your using your phone casually, like 3-4 calls ~ 15-20 min each call and have emails coming in at about 2-3/hr and you surf the web about 1hr/day on your phone... 5-7 hrs is not very good... usually you would need to make calls that are 30+ min with heavy browser usage and be in a really ****ty signal area while playing games and texting every 5minutes for you to get such ****ty battery life... there are a lot of forums out there with tips/tricks in improving battery life so don't expect people to start posting them here as there are THOUSANDS of posts on battery life on androidcentral.com and other such sites...
good luck... you should be able to get at least 12hrs on one charge with little to moderate usage -- again google and read for forums out there as there is a TON of information.
I'm curious, are you in a 4G or 3G area? if you have 4G on where there is no 4G, your phone will constantly search for a 4G signal, same with wifi. I find that 3G is pretty fast where I live. 1.2MB down. so I never really turn on 4G or wifi. I've been getting about 14-20 hrs depending on use, but that was only the few times I made it through a day without plugging it in to add music, or try to root it (without success) and stuff. today I unplugged it at 9:40 am, and have been using it pretty heavy. about 15 minutes of streaming video, 45 minutes of music playback, 35 minutes of internet use, constant messaging, some pictures, google talk, fringe running, as well as qik in the background, actually all kind of apps pop up in the background. I am at 50% battery at 5:00 pm. I think that's not bad compared to the N1 I just sold. I will say that I think Advanced Task Killer, from the markets probably helps the battery life. I highly recommend it. make sure you set it up to auto kill apps in the background. I think I get a couple of extra hours this way.
Found on Android Central Forum: (and it works, I get about 15-18 hours)
CHARGING EVO BATTERY FOR MAXIMUM LIFE:
You can charge your battery the following way to see if that helps improve the battery life on your device.
1.Connect the phone to the charger and charge the device until the LED turned green with the phone powered ON
2.Disconnect the phone, and power it OFF.
3.Reconnect the phone to the charger, and charge the device until the LED turns green again.
4.Disconnect the phone, power it ON and then power it OFF.
5.Reconnect the phone to the charger and charge until the LED turns green again.
6.Power ON and use.
My battery appears to have the same issue as well. My backlight is at 8%, auto sync is disabled for all services, always on mobile data is disabled, my network is set to CDMA, I'm not overclocked at all. I've done all the other battery saving tricks and I've done all the battery charging tricks.
I played Raging Thunder 2 for less than half an hour this afternoon, and my battery dropped down to 58%. I'm aware that games are pretty intensive, but isn't this a bit much?
EVOKeith said:
I know that battery life has been a hot topic among EVO 4G users. I have seen both sides of the spectrum with some getting an entire day or more out of their phones, while some, like myself, see 5-7 hours at the most. I finally went to my local Sprint Store/Repair Center where I was told that my battery life was "normal" and that EVO users should "except to charge your phone two or three times a day". Then the rep handed me a spare battery at no charge to me and told me to have a nice day.
So, here's the deal. I am a non-rooted, non-anything user. Is the only way to see a 24 hour charge to root my phone and flash a custom ROM? He did mention that Froyo would "increase your battery life a lot". Whenever that's going to happen. Sorry to add another thread on battery life, but I want to make an informed decision, as well as know if this rep was just brushing me off with 5-7 hour being "normal" and then handing me an extra battery for free.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Holy ****!
I'm not a "heavy user" and I turn off all sync and radios until I need them. In this state the phone will still recieve phone calls and text msgs. I turn on either wifi or mobile network access when I want to surf and enable bluetooth when I drive to connect to hand free in the car. I turn everything off when I'm done using each. I have all the power widgets right on my home screen so it only takes a second to turn on/off as needed. Using this way I have gone over 3 days before charging several times. I know this doesn't work for everyone, but I'd rather decide when I'm going to use my phone for what than to be at the beck and call of my phone. YMMV
GaryJ51 said:
I'm not a "heavy user" and I turn off all sync and radios until I need them. In this state the phone will still recieve phone calls and text msgs. I turn on either wifi or mobile network access when I want to surf and enable bluetooth when I drive to connect to hand free in the car. I turn everything off when I'm done using each. I have all the power widgets right on my home screen so it only takes a second to turn on/off as needed. Using this way I have gone over 3 days before charging several times. I know this doesn't work for everyone, but I'd rather decide when I'm going to use my phone for what than to be at the beck and call of my phone. YMMV
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Why don't you just use it normally and charge each night?
Just lazy.
Yeah, I've done all the tips and tricks and charge with power on the power off and charge, wash, rinse, repeat. Nothing works. I'm curious to see if the "free" battery they gave me will last longer.
I was in the same boat as you.
I have a fix and it should work.
turn on always on mobile data and enable auto sync
I posted a thread about getting rediculous battery and someone told me to do that and it worked.
go to settings all the way to the bottom to about phone Ans then choose battery. I bet ur up time and away time are the same. if they are that means something is keeping your phone on even tho the screen is off. doing what I told you above with a restart should fix the problem. also when you restart it its not going to instantly go to sleep leave your phone for like an hour and then check the up and awake time and it should be different. hope that helps.
and enable data when roaming.
Without specifics about what you have the phone doing and what kind of signal you have at home/work/etc, this is a totally irrelevant discussion. In my experience, the only thing that actually kills the battery quickly on the Evo or any other phone is poor cell signal.
I get well over a day on my evo... Running the netarchy kernel along with setcpu profiles. I have my phone set to clock to a max of about 384mhz when the phone screen is off.
I did the battery recharge trick and it helped a lot. I also have my display timeout set to 30 seconds.
5-7 hours before i rooted i would get 10-12 easy since rooting and loaded the.bakedsnackes rom i get avg 19 hours
sent with my evo from a secret place
Dump the Mail app and use Gmail to pop your accounts
If you are using the MAIL app that comes with the OS, that is likely the culprit. Especially if you are syncing more that one account. That can kill the battery very fast.
**try using the gmail app, and set it up so that it pops your pop mail accounts for you and pushes them to your phone. Then disable the built-in mail app and never use it again. This alone should double your battery life. It worked on the Hero and it works in the Evo.**
Do you by any chance use Yelp? I did an experiment last week with Yelp. Without the Yelp service running in the background, I would lose less than 8% of my battery overnight. With the Yelp service in the background, I lost about 50%. I've emailed Yelp to see if they can disable the Yelp service if I don't login to my Yelp account through the app.
Putting my phone on wifi made it so in the morning (4 hrs of low signal then to 50% battery), I put ti on the school's wifi and it was 80%.
tadtam said:
Found on Android Central Forum: (and it works, I get about 15-18 hours)
CHARGING EVO BATTERY FOR MAXIMUM LIFE:
You can charge your battery the following way to see if that helps improve the battery life on your device.
1.Connect the phone to the charger and charge the device until the LED turned green with the phone powered ON
2.Disconnect the phone, and power it OFF.
3.Reconnect the phone to the charger, and charge the device until the LED turns green again.
4.Disconnect the phone, power it ON and then power it OFF.
5.Reconnect the phone to the charger and charge until the LED turns green again.
6.Power ON and use.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I would avoid doing this. Lithium-Ion Batteries (found in the Evo and almost all other phones and laptops) can only go through a certain number of charge cycles. This method will not help prolong battery life.

A few uncommon problems...

Ok so I received my Vibrant on Monday and so far I am in love with it. Their are three things that bug me, however.
1. Battery Life is TERRIBLE. I know, I know-This has been discussed before but I did everything the other threads said and still no difference. On my phone, I will leave it on standby and it will drop 8 percent in like an hour and a half. Somethings wrong. Also, If I play the Sims for two hours (like I did today) my battery goes from 98% down to 45%. Is this normal?
Just to point out what I have going on with my phone:
- Brightness is turned down COMPLETELY. Automatic brightness is turned OFF.
- 3G is always on. Could this be the culprit?
- I have a completely black background.
- Last I checked, it said my display was taking up 60-70% of my battery usage.
- As stated above, Sims DRAINS my battery. Either somethings up with my phone or Samsung should have made sure the Sims doesnt kill the device.
2. The second I take my phone off the charger, the battery goes from 100% to 98%. Can I fix this? Its kind of annoying...
3. Problem with the Sims. Im not sure if any of you have this issue, but whenever I tell my Sim to watch TV, the app shuts down and takes me back to my home screen. Any idea why its happening?

The power consumption is huge

Yesterday, I was using the Google navigation on 3G network with the phone connected to a 500mA car charger. After 1hr, the battery dropped 20%...Anyone knows if a 1000mA car is enough??
Tonight, I was watching a Youtube HD video on 4G network (2/3 bars on 4G) with the phone connected to a 1000mA USB wall charger. After 10min, the battery dropped 2%...Well, even 1000mA cannot compensate the consumption of the battery.
The power consumption of this phone is ridiculous. Something must be wrong with the system/circuit design.
NOTE: I'm not complaining the battery but the power consumption of this phone. The charging cannot compensate the usage of the power. Think about a laptop. It's even more powerful, but you can use it freely without any concern about the battery as long as you plug it in an ac adapter. Why can't Epic 4G do this?
man i been seeing the same problems i was listen to the sprint radio while hooked up to the charge and would see it stay at the same percent for about a hr before it went up 1%. this battery issues is making me hate the phone right now and i cant find any rapid charge programs or settings for this yet. cant wait for some custom rom to come out that hopes to fix some of these issues
yup 4g is a battery hog which is why people are complaining about battery life,I suggest you turn it off, it's just not worth it IMO, which too bad cause we're paying extra afterall.
seven7dust said:
yup 4g is a battery hog which is why people are complaining about battery life,I suggest you turn it off, it's just not worth it IMO, which too bad cause we're paying extra afterall.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I saw a post this morning. The 3G even consumes more battery on Epic 4G during browsing. so we can expect even worse under 3G.
I'm on my third Epic and they have all had battery drain issues. Battery manufacture dates ranged from July to mid August. Right now actually, I'm streaming some radio over 3g and have an AIM client running in the background and the batter is slowly draining while plugged into the charger included in the box.
I have tried a factory reset just to be sure any apps I installed weren't affecting anything and still no dice. Even with running navigation in the car while plugged into a usb charger the battery will drain about 1% every 5 minutes or so. I'm probably returning the phone for good in a few days
This is with 4G disabled, using SwitchPro widget to enable 3G. I also have background updates disabled(under accounts/sync), I manually do them periodically.
fookxixi said:
Yesterday, I was using the Google navigation on 3G network with the phone connected to a 500mA car charger. After 1hr, the battery dropped 20%...Anyone knows if a 1000mA car is enough.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That shoul be more than enough. I use a Motorola-branded 850mA microUSB car charger (quite cheap on Amazon). On a recent day-long driving trip, it was sufficient to maintain the battery level while streaming audio over 3G and simultaneously running GPS tracking. I don't think a 500mA unit would have handled the load, however.
I'm really starting to think this phone is an epic fail. I get from 1.5 hours to 2 hours of use from a full charge! Thats with everything off, 4G, wifi, bluetooth, GPS. The sprint store manager wouldn't exchange my phone because he said their is nothing wrong with it. If it takes 6 hours to charge and then I get 2 hours of use, this phone is worthless to me!
syntax_erorr said:
I'm really starting to think this phone is an epic fail. I get from 1.5 hours to 2 hours of use from a full charge! Thats with everything off, 4G, wifi, bluetooth, GPS. The sprint store manager wouldn't exchange my phone because he said their is nothing wrong with it. If it takes 6 hours to charge and then I get 2 hours of use, this phone is worthless to me!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah that doesn't sound right. I think most people would have a hard time making it last only 2 hours. Maybe gaming while running WiFi tether.
Keep in mind with CDMA, the lower the signal to the tower, the more power it takes to keep the connection active. For GSM this is less of an issue. How is the signal where you live?
An interesting side note. I plugged in my charger for my Bluetooth which is only 180ma and it went from 70% to "Fully Charged" in 10 seconds. When I unplugged the charger it went back to 70%. It really didn't like that low power feed.
Sorry if it came out orange. I used screenshot the app and that's what i got. Anywho, its a perfect combo what I've done. See the up time, nearly 15 hours up time. I only lost 35% of life during the time too as you can see how full the batt is.
Remedies: Autokiller set to extreme. ATK: Set to aggressive, with auto kill set to when screen is off. Interval every hour. Cachemate: all settings lit up, so it clears about 12-14 MB every hour or 1-2 every manual clear. Set CPU: Conservative 1000/100 with set to boot. Notice, set CPU resets itself every reboot for now, just make sure your good.
Then you should be good as I have for TWO days on one charge nearly 24 hrs ago.
Sent From The Moon
My battery has increased five fold with that evo fix after an hour and a half I've only used 6 percent of my battery
PlankLongBeard said:
Sorry if it came out orange. I used screenshot the app and that's what i got. Anywho, its a perfect combo what I've done. See the up time, nearly 15 hours up time. I only lost 35% of life during the time too as you can see how full the batt is.
Remedies: Autokiller set to extreme. ATK: Set to aggressive, with auto kill set to when screen is off. Interval every hour. Cachemate: all settings lit up, so it clears about 12-14 MB every hour or 1-2 every manual clear. Set CPU: Conservative 1000/100 with set to boot. Notice, set CPU resets itself every reboot for now, just make sure your good.
Then you should be good as I have for TWO days on one charge nearly 24 hrs ago.
Sent From The Moon
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I would love to see more info/screenshots on this. The one SS you included somehow ended up thumbnail sized only. 2 days is nuts, anything over 24h would be.
hey guys
I've been really happy with the battery life on my epic - I get about 12-14 hours with on-off use, 4G off. My battery is sitting at about 35% after playing a bunch of games for about 3 hours in between classes and it has been running off battery for about 8 hours, browsing the web, sending texts and downloading apps on both 3g and wifi.
I'm using Advanced Task Killer and its set to kill aggressively every half hour - it kills all apps except Juice Defender, itself and LauncherPro.
I'm running LauncherPro - if that matters - doubtful, but I didn't like touchwiz. And I'm running JuiceDefender on default settings. Basically it kills the 3G radio when screen is off unless its transferring > then 15kbs of data. The normal radio remains on for calls/texts.
lv2bll said:
My battery has increased five fold with that evo fix after an hour and a half I've only used 6 percent of my battery
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What is the EVO fix? I'd love to try some extra tips.
My two cents - a typical day puts me at home and at work for the majority of the day and night, which both have wi-fi. I've turned off "look for open networks", "never allow wi-fi to sleep" and I leave wi-fi on. After a full night of charge I took the phone off of the charger at 11am on Saturnday and it finally turned off Sunday at 8pm - 33 hours is pretty darn good, almost two days. However yesterday I took the phone off the charger after leaving work at 6:30pm (so no wi-fi, just 3G) and in just an hour with watching a 15 minute long normal quality YouTube video, a few texts and a short phone call I was down TWENTY PERCENT. What the heck.
Over wi-fi, like I said, I'm good - great battery life since I'm not waking up the 3G radio to do anything. But when I get out of those wi-fi areas that's when my battery starts to drop. Anandtech is getting similar results with awful 3G battery:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/3891/samsung-epic-4g-review-the-fastest-android-phone/8
Something is wrong with the 3G radio, and I hope Sprint & Samsung seriously do something about it.
You guys are all failing to look at "Cell standby" details.
Time without signal on this phone - no matter WHAT coverage area you're in - is ALWAYS > 50%. This is bull**** and a Samsung software issue. Take a look for yourself.
oxeneers said:
You guys are all failing to look at "Cell standby" details.
Time without signal on this phone - no matter WHAT coverage area you're in - is ALWAYS > 50%. This is bull**** and a Samsung software issue. Take a look for yourself.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I never had a problem with but I've been reading many having a problem with "Cel Standby" going out of control. Mine it at 17%. Highest I have saw it was in the upper 30's range after a full day (14hr)
Just an update on my usage from Pg.1:
oxeneers said:
You guys are all failing to look at "Cell standby" details.
Time without signal on this phone - no matter WHAT coverage area you're in - is ALWAYS > 50%. This is bull**** and a Samsung software issue. Take a look for yourself.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I am not seeing this issue. Never seen it above 3%. Besides most of the battery is going to the screen it seems. I am actually wondering if it reporting the usage correctly. If the screen was really take that much of the power, it should be lasting a lot longer.
People getting great battery life are reporting they are using task killers and data connection blockers. That isn't even where they majority of the power goes. The system tells us it is going to the screen. Not the tasks or data connections. It seems counter-intuitive.
oxeneers said:
You guys are all failing to look at "Cell standby" details.
Time without signal on this phone - no matter WHAT coverage area you're in - is ALWAYS > 50%. This is bull**** and a Samsung software issue. Take a look for yourself.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Turn airplane mode on then off. (settings -> Wireless & Networks)
This will solve the problem until the next time you reboot. You must do this after every reboot.
I'm working on a more scientific breakdown of power consumption. But here are some brief findings.
The highest power consumer is the display. Even on the lowest brightness setting it consumes more power than a normal LCD (I'm comparing it to my Evo). If the display is only showing a black background it is lower power, but then again if all it is showing is noting, it may as well not be on at all. If you actually want to display something on the screen, it consumes power like it's going out of style. So much for Super AMOLED being a power saver (total and completely false.)
The next highest power consumer is the 3G radio. Under similar circumstances (similar signal strength) the 3G radio is consuming more power than the 4G and Wifi radios combined. Wifi seems to consume the least, followed by 4G then 3G. This is crazy and if not fixed might be unacceptable.
Next is background apps, most specifically anything that uses the network (email syncing, social networking and location reporting services like latitude) being the worst. The sync settings on the Epic are not as robust as the Evo and I've struggled to gain control of gmail without just setting it to manual only. Do not use latitude and although some will speak out against task killers, having one to keep "maps" at bay is worth it alone.
Then there are more obvious things like live wallpaper. Or specifically anything using the CPU / GPU and GPS.
More to come, but right now, something must be done about the 3G radio and GPS or this phone could live up to the moniker of Epic fail. I really hope Sprint and Samsung are doing something because otherwise if the phone worked as it could, it would be awesome.

those with 30-40 hrs on one charge...

How do ya do it?
at most ive gotten bout 20
MINIMAL use (I.e. no browser).
Yes, anyone getting that much battery is running minimal services with < 10% wake time.
I usually get about 14 hours.
I keep my brightness on auto,
surf the web randomly,
I don't turn off auto-sync,
I watch videos, stream Pandora to my car stereo over Bluetooth,
sync 2 email accounts,
send and receive about 20 texts a day,
my facebook and twitter widgets sync once an hour and sometimes I manually sync them in between,
my Tech-Buzz widget syncs once an hour,
Beautiful Widgets syncs once an hour,
I use whatever wallpaper I feel like using on any particular day(some people think black saves power),
On some days I use Navigation and that knocks my usage back by an hour or two if I don't plug it into the car charger while using it.
I refuse to cripple my phones capabilities, or sit it down all day just so I can say I get 30 hours of battery time. If I need more than 12-18 hours, I have 3 spare batteries ready to go.
Disclaimer: DI8 has really reduced my battery life, however I still can get 2 days if I stretch it, and am *always* at around 70% at the end of a normal day. On my last charge before DI8 I was still at around 50% after 36 hours, with normal use.
What I do:
* Wi-fi always on, never sleep
* 4G off unless I know I'm in a 4G area, then on (it stays off anyway if I've got wi-fi)
* GPS off
* DRM and all other non-essential services off
* Screen brightness 1 or 2 ticks above minimum
* Kill only apps that I know are hogs (Google Nav, for example), leave all others alone to do what they want, use ATK as little as possible
* Airplane mode workaround for TWS
I also just don't use a lot of apps that I know are going to potentially prevent the phone from sleeping or otherwise hog up the battery if they happen to start up in the background randomly. I just don't have apps like that. Some people install all sorts of weird crap on their phones that does god knows what, I generally will only install stuff where I know exactly what it does. I also don't run a lot of widgets that check stuff in the background, although I do run Twitter and Facebook.
I am sure I don't use my phone as much as some people here, but it's wrong to assume people who get good battery life just don't use their phones. I make no real attempt at not using my phone; I use it whenever I want. That includes making calls, browsing the web (with one of three browsers), sending text messages or writing emails, using navigation in my car, and playing games.
Of all the things I do with my phone, the only thing I've noticed really super-killing my battery is GPS and navigation. That burns the battery at a rate of about 20% per half hour, which is about as long as I normally use it. But even if I use the GPS for an hour in a day, I can still get about 24 hours out of the battery if I need to.
I'm convinced wi-fi still really helps, and I'm set up so that *most* of the time I have wi-fi. I have wi-fi at home, at work, and actually on most of my route to and from work (my cable company has free wi-fi if you're a cable subscriber). I don't know how good my battery life would be if I didn't have that.
I use to get 20-25 hours easy, now I'm lucky to get maybe 8-10
daazncandyman said:
I use to get 20-25 hours easy, now I'm lucky to get maybe 8-10
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Same here. Using stock DI18, rooted, mixup kernel with ondemand setcpu and juice defender (it was 5 hours b4 juice dfender installed.
Turned off the DRM service, automatic brightness. That's it. Stock everything else!
I've got GV and talk always on.
I"m a light user; sent 50+ text messages, occasionally check my email, and push email every hour.
At 40% battery life I have 2 days of battery life.
In the background I have
5 essential stock services running
digital clock wdiget
voicemail
email app
switchpro widget
My running time is 5.5% (lol), with display on 2 hours (auto-brightness), 3G on 10 hours, wifi on for the remaining time (Wi-fi policy never sleep), and TWS 0% (airplane mode trick).
Also, if you run wifi make sure you set the sleep policy to never. I'm using the DI18 update and when I turned my phone on I saw the 3G icon in the notification bar when there should be the wifi icon. Setting the wifi sleep policy to never will stop the phone from using 3G when the screen is off. NOT fixed in the DI18 update.
Attached my wallpaper lol
what exactly does wifi never sleep do to save battery ? also I seen it mentioned on a dif site, set it up that way and when the phone went off it appeared the wifi did also .. idk need a lil insight on that whole setting
dumpringz said:
what exactly does wifi never sleep do to save battery ? also I seen it mentioned on a dif site, set it up that way and when the phone went off it appeared the wifi did also .. idk need a lil insight on that whole setting
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Normally, wi-fi uses a lot less battery life than 3G, so sometimes you want to use wi-fi and not 3G.
You set wi-fi sleep policy to "never," so that when you have wi-fi turned on and the phone goes to sleep, it won't turn off the wi-fi and turn on 3G. So the phone only uses wi-fi and "never" switches to 3G.
You have to manually change this in the advanced settings.
I don't know if it's something I downloaded which is eating my battery. I guess I'll try to do a hard reset, if that doesn't solve it, time to root
I can't get more than 8 hours on this..any suggestions to increase it?
I never get to 10 hours but I use my phone constantly. I on average use two batteries a day. I believe I should get the most out of my phone, I am paying the monthly fee, why restrict myself cause my phone will have a dead battery, I always carry a spare.
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA App
Coin Slot said:
I never get to 10 hours but I use my phone constantly. I on average use two batteries a day. I believe I should get the most out of my phone, I am paying the monthly fee, why restrict myself cause my phone will have a dead battery, I always carry a spare.
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA App
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Click to collapse
Same here, I got 2 batteries off of ebay so I use the hell out of my phone. Brightness is on max to show off that screen, stereo bluetooth and pandora,4g is always on, live wallpapers and browse internet and play games a lot (angry birds mostly) . Battery lasts me 7 to 8 hrs which is amazing based on how much I use it. If u are doing normal use and getting 8 hrs then something is wrong, ur maybe not in 4g and 4g is ona nd ur wasting batt looking for signal oor something else. Maybe u have a service running in the background. I removed media hub and drm bc I heard they run a lot, but I never did a proper b4 and after comparison so not sure if it actually does help. I'm using noobs andromeda rom and d18 update.
Sent from my Epic 4G
Id be SO happy if I could even get 6 hours off one charge.
I'm lucky to get more than 3hours these days from 100 to 15%. :\
I did have a lot of widgets, but I removed a majority of them. I NEVER have wifi, 4G, GPS or sync on. My brightness is always set to 0%.
I guess I just use the phone too much! I don't mind because I usually am able to get near a wall outlet to charge my phone in the middle of the day.
But I'm worried about tomorrow, where I'm leaving at 8am and not getting back till 6pm with NO ACCESS to any wall outlets. I'm pretty sure I'm not gonna make it. Lol.
posted from a EPIC4G.
I'm convinced that with regular use you are gonna get 8-10 hrs on a full charge. Hell by 8 hrs you are going need to start charging unless you want to wait until the phone dies so you can claim x amount of hours.
There is no point in turning off everything on your phone and barely using it to say it lasts 20 hrs. Get a charger for work, home and your car. It is what it is.
I wake up at 6am, charge by 2 pm when battery is around 30%.
the problem with this phone bottom line is that 3g is eating the battery life. I set wifi to always on and I'm always on wifi in the house. I can get 12-14 hours sitting in my house. whoopie doo. Thats not hte point of the phone, the point of the phone is to have mobile service, not wifi service. anyone that is getting 30 hours out of the phone is using wifi. So thats not even a fair comparison. I love the phone, but this is just stupid, I shouldn't have to carry a spare battery with me if I go to the daytona 500 from 9am to 9pm.
robl45 said:
the problem with this phone bottom line is that 3g is eating the battery life. I set wifi to always on and I'm always on wifi in the house. I can get 12-14 hours sitting in my house. whoopie doo. Thats not hte point of the phone, the point of the phone is to have mobile service, not wifi service. anyone that is getting 30 hours out of the phone is using wifi. So thats not even a fair comparison. I love the phone, but this is just stupid, I shouldn't have to carry a spare battery with me if I go to the daytona 500 from 9am to 9pm.
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Click to collapse
Yeah 3G does eat more battery life than wi-fi but that doesn't mean you can't have great battery life with 3G on all the time. I can get 1-2 days with 3G on and with light use, but that's in part because I get a good 3G signal.
I probably emphasized too much on wi-fi but the point I'm trying to make is try to avoid using a weak connection. Generally, I use wi-fi/3g/4G in my home but inside most buildings they'll most likely have weak 3G and 4G connections, so I use the wi-fi network inside the building.
You said you could get 12-14 hours with wi-fi and not touching the phone? I'm not trying to be rude but that seems really low. If mines idle on wi-fi in my home it lasts days. With 14 hours idling, that means the battery life drops 7% every hour. Idling on wi-fi I think it should only drop 1-3% per hour.
Mind if you go to settings -> applications -> running services and post what you have?
i get twenty four hours on average a full day so to speak wake up it says fully charged i take it off check twitter and facebook leave the house and dont touch it until i am at school bored in class lol and then it says 95 after a full day of class it usually says 66 thats after 9 hours i go home play with it download apps etc make several calls and i text alot all day by the way and then i go to work and it says 50 or about 48 usually i use it all night off and on til i get home at seven my wife kills the battery and puts it on the charger while i sleep usually about 9

Ok I'm jealous

As I'm looking through the threads I'm seeing people getting terrific battery life. What can I do to get better battery life besides all the little tricks like cutting of gps, syncing, and back light etc? As I stated in another post I run the tunein app for 2hrs and my phone is at 20% HELP!!!
Stop using tunein/find alternative? I'm not exactly sure what the application does but I'm sure there has to be another application that offers similar functionality in the market, that might be easier on the battery.
powered by the tears of a million orphaned alpacas...
I've tried a alternative. I've tried the app for the actual radio station still get the same thing.
I use Tunein Radio since it's one of my favorites apps and have no issues whatsoever ... I mean it's normal the battery usage since it's streaming media.
Turning off the 4g made the biggest difference for me.
I'm usually near wifi, and with that on all day I SOMETIMES end up w/ <60% battery at the end of the day.
So just kick a man while he's down why don't ya!!!
Try this:
1. Do a full reset
2. Fully charge the phone. Once light is green, Let it stay unplugged for a couple of seconds, turn off the phone and plug in again. When light turns green again (may take up to an hour). Repeat until the green light appears almost instantly. This may take anywhere from 4-10 cycles.
3. Run the phone stock for one complete cycle. Don't add any apps.
4. If you have no problems, charge the phone then try adding one app then let the battery cycle again.
5. Keep adding an app after each cycle and monitor your battery consumption.
This way you can find out if the issue is your phone or the app. I know this isn't a quick fix, but it will help you dial in on the problem. I had similar problems as you before going through these steps. One of my cycles only got 2 hours of life before dying. I now get 15 hours of medium to heavy usage consistently! I am currently at 15 hours 5 minutes with 32%.
why dont you stop using apps to "fix" your battery and use the internal battery monitor program to narrow down exactly whats causing your battery drain?
settings>about phone>battery>battery usage
keeps a running tab on whats been using your battery since last unplugged.
if its cell standby, that usually means you are in a place that doesnt have service too long.
display is just screen being turned on.
android system is basically stuff installed in android. such as email, surfing the web, the market, etc etc.
see what that tells you. dont cover up the problem. get down to its roots. my phone completely stock got medium usage and lasted almost 9-10 hours.
Good points, newkidd. Finding the root cause is critical. However, I'd like to add that just because Display or Cell Standby is the top battery user at any given point in time is not necessarily a bad thing.
For example, if you were to unplug your phone in the morning but then forget it on the kitchen table when you leave the house for the day (No, I've never done that!), you'd see that Cell Standby was the top battery user for the day. But that's expected with a properly running phone that sat all day with 0 usage.
On the other hand, if you did nothing on your phone all day but turn it on every 5 minutes to check the time and then turned it back off, then Display would be the top battery user. Doesn't mean there's something wrong with the display or settings. At least not if your battery still lasts a full day. It just means the display was on a lot.
However, if your battery is down to 20% after only 2 hours, something is definitely wrong. Tunein is a streaming audio app, right? When you use it, are you in a good 3G (or 4G) coverage area? If the phone is having difficulty keeping a strong data signal then a streaming service could definitely eat up more battery than normal. How long does your battery last when you don't use Tunein? Or have you tried using it while connected via wifi instead of cellular data?
I'm starting to come to the conclusion I'm in a bad coverage area when at work. I left my at home today by accident and it was still almost full battery. I haven't tried using wi-fi.
Poor reception kills your battery QUICK. My house has horrible reception and for the week I was battling the cable company over our internet (no wifi) my phone would only last a few hours. Last weekend when I was home most of the day, so using maybe 85% wifi, my battery lasted the 18.5hrs until I went to bed. And I'm a heavy user. 3 gmail accounts synced, screen at near max brightness and lots of screen on and data use.
^ Shift Faced
my work
My work as well has horrible reception. We run a lot of electronics and are next to the airport, all bad for cell signals.
I try to stream music, but it is a crap shot depending on the day.
I have an audiobook that I listened to all day, with no significant additional drain. However streaming music gets me about three or four hours.
I work in the middle of Houston, TX, so I should be covered by excellent 3G and 4G signal. But at my desk in a corner office, windows on 2 sides of me, on the 6th floor of a 20 floor building, I get intermittent 3G and have never gotten a 4G connection.
Although that's better than when I was on the 20th floor for about a year. My desk was right against the windows but I couldn't even get a cell signal, much less 3G (no 4G at the time). I had to put my phone on airplane mode when I got to the office or the battery would die before lunch just from trying to get a cell signal. I could change the settings to force roaming only and calls/texts would work OK, but still drained the battery quickly.
Fortunately, we have wifi at the office so I connect to that every morning now and everything works fine. It's just annoying that I can't get 4G at all. Can't get it at home either (in a house, right by the window), even though the Sprint coverage map shows that I should. I can zoom in to my address and it's in the dark blue (best available) coverage area that should mean I can get a 4G signal inside buildings - "You will be able to use 4G data inside most buildings, in a car, and outside." Nope. Not unless I stand outside.
Back on topic, a poor signal will eat the battery for lunch...
no 4G at all here
I am annoyed that there is no 4G in Phoenix at all. 4th or 5th largest city in the country, (depending on the study), and we get snubbed.
Thanks a lot Sprint
Exactly! Where's our 4G in Phoenix. I remember reading about some test market thing with the valley, Clearwire and Sprint about running WiMax and nothing ever came of it. Oh well, guess we just have to be patient.
My battery life is great on my shift. Still stock, having issues getting root through my laptop, but I usually get a whole day out of my battery. For the first time I'm actually impressed with android battery life.
Sent from my Shift using Tapatalk
I'm trying out some things today for battery life, will post with results tomorrow
Problem is Android Market makes it way too easy to download a crap ton of of apps to the point that your phone slows to a crawl. We live in an always connected world, but this also means we need to be more aware of what and whom we interact with. Be careful out there kiddies.

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