low signal = horrid battery life! - Hero CDMA General

at work today i guess i had a bad signal and i noticed i lost over 20% in less than 8 hours. whats the cause of this and is there a fix? i also notice the phone runs like **** on a low signal, very sluggish even when overclocked.

More power is bein pumped into the radio to keep the signal strong(er). Airplane mode is your friend. As for being slow, I don't know why but I also experience slowness in low-signal areas.

abcdfv said:
More power is bein pumped into the radio to keep the signal strong(er). Airplane mode is your friend. As for being slow, I don't know why but I also experience slowness in low-signal areas.
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Click to collapse
must be an android thing because i never had this happen with winmo or my palm pre.

Turn off 'Background Syncing' in Accounts & Sync settings. That will greatly improve both your battery life and phone slowness in low-signal areas. I have terrible signal in my work building too (would almost completely drain my battery in an 8-hour day), and ever since I started turning off Background Sync while at work, my phone only drops to around 50% in a work day.
I really think it's more the syncing that sucks the battery down in low-signal areas, not the radio having to broadcast stronger.

I have bad signal strength at my house. I also have a Airave to make up for this however since it does not provide 3g my battery will drop like mad when I am home.
The fix for this in my case is to turn off my mobile network when I get home that way I can still receive calls and texts but it basically tells the phone to quit looking for 3g signal and sticks to just the basics.
I then use my wifi while at home to get on the market or have my gmail and other apps sync with the phone.
Hope that helps you out and you find a solution that works for you.

I noticed MUCH moreso on CM6 vs. Fresh 2.3.3 what a significantly negative impact having background data enabled in a low signal area can have on the phone. My workplace is a consistently terrible cell area and since switching to CM6, I have been not only plagued with terrible battery life (like 10-15% per hour with minimal usage!), but the phone was running like absolute poo.
Today I checked to be sure and to my surprise, background data WAS enabled! I promptly turned that off and the phone returned to it's former CM6 glory and battery life returned to non-workplace goodness.

I have a bad signal at work, so I force it to roaming. It saves my battery and my phone is more reliable. Just be careful not to use too many minutes or too much data.

MrGreg said:
I have a bad signal at work, so I force it to roaming. It saves my battery and my phone is more reliable. Just be careful not to use too many minutes or too much data.
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Click to collapse
How do you set it to roam? Is this a setting or is there a code i can type in whenever I want it to only look to roam, then another when i want it to go back to regular, or even if i only want it to look for 1X or only look for 3G? One of the client sites i regularly travel to has great roaming 1X speeds once i can get it to switch to that but it must also have a weak roaming 3g tower somewhere because its always on 3g with one to zero bars.
I'm on Fresh though i'm apparently going to have to look into CM6 in the near future. I love this place.
Sent from my HERO200 using XDA App

ncadden said:
How do you set it to roam? Is this a setting or is there a code i can type in whenever I want it to only look to roam, then another when i want it to go back to regular, or even if i only want it to look for 1X or only look for 3G? One of the client sites i regularly travel to has great roaming 1X speeds once i can get it to switch to that but it must also have a weak roaming 3g tower somewhere because its always on 3g with one to zero bars.
I'm on Fresh though i'm apparently going to have to look into CM6 in the near future. I love this place.
Sent from my HERO200 using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You have a few options...
1. You are running Fresh on your Hero? Use the modded phone.apk from here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=745092
2. Use the PRL hack...you'll have to search for it, although I think the link is in the thread that I linked above
3. Download the app "Roam Control". Disclaimer, I am the dev, and yes it costs money.
4. Flash CM6.

Just recently stumbled upon an app called shutupbattery saver
It automatically kills your data when signal is low. You tell it what signal strength turns it off. Does wonders
Sent from my HERO200 using XDA App

markus_del_marko said:
must be an android thing because i never had this happen with winmo or my palm pre.
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No..not really. I had several TP2 windoze phones since May of this year and went back to my Hero. The battery life on the RC1 build when you follow what has been said here,will give you way more life than any of the phones I have ever had.I was lucky to see 4 hours of life even with little usage with the TP2's. While my CDMA Hero does drop to 80% with everything turned on in 7 hours,it slows down considerably after that. Just with mild web crawling and 20 minutes of talk time it took well over 60 hours to drain completely last weekend after resetting the battery stats on mine with everything turned off. I actually had to use it non stop for 4 hours to drain the thing so it would shut off and be drained. Any phone I have ever owned has always done better after letting them drain completely and then charging them to 100% a few times. We have 4 of them in our home,and mine last longer than any of the others..the other 3 are stock 2.1.6 roms.
Mac

Why are people complaining about losing a measly, small 20 percent of battery in 8 hours? I'd understand if it was 35 percent or more, but seriously? you're complaining becuase your battery can last 40 hours? Wow...
CM6 RC1 with collin_ph battery tweak rules the world.

what i do to save my battery i change the settings on my advance task killer Menu>settings>Auto kill level(crazy)then also change Auto kill frequency(when screen off) and that really seems to help me

You could also look in to JuiceDefender. It shuts off 3g when screen is locked, turns it back on for either 1 min every 15 mins or 2 mins every 30 to sync.

jerry43812 said:
Why are people complaining about losing a measly, small 20 percent of battery in 8 hours? I'd understand if it was 35 percent or more, but seriously? you're complaining becuase your battery can last 40 hours? Wow...
CM6 RC1 with collin_ph battery tweak rules the world.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
not everyone runs the froyo rom. at least i won't until a sense port comes out. and yes when the phone has a low signal it runs like absolute ****.

I'm having this problem also on CM6. Unplugged my phone this morning, full charge. Went to the gym at 11:30 and worked out for an hour and a half. There is no signal in my gym. The phone was completely dead when I got back to my desk. So basically the 80% battery drained in 1.5 hours (assuming I lost 20% between 7am and 11:30 when I went to the gym) It was not nearly this bad on the stock ROM. I just insggtalled collin_ph but I doubt that will help in this scenario. I might just have to remember to put it in airplane mode before going to the gym.
My bigger worry is when I'm out riding my road bike in the country. If I'm in the middle of nowhere, the battery will drain FAST... and thats the place I'll likely need to call someone in an emergency.

In my opinion there are key steps to insure a good battery life I perform this process every time I turn my phone on for daily use
First in settings/wireless/mobile networks I turn off data also roam and I change the signal to home only then in account and sync I turn off automatic sync and back ground data also i make sure that wireless is off as well then I turn my attention to applications and I clear data and force close any running program I'm not using for example gmail e mail browser Google search blue tooth I only force close apks that I know wont affect the system and how it runs also I should mention that this is done after I had calibrated my battery also I in spare parts I choose to make my end button put my phone to sleep these two steps are only done once now back to the process I run the over clock widget with dead3nce 9/14 stable kernel but also with every stable release he has put out I set the feq to 710 Max and 710 min and diff feq when screen off with 384 Max and 245 min this setup gives me high performance and long battery life I get 14 plus hrs with heavy use before ill hit 50% so u can imagine with moderate use will b or even standby time so I basically kill my phone if I'm not using it its in what I think is its lowest power state that I can get it at but its still on and ready so wen Im ready to use it I activate it and turn on what I need when I'm done I kill it again short of turning it off just thought I put this out in case it helps also I'm running cm6 rc1 and the 8/22 nightly I switch back and forth because of themes but the process is the same and so are my results so hope this helps good luck
Sent from my HERO200 using XDA App

It's 3G. Turn off your Mobile data when you going to be in an area with a bad signal for a long time.
As someone else said the collin_ph battery tweak works wonders too.

Related

Battery Life on Wifi - Outstanding!!

Basically, when I leave wi-fi on my phone has incredible battery life. If someone has already mentioned this feel free to bury this post, but to my knowledge it doesn't seem this has been posted yet.
With wi-fi off and 3g on
- Battery lost 5-6 percent per hour
Wi-fi on
- Battery lost 1-2 percent per hour (sometimes less than 1 percent depending on what your doing)
Right now after having my phone on for 34 hours my battery is still at 70 percent! I'm fairly certain this is because it disables the 3g radio altogether which apparently is a real battery hog. That or maybe my phone is just a fluke. I really don't know.
This also seems to be tied to the htc sense rom (correct me if im wrong) but if i remember correctly battery drainage increased when wifi was enabled in the stock rom. Currently, I'm using the latest htc sense rom from modaco, I'd really enjoy hearing if enabling wifi helps others extend their battery life.
your having better battery life with the Desire ROMs? that odd, my battery life with a Desire ROM was 20-30% worse compared to stock.
amlwaycooljr said:
Basically, when I leave wi-fi on my phone has incredible battery life. If someone has already mentioned this feel free to bury this post, but to my knowledge it doesn't seem this has been posted yet.
With wi-fi off and 3g on
- Battery lost 5-6 percent per hour
Wi-fi on
- Battery lost 1-2 percent per hour (sometimes less than 1 percent depending on what your doing)
Right now after having my phone on for 34 hours my battery is still at 70 percent! I'm fairly certain this is because it disables the 3g radio altogether which apparently is a real battery hog. That or maybe my phone is just a fluke. I really don't know.
This also seems to be tied to the htc sense rom (correct me if im wrong) but if i remember correctly battery drainage increased when wifi was enabled in the stock rom. Currently, I'm using the latest htc sense rom from modaco, I'd really enjoy hearing if enabling wifi helps others extend their battery life.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Actually, it's a well known fact that 3G uses more power on most (every?) phones than Wifi... so you're not alone.
Hey when you say WIFI on..do you mean WIFI and EDGE or did you completely disabled the radio?
I never would have thought having wifi on would extend battery life to such a great extent though, in most of the latest cell phone reviews and what not everyone recommends to have wifi off saves battery life but in this case just the opposite is true. I kinda knew the wifi was more efficient but I never expected such a large benefit from leaving wifi on all the time.
@ram130 I haven't actually touched the radios at all so I expect them all to be on or at the very least have edge on, I am able to receive and send calls and txt so I'm assuming at least some cell radio has to be on. All I did was use the htc sense rom and enable wifi.
The cellular radio is still on, but 3G/Edge (data) are disconnected. I don't know how Edge compares to Wifi, but 3G is a battery killer in comparison.
uansari1 said:
The cellular radio is still on, but 3G/Edge (data) are disconnected. I don't know how Edge compares to Wifi, but 3G is a battery killer in comparison.
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amlwaycooljr said:
I never would have thought having wifi on would extend battery life to such a great extent though, in most of the latest cell phone reviews and what not everyone recommends to have wifi off saves battery life but in this case just the opposite is true. I kinda knew the wifi was more efficient but I never expected such a large benefit from leaving wifi on all the time.
@ram130 I haven't actually touched the radios at all so I expect them all to be on or at the very least have edge on, I am able to receive and send calls and txt so I'm assuming at least some cell radio has to be on. All I did was use the htc sense rom and enable wifi.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
In other words you have "use 2G networks" checked right?
I'm gonna try this is now. I'm currently at 3hr 32m unplugged with 80% left. I have wifi enabled and on the stock rom. So I'll post back when I wake in a few a hours and see how it goes.
My only problem:
Wifi seems to disconnect alot during the hour regardless if sleep policy is set to NEVER. My wifi signal is -78dBm to -86dBm in my room and on channel 11(used wifi analyzer). Any suggestions why?
I have the same experience at home, I enable Wifi and leave the phone stay home for a couple of days and battery still 40%, when I go out and wifi is not connected, 3G kicks in and battery drops much faster.
I'm using cyanogen 5.0.4.1
Interesting. Did not know this!
I guess I won't feel so bad about leaving my phone on Wifi all day!
Also, does anyone know how much power is used by not having a radio signal and letting it constantly search? That seems to destroy my battery. But sometimes I am in an area with wifi but no radio access (deep within a building).
It's too bad this phone doesn't have UMA - that would make up for T-Mobile's lack of indoor coverage (at times), and probably improve battery life a lot in some cases.
But I have to say that on another phones I've used, especially WinMo devices, using WiFi instead of 3G seemed to always use more battery. But, it could very well be different on this phone...I'm definitely going to give this a try.
im not sure about the percentage but i agree,the battery drain is considerably more when searching for radio.im in a building most of the day and it doesnt take long.miss the UMA i had on my bberry.
Paul22000 said:
Interesting. Did not know this!
I guess I won't feel so bad about leaving my phone on Wifi all day!
Also, does anyone know how much power is used by not having a radio signal and letting it constantly search? That seems to destroy my battery. But sometimes I am in an area with wifi but no radio access (deep within a building).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I also Get. About 25% better battery on wifi
Well after 10hrs of the phone being on stand by I woke up. It was at 46%!! my god. Anyway I checked my email, read an article all taking around 15mins and guess what? I had 30% left!. I put it back to stand by for 3hrs and took a look at it and had about 16% left...
It is now charging after one hour with just 10min use of downloading apps ..Can ANYONE tell me why my battery is draining so much on wifi? When its on EDGE for the night after 10hr I would have around 70% left from a full charge. Anyone can help me out here?
I shall be getting a replacement battery for free Tuesday.
Stock android.
ram130 said:
Well after 10hrs of the phone being on stand by I woke up. It was at 46%!! my god. Anyway I checked my email, read an article all taking around 15mins and guess what? I had 30% left!. I put it back to stand by for 3hrs and took a look at it and had about 16% left...
It is now charging after one hour with just 10min use of downloading apps ..Can ANYONE tell me why my battery is draining so much on wifi? When its on EDGE for the night after 10hr I would have around 70% left from a full charge. Anyone can help me out here?
I shall be getting a replacement battery for free Tuesday.
Stock android.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Did you set your phone to only use 2G networks also? If you're not charging, wifi will probably disable after not being used for a while..so it's probably rolling to 3G if you haven't disabled it.
I'm not saying it's convenient to constantly switch back and forth... but this explains why it may not be a good test of the battery life the way you're running it.
uansari1 said:
Did you set your phone to only use 2G networks also? If you're not charging, wifi will probably disable after not being used for a while..so it's probably rolling to 3G if you haven't disabled it.
I'm not saying it's convenient to constantly switch back and forth... but this explains why it may not be a good test of the battery life the way you're running it.
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Click to collapse
Well yes I have it on 2G only. Any thing else could be contributing to it dying so fast?
Well I found a way to use my laptop as an AP. So I connected my N1 to it and getting full bars(-41dBm) in my room now. No wifi disconnects so far!(maybe it was my linksys before ?).. So far the battery is at 86% with some 3D games, been unplug for 1hr 50min now. I'll put it to stand by now and see how it looks after 10hrs.
I'm on a stock firmware(not rooted). 2G only selected.
The way I understand it is as follows:
Phone is on STANDBY:
3g==2g* which are both more efficient then wifi (that's why the default wifi policy turns wifi off if it's not being used)**
Phone is ACTIVE:
wifi is more efficient then 2g/3g because:
1) It's waaay faster and thus causes less battery drain* and
2) The AP (router) is much closer to the phone then the cell tower so in theory it doesn't need to use as much power to talk to the router.
*http://code.google.com/events/io/2009/sessions/CodingLifeBatteryLife.html
4:45min into it there is a power usage chart and 3G/EDGE idle power usage is about the same - also somewhere else in the video they talk about wifi vs 3g usage when transferring data.
** http://code.google.com/p/sipdroid/wiki/NewStandbyTechnique
States that 3g standby is more efficient then wifi
drak0 said:
** http://code.google.com/p/sipdroid/wiki/NewStandbyTechnique
States that 3g standby is more efficient then wifi
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Someone needs to test this ok. ...already testing wifi
Ok I'm at 11hrs 30min on wifi and its at 67% with light usage(checking email, news for 5min)..improvement? kinda, because since turning off my laptop it switched back to getting low signal(-81dBm) from the router in the next room. Weird? I'm still thinking. anyway I'm heading out so gonna use the phone more today, lets see if it gets me through the day.
Still no where near the thread starter 30hrs!! Maybe stock really sucks? bad battery anyone??
@ram130 I'm not sure how my battery is lasting as long as it has so far. I'm up to what would be an insane number, 65 hours 36 percent left .. this battery just wont die. I haven't the slightest idea how it's lasting this long I just leave wifi on all the time and turn wifi standby off. If anyone could explain how leaving wifi on more than quadruples my battery life I'd sure love to know.

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.
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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.
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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.

anyone that can help me with battery life?

thiis thing dies on me really quick, at home not as bad when I'm on wifi, but i left this morning from my house, and by the time I got to work 45 minutes later i'm at like 90% and i've done nothing on the phone, not a thing, no text, no voice calls. time without signal is 0.
then of course I get to work and time without signal jumps to like 22%, but still, my blackberry didn't go dead in half a day. i'm running the mixup undervolted kernal and the epic experience rom.
I do run gps and normal phone settings but turning them off is really not an option, especially for my wife that just needs a phone that works and isn't dead before she is out of work, and she doesn't even use the phone.
am I doing something wrong or is the battery life really this crappy?
and it was worse before the new kernal on DI18, and way worse before that.
i use the same set up i got 10 hours under pretty use
try turning gps off at work
So what are you leaving on? 4g? Gps? WiFi? I found that using black wallpaper helps.
wifi and gps are always on, it seems its TWS that is killing it. at like 22% right now. battery is down to 83% right now 2 hours off charger. no voice calls or text calls.
If you are getting a tws of 50% then put your phone into airplane mode for about 10 seconds and then switch it back, you will see a dramatic decease in tws
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA App
Here's a few things you can do ...
1) If you have Sprint service in most places, turn off roaming (Settings, Call settings, System select, Sprint). This will disable roaming period so that all roaming services are disabled (i.e. you won't ever see the data roaming guard).
2) Download JuiceDefender beta (this turns off all data, i.e. Wifi / 3G, whenever your phone's screen is off, if you purchase UltimateJuice with it, you can schedule it however you want, and you can choose to allow some apps to always allow data to go through). This saves me a LOT of battery since my screen is usually off.
3) Try the TWS hack mentioned in the earlier post, it should be fixed in DI18, but some people are still seeing high numbers there.
4) If you're rooted, get an app like Autostarts and disable the DRM service from ever running. This was found to be a battery killer.
The biggest battery drainer of them all is the GPS, and then 3G. If you can minimize your uses with those, you will maximize battery life. Also, use Wifi in areas that have it because Wifi hardly drains battery at all compared to 3G. I haven't seen any kernel really that gets much more battery life than stock, so doing these things will help. I love the Epic, but the battery life is a real downer for me too. I've gotten a full day's use (medium use) at times, while some days it hardly lasts at all.
Yes do the airplane mode trick and turn off gps if you are not using it and DO NOT USE JUICE DEFENDER i get 45 hours battery life without it. that app runs constantly in the background and uses more battery. Juice defender is for lazy people that dont know how to find these data and sync settings that are already on the phone or you can download an app that will let you toggle whatever setting you need. Set emails to sync once an hour and if it is really a priority then go into the email account and push refresh.
If you are really getting 45 hours of battery while actually using your phone then will you please share all of the settings that you have that give you this kind of battery life
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA App
Use SetCPU, it will turn down the processor while the screen is off. Helped alot with battery life. =)
itsmebryan said:
I found that using black wallpaper helps.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I wondered if that would do anything. Considering how AMOLED works, dark themes and wallpapers *should* help battery life similar to reducing brightness.
Auto-Sync does some mean damage if your settings are too frequent, too. Try not to use Facebook/Twitter/Myspace integration, if possible, or disable them from syncing automatically, and sync them yourself when you feel the need.
Okay I don't know exactly what I did/didn't do but my battery problem seems to be greatly improved. Lets start with my details. Before 2 days ago. No matter what my use my battery drain would be approx 6-8% an hour. If I took my phone off the charger at 11am by 4pm I would be around 60%. GPS/4g/wifi off. Screen brightness set to lowest. tws not too bad. Using both the tws trick and drm stopped. Usually 2 or 3 phone calls 5-10 texts 5-10 minutes of browsing. I had a task killer installed but never used it to kill tasks just as an app switcher. Even after the di18 update no major difference. So the other day I downloaded an app called system panel. Another task manager. I deleted the task killer widget on my home page but no the app. The first day I took my phone off the charger used it for about an hour then put it back on the charger for about 15 minutes. When I took it off the charger it was at 96%. I opened system panel and killed all apps (necessary services/apps restarted immediately) did tws trick and drm kill. Same use as always after 8 hours my battery was at 80% a 16% drop. That's 2% an hour. The next day I deleted my task killer and over the same period of time I went from 96% to 83% (13% lose over 8 hrs) Only a little over 1% lose an hour. The only difference that I am aware of was the deletion of the task killer widget and then the app completely.
Sh0wNuF said:
If you are really getting 45 hours of battery while actually using your phone then will you please share all of the settings that you have that give you this kind of battery life
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ditto, I'd like to hear what you're doing too ... even when I do not TOUCH the phone, I cannot get 45 hours. I think you're being a bit optimistic here.
Lmao No. Since di18 it has been great. I use my phone for a lot of stuff too. I have a live wall paper and rss feeds that update. email is set to once an hour. Now dont get me wrong if i play a game then it will suck my battery pretty good like 5% for ten minutes. i have a widget for sync settings. im rooted with ALL SPRINT apps removed i think thats the biggest thing. dont leave gps or other on if you are not using it. i do not have drm removed. i use full brightness. i talk a few times a day and dozens of text and web surfing. no juice defender or task killers. The object for me was to not have any unneccessary stuff run when it doesnt need to. so the phone is set to come alive when the screen is on not off. Check ALL APP and WIDGET SETTINGS FOR HOW OFTEN THEY UPDATE. I DO MEAN ALL. GO THROUGH EVERY APP AND CHECK THEIR SETTINGS ALSO the biggest drain is make sure you sign out gtalk or it will just constantly run. I shoulda posted my screen shot of battery life earlier sorry i will as soon as it reads 1d21h again. prolly tomorrow afternoon.... Rooted,cwm,galaxy rom and kernel, blue minimalism theme
jbadboy2007 said:
Yes do the airplane mode trick and turn off gps if you are not using it and DO NOT USE JUICE DEFENDER i get 45 hours battery life without it. that app runs constantly in the background and uses more battery. Juice defender is for lazy people that dont know how to find these data and sync settings that are already on the phone or you can download an app that will let you toggle whatever setting you need. Set emails to sync once an hour and if it is really a priority then go into the email account and push refresh.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i do the airplane trick, problem is it seems,when im on wifi, the life is great, battery is perfect, as soon as you go to 3g, it goes to crap, plus the service where I work is spotty as well. I don't know what to do, seriously I can't go through 2 years of great cell service that I can't use because the battery is dead. I mean if I could get through 10 hours it wouldn't be bad, but as it is now, i'm lucky to squeak through about 8 hours. and I have the mixup kernal that is undervolted and supposedly already messing around with the cpu. usually on 3g, no matter where I am pretty much I"m at like 10-20% TWS.
tws is 50% for me. just stop the data with sync settings then it has no reason to draw more. my house and school have terrible service. you are only losing battery life due to data that is going really slow and it takes way more battery to accomplish. i keep wifi on all nite at my house but my sync settings are off. i do this so its not searching for 3g because i have an airrave and wifi. i used the di07 mixup and was not happy with it. galaxy roms have been the least buggy and very stable with the best battery life. That might be my opinion but also genius dog doesnt have an epic yet so i cant trust his stuff when he cant see the impacts with the kernels he is making. but he does know code i will tell you that.
robl45 said:
i do the airplane trick, problem is it seems,when im on wifi, the life is great, battery is perfect, as soon as you go to 3g, it goes to crap, plus the service where I work is spotty as well. I don't know what to do, seriously I can't go through 2 years of great cell service that I can't use because the battery is dead. I mean if I could get through 10 hours it wouldn't be bad, but as it is now, i'm lucky to squeak through about 8 hours. and I have the mixup kernal that is undervolted and supposedly already messing around with the cpu. usually on 3g, no matter where I am pretty much I"m at like 10-20% TWS.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Holy crap 8 hour battery life is really bad.
Do you have any apps syncing? A weak signal with an app syncing can have a devastating effect on the battery life.
In my school building I get 0-1 signal bars and once I use the stock email app to sync my email every hour with 3G on my battery life is probably a third as good.
How?
jbadboy2007 said:
Yes do the airplane mode trick and turn off gps if you are not using it and DO NOT USE JUICE DEFENDER i get 45 hours battery life without it. that app runs constantly in the background and uses more battery. Juice defender is for lazy people that dont know how to find these data and sync settings that are already on the phone or you can download an app that will let you toggle whatever setting you need. Set emails to sync once an hour and if it is really a priority then go into the email account and push refresh.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
sent from my epic 4g with no 4g
only thing syncing is gmail, I refuse to stop syncing my email, otherwise whats the point of the phone? my blackberry could do push no problem, the iphone could do push no problem.
akei1 said:
Holy crap 8 hour battery life is really bad.
Do you have any apps syncing? A weak signal with an app syncing can have a devastating effect on the battery life.
In my school building I get 0-1 signal bars and once I use the stock email app to sync my email every hour with 3G on my battery life is probably a third as good.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
robl45 said:
only thing syncing is gmail, I refuse to stop syncing my email, otherwise whats the point of the phone? my blackberry could do push no problem, the iphone could do push no problem.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Inside my building where I get a weak signal I turn off 3G and use the wifi to sync my apps regularly. I get a good wifi signal there.
If I can't get a good 3G signal in the building than there's not much I can do to my phone to make the 3G signal better (I think that's the cause for the battery drain).

Answers on battery life.

I've been seeing a lot of posts on crap battery life around here, and I was chasing my tail about some of them as well, following a lot of misinformation even by senior members. I think I have a good handle on it now, and picked up most of these tips from these forums, so I'm not taking credit for these ideas, just collecting them in one place. Some of my suggestions assume you have root and Rom Manager (see the Tips and Tricks sticky thread on how to get them).
1. If your battery drains in less than a day on standby, you probably have a bad flash of the JI6 modem (either from the OTA update or from a ROM). Flash the JI2 modem from here "www dot teamwhiskey dot com/home/downloads". If the flash fixes it, you may try going back to JI6 if you want, and it may stay fixed. I went back to JI2 and didn't bother going back to JI6, but it has worked for others. With JI2 and 3G on I get just over 24 hours in normal usage.
2. The #2 battery drain on standby is 3G. I turned it off (Settings/Wireless/Mobile networks/Network mode/GSM only) and my phone lasted for 40 hours on Edge with light usage (few phone calls, messaging, quite a lot of web surfing, 2 hours of podcasts). Didn't even feel too slow (I get 140kbps on edge). Can anybody suggest a really good widget for turning 3G on/off? I use the 2G-3G OnOff widget by Curvefish. It's not one-click, it's just a shortcut to Mobile Network Settings, but it works. Note that sometimes it takes a while for the data connection to re-establish after you see the 3G or E icon.
2.5. WiFi always on is a huge battery saver! It keeps 3g off. I can easily get 3+ days with light usage on my home wifi. Settings/Wireless and Network/Wifi Settings/Menu/Advanced/Wifi Sleep Policy/Never.
3. Don't need a task killer. I wasted all my time killing tasks trying to chase down my crappy battery usage, but since I fixed my modem and turned off 3G I know that the 3-5% CPU usage at idle does not hurt my battery. Taskiller for me was actually hitting the CPU constantly, lightly but for no reason, so I got pissed and uninstalled it.
4. Install a CPU usage monitor like Usage Timelines. It sits in the notification bar, very easy on the battery, but tells you if you have a rogue app pegging your CPU and draining your battery. These are the only apps you should be worried about killing. Astro File Manager has a task manager that shows CPU usage for each app, so you can kill the rogue one. I shoot for about 5% cpu usage at idle (at 200mhz - at 100mhz it would be a bit higher).
5. The app Autostarts lets you disable any app from starting on boot or other events like connectivity changes. This is not strictly necessary unless you have a lot of crap apps installed on your phone and they like to start themselves and waste CPU time behind your back.
6. If your battery reads less than 100% as soon as you unplug it from the charger fully charged, or your battery meter sits at 100% for a long time after you unplug it, you can recalibrate your battery meter. To recalibrate: 1) charge your battery to full, 2) unplug, 3) reboot into Clockwork Recovery and 4) Wipe battery stats.
7. There is No Such Thing as "battery reconditioning" (for all intents and purposes). The above procedure only RECALIBRATES you battery METER to read on a more linear scale between full and empty. It DOES NOT make your battery last longer, period. Whoever tells you that is a moron. If your battery is dying in 6 hours, doing any amount of calibration will not make it last longer (I've tried).
8. I wouldn't be too worried about undervolting, overclocking, kernel tricks and superawesomefast ROMS. The CPU drain at idle is so minuscule (as long as you don't have rogue apps) that those things make precious little difference. Like I said, the biggest drain is 3G and other radios. Having said that, I run Bionix 1.9 with the JAC kernel. It drained my battery in half a day at idle until I flashed the JI2 modem. With JI2 it suddenly started lasting over 24 hours, and once I turned off 3G, over 40 hours. I like this ROM and see no need to switch, it's very smooth. But you should be able to get similar battery life on a stock Vibrant.
9. I have GPS on, WiFi never sleep, auto-brightness, and a few widgets on like Weather and friend updates. I have no fancy settings, literally just turning off 3G (or wifi on, which is the same) got me 2-3 days. So I wouldn't waste time fooling around with magic settings (other than wifi never sleep), battery saver apps, etc.
10. If your screen is on all the time and you're playing games nonstop, you're draining your battery quicker than any of the things I mentioned above, so you probably don't care. In that case an optimized ROM/kernel is probably your best bet, especially JIT in Froyo. You can probably save on screen brightness as well.
If you guys have any other tips I'd be glad to add them to the list, but I hope this gives you an understanding of where your battery life is going. Basically: bad modem, 3G, or rogue apps.
Also, I hope this will put an end to trolls calling people whiners for complaining about battery life and saying unproductive **** like "you're a whiner" or "the Galaxy S is just a battery hog, live with it". It's not, you don't have to live with it, nobody should have to, here are your solutions.
Good luck.
A few things I do to help with battery life is:
Disable Audible touch tones
Disable Audible selection
Disable Haptic feedback
Disable SD card notifications
Set animations to NO animations
Uninstall media hub if you dont use it
Disable auto brightness adjustment
Disable power saving mode
I disable the last 2 and just swipe the notification bar to adjust brightness. Granted these items really only work when using the phone but I can go about 2 days of normal use without a charge believe it or not.
yeah disabling 3g has always been the best option for people really, really concerned with battery life.
But it's kinda hard to tell people not to use 3g on their brand new 3g capable devices.
You may want to add how to test if you battery is bad. If you use you phone repeatedly while it its plugged in you risk overheating and damaging your battery. Signs that unitas is the case are very quick drain and long (7 hours) charge times. You can easily test and see if your battery its damaged. Remove it from your phone and place on flat surface (e.g. Counter top) try spinning the battery. If it rotates easily and quickly you battery is bulging, this is a sign of damage. Time for a new battery.
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App
Answer to #2-
Use APNDroid. Comes with a widget.
Thanks to the OP and other contributors in this thread.
I flashed a ROM with the ji6 modem and battery life has been noticeably ****ty since. Example - this morning I unplugged my phone at 7:30 am. 100% charged. It's 10:21 am and my phone is at 75%
In the last 3 hours I browsed the web for 10 minutes while having my coffee and a smoke before heading out to work. Blue tooth was on for my drive, and I've sent 2 text messages. Aside from that my phone has been on stand-by since I unplugged it 3 hours ago.
I'm going to try to flash back to ji2 tonight as the battery usage was definitely better. Will also look into the 3G thing.
Thanks again.
You forgot to mention the two DRM and one downloader services that run resident on JI6.
These were the cause of my reduced battery life after I upgraded. Killing & removing these processes restored my battery life back to normal
blink55184 said:
Answer to #2-
Use APNDroid. Comes with a widget.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I just tried this - switching 3G off works fine, but switching 3G back on didn't work for me. I had to re-boot to get 3G back so this is a no-go in my case.
I know how to kill the processes for the DRM and downloader but how do I remove them?
OP thank you for putting together the list. But I've never seen the point of doing all this. Its like getting a lamborghini and only driving 40mph because it you don't want to waste gas, whats the point? Either get a second wall charger to charge at work or a car charger. Heck even get a second battery if you are out for a long period of time.
speoples20 said:
Its like getting a lamborghini and only driving 40mph because it you don't want to waste gas, whats the point?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You don't need to disable 3g.
The point of my post is to avoid people wasting their time with tweaks that have little to no effect on battery life. I'm telling people that they're wasting time killing apps and optimizing cpu usage and twiddling their settings when the radio drains most of their battery on standby anyway.
Meaning no matter what changes you make, you can only hope to improve your battery life by a tiny amount, because any other effect is overshadowed by 3G.
Put another way, you will NEVER get battery life much longer than a day if you're on 3g, so you're wasting your energy trying all kinds of tricks.
blink55184 said:
Answer to #2-
Use APNDroid. Comes with a widget.
smutek said:
I just tried this - switching 3G off works fine, but switching 3G back on didn't work for me. I had to re-boot to get 3G back so this is a no-go in my case.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
For me the widget did nothing. But it seems like it's not even supposed to turn the 3G radio off, but ALL APN network traffic. Did I miss something? It won't save battery power as long as the 3G radio is on.
I went back to the 2G-3G OnOff widget by Curvefish. It's not one-click, it's just a shortcut to Mobile Network Settings, but it works. Note that sometimes it takes a while for the data connection to re-establish after you see the 3G or E icon.
Back to my Moto Startac
While i understand the idea behind this thread, your conclusion is simple.
If you use the phone as a smartphone, it will eat up your battery no matter what.
I personally go through two batteries and some a day. (they cost about 12 bucks in ebay, and they work just fine)
The price for saving battery is not using the phone, and having a 400 bucks phone just for show off is just silly at least.
If you have a phone like this is to use it. At least you can change the battery not like some other devices......
I understand that task killer is useless, but do any of you use Autokiller (memory manager) ?
That's kind of a redundant question because even if you do not use the app, your phone is still performing the functions. The app just adjusts the settings. But to answer your question, using a memory optimization tool such as AutoKiller is 1000% more efficient than using a Task Killer. I don't think it effects battery much, but works wonders on performance.
There's no 3g-off widget because apparently in Android there's no way to do that through a direct command. I also use the Curvefish widget, and you are absolutely right about turning off 3g to save battery. I normally do so when I'm asleep or if I'm sitting at my desk next to a computer (why do I need fast data on my phone when I have my computer right here?).
The other thing I would recommend is AutoStarts. There are way too many apps that open themselves up at bizarre and inappropriate times. Autostarts is an easy and painless way to see which apps do this and keep them from opening.
gagb1967 said:
While i understand the idea behind this thread, your conclusion is simple.
If you use the phone as a smartphone, it will eat up your battery no matter what.
I personally go through two batteries and some a day. (they cost about 12 bucks in ebay, and they work just fine)
The price for saving battery is not using the phone, and having a 400 bucks phone just for show off is just silly at least.
If you have a phone like this is to use it. At least you can change the battery not like some other devices......
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
+1000
Great battery life comes to people who hardly use their phones. Guess I need to get a netbook. Will prolly get a netbook or 3g laptop + skype and ETF my phone soon. These battery woes are show-stopping.
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App
Losing 4% an hour on standby when you're not using the phone is unacceptable. Samsung screwed something up with the JI6 update. Most people think it's because of the stupid Media Hub. I think they are right.
People are not complaining about the poor battery life from using the phone. They are complaining about the slow battery drain even when they are not using it. ~4% an hour adds up fast. Vibrant is supposed to have 450 hour (18 days) stand-by time. That's what is rated. But people are getting 24 hour (1 day) stand-by time after JI6.
Yellow C6 said:
Losing 4% an hour on standby when you're not using the phone is unacceptable. Samsung screwed something up with the JI6 update. Most people think it's because of the stupid Media Hub. I think they are right.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm not ready to sign off on this idea. For me simply flashing JI2 over JI6 fixed it. For some people flashing JI6 back over still left the problem fixed. I still have those processes running on JI2 and my battery life is fine.
The other reason I'm not ready to recommend wiping out those DRM processes is that apparently it stops the bundled Avatar movie from playing, and might affect other things that users may get pissed about. I've read that killing the downloader process people are talking about kills the market. So I really wish those people advocating that solution would figure their **** out and provide exact steps for the fix (right now their posts are really vague like "kill the processes that are named something like this" and not well tested; in all my research I didn't find the exact name of the "downloader" process).
Is it possible to flash the ji2 modem without root? Wishful thinking, I suppose..

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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