Database Users

Observations on power

Battery life is not good on my Hermes, but a couple of things have seemed to make a big difference.
1) low signal areas cause will really drain the battery quickly. I guess it ramps up to output power, pretty obvious really, but quite a striking difference, I used to barely get through a working day, now I've moved jobs to a good signal area, plenty of power left at the end of the day
2) more subjective, but I *think* HTC home was making the device more power-hungry. Anyone else have this experience?
3) long-term the battery is doing very well, it's about 20 months old now and doesn't seem different from when I got the phone.
Long live the Hermes, it was an incremental stage in smartphone evolution, and nothing *massively* better has happened in the past 2 years.

patp said:
Battery life is not good on my Hermes, but a couple of things have seemed to make a big difference.
1) low signal areas cause will really drain the battery quickly. I guess it ramps up to output power, pretty obvious really, but quite a striking difference, I used to barely get through a working day, now I've moved jobs to a good signal area, plenty of power left at the end of the day
2) more subjective, but I *think* HTC home was making the device more power-hungry. Anyone else have this experience?
3) long-term the battery is doing very well, it's about 20 months old now and doesn't seem different from when I got the phone.
Long live the Hermes, it was an incremental stage in smartphone evolution, and nothing *massively* better has happened in the past 2 years.
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Click to collapse
I have been noticing a pretty poor battery life as of late, the battery would be fully charger and watching 30 mins of coreplayer it would put it down to 20%!!
Invested in a new battery (a 1500mAh one off ebay, same physical size) and it seems to be doing the trick now.

mrvanx said:
I have been noticing a pretty poor battery life as of late, the battery would be fully charger and watching 30 mins of coreplayer it would put it down to 20%!!
Invested in a new battery (a 1500mAh one off ebay, same physical size) and it seems to be doing the trick now.
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Click to collapse
It's certainly around the time that all my laptop batteries have tended to start degrading.
1500mAh is 11% more than the stock one, that's nice. Does it fit without modification? Are you allowed to tell me the sellers ID?

patp said:
It's certainly around the time that all my laptop batteries have tended to start degrading.
1500mAh is 11% more than the stock one, that's nice. Does it fit without modification? Are you allowed to tell me the sellers ID?
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Click to collapse
Lol sure! The dimensions are exactly the same, naturally you can go for a 2400 or 3000 mAh but they naturally need a modified rear cover.
This is the page i got the battery from: http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/HTC-TyTn-Repl...1229071QQihZ023QQcategoryZ75446QQcmdZViewItem
Delivery was VERY quick, but I am in the UK also so take a look at the delivery times etc... totally worth getting.

Kernels on Froyo

So I get terrible battery life with .33.4 kernels (925 or 800) but got phenomenal battery on Ravens 800mv from 5/03. Are there any .33.3 kernels that will have the right drivers? How hard would it be to mod?
Thanks

Have you considered just sticking with the stock kernel? I'm getting phenomenal battery life with the stock Froyo kernel. Last I checked, i was at 46% after 28 hours unplugged (pretty heavy usage too - streaming music over 3G, several phone calls, tons of texting, youtube, web browsing)

r34p3rex said:
Have you considered just sticking with the stock kernel? I'm getting phenomenal battery life with the stock Froyo kernel. Last I checked, i was at 46% after 28 hours unplugged (pretty heavy usage too - streaming music over 3G, several phone calls, tons of texting, youtube, web browsing)
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Click to collapse
My battery is getting raped on froyo almost to the point that I want to roll back to enoms 2.1

r34p3rex said:
Have you considered just sticking with the stock kernel? I'm getting phenomenal battery life with the stock Froyo kernel. Last I checked, i was at 46% after 28 hours unplugged (pretty heavy usage too - streaming music over 3G, several phone calls, tons of texting, youtube, web browsing)
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Click to collapse
what do you do to get that much battery? my battery life isnt so good on froyo

I tried stock. Wasn't great but was better than avs.
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Sent via the XDA Tapatalk App

all kernels are going to depend on how much you play with it, and what you have running. if you don't have a load of widgets, background data, bluetooth, etc running, you should get decent battery life.
the more crap you run, the more energy it takes. common sense.

timothydonohue said:
all kernels are going to depend on how much you play with it, and what you have running. if you don't have a load of widgets, background data, bluetooth, etc running, you should get decent battery life.
the more crap you run, the more energy it takes. common sense.
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This!
And I am getting pretty good battery life off the stock Froyo kernel. Actually, I am only draining at 2.2% an hour, and have had my screen on for 1hr 57 minutes, and the device off the charger for 14 hours. I have also made about 45 minutes of phone calls, and let it download with the screen off a bit.

Personally I have similar battery life to what I was getting on cm with uv/oc kernal. It does appear like it might be a little worse but I need time to be sure. Regardless I have gained small but real improvements with battery life on both cm and enom using the custom kernals and I have no reason to expect another result with froyo. Since battery life isnt exactly something I would describe as gratuitous on the N1 I will be kernaling up as soon as one looks like it actually works without issues. Right now thats not exactly the situation as I read down in development. There are a few usb mounting issues going one way and no cam going the other. Hopefully there will be a more hashed out kernal soon as the guys get more time to play with it. So getting back to the begining you ought to have something to work with shortly.

So no one will ever get the old kernels working with Froyo, huh?

If only I could find one that worked well without the USB dismount issue or the wifi issue, everything I've tried has failed. IMO 2.6.34 so far has worked best for me but has the dismount issue. I've tried four so far and none of them work well. I did get pretty proficient at moving zip files from dropbox to the sd card though.

Battery life seems to be so across the board dependent on so many variables that it sometimes seems like it's not even worth trying to gauge other people's experiences. I've tried numerous ROM/Kernal/Usage/Setting combinations and have never gotten what I'd consider to be 'good' battery life. 2.2's no exception.
I just ended up buying this 2 battery and external charger pack off of eBay for 20 bucks and admitting defeat. Our superphones are luck of the draw it seems when it comes to battery life. I'd follow someone's set up to the letter and get nowhere near the battery life they claim to get. I can turn off syncing, keep the screen dim, run a kernel that's supposed to get great battery life, and still get around 3%-5% drain per hour on standby.
My morning routine has me use bluetooth stereo headphones for about 25 minutes on the metro while I look at a couple of webpages. From out the door fully charged I'll be down to around 82% when I get into the office. To me, that's laughably terrible, but it's the only life I've ever known with my Nexus One.

halorin said:
Battery life seems to be so across the board dependent on so many variables that it sometimes seems like it's not even worth trying to gauge other people's experiences. I've tried numerous ROM/Kernal/Usage/Setting combinations and have never gotten what I'd consider to be 'good' battery life. 2.2's no exception.
I just ended up buying this 2 battery and external charger pack off of eBay for 20 bucks and admitting defeat. Our superphones are luck of the draw it seems when it comes to battery life. I'd follow someone's set up to the letter and get nowhere near the battery life they claim to get. I can turn off syncing, keep the screen dim, run a kernel that's supposed to get great battery life, and still get around 3%-5% drain per hour on standby.
My morning routine has me use bluetooth stereo headphones for about 25 minutes on the metro while I look at a couple of webpages. From out the door fully charged I'll be down to around 82% when I get into the office. To me, that's laughably terrible, but it's the only life I've ever known with my Nexus One.
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It is terrible and I was in the same boat as you. I found the kernel from 4/29 800mv and 5/03 800mv to be the big winners for me. Any other kernels and my battery drops like dead weight.

hah2110 said:
It is terrible and I was in the same boat as you. I found the kernel from 4/29 800mv and 5/03 800mv to be the big winners for me. Any other kernels and my battery drops like dead weight.
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Hm.. You're talking about Intersect's I'm assuming? How do they fair with Froyo? I'll have to try to track those down.

halorin said:
Hm.. You're talking about Intersect's I'm assuming? How do they fair with Froyo? I'll have to try to track those down.
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Ya. The two kernels I mentioned are the ones that had me going 1.5-3 days depending on usage.

In right there with you guys. I unplugged at 8am and now its 10am and I'm at 78% this is how its always been.

I downloaded the 5/03 one and I'm trying that one out now, thanks. Maybe we'll see some improvement. It sucks to lose the ability to record video for a chance at battery life on par with what I'd get on a RAZR, but that's the world we live in.

halorin said:
I downloaded the 5/03 one and I'm trying that one out now, thanks. Maybe we'll see some improvement. It sucks to lose the ability to record video for a chance at battery life on par with what I'd get on a RAZR, but that's the world we live in.
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Your RAZR doesn't have a 1ghz processor and a 3+" screen either... I'm not happy either but I'm just sayin'...

THATTON said:
Your RAZR doesn't have a 1ghz processor and a 3+" screen either... I'm not happy either but I'm just sayin'...
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True enough, but phones in the same category perform much better than ours in terms of battery life, and they never made the claim to be 'superphones'. And AMOLEDs are designed to not use a lot of juice, but HTC somehow botched that idea, from my research.

halorin said:
True enough, but phones in the same category perform much better than ours in terms of battery life, and they never made the claim to be 'superphones'. And AMOLEDs are designed to not use a lot of juice, but HTC somehow botched that idea, from my research.
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I agree... Hopefully the "final" release of Froyo will have an updated kernel addressing the battery life. To be, it's not a big deal because I am always near a charger but it would be nice to be able to get through an ENTIRE day of heavy usage without worrying about the battery dying.

I havent had a smartphone recently that could didn't need to be charged every night. I would love better battery life as I jmake it through weaker usage days at about 40% moderate usage at about 25% and with heavy use I have to find a way to get plugged in to get through. Still, reading how other similar phones (large screen 1 ghz etc) are doing leads me to believe that the N1 is roughly comparable. I'm not sure how you can compare a modern smartphone to a far less power hungry (and capable) feature phone that a person almost certainly did less with over the course of a day?

The Epic 4g's Battery Life is Really bad...

These numbers dont look encouraging at all. Hopefully this 3g power drain isnt all hardware and can be fixed up in software...
http://www.anandtech.com/show/3891/samsung-epic-4g-review-the-fastest-android-phone/8

icantdrawanime said:
These numbers dont look encouraging at all. Hopefully this 3g power drain isnt all hardware and can be fixed up in software...
http://www.anandtech.com/show/3891/samsung-epic-4g-review-the-fastest-android-phone/8
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Click to collapse
Mine is just fine. gets me through a full 8 hour work day and then some. Its right there with the evo and other android devices. Want better battery life?, unferclock it like iphone 4.
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA App

rufflez2010 said:
Mine is just fine. gets me through a full 8 hour work day and then some. Quit trolling.
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Well mine just sucks as does the gps. My wife and kid was lost yesterday and the nav/gps would not work. Screw this piece of chit.
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA App

Battery life does suck. Can't do anything on the phone for fear of the battery crapping out.

Expectations
Not sure what you are expecting as far as battery life but I have spent hours doing everything from GPS to downloading apps from wi fi and I get about a good 7 - 8 hours. No problems here.

Battery life threads bother me.
You ask your phone to do everything but wipe your rear end. It does more than Apple ever thought about, and we demand even more as customers. Faster Data, faster processors, more ram. Guys I hate to break it to you - but you want battery life go get a feature phone or blackberry. Otherwise, quit complaining about all the stuff you ask your device to do on such a small amount of energy. If we would quit caring so much about design and weight, phone companies could pack a car battery into it for you - look at Sedio... completely ruins the aesthetics of the phone, but you get longer battery life!
<conclusion>
Shut up or give up, battery technology just ain't there yet - and probably will never be able to match our demands until we have little nukes in our pockets.
</conclusion>

My EVO was pulling roughly 15-20 hours of battery life out of a full charge.
Thus far, I haven't been able to break 12 hours with the Epic, doing the same thing and with roughly the same usage. It's more than enough for a day, and I'm almost never near a charger (office, car, home, etc) but it'd be nice to have an extra boost. Bought those 2 for 10 Chinese batteries as a just in case.

At work right now and while streaming dubstep.fm and chatting on aim, my Epic is discharging while it's plugged into the charger.

You people that come into ever battery thread telling everyone to quit complaining and lauding the 8 hours of battery life you phone gets are not only completely missing the point, you're also contributing nothing to the discussion and perpetuating this conception that a third of a day is more than good enough for a phone's battery life. I mean, ****, my laptops get 8 hours of battery life.
The issue here is that we can clearly see that an android phone can get as much as 4 hours of 3g browsing time and 8 hours of wifi browsing time. The fact that this phone fails to come even close to that amount is alarming. A 25% reduction 3g browsing time and a whopping 38% reduction in wifi browsing time should make you question what is going on in this phone. Especially since the manufacturing process that produced this SOC is supposed to be much more power efficient than the one that produced the HTC evo.
I for one am really hoping samsung is aware of this issue and that battery life can be improved via some software tweaks. I owned the HTC evo. I was able to easily get 20 hours of battery life out of that phone doing the exact same things I do now. I was hoping to be able to match that with this phone. But right now, there is definitely an issue. Any of you people that deny it are seriously deluding yourselves.

I too have been frustrated by the surprisingly poor battery life. I've been holding back on believing it is a real problem because the first few days I had my Evo, it too had terrible battery life. However, with the Evo, after some battery conditioning, a hard reset and configuring the phone for what I wanted it to do vs what it came configured to do (Ex: I do not need push email, google voice or 4G running all the time and 25% screen brightness with a widget to switch it to 100% when needed) the Evo stepped up to the plate and settled into a cadence of giving me over 24 hours of use on a single charge.
I've had an Epic for over a week now. I've used it exactly as I do my Evo. I configured it the same as the Evo and in some cases with more extreme battery preserving (Ex: set the screen brightness to zero and only sync email every two hours (rather than the Evo's every hour)) and I can barely make it 14 hours, and that is a 14 hour DEAD stop.
Two other issues that are driving me crazy are the GPS and 3G performance.
It seems that when I'm sitting at home, the GPS will lock in about 10 seconds, but if I'm on the road in a random place (when I need the GPS the MOST) it will simply not lock if I'm driving and if I stop, it will eventually (maybe 5 minutes) lock.
3G performance has been absolutely horrible. I put the Epic right next to an Evo and TP2 and the Epic will get between 1/4th to 1/8th the throughput of the others. If I switch to Wifi, all is well and 4G is comparable (although not as reliable) to the Evo.
I am a keyboard person, the only thing wrong with the Evo was it did not have a keyboard. The Epic is exactly what I want, but these three strikes are making it tough to love. The 3G problem should be easy to fix with an update, as for the GPS and battery I don't know. I'm anxiously watching Sprint / Samsung to see if they will produce an update (see if they stand behind this product.)
BTW, at the end of a day, the number 1 battery culprit (according to the battery settings) is the display. With approx 1 to 1.5 hours of use at 0% brightness with an all black background, it still takes 50% to 65% of the battery (people posting that Super AMOLED saves battery over LCD are simply wrong.) The next offenders are Cell standby and phone idle. I was experiencing the 50% no signal problem, the workaround to cycle airplane mode helped that. But it does bring up another issue, although I have not had any call drops, the signal strength is consistently two bars (out of 6) lower than my Evo and TP2 (sitting right next to each other. At my home and in my office, my Evo and TP2 get 5 to 6 bars (full signal) but the Epic is 3 bars. I know the bars shown are not a good indicator and I don't have any dropped calls, but I wonder if this is not causing battery drain. This also makes me concerned that the main problem with this phone may not be solvable with software, it may be poor antenna design / implementation.

Wow, if more people actually realized that the SAMOLED screen uses MORE battery when displaying white pixels, we'd see less threads like this and less articles like the one posted.
On SAMOLED screens, each pixel is individually lit. White requires the most light. Constant web browsing will kill your battery FASTER than anything else because white is the color of choice when it comes to mobile web pages.
With that being said, OTHER THAN WEB BROWSING the battery on the Epic is much better than the EVO.

hmm i made a thread on 3g battery drain just the other day glad to see some actual evidence to back it up.

hydralisk said:
Wow, if more people actually realized that the SAMOLED screen uses MORE battery when displaying white pixels, we'd see less threads like this and less articles like the one posted.
On SAMOLED screens, each pixel is individually lit. White requires the most light. Constant web browsing will kill your battery FASTER than anything else because white is the color of choice when it comes to mobile web pages.
With that being said, OTHER THAN WEB BROWSING the battery on the Epic is much better than the EVO.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Wonder if we could hack together a browser mod to invert colors?

Kcarpenter said:
Wonder if we could hack together a browser mod to invert colors?
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Click to collapse
Heh. That would be nice. In the meantime, I use a darker wallpaper. When using the kindle app, I use white text on a black background. I keep my brightness at 0% (surprisingly still pretty bright) unless I go outside.

My battery if fine too. Turn off wat u don't need and you'll be fine. Mine lasts 8 or 9 hours. U can't expect to use this beast at full power doing everyting all the time and expect this 1500 battery t be magically long lasting. Same prob with evo. Tame the beast
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA App

A-effing-men man. The more features the phone has (or that you use), of course the more battery its going to drain. I came from the 9630 blackberry and i had about 6-10% battery drain per hour so this Epic isnt too bad of a switch for me since i am a heavy user.
Kcarpenter said:
Battery life threads bother me.
You ask your phone to do everything but wipe your rear end. It does more than Apple ever thought about, and we demand even more as customers. Faster Data, faster processors, more ram. Guys I hate to break it to you - but you want battery life go get a feature phone or blackberry. Otherwise, quit complaining about all the stuff you ask your device to do on such a small amount of energy. If we would quit caring so much about design and weight, phone companies could pack a car battery into it for you - look at Sedio... completely ruins the aesthetics of the phone, but you get longer battery life!
<conclusion>
Shut up or give up, battery technology just ain't there yet - and probably will never be able to match our demands until we have little nukes in our pockets.
</conclusion>
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

Anyone know of any extended batteries for it? I was quite happy with my G1's thickness, so adding a few mm on here should be fine.
(Also, screw form over function - last thing I want is a pretty, comfortable brick.)

Lol I had the same issue, so im taking it back and sticking with my evo and its badass extended battery
Sent from my PC36100 using Tapatalk

DJPUSA said:
Not sure what you are expecting as far as battery life but I have spent hours doing everything from GPS to downloading apps from wi fi and I get about a good 7 - 8 hours. No problems here.
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Click to collapse
Really sad when "a good 7 - 8 hours. No problems here" is now the yard stick battery life we expect from smartphones. Nothing smart there really.

TheMostToys said:
I too have been frustrated by the surprisingly poor battery life. I've been holding back on believing it is a real problem because the first few days I had my Evo, it too had terrible battery life. However, with the Evo, after some battery conditioning, a hard reset and configuring the phone for what I wanted it to do vs what it came configured to do (Ex: I do not need push email, google voice or 4G running all the time and 25% screen brightness with a widget to switch it to 100% when needed) the Evo stepped up to the plate and settled into a cadence of giving me over 24 hours of use on a single charge.
I've had an Epic for over a week now. I've used it exactly as I do my Evo. I configured it the same as the Evo and in some cases with more extreme battery preserving (Ex: set the screen brightness to zero and only sync email every two hours (rather than the Evo's every hour)) and I can barely make it 14 hours, and that is a 14 hour DEAD stop.
Two other issues that are driving me crazy are the GPS and 3G performance.
It seems that when I'm sitting at home, the GPS will lock in about 10 seconds, but if I'm on the road in a random place (when I need the GPS the MOST) it will simply not lock if I'm driving and if I stop, it will eventually (maybe 5 minutes) lock.
3G performance has been absolutely horrible. I put the Epic right next to an Evo and TP2 and the Epic will get between 1/4th to 1/8th the throughput of the others. If I switch to Wifi, all is well and 4G is comparable (although not as reliable) to the Evo.
I am a keyboard person, the only thing wrong with the Evo was it did not have a keyboard. The Epic is exactly what I want, but these three strikes are making it tough to love. The 3G problem should be easy to fix with an update, as for the GPS and battery I don't know. I'm anxiously watching Sprint / Samsung to see if they will produce an update (see if they stand behind this product.)
BTW, at the end of a day, the number 1 battery culprit (according to the battery settings) is the display. With approx 1 to 1.5 hours of use at 0% brightness with an all black background, it still takes 50% to 65% of the battery (people posting that Super AMOLED saves battery over LCD are simply wrong.) The next offenders are Cell standby and phone idle. I was experiencing the 50% no signal problem, the workaround to cycle airplane mode helped that. But it does bring up another issue, although I have not had any call drops, the signal strength is consistently two bars (out of 6) lower than my Evo and TP2 (sitting right next to each other. At my home and in my office, my Evo and TP2 get 5 to 6 bars (full signal) but the Epic is 3 bars. I know the bars shown are not a good indicator and I don't have any dropped calls, but I wonder if this is not causing battery drain. This also makes me concerned that the main problem with this phone may not be solvable with software, it may be poor antenna design / implementation.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Wasn't SuperAmoLED supposed to be the wunderkid technology battery life saver? It seems not to be the case with these descriptions like yours. What gives? So it looks better than LCD but sucks just as much juice??

Battery life is getting better and better.

I haven't really done anything different, but my battery life in the past few weeks has just gotten better and better.
Right now it's 3pm. I put in a fresh battery at 9pm last night. Batt level: 55%. I was asleep for 7 out of those 18 hours, but I've had wifi and BT on the whole time. I've read and replied to 15 emails, maybe 10 texts, 15 min of calls, surfed the web for 2 hours, played about 30min of games, and had music streaming for 1.5 hrs. I've easily been making it through long work days (8am-8pm) of moderate/heavy use, whereas before I would need to recharge after 6-8 hours.
Anyone else noticing better battery life after the first few weeks? (of course, it might have to do with the fact that I'm playing with it less, but there are days when I play with it constantly and it's still doing better than 12+ hours)

I'm still on the first week with my current vibrant and I have noticed a slight improvement in battery life since I first got it--the fact that my life is pretty consistent day to day (phone-wise) helps me track it. Maybe the hardware and software need to be 'broken in' per-se?

Kubernetes said:
... I've easily been making it through long work days (8am-8pm) of moderate/heavy use, whereas before I would need to recharge after 6-8 hours.
...
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Click to collapse
Yeah, it does get better, but 12 hours is not good enough nowadays -- if you go to dinner after work, the battery will be dead before you get home.
This is my biggest gripe about the Galaxy S -- compared to my old iPhone 3Gs the battery life just sucks.
I am hoping that the efficiencies that come with Froyo will squeeze a few more hours and make it usable for a full day.
If Samsung gets off its lazy (or incompetent) butt and upgrades us to Froyo soon, of course.

MacGuy2006 said:
Yeah, it does get better, but 12 hours is not good enough nowadays -- if you go to dinner after work, the battery will be dead before you get home.
This is my biggest gripe about the Galaxy S -- compared to my old iPhone 3Gs the battery life just sucks.
I am hoping that the efficiencies that come with Froyo will squeeze a few more hours and make it usable for a full day.
If Samsung gets off its lazy (or incompetent) butt and upgrades us to Froyo soon, of course.
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I can get close to 36 hours from mine, not sure what you guys are doing.

lralexl said:
I can get close to 36 hours from mine, not sure what you guys are doing.
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The question is, what are you not doing? We can all get it to last the long, but this is a smart phone. I cannot afford to treat it like if I was stranded on an island.

Before I get into my post I just wanted to say I'm running stock out of the box with no root/ROM/etc. Just plain ol vanilla Eclair...with the JI5 via Kies.
I'm getting about 32 hours myself. I do use tasker to set up profiles only to turn things on when I want them. Such as sync will only be enabled for specific apps when I run them then off when I close them. GPS is only on when I run Maps/Yelp/any geo-aware app then it turns itself off. Turn on silent mode/vibrate when I'm at the office by recognizing specific cell towers...stuff like that.
I also disabled "Use Wireless Networks" under Location & Security since Google says it will use it even when the phone is off. I don't know why but it's been saving on battery too. I also don't use any task killing app such as ATK since I think the phone should be smart enough to manage the memory by itself.
edit: Oh, I use automatic brightness settings too with manual brightness control on the browser (usually on low-med setting)

Mark271 said:
The question is, what are you not doing? We can all get it to last the long, but this is a smart phone. I cannot afford to treat it like if I was stranded on an island.
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Everything enabled except brightness. i turn off wifi and bluetooth when sleeping, and have sync set to once an hour for social contacts and such. For facebook etc i manually update my feed when i want to check on it, or it auto updates every hour.

Kubernetes said:
I haven't really done anything different, but my battery life in the past few weeks has just gotten better and better.
Right now it's 3pm. I put in a fresh battery at 9pm last night. Batt level: 55%. I was asleep for 7 out of those 18 hours, but I've had wifi and BT on the whole time. I've read and replied to 15 emails, maybe 10 texts, 15 min of calls, surfed the web for 2 hours, played about 30min of games, and had music streaming for 1.5 hrs. I've easily been making it through long work days (8am-8pm) of moderate/heavy use, whereas before I would need to recharge after 6-8 hours.
Anyone else noticing better battery life after the first few weeks? (of course, it might have to do with the fact that I'm playing with it less, but there are days when I play with it constantly and it's still doing better than 12+ hours)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm at a point of consistent battery life of about 13 hours of moderate to heavy use. Been this way since about the middle of August. The longest I've pushed it was close to 21 hours but i'm normally in the 11-12 range.
Glad your phone is leveling out though

Kubernetes said:
I haven't really done anything different, but my battery life in the past few weeks has just gotten better and better.
Right now it's 3pm. I put in a fresh battery at 9pm last night. Batt level: 55%. I was asleep for 7 out of those 18 hours, but I've had wifi and BT on the whole time. I've read and replied to 15 emails, maybe 10 texts, 15 min of calls, surfed the web for 2 hours, played about 30min of games, and had music streaming for 1.5 hrs. I've easily been making it through long work days (8am-8pm) of moderate/heavy use, whereas before I would need to recharge after 6-8 hours.
Anyone else noticing better battery life after the first few weeks? (of course, it might have to do with the fact that I'm playing with it less, but there are days when I play with it constantly and it's still doing better than 12+ hours)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Nah it's not any different from when you first bought it, you're just using it less, even though you think you are using it the same.
Trust me, when people buy a new phone, the first few days or couple weeks they can't take their fingers off the phone, and it appears battery sucks. As you get over your new toy phase, you don't play with it as much, and magically you think the battery has grown new cells.
bye.

MacGuy2006 said:
Yeah, it does get better, but 12 hours is not good enough nowadays -- if you go to dinner after work, the battery will be dead before you get home.
This is my biggest gripe about the Galaxy S -- compared to my old iPhone 3Gs the battery life just sucks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There are easy ways to take care of this if you really need better battery life. First, call T-Mobile and complain that battery life is shorter than advertised. They'll walk you through a script and send you a free spare battery. Second, get an external battery charger. They're all over ebay for about ten dollars, and most come with generic spare batteries.
I've now got a charger and three batteries, so I can pretty much make it through an entire work week without worrying. (You couldn't do that with a 3GS!)

Kubernetes said:
There are easy ways to take care of this if you really need better battery life. First, call T-Mobile and complain that battery life is shorter than advertised. They'll walk you through a script and send you a free spare battery. Second, get an external battery charger. They're all over ebay for about ten dollars, and most come with generic spare batteries.
I've now got a charger and three batteries, so I can pretty much make it through an entire work week without worrying. (You couldn't do that with a 3GS!)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Are you serious?!
You really like carrying a pocketful of spare batteries?
I have 2 spare batteries, but I pack them only when I travel.
The damned phone should be able to last throughout a full day (meaning 16 or so hours) without having to worry about turning features off or limiting your calls and mail checking).
I never had to even think about the battery with my iPhone 3Gs.

you must really be glued to your phone if you can't make it a full day

lolcopter said:
you must really be glued to your phone if you can't make it a full day
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Click to collapse
Uhm, I am actually using it exactly the way I used my iPhone, and the way I need to use to do my work.
It just has crappy battery life
What are you comparing it to? A WM6 phone or something?

lralexl said:
I can get close to 36 hours from mine, not sure what you guys are doing.
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Click to collapse
I get nice battery life but I use it too much, then "a day" is from 5am to 10pm, it's just too useful, and when you check usage, it's 75% display.
36 hours would be easy if I limited my screen on-time....while I would like a UV kernel it's likely not helping enough. My display is on lowest, yet I'd love a lower setting.
Aside, the more background services check stuff while screen is off, battery life hours down.
Overall, I am VERY happy with the battery life.
Sent from my Vibrant.

MacGuy2006 said:
Are you serious?!
You really like carrying a pocketful of spare batteries?
I have 2 spare batteries, but I pack them only when I travel.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Um, the batteries are pretty small and skinny. Are you wearing pants with no pockets or something? Seriously, the thing can almost fit in the coin pocket of some jeans.
The damned phone should be able to last throughout a full day (meaning 16 or so hours) without having to worry about turning features off or limiting your calls and mail checking).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Should? Says who? The phone is pretty average for its class. You can either complain that things are not the way you want them, or you can adapt by carrying around a diminutive spare battery.
I never had to even think about the battery with my iPhone 3Gs.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You must be one of the few 3G/3GS users to never worry about battery life. Most of the users I know have (or had) to recharge mid-day, a pain in the butt since the battery is not removable. Your 3GS has a much slower processor/GPU, and a smaller screen with a quarter of the pixels; but even then, google "iphone 3gs battery life" and you'll get page after page of reviewers and users complaining about the abysmal battery life.
(of course, someone here claims that his Vibrant can go 40+ hours, so maybe your iPhone is a similar outlier.)

SamsungVibrant said:
Nah it's not any different from when you first bought it, you're just using it less, even though you think you are using it the same.
Trust me, when people buy a new phone, the first few days or couple weeks they can't take their fingers off the phone, and it appears battery sucks. As you get over your new toy phase, you don't play with it as much, and magically you think the battery has grown new cells.
bye.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Its exactly what the problem is. When I flash a new rom I spend 30minutes getting back to the way I like it and my battery suffers from it. When I actually use my phone like its intended to be used I get great battery life.

Are you using any kind of ROMs? I think some ROMs greatly improves battery life.

Kubernetes said:
...
Should? Says who? The phone is pretty average for its class. You can either complain that things are not the way you want them, or you can adapt by carrying around a diminutive spare battery....
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Only a true nerd....
I wear skinny jeans.... ))
Kubernetes said:
...You must be one of the few 3G/3GS users to never worry about battery life. Most of the users I know have (or had) to recharge mid-day, a pain in the butt since the battery is not removable. Your 3GS has a much slower processor/GPU, and a smaller screen with a quarter of the pixels; but even then, google "iphone 3gs battery life" and you'll get page after page of reviewers and users complaining about the abysmal battery life.
(of course, someone here claims that his Vibrant can go 40+ hours, so maybe your iPhone is a similar outlier.)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Dude, I've had one iPhone 2G and two iPhone 3Gs. I also have two Galaxy S variants (international and a Vibrant).
There is no comparison between the iPhone 3Gs and the Galaxy S in terms of battery life. With the same kind of usage, the iPhone 3 Gs would last about 32-37 hours, while the Galaxy S would last about 12-13.
Even the iPhone 2G lasted about 18-20 hours. Now, compared to my previous HTC WM6 and WM6.5 phone, the Galaxy S does have longer battery life, but that's nothing to be so proud of.
The Galaxy's screen is certainly better than the 3Gs's, but the Super AMOLED is supposed to be more efficient than the LCD on the iPhone. Plus, in real world use, the iPhone 3Gs certainly feels smoother than the Galaxy S, even with the lag fix, and scrolling on the iPhone is smooth as butter, while the Galaxy S is choppy.
And it's not just the OS, because the EVO scrolls noticeably smoother than the Galaxy S.

I consistently get 20+ hours out of one charge. I can't really use my phone at work, but during breaks and lunch I'm always getting on it and checking mail/feeds/youtube or whatever and still have about 70% by the time I go home. I usually have more than half by the time I go to bed unless I've been doing some tethering or heavy audio/video streaming.

SamsungVibrant said:
Nah it's not any different from when you first bought it, you're just using it less, even though you think you are using it the same.
Trust me, when people buy a new phone, the first few days or couple weeks they can't take their fingers off the phone, and it appears battery sucks. As you get over your new toy phase, you don't play with it as much, and magically you think the battery has grown new cells.
bye.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
lol...thats so true...

[Q] horrible battery life! anyone else?

Hi, I been having the HTC Surround for a little over a week now. I love the look and feel to it (I know OS wise it has a lot of improvements to do but I'm willing to put up with it for a bit, considering its a new OS). However one thing I notice is that it has horrible battery life! The phone last about 10/12 Hrs on a full charge. During this time period, there is no heavy use; tops 50 txt messages send and received, about an hour of music, screen lock (brightness set to low, when on), perhaps 15 minutes of talk time, data connection turn off, about 20 minutes of WiFi (I turn off WiFi when not in use), rest of the time on stand by as mention before (with the screen locked). Another thing i noticed yesterday night was that my phone was charge completely, i left it on stand by and within 5 hrs that i slept the phone had gone a little lower than 3/4ths (data connection was off).
I read a post here that said battery may drain quicker when phone is left in cold weather and i thought maybe this could be the case. However I'm really skeptical because i live in Los Angeles. Cold weather, which is this time of the year, is mid 40 degrees at its lowest! That's not cold! But anyways i guess I'll try putting that theory on a test (imma try keeping it warm, see if it makes a difference)
so is anyone else experiencing horrible battery life? Or am I just an unlucky person who got a defective battery?
THANKS in advance

gravewormx said:
Hi, I been having the HTC Surround for a little over a week now. I love the look and feel to it (I know OS wise it has a lot of improvements to do but I'm willing to put up with it for a bit, considering its a new OS). However one thing I notice is that it has horrible battery life! The phone last about 10/12 Hrs on a full charge. During this time period, there is no heavy use; tops 50 txt messages send and received, about an hour of music, screen lock (brightness set to low, when on), perhaps 15 minutes of talk time, data connection turn off, about 20 minutes of WiFi (I turn off WiFi when not in use), rest of the time on stand by as mention before (with the screen locked). Another thing i noticed yesterday night was that my phone was charge completely, i left it on stand by and within 5 hrs that i slept the phone had gone a little lower than 3/4ths (data connection was off).
I read a post here that said battery may drain quicker when phone is left in cold weather and i thought maybe this could be the case. However I'm really skeptical because i live in Los Angeles. Cold weather, which is this time of the year, is mid 40 degrees at its lowest! That's not cold! But anyways i guess I'll try putting that theory on a test (imma try keeping it warm, see if it makes a difference)
so is anyone else experiencing horrible battery life? Or am I just an unlucky person who got a defective battery?
THANKS in advance
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What "theme" are you using?

If I don't use my phone, it will last for days. Even when I use it through out the day, it lasts well into the next morning/afternoon.
The battery life does get better the more you drain/charge it.

dressanderc said:
What "theme" are you using?
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Click to collapse
I'm using a black background and lime tiles...

XeNoMoRpH1030 said:
If I don't use my phone, it will last for days. Even when I use it through out the day, it lasts well into the next morning/afternoon.
The battery life does get better the more you drain/charge it.
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Click to collapse
well, I been having it for a week now. I seen no difference in battery life. But imma give it another week or so. See if this works. Then I'm gonna try buying different battery. If that doesn't help, I think I'm going to have to switch back to my Samsung Captivate. I would hate doing this, but this type of battery life is a deal breaker. Today, it was even worse! It lasted me only 9hrs while I was at work, which at least 8 of those hrs it was on stand by!

Sounds like you have a bad battery, bro. I'd get it replaced at the store you bought it from.

dressanderc said:
Sounds like you have a bad battery, bro. I'd get it replaced at the store you bought it from.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
yeah, I'm going to try this on my day off which is on Monday. Also gives me time to test out the other persons suggestion
thanks for your opinions. I'll get back to you guys and see what happens.

My surround - now two weeks old is showing much improved battery life. It didn't make it through a day when I first got it. Part of that was due to my fiddling with it and part due - I think - to the battery conditioning.
Now, it is going a full day on a charge. I am also switching off 3G and on WiFi when I am in my office or home. It is a bit of a pain in the butt and I hope that M$ gives up some APIs soon so that someone - cough Bruce Jackson cough - will write an app. We'll see.

I have noticed that the Bluetooth drains the battery considerably faster. Try turning Bluetooth off when you don't need it.

acur8ly said:
I have noticed that the Bluetooth drains the battery considerably faster. Try turning Bluetooth off when you don't need it.
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Click to collapse
I don't use the Bluetooth at all. So this can't be the problem. but thanks anyways. (I might need this information since I was planing on using one in the near future).
So I notice that now, my Surround does get better battery life. (which is absolutely crazy! since now I have the screen brightness on medium and data turn on lol). I guess the battery just needed to be use and charge a bit more. However, I still think battery life could be improved. (hopefully, future updates will teak some system settings that will do this)
I have also decided that I will keep my Surround instead of going back to my Captivate I wish battery life would be better and the OS to be more "open" but truth be told, I fell in love with my phone haha Then when i went back to my Samsung Captivate, it felt weird. Android felt much slower.
So i gave it a little test; I launched messaging, email, music, browser, etc on both phones at the same time. Turns out both of them launch these native applications in the same amount of time.
I guess what makes WP7 fell smother and faster is the (eyecandy) transitions.

think its the battery
ya i have had mine for 2 weeks now and i think the problem is the fact that the battery is a 1230mAh, and we also have a samsung focus with a 1450mAh battery that will last an exra 2-3 hours longer which makes a huge difference! im hoping htc will make a larger mAh battery avaliable, mine will only last anywhere from 5-7 hours from normal use

I just ordered a Mugen 1300mah battery..not *much* more capacity, but hopefully it helps a bit!

if i dont use my surround (like not using too much 3g, wifi, music, gaming, and just normal phone calls and texts) it can last a whole day and probably a lil more, but when i do too much 3g/wifi/gaming/music it drains quickkkkkk.
and i do hope htc will have a larger capacity battery for the surround soon... 1230 is kinda small compare to other phones nowadays..
but still this has much better battery life than my previous phones (diamond2 and touchpro)
i just find myself carrying the usb cable and wall charger alot in my bag :]
and having a car charger is a plus also.

My girlfreind has had the phone since xmas. Initially the battery would lose its charge very quickly. I had her do a bump charge and just let the battery settle in. She can now go up a third day wothout the need for a charge with moderate txt.
Be aware the quick drop whenn taking it off the charger is NORMAL. Read this thread for a discussion of that http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=871051
Sent from my ADR6300 using Tapatalk

Agree - Bad Battery Life - But not as bad as some....
Smart phones, in general, aren't what I would call great at conserving battery life under any condition. Pick any model of high-end smart phone and tell me who can get more than 2 days (using every trick in the book to eliminate unnecessary drain). Yes, this phone is under-powered in terms of only having a 1300 mAh battery when it should have a 1400 or 1500.
Cut the unnecessary stuff when you are not using it - Bluetooth, WiFi, etc.
You can easily get a day + out of this phone with moderate/mixed use (some talking, some browsing, some multi-media viewing). That's pretty good, I'd say (from my relative experience across many different types of smart phones). I just plug it in every night.....pick it up in the morning and go. Haven't had any issues with it running out during the day.
Now, if you are starting first thing in the morning and running movies, have the bluetooth going, the WiFi on........well, heck yes, you are going to have a battery drain problem. If you want to run it that way.....just leave it plugged in.

Has anyone used a Seidio Innocell 1300mAh Replacement battery? Was wondering if it was worth the investment to improve the Surround's poor battery performance.
Thanks,

So...when is someone gonna step up to the plate and improve battery technology? It really sucks that these phone manufacturers are giving us ALL these fancy features that drain the battery and when we complain about having poor battery life they are telling us to not use all those fancy features...kinda defeats the purpose of buying a smartphone, am I right?

guys .. wake PLZ UP ))
1 ghz (1-2 core cpu ) ..
3.8 and more screen ..
DEDICATED GRAPHICS .
OS .
with DIRECTX9 Interface .
and that all spiced up with 1600 ma battery in best case .
and that you wana to run more then 6 hours on full load ? say THX TO MS .. for NON multitask os .. overwise battery life was even more lol then this

dgduris said:
My surround - now two weeks old is showing much improved battery life. It didn't make it through a day when I first got it. Part of that was due to my fiddling with it and part due - I think - to the battery conditioning.
Now, it is going a full day on a charge. I am also switching off 3G and on WiFi when I am in my office or home. It is a bit of a pain in the butt and I hope that M$ gives up some APIs soon so that someone - cough Bruce Jackson cough - will write an app. We'll see.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I noticed this as well. As time went by the battery actually started to last longer. When i first got it i used it less than i do now and the battery would die before i even got home for work. Now it lasts till about an hour or so after i finish and get home.

does the surround use the same battery as the HTC desire HD?
Theres an ebay seller that is selling a surround battery and wall charger but the wall charger has a sticker that says: For HTC Desire HD