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I've had my HTC Touch on CDMA/Bell Canada for about half a year now. I love the phone but the battery life just sucks. I can't get through a full day without having to plug in. Where I work and where I live the CDMA signal is weak. My phone is constantly flipping back and forth between X1 and EVDO and voice calls are not very reliable.
I know things like Push mail, GPS...and other data agressive applications will drain the battery, however even when I turn everything off except for the phone itself I can't get through a fully day.
I suspect my phone is constantly busy trying to maintain a connection to the cell network. Does anyone have any tips on how I could help get better battery life?
Leon.
lbloo said:
I've had my HTC Touch on CDMA/Bell Canada for about half a year now. I love the phone but the battery life just sucks. I can't get through a full day without having to plug in. Where I work and where I live the CDMA signal is weak. My phone is constantly flipping back and forth between X1 and EVDO and voice calls are not very reliable.
I know things like Push mail, GPS...and other data agressive applications will drain the battery, however even when I turn everything off except for the phone itself I can't get through a fully day.
I suspect my phone is constantly busy trying to maintain a connection to the cell network. Does anyone have any tips on how I could help get better battery life?
Leon.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It is very hard to provide you with any help when we really don't know what you have installed and running on your phone. Some plugins can drain your battery while they are running - EG - WeatherPanel - Try not to let this program keep running if you have it installed - especially with animated weather icons. Reduce the brightness of your display screen if you can manage that. Make sure that your display is shutting off as well. Keeping the display on will surely drain your battery. Set it to shut off after so many seconds of inactivity. Take a look at your task manager to make sure that you don't have many programs running in the background - and set your task manager to actualy close programs when you tap on the x as it is default setting to just minimize your apps and not close them. If they are all running in the backgroung, you will surely see battery drain.
With a bare bones configuration my battery would last around 10 hours before I had to plug in. All I had running was basically my phone and some light web surfing.
I've since loaded up my phone with a apps/plug-ins and my battery last about 5 hours now sometimes less. I am running some apps which do things in the background:
-Weather Panel, no animated graphics (Auto update every 6 hours)
-HTC HUB (Auto update every 6 hours)
-Push Email (Zimbra mail, looks like Exchange)
-Pull Email (Gmail) every 30 minutes
Even if I can get all these applications to be much less power hungry, I'll get at most 10 hours. I'm hoping to get multiple days of battery life, not just hours.
While on holiday I turned off the phone, went into Flight mode for a week, but still used GPS on occassion. My batteries then lasted days!
Thanks for your suggestions about those apps.
I can almost go more than half a day, which is enough to get me from my house, to work (or wherever I go), and back home. I'm thinking I should get a spare charger for my office though.
But I have running:
FlexMail, with 2 IMAP accounts, and Live account
Palringo or Live Messenger (depends which ROM I'm using !)
Some Opera browsing
Occasional GPS
Some MP3's
And the obvious phone calls
Ohh, and when I get bored, some Kevtris!
I leave work at 4pm, and when I arive at work the following day at 7am, I'm usually at 20% battery life, and that's with it being plugged in via usb for at least 3-5 hours during the evening. Barebones flash, with SPB Mobile Shell 2.0, and that's about it. It's a bummer, having to stay close to a usb port or wall outlet.
I did notice, my normal power consumption is 150-250mAH, however when I plug in to usb, it jumps to 400-500mAH, sometimes higher. That is with activesync or without, doesn't seem to make a difference.
Well, I don't know about Zimbra, but I know the SEVEN push service absolutely *destroyed* my battery life. I just set my phone to check my Gmail every 5 min, and it's good enough for me, with much better battery life.
That said, your problem is your location. Your phone will burn a lot of juice if you work in a basement or dead zone trying to find towers. There's not really anything you can do about it, other than turn off the phone radio when you know you're going to be out of range, but of course, that defeats the purpose of having a cell phone.
Get a new job, get a 2nd battery, or plug it in at work. Smart phones don't have great battery life to begin with, and if you are getting a weak signal, you are just out of luck.
[EDIT]
Or, you can try one of those Sprint base stations. You may not be able to set one up at work, but you can at least do it at home. Should help some.
I got an extended battery (Seidio 2000 mAh) and my phone lasts for more than 24 hours now, probably 2 days if i let it go without a charge long enough.
Like right now I have had a bunch of phone calls, done a bunch of texting, played some kevtris and my phone has a lot of stuff installed on it. It's been off the charger since 9:30AM and its 4:40PM now and the battery is at 81%.
Before I got the extended battery my phone would probably be at less than 50% at this point in time. The extended battery does make the phone A BIT bulkier, but its really not that big of a difference to me.
Today I decided to do a real world test of the Evo's battery life. I used my phone the way I would normally use it on an other day. As for the phone itself, I am running the rom from the OTA update. The only changes that have been made is that I am using unrevoked root method so that I can use the Overclock Widget (marketplace) to turn the processor freq down to 245000 when the screen is off. I also use Advanced Task Killer to turn off apps that I am not using. I had bluetooth and gps turned on throughout the entirety of this test, wifi was on for about 3.5 hours. During this test I played a game for a short period of time, did some light web browsing, and had several phone conversations that totalled a little more than 2 hours. With doing all this, my battery lasted for a little more than 11 hours. That being said, under normal use the Evo should definitely last you throughout a full day.
Thanks for the info. I got my Evo yesterday and haven't been able to put it to through extreme testing yet
No problem. just kind of got tired of hearing how poor the battery life was. Even before using the overclock widget I was still getting decent battery life, but the overclock widget just put it over the top. To add to that, I don't normally talk for 2 hrs. on my phone during a normal day, so really a lot of that 29% battery drain from phone use wouldn't be there. The only thing I didn't use today was 4g (which I don't normally use unless I'm on the phone and need to use data).
Not sure what this proves or "dispells". When people (myself included until making some friendstream changes) are getting 6 hours out of a charge with light use, that is a real problem. You must not have friendstream syncing...if you did and did everything you just wrote about, your phone would be dead in 3 hours tops. Thanks for the info., but once again, people are havnig real issues with the battery...it's not made up.
admorris said:
Not sure what this proves or "dispells". When people (myself included until making some friendstream changes) are getting 6 hours out of a charge with light use, that is a real problem. You must not have friendstream syncing...if you did and did everything you just wrote about, your phone would be dead in 3 hours tops. Thanks for the info., but once again, people are havnig real issues with the battery...it's not made up.
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Click to collapse
If you are experiencing poor battery life then it is most likely attributed to not managing your apps properly (friendstream included). For example, without advanced task killer you will get a drastically different amount of battery life than if you have it. Then add to that, the way you configure advanced task killer can add a large amount of battery life compared to having advanced task killer without it being configured properly. Even with friendstream running you should still be able to get a decent amount of battery life (I am aware that it does use more juice), try having your facebook sync less often.
mysterioustko said:
If you are experiencing poor battery life then it is most likely attributed to not managing your apps properly (friendstream included). For example, without advanced task killer you will get a drastically different amount of battery life than if you have it. Then add to that, the way you configure advanced task killer can add a large amount of battery life compared to having advanced task killer without it being configured properly. Even with friendstream running you should still be able to get a decent amount of battery life (I am aware that it does use more juice), try having your facebook sync less often.
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I totally agree I've been using my evo and been fine, I only really have it connected to power when I have it tethering. Besides that it lasts me not all day but while I'm at work (which is the most important part) I get a good 9-10 hours out of it before I really need to charge. It should also be noted that I use locale to switch BT and wifi off when I'm not in an area to take advantage of them.
I think some people have bad batterys/evo's, it's not just a matter of running the right programs or killing tasks
mrono said:
I think some people have bad batterys/evo's, it's not just a matter of running the right programs or killing tasks
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While that is possible I think the majority of the problem rests with the user's mismanagement of apps. I have seen way to many posts from people declaring the battery life to be so horrible, only to make a few changes and then turn around and say how much better it got. If that person had a bad battery then the battery would still have been bad, it wouldn't just start being good. That said, it is very possible that there are people with bad batteries. I just think that most of the people have good batteries and bad phone management.
I did pretty much the same thing. I have the O/C widget to set the frequency to 245000 when the screen is off and also have Advance Task Manager configured to close apps I'm not using. Helps out a lot and I usually get around 12~14 hours on a charge.
mysterioustko said:
If you are experiencing poor battery life then it is most likely attributed to not managing your apps properly (friendstream included). For example, without advanced task killer you will get a drastically different amount of battery life than if you have it. Then add to that, the way you configure advanced task killer can add a large amount of battery life compared to having advanced task killer without it being configured properly. Even with friendstream running you should still be able to get a decent amount of battery life (I am aware that it does use more juice), try having your facebook sync less often.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
While I completely understand what you are saying, I can't really agree that b/c someone is not getting a full day out of their phone it is b/c of poor app management. While deleting facebook for sense, then reinstalling with only contacts synced fixed everything for me, the fact that you have to go through the phone with a fine tooth comb to get it to run more than 6 hours at a time is pretty silly. While doing that stuff is fine for me and most on this forum, it will undoubtedly turn a lot of non-techie people off from this phone...especially with Sprint doing their new 30 day full refund policy.
It's all good though, just plugged my phone in after 19 hours...playing with it most of the day.
I use advanced task killer and turned off sync for apps I dont use. At 65% used pandora (in 4g for about an hour), browsed several sites, made phone calls, text, emailed. All the normal stuff. Took my phone off the charger 15 hours ago.
Prior to using advanced task killer I would be to about 18% right now. So for those saying that task managers kill more battery power my phone seems to do the exact opposite.
rutter9 said:
I use advanced task killer and turned off sync for apps I dont use. At 65% used pandora (in 4g for about an hour), browsed several sites, made phone calls, text, emailed. All the normal stuff. Took my phone off the charger 15 hours ago.
Prior to using advanced task killer I would be to about 18% right now. So for those saying that task managers kill more battery power my phone seems to do the exact opposite.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Task killers really only help if you have an app that would normally be giving you higher than usual wake time (the calendar comes to mind). At the start of every boot I always make sure to kill everything so only essential apps and those I use are running. I don't use any kind of auto kill.
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Sent from my HTC EVO 4G using Tapatalk Pro.
It is no longer recommended that a task killer be used. It may result in poor phone performance.
After i rooted with Toasts method, installed OMJ's rom removing all of the sprintware and added the OverClockWidget to tweak the processor, i was able to go a full 32 hours without charging. i had gps and bluetooth on the whole time and wifi on for several hours. i made calls, sent texts, took pictures, basically normal usage.
Just to add to all this. Bad battery isnt just a HTC Evo problem. Go read the forums of almost every android phone released and they all report the same things (in the beginning). Someone that has had a android phone in the past probably hasnt said much about battery. There are so many things you can do to increase battery.
1. manage your apps. Exit them instead of leaving them running (press back button until the app closes, or some apps you can Menu> exit) Pressing home doesnt close the app, it only takes you to the homescreen. Also change the sync times of all your apps/widgets. If you dont use gmail or google calendar, then uncheck the "sync" in Menu>accounts & sync> google. One last thing use a task manager (not recommended by some devs) I use it to end tasks of apps that use data, or ones that i use maybe once a day or once a week, i dont need them cached for quick returning, so i end the task all together. I ignore apps so they dont end that i use very frequently or ones that dont use data or run in the background.
2. Calibrate your battery once like so.. Charge your phone to 100% and then use your phone like normal until its so dead it shuts off by itself. Dont plug it into the computer or wall charger in that time. Then once it shuts off, plug the phone into a wall charger and charge it till its 100% again. After that, plug and play as much as you want.
3. Buy a car charger, usb cord for the comp, and maybe another wall charger. Buy an extra battery or extended battery. Doing the above and adding these to them, youll have a huge increase in battery.
I have an htc hero and i can get well over 12 hours of use by just watching what syncs and what uses data. And i use my phone alot, and wake it up a ton to check for notifications.
I use a friends Evo so im not new to the device and I understand its a different phone.
Stock htc phones come with a lot of stuff preinstalled and widgets. When signing into them with your accounts the sync times are usually pretty high, some like every 15mins. Watch what you are doing with the phone and youll have normal battery life.
i avg 18 -19 hours per charge so im very happy
aaaaah ok now I know who is the idiot Dylan here. Thanks. What a dumbass know-it-all.
I think some people are getting poor battery life because intermittent signal. I know this was the case for me. When I go to a friends house that I barely have signal, the phone constantly tries to find signal or goes into roaming. It would drain the battery fast. When I was in good signal area it seemed to last quite a while. Just saying that it is more than just running apps that cause poor battery.
Also if you will not use the internet turn off the mobile network, put the widget in your screen. You can receive calls but the internet is off.
dwertz said:
I think some people are getting poor battery life because intermittent signal. I know this was the case for me. When I go to a friends house that I barely have signal, the phone constantly tries to find signal or goes into roaming. It would drain the battery fast. When I was in good signal area it seemed to last quite a while. Just saying that it is more than just running apps that cause poor battery.
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Click to collapse
You make a very good point. Weak/no signal areas will drain your battery (as with any phone) very quickly due to the phone constantly scanning for signal. Not really much you can due about that other than turning your phone radio off or switching carriers lol. One thing I've read in the Dev forum that may help you is to change your prl to the Alltell/Verizon prl. Some people have reported that this works well in low signal areas.
Ok so I received my Vibrant on Monday and so far I am in love with it. Their are three things that bug me, however.
1. Battery Life is TERRIBLE. I know, I know-This has been discussed before but I did everything the other threads said and still no difference. On my phone, I will leave it on standby and it will drop 8 percent in like an hour and a half. Somethings wrong. Also, If I play the Sims for two hours (like I did today) my battery goes from 98% down to 45%. Is this normal?
Just to point out what I have going on with my phone:
- Brightness is turned down COMPLETELY. Automatic brightness is turned OFF.
- 3G is always on. Could this be the culprit?
- I have a completely black background.
- Last I checked, it said my display was taking up 60-70% of my battery usage.
- As stated above, Sims DRAINS my battery. Either somethings up with my phone or Samsung should have made sure the Sims doesnt kill the device.
2. The second I take my phone off the charger, the battery goes from 100% to 98%. Can I fix this? Its kind of annoying...
3. Problem with the Sims. Im not sure if any of you have this issue, but whenever I tell my Sim to watch TV, the app shuts down and takes me back to my home screen. Any idea why its happening?
alecjake said:
Ok so I received my Vibrant on Monday and so far I am in love with it. Their are three things that bug me, however.
1. Battery Life is TERRIBLE. I know, I know-This has been discussed before but I did everything the other threads said and still no difference. On my phone, I will leave it on standby and it will drop 8 percent in like an hour and a half. Somethings wrong. Also, If I play the Sims for two hours (like I did today) my battery goes from 98% down to 45%. Is this normal?
Just to point out what I have going on with my phone:
- Brightness is turned down COMPLETELY. Automatic brightness is turned OFF.
- 3G is always on. Could this be the culprit?
- I have a completely black background.
- Last I checked, it said my display was taking up 60-70% of my battery usage.
- As stated above, Sims DRAINS my battery. Either somethings up with my phone or Samsung should have made sure the Sims doesnt kill the device.
2. The second I take my phone off the charger, the battery goes from 100% to 98%. Can I fix this? Its kind of annoying...
3. Problem with the Sims. Im not sure if any of you have this issue, but whenever I tell my Sim to watch TV, the app shuts down and takes me back to my home screen. Any idea why its happening?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
1. Leaving a phone in 3G all the time is not a good idea, if you have WiFi near you you can connect to I'd use WiFi instead, it has less battery drain then the antenna that is constantly searching for 3G signal - unless you are in the area with bulletproof 3G coverage of course.
2. It seems like this bug is common 100% jumps to 98% once you unplug the charger, are there really any accurate battery meters on the market?
3. Can't help you there, not playing the game on my phone.
HTH
lqaddict said:
1. Leaving a phone in 3G all the time is not a good idea, if you have WiFi near you you can connect to I'd use WiFi instead, it has less battery drain then the antenna that is constantly searching for 3G signal - unless you are in the area with bulletproof 3G coverage of course.
2. It seems like this bug is common 100% jumps to 98% once you unplug the charger, are there really any accurate battery meters on the market?
3. Can't help you there, not playing the game on my phone.
HTH
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
alright thanks. im in phoenix here so i am almost always in a 3G area. I guess i'll leave it on since i rarely dont have 3G
I also read on multiple forums including HoFo that 3G generally consumes more energy then WiFi.
sims 3 fix
so my girlfriend was complaining about sims crashing when she watched tv or relaxed on the couch. i fixed this by moving both the sims launcher app and the sims game app to data/app.
I normally use Edge simply because I don't need Wifi or 3G on unless I'm doing some heavy data transferring.
Currently I'm at 61% battery, which means my phone has been off the charger for 16hours. Its not a fluke either because its just normal use for me. I normally take my phone off the charger at 6am and I plug it back in around 11pm.
Prolonged GPS, Wifi and 3G will eat your battery. I'm not saying don't use the services, but you give up one for the other. I personally like to have awesome battery usage until I'm out and about and really need to use my phone.
I'd recommend you call T-Mobile customer service and have them diagnose the problems you are having and issue a replacement if necessary.
Based on my experience, battery life is excellent, probably the best I've seen in any smartphone in this category. Battery usually last easily through the day with heavy use, including:
- having 3G on all the time (and frequently switching to edge and back)
- 2 email accounts using push (gmail and exchange)
- gps on all the time
- google latitude running all the time
- facebook and twitter sync'ing every hour
- fancy widget sync'ing every two hours
- Newsroom harvesting 12 news sites in the background
- occasional picture (3 or 4) a day
- web browsing and searching
- xda app for reading and replying to this forum.
- bluetooth is always on
- wifi is on from 8 pm on.
I charge the phone through the night, unplug it at 8 am, return home at 8 pm and put it to charge around 11 pm, with still 50%. Brightness is set to auto. Phone is not rooted or modified in any way.
You bought a high end phone that should perform as such. You are supposed to get the most out of your phone, not turn off its features. I wouldn't listen to those who claim you should turn off everything and dim the screen. What's next, not using the phone to preserve batteries?
That's just my two cents.
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App
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...
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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..
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.