[Q] Do I need to have my phone replaced? - Epic 4G General

I got the Epic on September 1st, and I absolutely love it, I do have the screen wiggle, but I am not worried about that, GPS and everything has been great, but since the incremental update, I have been having some serious problems. First, the phone has been randomly rebooting or disconnecting from the network at random intervals. Then the WiFi randomly comes on, and looks for networks even when there is none available, and I have no Battery/Network Management software installed. Then, and this is the worst thing, the battery life has been TERRIBLE since then, I am a high school student, and my phone will lose 25% battery in the 8 hours it is in airplane mode, with the display off, and the phone in my pocket. I do not have the device rooted, because I wanted to wait for a 2.2 update from the community or Sprint/Samsung first.
Do I need to return my phone? I got it from Best Buy, and do not have insurance. This is not a fraud though, it hasn't been dropped, it hasn't been submersed in anything, it is spotless, etc, and I haven't been doing anything risky software wise, I haven't even installed any non-market apps. What should I do? Any input would be great!
UPDATE: I also always have WiFi, GPS, Bluetooth, and all other non network services turned off, as I never use them, and my signal at my house, where it spends 80%+ of its on-network time, is 4 bars throughout.

For one i'd advise leaving wifi on and connected to a wifi network as that uses much less batter than on 3g, trust me.
On my days off from work, I have wifi on at home all day and it's amazing the difference in battery life. The Epic has a 3g battery drain bug that needs to be fixed.
Now as to your other issues, if it's bothering you enough and a hard reset hasn't helped then by all means if still within the return/exchange policy, then do so. Don't wait too long, as we don't know precisely when 2.2 or whatever major fix/update is landing.

your within ur 30 .. swap it if you don't feel comfortable using it

Try this and see if you can get some battery life improvement.
Install juicedefender and allow it to scan your phone and set defaults, the defaults will turn off the 3g radio when your screen is off only turning it on once every 15 minutes for 30 seconds to check email, etc. Don't worry if your dling something or listening to pandora it will leave the 3g radio on until you stop.
Install autokiller keep the defaults, you can root your phone for full access but it can do some minor memory management for you without root.
Install advanced task killer and set it to kill all your apps except juicedefender, autokiller, and itself every 30 minutes with a safe kill level.
My phone has been running for about 8 hours and I'm at 75% life, and I've been using it on and off all day with these settings plus some minor changes.
Let me know how it works out or ifyou ned help.
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA App

Related

Battery live

Hi
Yesterday arrived my dev phone 1 and I am very hapy with it bu battery level is at 20% at 18:00. Is this normal?. I dont want to switch the band to 2g. I keep gmail synched with direct push but google talk not. anyone with same prpoblem?
Thanks
yeah, the standard battery in the G1 is ****ing terrible
not a lot you can do except buying an extended battery (which is a very good idea! )
The only thing I have found to extend my battery Life has been discussed previously a few times on these boards...
1. Turn off Wifi, when not in use. (Toggle WiFi from the Market is Great)
2. Turn off GPS, when not in use. (Toggle GPS from the Market also great)
3. Turn down the screen brightness.
4. (not sure if this makes a big difference) But sometimes if I do not need my feeds or background running apps throughout the day I will restart my phone, or run through a few applications that are not pulling web cache. This way you dont have auto update feedreaders in the background running. It seems like it works for me, but that could very well be wishful thinking. Also turning of things like Twitroid update etc...
Hope that helps.
recasper said:
The only thing I have found to extend my battery Life has been discussed previously a few times on these boards...
1. Turn off Wifi, when not in use. (Toggle WiFi from the Market is Great)
2. Turn off GPS, when not in use. (Toggle GPS from the Market also great)
3. Turn down the screen brightness.
4. (not sure if this makes a big difference) But sometimes if I do not need my feeds or background running apps throughout the day I will restart my phone, or run through a few applications that are not pulling web cache. This way you dont have auto update feedreaders in the background running. It seems like it works for me, but that could very well be wishful thinking. Also turning of things like Twitroid update etc...
Hope that helps.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i do #4 as well, it seems to help, since i have root i just go into terminal and type su [enter] reboot [enter] and when it turns back on its usually doing bettery with the battery
as for opening programs, would advanced task manager serve the same purpose (closing apps that arnt needed and using memory, because if its using memory isnt it in some way using battery power?)
Thanks.
I am porting CommMgrPro to Android (Similar to Locale but much more powerfull). In this way I will switch to 2G, turn Wifi off, disable connections, etc, etc, etc automatically depending on my location/weekday/hour.
Greetings
Dani
Hi All
I have a brand new G1 and, like you, I was suprised by the short battery life.
I also thought about selling the phone but apart from that problem I like it very much.
I noticed that the permanent 3g wireless connection was the real draining battery application.
So the solution I found now is: to disable the permanent connection. I downloaded APNdroid application from the market and I use it everytime I need to toggle connection on and off.
I also tried to leave the WIFI on and i saw that it does not consume much battery.
I did not tried with the GPS.
I am using a good tool to toggle and to fine check the battery level: Useful switchers
I can now say I am pretty satisfied with the phone.
Greeting
Lollo
lollonet said:
Hi All
I have a brand new G1 and, like you, I was suprised by the short battery life.
I also thought about selling the phone but apart from that problem I like it very much.
I noticed that the permanent 3g wireless connection was the real draining battery application.
So the solution I found now is: to disable the permanent connection. I downloaded APNdroid application from the market and I use it everytime I need to toggle connection on and off.
I also tried to leave the WIFI on and i saw that it does not consume much battery.
I did not tried with the GPS.
I am using a good tool to toggle and to fine check the battery level: Useful switchers
I can now say I am pretty satisfied with the phone.
Greeting
Lollo
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes. It was the same problem there was in HTC Hermes/TyNT and TouchPro/Diamond. I created bandswitch in the past and will create two little toggles to switch 3g/2g with and without time limit....
Conditioning
Try Conditioning the Battery...
I have gps on, 2g, brightness at 50% and screen timeout at 30 secs, everything syncing and I get around 5 or 6 hours of use...just like the company says I should.
Run your battery completely dead...
Charge your phone for around 8-12 hours...
Repeat for about 6 days...
You should see improved battery life.
I have 3g, wifi, bluetooth, brightness at 50% and screen timeout at 30 secs, everything syncing with 1-2 hours of music/video with 30 SMS, about 20 mins of calls......I am now getting about 8hrs on the new ones from HTC (the 04).
Interesting Battery
Well now that I have had a week of use I have noticed that the (old) "02" batteries would last about 4-5hrs and go until 1% before turning off, with a slow count down. The (new) "04" batteries stay at a high number (about 6-7hrs) until they get to 15% and within a few mins turn-off....as I recall I saw postings of 'quick' count downs, so I wonder if you either get a slow drain down with about 4hrs of use OR about 6 hrs of use with the last 15% a very quick shutdown....I'll keep monitoring these new HTC batteries to see if it was just one of those "weekend" things or if this is the trade off...was caught off guard as I had been getting 30 mins or so when I had 15% left and the G1 would stay on until 1%..."teach an old dog new tricks".....

Battery life went from poor to awesome to even worse?

Bought my Xperia just over a month ago, and installed juicedefender and juiceplotter to help manage my power use.
At first, I did the whole charging cycle thing, and managed to get battery life up to nearly 20 hours after a week! In the past few weeks however, my phone barely lasts 10 hours now...the battery dies before I can get a chance to recharge. I am a heavy user, but that doesn't seem to explain the sudden drop in battery capacity.
Because of the drop in power over the last few weeks, I have set EVERYTHING to not update, and google sync has been set to sync every other day.
Will my battery just continue to get worse? or do I have a faulty battery?
don't get me wrong, I love my new phone...I just need to know if this is a typical problem, or if I need to get a new battery.
Thanks!
Hi - I'm getting about 40 hours out of mine.. I tend to switch mobile data off when I'm at home as I use wifi.. the problem seems mainly to lie with 3G.. so when I'm out and about I switch wifi off and mobile data on.. but I tend to keep to 2G (GSM) for background syncing etc.. and switch 3G(GSM/WCDMA preferred) on when I want to do any active stuff.. like internet browsing of using the XDA app... I also have my Wifi sleep policy set to "sleep when screen is off"..
What do you use your phone for? if you can tell me a bit about how your using your handset I might be able to give you some more specific advice.
Thanks for the fast reply!
I use juice defender to switch off 3G when the screen is off. It connects every 15 minutes, could that be the issue?
I've looked for a way to switch to GSM, but I can't seem to do it with my carrier(don't have the option in my settings).
I use a lot of data, up to 3 gigs per month 3G only(on average). 4 or 5 calls a day, and probably 100 texts per day. I keep my screen at around 25% brightness.
If you can't switch to GSM then maybe try switching mobile data off all together when you're not using it..(when travelling etc)... (far from ideal I know!).. but it might help.. I think that the 3G radio isn't sleeping properly.. the new software update which is due out anytime now MIGHT solve it.. but only if you're either on an unbranded handset (sound like you're not) or your carrier pushes the update through to you...
The other things you can try is to switch off "Search for updates automatically" in the phone settings... and switch of determine location by wireless networks (in the location settings menu)..
There was a thread about auto brightness causing constant cpu drain, leaving it autobrightness is thought to be battery kind`er.
Ive stopped using task managers and just use default android control and its good for my battery. I check the ram availability occasionaly and though it gets down to around 30 or 40 or meg it shows no slowdowns or hangups but I do reboot after charging every other night.
I'm experiencing similar behavior: poor, then good, then poor, then good again, of course with similar usage. I don't use any task killer and have 3G always on. I have tried 3 different batteries: the stock one, the one from my X1, and the 1800 mAh from Mugen: same pattern with every battery.
I definitely think that there's something bad in the design of the power circuitry and/or in the kernel.

Sprint Update Ruined my Epic! - No 4G!

I've been trying hard to avoid the Epic update, since my phone was working great. I was getting almost 20 hours battery before being asked to charge, using about 30 minutes phone calls, 1 hour "display on" time, bluetooth/wifi off, GPS only when needed.
The nagging update available message would always pop up, and I'd always tell it to install later.
Somehow, I must have accidentally selected update while getting out of the car today, since I saw the phone installing firmware and then reboot.
After the reboot, my Sprint Hotspot stopped working. Now when I activate it, it turns my 3G radio off. Prior to this, I could activate (and use) Sprint Wifi tethering even though I am not specifically subscribed to it. Now, it still "activates" but shuts down my data connection.
Even worse, when I try to activate 4G, it just hangs the phone. I tried factory resetting, which did not solve the problem. Still no more 4G. Also, I noticed my battery getting really hot, and the smell of smoke inside the case. The battery went from 50% to 9% within a minute!! I don't have any explanation on how the update caused this.....
This update fried my phone! I'm going to try the Odin method back to DG27. If that doesn't work, the phone is going back!
DO NOT UPDATE if you can avoid it!!
that sucks
I'm having a really really hard time believing the ota update had anything to do with anything you described.
Sent from my SPH-D700 using Tapatalk
styckx said:
I'm having a really really hard time believing the ota update had anything to do with anything you described.
Sent from my SPH-D700 using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Me too, but I don't know what else could have caused it. Just tried Odin, still can't get 4G to work.
I don't think there's much else I can try. The phone just hangs when I enable 4G. Tried factory reset, Odin back to DG27. No luck.
Any ideas?
Dont listen to this guy -- you want the DI07 update on your phone. It has vital improvements to the radio and kernel. It doesn't break 4G or ruin battery life.
it has happened to many of us,including me..i also started a thread in the development forum..i talked to a service rep and they instructed me to do a msl reset,which required a msl code the give and no luck..this happened to me last week.since then i swapped my phone for another unit an was weary of updaing again,but i did and everything works fine now.im guessing a bad batch of phones or bad dowload/install of update ota.return it for another
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA App
Before the update, I was getting about 14-15 hours of battery with my average daily use. After the update I'm swapping batteries every 6 or 7 hours. I started tracking power consumption a few days ago with Spare Parts. I flashed back to stock with odin, and installed the DI07 update. The only apps I installed were Battery Indicator Pro and Spare Parts. I noticed right away that the running time was always close to 100%. That means that the phone is not sleeping. Under "Partial Wake usage", Android System is running almost the same amount of time the phone is powered on. It's not spiking the CPU, but running just enough to create a partial wakelock. This behavior is consistent on every boot. Normally, Android System should only keep the system awake about 3 or 4 minutes per hour of uptime at most. I think they botched something in the update.
Tonight I reverted back to DG27 and the problem is now non-existent. I only have one Epic to test, so I'm curious to see if anyone else gets different results. If it's just my Epic, then I will be returning it for another.
Anyone feel like experimenting?
I'm going on 18 hours now since I reverted back to DG27 and I'm still on the same battery. I would be on my third battery right now if I was still running DI07. I don't think I'm gonna be updating till Sprint releases another fix. Other than Media Hub and the loss of battery life, I noticed no changes while running DI07.
Sent from my SPH-D700 using Tapatalk
I'm getting over 18hrs since update. It maybe just like the HTC phone when you flash the rom the battery life goes down for the first few full charges then after that it's fine. Maybe I'm just lucky because I'm not having all the drama you guys and others are having.
infamousjax said:
Dont listen to this guy -- you want the DI07 update on your phone. It has vital improvements to the radio and kernel. It doesn't break 4G or ruin battery life.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Any why should we listen to you? Can you describe your source of knowing how this update has "vital improvements" to the radio and kernal? What are the nature of these improvements?
Thanks
-Everyone
Not sure what the particular improvements are... but check your phone info and you will see that the baseband was changed, which means a new radio was implemented. Also, in the release notes it specified that there were some "Qualcomm Updates", and since Qualcomm engineers the radio in our phones, it doesn't take much brain capacity to put 2 and 2 together.
I've updated and have experienced none of these problems. (As I suspect is true of most of the people here.)
infamousjax said:
Dont listen to this guy -- you want the DI07 update on your phone. It has vital improvements to the radio and kernel. It doesn't break 4G or ruin battery life.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It ABSOLUTELY ruins battery life. If it doesn't ruin your battery life specifically, then your one lucky sun of gun. It cut my battery life in half. I used to be able to go to 11pm and never even get a battery warning! Now, my phone completely shuts down by late afternoon while I'm still at work. DI07 is a horrible update. I don't know what Samsung/Sprint did, but my screen is dimmer, battery life took a major dump, and the phone does not seem any faster, actually slower if anything. My phone also seems to be hot all the time, even after it's supposedly been asleep for hours. With DG27 it was always felt cool when pulling it out of my holster and not hot like it is now.
Testing...testing
After running DG27 for almost 24 hours with great results, I decided to give the DI07 update another shot. But first I made a Nandroid backup in CWM before I accepted the update. After about two hours on DI07, it was clear the phone was not sleeping again when the screen was off.
So now I'm gonna try another experiment. I've done a system restore from my Nandroid backup to DG27. Except that the Baseband(radio) is still DI07 because Nandroid doesn't touch the radio. I'm thinking that this will tell us if the new radio is the culprit, or if they just botched something in the DI07 ROM.
Dev's, let me know if I'm off base here. I will report as soon as I have any relevant results.
compujock said:
It ABSOLUTELY ruins battery life. If it doesn't ruin your battery life specifically, then your one lucky sun of gun. It cut my battery life in half. I used to be able to go to 11pm and never even get a battery warning! Now, my phone completely shuts down by late afternoon while I'm still at work. DI07 is a horrible update. I don't know what Samsung/Sprint did, but my screen is dimmer, battery life took a major dump, and the phone does not seem any faster, actually slower if anything. My phone also seems to be hot all the time, even after it's supposedly been asleep for hours. With DG27 it was always felt cool when pulling it out of my holster and not hot like it is now.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Heres what will help:
Run the root script, delete all sprint bloatware, and keep track of all the services running on your phone. I'm getting 20 hours of battery with heavy usage on the DI07 update.
Also, try the bump charging method which has helped me a lot. Turn the phone on, let it fully charge, unplug, let it fully charge, turn back on.. rinse and repeat. It helps.
The update is not what is causing bad battery life. The screen dimming is part of the auto-brightness setting and/or power saving setting which should be helping the battery more than killing it.
Get System Panel/spare parts or any kind of task manager to MONITOR (not kill) processes running on your phone.
Here's a post from another forum, so I'm not the only person with a dead 4G radio. I believe it was temporally related to the update, but reverting back to DG27 didn't fix it.
Link: http://forum.androidcentral.com/sprint-epic-4g/36985-4g-doesnt-work-after-di07-update.html
"I have been out of town in a non-4G area since applying the DI07 update. Got home earlier today and just went to turn on 4G and it no longer is working!!
When I enable 4G (through the pull-down or the settings menu) now it just says "On..." and then "Unknown..."
Anyone else that has applied the update and lives in a 4G area seeing similar behavior?? I am currently backing up me SMS messages so I can do a hard-reset to see if that will fix it."
infamousjax said:
Heres what will help:
Run the root script, delete all sprint bloatware, and keep track of all the services running on your phone. I'm getting 20 hours of battery with heavy usage on the DI07 update.
Also, try the bump charging method which has helped me a lot. Turn the phone on, let it fully charge, unplug, let it fully charge, turn back on.. rinse and repeat. It helps.
The update is not what is causing bad battery life. The screen dimming is part of the auto-brightness setting and/or power saving setting which should be helping the battery more than killing it.
Get System Panel/spare parts or any kind of task manager to MONITOR (not kill) processes running on your phone.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Infamous,
These are all good suggestions for basic power management under normal circumstances, but for some reason this update has introduced an issue that causes the Android System process to prevent the phone from sleeping. Why it's not affecting everyone I don't know. Some people had to take their phones back to the Sprint store after the update because they got so hot and would not cool down unless turned off.
Anyway, if you are getting 20 hours on heavy use, you obviously don't have the bug. But to anyone who thinks they might, you can check using Spare Parts.
First, if you've just rebooted, turn the screen off and let it sit for a few minuets. Open Spare Parts and click Battery history. By default it displays 'Other usage'. If your 'Running' percentage is 100% or close to it, and your 'Screen on' percentage is anything other than your 'Running' percentage, then your phone is not sleeping when the screen is off.
Next change the top tab from 'Other usage' to 'Partial wake usage'. This will show you what is preventing it from sleeping. You can click on whatever is at the top of the list to see its partial wake time. If it's 'Android System', the partial wake time should not be any more than about 1 minute per hour of system uptime. For example, if your phone has only been on for 10 minuets, and 'Android System' has a partial wake time of 2 minutes, you have a problem.
Found more info here.
http://forum.androidcentral.com/sprint-epic-4g/37034-those-batt-issues-after-upgrade.html
This is great info, according to Spare Parts and your info, I have a severe problem. I have just killed DRM
The update went through automatically Sat night, battery has dived at least
50%. Reboot at that time.
Battery History
Total in all Time Since Reboot (2 days)
Running 30.5% 99.7
Screen On 16.7 18.3
I see the problem, don't know if DRM dead will fix, is there anything else I can do?
I am rooted (or at least I was, I stayed stock and added Wireless Tether, it is broken). So not happy there either.
I will charge and check this tomorrow to see what changes or if there are any other suggestions.
Thetwo apps running none stop are I! Agent Service in Android System and GTalkService in Goggle, using over 10 mb ram
Other usage is still almost 100%, Screen time has gone down, but Wifi On is same as Running and I have it turned off every which way I can find as with nothing showing on top bar.
Partial Wakelock: Andoid System is on 113 hrs of25 since boot.

Answers on battery life.

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

[Q] Battery life makes me cry

(I'll preface this by saying that I am well aware there have been a million threads about this, I'm sure, and I'm even more sure that there will be a million more. And I have searched, and searched, and searched some more, and I still feel the need to post this question. Flame me if you want. I'll use the flames to heat up some tea, or something.)
I bought my phone last Thursday, it got lit with service Friday. I went over the weekend and into Sunday with stock ROM/kernel, and decided to mix things up by rooting my phone and using the MixUp kernel to see if I could get better battery life.. and it didn't work too well. I mean, life went up a bit, but not noticeably so (maybe twenty or thirty minutes?)
After that, I flashed Syndicate, which had Xtreme Kernel. I calibrated the battery as instructed inside of Clockwork and went with it for Tuesday.. took it off the charger at 8:00 and it died around 4:00. Kept the same kernel and flashed Epic Experience and the attached JuicePlotter shot is where I am at right now.
My usage today has been light browsing and that's basically it. I've got the processor underclocked to 600 with SetCPU, and JuiceDefender and Superpower have been preventing any data from going on when my screen is off, and for the last two hours I've been listening to MP3s using the in-built music player.
This makes me cry considering there are people on here saying they're able to get much more life out of their battery, even with BT and WiFi etc. I'm aware that each phone is different and all that, but still.
All that said, is there a problem with my phone/battery, is this par for the course with the Epic, or should I just stop whining?
Thanks in advance for any help/insight.
A couple of things...get a task killer app so that you can kill the drm process which eats up a ton of battery, calibraing your battery takes 2 or 3 times going from full charge to zero and also, since its a new phone it takes charging to full and letting it get down to complete zero a few times before you will see better battery life no matter what else you do
Edit: oh and also definitely do the airplane mode toggle as well
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA App
storytobetold said:
(I'll preface this by saying that I am well aware there have been a million threads about this, I'm sure, and I'm even more sure that there will be a million more. And I have searched, and searched, and searched some more, and I still feel the need to post this question. Flame me if you want. I'll use the flames to heat up some tea, or something.)
I bought my phone last Thursday, it got lit with service Friday. I went over the weekend and into Sunday with stock ROM/kernel, and decided to mix things up by rooting my phone and using the MixUp kernel to see if I could get better battery life.. and it didn't work too well. I mean, life went up a bit, but not noticeably so (maybe twenty or thirty minutes?)
After that, I flashed Syndicate, which had Xtreme Kernel. I calibrated the battery as instructed inside of Clockwork and went with it for Tuesday.. took it off the charger at 8:00 and it died around 4:00. Kept the same kernel and flashed Epic Experience and the attached JuicePlotter shot is where I am at right now.
My usage today has been light browsing and that's basically it. I've got the processor underclocked to 600 with SetCPU, and JuiceDefender and Superpower have been preventing any data from going on when my screen is off, and for the last two hours I've been listening to MP3s using the in-built music player.
This makes me cry considering there are people on here saying they're able to get much more life out of their battery, even with BT and WiFi etc. I'm aware that each phone is different and all that, but still.
All that said, is there a problem with my phone/battery, is this par for the course with the Epic, or should I just stop whining?
Thanks in advance for any help/insight.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Also, for each new Kernel you flash, you have to calibrate the battery.
Charge it to full, boot off, boot up in Clockwork, go to Advanced and Clear Battery stats. Reboot the phone, use it until it runs dead and shuts off, than plug it back in and charge it to full with the phone on.
Every time you flash a new kernel, you have to do that process so the battery calibrates to that certain kernel.
Also, try Baked Snack, it gets the best battery life for 2.1 ROMs.
http://www.bakedsnackshack.com/source/
Download Bakedsnack1.6 and Step 2.
Make a backup.
Wipe data/cache
Install 1.6
Boot the phone up
Reboot into clockwork
Install Step 2
Boot the phone up.
I have to have a car charger if I go anywhere. This phone dies so fast with normal usage. Do anything crazy like turn features on, surf the web, or increase brightness, and I am lucky to get 2 hours. I have multiple batteries, both have the same result.
Muckrak3r said:
I have to have a car charger if I go anywhere. This phone dies so fast with normal usage. Do anything crazy like turn features on, surf the web, or increase brightness, and I am lucky to get 2 hours. I have multiple batteries, both have the same result.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
2 Hours..? Whaaaaa? Lol.
When I calibrate my battery, I turn EVERYTHING on, screen brightness all the way up, Pandora running, every widget I can fit on my screens set to update at their quickest setting, screen set to 30min (Though I never let it shut off). Bluetooth, GPS, 4G running (I don't have 4G here, so it just keeps searching, which drains it more than if it was connected). And running the Maps Live wall paper to use GPS.
When I do all that, I can't get it to even die under 4 hours.
Hopefully you were exaggerating with saying 2 hours lol.
Thank you guys for replying!
Sh0wNuF: I killed the DRM service today and used ATK to kill errant processes throughout the day today to no avail. I also used the airplane mode toggle to try to limit my time without a signal.
SemiGamer: Thank you! I did do the clockwork step as I said in my first post, but I will try to install BakedSnack and get back to you guys as to the battery life.
From the looks of that juiceplotter graph, your data is constantly on and destroying your battery. What is the point of having juicedefender if the data is constantly on?
If you set up the phone properly, and there are a MILLION threads on this which state a MILLION times to disable DRM and toggle airplane mode as a mere baseline beginning, you should lose at most 1% an hour when the phone is idle without a data connection and the screen off.
Now it looks like you probably have the data on constantly with emails rolling in, facebook auto updating every 5 minutes, weather checking every half hour and other things that are just destroying your battery life. If you need your phone to do all that nonsense, then you will be crying for the rest of the time you have it.
muyoso said:
From the looks of that juiceplotter graph, your data is constantly on and destroying your battery. What is the point of having juicedefender if the data is constantly on?
If you set up the phone properly, and there are a MILLION threads on this which state a MILLION times to disable DRM and toggle airplane mode as a mere baseline beginning, you should lose at most 1% an hour when the phone is idle without a data connection and the screen off.
Now it looks like you probably have the data on constantly with emails rolling in, facebook auto updating every 5 minutes, weather checking every half hour and other things that are just destroying your battery life. If you need your phone to do all that nonsense, then you will be crying for the rest of the time you have it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you for your reply, but as I said in my first post, I was using both JuiceDefender and Superpower to make sure data was off in the background, and as I said in my most recent post, I did disable the OmaDrm service as well as enable/disable Airplane Mode to lower my TWS.
storytobetold said:
Thank you for your reply, but as I said in my first post, I was using both JuiceDefender and Superpower to make sure data was off in the background, and as I said in my most recent post, I did disable the OmaDrm service as well as enable/disable Airplane Mode to lower my TWS.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thats fine, but your data aint off. Look at that graph you posted. Every little blip is either data being accessed or the screen turning on. The line should be smooth if there is no data and no screen on.
So there are two options, either you are constantly using the phone and its the screen killing the battery, or you have juicedefender set up all wrong and its the data killing the battery.
If I remember correctly, any spike below the line is data, either wifi or 3g and any spike above the line is the screen turned on. So from the looks of it your data is literally never turning off and you are checking the phone and turning the screen on and off pretty frequently.
What are your settings in juicedefender?
muyoso said:
Thats fine, but your data aint off. Look at that graph you posted. Every little blip is either data being accessed or the screen turning on. The line should be smooth if there is no data and no screen on.
So there are two options, either you are constantly using the phone and its the screen killing the battery, or you have juicedefender set up all wrong and its the data killing the battery.
If I remember correctly, any spike below the line is data, either wifi or 3g and any spike above the line is the screen turned on. So from the looks of it your data is literally never turning off and you are checking the phone and turning the screen on and off pretty frequently.
What are your settings in juicedefender?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Timeout: Do nothing
Schedule: Enable Data for 1m every 15m
Night: Keep Data/Wifi disabled 2am>5am
Battery: Keep Data/WiFi disabled while below 15%
Traffic: Leave Data/Wifi enabled while >50KB/15s
Peak: Do nothing
Apps: Do nothing
Screen: Leave Data enabled while screen unlocked
Location: Do nothing
I have almost identical batter results as you. I do use the phone fairly often to send messages but the screen brightness is all the way down and I use set cpu on the froyo beta leak. I reset battery stats and also (perhaps you could look into this too) checked spare parts for any rogue programs. Does yours say the screen takes up most of your battery even if you barely use it?
Sent from my SPH-D700 using Tapatalk
storytobetold said:
Timeout: Do nothing
Schedule: Enable Data for 1m every 15m
Night: Keep Data/Wifi disabled 2am>5am
Battery: Keep Data/WiFi disabled while below 15%
Traffic: Leave Data/Wifi enabled while >50KB/15s
Peak: Do nothing
Apps: Do nothing
Screen: Leave Data enabled while screen unlocked
Location: Do nothing
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I would up the Schedule to less often and turn off the traffic toggle. Also, I wouldn't doubt that your phone is never going to sleep. If you have spare parts check the Battery History. If you listen to music with the phone, the service started by the music player, CorePlayerService, keeps the phone awake constantly for me. I ended up making a simple kill music widget using tasker to fix this issue.
I bought a wildly overpriced Samsung stand/battery charger from Amazon. My wife & I each start the day with a charged Epic and a spare battery. No worries
Sent from my SPH-D700 using Tapatalk
Used BS 1.6 w/ step2 kernel today. MUCH better battery life but my phone was acting just a bit wacky (locked up and required batt. pull twice or three times)
Not the biggest fan of the aesthetics of the ROM.. but I'll live.
storytobetold said:
Used BS 1.6 w/ step2 kernel today. MUCH better battery life but my phone was acting just a bit wacky (locked up and required batt. pull twice or three times)
Not the biggest fan of the aesthetics of the ROM.. but I'll live.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
When you say much better battery life exactly how much? My battery dropped 20% today while not being used and Display was still at 60% (I turned the alarm off twice). I'm running the Quantum ROM which could have something to do with it but the battery is horrible for me. I can't get more than 8 hours and that's if i barely use it. I have spare parts and no apps are partially waking it. Just Wifi and sync. No GPS, brightness all the way down. The main thing that bothers me is that display is always #1 even if i don't use the phone at all. Any thoughts?
I've ran both Quantum and Viper Froyo roms and aside from making my phone hot enough to fry eggs, the battery life was not good.
As far as battery life goes, I'll start with the obvious stuff.
1. Turn off GPS, Bluetooth and 4G. 4G is a complete power whore.
2. As for wifi, turn it off unless you are in a bad coverage area for cell data. If you are connect to wifi and set Spare Parts to never let wifi sleep.
3. For DRM there are 3 files you need to remove that will prevent it from running / reinstalling and they are DrmProvider.apk, DrmUA.apk, and SisoDrmProvider.apk.
4. Toggle airplane mode every single time you reboot without fail.
For a true test of whether your phone simply needs to be returned as "defective" you should wipe the device, dont setup a google account and let it run for a day after executing steps 1-4 above. It would be best to an apk for Spare Parts and SDX Stock App Remover on your microSD that could be installed using My Files. If you still have problems take the phone back to sprint (after restoring it to factory of course) and tell them it is defective.
storytobetold said:
This makes me cry considering there are people on here saying they're able to get much more life out of their battery,
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Camera on the EVO made me cry, so bad i switched to the Epic, I deal with the battery buy purchasing 2 batteries and a charger on ebay for $9. now I have three batteries. I had like 4 batteries for the EVO
MLHickey said:
When you say much better battery life exactly how much? My battery dropped 20% today while not being used and Display was still at 60% (I turned the alarm off twice). I'm running the Quantum ROM which could have something to do with it but the battery is horrible for me. I can't get more than 8 hours and that's if i barely use it. I have spare parts and no apps are partially waking it. Just Wifi and sync. No GPS, brightness all the way down. The main thing that bothers me is that display is always #1 even if i don't use the phone at all. Any thoughts?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Here's a JuicePlotter graph from today for comparison from my original one yesterday.
I still wonder if it wasn't going to sleep because of PowerAMP and I didn't underclock today like I did yesterday.
There are a few other physical issues with my phone (slider seems a bit loose compared to my other phones: if I swipe with slider closed with a bit more pressure than usual, I can feel the screen move up and down; screen seems to slightly come up a bit when phone's tilted a bit, taps make you feel the screen go back down) that also made me want to consider exchanging it on top of the battery issue but if I'm getting good battery life I don't think I'll mess with what works, unless anything gets worse.

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