I had searched previously and read some things about this "bump" charging stuff supposedly getting you many more hours of usage on a normal schedule.
Actually, guess I should preface with some background info. This is my first android phone, but I've been watching since 1.6 came out. So, the day I got my Epic it was rooted and I flashed Nebula ROM on it. I also tried out Epic Experience, but was more pleased with Nebula. Of course I'm running DK28 with the modem fix.
On to my question. What can be done to increase battery life on a fairly undemanding schedule, without causing the device itself to operate less smoothly?
I tried several of the bump charging methods I saw, but I'm sitting at 33% battery after 5:45.
I'm going to feel dumb if this is actually average and I'm just expecting too much, haha.
Thank you, kindly.
Kanojo said:
I had searched previously and read some things about this "bump" charging stuff supposedly getting you many more hours of usage on a normal schedule.
Actually, guess I should preface with some background info. This is my first android phone, but I've been watching since 1.6 came out. So, the day I got my Epic it was rooted and I flashed Nebula ROM on it. I also tried out Epic Experience, but was more pleased with Nebula. Of course I'm running DK28 with the modem fix.
On to my question. What can be done to increase battery life on a fairly undemanding schedule, without causing the device itself to operate less smoothly?
I tried several of the bump charging methods I saw, but I'm sitting at 33% battery after 5:45.
I'm going to feel dumb if this is actually average and I'm just expecting too much, haha.
Thank you, kindly.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You can try calibrating your battery. If you don't know how, well here's some instructions:
To do this, all you have to do is let your battery completely drain. Then while the phone is off, charge it for around eight hours straight without turning the phone on (have it just showing the battery icon).
Since you are already at 33% or so, I'd suggest just letting it drain today, and have it just charge overnight.
I, too, am running the Nebula Rom, but I haven't tested it for a full day without charging it yet. So, you can try calibrating the battery if you would like to see if you would get any improvement, but in my opinion, 33% at 5:45 sounds great. I'd be satisfied with that.
Please let me know how it all turns out.
Hope this helps!
acer1096xxx said:
You can try calibrating your battery. If you don't know how, well here's some instructions:
To do this, all you have to do is let your battery completely drain. Then while the phone is off, charge it for around eight hours straight without turning the phone on (have it just showing the battery icon).
Since you are already at 33% or so, I'd suggest just letting it drain today, and have it just charge overnight.
I, too, am running the Nebula Rom, but I haven't tested it for a full day without charging it yet. So, you can try calibrating the battery if you would like to see if you would get any improvement, but in my opinion, 33% at 5:45 sounds great. I'd be satisfied with that.
Please let me know how it all turns out.
Hope this helps!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you for the speedy reply, I will try that.
I wasn't really expecting 33%, but more around 50%. I've only sent three texts today on it (as I was trying to see how well it'd hold up) and so I assumed battery life would be fairly high. But I am also living in an area with extremely poor coverage, so bad that it'll start searching for signal if I move the phone 2 feet away. So maybe it is trying to acquire a signal often.
I'll report back in the morning. Any other advice/ideas would be greatly appreciated.
Kanojo said:
Thank you for the speedy reply, I will try that.
I wasn't really expecting 33%, but more around 50%. I've only sent three texts today on it (as I was trying to see how well it'd hold up) and so I assumed battery life would be fairly high. But I am also living in an area with extremely poor coverage, so bad that it'll start searching for signal if I move the phone 2 feet away. So maybe it is trying to acquire a signal often.
I'll report back in the morning. Any other advice/ideas would be greatly appreciated.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, there's basic things as well.
Check to see if Data Roaming is on, make the brightness Auto, no live wallpaper, no bluetooth, no GPS, No background data/Accounts Sync.
But you shouldn't have to do ALL of those. Just a couple if you haven't already to boost the battery a little.
And yes, searching for a signal could be the problem.
And only three texts? Nothing else? Maybe there is something wrong.
Tell me the results tomorrow after calibrating the battery.
I'm using midnight rom and I'm at 20h26m and 33% with moderate usage. You can try recalibrate and wipe 3x b4 install the rom. It might help. Good luck.
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA App
Alright, it's 9:20 EST and I'm starting off with 96% battery life. I'll gauge how it holds up through "normal" usage, which is somewhat less conservative. Wifi will be on nearly constantly, my signal will be weak unless I leave, autosync is set to hourly with background data.
I normally get about 12-16 hours on what I call moderate use.
I leave gps on all the time. I make ~6-10 calls a day for 5-30 minutes. I send and receive ~30 texts a day. I'll put an hour or two worth of internet time per day. (not watching videos)
I kill the drm and friend locator services on every boot. This helped my battery life a lot.
It does help to train your battery dragon occasionally.
ntime60 said:
I normally get about 12-16 hours on what I call moderate use.
I leave gps on all the time. I make ~6-10 calls a day for 5-30 minutes. I send and receive ~30 texts a day. I'll put an hour or two worth of internet time per day. (not watching videos)
I kill the drm and friend locator services on every boot. This helped my battery life a lot.
It does help to train your battery dragon occasionally.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ya, that's the kind of performance I'd like. Are you running stock or do you have a rom installed? Also, what DRM and Friend Locater? Never heard of the latter.
acer1096xxx said:
Well, there's basic things as well.
Check to see if Data Roaming is on, make the brightness Auto, no live wallpaper, no bluetooth, no GPS, No background data/Accounts Sync.
But you shouldn't have to do ALL of those. Just a couple if you haven't already to boost the battery a little.
And yes, searching for a signal could be the problem.
And only three texts? Nothing else? Maybe there is something wrong.
Tell me the results tomorrow after calibrating the battery.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Are you saying to turn Data Roaming on or off? I could come up with a reason it would help either way, so do tell.
Same thing with Auto brightness, I would think that actually uses more battery than a fixed lower/medium brightness.
Do people on here really leave Sync and GPS off?
Compared to these settings, I'm completely lazy, and still get good battery life.
AndrewZorn said:
Are you saying to turn Data Roaming on or off? I could come up with a reason it would help either way, so do tell.
Same thing with Auto brightness, I would think that actually uses more battery than a fixed lower/medium brightness.
Do people on here really leave Sync and GPS off?
Compared to these settings, I'm completely lazy, and still get good battery life.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Turn off Data Roaming. The reason being is that with it on, your network will constantly search for data, and that drains the battery. The brightness I am actually not sure on. I have had better results with auto rather than, say, 0%.
If you get good battery life already, that's fine. But auto-sync isn't really necessary in my opinion.
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA App
Alright, it's been 5:33 since it's been unplugged and I'm sitting at 68%. This is with wifi on the entire time, brightness set to auto, and data roaming off (no need for it to be on, I was considering toggling it based on my location in Tasker). Sync is on and I rarely have use for GPS in my day-to-day so that is off.
So I think the calibration as recommended by Acer1096xxx has effected the life of my battery for the better. Thank you, once again.
Hopefully this thread will help others out in the long run. I'll continue to monitor my activity and battery life.
EDIT: 57% as of 5 o'clock. Had to plug it in because I'd be going out tonight doing things. Overall, this is about the performance I was hoping.
Related
The "Battery Use" reported by Android is completely out of whack on my Epic. It's the one under "Settings" and then "About phone."
For example, it's listing "Voice calls" as accounting for 83% of my battery use with 3h24m29s of time on. I know for a fact I've only talked on it for ~5min today. In fact, I was curious as to why it was showing 34 mins when I checked it at noon so I kept checking it, and by 12:15, it was showing 1h35m! Totally bizarre, not to mention most of the other battery usage times are off too, including a cell standby time that's shown to be longer than the time that the phone's been on.
Anyone else having this issue?
Haven't noticed this yet, but I'll keep an eye out for it. Out of curiosity, the battery drain isn't any different though, right? Your battery isn't being drained as if you talked on the phone for 4 hours?
lordcyrus said:
Haven't noticed this yet, but I'll keep an eye out for it. Out of curiosity, the battery drain isn't any different though, right? Your battery isn't being drained as if you talked on the phone for 4 hours?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Honestly I can't say. My battery life has been horrendous from the first day I got the phone. Have yet to make it through an entire workday with it. That is even when it just sits in standby when I'm at work. I don't know if that has anything to do with this usage indicator issue. But I went to the local Sprint store today. They didn't really know what was going on so they gave me a new battery to try out. I will report back if anything's changed.
Make sure you condition it real good. Like for the first week, give it a full charge then use it until it dies. I've done that and ran the battery until dead on purpose about three times the first couple days. If the battery is good, the life should get better and more stable. Also I suspect that, after speaking to the dev of battery indicator pro, some brands and models of phones report a ballpark figure and some are just about right on the money. My battery has noticably improved after these full powering cycles and topping off a few times after full.
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA App
bojackson63044 said:
Honestly I can't say. My battery life has been horrendous from the first day I got the phone. Have yet to make it through an entire workday with it. That is even when it just sits in standby when I'm at work. I don't know if that has anything to do with this usage indicator issue. But I went to the local Sprint store today. They didn't really know what was going on so they gave me a new battery to try out. I will report back if anything's changed.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, hopefully that fixes it. I've talked to a few people who have gotten amazing battery life using JuiceDefender to automate turning the 3G connection on and off, which people seem to all agree is the biggest battery killer sans display, and they are claiming going from 100% battery to 95% battery overnight, 2AM to 10AM.
If I leave my phone alone for an hour I will lose that much, and that's with the same JD settings. Then again, even with my EVO I found JD to be nearly worthless. Right now it's claiming 2.11x more battery life, but if it equates to anything in actuality I might be gaining 10 or 15 minutes. Maybe.
Mine is the same way. It sits on standby most of the day. But it still eats up the battery and the phone is always warm.
Sent from my SPH-D700 using Tapatalk
lordcyrus said:
Well, hopefully that fixes it. I've talked to a few people who have gotten amazing battery life using JuiceDefender to automate turning the 3G connection on and off, which people seem to all agree is the biggest battery killer sans display, and they are claiming going from 100% battery to 95% battery overnight, 2AM to 10AM.
If I leave my phone alone for an hour I will lose that much, and that's with the same JD settings. Then again, even with my EVO I found JD to be nearly worthless. Right now it's claiming 2.11x more battery life, but if it equates to anything in actuality I might be gaining 10 or 15 minutes. Maybe.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If 3G sucks as much battery as suspected, then google needs to put a button for it into the Power Control Widget (1 of my favorites).
sultan.of.swing said:
Mine is the same way. It sits on standby most of the day. But it still eats up the battery and the phone is always warm.
Sent from my SPH-D700 using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sounds like you are suffering from that bug where the phone is always looking for a gsm signal instead of just locking into what it works with cdma.
Press and hold the power button, select airplane mode. Let it sit in airplane mode for a minute and then repeat above steps to disable airplane mode.
Your time without signal should drop significantly thus resulting in a cool phone and much better battery life.
You need to do this every time you reboot the phone by the way. This bug should hopefully be worked out with the froyo update.
Reporting back after new battery and factory reset - still broken. "Battery use" says "Cell Standby" has been on for 20mins after the phone's only been on for 11mins. Seems to be an Android or Touchwiz problem.
Still waiting to see if the new battery will carry it through a 8hr work day. If that doesn't work, then I'm trading it in for an EVO. Too bad since I really liked the physical keyboard on the Epic.
ort84 said:
Sounds like you are suffering from that bug where the phone is always looking for a gsm signal instead of just locking into what it works with cdma.
Press and hold the power button, select airplane mode. Let it sit in airplane mode for a minute and then repeat above steps to disable airplane mode.
Your time without signal should drop significantly thus resulting in a cool phone and much better battery life.
You need to do this every time you reboot the phone by the way. This bug should hopefully be worked out with the froyo update.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yep, problem I have is where I live I dont get any signal. I end up roaming thus causing the radio to kill the battery extremely fast. Last night i put the phone In airplane mode and let it charge. Phone cooled down even though it was charging.
So unless I get better signal without Roaming or I move I guess I am just stuck with not being able to use my phone at home or at work.
on mine my battery meter is all off also. my battery widget shows that my phone its at like 40% while my icon in my notification bar is pretty much full like it would be only at 70%... its not even more than half gone. so I know there is an issue with how my phone reads the battery or something
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA App
Hey guys,
Just got my Epic yesterday.. coming from the G1 with lots of experience loading and tweaking ROMs and dealing with same/similar battery issues.
After unpacking the Epic I used it and let it drain down to zero before recharging it; after a full recharge, I loaded up the 7 screens with widgets and ran a live wallpaper (fish). I didn't really use the phone much at all and the phone went from 100% battery down to zero in the span of only four hours!!! Geeze, you've got to be kidding me - four hours battery life?? WTF????!!
Back to the drawing board: I rooted it and ran SetCPU with some power saving profiles. Removed the live wallpaper and went to stock wallpaper. Set display power off at 30 seconds. Note that 4G remains off since there's no 4G in my area..
Couple of questions:
1. Is there any way to toggle 2G/3G like there was on my old G1? I know that was a power saver.
2. I didn't stop to read all the documentation yet (typical male, I know) but is there any way to wake this thing up from sleep mode besides pressing the power button? I can see that power button breaking for as much use as it's getting from me constantly having to wake this thing up!
3. My brightness setting is set to auto - since the display is usually the biggest drain on these things, is there a recommended manual brightness setting (percentage) that seems to work well for you and saves on battery power?
I'm waiting for the Seideo Extended Battery (just like many of you) and am wondering if I should keep the Epic since I'm on the Sprint 30-day Easy Return program.
Appreciate hearing from everyone!
Chris R.
I don't have 4G where I am. But, I have a all black wallpaper(uses less power) and unrooted. I easily get about 12-18hr out of my phone wit normal use(text, talk, and surfing the net with skyfire). Only thing that really kills my battery are games(Robo Defense can take over 30min to play one game).
Thanks for the reply - situation NOT improving
Thanks for the reply.. unfortunately, the situation is not improving...
I tried setting a Sleep Profile using SetCPU that would under-clock the CPU (using the stock kernel) once the screen dimmed and the phone went into Sleep Mode. Unfortunately, as mentioned in another thread here, the result was that the phone froze and required a battery-pull to reset.
I'm really starting to lose my enthusiasm for this device; as beautiful a display and as responsive a CPU/GPU, all of that doesn't mean much if you don't have good power management built into the firmware. At 6PM this evening I pulled it off the charger at 67% charged, it's now 8:35 PM, only 2.5 hours later and I'm down to 22%. I'm in a decent coverage area and get 2-4 bars of 3G strength so I don't think it's an issue of the radio being the culprit; in-fact if you check the battery stats it reports that that lovely Display is accountable for 78% of the battery usage! So I guess we're paying a hefty price for these 4-inch AMOLED displays!
I read somewhere else that the most recent update (DI07) has caused the battery performance to decrease; since my unit is brand-new it immediately went and installed DI07 shortly after the first boot-up so I have nothing to compare it to.. can anyone comment on that?
Thanks!
Chris R.
I'm sure custom ROMs will put performance / battery life on the top of the list but until then, I use JuiceDefender beta and have seen pretty good results with it. It shuts off data whenever the screen is off and since my screen is off a good amount (only use my phone if I need to check email, call, and / or text, which is rare when I'm at work). Other than that, yes, use black wallpaper, lower brightness to the min. in the OS and browser, and don't leave apps that constantly use 3G open (things like ebuddy, pandora, etc.). 3G really destroys battery life so minimal use of 3G data would maximize battery life. Maybe the devs can figure out a way to get at least one full day of battery life on this phone. I'm hoping that is the case.
As to your post, yes, DI07 has resulted in poorer battery life, for whatever reason. I was definitely getting a few hours more with the older firmware. I would not lose hope yet. As disappointed as you are (and all of us are, I can assure you of that), the devs are really starting to push out nice ROMs already, and in a few weeks to a month, I bet we will see some solid battery life. Hell, even 2.2 should yield much better results. Patience
Thanks for the tip!
nimaim said:
I'm sure custom ROMs will put performance / battery life on the top of the list but until then, I use JuiceDefender beta and have seen pretty good results with it. It shuts off data whenever the screen is off and since my screen is off a good amount (only use my phone if I need to check email, call, and / or text, which is rare when I'm at work).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the reply! Also thanks for the tip regarding JuiceDefender! What a great app! will give it some more time and report results back here.
Thanks again!
Chris R.
nimaim said:
I'm sure custom ROMs will put performance / battery life on the top of the list but until then, I use JuiceDefender beta and have seen pretty good results with it. It shuts off data whenever the screen is off and since my screen is off a good amount (only use my phone if I need to check email, call, and / or text, which is rare when I'm at work). Other than that, yes, use black wallpaper, lower brightness to the min. in the OS and browser, and don't leave apps that constantly use 3G open (things like ebuddy, pandora, etc.). 3G really destroys battery life so minimal use of 3G data would maximize battery life. Maybe the devs can figure out a way to get at least one full day of battery life on this phone. I'm hoping that is the case.
As to your post, yes, DI07 has resulted in poorer battery life, for whatever reason. I was definitely getting a few hours more with the older firmware. I would not lose hope yet. As disappointed as you are (and all of us are, I can assure you of that), the devs are really starting to push out nice ROMs already, and in a few weeks to a month, I bet we will see some solid battery life. Hell, even 2.2 should yield much better results. Patience
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
DI07 has hurt my battery life substantially. In fact, my battery drains very close to twice as fast now with the update. I don't understand what they did. My phone certainly doesn't seem any faster, my display is dimmer, and battery life sucks. I'm going to have to go back to DG27 so I can use my phone all day. With DI07 it always dies on me by mid afternoon. With DG27 it was still running by 11pm at night without even a battery low warning.
juice defender ftw
also, use advanced task killer with low security settings to kill all the background processes. Set the autokill to when the screen turns off. This keeps everything pretty well managed and helps with battery as well
JUICE DEFENDER BATTERY!!! Saved my phone from flying out of my car window at 10 in the morning........
here is a link to a thread I started.
Sharing my juice defender settings. I also use ultimate juice.
http://forum.ppcgeeks.com/sprint-epic-4g/133933-sharing-my-juice-defender-settings.html
I can get a day and a half (or slightly longer) out of a single charge.
YMMV.
Hope this helps
Advanced task killer + Juice Defender. You could also get some custom roms and Kernals that would help boost it.
But that's your best hope. Keep off 4g, wifi, bluetooth, etc.
compujock said:
DI07 has hurt my battery life substantially. In fact, my battery drains very close to twice as fast now with the update. I don't understand what they did. My phone certainly doesn't seem any faster, my display is dimmer, and battery life sucks. I'm going to have to go back to DG27 so I can use my phone all day. With DI07 it always dies on me by mid afternoon. With DG27 it was still running by 11pm at night without even a battery low warning.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Look here- try stopping the DRM service and see if that helps your battery life with D107
jimmyz said:
Look here- try stopping the DRM service and see if that helps your battery life with D107
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ah, the evils of DRM can strike in unexpected ways...
I wasn't really having a battery problem but I just turned DRM off, so we'll see if battery life improves anyway.
I had a whole long post here that got wiped with the xda disk array failure, so I'll just sum that up here too:
1) Use wi-fi if possible - it REALLY helps
2) 4G does not seem to use the battery any more than 3G, although hunting for 4G does and 4G coverage is not as extensive as 3G even in 4G areas. So it's still best to leave it off if you're moving around.
3) Dim your screen and use a dark, static background. AMOLED screens don't work like LCD's; they use more power the more pixels are lit and the brighter they are.
4) GPS also kills your battery - leave that off unless you need it too.
I think that's it. I get about 18 hours on DI07 (even before trying the DRM thing; maybe I can get to a full day!).
One thing I'm noticing after checking DRM - I've got Google Maps' LocationService popping up about every 10 seconds, and I can't seem to shut it off permanently. (I went into Lattitude and turned that off, not sure what else to do.) That can't be helping... anyone know how to get rid of that?
I'm using juice defender and a constant email junkie, but lite use on other aspects of the phone. It goes off charger at 5:30 am and I'm about 67% at around 3p. It then goes in the car charger on the way home. This has much better battery life than the Pre or the Hero as with both I had to turn off email to get it to last throughout the day.
I don't expect these phones to last days, but I expect any phone that I get to last the business day. I've always been one to charge overnight.
Wifi drains battery more from what I've read.
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA App
I've heard the opposite that wifi (as long as it's connected) uses up less battery than 3g/4g. Any of them will suck the battery dry if they're searching, so make sure you have a connection to one of them.
Hi everyone, new to the forum. Just started checking it out when the Epic was released and this is my first post. Anyways, here's my question. My phone's been off the charger for 7 hours and 17 minutes and it is now down to 15%.
Display 79%
Cell standby 7%
Android System 4%
Phone idle 2%
Swype 2%
I've gone into the display settings and I thought I had set everything up optimally. The brightness is always very low. The screen timeout is 15 seconds and the keyboard matches that. I don't know what else I can do to cripple the phone to get the battery to last longer.
I have had wifi on, 4g off, bluetooth off, gps off. Really all I have done this afternoon while watching NFL games is check my yahoo fantasy score, play 2 games of WordFeud, and check twitter and facebook. I purchased Juice Defender a week ago and it has been running all day.
Any suggestions for how I can reduce the drain from the display? My background is a black and white picture of a friend of mine, which I thought would help.
Don't get me wrong, I love this phone. But the battery life I've seen is just terrible. I'd love to buy the extended battery from Seidio whenever its available, at least that would make it last longer even if the settings aren't tweaked.
Do you have juice defender installed?
Yep. Its installed and running now.
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA App
bagelicious said:
Hi everyone, new to the forum. Just started checking it out when the Epic was released and this is my first post. Anyways, here's my question. My phone's been off the charger for 7 hours and 17 minutes and it is now down to 15%.
Display 79%
Cell standby 7%
Android System 4%
Phone idle 2%
Swype 2%
I've gone into the display settings and I thought I had set everything up optimally. The brightness is always very low. The screen timeout is 15 seconds and the keyboard matches that. I don't know what else I can do to cripple the phone to get the battery to last longer.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There are only two reasons for your display to be using that much battery:
a) it's too bright, or
b) you're using it a lot.
If you're using the phone a lot, your battery's going to run out pretty quick and there's no way around that. If you're using it a "normal" amount, which to me means maybe an hour *total* per day of having the display on, then the other culprit is going to be your brightness. (Some would argue that's less than a normal amount, but think about it... you get a new phone, you're going to play with it for a week or two until you've seen all the cool stuff. But at some point you're going to start putting it away most of the time and just using it when someone calls you, you get a message/email or maybe to play a game or two while waiting for the train.)
Set your brightness *all* the way down, just as a test for a couple days. Make sure all the "power saving" features of the display are turned *off* (auto brightness, and whatever that "picture detection" feature's called, I can't remember). You just want the display as dim as possible all the time, just to see what happens. See what the battery usage says after a day or two of this.
My bet is that you'll see a drop, and then as you get into a more normal usage pattern it'll drop further still. You can raise the brightness a couple ticks then as you learn how to stretch your battery out.
Personally, my display is rarely over 15% or so of my usage. Today it's 29%, but it's a Sunday and I don't have anything better to do but play around on my phone.
btw, it's still the first day I've tried this but that DRM thing might be working. It's almost 9PM and I'm still on like 80% battery, and like I said I have been using the phone off and on throughout the day.
That has helped tremendously. I installed it pretty much when I got the phone and I'm able to last the whole work day with 67% left. (10 hour day)
I have read many other threads about improving battery life and such but I am still at a loss. My battery in my Epic is only lasting about 5 hours(9AM~1:30PM). I have a moderate signal the whole time and I am using the phone but I only have the screen on about 10% of the time according to Battery Stats(forget where I found this info, maybe spare parts?)
I have turned off Wifi, bluetooth, 4g, GPS only turns on when I open an app that needs it. I really have no idea what I am doing wrong since this seems to be completely terrible battery life. I have also killed the drm service and have found that it did not help my battery life much.
I am rooted and running Syndicate Rom 1.0.2(not froyo since I use a Mac and have not gotten my hands on a pc). I am using Xtreme Kernel clocked at a max of 1ghz.
Any other tips? Should I take the phone to Sprint and ask for a new battery? The phone at this point is only about 3 months old. If this seems to be normal for battery life then I am pretty sure I will be jumping ship and getting a new phone.
Zach
mttallaczach said:
I have read many other threads about improving battery life and such but I am still at a loss. My battery in my Epic is only lasting about 5 hours(9AM~1:30PM). I have a moderate signal the whole time and I am using the phone but I only have the screen on about 10% of the time according to Battery Stats(forget where I found this info, maybe spare parts?)
I have turned off Wifi, bluetooth, 4g, GPS only turns on when I open an app that needs it. I really have no idea what I am doing wrong since this seems to be completely terrible battery life. I have also killed the drm service and have found that it did not help my battery life much.
I am rooted and running Syndicate Rom 1.0.2(not froyo since I use a Mac and have not gotten my hands on a pc). I am using Xtreme Kernel clocked at a max of 1ghz.
Any other tips? Should I take the phone to Sprint and ask for a new battery? The phone at this point is only about 3 months old. If this seems to be normal for battery life then I am pretty sure I will be jumping ship and getting a new phone.
Zach
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Only advise I have is to toggle airplane mode after every boot and switch from the extreme kernel to pheonix 1.43, it has the best battery life by far as will any of the phenix kernels but 1.43 is the best
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA App
I got 25 hours of a charge the other day. Had to grab a screen shot real quick before it **** down. Might frame it. On stock dk28 with moderate use, lots of pics...it was on christmas so it was prety well used, trying to escape conversations with in laws.
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA App
I'm having the same exact problem. Same ROM and everything. I'm getting absolutely terrible battery life, maybe 5hrs on a full charge. Its ridiculous especially seeing how the nexus s is basically the same phone and gets nearly 20 hrs with no problem. WTF!!!??
Would bet a dollar that your phone is not entering sleep mode properly. Download Spare parts, charge your phone up, unplug it and turn the screen off and wait for like 10-20 minutes and then turn it on and open spare parts and look under Battery History. You will see that it will say Running 100% or something high like that.
This is probably because of something you set up. Either facebook updating every 30 seconds or maybe push email. I dont know.
I pretty much always get at least 24 hours and I work in a basement where I barely get a signal. I leave wifi on all day. I talk for about 20-45 a day on average. I listen to music for a couple hours a day. I play games for a good half hour of my lunch break and sometimes for an hour or two at night. Sometimes I forget to turn my gps off for half the day while I'm in the basement.
I have killed a battery in 6 hours when I spent the entire time downloading and playing games. And I had a battery last 42 hours a couple weeks ago when I was helping a buddy work on a car. We used it to drive some crappy pc speakers for music for about 8 hours in those two days and I spent a couple hours over those two days looking for info to help us diagnose his car.
I have been on Mammon's DK28 for a few weeks and have mostly been on the latest FroYo roms since the leaks starting hitting the public. I ran the same rom and kernel as you guys for a couple weeks, and I don't remember the battery being that bad. IIRC, I was overclocked and still saw 18+ hours of battery life with normal usage.
What are we doing differently? That is the question. Do you have a bunch of widgets and a live wallpaper? I don't. I try to keep my widgets pretty minimal. I have TWC on one screen, a flashlight widget on my main screen, and Pandora and PowerAmp on a third. I generally use a pretty dark wallpaper, too. Something simple and easy on the eyes as well as the amoled. I also keep my wifi on and set it to never sleep wifi. Why? So it doesn't search for a 3g data connection. I have wireless networks I can connect to in the places where I spend most of my time, so I might as well use them. Sure it has to power up the wifi radio, but the wifi radio seems to use very little power when you're sitting somewhere with a good signal. Also, read "How to Train Your Dragon" in the dev section. I have three batteries and generally reset the battery stats on one of them every two weeks. If you only have one battery, every 3-4 weeks is suggested. I always charge my batteries in the charger and almost never plug my phone in (because I don't have to) and about half the time I bump charge the battery after it is finished. Be careful with bump charging as it can reduce the number of charge cycles your battery can take, but can net you 10-15% more capacity in the short term. I rarely discharge my batteries below 15% except for when I'm recalibrating them. If you discharge your battery to too low of a voltage it can reduce capacity. And if voltage is reduced too low, it won't charge at all, but may be fixable with a cadex machine.
Be sure to go find that thread on how to train your dragon. There are some links in there that will teach you a good bit about how lithium ion batteries work and what you can do with them. After that, you need to see what is running on your phone to use that much battery. Is some process or group of process eating your processor?
edit: Look Mom, I wrote a book!
I will try changing kernels and updating to froyo(maybe hijack my dad's netbook).
If this doesn't work then I am going to go to sprint and see if they will swap out my battery. I tried the thing with spare parts and it says time running is 18% since last unplug which seems a bit high but not too ridiculous.
I have read and followed the instructions in how to train your dragon. I am really starting to think it is a faulty battery. I will report back, thank you everyone for the advice.
ok, thank you all for the advice. I am able to get through a whole day now on a charge since changing to Phoenix. Maxes out at about 10 hours as long as I am not constantly on it.
Updating to froyo later today.
Not really going to be helpful for you, but just my observation:
DK28 has MURDERED my battery life. Lots of people have issues with DK28, but the GPS, accelerometer, etc but all that stuff works fine for me - the only problem is the mega hit battery life took.
Let's hope the official release isn't as bad.
DK28 probably murdered your battery life because you forgot to do one of the battery saving techniques that you were using on your previous DI18 rom. Pretty much everyone else is seeing battery improvements with DK28.
I don't think so. I never use GPS, 4G or Wifi and I've always had the brightness auto adjust on.
Reading through threads I see lots of people saying JD and similar apps are good and lots saying they are bad. This is quite confusing for someone who just wants to get good battery life. In my experience I have gone from finding it good to finding it bad. I will try and explain why this occurs so that people are able to decide if it will be worthwhile for them.
First install Battery Monitor Widget and find out what sort of drain your battery is experiencing every hour.
With a stock rooted G2 with data connection on continually (no wifi) I was getting around 80-150 mA which explains why it would not last longer that about 16 hours. Most of this drain seems to occur from data connections. After installing JD or something similar the drain can be reduced to around 50 mA. Which is great, suddenly you get the claimed 1.5 to 2x battery life. JD seems great.
But after you install a good ROM and custom kernal, remove or freeze all the apps that keep using your data connection unnecessarily and install Better Battery stats you observe that JD stops the phone going into a proper deep sleep. If you dump it the drain on the phone drops to very low numbers usually under 20mA sometimes 5mA or even 2mA. This means you use around 1-3% of the battery life of the phone overnight with no changes. Now your phone can last days between charges. Note this is with Data or Wifi connections turned on and Sync active always.
Summary:
On a badly set up phone JD improves battery life (for the lazy)
On a well set up phone JD worsens battery life (takes some time)
Note: I got the best results using Speedmods kernal but I have no reason to think that other kernals could not get similarly low battery drains.
Thanks for sharing your observations. I have juice defender and have had similar findings. The wake locks jd causes play into the aos bug of the phone which is why it can make things worse on a well set up phone (the extra drain from the wake locks outweighs the savings from turning the data connection off when it's not in use). If not for the aos bug it would probably be good in all cases. I had noticed this in my testing and am glad to see I'm not the only one.
Sent from my GT-I9100 using xda premium
Thanks for sharing your observations.
If I had seen your post much earlier than I wouldn't have to buy JD. Anyway, I have gone through the hard way, and learnt how to keep my phone organized and minimized rouge apps issue. JD is pretty much useless now.
IMHO, I think Battery monitor widget pro seems to be a much better buy
Thanx for this helpful info!
BTW, kernel not kernal
I do not have a lot of widgets and sync as little as possible. Mail sync is only on demand (when I have time to read it), and Weather is every 6 hour (disabled in night time).
So my battery live is good ½% standby and with normal use it can easily last a full day (no gaming, just Internet, Talk, SMS).
I decided to try JD in order to save even more juice, but JD ended up using more battery than it saved me!
So I can confirm that JD is good for the "lazy user" and bad if your aware of your sync. and how your apps behave.
What do u mean by dumping? You said if you dump it and the drain goea away? Im a bit confused
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best way to save battery overnight are, disable all internet connection including Wifi, switch to 2G, kill all task then have a sweet dream till next sun rises
KurskS said:
What do u mean by dumping? You said if you dump it and the drain goea away? Im a bit confused
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By 'dump' I just meant uninstall JD. If you uninstall JD your phone will be able to deep sleep properly provided it is set up well and you actually save more battery.
foxcheng said:
best way to save battery overnight are, disable all internet connection including Wifi, switch to 2G, kill all task then have a sweet dream till next sun rises
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Sure you can do that, but it's not necessary. I leave wifi and 3g on and still have drain of 5mA all night. I wake up and have lost almost no battery. The same applies for when the phone is idle during the day.
razar77 said:
Sure you can do that, but it's not necessary. I leave wifi and 3g on and still have drain of 5mA all night. I wake up and have lost almost no battery. The same applies for when the phone is idle during the day.
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What kernel , Rom and apps (that sync) are you using?
Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk
I've been getting godawful battery life - the phone comes off the charger at 8-9 in the morning and I am at ~10% at 3-4 in the afternoon with maybe an hour or two of screen on time. I'm running the latest build of PureNexus and EX Kernel, both of which are supposed to have better battery life. Android System is using 2-3 times more battery than everything else, depending on how long I've had my screen on. Should I switch back to stock (I really don't want to), or are one of these things in particular causing most of the problems?
What about apps??
Install WLD/BBS/GSAM to check the wakelocks..
If that doesn't help (which I think will help hehe) try performing a clean install of the rom+kernel
I have the same setup and I also get not that great of battery life. I get about 2H SOT for 12 hours of uptime. Theres no wakelocks or anything that shouldnt be happening. I just dont get good battery life. I don't even do much on my phone, I just reply to texts, listen to music, and occasionally google stuff.
Check if wifi and bluetooth scanning are on
pipnmike said:
Check if wifi and bluetooth scanning are on
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I didn't even know that was a setting. What exactly does this do? Will it disable any functionality of anything?
jdubya42 said:
I didn't even know that was a setting. What exactly does this do? Will it disable any functionality of anything?
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It helps with many thing but primarily google now. It enables approx location for searches by scaning for wifi and/or bluetooth signal which is used to determine locarion. and also helps with smart lock I believe. Although that shouldn't drain that much battery.
Sent from a Shaftamle Galaxy S4
"Thanks Button" is always appreciated!
149ThemedGoogleKeyboards!!!!!!
Eclipse ROM fatness!
MyColorScreen
jdubya42 said:
I have the same setup and I also get not that great of battery life. I get about 2H SOT for 12 hours of uptime. Theres no wakelocks or anything that shouldnt be happening. I just dont get good battery life. I don't even do much on my phone, I just reply to texts, listen to music, and occasionally google stuff.
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The reality is... By only doing small and short tasks at a time, it uses more battery. Stopping and starting lots is a lot less efficient than constant running. I am able to get about 4 hours SOT if I do small tasks, nothing prolonged, but if I stream films or longer stuff, I get 5.5-6 hours SOT. It may be worth you looking at one of the scripts for the EX kernel governors, as one of them optimises battery life for users that don't have heavy usage. Do a quick forum search for it, it is worth a try!
The most important thing is to not focus on whatever figure you get for your SOT, as long as the battery lasts long enough between chargers that it is 1) better than your previous device and 2) good enough that it does not run flat between charges, then there is no real issue. People tend to focus on SOT as a defining factor of battery life, when it isn't the only thing to focus on!!
Hope this helps somehow.
Check to see what is syncing for your Google account. I had a ton of crap syncing that I don't even use. I restricted it just to mail, contacts and apps. Also, lock WiFi on to 2.4ghz instead of automatic. Turn off automatically scan for new networks.
Yeah I realize the thing about SOT. I was just giving it a number. Honestly the battery life just doesn't impress me. I wish it lasted until I went to bed, not just when I got home.
jdubya42 said:
Yeah I realize the thing about SOT. I was just giving it a number. Honestly the battery life just doesn't impress me. I wish it lasted until I went to bed, not just when I got home.
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It is possible. I started off with diabolical battery life, but now I get through the day with ease. My only issue now is standby time, it is lacking a bit...