Database Users

Nexus One Battery Life vs iPhone 3gS/4G

Earlier this year, I was a huge Android fan. I had a rooted G1 with a different firmware every week. My Dream ended when I realized that the battery was lasting me not more than 5-6 hours, even with very light use. This was after swapping out batteries/phones. Also, for working out, I needed a good music player. Android's default one needed a LOT of improvements.
So, when my friend brought over his iPhone, I decided to give it a try. I bought an iPhone 3GS from craigslist. Jailbroke and Unlocked it. The battery was lasting me more than a day, even after watching more than an hour of TED.com talks, and listening to an hour of music. The ipod functionality was amazing with the volume/music controls in the earphones.
Then, I accidentally updated my phone to the latest firmware... which cannot be unlocked. So I'm back to using my G1.
So, the question still stands.. Is Froyo on Nexus One better in battery performance and iPod functionality of iPhone 3GS. Especially with the upcoming iPhone 4G, we can be sure that Apple will increase the battery life of iPhone (as they've done with all previous updates)?

I get a lot better battery life with Froyo then on my 3GS to be honest. Also, as far as the music functionality goes, why do you think its so bad? If you dislike the interface, then you can download a alternate option from the Market. But for me, as long as it plays the songs, view/edit playlists and browse the music I am good to go.

i got slightly less battery life from my Nexus with 3G turned off compared to my jailbroken 3GS.
normally ended up with about 10% less battery at the end of the day compared to my IPhone and similar usage.
the Nexus was stone stock.

Thanks for the replies...
To answer the question about music interface... I think the ipod interface is much smoother than anything i've seen in Android (please suggest something in case I might've missed it). As I mentioned before, I use the earphone controls A LOT.. and am not sure if Nexus One will offer the same functionality.
Battery life is a huge issue for me. As I said, my usage on iPhone was pretty heavy. Let me lay it out here -- this is with Edge.. Push On.. and Location On.
- 1.5 hrs music
- 1 hr video (Ted talks podcast)
- 1.5 hr phone calls
- 2 hr games
- 3 hr Wifi on
With this kinda usage, my iPhone would have 15-20% battery left by end of the day (midnight usually)...
Does your Nexus One match that or is better?
( I'd love to switch to Nexus, if battery is a non-issue... love the Google integration!)

Battery life is across the board on the N1 for some reason. People will have the same set up and get very different kinds of battery life. I know I've never been happy with the battery life of the phone.
A good music player is ³. Cubed. I like it. I recommend the Nexus One if you get the 2 batteries and external battery charger for 20 bucks deal off of eBay. Maybe life will increase but until then having an arsenal of batteries solves my problem.

Ok, I guess I'm back to 8th grade, basic math. Let's calculate. And because you could have just looked in the specs and done the math yourself, I'm not going to look there, and if I bring the wrong numbers - so be it.
1.5 hr of music is almost nothing. Music is optimized for very low battery usage - 20 hr of listening or so. Let's say, 5% off battery.
Wifi on is nothing. You can keep it on for as long as you like, you actually save battery - it turns off 3G/HSDPA and uses WiFi data.
1.5 hr phone calls out of ~6 hours spec ~= 25% battery off.
1 hr video out of 5 hr spec ~= 20% off.
2 hr games are quite destructive. Both CPU activity and display. Let's say, another 25-30% off.
You're left with approx. 15-20%. Surprised?
Oh wait... It figures, no? Do you think one of those systems is going to be significantly inferior in terms of battery life? You don't think Samsung and Qualcomm know their stuff well enough?
Ah, and the difference is going to show if you use Android power and load it with zillion auto-updating and auto-syncing widgets, that'll chew on your CPU idle time and use up your network power.
[edit] That's exactly the reason for varying battery life between users, as the poster above noted. People use their phone differently, and unlike iPhone, it can perform a lot of things simultaneously, without you even noticing (it's enough that you installed auto-syncing widget and made it sync once in 5 min with a good amount of data, for example) - and it'll cost you battery life. Control what you're running, and you'll get more out of the battery.

I came from an iPhone 3G to the Nexus One and the battery life does seem worse. it's always hard to compare because I do more with my Nexus One. My gut feeling though is even if my usage is similar to what I would have done with my iPhone, the Nexus One just uses more power. Part of that may be the higher res screen. Battery usage almost always shows the display as the biggest user of my battery.
I recently have been having worse than normal battery life. I'm not sure if it's due to upgrading to Froyo or if it is because I turned Latitude on. If it's Latitude, then it's really frustrating that the Battery Usage area doesn't list Latitude as using my battery. Kind of makes that a pointless feature if things just get hidden under names like "Android System".
I also agree with you on the Android music player. I use it, and it's not terrible, but the iPod app on the iPhone is just much easier to quickly get to the music you want to play. Also the Genius features are really well done. Someone suggested Cubed. I found it gives a really good first impression but once you use it you realize it's actually just flashy and it functions awful. As far as I can tell there's no way to quickly find and play a single song with it.

Battery life for 3gs is better than nexus..

For my usage the battery life on Froyo is about twice as good as the battery on 3GS. Granted, I listen to slacker radio while browse websites for about 2 hours a day and the multitasking on android is much more natural than the jailbreak alternative.

tantrix said:
Thanks for the replies...
To answer the question about music interface... I think the ipod interface is much smoother than anything i've seen in Android (please suggest something in case I might've missed it). As I mentioned before, I use the earphone controls A LOT.. and am not sure if Nexus One will offer the same functionality.
Battery life is a huge issue for me. As I said, my usage on iPhone was pretty heavy. Let me lay it out here -- this is with Edge.. Push On.. and Location On.
- 1.5 hrs music
- 1 hr video (Ted talks podcast)
- 1.5 hr phone calls
- 2 hr games
- 3 hr Wifi on
With this kinda usage, my iPhone would have 15-20% battery left by end of the day (midnight usually)...
Does your Nexus One match that or is better?
( I'd love to switch to Nexus, if battery is a non-issue... love the Google integration!)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I am not altogether sure you aren't just trolling. There isn't any way to give a definitive answer to this question, but I'll give you my experience.
No new N1 user is going to say he gets good battery life. You won't want to shut the screen off for the first week.
Now, I can get a day and a half out of my battery on a stock rom if I don't sync absolutely everything frequently, I use wifi when it's available, keeping radios I am not using off and basically, being mindful of power use. I use it frequently, but not constantly. And if I am away from a charger, I have an inexpensive spare battery that I can change all by myself without any special tools all the while sending SJ a FU via ESP.

attn1 said:
I am not altogether sure you aren't just trolling. There isn't any way to give a definitive answer to this question, but I'll give you my experience.
No new N1 user is going to say he gets good battery life. You won't want to shut the screen off for the first week.
Now, I can get a day and a half out of my battery on a stock rom if I don't sync absolutely everything frequently, I use wifi when it's available, keeping radios I am not using off and basically, being mindful of power use. I use it frequently, but not constantly. And if I am away from a charger, I have an inexpensive spare battery that I can change all by myself without any special tools all the while sending SJ a FU via ESP.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for all the inputs...
Lemme get first thing straight.. I have NO intentions of trolling No harm intended. When I bought the iPhone, EVERYONE I know was immensely surprised. I was (and still am) a spokesperson for Android. I love the apps. Maybe thats a reason that we all install so many widgets/apps which use data.... So many are available for free!! and awesome ones too.. for example.. I'd kill for the News and Weather app to be in iPhone.. but its not...
As I said in the original post.. a big chunk of my criteria is battery life.. second big chunk is music... I guess I'm sad that no Android phone yet can beat the battery life that an average iPhone user gets... I was hoping by releasing Froyo, google would change that (hence this thread)...
Trust me guys.. I live by my gmail.. would rather have everything centered around it... than having apple control my life... just dont wanna carry around extra batteries.. like i had to for my g1...

Intersectraven kernels with any nexus one Rom gives me the best battery. Rite now I'm on froyo and have lasted more than 20 hours with the kernel.
-------------------------------------
Sent from my Nexus One

Now that I'm using my nexus normally, I'm getting good battery life. 12 hours of solid usage.

myplague said:
Intersectraven kernels with any nexus one Rom gives me the best battery. Rite now I'm on froyo and have lasted more than 20 hours with the kernel.
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Click to collapse
Which of Raven's kernel are you using?
I have a iPhone 2G and it beats my N1 on battery but not considerably.. I read that the 2G is teh king while 3G is the worse of the three iPhones. 3GS is slight better than 3G.

. 34 925mV
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Sent from my Nexus One

Something that people keep mentioning but seems to keep getting overlooked when people compare any device running Android to the Almighty iPhone...
Multitasking. Takes. More. Power.
Being able to run 5 or so apps in the background (along with all the automated syncing that's happening on the network-data side of things) is going to drain the battery more than doing one thing at a time on Apple's product.
When your iPhone is able to effectively multitask, come back and then you can compare the battery life.
Quite simply, Android lets you do more than you could ever possibly do on the iPhone platform. It gives you the option (free will - unheard of on the Apple side of things!) to run a handful of apps simultaneously. This, naturally, uses more power as the processor is doing more. This is not rocket science, people. You choose to do more, so accept the power penalty. Or, you can be mindful of your battery usage and manage things appropriately to get a significant battery life improvement. It's your choice!
And if you still don't get enough battery life out of this more powerful, more capable device, as attn1 pointed out, there is absolutely nothing to stop you from getting an inexpensive spare battery that can be swapped into the phone in under a minute (INCLUDING the time it takes to shut down and power back up).
Trying to compare any recent Android device to Apple's iPhone is like comparing my gaming notebook to my old TI-84 graphing calculator - which did get much better battery life than my current Asus G72 notebook.

xzr3b0rnzx said:
Battery life for 3gs is better than nexus..
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Click to collapse
For me it's nexus that wins 3gs easily. my iphone with small use 1 day nexus with hevy use 1 day.

Some backstory.
Paul's Froyo.
Tweaked Kernel.
Home++
Sync off
Widgets: Facebook (no notification), ³ medium, Google Search, Power Control, News and Weather (12 hour refresh)
Screen set to auto brightness
Went to bed with 98% charge at 11:30pm.
Alarm goes off at 5am. 93%
Check Facebook. Turn on sync. Browse xda on default browser. 89%
Get on the metro.
Browse the internet.
Read a few news articles in the news widget.
Listen to music with Bluetooth headphones for 20 minutes or so.
Browse xda some more.
Download the latest 925 cfs kernel from ir's thread.
By 7:14 I'm at 64% charge.
In 2 hours doing what I noted here I lose close to half my battery?! That's laughabad.

It's amazing how all over the place the returns are.
I have owned the following phones in the last three years :
iPhone 2G
iPhone 3G
BlackBerry Bold
iPhone 3GS* (borrowed for 2 weeks to see if I wanted to go back...)
Milestone
Nexus One
I, personally, got the best battery life out of the iPhone 2G - I got three days out of it, consistently. BUT, I did not have an unlimited data plan, I did not use it for mail, I always got apps from the store over WiFi, I never streamed music, video or anything else. I had no RSS reader. I listened to some music, played the OCCASIONAL game, sent some texts and made a few calls.
Next would be the Bold. I POUNDED that thing and ALWAYS got at least 2 days out of it. I would send dozens of SMS, read and reply to at least 40 emails/day, use GTalk with my wife for at least 50 messages a day. I'd read RSS feeds with Viigo.
After that, every single phone on the list requires charging every single day.
On the iPhone 3G, I would do a little surfing, maybe a little video, some emails and some text. Music on the metro coming and going to/from work. Charging every day was mandatory.
On the 3GS, with how App Store had better and better stuff, I killed it (as in forced shut down) 5 out of 15 days - all that with no widgets and no multitasking. I would read Le Monde, do some browsing, read tweets, read emails, make a couple of calls and texts. I started stocking the charge cable at work and in my backpack during my weeks with a 3GS, because it wouldn't make it through a day. Most friends and colleagues who have them do the same.
I received the Milestone in December. I loved it, and really started pounding a phone - 100 GTalks a day, some SMS, all email, NewsRob for RSS, Le Monde, News & Weather widget one we hacked that on there (following the Jan 5 release of the N1), twitter and facebook, browsing. App downloads, widgets left and right, plus CONSTANT dev work, image building, flashing, testing, etc. I would get a day if I took my foot off the gas, but if I pushed it too hard, I would kill it. There were a couple of battery killers that were avoidable but which I didn't avoid from time to time - leaving Qik, the browser on the google homepage (with autolocation on) the Camera or Maps open, then letting the phone go "idle" with the screen asleep keeps the GPS on and would eat the battery in an hour or two. This left me high and dry a couple of times, until I paid a bit more attention. The Milestone got better 3G than any iPhone and worse / less-consistent WiFi.
I picked up a Nexus at the beginning of March. It gets somewhat-to-significantly better battery life than the Milestone. I still have to charge it daily, but there seem to be fewer battery-death bonehead choices that drink the go-go juice and leave you without your electronic BFF. Most of that is probably Android 2.1 and the UV kernels - I noticed that the Milestone was better with 2.1 as well. It also gets 10dbm worse radio reception with the same SIM on the same desk on the same network in the same office. But it gets MUCH better and more reliable WiFi, and that is better still since FroYo. I use it a ton - RSS, chat, SMS, calls, LOTS of browsing, Le Monde, NYTimes in Newspapers Full, lots of games in spare time, Google Listen for Podcasts, Music, Movies, taking pictures and videos and posting them online with Twitter, Facebook, YouTube or Buzz, etc.
The Nexus has one MASSIVE problem, as far as bettery goes - charging it on any computer USB port, and many thrid-party USB charge plugs (AC or DC) is atrocious - hours and hours to get just a few percent. I don't know why - Apple can use 1A from anything, RIM / BlackBerry can come close to 2A. My Milestone would take at least 1A from anything. But the stupid HTC kit won't take more than about 400mA from a computer or a non-shorted USB charger. SOME 3rd party stuff will be exploited up until 1A, as will the charger that the N1 comes with, but if not, you're going to see slooooooow charging.
As far as the music player: I want 2 things - good sound and the ability to pause and skip with the mic button. Every iPhone does this, and so does the N1. The N1 DOES support headset buttons (it's own set comes with them), but I use my Shures with a simple mic adaptor. I almost never see the interface - I put on a playlist and shuffle it. DoubleTwist makes sure that I have the same lists on my iPod touch and my Nexus, so I really don't notice the difference.
If you use the interface a lot, well, then the player on an iPhone is the best there is. I just don't use the interface often enough to make that a selling point.
As far as sound - the Milestone got SIGNIFICANTLY more volume and better sound then any iPhone and a ridiculous amount more than an N1.
Froyo just rocks. I miss a couple of CM features, but there are sooooo many good things baked into Froyo - tethering, copy/paste in received GMail messages, SD card app storage, cloud-stored settings, Flash, incredible performance.
Your Mileage May Vary.

big_adventure said:
The N1 DOES support headset buttons (it's own set comes with them),
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the VERY detailed post... And also for clarifying the controls thing... thats awesome that N1 uses the mic button for controls... I use it a lot while running to skip songs...
I'm on the brink with my G1 though... Flashed the latest 2.1 ROM from Cygo.. at first I thought it was fast.. but now its driving me crazy.. its not really the ROM but the phone itself.. will post a video of the experience soon..
So to summarize above posts...
- N1 can give same or better battery life than iPhone... provided.. that we use it well... no crazy widgets/apps which keep using data...
- The earphones button CAN be used in N1 to skip songs.. which is awesome for me...
I think I might order my N1 today itself.. as it's still being sold on google (surprisingly enough).. Who knows once only T-Mobile sells it, if they'll stop offering the unlocked option....
Thanks for all the input guys

One week: Nice phone

Had my Atrix a little over a week and like it a lot.
Not rooted.
I get 2 days on the battery -- about 25% at the end of the second evening. I leave WiFi on and GPS mostly off (turning it on only when I need it). I have set the task manager to shut things down but, of course, various Moto-stuff continues to run. Display on auto brightness. I use it quite a bit for email and web browsing but, I'm sure, much less than others.
A couple of days after I got it, I was driving over the mountains, going in and out of any coverage, and it went black and unresponsive. Seemed like it would vibrate occasionally but I needed to pull the battery to bring it back. No problem like that since, even driving the same road the other direction. That was soon after the upgrade, so maybe it needed to be rebooted again.
Occasionally it becomes unresponsive in the middle of doing something complex in a new app -- like freezing in a context menu. Putting it to sleep with the sleep key and then bringing it back makes it responsive again. Not a real problem but certainly a symptom of immature software -- as expected.
I find the screen to be excellent.
Most recently I was using a BB Bold 9000. This phone, with an Otterbox Commuter, is considerably thinner than the 9000 with an Otterbox on it. I like that. I miss the real BB keyboard but the future is clearly non-physical keyboards (not necessarily screens).
Best: It can be turned up to be the loudest phone I have ever owned. More distortion at top volume (as expected) but having the ability to turn up the ring volume and the phone volume / speakerphone volume is excellent.
Next best: Easily replaceable battery, including excellent approach to the back cover. I wouldn't own a phone that needed to be sent back to the factory when the battery gets tired. My experience on batteries is that they start noticeably downhill as soon as one year. When that happens with this one, I will buy a second battery and have one new battery and one tired battery. I know some people like the iPhone case design but I believe the Atrix case / back cover is a first-class design as well -- just a totally different set of design goals.

The atrix is a really good phone I don't understand why people hate on it so much.
It could be even better with an unlocked bootloader but I mean its still crazy good.

I am wrapping my 4rth complete day. My experiences are pretty darn similar to your own.
So far I get two days per full charge. This is with lots of playing around and downloading of apps and files.
I have had it sort of freeze a couple of times when playing with many newly downloaded apps one after another. But nothing a quick lok and unlock didnt fix.
This phone is unreal fast!
The minute I got my phone dropped of by fed ex, I plugged it in to the wall outlet. When it was 100% charged, I downloaded and intstalled the update. Other than that, I havent installed anything else but apps and widgets.

kdspiv said:
...
So far I get two days per full charge. This is with lots of playing around and downloading of apps and files.
...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Do you guys have push mail set up, or are you polling? I'm at ~35% after being unplugged for 9 hours with pretty heavy use. lots of screen on time, live wallpapers, wifi on/off, lots of apps/data downloading, mp3s, etc.
Awesome phone, no complaints at all though!

stewartsoda said:
Do you guys have push mail set up, or are you polling? I'm at ~35% after being unplugged for 9 hours with pretty heavy use. lots of screen on time, live wallpapers, wifi on/off, lots of apps/data downloading, mp3s, etc.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Email=gmail is essentially default except ringtone=silent. I have always assumed that it is polled but googling it I see that some people say it is push -- surprise to me.
I remember reducing the frequency of data requests but can't find that menu right now...
I often use the phone several times an hour for email, FB, calendar, web. Never used it for mp3 and only once for some YouTube.

RacecarBMW said:
The atrix is a really good phone I don't understand why people hate on it so much.
It could be even better with an unlocked bootloader but I mean its still crazy good.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm not sure either. I ***** and moan about damn near everything and I have no complaints about this device, other than the bootloader. That'd bring a ton of dev interest to the Atrix community but oh well, it does everything else flawlessly. And there isn't even really much I'd use if the devs unlocked the bootloader to be honest.
I'm someone who *****es about everything and if I'm content, I can't see how others can possibly make any complaints.

airprakken said:
Email=gmail is essentially default except ringtone=silent. I have always assumed that it is polled but googling it I see that some people say it is push -- surprise to me.
...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Gmail is set up as push by default, but Android calls it "sync" instead of push. The setting is pretty hidden in Blur, I can't figure out where to get to it except for the Power Widget I have on my homescreen.

I get a full day, no problem, and end up at about %40+ when I charge it for a few hours in the morning before going to work. I have 3 push e-mail accounts, use WiFi most of the day, and browse the web once in a while. Use Google Reader to get time to pass during those painfully long meetings.
But I've been hard pressed to wear the battery out in a day with my "typical" use. Battery lasts much longer than my Nexus One and leaps longer then the old G1.
Just my $0.02 worth, YMMV.

jmastrol said:
Battery lasts much longer than my Nexus One and leaps longer then the old G1.
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Click to collapse
Yes, indeed. I had a G1 to experiment with some Android development. It's battery depletion rate, even when dark, made it almost useless.
The new Atrix battery is better than my Blackberry Bold 9000 with a one year old battery -- much better than I expected.

airprakken said:
Yes, indeed. I had a G1 to experiment with some Android development. It's battery depletion rate, even when dark, made it almost useless.
The new Atrix battery is better than my Blackberry Bold 9000 with a one year old battery -- much better than I expected.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I agree, I don't know how well Moto was able to optimize the Tegra 2 chip and various electronics but the 1930 mAh battery surely helped.

Question on internet browsing on the note

Does the battery life in this area improve the more you use the battery? At the moment there seems to be a big difference in how it performs in this area compared to the battery life for other functions on it. When browsing the net you can literally see the battery draining away.
Sent from my GT-N7000 using Tapatalk

Don't think this action is THAT much of a battery concern, I suggest 3G data connection is the main issue, which in the case, shouldn't be much off difference to the other options at all.
The other issue was screen, yes it is larger, higher resolution, but as a user from N1>LG2X>SGS2>Note, I do not see big difference too, all device mentioned would last me from 12~14 hours with my usage, the 2 hours diff seems related to the different daily usage instead of CPU/Screen etc.
Just a reference:
I had these sync on ALL time:
Contacts/Calender/Twitter/G+/Google Reader/Whatsapp/GMail/GTalk/Latitude
On Wifi only:
DropSync
Normal usage, web browsing mainly, G+/Twitter/GTalk/whatsapp a bit, not much phone calls (45~60 mins), most of the time Wifi (at work/at home), Note would last me 13~14hours.

I have had devices before with suspect battery life, but on them it tended to get hit whatever you were using. Whereas with the Note it seems to have a decent to good battery life on most things, even with various synchs going on in the background. But as soon as you venture online it takes a big hit. It must be related to the screen, which shows in spite of claims at the time that Super AMOLED still eats battery.
Sent from my GT-N7000 using Tapatalk

Super Chimp said:
I have had devices before with suspect battery life, but on them it tended to get hit whatever you were using. Whereas with the Note it seems to have a decent to good battery life on most things, even with various synchs going on in the background. But as soon as you venture online it takes a big hit. It must be related to the screen, which shows in spite of claims at the time that Super AMOLED still eats battery.
Sent from my GT-N7000 using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
are you browsing through wifi? wifi eats my battery.
Also many web pages have white backgrounds and that is a real killer for amoled. I converted opera to default to green text on black and that helps a lot.
- Frank

A famous site made some battery tests and the results speak for themselves:
around 9 hours of video playback, but 3h30mn of wifi surfing...
The OLED screen burns the battery because everything is white on the web.
Web surfing is one of the selling points of this phone, but this phone can surf the web only half the time of the best smartphones around:
EPIC FAIL !!!

Latoc said:
around 9 hours of video playback, but 3h30mn of wifi surfing...
The OLED screen burns the battery because everything is white on the web.
Web surfing is one of the selling points of this phone, but this phone can surf the web only half the time of the best smartphones around:
EPIC FAIL !!!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There's a lot of questions regarding what exactly that test is, since that doesn't match what people are seeing in real life.
I'm guessing they had their screen at 100% brightness.
I find this phone extremely bright, actually, so that's quite overkill.
- Frank

There is a power saving feature in the stock browser, I think it is added in new firmware. I am on KKA firmware.

Is there any conclusive evidence if the battery drain is from the WiFi conenction or of any browsing will eat it?

Viamonte said:
Is there any conclusive evidence if the battery drain is from the WiFi conenction or of any browsing will eat it?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't use WiFi so I do all my browsing on 3G only. I can have it where my Note only shows a fairly small drain through calls, texts, emails etc. But after say only 30 minutes web browsing the battery is showing a big dent in it.
Sent from my GT-N7000 using Tapatalk

Super Chimp said:
I don't use WiFi so I do all my browsing on 3G only. I can have it where my Note only shows a fairly small drain through calls, texts, emails etc. But after say only 30 minutes web browsing the battery is showing a big dent in it.
Sent from my GT-N7000 using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, ****
Thx for the reply tough xD

ChodTheWacko said:
There's a lot of questions regarding what exactly that test is, since that doesn't match what people are seeing in real life.
I'm guessing they had their screen at 100% brightness.
I find this phone extremely bright, actually, so that's quite overkill.
- Frank
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think they had it at 50%. Also a real life scenario imo, would be having the brightness at 25-30% and reloading a page every 20 seconds on a good optimized battery. Then only we can talk browsing numbers.
But since they tested the battery and compared it with the same/similar settings setup's on the phones, I guess an alternative browser to work on those "white" backgrounds, is a must..

ChodTheWacko said:
are you browsing through wifi? wifi eats my battery.
Also many web pages have white backgrounds and that is a real killer for amoled. I converted opera to default to green text on black and that helps a lot.
- Frank
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
How did you do that? I'm using opera mobile and I'd really like to reverse the colors or something for night browsing so it's not so bright. I haven't been able too find any such settings. It bothers my girlfriend sometimes if I'm up late at night browsing the web and it lights up the whole bedroom. Red text on a black background would be optimal. Before the Note I used Cyanogen Mod which has a render effect you can activate in the settings to disable green and blue sub-pixels for a red night vision effect (or other combinations for other colors.)

maxh said:
How did you do that? I'm using opera mobile and I'd really like to reverse the colors or something for night browsing so it's not so bright.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Here you go:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1326434
- Frank

Please explain!!!

Ive had a few questions when it comes to my trial with samsung devices and this is where my story starts..
So I have had a mirage of Samsung devices starting with the Note 2, to the Galaxy s4, and now currently the Note 3. I have put as much time and effort as my noob abilities will allow me to and I'm honestly trying to figure out a couple of things. Throughout all these devices in less than one year I have realized that I can only get my battery to supply modest results. I have torn through xda and have done almost every solution out there to in order to increase my battery life. With no impacting results I sit here truly wondering how is it that people can really get more than a day out of these phones. I have honestly never been able to get any of these phones to 5-6 hours screen on time and more than 24 hours off the charger. I evny the people that swear they are heavy users and still get great battery life, but I just dont see how this is possible from my experience...
I would say on a normal day i use the device moderatly and somewhat carefully as to retain the battery life to the fullest. I normally have my phone on WiFi for about half the day but I do browse and do a bit on LTE too. I use all kinds of social apps (twitter, instagram, fb, hangouts for sms, etc) that are all using push notifications. I have a university email that uses exchange and that is push as well. I stream all my music using Google play music daily but also a lot on WiFi. I search the web a lot and use flipboard constantly. I hardly use any games except at home when I know I have my charger. So one of my questions is, does this classify me as a heavy user comparing to all of you people?
I have tried almost everything.. Wake lock detector, turning off absolutely everything location based, app ops, power saver for when I'm at work (8+ hours), turning off all the smart features, low brightness, turning off bloat, etc. But still nothing too spectacular for results. Keep I'm mind I'm all stock and for now I dont really want to change that. So my main question after that long story is, am I missing something? Should I be getting better battery life after all these attempts? Is my battery life ok for how I use my phone? Are there any other options so I can be like the people getting monster battery life?
What made me write this post is because I was at BestBuy and one of the Samsung reps had the same Verizon note 3 that I have. I asked him if I could see his battery stats (which he did not know how to find.. Wow) and his phone had been on for over a day and had 7 hours of screen on time.. It blew me away that he was getting extraordinary battery life and obviously didnt do a thing to try to preserve it.
Keep in mind the battery stats posted are actually some of the best Ive had when it comes to screen on time so usually its dead after about 16 hrs and 3 hrs screen on time.
Sent from my SM-N900V using xda app-developers app

junior_mafioso said:
Ive had a few questions when it comes to my trial with samsung devices and this is where my story starts..
So I have had a mirage of Samsung devices starting with the Note 2, to the Galaxy s4, and now currently the Note 3. I have put as much time and effort as my noob abilities will allow me to and I'm honestly trying to figure out a couple of things. Throughout all these devices in less than one year I have realized that I can only get my battery to supply modest results. I have torn through xda and have done almost every solution out there to in order to increase my battery life. With no impacting results I sit here truly wondering how is it that people can really get more than a day out of these phones. I have honestly never been able to get any of these phones to 5-6 hours screen on time and more than 24 hours off the charger. I evny the people that swear they are heavy users and still get great battery life, but I just dont see how this is possible from my experience...
I would say on a normal day i use the device moderatly and somewhat carefully as to retain the battery life to the fullest. I normally have my phone on WiFi for about half the day but I do browse and do a bit on LTE too. I use all kinds of social apps (twitter, instagram, fb, hangouts for sms, etc) that are all using push notifications. I have a university email that uses exchange and that is push as well. I stream all my music using Google play music daily but also a lot on WiFi. I search the web a lot and use flipboard constantly. I hardly use any games except at home when I know I have my charger. So one of my questions is, does this classify me as a heavy user comparing to all of you people?
I have tried almost everything.. Wake lock detector, turning off absolutely everything location based, app ops, power saver for when I'm at work (8+ hours), turning off all the smart features, low brightness, turning off bloat, etc. But still nothing too spectacular for results. Keep I'm mind I'm all stock and for now I dont really want to change that. So my main question after that long story is, am I missing something? Should I be getting better battery life after all these attempts? Is my battery life ok for how I use my phone? Are there any other options so I can be like the people getting monster battery life?
What made me write this post is because I was at BestBuy and one of the Samsung reps had the same Verizon note 3 that I have. I asked him if I could see his battery stats (which he did not know how to find.. Wow) and his phone had been on for over a day and had 7 hours of screen on time.. It blew me away that he was getting extraordinary battery life and obviously didnt do a thing to try to preserve it.
Keep in mind the battery stats posted are actually some of the best Ive had when it comes to screen on time so usually its dead after about 16 hrs and 3 hrs screen on time.
Sent from my SM-N900V using xda app-developers app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
if your doing graphic intensive stuff on the internet it will destroy your battery. The fact your chrome used almost as much battery as your screen makes me believe there's something wrong there..

My chrome browsing basically just consists of normal web pages and some embedded videos on news and sports sites. Is that enough to cause that much damage?
Sent from my SM-N900V using xda app-developers app

It shouldn't. But just to be sure, whenever you're done using your phone at times you can go into task manager holding down the home button and click the clear memory button under the RAM tab. That will stop all processes from continuing to run when you're done using them
♢NoteIII♢

LeftyGR said:
It shouldn't. But just to be sure, whenever you're done using your phone at times you can go into task manager holding down the home button and click the clear memory button under the RAM tab. That will stop all processes from continuing to run when you're done using them
♢NoteIII♢
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
+1
I would also consider giving chrome a break and using a different browser to see if you battery life improves. I'm currently using Boat Browser but there are several browsers.

junior_mafioso said:
Ive had a few questions when it comes to my trial with samsung devices and this is where my story starts..
So I have had a mirage of Samsung devices starting with the Note 2, to the Galaxy s4, and now currently the Note 3. I have put as much time and effort as my noob abilities will allow me to and I'm honestly trying to figure out a couple of things. Throughout all these devices in less than one year I have realized that I can only get my battery to supply modest results. I have torn through xda and have done almost every solution out there to in order to increase my battery life. With no impacting results I sit here truly wondering how is it that people can really get more than a day out of these phones. I have honestly never been able to get any of these phones to 5-6 hours screen on time and more than 24 hours off the charger. I evny the people that swear they are heavy users and still get great battery life, but I just dont see how this is possible from my experience...
I would say on a normal day i use the device moderatly and somewhat carefully as to retain the battery life to the fullest. I normally have my phone on WiFi for about half the day but I do browse and do a bit on LTE too. I use all kinds of social apps (twitter, instagram, fb, hangouts for sms, etc) that are all using push notifications. I have a university email that uses exchange and that is push as well. I stream all my music using Google play music daily but also a lot on WiFi. I search the web a lot and use flipboard constantly. I hardly use any games except at home when I know I have my charger. So one of my questions is, does this classify me as a heavy user comparing to all of you people?
I have tried almost everything.. Wake lock detector, turning off absolutely everything location based, app ops, power saver for when I'm at work (8+ hours), turning off all the smart features, low brightness, turning off bloat, etc. But still nothing too spectacular for results. Keep I'm mind I'm all stock and for now I dont really want to change that. So my main question after that long story is, am I missing something? Should I be getting better battery life after all these attempts? Is my battery life ok for how I use my phone? Are there any other options so I can be like the people getting monster battery life?
What made me write this post is because I was at BestBuy and one of the Samsung reps had the same Verizon note 3 that I have. I asked him if I could see his battery stats (which he did not know how to find.. Wow) and his phone had been on for over a day and had 7 hours of screen on time.. It blew me away that he was getting extraordinary battery life and obviously didnt do a thing to try to preserve it.
Keep in mind the battery stats posted are actually some of the best Ive had when it comes to screen on time so usually its dead after about 16 hrs and 3 hrs screen on time.
Sent from my SM-N900V using xda app-developers app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah I agree that something just doesn't seem right with Chrome using about as much battery as your screen. Try another browser, make sure you clear your recent apps, and turn off anything that you are not going to be using. I turn off all of the touch sounds and haptic feedback, as well as smart stay and air gestures, etc..I never really seemed to get the battery life that I thought I should be getting whenever I was on the Stock ROM.

Maybe chrome is the culprit but I do clear the ram and close apps all the time.. Its just frustrating that I'm trying everything and nothing seems to be changing much..
Sent from my SM-N900V using xda app-developers app

junior_mafioso said:
Maybe chrome is the culprit but I do clear the ram and close apps all the time.. Its just frustrating that I'm trying everything and nothing seems to be changing much..
Sent from my SM-N900V using xda app-developers app
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Click to collapse
I personally like Firefox and Opera Mini, it's a matter of personal preference though. There are a bunch of browsers out there. I also use Battery Doctor and Clean Master to clear cache, junk files and applications running in the background. If your rooted you can download "Greenify" which would probably help you as well.

Xanza89 said:
I personally like Firefox and Opera Mini, it's a matter of personal preference though. There are a bunch of browsers out there. I also use Battery Doctor and Clean Master to clear cache, junk files and applications running in the background. If your rooted you can download "Greenify" which would probably help you as well.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have the Greenify Donation app, and love it. Stopped using Chrome because it was tearing my battery life down, using the Stock Browser and Boat Browser at times. Greenify also helps with some other apps that just keep running even though I didn't use them during the day. The only thing I have as an exception, is my Blackberry Messenger to communicate with my family abroad during the day and that app has been behaving nicely. Everything else, minus HD Widgets, has been Greenified, and I can go all day (unplug at 7A, plug back in around 9P with plenty of juice left.

So this is what I get after a long period using wakelock detector. Does anyone have any insight as to what this all means. What does the x538 refer to and how does this app show how it's affecting my phone? One is the CPU wake lock and the other is the screen.
Sent from my SM-N900V using xda app-developers app

The 538 is how many times it has woken the phone up (wake lock).
Sent from my SM-N900V using Tapatalk

Is that amount excessive is the question?
Sent from my SM-N900V using xda app-developers app

PSA for T-Mobile Priv users

Hey guys! I hope you're all enjoying your new Priv! I got mine on release day, so I've been tinkering with it since I got it. A few things bothered me about the device: the battery would take forever to charge, even using a Qualcomm certified quick charger, and the battery would drain abnormally fast. Even with no apps running, Antutu would only score 40,000 to 50,000 and 800/2500 in Geekbench.
I found out that the T-Mobile MyAccount app was always running in the background and took up 6% of my phone's battery, just above android OS. After I disabled that app, I found that a full charge would only take about an hour, versus the 2 hours it took before. Battery life also skyrocketed from about 8 hours to 14+. Antutu scores went up to 60,000 to 67,000 (I tested several times) and Geekbench now consistently scores 1200/3500 for me. The phone also doesn't get NEARLY as hot as it used to.
One other thing I did was to change all my accounts in the hub to sync every 15 minutes instead of push, which also seemed to help with the battery life. Hope this info helps you turn your Priv into the best phone it can be!

Zer0.exe said:
Hey guys! I hope you're all enjoying your new Priv! I got mine on release day, so I've been tinkering with it since I got it. A few things bothered me about the device: the battery would take forever to charge, even using a Qualcomm certified quick charger, and the battery would drain abnormally fast. Even with no apps running, Antutu would only score 40,000 to 50,000 and 800/2500 in Geekbench.
I found out that the T-Mobile MyAccount app was always running in the background and took up 6% of my phone's battery, just above android OS. After I disabled that app, I found that a full charge would only take about an hour, versus the 2 hours it took before. Battery life also skyrocketed from about 8 hours to 14+. Antutu scores went up to 60,000 to 67,000 (I tested several times) and Geekbench now consistently scores 1200/3500 for me. The phone also doesn't get NEARLY as hot as it used to.
One other thing I did was to change all my accounts in the hub to sync every 15 minutes instead of push, which also seemed to help with the battery life. Hope this info helps you turn your Priv into the best phone it can be!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I heard that some people on Blackberry forums were reporting that T-Mobile My Account app could/is causing battery drainage. I didn't like my account app showing me notifications and went to options in that app and remove all the check marks from the there. I had no issues with battery, but as a precaution I always disable apps that I never use.

Thanks for the heads-up. Finally picked one up today and felt that it did indeed heat up quicker than it should and definitely wasn't charging as fast as I thought it should be. Hopefully this helps!

My Priv's battery has been an utter nightmare - gonna give this a shot. Have you noticed any adverse effects from disabling the app? My main concern is if BingeOn will still work. I'm okay with not being able to disable it (not a big video guy) but free music streaming is super important to me - streaming music at work constantly during an 8hr shift, in the car during my commute... yeah, I need that.
And, before anyone says anything, it's not the music streaming doing it. In fact, the battery seems almost better when I'm doing that since I've just got the phone sitting in my pocket. Wakelocks are an absolute nuisance though - "awake" time is well over 10x SoT.

Trevorq243 said:
My Priv's battery has been an utter nightmare - gonna give this a shot. Have you noticed any adverse effects from disabling the app? My main concern is if BingeOn will still work. I'm okay with not being able to disable it (not a big video guy) but free music streaming is super important to me - streaming music at work constantly during an 8hr shift, in the car during my commute... yeah, I need that.
And, before anyone says anything, it's not the music streaming doing it. In fact, the battery seems almost better when I'm doing that since I've just got the phone sitting in my pocket. Wakelocks are an absolute nuisance though - "awake" time is well over 10x SoT.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
BingeOn doesn't require any T-Mobile bloat to run. It's handled on the network side, not on the device itself. Also, unless they recently changed something, you don't need BingeOn enabled to get free music streaming. Music streaming is free regardless.

Thanks for that. So far the Priv is doing a fine job keeping itself alive now that app is gone. Nice to know I won't be blowing past my data allowance. I'm new to T-Mobile and so far, so good. Well, other than their app destroying my phone of course.

Trevorq243 said:
Thanks for that. So far the Priv is doing a fine job keeping itself alive now that app is gone. Nice to know I won't be blowing past my data allowance. I'm new to T-Mobile and so far, so good. Well, other than their app destroying my phone of course.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You'll get all that bloat with any carrier
I do want to point out that the Priv does an awesome job of standby. It makes sense that a 2K screen could drain the battery quickly, but I've gone 9 hours with only 40% drain when I barely use it, so it stays alive well when you aren't actively using it. I was also streaming music the whole time, but since the screen itself was off it saved my battery.

Zer0.exe said:
You'll get all that bloat with any carrier
I do want to point out that the Priv does an awesome job of standby. It makes sense that a 2K screen could drain the battery quickly, but I've gone 9 hours with only 40% drain when I barely use it, so it stays alive well when you aren't actively using it. I was also streaming music the whole time, but since the screen itself was off it saved my battery.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yep, that's been my experience. On for ~16 hours with 3hrs SoT. Not bad, really. I wouldn't mind a little more longevity but hey, that's what power banks are for.

Here's my own battery experience. I only removed the t-mobile apps and using Facebook on chrome and not the app. I'm a moderate user 2.5 hrs of on screen time!

cronojay said:
Here's my own battery experience. I only removed the t-mobile apps and using Facebook on chrome and not the app. I'm a moderate user 2.5 hrs of on screen time!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The screen is a killer on this device, but it shouldn't be quite that bad. Are all your BlackBerry apps up to date? Some people have to manually check for updates for some reason.
Also, I disabled every T-Mobile app except visual voicemail. No idea if that'll help or not but it's worth a shot.
Finally, how long have you had the device? Phones always seem screwy battery-life wise during the first few days, regardless of system health.

I disabled all bloatware, this phone dies WAYYYYY to fast compare to my prior note 5.
I really dont, but i'll need to trade back in this phone if I don't get this solved. A man needs a phone with a battery!

Trevorq243 said:
The screen is a killer on this device, but it shouldn't be quite that bad. Are all your BlackBerry apps up to date? Some people have to manually check for updates for some reason.
Also, I disabled every T-Mobile app except visual voicemail. No idea if that'll help or not but it's worth a shot.
Finally, how long have you had the device? Phones always seem screwy battery-life wise during the first few days, regardless of system health.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
How about this one for a little bit over 2 weeks and so far it's been phenomenal for me 1 degrees in love with a good battery life is I disabled Facebook and I just use the web to look at Facebook so that save my battery by at least 20%.

techprint said:
I disabled all bloatware, this phone dies WAYYYYY to fast compare to my prior note 5.
I really dont, but i'll need to trade back in this phone if I don't get this solved. A man needs a phone with a battery!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Other than battery life, how are you liking the switch? I like but don't love my note 5. I hadn't had a note since the original version, but I'm finding again that I just don't use the spen. I'm thinking about jumping back into a blackberry with keyboard.
Sent from my SM-N920T using Tapatalk

crawldit said:
Other than battery life, how are you liking the switch? I like but don't love my note 5. I hadn't had a note since the original version, but I'm finding again that I just don't use the spen. I'm thinking about jumping back into a blackberry with keyboard.
Sent from my SM-N920T using Tapatalk
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Click to collapse
I'll take back what I previously wrote, as of yesterday I managed to get 24 hours on phone battery. at standby this phone doesn't use any sort of battery, I killed 20 percent in 40 mins on youtube though..
Going to give it a solid week, if not i'll return it and hopefully pick up the new s7 if release by then. I was on the same boat as you, got tired of the note and just wanted a switch. I'll keep checking back leaving my reviews here

techprint said:
I'll take back what I previously wrote, as of yesterday I managed to get 24 hours on phone battery. at standby this phone doesn't use any sort of battery, I killed 20 percent in 40 mins on youtube though..
Going to give it a solid week, if not i'll return it and hopefully pick up the new s7 if release by then. I was on the same boat as you, got tired of the note and just wanted a switch. I'll keep checking back leaving my reviews here
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'll second this - screen off, next to zero battery used. Screen on, battery tanks like crazy. I think I'm gonna stick with it though I'm tempted to give the V10 a shot - I need a tough phone and this most certainly is not.