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I have been on here a couple of times complaining about my lousy battery. Well, today I decided to see exactly how far I can take this thing before it conks out on me. Here are my results.
The phone up-time was just over 19 hours, with 14% battery left. (I took my results at 14% because I didn't want the phone turning off on me thus losing all data.) About 49% of the battery was used by the screen, which was on for a total of 3 hours and 20 minutes during this 19 hour period. The rest was split up among other activities, but the most notable/concerning area is 43 seconds of voice took up almost 2% of total battery usage.
I could probably pull out another half-hour or so usage before the phone's battery totally dies, so my final number is 4 hours of usage out of a full charge. This is total usage, i.e. the screen was on for 4 hours.
The phone was at lowest brightness all day except for 10-15 minutes where I had it on full 'cause I was using it outside. I am not using any CPU throttling apps, or such. Background is not fully black. I use one widget, rest are icons. I have Advanced Task Killer which I routinely use to kill tasks, but to be completely honest, unless there is a rouge task ATK does not increase battery life by much. Phone was on 3G primarily, although there were times during the day when I was on EDGE because of weak signal.
All in all, the battery on the Vibrant is pathetic for what it has (Super AMOLED, 45 nm, etc.) but I am glad I can at least last a day. Hopefully Samsung has addressed battery issues in Froyo.
Feel free to post your results on how long you can make your battery last below, so we can all get a better idea. Please do not post "my battery lasts XX days" - give details on your usage, like how I mentioned the battery was at 14% after 19 hours up-time, but actual usage was 3 hours and 20 minutes. Often times it seems like many people brag about how "great" their Vibrant's battery is, but really they rarely use the phone all day hence the "great" battery life.
I completely feel your pain. I had the same issues with my vibrant also. I personally do not believe it is the battery any more because after I applied the ryanza one click lag fix my battery life practically tripled. I kept a very close eye on my usage and settings for the first few weeks. I would get about 12 hours out of a full charge and I would barely use the phone. Frustrated me to no end because I would hear people say that 12 hours with a powerful phone like vibrant is expected. To me it was not acceptable.
I never changed any settings or installed any programs after doing the lag fix but it certainly had a drastic effect. Ill get more statistics when I get home, im at work right now.
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App
I got a good deal on eBay for a 2batteries and a charger for 10 bucks . . Go find out. And about the battery I get around 3/4 day of pretty heavy use, wifi on all day and such.
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App
get Juice Defender if you want to squeeze even more out of it
but having the display on almost 4 hours....that's gonna suck the battery no matter what phone you have
mine has superb battery life. I am always confident it will get me pass the day and more. obviously, if I game and web a lot, it will drain faster. For my typical day, it's perfect. I went on to over 2 days with this charge. What an awesome battery!
I get about 5 hours of usage. On wifi it goes up a like a hour .
hydrogenman said:
get Juice Defender if you want to squeeze even more out of it
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Click to collapse
Have to agree with this. I tried it out and got quite a boost. I didn't keep as good of details as the OP on my battery use but prior to juice defender a was struggling to make a day. Now a day is not a problem. My typical usage is probably pretty high, lots of internet, lots of tinkering right now plus working on morphs and things, I do keep my screen all the way down except when outside (rarely use my phone outdoors so not much of that), no widgets, no task killer. When I installed juice defender I used the stock settings with the exception of allowing gmail and chat to sync anytime. Juice defender says I'm getting an average of 1.7x the battery life. I think almost all of that comes from when the phone is asleep.
Edit. Checked on details.
Pulled my phone off the charger at 6 am it was at 100%. Used to to do some reading on my way to work (about 30min on the train) worked on some morphs, checked some emails, downloaded some stuff. I'm at 82% and it's 12:20.
Cell standby 39%
Display 33%
phone idle 23%
Various 5%
I use my phone for quite a bit during the day and pull about 13 hours before it starts blinking at me. I personally have zero problems with that amount of battery life from a device of such caliber. My best friend was complaining about her battery in her Vibrant and like I tell everyone else, it's probably some rogue app somewhere. She didn't believe me so we swapped batteries 3 days ago and I still get the same usage times out of her battery as I did mine and her battery life has improved significantly as well.
I don't know what is is that people are doing to get 4-5 hours but 13+ with average use (text, moderate browsing, syncing all day, screen at full brightness all day) is to be expected with this phone. I will post a screenshot of consistency over the course of this weekend to visualize my point.
Also I do not use a task killer of any kind except the Android built in one and I removed hers as well
boodies said:
mine has superb battery life. I am always confident it will get me pass the day and more. obviously, if I game and web a lot, it will drain faster. For my typical day, it's perfect. I went on to over 2 days with this charge. What an awesome battery!
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Click to collapse
You mean if you actually use the phone it will drain a lot faster. Your post is a perfect example of what I mean when I said people post very misleading results. For those ~40 hours that your Vibrant has been up, your display has only been on 1, maybe 2 hours (hence only 8% battery usage). Your result is not accurate at all - you aren't using the phone. Anyone can get great battery by letting it sits for hours on in.
hydrogenman said:
get Juice Defender if you want to squeeze even more out of it
but having the display on almost 4 hours....that's gonna suck the battery no matter what phone you have
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks I will look at Juice Defender, but I am not too sure what it will do to help improve my battery which I am not doing already. (I leave GPS off, WiFi off when im not using, have applied lagfix, etc.)
The Droid X is known to get 7-8 hours; and considering the Vibrant has power-friendly hardware, the Vibrant should be getting the same.
bdveteran18 said:
I use my phone for quite a bit during the day and pull about 13 hours before it starts blinking at me. I personally have zero problems with that amount of battery life from a device of such caliber. My best friend was complaining about her battery in her Vibrant and like I tell everyone else, it's probably some rogue app somewhere. She didn't believe me so we swapped batteries 3 days ago and I still get the same usage times out of her battery as I did mine and her battery life has improved significantly as well.
I don't know what is is that people are doing to get 4-5 hours but 13+ with average use (text, moderate browsing, syncing all day, screen at full brightness all day) is to be expected with this phone. I will post a screenshot of consistency over the course of this weekend to visualize my point.
Also I do not use a task killer of any kind except the Android built in one and I removed hers as well
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
When you say 13+ hours, do you mean total up-time or total usage time? Because, as I mentioned in my post, my total up-time was ~19 hours, but usage was actually ~4.
DarkAgent said:
When you say 13+ hours, do you mean total up-time or total usage time? Because, as I mentioned in my post, my total up-time was ~19 hours, but usage was actually ~4.
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Click to collapse
I apologize for being unclear before. total usage time is about 6.5 hours of consistent usage. Such as watching movies, playing games, and browsing the web. I will post some battery usage screenshots a little later.
bdveteran18 said:
I apologize for being unclear before. total usage time is about 6.5 hours of consistent usage. Such as watching movies, playing games, and browsing the web. I will post some battery usage screenshots a little later.
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Click to collapse
Thanks for clearing that up! Well, it sounds like you are fairing better than me, but without actual data it is hard to say.
Oh, and an FYI: I just called up T-Mobile and had them send me a new battery. FWIW, I am not being charged anything (not even shipping) and I don't have to send back my current battery. I love the retention department .
Can someone post up what they do/what settings they use for juice defender? I installed it but I really don't see how it could save me any more battery seeing that I keep wifi, gps, and all that off, plus my screen is on the lowest setting at all times
Hi all,
What I found out that works best for me is, no task killer, no juice defender, lowest display setting possible, and turning off 3g. 3g ready drains the battery. Task killers are pretty worthless. Do some research on that topic. Android kills programs all by itself. And task killers run in the background, using up battery. My phone is rooted, so I run autostarts to control what starts at boot. My uptime isn't great, but its adequate enough to last from morning to night. I do agee that the battery life when using the phone itself for voice calls is sub part at best. I do believe froyo will help with a lot of these problems. Just my 2ยข.
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App
DON'T use task killer. Vibrant has really good system resource management. With task killers constantly killing core system processes, the phone has to use more power to keep restarting them.
You can read more about it here: http://geekfor.me/faq/you-shouldnt-be-using-a-task-killer-with-android/
And only turn on active sync for apps that you absolutely need to have them syncing all the time.
This should make your phone last for a whole day with decent usage. If you are still getting very short up time, you probably have a bad battery. Call T-Mo and ask for a replacement.
It all depends on usage. The first days when I got my Vibrant, I was downloading apps all day, or browsing websites, so the battery barely lasts for a day. I usually leave my phone plugged in to my laptop when going to sleep, and set the laptop to auto-shutdown in 4 hour, so the phone gets unplugged at about 4:30 am. With that heavy usage, I needed to recharge at about 7 pm.
However, now that I'm not playing with it that much, the battery life improves greatly. Now I usually do 10-20 text messages and about 30 minutes voice call everyday, also some browsing on the xda forum, and maybe reply several emails. The battery is usually at 40 percent at 10 pm. The only thing I can complain about is that with 40% battery left, I don't want to do a complete recharge, but it won't last the second day either.
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App
DarkAgent said:
Thanks for clearing that up! Well, it sounds like you are fairing better than me, but without actual data it is hard to say.
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Click to collapse
I forgot to take pics lol. (busy with my fantasy draft). I will take some today. Rebooting my phone right before I leave for work and some throughout the day.
It still will be hard to say why my battery life exceeds yours but you will at least be able to compare the two.
Sent from my awesome Vibrant using XDA App
I get around 5 hours display. Using wifi sporadically, juice defender paid version, lowest brightness. Our screen is too bright. Lol on lowest it looks like the evo's middle.
Sent from my SGH-T959 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)
What is the best rom for the Epic that will improve battery life? I have an Evo. My wife has an Epic. Mine will go all day and end up at 45-50%. Hers will end up at 15-20%. I know that 2.2 will make some great changes to the battery life (God I hope so), but what choices do we have now?
Epic Experience with Phoenix kernel gives me a good 14-18 hours with medium usage.
Rims don't change anything really battery related. Kernels are what effect battery life.
Also, you don't need a specific kernel to get amazing battery life. Get these apps
Spare parts
Autostarts
Juicedefender ultimate
Spare parts will tell you what is killing the battery
Autostarts will disable the drm crap on startup
Juicedefender will disable the data and wifi when not needed.
I can get 24 hours on my epic without even trying to conserve battery.
pdaddy said:
What is the best rom for the Epic that will improve battery life? I have an Evo. My wife has an Epic. Mine will go all day and end up at 45-50%. Hers will end up at 15-20%. I know that 2.2 will make some great changes to the battery life (God I hope so), but what choices do we have now?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Shameless plug but I am getting 16 hours with heavy use
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=829650
rjmjr69 said:
Shameless plug but I am getting 16 hours with heavy use
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=829650
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
define heavy use
how is the speed and performance of the epic experience and pheonix combo? im a speed freak when it comes to my phone but im as in desperate need of good battery life. any suggestions and feedback would be appreciated.
Sent through the Matrix
fromchaos0646 said:
how is the speed and performance of the epic experience and pheonix combo? im a speed freak when it comes to my phone but im as in desperate need of good battery life. any suggestions and feedback would be appreciated.
Sent through the Matrix
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Speed freak and in desperate need of good battery life are polar opposites of each other. Nothing the phone does at this point needs the processor to be clocked any higher than stock and doing so is detrimental to battery life. The phone is plenty speedy using that combo. You might get the occasional hiccup in a menu for a half a second, but it is worth it for the amazing battery life, and it isn't a big deal at all.
yeah i realize they are complete opposite. im just trying to find a good balance between battery life and power. i may just have to sacrifice a little power for battery life then. i will try this combo maybe tomorrow, seeing as though i have homecoming tonight lol.
i get 60 hours + with moderate usuage. andromeda rom which includes andromeda kernal. You do not need spare parts or any task killers. 24 hours is weak battery llife. phone calls is the most extensive battery drain. if i do not make a call i can browse all day and still have 40% left.
This is how you get amazing battery performance.
I have some very VERY helpful hints of great battery life for the Epic 4g. (as i am on hour 26 to 28 and have 20% left with about 1 to 1.5 hours of screen on use.)
First off, use black, or almost black background. Our screens are superAMOLED. This means that if the screen is showing black... those particular black pixels... are simply not on. If you have the home screen black, and have no icons on it, then the status bar is all that is using power... maybe 6 or 8 percent.
Next, Lose the brightness. A few helpful hints on this. 1) uncheck the autobrightness in the display settings 2) turn the brightness down in the display settings 3) If you slide your finger from right to left across the status bar at the top, the screen will dim, if you slide your finger from left to right, it will brighten(this causes accidental brightness 4) cover this light sensor on the right side at the top (I believe) because the phone seems to have a problem always autobrighting even with the uncheck in the settings. This is done best with electrical tape, or perhaps finger nail polish. These things should ensure to always be at minimum brightness
Next, Install Frankenstein Froyo Rom(lightest rom=less cpu usage/blackest rom=less screen battery usage), And Genocide Kernel(undervolted)
Next, install task killer(keeps the rom at optimum efficiency meaning less cpu usage assuming you are killing the apps 3 or 4 times a day) install set cpu(This allows you to limit the cpu clock speed(400mhz is optimal usable and battery settings)
Things to remember, ALWAYS TURN THE SCREEN OFF.
If you pick it up every thirty seconds to see if you have a text, then just sit it down... whats happening now.. The screen is staying on for another 15 seconds probably. DUH!!! bye bye battery!!
TURN OFF THE SCREEN BEFORE YOU SIT THE PHONE DOWN!!!
Turn off gps when not in use.
Turn off wifi when not in use.
Turn off 4g when not in use
Dont use it as an mp3 player.
Dont talk on speaker phone.
Those last few were pretty obvious.. but some people need to be told.
I Hope this helps anyone looking to conserve battery. Follow these steps and i promise 24 hours plus ever time and often as much as 48 hours.
Enjoy
EDIT****
By the way, When you set yourself up with this rom, you are making your phone TWICE as fast... LITERALLY. Hard to believe that a ROM could be twice as fast.
With stock android2.1 this phone gets 800 to 900 in quadrant(benchmark tool/tell how fast your phone REALLY is) Stock android 2.2 quadrant score is a little better scoring as high as 1000.
With this setup, i have gotten as high as 1950 in quadrant. No joke. This is reflected as you cant even tell the phone is clocked down to 400mhz without heavy apps and REALLY paying attention.
Hoping to get some good feedback from those who have used the epic for a couple months or more. Now that you're probably using the device normally, as in not attached to it all the time, how is battery life? I've heard initial reports that it's not so good... Also, for those of you who have updated unofficially to Froyo, does the upgrade help with battery life? Can anyone comment how Epic's battery compares to EVO's?
Thanks.
I usually get about 9 hours in my stock battery and 6-7 on my cheap eBay ones. Overall idea say meh, its about on par with most other android devices. I'm running the stock dk28 leak as well with no battery tweaks or mangers of any sort.
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA App
On most of the DK28 roms I'm pulling a solid 10 hours with moderate use. For reference, If I leave the phone on standby all day in my house it's lasted 23 hours, if I recall correctly. Honestly that's pretty damn good for a smartphone.
EDIT: I don't use any battery-manager or powersaver either. Brightness = Auto, bluetooth/wifi/4g/gps = 1 is on at any given point in time usually. Google auto-sync = on as well as touiteur (twitter) and facebook notifications every 15 min.
I have been impressed by my battery life actually. I can't speak for the EVO(although maybe soon since my friend might give me his as a backup). I can usually get between 4-5 hours of play time(surfing, texting, apps, music, wireless tethering, movies, etc) The rest of the time it is usually idol. I usually charge it over night, unplug it around 7am, then plug it back in around 11pm. At 11pm, I usually have between 10- 30% battery left.
I just switched to a froyo ROM(bonsai, which is excellent) and so far the battery seems to be about the same. By lunchtime 12:30 it is usually between 70-80% and right now I am at 72% but I also had some extensive time testing the tethering feature.
To be honest, I had a blackberry, and the battery life was a little better, but the features were not nearly as good. It amazes me the battery these things get with that amazing samoled screen.
disclaimer: I do not play games outside of sudoku and spades, so my CPU does not really get challenged, which probably accounts for some battery savings. Oh and I use regular wallpapers, cause I don't really like the live wallpapers.
Im on 2.2.1,and I have to say I see a 40% increase in battery life compared to 2.1,and thats about 11-12 hours,no battery saving apps either,well except setcpu,which does help,but its set at 100mhz - 1ghz conservative.And I use it more now then when I got it,I havnt got tired of it at all.I have noticed the first 10% goes the fastest,and I have calibrated twice since moving to the ROM im on,and its the same in all,so if you get an Epic dont let that scare you.
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA App
I've had an Epic since a couple weeks after it was released and I think the battery is probably working the way they meant it to, which means a solid day. I charge it overnight, unplug it when I go to work, plug it in when I go to bed, and I'm usually at around 40% by that time with moderate use. I don't generally have problems with battery drain.
The exception to this is when using GPS with the screen on. It's really difficult to use this phone as a direct PND replacement even though it's basically made for it (especially with Froyo, which fixes the GPS lock issues), because the screen and GPS together will drain the battery from 100% to 0% in about 40 minutes. My dedicated PND, by contrast, will give me 8 *hours* of continuous use on battery power.
Also, I have a 1000mah car charger and even with that connected, the battery still drains when using GPS and the screen (it just drains slower). I have to just turn the screen off when I know I won't be needing to make a turn for a while.
The one thing I wish about the Epic is that it had a regular old LCD screen. The AMOLED screen is the one battery killer - you really need to watch how long you have it on. In normal use it isn't much of an issue, but you just can't do much of all the cool things they advertise that you can do with this phone (like GPS or watching movies).
I do also keep my screen turned way down, which makes a difference, but it's still a killer.
Well, I reported over in another thread that with Froyo, and basically having my phone sit around and do nothing with no WiFi, GPS, Bluetooth, no "fixes" such as switching to airplane mode or killing the DRM service, and no "battery saver" programs, I was able to get 108 hours on a single charge with the stock battery (1500mAH). That was with the screen on time of about 50 minutes and talk time of about 40 minutes... (pictures here)
It all boils down to how you use your phone, but in a stock configuration, the power management seems to be better on 2.2 than 2.1 as shown by the large amount of "idle" time I was able to get on a single charge.
Koadic said:
Well, I reported over in another thread that with Froyo, and basically having my phone sit around and do nothing with no WiFi, GPS, Bluetooth, no "fixes" such as switching to airplane mode or killing the DRM service, and no "battery saver" programs, I was able to get 108 hours on a single charge with the stock battery (1500mAH). That was with the screen on time of about 50 minutes and talk time of about 40 minutes... (pictures here)
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I don't disbelieve that - in my post above, when I'm talking about draining the battery with GPS and the screen on in 40 minutes, or when I'm talking about having 40% battery left at the end of a regular day, it's almost always with a screen on time of 30-40 minutes. So 50 minutes sounds about right to drain the battery completely, with nothing else on.
I'll bet if you had 0 minutes screen on time - just let the phone sit idle - you could have probably gotten 200 hours or more.
badasscat said:
I'll bet if you had 0 minutes screen on time - just let the phone sit idle - you could have probably gotten 200 hours or more.
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LOL, what's the point of having a phone then? 8-9 days without using it? I dont think I could hold out that long.
And I didn't even see your post until after I posted.
Koadic said:
LOL, what's the point of having a phone then? 8-9 days without using it? I dont think I could hold out that long.
And I didn't even see your post until after I posted.
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No I know, I was more just clarifying so it didn't seem like we contradicted each other. I think the important stat is really screen time and then any extra radios you have turned on. Just with the regular radio and nothing else, you could get ridiculous battery life on the Epic. It's the extra radios and screen that kill it.
My phone gets me through the day. About 20% down in 7 hours on standby, so thats decent. Heavy usage with full brightness on and live wallpaper starting in the morning, stopping at like 6 A.M...it'd probably die there, for me at least.
The battery is good; I'm running the dk28 rom but it really hasn't affected my battery life at all.
On phoenix kernel i was getting 20-36 hours moderate to light usage. With acs xtreme kernel I'm getting 12-20 hrs w/ moderate use.
That's about 3-4 hrs of screen on time, 45-60 min of talk time. Emails, text ing, twitter, xda, and some various forum reading. Angry birds if waiting in line somewhere..
Note: I leave background data turned off and manually sync/refresh mail/contacts/data. I have no need/desire to be alerted evrytime someone updates twit/fb. I also use juice defender.
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA App
I can barely look at my phone on full brightness - it hurts my eyes with beams of awesome.
I get between 13 and 16 hours depending on how much Angry Bird time I put in that day. If I'm doing normal browsing, facebooking, etc then I'll be closer to 16, but gaming drops my battery like a rock.
Thanks for the replies! I think I'm convinced a lot of it has to do with how you use the device. Pretty much how it went with the EVO when it first came out... lots of people complaining about battery and then it kind of faded once everyone settled down. All I need is to get from early morning to right before bed.
GPS with google nav is a killer on any Android with decent screen size and resolution I think. Anyway, I thought SAMOLED is supposed to save a little battery? Or is that only if the background is black? In any case, I usually dim my screen to 30%, keep GPS off, keep auto-updates down to a manageable size, and use some other tricks to save battery, so I should be good to go.
I tried to thank all of you with the new thanks button, but didn't realize there's a limit per day haha. I'll finish it up tomorrow.
As far as I am concerned the battery life on DK28 is amazing. I use overclock widget set at 1000/200 screen on and 400/200 screen off. I can pull more than 30 hours with multiple phone calls, texting, email, web and games for over an hour. Here's the screen shot I took today before putting the phone on the charger.
I've noticed a substantial improvement in battery life since upgrading to 2.2. However, I also began using the Epic Experience ROM shortly afterwards, which boosted it even further. That, plus Juice Defender nets me a perfectly acceptable battery life.
I used my phone heavily today and still got about 18 hours out of it before plugging it in before bed at a 35% charge. On top of that, my phone's never felt snappier.
whoa, is it normal for the epic to take 3.5 hours to charge? If so, any explanation? Past devices i've had tend to take an hour less... Running 2.1, does Froyo help?
Currently on Epic Experience with SuperPower installed. I unplugged the phone about 16 hours ago and it's sitting at 36% with light voice and moderate SMS/data use.
Battery life definitely improved after upgrading from 2.1, even with light use it would be dead in under 12 hours on stock 2.1/DI17.
How to get unbelievable battery life
I have some very VERY helpful hints of great battery life for the Epic 4g. (as i am on hour 26 to 28 and have 20% left with about 1 to 1.5 hours of screen on use.)
First off, use black, or almost black background. Our screens are superAMOLED. This means that if the screen is showing black... those particular black pixels... are simply not on. If you have the home screen black, and have no icons on it, then the status bar is all that is using power... maybe 6 or 8 percent.
Next, Lose the brightness. A few helpful hints on this. 1) uncheck the autobrightness in the display settings 2) turn the brightness down in the display settings 3) If you slide your finger from right to left across the status bar at the top, the screen will dim, if you slide your finger from left to right, it will brighten(this causes accidental brightness 4) cover this light sensor on the right side at the top (I believe) because the phone seems to have a problem always autobrighting even with the uncheck in the settings. This is done best with electrical tape, or perhaps finger nail polish. These things should ensure to always be at minimum brightness
Next, Install Frankenstein Froyo Rom(lightest rom=less cpu usage/blackest rom=less screen battery usage), And Genocide Kernel(undervolted)
Next, install task killer(keeps the rom at optimum efficiency meaning less cpu usage assuming you are killing the apps 3 or 4 times a day) install set cpu(This allows you to limit the cpu clock speed(400mhz is optimal usable and battery settings)
Things to remember, ALWAYS TURN THE SCREEN OFF.
If you pick it up every thirty seconds to see if you have a text, then just sit it down... whats happening now.. The screen is staying on for another 15 seconds probably. DUH!!! bye bye battery!!
TURN OFF THE SCREEN BEFORE YOU SIT THE PHONE DOWN!!!
Turn off gps when not in use.
Turn off wifi when not in use.
Turn off 4g when not in use
Dont use it as an mp3 player.
Dont talk on speaker phone.
Those last few were pretty obvious.. but some people need to be told.
I Hope this helps anyone looking to conserve battery. Follow these steps and i promise 24 hours plus ever time and often as much as 48 hours.
Enjoy
EDIT****
By the way, When you set yourself up with this rom, you are making your phone TWICE as fast... LITERALLY. Hard to believe that a ROM could be twice as fast.
With stock android2.1 this phone gets 800 to 900 in quadrant(benchmark tool/tell how fast your phone REALLY is) Stock android 2.2 quadrant score is a little better scoring as high as 1000.
With this setup, i have gotten as high as 1950 in quadrant. No joke. This is reflected as you cant even tell the phone is clocked down to 400mhz without heavy apps and REALLY paying attention.
I used to get about 8 hrs of use before having to charge. Battery would drain even when I wasn't using the phone. Since flashing to DI18 a few months ago battery life has been great. A good 15-17 hours of moderate/high use and minimal drain with the phone on standby.
I lower the brightness all the way, end the DRM process and do the TWS trick after a reboot. No fancy battery management app that disables all your phone for the sake of battery.
I expect 2 hrs of the screen being on before my battery gets down to 20-30%. Which I think is very reasonable for moderate to high usage.
I again wanted to say thank you to all involved in making the Fascinate the best phone it can be.
I have instantly noticed a considerable battery life improvement using this radio.
Just thanks.
And juice defender doesn't hurt either..
You must not be using your phone at all, mine only gives my around 7 hours.
Really? Only 30 hours? My white fascinate could go for 3 days with light usage and 2 with moderate. I bet you it could last for 4 days if I didn't do anything but text or call people. Oh and don't use battery apps, they don't do crap honestly. The only thing that kills your phone is games and the screen being on. But if you use your stock Froyo task manager then you're good.
I am confused a little but mostly dissapointed in how people report usage and battery life around here. I think for the most part it is simply a result of how subjective the term "use" is defined in all it's various "states". For instance what I consider "heavy usage" might be beyond what a lot of people would consider to even be reasonably expected. On the other hand you can have another person who thinks using their phone once for a few minutes every hour is heavy usage. Some seem to be reporting standby time like it is normal usage, which depending on your definition could be true. Some people seem to be obviously "lengthening" their "epeen" for some unknown sad reason which is the part that is dissapointing.
I can say, once, I left mine on after using it all day Friday, set it on a table at home and I can't remember why but I didn't touch it again till Sunday afternoon. It literally only used a few percent battery life. This is abnormal usage to me. This might be "normal" for some people.
Some people like myself are device addicts. I don't go anywhere without my phone. I rarely make calls on it. I rarely use my powerful desktop for any casual pc use like web surfing, IRC, listening to music, personal gmail and work email via exchange. I do all of that on my phone. My day consists of picking up the phone fully charged at 7:30am, at work by 7:45, and then once in my cube the headphones get plugged in and between voodoo sound and power amp I get pretty lost in the tunes. All the while I am getting constant email delivery notices. I probably look something up on my phone a few times a day. It is on wifi all day at work and home.
Once home I stay on it after dinner....once the kids are away, the wife and I sit in the living room and she on her laptop and me on my phone we kinda watch shows together while surfing or whatever. So hours of constant use in the evening. My screen is on a lot because I don't go long without doing something on it.
I have recently been getting around 14-18 hours if I run it to dead on the 2.9.2 + latest Voodoo sound enabled kernel floating around but was on eb01 radio. I flashed ec01 radio tonight hopefully to see better battery life but there's no way in hell I would be expecting anything close to 30 hours or days!? Not unless I laid my phone down and walked away for a few days, then sure. I consider myself to be a fairly heavy user.
Sent from my SCH-I500 using XDA Premium App
In my case Syn Ack is right about the screen. This past weekend I gave my phone a real test. I put EC01 on, got rid of most of the bloat and left the phone in that state. Didn't install any extra apps that would run in the background. Only had 1 home screen with nothing on it but a black wallpaper. The phone looks boring as ****. lol
From what I saw, the only things eating battery was having the screen on, a small bit of time with no signal, followed by android system and any other apps I may have used which didn't make up much compared to the screen.
I love the screen, but it's like a high maintenance girlfriend. Its sucking the life outta this phone.
Sent from my SCH-I500 using XDA App
DeezNotes said:
I love the screen, but it's like a high maintenance girlfriend. Its sucking the life outta this phone.
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That's pretty much par for the course. The screen is always the biggest battery drain in any phone out there, out of any piece of hardware in any phone. Trying to keep the screen's brightness as low as possible, and it off whenever you don't need it on, are probably the best things you can do to improve your battery life (followed by deleting crappy widgets like the Facebook one that keep your network up constantly).
Then again, I set my screen to have a 2 minute timeout, because the 15 or so second default way too often caused the screen to turn off on me while I was reading something and I generally use the power button to turn it off when I'm done. I figure, as long as I can make it till night, that's good enough for this phone 95% of the time (the other 5%, I can generally plan ahead).
I honestly don't see poor battery life as in issue for this phone.
Mine will last for 3 days of extremely light usage, 2 days with light-ish usage, and if I hammer on it and play some games, 14 hours or so, it'll beep at me.
IMO, this is not an issue. I have seen the battery life increase with the latest updates (OC Kernel from imnutz, SFC2.9.2, EC01 radio) - and I was happy before.
I also don;t think that you can really count on what other people see as anything but a hopeful ballpark figure. We all know that each of the phones HW is a little different. We all know that our setups vary greatly. We all know that we use the phone differently.
So, hoping that something will be a be all, end all guide as to how long your phone will stay powered depends on so many variables that you have to tweak it for your use.
FWIW, I run live wallpaper, 7 screens and use OC steps up to 1400 and I am very pleased, dare I say impressed with the life I get out of the phone. I also keep a spare battery fully charged - I guess this helps me care less and just ooh and ahh when it lasts more than a day.
Mine gets 150 hours...... Turned off.
Sent from my SCH-I500 using XDA App
With the phone sleeping (screen off), my battery drops at MOST 2% per hour. I don't use but a couple of widgets, Facebook and weather. My sync time for Facebook is 1 hour and weather is 2 hours.
For me, when I was referring to my 2-3 days of battery life:
Light usage (3 days): a few phone calls a day, < 25 texts, no internet, no market, no games, no battery control apps except using Task Manager wisely.
Moderate usage (2 days): regular phone calls, < 50 texts, some internet, maybe a game or 2 but not for long, Task manager.
Heavy usage (1.5 days): regular phone calls, texting all the time, heavy internet, games, rom flashing, playing music a bunch.
Super ridiculously heavy (1 day): phone/text/internet/games/music, all nonstop heavy usage.
Super light (3+): Data (3G) off, a couple calls, light texting, using Task manager wisely. It can happen...
One thing I have come to find out is that not only your screen is the number 1 factor but if you live in an area that phases your phone in and out of 3G very often, your phone could easily drain 10% per hour. The IT building here on my campus has god awful reception and it drains at 10% per hour but when I go home I only see 1-2% not doing anything at all. Wifi is a battery drainer too.
There were a few nights where I remember hitting task manager and clearing out every single task and everything possible running, turning off data, and turning the screen off and the phone did not even lose 1% of battery over 9 hours. Perfect reception.
So if you see terrible battery, try using your screen a little less, or turn down the brightness. Try a *228 for your radio towers update. Cell standby can you get hard if you're in bad reception.
The best thing you could do to save your battery is kill all of your tasks, turn off data, turn your screen off, and change your sync intervals to 1hour+.
i'm on ec01 for about 12 hours now, sFc, in nemesis OTB kernal underclocked using volt settings gives me about a 8 hours with the amount of usage I put it through. Serious wifi, network usage, processor spiking and multi-tasking. Overall what one would expect from android.
jpaulwaite said:
i'm on ec01 for about 12 hours now, sFc, in nemesis OTB kernal underclocked using volt settings gives me about a 8 hours with the amount of usage I put it through. Serious wifi, network usage, processor spiking and multi-tasking. Overall what one would expect from android.
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Heavy user, this seems about right. Your battery goes from 100% to what % before you recharge?