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Now we know the reason why the battery is draining so fast on Galasy S Phones.
The simple reason the AMOLED screen.
If we compare the Droid X with the Galaxy S both with 1500mAh batterys. While the Droid X can reach up to 7:42 hours of battery life the Galaxy s can only 4:44 hours. Its sad because the marketing made us believe that AMOLED is power saving.
Here the full Test from laptopmag.com.
Did you not read this part?
"So should you steer clear of AMOLED phones if you care about endurance? Not necessarily. OLED technology uses the most power when displaying white, which is why Samsung chose a black background for the app menus on its Galaxy S phones. Since our battery test surfs web pages
, most of which have a white background, both the Galaxy devices and the Incredible were at a disadvantage. It really comes down to what you view most often on your phone."
I tested a mkv 720p video playing for 1 hour and it only used 15% battery. From that, the battery should last about 6.5 hrs.
I was reading a test on another site a week or two ago, and it claimed the Galaxy S ran a 720p vid of Avatar on loop for 7.5 hours before refusing to run the video any further as the battery had reached 20, so 4.5 hours seams a little low?
psp888 said:
I tested a mkv 720p video playing for 1 hour and it only used 15% battery. From that, the battery should last about 6.5 hrs.
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The brightness must have been set to VERY low, non ?
Not quite true that it's just the screen.
I installed a widget to turn off data connections entirely (running on 1G phone and text only) and I get about 4-5 days off a single charge now, and that's with moderate gaming/music/ebook use.
If I want to use the internet/email/whatever I just click the widget, it reconnects in 10 seconds and I am away.
I am also running the LG Optimus launcher as well, which I notice gives me much better battery life than TouchWiz/Launcher Pro/etc (although don't hit the volume button on the homescreen as it force closes)
Prasad007 said:
The brightness must have been set to VERY low, non ?
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it was indoor, with auto brightness, so don't know what brightness it was on.
psp888 said:
it was indoor, with auto brightness, so don't know what brightness it was on.
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Well, that's pretty darn good then! I doubt I've seen battery life that good on my phone....
when the phone is set on auto brightness 90% of the time is less than 50% brightness
when is above 50% brightness it is super cool! that's when you see the full effect of the SAMOLED
if you set it to say 60% or 75% brighness you will see the full bloom of the colours.
I'm pretty *****y about my phone's battery life but i have to admit that watching mkv and avi videos on my phone does not drain the battery as i would have expected. 1h30min movie drained around 20% of the battery, brightness in the perfect middle, 3G on and all that. So i think 7h++ playback is definitly doable.
Oddly enough i have the impression that leaving your phone screen on for 1h30min would probably drain close to 20% of the battery (just an impression though, might be totally wrong).
Also, 3G drains a lot of battery. I messed up with my phone and didn't have the APN configured, so no 3G, battery performance exploded, especially if u'r in an area with not so strong signal
i only notice heavy drain on battery when i'm on WiFi or 3G
like browsing the web, downloading stuff
just having WiFi on and 3G on does not consume that much battery, it is only when they are fully active.
all other tasks like watching movie, or doing offline stuff, even playing games does not consume much battery
i can drain the battery with just 4 hours of constant browsing/download stuff
but i can go on the full 24 with 1 battery pack if i do not use 3G/Wifi
on JM1 (or maybe JM2) when i had no 3G and WiFi turnerd off, bascically it would be 2% off every 8h-10h iddle time which sounds really good. However, according to the reported capable iddle time of the phone, it's not that good. People also reported less consumption in iddle.
I don't think i had too many tasks runing in the background (definitly no task killers)
Will.1 said:
I'm pretty *****y about my phone's battery life but i have to admit that watching mkv and avi videos on my phone does not drain the battery as i would have expected. 1h30min movie drained around 20% of the battery, brightness in the perfect middle, 3G on and all that. So i think 7h++ playback is definitly doable.
Oddly enough i have the impression that leaving your phone screen on for 1h30min would probably drain close to 20% of the battery (just an impression though, might be totally wrong).
Also, 3G drains a lot of battery. I messed up with my phone and didn't have the APN configured, so no 3G, battery performance exploded, especially if u'r in an area with not so strong signal
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I fully agree with you. I'm surpised my phone uses so little power when watching a movie, coming from winmo I'm shocked I can use this thing for a day (12-18hours) before it dies. Overall I'm quite happy with my set up as everywhere I go I have power cables. Car (check) , Office (check.USB sync) , walking (check, 2000mha solar battery charger) and Home (power adapter). I'm power paranoid due to being with Winmo since the Aero 2130 to X1i.
And yeh, 3g kills things 4hours max when on 3g.
the main thing that seems to drain the battery for me is web surfing and widgets which use the data connection. I now run a minimalist set of home screens with few widgets and have already noticed an increase in performance and battery life. 3g is pretty power hungry, but since vodafones 3g connectivity is so poor, I am often forced to use gprs through the day anyway as I'm plagued with time outs and dropping connections (if anyone from vodafone is reading, I've only been with you 3 months, and already I know I won't be staying with you come the end of my contract!)
Something's gotta be wrong with the test? I mean, look at the Captivate and Vibrant, both do about 4h 45m, but the Epic 4G does 5h 34m? Same screen, same battery, no? Yet ~50 minutes difference? Must be something other than the screen doing something...
Regards
Tachikoma_kun said:
Not quite true that it's just the screen.
I installed a widget to turn off data connections entirely (running on 1G phone and text only) and I get about 4-5 days off a single charge now, and that's with moderate gaming/music/ebook use.
If I want to use the internet/email/whatever I just click the widget, it reconnects in 10 seconds and I am away.
I am also running the LG Optimus launcher as well, which I notice gives me much better battery life than TouchWiz/Launcher Pro/etc (although don't hit the volume button on the homescreen as it force closes)
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Tachikoma_kun, what widget are you using to shut off 3G?
I came to the Galaxy from a HTC legend and I miss the HTC widget that lets you shut down mobile date completely. When I first had my galaxy on JF3 firmware, I noticed there was an option in the settings to use '2G' only. But since flashing JM8 I can't see this any longer.
Most of the widgets I've seen do some jiggery pokery with the APN configuration to achieve the data/3G shutdown, does the widget you use do the same thing?
Thanks
What's the point of having an android phone if you can't use as mobile internet as you want? I'm on unlimited data plan and my SGS lasts less than half a day on full charge with data on. Its the same thing with my old experia x10i. So I'd assume its the 3g/hsdpa connection. I had a blackberry 9700 as well. Battery life shortens significantly with 3g on.
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I know there have been many threads like this but I'm just looking for clarification as this is my first Android phone. At my house I usually get the Rogers H speed with 3/4 bars. When I browse the Internet for just an hour, 15% of the battery has been drained. Is this normal on these speeds?
I plan on leaving an IM client on 24/7 and using GPS/maps daily, so I am a bit worried because this may not last the entire day. I could switch to EDGE when I don't need it but apparently I heard that will disconnect once I start a voice call (and want to keep my IM on always). I checked my battery stats and apparently the cell standby (H) is taking most of the battery.
I am using CyanogenMod 6.1.1 with stock radio from Bell. I'm going to try to see if SetCPU makes a difference. And is there any program that can limit the HSPDA bandwidth so less battery is used? Thanks.
call *#*#4636#*#*
If you are at home or in a Wi-Fi accessible, Turn ON wifi - it uses wayyyyy less battery than the phone radio when it comes to Data....
you could get a extended battery.... Mugen Power has one for 1800 mAH and its the same size as the stock battery so no need of a bigger door.
What is your screen brightness set at? The screen is one of the top battery drain culprits. Try turning off auto-brightness, and turning the brightness down to as low as you find tolerable (depending on personal taste, and the lighting conditions in the places you use the phone the most). I recently just lowered my brightness to 35% (still plenty bright under many conditions) from 45%, and already noticing a significant improvement in batter life. Battery usage of the display dropped from over 70% to 45-50%. I haven't had the brightness set this low long enough to see how it translates to hours/days between charges, but we'll see how it goes . . ..
my battery life is retarded. probably less than yours. i swear i think i lose 1% of battery per minute of web surfing. battery is fine if you do not go on the web and have 2g on all day.
Yeah, it's pretty bad.
But that's the same for most smartphones nowadays I think...
Back to the days of game gear, the battery muncher.
6AA = 5 hours of gameplay.
I just bought some Chinese 1500maH batteries on eBay and I don't know if they're actually 1500maH. If I play with my phone a bit, I get 50% after 8 hours at work. Yikes!
Frostie123 said:
I know there have been many threads like this but I'm just looking for clarification as this is my first Android phone. At my house I usually get the Rogers H speed with 3/4 bars. When I browse the Internet for just an hour, 15% of the battery has been drained. Is this normal on these speeds?
I plan on leaving an IM client on 24/7 and using GPS/maps daily, so I am a bit worried because this may not last the entire day. I could switch to EDGE when I don't need it but apparently I heard that will disconnect once I start a voice call (and want to keep my IM on always). I checked my battery stats and apparently the cell standby (H) is taking most of the battery.
I am using CyanogenMod 6.1.1 with stock radio from Bell. I'm going to try to see if SetCPU makes a difference. And is there any program that can limit the HSPDA bandwidth so less battery is used? Thanks.
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Assuming the screen was on the entire time, 15% drain for an hour of web surfing sounds pretty good to me. The main battery eater while using the phone is the screen, so I doubt messing with your connectivity is going to drastically change your battery consumption in this usage scenario. Changing connectivity to Wifi or EDGE would probably help more during those times when your phone is off but your phone is still connected to the internet.
On a side note, I had terrible idle battery life when I was using CyanogenMod 6.1.1 on my Desire Z. When I was using my phone, battery life seemed normal. But when the phone was on standby, it seemed like my phone was running even when it was supposed to be on standby. I suspect it might have been SetCPU constantly polling in the background. I switched to Virtuous and didn't install SetCPU/didn't do any overclocking and my life improved literally threefold.
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.
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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.
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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.
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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?
The only thing I ha te about this phone is the embarrasing battery life. So I bought an extended battery online with 3000 mAh (double the normal battery) but Im not really noticing a difference, even with a static wallpaper and few widgets and gps turned off, the battery life is still horrible. I get about 8-10 hours worth. Is the a type of power cycle I can do to increase it at all?
hyperbyteX said:
The only thing I ha te about this phone is the embarrasing battery life.
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Lie! Man this phone rocks on battery life. With heavy usage or with medium. With heavy usage it holds on for more then a day. medium gives you atleast 2.
hyperbyteX said:
So I bought an extended battery online with 3000 mAh (double the normal battery) but Im not really noticing a difference, even with a static wallpaper and few widgets and gps turned off, the battery life is still horrible. I get about 8-10 hours worth. Is the a type of power cycle I can do to increase it at all?
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What battery you bought? Are you sure it has the declared 3000mAh ?
And what rom and kernel you are running?
I wouldn't be surprised if your '3000 mah' has minimally more capacity than the stock 1500 mah.
Given that many people post good battery with a wide variety of ROMs/kernels, unless your specific ROM/kernel has a problem I think many of these cases come down to one of two things:
1) usage, the phone will only get 5-7 hours of 'screen-on' usage, period. I was burning through this every day when I first got my shiny new toy, now I use it for about 1-2 hours a day and the battery lasts for 2 days on average. Some 'background' apps can be killer too, for example streaming apps that hit the data and hogs like Tunein radio (which is awesome but actually heats the phone up). In these cases you need to look at your specific usage and adjust usage or expectations.
2) Background crap. Who knows what it is, Facebook, Tango, etc. Last resort is factory reset to get rid of it (although many probably just install the same stuff they had sucking juice before...).
A third reason could be bad reception, especially with always-on data. My phone can idle for many days at my apartment where cell signal is strong and wifi is on. In an area with weak reception and the phone is trying to maintain data connection as well the radio will be sucking up tons of juice. There is no easy solution for this, I don't have much experience with it, perhaps mucking around with modems will help. Juice Defender (data connection manager) may also help it helped my battery life even with good reception but ultimately I don't even need it to go 2 days so I stopped fiddling with it (it has downsides like things are delayed up to 15 min between data connections and also a pause when you unlock phone for data to establish).
Any Singapore users here with rooted/custom ROM'd S2 still experiencing heavy battery drain with fairly normal usage (occasional web browsing and playing games, maybe 3-5 photos - battery dead in less than 8 hours?).
I've noticed that here in SG, my 3G signal keeps on going off and on, as if the phone is constantly trying to reconnect to a 3G signal (SingTel has been pretty bad for me, especially while walking around town). I've turned it off to 2G only and my battery seems to have improved.
Anyone else in SG have suggestions on how to improve battery life?
Although old thread, for anyone who like to have an app to auto toggle 3G in a set interval check this review:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1832442
3G is the suspect zero!!!
3G is definitely the suspect zero for your battery drain....
sgnoobie said:
Any Singapore users here with rooted/custom ROM'd S2 still experiencing heavy battery drain with fairly normal usage (occasional web browsing and playing games, maybe 3-5 photos - battery dead in less than 8 hours?).
I've noticed that here in SG, my 3G signal keeps on going off and on, as if the phone is constantly trying to reconnect to a 3G signal (SingTel has been pretty bad for me, especially while walking around town). I've turned it off to 2G only and my battery seems to have improved.
Anyone else in SG have suggestions on how to improve battery life?
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Im from SG dude my phone can last for 16hours with 3h-4h screen on. Its pretty decent. Change your modem. Im on LPX. Dont use FB app if you are using one. Its a huge battery drainer. Use BBS to find out what else is keeping your phone awake/draining your battery.
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How the heck you get so good battery life O_O max for me with UV and UC is 14hrs 2.5hrs screen time.................... If you are on stock rom then that is also a suspect, Official 4.0.3 has horrible battery life
Im on RootBox JB by Bajee and Dream Kernel 2.7
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