Database Users

Battery life experiences

Just starting a thread for battery life experience as people use the phone. Mine is pretty freakin' great right now, but I'll post some initial results after I get home later tonight. I finished charging to 100% almost 2 hours ago, and with just a bit of usage (maybe 10 minutes total screen on time) I still am at 100%. Though, we know that it sometimes takes a long time to drop from 100% to 90%.
What are other people's experiences? Please post display on time in battery stats, as that gives a good feel for how much you're actually using the phone.

Unplugged it at 6:30am with a full charge.
Took it to work, I put it in airplane mode when I'm in the building because I don't get a signal and don't want the radio searching for a signal and wasting power. GPS/Bluetooth/Wifi are all turned off. I turn the radio back on when I'm out of the building, and I'd estimate it's been on 2 hours since it was charged.
Have watched the latest episode of Family Guy and started on the latest episode of Dexter using Rock Player.
I estimate the screen has been on for about 4 hours. I can only estimate because I had to plug the phone in to transfer a file a couple hours ago which reset the stats.
I've downloaded and installed about 20-30 apps today over 3G networks.
At the current time of 3:15pm (8 hours 45 minutes since full charge), I have 30% of the battery left.
I think you're supposed to do a full charge and full discharge so the phone can "calibrate" the battery meter, which I have not done yet, but so far I'm very pleased. Puts my 2 yr old G1's battery life to shame...

Yeah it sounds decent. A bit better than my Nexus One was.

I would say it is on par with the Nexus One. Should get you through the day but you will be plugging it in at night. It is comparable to most android phones.
Sent from my T-Mobile G2 using XDA App

Without explaining a bunch of boring details, it's definitely better than my N1 so far. Charged it up right after getting it from the UPS guy today for a couple of hours while I took a nap.
We'll just have to wait and see after a few days of use, charges and discharges. Looking great so far, though!

Played around with it at the store today, came in at 3 p.m after school. The demo unit was already at 45% when I got it, surfed the web for about half an hour, downloaded an app, watched YouTube for about 5 minutes and the phone died at about 4:30.
Not really impressed, but its an Android phone. Hopefully it can be better, the good thing is that the web browser is a lot faster than my iPhone 4. That's what keeping me on returning the iPhone, and it starts up a lot faster as well. Took about 20 seconds to boot up after the phone died on me, and the rep charged it.
Definitely will be needing to charge it every night.

3 hr bike ride with music playing used about %50 of the bat. So its way better then my G1 but not as good as my Iphone 2g.

I'm getting much better battery life then I was getting on the G1....love this phone
Sent from my T-Mobile G2 using XDA App

How about someone download Battery Left widget and tell us what it says.
Will vary by user but it will be more accurate with remaining battery life.

So far the battery life on mine is terrible compared to my nexus one, and that was terrible as well.
I woke up 10am, phone on the charger, took it off, around 2pm made two phone calls. Went to work at 5pm, phone's battery was at 23% around 7pm. My nexus one around that point would be at ~50%. So far I'm not impressed with this phone, more work could have went into it.

I loaded a few webpages... did a video chat with someone on Fring for about a minute (lol), downloaded a few apps, had a few phone calls... one lasting about 10 minutes... and after being off the charger for 5 and a half hours.. i'm at 44 percent power... this is my first android device so I'm not sure if that's good or bad

Have you all that are reporting poor battery life done the full-charge/full-discharge thing to "calibrate" the battery meter. I'm not sure that it really matters, but I'm assuming it does since battery info is one of the things you can wipe in the recovery roms.
I'm still extremely pleased with my battery life.

I got the phone yesterday and played with it right out of the box till it was at 5% battery... i plugged it in lastnight and let it fully charge and i unplugged it at 6:15am this mornining... i used the gps to get to work to see how it was... i have watched videos on youtube, gone on the internet, checked and sent emails and texts, downloaded some apps... and played around with it today... i had it plugged into the computer thru usb for approx 5 min tops to set up some media files... and as of now at 3:33pm my battery is at 50%

Opening mine at 930/10pm, heavily used it to burn it to 0% and did that by 12/1230am. Charged it to 100% by 330am. Played with it a bit then went to bed, left it unplugged. Woke up today and burned it to 0% by 330pm. It's charging right now and we'll see how it goes throughout tonight. It will get a bit of pocket time so I'll get a real feel for the battery life.

Took mine off the charger at 7am throught the day had 20 incoming/outgoing calls all lasted at least 2or 3 mins each, downloaded a couple of apps, checked facebook and twitter a few times. showed it off to some friends and now it is almost 5:00 and still have 60% battery, so I am impressed especially since I had a G1 before this

Jorsher said:
Have you all that are reporting poor battery life done the full-charge/full-discharge thing to "calibrate" the battery meter. I'm not sure that it really matters, but I'm assuming it does since battery info is one of the things you can wipe in the recovery roms.
I'm still extremely pleased with my battery life.
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Click to collapse
They aren't changing them long enough. Lithium ion batteries don't have to be trained like the older style ones. Other other culprit could be the batterystats.bin but you can't access or delete that without root. Jut discharge the battery till it powers off and charge for 4-6 hrs.

charged mine last night while tethered to my laptop browsing - took it off about midnight
this morning the alarm sound (pre-alarm 5 minutes, full alarm for 10 mins and never woke me btw), spent about 2 hours+ talking, browsed the web for maybe 15 minutes, downloaded a few apps from the market and ran a few quadrant benchmark test - it's now almost 6:00PM and it's at 40% -
i'm happy with that - and from experience with my MT3G and the vibrant, battery life should improve with some cycling or useage

sino8r said:
Jut discharge the battery till it powers off and charge for 4-6 hrs.
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Click to collapse
leave it on the charger for 4-6 hours after its full or just to charge it from empty to full?

I'm very glad to hear about the excellent battery life. A friend of mine has even reported his phone being on for a full day and still having battery life left.
People make sure that you charge up your battery fully before turning the phone on. It's better to be safe than sorry. I know people say it does not matter but otherwise the battery won't be accurate if you just turn it on out of the box.

10 hours and some change later after normal phone usage and I had to charge it... I'm impressed to say the least

One day stand by and battery drop to 50%

I bought my transformer and updated it to 3.1 on day one. So I don't know how good battery performance is in 3.0. But after updating to 3.1, one day stand by drops the battery level to 50% with wifi on. Is it normal?

That would seem normal to me if you're leaving your wifi on all the time. Really it all depends on how many background services you keep running while the device is in standby. In my case when I first got my TF, the wifi was never set to turn off while in standby, so all of my accounts and application synchronization continued while the screen was off. My battery typically lasts about a day or two if I allow those services to run when the device is not in use.
If instead you turn off the wifi, sync, and even live wallpaper, you should be able to get a few extra days of standby time.

Normal for me is 3-4% drains overnight with wifi on. Sometimes it will drain ~20%, and goes back to normal after I reboot it. Must be some rogue app or something causing problems.

It lasts a lot longer if you turn wifi off.
Better yet, check out JuiceDefender. It has a free version and paid versions that give you more control/settings. Try the free one. If you need better control, then buy it. I don't buy lots of apps as usually the free ones do it for me, but it really works well.
The only other app I bought was TitaniunBackup (for my phone, but as it turns it, once you root the TF, it works there too.)

Other threads already started here seem to indicate that while docked the TF will drain at around 5%/hour while in standby (wi-fi or no) and 2%/hour while completely turned off.
This is not the case when the TF is not docked so this is not necessarily a question of having wifi on or rogue apps.
I would not consider this an acceptable drainage level. Hope Asus is looking at this problem and a firmware update will fix this...
Otherwise, very satisfied with the combo.

Jojobou said:
Other threads already started here seem to indicate that while docked the TF will drain at around 5%/hour while in standby (wi-fi or no) and 2%/hour while completely turned off.
This is not the case when the TF is not docked so this is not necessarily a question of having wifi on or rogue apps.
I would not consider this an acceptable drainage level. Hope Asus is looking at this problem and a firmware update will fix this...
Otherwise, very satisfied with the combo.
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yeah, I was expecting much longer stand by time even with wifi on from a tablet. Asus should fix this to be at least close to what ipad does.

eatapple said:
yeah, I was expecting much longer stand by time even with wifi on from a tablet. Asus should fix this to be at least close to what ipad does.
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Others may correct me but I think the standby time with wifi for the tablet is ok. The battery life is a problem only when the TF is docked.

Nothing wrong at all with the battery life, not sure where Asus are getting their 8 hour battery life from, I have far exceeded 8 hours and have currently been going over 5 days (still with 20% left)

i think the battery life is based on playing 720p video at a certain screen brightness(60 nips or nits i think but i have no clue what that means) of course you can get more life depending on what you're using
and i guess everyone has different opinions on acceptable drain but i wouldn't expect my laptop to last more than 2 days if its internet connection is on and sync'ing so why expect a tablet? laptops(that i've used) shut off connections and do nothing when left alone to save battery
people who need their tablet to last for days while not in use(or very minimal use) should just turn off wifi(or turn off the tablet) when you're not going to use it for hours... or leave it charging

Concerning battery drain of the keyboard dock when the tablet is sleeping:
There is a setting SCREEN>MobileDock Battery Saving Mode.
"Disables wake-up function on keyboard when the device is asleep to save more power"
I have to assume this setting should be checked. If not, that may be why your battery doesn't last long when asleep.

Asus states 9.5h (9h30m) battery life on tablet alone, see bottom of this page, *1:
http://usa.asus.com/Eee/Eee_Pad/Eee_Pad_Transformer_TF101/
they tested 720p video @ 60 nits (lowest screen brightness), I think with wifi on.
prior to 3.1 update I've been getting 9h15m to 9h25m per charge.
I use the TF for 2-3 hours at a time and shut it off (not put to sleep) when not using.
since 3.1 the best I got was 8h15m on a charge (same type of use as before).
I went through TF settings, i monitor the apps, got rid of all my Widgets and still am getting over an hour less per charge than before 3.1 update....
there has got to be some kind of a bug in the new release.
granted, there are some welcome improvements in 3.1, but this battery life issue bugs me
I hope Asus fixes it in the next update.
no1

I really hate to be "that guy", but who cares?
As long as it lasts through a day of normal use, you charge it at night, and that's that. I never understood the obsession with "My device gets 5 days without a charge!" Good for you. Those of us who have electrical outlets only need 1 day. Unless you're doing something special that requires you to be away from an electrical outlet for several days at a time, it really shouldn't matter. If that is the case, it's probably your responsibility to look into ways of saving power.
Cutting WiFi while inactive is one solution. Keeping it charged while idle is another.
Stand by doesn't mean 0 battery is used, it means less battery is used. I'd say 50% is pretty decent after 24 hours of inactivity.

[Q] Transformer standby time

Hi everyone
My question is for techy people in this forum.
According to you why standby time of TF is so bad when compare to ipad2.
Is this software or hardware related problem?
Is it fixable?
Thank.

kivawolf said:
Hi everyone
My question is for techy people in this forum.
According to you why standby time of TF is so bad when compare to ipad2.
Is this software or hardware related problem?
Is it fixable?
Thank.
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Click to collapse
Software problem, IIRC mainly related to the keyboard dock (dock will drain battery when it should be asleep). I still get several days of standby time, which is far more than acceptable. I don't need 2 week standby .
This post needs to go in the proper forum, however.

Gary13579 said:
Software problem, IIRC mainly related to the keyboard dock (dock will drain battery when it should be asleep). I still get several days of standby time, which is far more than acceptable. I don't need 2 week standby .
This post needs to go in the proper forum, however.
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Click to collapse
Sorry, I though this is related to development.
So you are saying that honeycomb is bad by design to battery? Because all honeycomb tablet have the same problem.
There is some thing about standby mode that consume for power than ipad, but why?
It is nice that the tablet does not run out of battery when you really need it.

After leaving my Transformer untouched for about 4 days last week, the battery was sitting in the 80-ish percent area. Seems like pretty damn good standby time to me.

Standby time depends on whether you have the pad docked to the keyboard or not.
If you keep the two separated the standby time is pretty good although I haven't timed it.
If you keep the tablet attached to the dock then standby time for the dock is greatly reduced as it seems to keep charging the tablet until it drains to zero even if you started with a fully charged tablet. It is a very annoying problem that no-one seems to have found a cure for yet. If you let the dock discharge fully some people have found it impossible to charge again.

I am comparing TF and ipad2 without the dock for the obvious reason.

And how long is the iPad 2 standby time?
After using a HTC Desire with poor battery life for the past year I find the standby time for the Transformer to be fantastic. I'm able to use it a bit each day for at least about 5 days. Nothing heavy, but the fact that I can pick it up after a few days of no use and it's still got a decent charge is impressive to me these days.

never used an ipad/2 for extended period of time but stnadby time on the asus is pretty good. what i find helps greatly is if you plan on leaving it in standby for a awhile, then its best to turn off WiFi as it'll help save battery life even more.
i had it fully charged this morning and unplugged it to take to work. Unplugged it around 730am, powered it on and turn off wifi and let the screen timed out. Finally turn screen on at like 130p and the battery still shows 99%

My stand by time was horrible on stock 3.1 I don't why. Once I rooted and installed Prime and OC kernel at 1.2ghz I get much better standby time. Almost comparable to my Ipad 1. Battery life seems to be better too as compared to stock 3.1

Midda said:
After leaving my Transformer untouched for about 4 days last week, the battery was sitting in the 80-ish percent area. Seems like pretty damn good standby time to me.
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Click to collapse
mine is stock 3.1 and never lasts that long, my ipad 2 lasts multiple weeks!

A|ex said:
mine is stock 3.1 and never lasts that long, my ipad 2 lasts multiple weeks!
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Click to collapse
let the wifi shut off when the tablet goes to sleep, it's something iOS does by default and turning off radios will make the battery last a lot longer.
also, if you are going to leave wifi connected, the less widgets and applications you allow to pull data (or adjust the intervals they are set to sync), the longer your battery will last. iOS also is a very passive OS so when you put an ipad to sleep, everything is basically shut down, android allows apps to keep running if you have set them to sync data (ie, twitter, facebook, etc) which will also consume more battery.
the dock issue is an issue. but undocked, mine will last a week or so with light/moderate use, then again i generally charge it at night anyways.
and yes, this should be in general section, it has nothing to do with development for the device, you are asking a general question about the device/platform.

I just took my transformer on a 5 day trip, fully charged to start with, and i didn't bring the charger. I probably only used the tablet 3 times for 15 minutes, and the rest was standby. When i got home and plugged it in, it was down to 2% battery, just about to die. That is just unexceptionable. And iPad 2 under slimier circumstances would have consumed maybe around 20% of it's battery life?
I read somewhere that the new samsung galaxy tab 10.1 is rumored to have up to 75 days of stand by. I don't believe that at all, but if they are claiming that, i would assume that i would last much longer than 5 days. (plus i played with one the other day in best buy and it just feels awesome in the hands)
conclusion: hopefully future updates will help out with the transformer's battery life and stand by time.

Thread re-opened and moved to General.
Mark.

Which is your WIFI policy?
I have it on WIFI off when screen off, and stand-by time is pretty good. I guess that if you need WIFI always on it will adversely affect your battery usage.
Regards.

Its not a Honeycomb issue its a Asus issue. I have a Samsung 10.1 and the stand by time is much better then the Asus. The stand by time for the 10.1 is about 7 hrs and it eats up only 3%. Also, the wifi policy on the 10.1 is set to stay on when it goes into stand by mode. My TF wifi policy is set to turn off when the screen is off and it still eats more battery life then the 10.1. I pretty much have the same apps on both tablet.

Yeah, I have mine set to turn off the wifi when the screen is off (pretty sure this was the default setting), and my standby time is much better than I was expecting (as per my post on the first page). Given the drain I've experienced, I'd expect it to last 2 weeks or so on standby, which seems pretty good to me.

It could be that your wifi disconnect policy is not set to go into standby when the screen goes off. Don't worry, it waits 15 minutes before actually turning off the antenna. But there is a bug where it defaults to "Never" after being charged (including the dock), or after a reboot:
http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=16720
I get a few days out of mine, but I don't give it much chance to be standby, I use it regularly in the evenings.

Hi,
I am sorry, I think I didn't well explain it.
It is the fact that TF has less standby time than ipad2.
But, my question is more about Technic.
Ipad2 does email sync with wifi always ON beat TF wifi off.
But why? There is some app working in background? Why it need to be in standby mode?

I still hear email notifications even with Wifi policy set to turn off when screen is off. Definitely a software problem. In regards to the dock issue, ASUS needs to make some changes to Honeycomb so when it knows the dock is plugged in, the power saving features still kicks in when on standby despite the tablet being charged. It probably assumes the dock is actually a wall charger and doesn't kick in any power saving features. (default behaviour set by Google)

I think the main question in this thread needs to be why are people leaving their Transformers in standby for soo long!!
USE YOUR TABLET EVERY SECOND GOD GIVES YOU AND YOU WONT CARE ABOUT HOW LONG IT WILL LAST WHEN ITS ASLEEP
Mark.

[Q] How often do you charge your simple touch

How often do you charge your rooted nook simple touch? after i rooted mine after reading on it for about 6 hours for 2 days, my battery dropped to about 78%. Is this normal or my battery draining too fast? also when nook goes to sleep mode it doesnt drain battery right?

It kinda depends on if I'm using it a lot during school. If I have the WiFi enabled and I'm taking notes with a lot of screen refreshes, then it ends up at about 50-70% battery at the end of the day, at which point I either charge it that night or the next. Other times when I don't use it for much other than writing down homework, it doesn't go down too much. I haven't charged mine for a few days and it's at 40% right now.

I don't charge mine all that often depends on just what I'm doing with it. If it's got wifi on it's a couple of days, if I'm just reading or not using it it's a lot longer. I intend to eventually do a battery test of not using it, using it without wifi, and using with wifi, but it could be months before it gets finished (or started) since I don't have multiple nooks. lol

I've only done testing for 10 hour stints, but here's what I've noticed:
With wifi off and the unit mostly sleeping, it uses about 0.14% battery per hour.
With wifi on and the unit mostly sleeping, it uses about 0.9% battery per hour.
With the wifi on and using the unit furiously, it uses about 8% battery per hour.
I haven't had the unit long enough to develop any "typical" daily patterns yet. I did set up Tasker to only turn on wifi when select apps are run, and shut it back off when they close. This seems to give me the best of both worlds.
So to answer the question, I charge it when it gets low (< 30%). How long that takes varies based on usage.

It seems you all are lucky. I am using my nook the same way as bobstro, and I have had my nook for 3 days. I charged it completely. After reading for 4 hours max, and playing with android for 1 hour, I am at 30 - 40%. What is going on?

brendan10211 said:
It seems you all are lucky. I am using my nook the same way as bobstro, and I have had my nook for 3 days. I charged it completely. After reading for 4 hours max, and playing with android for 1 hour, I am at 30 - 40%. What is going on?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Make sure your wifi isn't needlessly running say when you're reading.

brendan10211 said:
It seems you all are lucky. I am using my nook the same way as bobstro, and I have had my nook for 3 days. I charged it completely. After reading for 4 hours max, and playing with android for 1 hour, I am at 30 - 40%. What is going on?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
A lot depends on how many screen refreshes you're doing, and network/wifi usage. If you're rebooting a lot, and raiding the Market, it will go more quickly.
Try just letting it sit unmolested for a bit and see if it levels out. With wifi off, mine is barely sipping power when in standby.
You also could be seeing bogus calibration. It's not dead until it's dead, regardless of what the gauge says. I've had Android devices blasting audio for 3 hours when the gauge read 1%. I'd give it a few more days and charge cycles before worrying too much. I think many of us panic when our battery doesn't last long the first few days, forgetting that we're playing with it constantly.
Of course, if you're still seeing poor battery life after a few days, definitely take it in for an exchange!

Ok. I charged it to 100% last night and then turned it off when it completed. This morning, I turned it on, and it has been on for a total of 4 hours. 2 of these hours were in standby, a half was reading, and the rest were taking notes and chatting with friends. Two hours were spent with the wifi on and two were spent with the wifi off. It is at 90% now. I think the part about misreading the level is what happened to me.
On a related note, anyone know of a good battery monitor widget for ADW?

brendan10211 said:
Ok. I charged it to 100% last night and then turned it off when it completed. This morning, I turned it on, and it has been on for a total of 4 hours. 2 of these hours were in standby, a half was reading, and the rest were taking notes and chatting with friends. Two hours were spent with the wifi on and two were spent with the wifi off. It is at 90% now. I think the part about misreading the level is what happened to me.
On a related note, anyone know of a good battery monitor widget for ADW?
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Click to collapse
I use Battery solo widget. Its very good and get the job done

brendan10211 said:
[...] On a related note, anyone know of a good battery monitor widget for ADW?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
When I'm in compulsive battery tracking mode, I use Battery Monitor Widget Pro ($) for the graphing features. It allows me to go back and compare a week's worth of battery performance data. I also get a good feeling when I glance at it and battery availability has been flat for an extended period.
There's a free version, but I don't recall how useful it was.
Once I'm comfortable with things, I plan on removing it and any other monitoring tools, as they do consume some battery themselves.

Thanks. Will have to check that out.

Battery life

I got a refurb Note 10.1 2014 from Groupon about a month ago. The battery life has been poor but I didn't use it enough to quantify it. I got home form work today and it was at 65%. After exactly an hour of use, it told me it was about to die at 5%. I can literally watch the battery percentage tick down while writing an email or browsing the web. Is this normal? I've had 11 android phones but this is my first tablet, I've never seen performance this poor.

This is my issue with android devices. If you are not an above average user and know how to trouble shoot to find what app or apps is causing your battery drain you will be left thinking the device itself is not good, when it's probably a wakelock or some background app killing your battery.
My device has good battery life. I wish it would do better with simple Internet browsing, but watching videos and other tasks are great in my opinion.
My advice, try to find if your issue is software related. After ruling that out, the only option is that out must be hardware related.
Sent from my SM-N9005 using Tapatalk

I found the battery poor for the first couple of weeks. I gave it a full charge, took it off a couple of mins after 100% each time, only letting it drain down to about 15%. I was getting about 6 hours on screen time without power hungry games.
Then a few days ago drained it full, and charged it over night, now getting 9-10hours on screen time - mainly web surfing, watching full hd film streamed off home servers and low power games (5's.....far too addictive and simple). This also includes some use streaming bluetooth to wireless speaker with screen off, so at least another hour use on top of the 10 but with the screen off.

I'm about like redsurf. 6-10 hours of screen-on depending what you are doing with it. If you are only getting 2-3 hours there is something wrong. You can check under power in the tools/settings menu to see what is eating your power. If it is a program, kill the task. If it is the screen (more than 50% any time I have checked) and you are only getting 2-3 hours, definitely something wrong.
Oh, also try turning down brightness.

Note10.1Dude said:
I'm about like redsurf. 6-10 hours of screen-on depending what you are doing with it. If you are only getting 2-3 hours there is something wrong. You can check under power in the tools/settings menu to see what is eating your power. If it is a program, kill the task. If it is the screen (more than 50% any time I have checked) and you are only getting 2-3 hours, definitely something wrong.
Oh, also try turning down brightness.
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Funny enough, I probably have my screen brightness set to between 10% and 25% and rarely ever need it to be turned up any higher than that.

By rooting and disabling alot of bloat stuff I get an additional 1-2 hours out of my note 10.1. Just saying

I'm sure there could be a software issue, but even if i was gaming at full brightness with 40 background apps (I don't), 2 hours is unacceptable and probably defective.