Battery Life Guide - Droid X General

Hello everybody! The purpose of this guide is to show you some free ways to greatly increase your battery life on the Droid X. First this guide assumes you have the Gingerbread kernel, root access, and are comfortable with ClockworkMod Recovery. If you have not installed a few roms, SBF’ed, or backed up your phone, learn how to and practice it a few times. I am not responsible if you fubar and have to SBF your phone. This guide is specifically written for the Droid X, but since the Droid 2 uses the same innards, you can probably use this guide interchangeably with that phone. Not all the steps in this guide only apply to the Droid X so I will say something on the steps that can be used on other Android devices.
First I'm going to start with basic things you do not want to do if you plan on saving battery. (All Devices)
Battery Saver Apps: Battery saving apps like Juice Defender are bad ideas. As I will explain later, many apps expect an always on data connection and prevent your processor from going into deep sleep when they are waiting for that data connection to come back on. Not to mention a battery saver is just another app and service that is running in the background potentially using battery.
Wipe Battery Stats: A Google developer has confirmed that the batterystats.bin does not hold battery calibration information. It holds information to compute battery usage information. The same information you see under “Battery Usage” in settings. Wiping this file just wastes your time.
Hungry Apps: Apps that use excessive notifications keep the processor from going into deep sleep. Facebook is the number 1 culprit here. Go into the app settings and turn of notifications. Use your back button to exit apps when you are done.
Automatic Backlight: On the Droid X, the Automatic Brightness setting is useless. Minimum brightness is too high by default. Either turn it off and set brightness manually or take the step I did that comes up later in this guide.
Wifi: Wifi when you are in range of a router uses less power than your 3G connection and is faster anyways. Wifi when you are not in the range of a router is a battery killer and should be avoided. Use your notification toggles if you have them. Get a widget if you don’t.
GPS: GPS should be turned off at all times unless you are actively using it. Nobody cares where you were when you posted on Facebook.
App killers: App Killers are good for hunting down and killing an app once in a while but are usually pointless. Android automatically loads apps into free memory for quicker starts. Why have your app killer wake up the phone from its idle, kill all of your apps to free up memory, and then have Android automatically reload most of those apps back into memory?
Bluetooth: Bluetooth headsets are best left in the car where you have your phone on a charger. If you need to use one off the charger, don’t forget to turn off your Bluetooth when you are done.
Charging: Charge as often as possible. Follow the same battery saving strategies you usually do when your phone is off the charger. It makes your phone charge faster. Keep in mind the mA rating on the charger. The stock one is 850mA. Do not exceed this rating. USB is ~500mA depending on other devices attached to the computer. The higher the rating, the faster the charge. Do not let the battery get very hot. Do not let your battery level drop below 10 very often. Low charge levels on Li-Ion batteries can damage them. Alternately, do not reputedly plug and unplug your phone once your battery shows 100. Android charges to 100 and lets it use up battery for a few percentages before it starts charging again. This is to prevent overcharging and damaging your battery. If you plug and unplug it repeatedly, it tricks Android into charging it more and more. Keep in mind that li-ion batteries lose capacity over time whether you use them or not. Replace them when they are no longer keeping you happy.
Step 1. Selecting a Rom
Liberty 3 forum topic: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1368049
Really for the purpose of this guide the only rom worth picking is Liberty 3. This rom is based on Motorola code which is known for good battery life and has init.d support baked in. It also has the power toggles in the notification bar and has pretty good customization. The 2nd-init roms that have init.d will work too but have issues with battery life. From this point forward I am going to assume you are going to be using Liberty 3 but the steps should work the same for other roms as long as there is init.d support.
Step 2. Installing the Rom
Use CWM to install the rom like you normally would. Start up and follow the usual setup wizard. Once you are able to get to settings, click on Liberty Settings, then Performance, then Start-up Tweaks, then uncheck everything except "Enable start-up tweaks." These settings interfere with the next step and are going to be duplicated by the next step.
Step 3. Install jakebitesmod
Jakebitesmod forum topic: http://rootzwiki.com/topic/3435-mods-jakebitesmods-v18-for-d2-ota-gb-kernel-all-roms-mods/ (Please consider donating to this developer as this script helps a lot of people.)
Jakebitesmod has some good scripts to optimize many things in Android. Pretty much anything that speeds up Android can have a small improvement on your battery life. We are specifically going to use his script to under volt the processor and set the governor at boot without using an app. Copy the linked file to your SD card and boot into CWM again to flash this. Restart your phone like normal.
Step 4. Configure jakebitesmod
Open Terminal Emulator and type “su”. This should prompt Superuser for root permission. Allow the permissions and move on. Type “modcentral”. This should bring up a little text menu of things to do. The menu option we are gonna be looking for is “1”. Read the safety issues and if you want to move forward press “Y”. From here we are going to select “1”. This option will leave you with the stock processor speeds but change the voltages on the processor to lower settings. This is generally safe because lower voltages should only cause problems with freezing and crashing, but should not physically be harmful to the processor. Voltage also makes much more of a difference on power than clock speed so this should save us a good chunk of battery. Push “Y” to continue and set the voltages and speeds at boot. Press enter a couple times and it should tell you it succeeded. Yay. From here we want to go to menu option “3”. Governors control when the processor jumps up or down in speed based on some magic formula that takes into account how much work your processor is expected to be doing. Personally I agree with jakebites and I chose interactiveX. It jumps up in speed fast enough not to appear like the phone is laggy and drops back down fast enough to save battery. It also automatically drops down to the lowest speed while the screen is off. After you have made your choice push “Y” and enter a few more times. Once we are back to a menu we can just hit the back button and exit the Terminal Emulator.
Step 4. Adjusting the Backlighting (All Devices)
The Droid X’s backlight settings is a real pain. The lowest brightness setting it will dip down to is 20. This is way too bright for darkness. You know what I mean if you have browsed at night in bed. Luckily there is an app for that. Download “Custom Auto Brightness” from the Market and install it. It ends up being called LogGraph in the app drawer for some odd reason. Open this and hit you menu key and then select “Preferences”. Select calibrate sensor and follow the directions on the screen. Then go to check brightness range and follow the directions on the screen. Then back out to the main screen and make sure “Demonstrate….” is checked. Push the left “Select sensor reading” and observe the line on the graph move. These are the levels of light the ambient light sensor are going to report at. So say you have the sensor reading slider set to 10. You move the bottom slider to a value of 2. This means that your backlight will be at its lowest level when your sensor says the light in the room is at a level of 10. You can adjust these to what you prefer, but for the best battery savings turn your readings at 1 and 10 to a value of 2. This will keep your backlight nice and low while you are in a dark room but still let your backlight jump up while you are outside. Once these are set head back into the preferences and make sure that all of the checks are enabled except “Foreground mode” and “Bypass hysteresis”. Once that is done hit the back button until you close the app and then turn your screen off and on. If you brightness is way lower than it was before you are golden. If not double check the guide.
Step 5. Install Your Normal Apps (All Devices)
The next steps require your normal apps to be installed and signed into those apps like normal.
Step 6. Set Your Sync Times (All Devices)
Install the app “AutoSync Account Activator” from the Market. Open and accept the agreement. Now you should see some apps listed. I get “Google” and “Facebook” but yours may vary depending on what you have installed. The process should be similar for each app. First off, click on “Google”. The first page called “Connections” lists you connections. Click on connections you would like your account to be able to sync on. Cellular is an obvious one but really you should have your wifi on and have it activated in this while you are home. The next screen, “Periodic Sync”, controls how often your apps sync. Unless you use your Google Calendar often, set that to “1 day”. Contacts should also be “1 day”. Gmail should be set accordingly to how often you care about your email. Others may show up. Set them to according to your judgment. Just keep in mind the more often you sync, the more battery you will use. If you do not use the service at all you can select “No period”. If you have one set to no period you should also set it in the next page to “Always off”. All of the rest should be set to auto.
Step 7. Observing What You Apps Are Doing and What to Do About It (All Devices)
This step is subdivided for the benefit of your eyes.
XDA Edition BetterBatteryStats forum topic: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1179809 (The link is at very bottom of 2nd post. Please purchase from the developer on Market if you use this more than a few times.)
A. This final step will ultimately probably figure out why you were getting bad battery. Android’s power management relies on what are called “wake locks”. Wake locks are things apps can create to tell Android’s power management to prevent the phone from going into deep sleep. Deep sleep is a state your processer goes into to basically shut itself off. A good example of a wake lock is when you are playing an mp3 and your screen is off. Normally when your screen is off your device wants to get into deep sleep asap. The audio service creates a wake lock to prevent your processor from entering deep sleep, because this would stop the mp3 playback. Most of the naughty apps out there use wake locks to keep data connections alive and use them to keep updating and keep notifications going. They tend not to give up that wake lock when they should and keep your phone from going to sleep. Apps that shut off your data connection, like Juice Defender, will cause even good behaving apps to freak out and keep their wake locks active while they wait for the data connection.
B. To look for these wake lock hogs we have a couple apps to get. The first one is from the link. It’s the XDA Edition of BetterBatteryStats. The second is CPU Spy from the Market. To use BetterBatteryStats just dump it on your sd card, use a file explorer to open it, enable Unknown Sources, and install it. Then open it, plug in your phone, unplug your phone, and use it like normal for a few hours. When you are ready, open the app, click on the first drop down, and select “Partial Wakelock”. Make sure the second drop down says “Since Unplugged”. Whatever apps are listed at the top are the apps that are keeping your phone from sleeping. My top 3 are DownloadManager (I was using Market and turned off my screen.), PowerAMP scan, and the PowerAMP service, but only the DownloadManager used any significant time. CPU Spy can be used to see how often your processor is going into deep sleep. Once you find your bad apps, you can look around in them and see if there are any settings in there to either turn off notifications, increase the time between updates, or anything else you may think is keeping the app busy.
C. If there is nothing there you can change, you can consider preventing it from starting. If you do not have ROM Toolbox Lite, download it. Open it and click on “Auto Start Manager”. Then scroll the screen sideways to get to the menu that says “Applications”. Click on apps and you will see two actions that we will be looking at. They are “boot completed” and “connectivity changed”. Apps like games, media players, internet radios, Facebook, etc, do not need to be started at boot and do not need to be started when connectivity has changed. Unselecting these will keep apps like Facebook from starting when you turn your phone on and when you switch from 3G to wifi.
D. If you ultimately can’t figure out why an app is keeping its wake lock for so long you may have to consider if the app is worth the lost battery life. Unfortunately there are just those apps out there that are poorly written. Consider sending an email to the developer explaining your problem and ask what you can do to fix it. If they don’t replay politely give them some poor feedback with a good explanation in the Market. They may look into the problem and correct it.
In Closing...
Thanks to everyone for reading, or at least skimming, my guide. I really hope this helps and saves time for a lot of people. If there are any issues anybody runs into I’ll try to help and explain the best I can. I apologize for any mistakes, errors, or bad sentence structure. If anybody has anything to add I will definitely consider adding it as long as it is free, easy to do, and produces results. If I broke any forum rules please notify me before deleting this topic. I’ll be happy to fix the issue.
About wake locks: http://forum.xda-developers.com/wiki/Wakelocks
Li-Ion batteries: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-ion_battery#Battery_charging_procedure
Batterystats.bin information: http://www.androidcentral.com/wiping-battery-stats-doesnt-improve-battery-life-says-google-engineer
(Edit 1: Added instructions to delete default init.d scripts installed with Liberty. They seem to conflict with jakebitesmod's voltage settings. They didn't want to stick through reboots. All of the script's functions are duplicated by jakebitesmod anyways.)
(Edit 2: Turns out that deleting the init.d scripts isn't needed. Instructions updated.)

Really great advice. I don't even have a Droid X. I have a One X but this is still very relevant.
Thank you

Great guide. You should include CPU Governor such as BoostedASSv2. It helped me get good battery life (as so others).

Related

Super Evo Battery Tips and Explanations **Updated 1-22-11**

Over the months I have been an Evo user, I have collected some valuable information that all users should probably know in regards to maximizing battery life. Besides the stuff about 4G and a few specific options, these steps apply to pretty much any other android phone running 2.2, and a lot of them apply to versions below Froyo.
General Lithium Ion Battery Information
^^This link includes stuff about charging, including trickle charging aka SBC (Why NOT to use it, or at your own peril)
My tips for good battery life:
Tips for Non-Rooted users:
1. Turn off all radios when not in use.
(gps, Bluetooth, wifi, data, 4g) Use a widget like the default HTC power widget or Switchpro from the market. The radios of the phone draw power if on even if the user isn't actually utilizing the radio's functions.
To manually turn off radios without a toggle, go to menu>settings>wireless & networks.
Wifi uses less battery than 3G, so use wifi when you can.
**IMPORTANT DISCOVERY**When you turn on your 4G radio, then turn it off, it will keep scanning and turning off all by itself.
The problem is apparently exacerbated by a 4G toggle widget, which causes the phone to automatically turn on 4G at boot. This repeating of scanning and disconnecting severely drains battery life, and sadly, no matter what ROM or kernel you use, there is only one way to fix it:
-If you don’t use the toggle widget, then you have to reboot your phone after turning off 4G
-If you do use a toggle widget, then you have to remove the widget from your homescreens, then turn off 4G via settings, then reboot.
**To check to see if this is happening, download alogcat off of the market. Look for the lines saying: I/Wimax ( xxx): <DC> Try to establish a connection to DC server.
E/Wimax ( xxx): <DC CONNECT> IO error: msg=’/xxx.x.x.x:xxxx –
Connection refused’
Over and over again.
2. Juice Defender is one of my favorite apps. Basically it controls your data for you to maximize life.
More explanations are on their page, search it on the market for free, or upgrade for more features.
Here are my settings for it: Click me
Note that for me at least, juice defender likes to deny apps data privileges whether you allow them or not, so screen on = data on works best for me.
3. I love live wallpapers, and I’ve always been a fan of pixel zombies, but they are really only good for showing off due to their battery drain.
4. Go to menu<settings<wireless & networks<mobile networks<disable always on mobile data.
Product F(RED) said:
To clarify, "Always On Mobile Data", when turned off, lets the 3G modem go to sleep after the screen has been off for 5 minutes. It doesn't interfere with anything like email or any other application that requires an internet connection at that moment because it turns on on-demand rather than being on all the time and wasting battery.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
5. Set your screen timeout to something that fits you
This will prevent your phone from staying on when you don’t manually turn off the screen. Also with this, manually turn off your screen when you’re done with your phone.
6. Everyone has that issue where the first ten percent go the fastest.
This is due to two things. One is that these types of batteries stop charging once they get to 100% to prevent damage, and begin charging again at 90%. This means that you could potentially unplug your seemingly fully charged phone at 90% actual charge. The second is number 6.5.
6.5. Use the trick described in this thread, it works.
My idea behind how often you should do it is once a month, if you flash a new ROM, or if you stop noticing the benefits.
This is the calibration technique recommended by HTC themselves. Check it out!​
7. Task killers used to be the shiz, but no longer.
Here is the ultimate, in depth, graphically assisted, explanation by the famous Fresh ROM's chef, Flipz. Shortly, in light of recent testing, really don’t do anything but force apps that the android OS needed to be open, and thus didn’t close, to re-open. So try not using them, unless for stuff like trying to figure out why your phone isn’t sleeping with system panel. You really won’t notice a performance difference, and the adverse effects you aren’t seeing will stop
+=+ A good alternative is the application SystemPanel Pro. It has a free version, but I highly reccomend purchasing the paid app. It basically monitors everything going on with your phone's usage both in real time an in terms of usage history. If your battery is draiging fast, it tells you what app was doing it, how much it was doing it, and allows you to stop it.
8. People posting screenshots of the Battery screen as proof of long lasting battery are giving statistically irrelevant information.
See HERE That screen shows time since last REBOOT, not last charge. This isn't always the case, but a lot of people will post a lot of things about battery life, but look for definitive screenshots and testing results before you break down and cry due to the poster's life and yours.
9. I'm sure you have all heard around that your phone isn't "sleeping".
This is referring to the phone's "awake" time, hence the name. When you go to menu>settings>about phone>battery, you can compare the two numbers, "up time" vs. "awake time." Generally, up time refers to the amount of time since the last reboot. The "awake time" is how long the screen has been active. The problem is, a lot of the time, due to the endless possibilities of inconsistencies between apps/ROMs/kernels/phones, the phone will not go to "sleep", drawing power proportionate to the screen being in use when it reality the phone is sitting idle.
If you compare these numbers, and they are the same, or if you note the difference, turn off the screen for a minute, then re-check and they are the same, then your phone is not sleeping.
One solution is to reboot.
Usually, SystemPanel will show an app that has gone "rouge" and is keeping your phone awake.
Uninstall applications/reinstalling them slowly, checking after every install to see what is causing it is one tedious but surefire solution.
Lastly,
Follow these steps that I have discovered almost always work.
1. Reboot phone.
2. Instantly upon reboot, as soon as you gain control, open up some type of monitor/taskkiller
3. "kill all" tasks on startup; about 5 times in quick succession should do the trick.
4. Turn off the screen and leave it for about five minutes.
5. Check the up time v. awake time and see if they are the same.
6. If they are, repeat steps 1-5. If they are different, you are good.
Tips for Rooted users:
1. Try out custom kernels.
By going to the EVO 4G Android Development section of the forums, you can see all of the different kernels being developed. These allow for all kinds of modifications like underclocking the CPU and undervolting, both of which save battery. To see how to use them, read the FAQ's in each thread's OPs.
Here is a great guide to custom kernel's by mroneeyedboh.
2. Use SetCPU in compliance with whatever your custom kernel allows.
This site will explain the basics of SetCPU: http://www.pokedev.com/setcpu/
-Profiles from SetCPU should usually involve these for battery life optimization:
-Screen off at the minimum clock speed for both, with the max raised on level if sluggishness is apparent
-A temperature greater than “X”
-General power related profiles that lower cpu speed at lower battery levels
-Here are my SetCPU profiles: 1 , 2 , 3
-My profiles change a lot as time goes by, because different kernel creators recommend different settings. I suggest reading up on whatever kernel you are using to gather settings.
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NOTES:
*Some apps or processes begin to run at startup and keep the phone awake. These apps are not detected by things like spare parts or system panel, unless sometimes represented in the "system" process, in which case its usage will be unusually high.
This shouldn't take more than three repeats, and if it does, you need to factory reset, and slowly add apps back to see what's causing the problem.
___--- When it comes to actually "calibrating" one's battery, there are a couple of methods floating around. The method I first learned is to charge the phone all the way, boot into recovery immediately, and "wipe battery stats". Then reboot quickly, and run your phone all the way to death without charging it, then charge it all the way without interrupting it, and you should be good to go. Do this when changing ROMs/kernels for best results.
----When it comes to people claiming 20 plus hours of moderate/heavy use out of their current setup or other ridiculous absurdities, consider my position: No matter what you do, the Evo battery is the Evo battery. You can tweak it and customize it with kernels, ROMs, and settings, but none of that will turn it into a car battery. The main problem (besides a false sense of pride) that leads to these reports is the misunderstanding of what the usage levels are, so here’s my best summary:
* *Light usage – Phone screen actually on for maybe 4 hours. Things like a few texts, some emails, 20 minutes web browsing, etc.
* *Moderate usage – You watched a few youtube videos or similar apps, sustained web browsing, hundreds of texts, some games. Hours range from about 5-10 of screen on
* *Heavy usage – LOTS of video watching and games, or some high def gaming/movie watching for at least an hour to an hour and a half in total, with lots of emails and texts, browsing, and other app shenanigans
*I’m sure everyone doesn’t agree with all these numbers, but this is most likely a good average of what powerusers think. All specific hourage may vary due to differences in phones, batteries, ROMs, and kernels… Which also means that most battery comparisons are pointless; it’s only what you can improve on that counts!
I’ll update this whenever I see good stuff, people remind me, or I remember/come across things I do.
Hope it helps everybody!
Hit the "THANKS" button if I help you!
*All this is available in the link in my signature
I just use the power widget for data instead of juice. Don't mind clicking it once before and after I turn the screen on. Also don't always use data when its on..
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA App
martyzidek said:
I just use the power widget for data instead of juice. Don't mind clicking it once before and after I turn the screen on. Also don't always use data when its on..
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA App
Click to expand...
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I do that also, but the fact that juice only lets your stuff sync at a certain lengthy interval is what really makes it awesome. If you just disable the data period, your stuff won't sync correctly
I only have mail to sync and with that if I go into my mail it syncs. I go on Facebook on the browser so I don't use the app and deleted off my phone. Also I don't use Google mail or friendstream which is all deleted fully off my phone. So I don't have to worry. And most stuff that syncs on here to a set time will have a sync button or sync when you use or go into it anyways. So why not have it just sync when you actually check it? My 2 cents.
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA App
Great guide; good job!
I just turn off the background data, we have more than enough RAM to even need a task manager, I agree it sucks cpu usage and its tedious to close apps constantly and its only needed for low RAM phones these days anyway. Getting +6-8 hours use from a smart phone from moderste use is great Imo. I get great battery life already without much tweaking. I dont get what's the point of underclocking since the 1 ghz is one of the main selling points. I enjoy the obscene speed of the phone. Keep the screen dim and stay off the live wallpapers. Good write up!
Thanks for the tips and the profiles.
martyzidek said:
I only have mail to sync and with that if I go into my mail it syncs. I go on Facebook on the browser so I don't use the app and deleted off my phone. Also I don't use Google mail or friendstream which is all deleted fully off my phone. So I don't have to worry. And most stuff that syncs on here to a set time will have a sync button or sync when you use or go into it anyways. So why not have it just sync when you actually check it? My 2 cents.
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA App
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I appreciate your thoughts, but it's just as you said: "I only have.." etc. Other people do it differently, so these tips should help THEM. Glad you know what works for you though
phatmanxxl said:
I just turn off the background data, we have more than enough RAM to even need a task manager, I agree it sucks cpu usage and its tedious to close apps constantly and its only needed for low RAM phones these days anyway. Getting +6-8 hours use from a smart phone from moderste use is great Imo. I get great battery life already without much tweaking. I dont get what's the point of underclocking since the 1 ghz is one of the main selling points. I enjoy the obscene speed of the phone. Keep the screen dim and stay off the live wallpapers. Good write up!
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bigmoogle said:
Thanks for the tips and the profiles.
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bludragon742 said:
Great guide; good job!
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Thanks y'all! Please vote on the poll and rate so more people can see this for longer
Glad it's helping
abkrieger said:
I appreciate your thoughts, but it's just as you said: "I only have.." etc. Other people do it differently, so these tips should help THEM. Glad you know what works for you though
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Anything that syncs has an option somewhere on the widget or app. All you do is hit the refresh button and updates. Same with mail. I go into my mail and it then syncs. So if its that important for friendstream or Facebook to update and sync to a certain setting then by all means juice is for you. Just a waste of battery.
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA App
martyzidek said:
Anything that syncs has an option somewhere on the widget or app. All you do is hit the refresh button and updates. Same with mail. I go into my mail and it then syncs. So if its that important for friendstream or Facebook to update and sync to a certain setting then by all means juice is for you. Just a waste of battery.
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA App
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Say for example I have:
Weather widget on homescreen, fb widget, friendstream, news widget, two mail apps in background, google voice for vm...
-To name a few. If you use all of these, then you wouldn't also want to:
Refresh weather widget by clicking on it, which pulls up the menu, then clicking refresh - then clicking on your fb widget, which brings up the menu, and hitting refresh - going to friendstream, clicking on it, menu, refresh - same for news widget - same for mail apps - google voice...
The mail and google voice update in the background, and unless you want them always checking, or going in when you remember and telling it to refresh, the best option is to limit when it has access based on YOUR schedule.
The point of widgets is one-look convenience. Two clicks to sync a widget, taking you off the homescreen, defeats the purpose. Maybe not for you, but most people.
Now, adding all those up, that would be about 15 taps on the screen, taking all over the place, just to have your apps/widgets do what they are supposed to do. No thanks. I would rather click zero times, and have EVERYTHING sync at one time, in intervals of my choosing.
To each his own I guess
You use setcpu with kingxkernal?
phatmanxxl said:
I just turn off the background data,
Click to expand...
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exactly what is the background data?
what data gets synced in the backgrounds? and if u turn that off, when does it actually sync that data?
SayWhat10 said:
exactly what is the background data?
what data gets synced in the backgrounds? and if u turn that off, when does it actually sync that data?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You would manually have to sync data.
c_l021 said:
You use setcpu with kingxkernal?
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No I've stopped using it with the kingkernels as per his request.
EDIT: It's supposedly HAVS kernels in general.
JUST BUMPIN THE THREAD.
To clarify, "Always On Mobile Data", when turned off, lets the 3G modem go to sleep after the screen has been off for 5 minutes. It doesn't interfere with anything like email or any other application that requires an internet connection at that moment because it turns on on-demand rather than being on all the time and wasting battery.
Great thread... I have found a good tsk killer called "system panel" it cost a cpl bucks in the market but its worth it... Old task killer apps stored working when froyo was released... System panel still works, plus it gives you a lot more control over your phone by telling you what is using what from your battery... In conjunction with juice defender... Too have the best offense to defend your charges!
Sent from the MATRIX... while plugged into my EVO... using the XDA app... from a galaxy far-far away.......
JayStation3 said:
Great thread... I have found a good tsk killer called "system panel" it cost a cpl bucks in the market but its worth it... Old task killer apps stored working when froyo was released... System panel still works, plus it gives you a lot more control over your phone by telling you what is using what from your battery... In conjunction with juice defender... Too have the best offense to defend your charges!
Sent from the MATRIX... while plugged into my EVO... using the XDA app... from a galaxy far-far away.......
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've had system panel pro since the day I bought my phone
Product F(RED) said:
To clarify, "Always On Mobile Data", when turned off, lets the 3G modem go to sleep after the screen has been off for 5 minutes. It doesn't interfere with anything like email or any other application that requires an internet connection at that moment because it turns on on-demand rather than being on all the time and wasting battery.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'll add this to the OP, thanks for the clear description!
Biofall said:
Over the months I have been an Evo user, I have collected some valuable information that all users should probably know in regards to maximizing battery life. Here they are
My tips for good battery life:
1. Turn off all radios when not in use (gps, Bluetooth, wifi, data, 4g) using a widget like the default HTC power widget or Switchpro from the market.
To manually turn off radios without a toggle, go to menu>settings>wireless & networks
^^^^**** IMPORTANT DISCOVERY****^^^^
When you turn on your 4G radio, then turn it off, it will keep scanning and turning off all by itself.
The problem is apparently exacerbated by a 4G toggle widget, which causes the phone to automatically turn on 4G at boot. This repeating of scanning and disconnecting severely drains battery life, and sadly, no matter what ROM or kernel you use, there is only one way to fix it:
-If you don’t use the toggle widget, then you have to reboot your phone after turning off 4G
-If you do use a toggle widget, then you have to remove the widget from your homescreens, then turn off 4G via settings, then reboot.
**To check to see if this is happening, download alogcat off of the market. Look for the lines saying: I/Wimax ( xxx): <DC> Try to establish a connection to DC server.
E/Wimax ( xxx): <DC CONNECT> IO error: msg=’/xxx.x.x.x:xxxx –
Connection refused’
Over and over again.
5. Go to menu<settings<wireless & networks<mobile networks<disable always on mobile data
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Wow, this is awesome man. #1 is a huge discovery for sure. we just got 4g here recently and I started having this huge battery drain problem. I have been monitoring my phone with system panel and found "suspend" to running my cpu full bore 100% of the time.
if your search for suspend you can find a few threads here and over at androidforums. no one had seemed to find the issue of why suspend is always running. but it is for me definitely being caused by 4g as you describe.
I didn't think it was 4g because I found a wimax process at 0%
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but after playing with 4g and your ideas here I can make this suspend start and stop at will now.
some screen shots of system panel with the suspend issue on.
here are some screen shots after finding this thread last night around midnight and killing 4g and rebooting.
thanks, this saved me from loading up an older nandroid that I didn't have this issue. but now I know its not rom or app related.
here is what I did to stop suspend/4g from running. I keep mobile data always on unchecked. and I use a 4g toggle from switch pro (well not anymore)
I turned off 4g through my toggle. reboot phone, suspend is still running and the phone will not sleep. I then go into settings - wireless & networks - mobile networks, I then check mobile data always on and then uncheck it. suspend will now stop and phone will sleep. data always on check and uncheck only works after a reboot.
anyways I think this find is awesome! and maybe we should mention that this 4g problem and this suspend process are one in the same. as it seems people have been having this suspend process problem for months on end with no solution.
I really didn't think it could be 4g as I saw wimax process at 0% and a simple reboot didn't end it. I thought it had to be an app.
thanks bro

99% sure that this will increase your battery life

There are numerous threads about getting better battery life involving different settings, turning on and off stuff manually and battery calibration etc etc but noone that really helped as much as what ive discovered now.
Me and my spouse has the same phone but we dont have the same operator. I have Telia which has the best coverage in this area while she has Telenor which is worse in general coverage making the phone work harder in the net + really bad when it comes to 3G coverage and thus having slow data connection.
Therefore we have very different standby time on our phones and ive tried to tweak it with different kernels, modems and different flashes but nothing that really helped.
So I made a thread to gather some info from various people but it hasnt growed that much yet (http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=989266). 2nd post from "theduckking" showed that he was using an app called "tasker" which cost ~4euro (well worth the money if you have low battery time)
Now ive just started using it but I already have 69hours of standby and 27% left of battery and ive never had that amount of battery standby for a really long time! This is getting close to an old fashioned Nokia 3310 standby
My spouse isnt getting as much obvisually as she has worse coverage which drains more battery but she has gone from barely a day to 2 days standby with 10% battery left ~30hours and this is with the following method.
Note. Both our phones have the same configuration, its only the operator which is the difference
Rom: Darky 9.3 Final
Modem: JPY (its the one coming from the darky 9.3 flash)
Kernel: DamianGTO 1.1 Gold
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Now two things that have made the battery last longer is first underclocking it to 800MHz and undervolt -100mV in CWM (this will only make a minor difference albeit noticeble)
And the grand thing that will really up your battery is the app called "TASKER".
Ive only setup two rules and that is to turn off mobile data and wifi when screen is off and turn them back on when screen is on. You can customize it further if you like but im just gonna show how to setup the basics.
After you have downloaded it, fire it up and press "new" and then just press "ok" select "event" and "display off", press "done"
Now press the "+" and "net" then "mobile data", make sure "Off" is selected and then press "Done".
Press "+" again and "net", "Wifi Net" check that it is saying "Disconnect" and press "Done" and press "Done" again to get back to the main menu of "Tasker"
Next rule so press "New" and "ok" again, then "event" and "Display" and select "Display On". Press "Done" and then press the "+" followed by "Net" and "Mobile Data", make sure the checkbox says "On" and press "Done" and you are set. Press home button to apply the settings and you should now have "Tasker" in the top row.
Now this fix will maybe not suit everyone but if you value battery time more than anything then its absolutely for you.
What will happen is that all data traffic will be completely turned off when the phones screen is off and the impact of this is
You wont recieve instant (push) gmail until you unlock your screen
Google talk will not let others see you online/busy when screen is off
If you are making calendar updates from google calendar online, the calendar updates wont appear until you unlock your screen
Probably other stuff that havent crossed my mind
Links to other battery tips
Disable HSDPA (still uses regular 3G but with the slightly lower speed) by Hardcore
Some other battery fixes by bokbacken
Battery calibration by TechnicR
Changing modem to ZSJPG or XXJVE by johnsonxray
Hoping this will help alot of you out there with mediocre battery
Some screenies from the battery status page in settings.
Sorry about the dark image, I raised the contrast and brightness manually afterwards to make it somewhat readable (I forgot to disable the "screen filter" which I enable at nights when reading )
pretty interesting.. will give it a try..
Hardcore made a thread on how to conserve battery life by disabling hsdpa. You can search for it. It has helped me a lot.
I'm using "superpower" from the market and I will install tasker to see if there is new options
If you use Tasker just for Wi-Fi and data turn - off when screen is off you better use (IMHO) SuperPower app. You also better untick auto retrieve option in MMS settings or you will not receive MMS anymore with this settings.
yay I'm famous... or at least useful
I have my connection Tasks attached to this post. you just have to import them and set up rules when to execute them. I have one that starts the OffOnScreenLock task when the screen is locked, one that calls the reconnect task when the screen is unlocked and one that does call reconnect every 45min
View attachment connectionTasks.zip
experiment with it^^
EDIT:
I also set tasker up to enable and disable GPS automatically (when maps or navigation start it enables GPS, on close it disables it again)
It's fun to play around^^
ragin said:
Hardcore made a thread on how to conserve battery life by disabling hsdpa. You can search for it. It has helped me a lot.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
it's here
Thomasen76 said:
I'm using "superpower" from the market and I will install tasker to see if there is new options
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I using Super Power long time too (although i have 3000 mAh battery ), and i have battry life about 4-5 days on normal using, and 2-3 days by heavy using SGS.
I ask, after your testing, if you can make comparision battery life, using Super Power and Tasker, wich is better ?
Thank you in advance
Regards
Same here. Using Super Power some months ago, but now I'm curious about Tasker.
Wonder if it's better thar Super Power. Anyone can confirm that?
diN0pt said:
Same here. Using Super Power some months ago, but now I'm curious about Tasker.
Wonder if it's better thar Super Power. Anyone can confirm that?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I just took a small look at super power. I found nothing you can't do with (except the 2g/3g toggling but I did not try that) tasker. The difference is, that you have to set up your own tasks and functions and rules. you can also create widgets and use variables to alter the way your own task works. If you have some programming skills you will probably love it, otherwise it's lots of potential left unused. (like loops, if/else statements)
You can read up on it over at lifehacker.com
I agree of course. Then again if you are a developer might as well completely roll your own
Tasker is nice if you know how to use it. Doesn't do all the things SuperPower can do, but can do a lot of thing (though less on 2.3, I think ? Not sure).
Gotta decide what's your own cup of tea. Apps like SuperPower (and Juice Defender, and a number of others ones) try to make your life easier, while with apps like Tasker (and the right plugins, of course) you can make your own rules. It's often more difficult than it sounds, though!

Androids energy efficiency?

Uhh, I cannot post this in development as I am still a newby :-(
However:
Hello,
I came from Symbian (Nokia C7-00) and liked the phone very much. Everything worked the way it should. (I was especially interested in office functionality.)
Now I bought a Galaxy Note and I really love the hardware.
But I discovered that it uses much energy and it doesn't like to sleep as often as it could. (I already returned to Android GB, which gives a better experience, but there still is room for improvement.)
1. Sometimes even though the phone simply lies around and does nothing, the last app that I forgot to close is hindering the CPU from sleeping. Why? The is no need.
2. At night I am used to turn the phone into flight mode. However I found out that this isn't the best thing for Android. In the morning, when the email app goes to push phase, the phone leaves sleep mode and seems to excitedly wait for the flight mode to get switched off. This uses *quite* a bit of battery!
These things seem strange to me. My impression is that Android is not really optimised for cell phones. If the screen is off, there is no need for CPU time, doesn't it? There is nothing urgent to do; everything could be done slowly; no hurry.
I guess the battery could last *much* longer if this would be improved.
Greetings,
corcov
corcovo said:
Uhh, I cannot post this in development as I am still a newby :-(
However:
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Which is handy, because this thread has nothing to do with development and thus saved you from some abuse!
Regards,
Dave
Sent from my GT-N7000 using Tapatalk 2
But I already know how to click the "thanks" button
corcovo said:
But I already know how to click the "thanks" button
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Doesn't matter.
Development, if you did not create IT, then it does not belong in development. Remember that. Otherwise you will get flamed.
Android is a mobile OS, so of course it is optimised for smart phones - not ordinary cell phones. Android acts like a computer and, if you keep a computer running Crysis 2 for example, it would burn more power than a computer just playing some music off of iTunes.
In terms of improving your battery, check your brightness. You can download widgets to adjust the brightness right from the home screens. I use these to set my brightness to its lowest whilst at home (perfectly adequate for night and indoor use away from sunlight) and turn it onto automatic when I go outside. This has saved my a bunch of battery.
If you are running a stock Samsung ROM, turn on power saving mode. I always leave it on and, frankly, I have no idea as to what it actually does. I haven't noticed a performance drop in the slightest, but if it saves a bit of battery it is worth it. Also, you could try Juice Defender or some other battery saving apps which work for some people - others not.
Finally, ensure you haven't left GPS, Bluetooth or WiFi on when not needed. Try downloading CPU Spy to check your phone deep sleeps, yet mine even without it ever deep sleeping gets around 16 hours of battery life which is still the best I have ever gotten on a smart phone. Bettery Battery Stats can show you wake-locks (apps that are keeping your phone active) also.
Brad387 said:
Android is a mobile OS, so of course it is optimised for smart phones - not ordinary cell phones.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I see. Well it might be a nice feature if one could add an "now be a cell phone"-option for energy enhancement, which means: if screen if off, sleep.
c.
corcovo said:
1. Sometimes even though the phone simply lies around and does nothing, the last app that I forgot to close is hindering the CPU from sleeping. Why? The is no need.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There are some legitimate needs for keeping the CPU from sleeping for a short period of time - such as finishing a sync operation (otherwise, the radio power spent beginning the sync is wasted). Unfortunately, some poorly written applications (Facebook for example) abuse the wakelock mechanisms and hold wakelocks when it is not justified.
2. At night I am used to turn the phone into flight mode. However I found out that this isn't the best thing for Android. In the morning, when the email app goes to push phase, the phone leaves sleep mode and seems to excitedly wait for the flight mode to get switched off. This uses *quite* a bit of battery!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is not something I have ever encountered myself. "push" relies on the server to trigger something - in airplane mode, this trigger can't happen.
These things seem strange to me. My impression is that Android is not really optimised for cell phones. If the screen is off, there is no need for CPU time, doesn't it? There is nothing urgent to do; everything could be done slowly; no hurry.
I guess the battery could last *much* longer if this would be improved.
Greetings,
corcov
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Android is well optimized for cell phones - However, it assumes that third-party applications follow Google's recommendations for power management. Unfortunately, many of them do not. The number of IM applications which choose to use their own proprietary and poorly optimized network protocols (such as Skype, it's atrocious) as opposed to Google C2DM (optimized and efficient) is astonishing.
An interesting note was that I believe much of the focus at Google I/O was on reminding app developers that they need to play nice with the system and other apps.
There are some cases where there are device-specific nonoptimalities. Compared to most Nexus devices, Exynos devices have an absurdly long time to resume from wake (1000 milliseconds), and during that resume cycle CPU frequency is locked to 800 MHz and cpuidle is disabled. This is one of the #1 causes of power drain on our device. This is also exclusively a Samsung kernel/hardware architecture problem that does not affect the Nexus S (similar CPU, but completely different modem interface) or the Galaxy Nexus (different CPU/modem interface).
In the case of our device, the modem is hung off of the CPU on a USB bus - this makes for very long resume times.
Here are obvious reasons the CPU should occasionally turn on when the screen is off:
1) MP3 playback in the background
2) Handling of background syncs - e.g. when an email or Google Talk IM comes in, wake the CPU, handle it, and pop a notification sound, then go back to sleep. Normally, this means the CPU sleeps while waiting for an interrupt from the WLAN chipset or the cellular radio. Unfortunately, some apps drive incoming data to the device far too frequently. (See my above rant about Skype's network protocols being crap compared to Google's C2DM protocol.)
3) Handling of scheduled wakeups (alarms, calendar events, etc) - these are rare and almost never consume power
Most power drain is from item 2, with third-party apps frequently behaving extremely poorly compared to Google's own application suite and sync protocols.
Now this an extensive answer which is very informative and helpful for me since insights are always soothing. Love it. Thanks!
not much to add after Entropy, but if you feel the need to get some control over battery usage you could try betterbatterystats app (and the thread) to identify battery eaters, besides that, there are few apps to check what is going on with your system when it sleeps:
- CPU Spy to show cpu states time
- Autorun Manager or Autostarts to disable triggers causing apps like FB to run without reason (those which you will find with betterbatterystats)
- Battery Monitor Widget, to check battery current consumption (mA) - this app is generally not recommended, because Note's hardware does not report the actual current, so the readings are highly estimated and because when poorly configured it can drain your battery faster, BUT otoh with refresh rate set at 5 minutes or more, it can give you some approximate orientation on how much battery you lose (better than counting %/hour by yourself) at negligible battery usage
- also, if you feel the need to disable net and sync during night, you could automate it using "lama", which is free, and in my experience does not eat much battery by itself
- and last but not least, avoid taskillers, those apps may have adverse effect, i.e. self restarting apps (by the triggers mentioned above), will get killed then restarted and so on and so on, leading to much higher battery drain

[Solved]Samsung Galaxy S5 battery drain so instantly!

Battery Saving Tips
1. Keeping mobile data (i.e., 4G or 3G) or wifi on all of the time uses battery. Ask yourself if you really need to be notified in real time about every new email, Facebook post, or tweet. If it isn't that important, then keep mobile data and wifi off until you really need it. Although most devices make it easy to toggle wifi off and on, it's a little more inconvenient to toggle mobile data with the stock controls. I like Power Toggles, which is very customizable and easy to use; another popular choice is Widgetsoid.
2. The biggest power drain is usually from the screen. The longer it's on and the brighter it is, the faster your battery drains. Adjust your screen timeout so that it turns off after 30-60 seconds of idle. Turn the brightness down to 50% or less, which is usually more than enough for indoor lighting. Automatic brightness may or may not help save battery--some think that constant sensing and screen adjustment may actually contribute to battery use.
3. Many apps (e.g., Facebook) by default will try to refresh their data on the web at certain intervals. In order to do so, they have to partially wake the device up from sleep, then try to access the web, and then refresh data, all of which uses battery. If you don't need realtime updates, you can typically change to manual refresh in the app's Settings, which prevents the app from waking up the device. For Facebook, all you need to do when you open the app is just swipe down, and your newsfeed will manually refresh to what's current.
4. Google Currents is notorious for being a memory and battery hog. Many people have reported that battery life improved significantly after changing its refresh setting to manual and/or disabling Google Currents completely. (Update 7/2014: Google Currents has since been replaced by Google Play Newsstand, which manages memory much more efficiently, without the same battery drain.)
5. Along the same lines, consider turning off the device's Background Sync. You can find the switch to turn it on or off under Settings/Accounts/Google, but it's easier to use the stock Power Control toggle or the better Power Toggles or Widgetsoid apps. Turning off Background Sync means the device is spending less time and energy syncing your Google account. If Background Sync is off, you can always manually refresh any of the Google apps within their respective menus.
6. Some apps partially wake a device up from sleep (called a "wake lock") numerous times a day to do things like trying to check the web for data updates as well as reporting location data. Install an app to detect wake locks like Wake Lock Detector. Let it run for the better part of a day, then open it and find out what apps are responsible for the most wake locks. (Update 7/2014: KitKat no longer allows apps like this to report wakelocks unless your rooted.)
7. #6 is how I discovered that Google Maps was burning up a fair amount of battery due to its Location Reporting (previously for Latitude, now used for Google+). If Location Reporting is turned on, then Maps causes very frequent wake locks to check location and report it. I don't think Latitude was that popular--I certainly didn't use it, because I don't really want other people to know exactly where I am, so I turn off Location Reporting by opening Maps, tapping Settings/Google Location Settings, and turning off Location Reporting. Note that this does not affect the ability of your apps to use your location to refine searches, for example.
8. Widgets are definitely a cool feature that makes Android unique, but some of them also contribute to battery drain--specifically the ones that need to access the web to update their information (think weather widgets). Review your widget use and remove the ones you really don't use.
9. Live wallpapers, another feature that distinguishes Android, can also use up power like crazy--typically the ones that are very graphics/animation intensive, or the ones that also access the web for information like weather. Use static wallpapers instead, but if they're too boring.
10. Vibrate uses a lot of power. Do you really need your phone to ring and vibrate at the same time? Do you really need the haptic feedback when you're typing (especially if you're using Swype-style gesture typing)? Turn off vibrate.
11. GPS is another big power-sucker. For most location-based apps, using Google Location Services (based on the wifi hotspot's MAC address or by triangulating your nearest cell towers) is enough, since it generally locates you accurately within about 100 meters. Use GPS only if you need a more precise location, like if you're driving and using Navigation. Otherwise, turn off GPS by changing the setting to "Battery Saving."
12. You never know what kinds of processes the bloatware on your device might be responsible for, but they might be contributing to battery use as well. Go to Settings/Apps/All Apps, go through the list, and disable any bloatware apps that you don't need. Be cautious that you don't disable an important system app--if you aren't sure, just post a question in one of the AC Forums, and someone is bound to know.
13. Understand how Android utilizes RAM, and resist the urge to use task killers. To understand how things work, read this article by the esteemed Jerry Hildenbrand here, as well as this guide by Ambassador extraordinaire Golfdriver97. Apps that you kill manually will often restart on their own, which in itself takes a little bit of CPU and battery power--so if it's happening hundreds of times a day, it can become significant. The main reason to use a task killer is if there is some runaway process that you know is bogging the system down and won't shut down on its own. It might still restart on its own--if the cycle keeps happening, it's probably a problem with the app, which should be uninstalled or disabled.
14. Poor cell reception kills battery, because the radio is working overtime to try to establish the connection. If you know you're going to be in an area of poor reception for a while, consider turning on Airplane Mode to temporarily shut off your cell radio. You can get some idea of how much time you're spending in an area of poor signal by going to Settings/Battery, tapping Cell Standby (if it's there), and seeing if it says how much time without signal there was.
15. If none of the above tips are helping, then try wiping the cache partition, which is the portion of memory where Android stores a lot of temporary data. It's a little different from clearing the cache of individual apps, because the cache partition also stores a lot of temporary data used by the system. You need to access your device's recovery menu in order to wipe the cache partition, and this process varies with the device, so the best way to learn how to do it is to do a web search for "wipe cache partition [your device name]."
Not really a fan of threads like this, basically they say turn the cool features of your phone off to save it's battery? Yes I still read them in case someone comes up with something interesting or innovative but generally all the same don't use some of the best features of your phone.
We're not iPhone users buy spare battery.
Sent from my SM-G900F using XDA Free mobile app
Try a custom kernel
So is there a fix for battery drain? i keep reading all these threads about basically turning off everything no your phone. my problem is i used to have everything on my phone on and still was a good 50% battery life left at the end of the day. this was with heavy use as well. a lot internet surfing, youtube, gaming, location was turned on. I was loving my battery life. Now, seemingly over night my battery is horrible. i cannot make it to the end of the day with almost no use, i now have to charge it half way through the day to get it to last me until 9 oclock or so. my battery is now at 70-80% after a couple hours with absolutely no use. any idea or fix for what has caused this sudden drain of my battery?
Personally I use apps that close apps that automatically (autorun pro is my favourite) start block ad's etc I get a good days usage from mine.
It's a compromise but I carry a spare battery as well
Sent from my SM-G900F using XDA Free mobile app
So I found out my issue was my email app. I cleared the data on it and now I'm back to having a 50% battery left at the end of a day with heavy use.
---------- Post added at 08:36 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:28 PM ----------
So I found out my issue was my email app. I cleared the data on it and now I'm back to having a 50% battery left at the end of a day with heavy use.
Turning off all features that make a phone "smart" is like buying a luxury Mercedes and ignore all those functions and use it as if it's a cheap Chinese car! If I want to use my phone just for SMS and Call why not buy a Nokia 1100 and buy a tablet to check my emails, viber and all other apps!
I bought a Galaxy S5 to utilize those functions. Anyway, previously my phone used to drain its battery in 6 hours! by adjusting my setting to the following I could increase the battery life to 14 hours! (I know it is still low but way better than 6 hours!)
1. Decrease the BRIGHTNESS as low as possible. For casual use we do not need a bright screen! whenever you wanna check an important photo you may increase the brightness temporary. (only by this you can have extra 2 hours or more)
2. Turn off unnecessary syncs, I do not need to have my contacts synced with 10 servers! Allow your phone to sync them with only one account ( I did it for Google only and turned off Samsung acc. dropbox, ChatOn and ...)
3. Do not add so many email accounts to your phone! Just add those you use frequently ( I have 5 emails and only 2 of them are vital for me!)
4. Set your location to use wifi only, and turn your GPS on only when you want to have a turn-by-turn navigation ( built in GPS can drain you battery in less than 1 hour!)
5. Turn off Push notifications for Games. ( you do not miss anything if you attend to your games 1 hour late!)
6. Uninstall those communication apps that are not necessary, you do not need to have BBM, Viber, Line, Whatsapp, Telegram, Hulu, Wechat and ... Keep those that you use frequently (In my case I kept Viber and Whatsapp only)
7. Uninstall any Anti-virus app! The likelihood of getting malware or virus if you install apps from Google Store is almost zero, so you only allocate some RAM to an useless app for doing nothing! If you wanna have any I recommend "360 Security" as I learned it uses only 6 mb of RAM and you can turn off real time protection.
By doing the above things I could get 8 hours extra from my phone!
It also a good idea to check which apps 'Autorun' when your phone restarts. SD Maid (maybe PRO version) has an AppControl option that lets you toggle autorun on or off.

[HOW-TO][NEWBIE GUIDE] Optimize & proper set up your Galaxy S6 Edge (stock firmware)

[HOW-TO][NEWBIE GUIDE] Optimize & proper set up your Galaxy S6 Edge (stock firmware)
As I've read across this forum and on several specific threads related to usage, battery life and so on, as well as discussing with some of my friends having a S6 or S6 Edge, I realized that most of the people don't really know how to properly set up their phones or how to use them efficiently.
OK, I get it, this is a fancy phone, not every owner is a developer or tech guy so it might be that many choose it based on the looks and don't really know how to optimize it...then they start complaining about different things like lag or battery drain not knowing that most of the problems are caused by miss-usage or improper setup. Of course there are bugs too, nothing is perfect. Of course there are many firmwares available and some are market or carrier dependent so some features or settings might be missing from some of them or even work differently.
What I will try here is to provide some guidelines and tips for setting up various things on the phone in order to maximize it's battery life and for a better usage. I will also make some recommendations based on my experience, tests and usage that might not apply to everyone. Use common sense and logic to apply similar settings in your particular case. Don't come screaming that you made that or that and now something is not working.
And YES, I know there are similar guides like this posted over the Internet and I'll probably make similar recommendations here too but I couldn't find such a guide here on XDA that is particular to this phone (if there is a better one than you might as well ignore mine).
All these things I'll describe below are applicable to any STOCK, NON-ROOTED 5.1.1 firmware and won't break warranty or your phone.
Now that was a long (and maybe unneeded introduction) but I thought to write this for everyone...let's start.
Model No.: SM-G925F
Android: 5.1.1 r2 (LMY47X)
Baseband: G925FXXU2QOI7
Kernel: 3.10.61-5672012
Build date: Fri Sept 4 2015
Carrier: Orange RO
DISPLAY
First I would like to say some words about the display. We have a great display, high resolution and it is most likely the biggest battery drain factor. There are two major things about it that you should keep in mind and will help you to get a better battery:
1. It's AMOLED...that means that the black pixels on it will consume no power because are not lit. Studies showed that even if not completely black, AMOLED displays use less energy if the displayed picture is darker compared to a lighter one.
2. The brightness level. Most people use it on "auto" or high level settings and this will be a major drain factor.
You can drastically lower the battery drain caused by your screen by selecting as much as possible dark (black) backgrounds and/or themes. There are some nice ones available in the Theme Store (my favorite is the Dalkomm Coffee Theme), that make most screens and menus dark/black. Also choosing a dark wallpaper for lockscreen/homescreens will help.
Don't use screen brightness at maximum...never. You don't need that in 99% of the cases. Also you won't probably need the automatic setting either since most of the people are spending most of the time indoors (either at work or home). A low manual setting will be fine most of the time, I have it set up at about 20% and only need a brighter one when going out. At that time I just tap on "auto" and it'll increase based on ambient light level. So you don't even need to tweak it alot every time. Find a low manual setting that's fine for your eyes and just tap on "auto" when you go out in sunlight.
CONNECTIVITY
Another battery drain factor is your multiple connection/radios features. In most cases you use just several: Mobile Data, WiFi, GPS/location and BT (when applicable). That means you should turn off all the others you don't use...NFC or BT (when not connected to a headset or car-kit or not listening to music). I don't listen to music and don't have a BT headset so I mostly not using BT (just when I'm in my car) and almost never use NFC so I have both disabled and I enable them only when needed via the Quick Settings.
WiFi
WiFi should also be properly setup otherwise it'll have impact on battery. It was incorrectly assumed or considered that keeping WiFi on all the time will drain battery faster. That was proven in different tests that's not true and in fact keeping WiFi on all the time won't make a big difference and in some cases was even better than to turn it off/on. I think is something similar with the car engines that suck more fuel when started that when running at idle. The major power drain is not when WiFi is running while is not connected to any network, but when the WiFi radio is powered up. When is on and not connected, it's going into a lower power state so the battery consumption is negligible.
I had a case with one of my friends that had WiFi setup to turn off when display was off...wrong choice, he got about 30% battery drain overnight because instead of having it connected to his home WiFi, the phone was using his 4G/LTE connection to make all the background sync/updates. That was eating his battery and also his data plan. After setting WiFi to "always" his overnight drain lowered to as little as 2-3%.
In some regions/carriers there are 2 other settings that were proven to help battery life: WiFi calling and VoLTE. I don't have either of them but based on different articles and what people say, they surely help with that so don't forget to turn them off if you don't use these features.
You might also want to try turning off "Always allows scanning" and "Smart network switch". I have the second turned off but I keep on the first one. Basically the first option tell the Location service to use WiFi for locating the device even if WiFi is switched off (by the on/off switch) so that means the radio is active. Second option should make you switch faster from WiFi to mobile data in case the WiFi signal is not strong enough or fluctuating. In my country there are plenty of WiFi hot-spots and they have mostly good connections so I don't use this feature.
GPS
Well here the opinions are split but I am currently having it ON all the time and Location Service is set to "high accuracy". I personally haven't noticed such a major difference with or without it so I preferred to let it on as it is used by many apps or services. You can try to set Location to "wifi and cell only" but don't think that will bring you a major benefit.
RUNNING APPS/PROCESSES
Well this is an important one. I've initially started to turn off/disable/uninstall everything I don't need or use. This can be done mostly from the Settings - Applications - Application Manager or if you want to go further, you can install Package Disabler Pro from PlayStore, about which I'll detail later.
Now why we should do that? There are lots of apps, processes and background services running on our devices that take care about all the things we do on the device. The problem is that ALL are using resources: processor time, memory, space and so on. In the end these are translated for a user in LAG or battery drain. Of course we cannot kill everything and I learned long time ago that installing Task or memory managers on Android it's the worst thing you can do. Android it's smart enough to take care better about it's resources and processes (at least to a certain point) and keep killing a certain process won't give you more battery life but will eat more of it in the end,
What I wanted to say is you shouldn't start disabling, killing or blocking everything cause you might end up with an unstable or not properly working phone (case in which only a factory reset might help). First of all look at the ALL tab in Application Manager and try to identify what you don't need or use. For example I'm certainly not using some things like: music, books, news feeds, Samsung's keyboard (I use SwiftKey), the TouchWiz launcher (I use Nova), health services or whatever, S-Voice, S-Health, S-Finder, I don't have any smartwatches so I don't use any Gear processes, fancy device wake-up functions (like wave gestures) or animated wallpapers either.
So after all considerations above, you decided that you can safely disable some apps/processes. All good but you'll quickly learn that some of them cannot be disabled via Application Manager (the "disable" button is grayed out). Now what? Well here comes handy that Package Disabler Pro that I've told you about in the beginning. That app is able to disable ANY apps/processes on your phone, including those that are protected and cannot be disabled via the normal way (and yes it can do that without being rooted). The downside of it is that you must be careful what you choose to disable not to have something that is needed for the normal functionality or the apps you're currently using. The app has also a backup/restore function (via an xml file) for saving the list with apps you have disabled and easily import them back after a factory reset for ex. I've added to this thread my list of disabled apps as it is exported by the application (just unzip and copy the file on the root of your internal memory and it can then be imported in the Package Disabler app)
Another important thing is WHAT apps you're using. I know that socializing and social networking are some of today's most trendy things but keep in mind that some of the apps used for that are not so well made. An example could be the Facebook app/messenger which are reported to drain alot of battery. RSS feeds, news feeds, multiple weather apps or widgets, all contribute to battery drain and lag. Don't install several apps/widgets for the same purpose (like several calendar apps or weather apps). Each will take resources and won't have an added value. Want to use another weather app/widget than the one coming with the phone? Fine, install it...but don't forget to uninstall/disable the built in one or others that do the same thing. Same goes for keyboard for ex; I use SwiftKey for years and got used with it. For me it's better than any keyboard that Samsung might put on the device, therefore I've disabled the standard Samsung keyboard. I also don't like TouchWiz launcher and use Nova that offers me much more flexibility so...I've disabled both the "easy" and "regular" TouchWiz launchers. I went to the point that I've even disabled the different embedded font types, you have 5 of them and I doubt someone uses more than one at a time.
So as you all can see it's not only a matter of setup but also a matter of usage. When you have a device you have to use it properly otherwise it'll not perform as you expect. Imagine a car that has a manufacturer fuel consumption value of 5.5 liters/100 Km....that's under certain conditions not on ANY type of driving. Fly with 200+ km/hr on a highway and I'll guarantee you won't have 5.5 liters/100 km consumption. That doesn't mean the manufacturer has lied or mislead you. Same goes with a phone, if you don't know how to use it and optimize it, you'll have a bad experience.
I work in the IT industry for years and I mostly laugh when I hear someone advising somebody to reinstall the operating system to solve a problem. Same goes for "factory reset" for a phone. Yes, this method works some times but that won't solve the root cause of an issues if you're using it the same way. After several days it'll perform as bad as before and you'll just say that "factory reset" did nothing. Of course it didn't...YOU have to do something different, not the phone.
Now I apologize for the long post and I do hope that at least some will learn to better manage their devices and to understand what they're doing not just running certain commands or procedures blind. Both S6 and S6e are great devices but we should learn how to properly use them in order to benefit the most from them...otherwise we just come here asking for help or mumbling about what crap devices they are.
Thank you, I will check to see if I get an improvement on the standby battery drain.
Your part about not setting the screen to Auto is flawed. You mention that we are mostly indoors, and you don't need a brighter screen for that. Auto mode also knows that and sets the brightness lower. It already does automatically what you do manually.
Tnx. And yes....keeping screen at 20% brightness and just switching to auto when in outdoors works great for the battery life.
ArmedandDangerous said:
Your part about not setting the screen to Auto is flawed. You mention that we are mostly indoors, and you don't need a brighter screen for that. Auto mode also knows that and sets the brightness lower. It already does automatically what you do manually.
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Not quite, I've tested it. If you're on "auto" and use a lower setting on the slidebar, in a dark room the screen is too dark, you'll have to turn off "auto" and the manual brighteness set on the same level will be much higher than on auto.
Now if you have such good eyes and you're able to use "auto" in all cases with the slider at 20% that's good for you...unfortunately I am not so that's why I use it as I've described. The point is that "auto" mode consumes MORE battery regardless of how it's set, than a lower 'manual' mode. So I preffer to have it like this than to use auto all the time.
Thanks for the awesome guide. I'll start disabling some useless processes and see how my battery life is working. Anyway without much editing the battery of S6Edge is pretty good. I can use it a whole day and still 19% remaining. As a comparison I wasn't able to do it with my S3 having to recharge it 2 or even 3 times at day.
Again, thanks for the guide!
Enviado desde mi SGS6e mediante Tapatalk

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