Database Users

What sucks YOUR battery?

I have epic 4g now for a week. Its still not activated, just sits at home connected to wifi - while I use touch pro2, awaiting sero plus on oct 1st.
There is push sync with hotmail and google. I get home and play almost constantly with the phone from 5 to 11pm - testing new apps/games, reading twitter etc - before I get low battery warning.
My biggest surprise was that the SCREEN (supposedly high efficency AMOLED) is draining more than 40% of the battery! Not the wifi, not the cpu or whatever else is inside. This is with default power managment settings.
What numbers do you guys get in the end of the day? What are you using - 3g,4g,wifi,gps,apps?
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA App

Sometimes mine goes as high as 72%, and that's the screen alone, and i have the brightness down all the way to zero (and even at zero it's still plenty viewable).

Definitely the screen is the biggest battery drainer. I've NEVER seen anything higher usage than the Display. Its usually in the 60-80% of battery usage.
And I keep the power to the lowest setting on a daily basis.

The screen is always the biggest offender. Usually in the 70%+ range with brightness all he way down. The samoled talk is just marketing bs. Maybe better performance when the screen is black. Unfortunately all black backgrounds happen to be the minority on websites, applications etc.

Display used to be the main offender on my phone (60-70%) but since I upgraded to DI07, Cell Standby is crushing my battery. The airplane toggle doesn't do ****, had to buy a cable so I can plug it in at work just so at the end of an 8hr day I have more than 30% battery left even with JuiceDefender running. Getting pretty frustrated.

kidstechno said:
Display used to be the main offender on my phone (60-70%) but since I upgraded to DI07, Cell Standby is crushing my battery. The airplane toggle doesn't do ****, had to buy a cable so I can plug it in at work just so at the end of an 8hr day I have more than 30% battery left even with JuiceDefender running. Getting pretty frustrated.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have this exact same issue. Cell standby is killing my battery. Right now I have 18% time without signal... it has been as high as 25% before. I never had this issue before DI07.

Cell Standby is 41%, with Display at 32%, time without signal is a whopping 50%, and I get near-full to full bars at work and about 2-3 at home.

my cell standby was over 50% after the update. I went in and changed my call setting>System select and chose "sprint only" which will not allow the phone to roam, but it got rid of this battery drain. I have a lot more battery now. But i will have to turn it back whenever i loose service. There's got to be a better way to avoid this thing always looking for the GSM towers when it's a SPRINT PHONE and should for CDMA unless there's no signal. I don't understand how they allow such a dumb issue to haunt tihs phone.

My current numbers:
Cell Standby: 34%
Phone idle: 25%
Display: 17%
Android System: 10%
Email: 5%
Maps: 3%
Dialer: 2%
Wi-fi: 2%
Android OS: 2%
Cell standby has gone up for me since the update, but my last charge was actually the first time I saw any significant "time without signal", and I think that was because I had 4G turned on all day. I have it turned off now and that number is back to 0%.
I'm learning some tricks to keep the battery charged on this thing. Yesterday I managed to go all day from waking up to going to sleep without charging (around 18 hours, though I rebooted at one point so I'm not sure the actual total) and I still had about 1/5 of my battery gauge left.
I've found wi-fi makes a HUGE difference. I have wi-fi both at home and at work, and that's probably 80% of an average day for me. Wi-fi drains the battery *much* less than 3G.
I have my screen turned down not to 0, but probably 2 ticks over that. I use the notification bar swipe to turn it up or down, so I don't know exactly, I just set it to as dim as I'm comfortable with in any situation. Power mode and auto-brightness are turned off.
I switched my background from the default to one that's very dark. I'm convinced that makes a big difference.
I do use a task killer, but I leave my email running, along with whatever else seems like it should be kept running.
Obviously when you look at percentages, there's always going to be *something* at the top of the list, so it's pointless to constantly try to knock whatever's #1 down to the bottom. Different people use their phones differently, so if someone else has their display at the top, it just means they're looking at it a lot and maybe have it too bright. But no matter what you do, something's always going to have a higher percentage than anything else.

badasscat said:
My current numbers:
Cell Standby: 34%
Phone idle: 25%
Display: 17%
Android System: 10%
Email: 5%
Maps: 3%
Dialer: 2%
Wi-fi: 2%
Android OS: 2%
Cell standby has gone up for me since the update, but my last charge was actually the first time I saw any significant "time without signal", and I think that was because I had 4G turned on all day. I have it turned off now and that number is back to 0%.
I'm learning some tricks to keep the battery charged on this thing. Yesterday I managed to go all day from waking up to going to sleep without charging (around 18 hours, though I rebooted at one point so I'm not sure the actual total) and I still had about 1/5 of my battery gauge left.
I've found wi-fi makes a HUGE difference. I have wi-fi both at home and at work, and that's probably 80% of an average day for me. Wi-fi drains the battery *much* less than 3G.
I have my screen turned down not to 0, but probably 2 ticks over that. I use the notification bar swipe to turn it up or down, so I don't know exactly, I just set it to as dim as I'm comfortable with in any situation. Power mode and auto-brightness are turned off.
I switched my background from the default to one that's very dark. I'm convinced that makes a big difference.
I do use a task killer, but I leave my email running, along with whatever else seems like it should be kept running.
Obviously when you look at percentages, there's always going to be *something* at the top of the list, so it's pointless to constantly try to knock whatever's #1 down to the bottom. Different people use their phones differently, so if someone else has their display at the top, it just means they're looking at it a lot and maybe have it too bright. But no matter what you do, something's always going to have a higher percentage than anything else.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
How are you able to control the brightness with the notification swipe? I've made it brighter but not dimmer.
Sent from my SPH-D700

So for all the people that have their phone on the lowest brightness, but get a Display usage >50%...are you using your phone that much?
Because I have my display on auto, and my Display usage is a 32%, and that is still enough for it to be #1 on my battery use list.

First, let me get the immature response out of the way: "What sucks my battery? Your MOM!"
Now that that's out of my system, my battery drain is generally caused by the same things as everyone else: screen and TWS. Although I mitigate TWS by using the airplane mode trick which seems to still work for me.

Iilex said:
How are you able to control the brightness with the notification swipe? I've made it brighter but not dimmer.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I dunno, I just do. The way the thing works is a little tricky, it seems like it's absolute rather than relative, meaning if your display is already on the dim side, you need to start with your finger way over to the left to take it down the last few ticks. There's only so dim you can make it - the lowest brightness setting would look like a 4 or 5 year old phone at its brightest. That's true regardless of how you dim it. So you may just have it pretty dim and because of the way the notification bar thing works, when you put your finger in the middle, you're making it brighter without meaning to. But if you slide all the way to the left, it'll be as dim as you can make it.

jemarent said:
my cell standby was over 50% after the update. I went in and changed my call setting>System select and chose "sprint only" which will not allow the phone to roam, but it got rid of this battery drain. I have a lot more battery now. But i will have to turn it back whenever i loose service. There's got to be a better way to avoid this thing always looking for the GSM towers when it's a SPRINT PHONE and should for CDMA unless there's no signal. I don't understand how they allow such a dumb issue to haunt tihs phone.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
+1 to this, after I changed this setting my time without signal is about 3% before it was up in the 50's. Good tip right there
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA App

I guess this is a commom issue... Unless epics hardware is sooo optimized and only sips power ;-)
Does anybody have data from other android phones - nexus, droids...?
Sent from my SPH-D700 using Tapatalk

3-4 hours of talk time takes up 70% of my use during a 10-16 hour usage. Second would be my screen.

My screen is 79% and cell standby only 7%
My screen is all the way down, even tho with the new update I notice my screen got dimmer than before.
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA App

Does power saving mode really save juice?

The way that I understand power saving mode is that it saves juice by changing backlight based on what is on the screen. However in order to do this it.means cpu would be constantly used. So does power saving mode really save juice? Is the amount of battery saved by changing backlight more than the battery used by constant cpu usage?

That's a good question but I highly doubt that they would add the feature if they didn't test that it actually saved power. But, stranger things have happened.

kangxi said:
That's a good question but I highly doubt that they would add the feature if they didn't test that it actually saved power. But, stranger things have happened.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I assume you aren't basing that statement on recent events of failed quality control on high-end phones

No, it does not.

lemarg said:
No, it does not.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
And this is based on???

From what I have read, having power saving mode on is another process the cpu has to worry about therefore possibly causing more battery drain. Personally I have disabled power saving mode and auto brightness and have experienced a slight improvement in battery life. I use the slide on taskbar feature to adjust brightness manually.

I have both Power Saving Mode and Automatic Brightness on, 3G off, and I get over 40 hours in normal use! I hope that tells you these settings don't drain the battery and you shouldn't worry about having them turned on.
It is NOT putting an undue burden on the cpu, and small amounts of CPU usage have MUCH less effect than powering the screen.

steel_3d said:
I have both Power Saving Mode and Automatic Brightness on, 3G off, and I get over 40 hours in normal use! I hope that tells you these settings don't drain the battery and you shouldn't worry about having them turned on.
It is NOT putting an undue burden on the cpu, and small amounts of CPU usage have MUCH less effect than powering the screen.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have to ask what is normal use for you? Cant imagine getting 40 hrs on any device besides a BBerry.
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App

I find that the 'auto settings' takes away from a session - screen dimming and back again. Swipe to adjust brightness seems to work fine. As far as I'm concerned, the Vibrant is running normal when usage puts Screen at 83% or so.. After all, we bought it for the display to begin with

kangxi said:
That's a good question but I highly doubt that they would add the feature if they didn't test that it actually saved power. But, stranger things have happened.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
They released the phone without doing adaquate testing on the GPS.
HTC released the G2 without turning it upside down & seeing the hinge go a flyin.
Just because they threw a feature in doesn't mean that it's been tested.
We're the testers

intruda119 said:
I have to ask what is normal use for you? Cant imagine getting 40 hrs on any device besides a BBerry.
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
He keeps is 3G off, thats what's saving the battery. That and he probably was sleeping for 16+ of those 40 hours.

Just an FYI, I have been running my phone on automatic brightness + power saving mode for the past few days as opposed to my usual lowest brightness + no power saving mode; and usually I would get inbetween 3.5-4 hours of screen time (depending on what I did) but now I am getting 4-4.5 hours (same usage). Obviously the automatic brightness does not improve battery life over lowest brightness all the time, so power saving mode must be doing something right -- something aside from just lowering screen brightness as needed.

That is a feature of 2.1 that is intended to help people with LED backlit screens by turning off LEDs in areas that are black. We have SAMOLEDS, which are lit by pixel, and we get battery battery life by using black themes. That is why Fusion 1.1 is nearly all black, and gets insane battery life.

steel_3d said:
I have both Power Saving Mode and Automatic Brightness on, 3G off, and I get over 40 hours in normal use! I hope that tells you these settings don't drain the battery and you shouldn't worry about having them turned on.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Actually, that doesn't tell us anything. What is your battery life like with Power Saving and Auto Brightness off?

What's the best battery settings for stock rom?

I keep seeing all these threads about how people are getting rediculous hours on 1 charge, but mostly all the post I see are people with rooted phones. What are the best ways to increase battery live on a epic with stock rom?

Those crazy battery life u see is ppl putting their phone in airplane mode and with very limited use. They don't mean anything. But some tips to improve batt life are keep screen brightness down, turn off 4g when not in use, maybe use juice defender to automatically turn off 3g whenever the screen is off.
Sent from my Epic 4G

I'm 100% stock, unrooted.
Turned off Auto-Sync
Brightness set to auto
Wifi on, since I'm usually within range of work or home wifi
Swapped Wifi policy to never drop when asleep. (prevents wifi from dropping and going to 3g)
Killed that absolutely stupid DRM process
Activate Airplane mode after initial boot and turn it back off. (Due to Samsung bug)
Have any program that syncs set to sync at 2hr intervals
My battery life with heavy usage will last over 6 hours (games, txts, browsing, app downloading). With moderate usage it usually can go 15 hours (sans app downloading), and with light usage I've pushed it 2 days (games and txts).
Mind you I don't use the browser much since 90% of my day is in front a PC, Mon-Fri.

I'm 100% stock, no root as well.
1.Train your battery!
when I got my phone I did at least 3 full charge/complete discharge cycles
2.I do not use any Task Killers or JuiceDefender (tried and uninstalled for ineffectiveness), I just use built in tool to monitor running programs and kill off the one I do not need. I prefer not to install application that do not have clean exit programmed. I do use JuicePlotter to monitor battery charge/discharge.
3. After each reboot toggle airplane mode on and off(Airplane trick)
4. Go to Menu/Settings/Applications/Running Services and shut down all services that not needed (DRM, MediaHub, etc)
5. Set brightness to minimal possible value (works fine for me), not auto set - when I need it on the street just slide the finger across the status bar and raise the level as needed.
6. All 4G, GPS, Wi-Fi are off and on only when needed. I use Wi-Fi home, 4G at work, rest of the places 3G or whatever is available. My data/sync is always on. Wi-Fi set to never sleep.
7. I have Roaming Guard off since my house in the very poor reception area so it's roaming most of the time but there is wi-fi for data.
8. Use dark background/wallpaper (I use Star Wars light speed jump live wallpaper)
IMO the battery life is depend on the type of use. From my 2 month experience the following battery killer tasks are:
1.Streaming video, music with screen on (will discharge the battery even when plugged in.
1a.Streaming music with screen off.
2. I haven't tried tethering (hot spot mode) but would think it's a killer as well
3. Browsing web, especially over 3G
4. Roaming
5. Game playing.
6. GPS
Obviously you can have a bad (defective) battery, but it's likely less then 1%.
Good luck!

nikon120 - What do you consider moderate? I consider my usage to be moderate, but I can't go 15hrs. Yesterday after fully charging the phone from mid point, my phone completely died after 5hrs, with very light usuage as most of that time I was busy. Today with light to moderate usage, my phone is indicating that it needs to be charged at roughly hr 10.
stud_muffler - I'm not familair with this airplane trick you're referring to. Can you enlighten me?
I'm doing most of the things suggested in this post, but I still don't think the battery usage I'm getting is up to par. The battery life on my Epic is much worse then what I was getting on my WinMo TP2, with roughly the same amount of usage.

noreboy said:
stud_muffler - I'm not familair with this airplane trick you're referring to. Can you enlighten me?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
After you reboot the phone press and hold Power button until it buzz.
Menu will appear.
Select and touch Airplane Mode option. It will turn off all radio and show plane icon in the status bar.
wait few seconds and repeat to turn radio on.
that's all.

(QUESTION) What wifi setting are you using?

I'm curious what wifi setting people are using with the new 3.1 update?
Off with screen off
Always on
Always on while charging
Sent via Tapatalk

Off with screen off.
Get tired of notification sounds when not using it.
Also, battery life seems even better with 3.1 - now regularly getting 12 hours per charge.

I have it always on. It doesn't really use much more battery and I like to have IM applications on most of the time. I just tap on the clock on the bottom-right corner and turn airplane mode on when I'm sleeping and turn it off when I awake. Simple and efficient.

Also "always on". WiFi used almost exactly 1% battery life per hour when I left my tablet alone for two days, not going to worry about a 4day "standby" timer

Do you guys turn your tablet off when not in use?

This is my first tablet and not sure about battery life and everything. So I left my tablet on through the night and lost roughly 10% through the night. Not sure if thats normal or not. But if so, I will definitely be turning it off throughout the night or when I won't be using for awhile. But is there a standby mode or something we can put the tablet into?

tu3218 said:
This is my first tablet and not sure about battery life and everything. So I left my tablet on through the night and lost roughly 10% through the night. Not sure if thats normal or not. But if so, I will definitely be turning it off throughout the night or when I won't be using for awhile. But is there a standby mode or something we can put the tablet into?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't turn it off, no. One thing that will save you battery is to turn the airplane mode on when you're not using it.

I just turn off wireless and pwer off screen.

never been off
I never turn my tab off. At night.it will loose. 6 to 8 percent. At night maybe a bit more or less depending on how long its off.
And I use it often thru out the day
Awesome battery life

Haven't turned it off yet. I use it all day and plug it in at night around 20-30%, wake up charged and do it again.

I just turn the screen off overnight while charging; I leave wifi on to synch work emails & calendars. Nearly a decade of smartphone use has gotten me in the dedicated habit of charging everything every night.
Thing to keep in mind, tablets arent Kindles with week+ battery life; keep in the habit of charging it whenever convenient & you won't run out of juice unexpectedly.

I'm in the minority here.
I turn my Tab and Evo off every night, the phone just before bed. It save a bit of batt life and unwanted calls in the middle of the night or any alert tones as I'm a pretty light sleeper. I've also been doing this for probably 7-8 yrs with all my smart phones (Symbian, Win-Mo, Palm, BB and now Android).

Sometimes I turn it off at night, sometimes I just leave it on. It's definitely on ALL day. I haven't really seen it losing much battery if I leave it on overnight, but I don't have it configured to sync frequently. Whenever I notice the battery is getting a little low, I charge it up again -- don't really have a set pattern or routine that I charge it.

Anytime I know I won't be using it for twenty minutes or more, I just shut it down.
Not sure there is a right/wrong, good/bad way to do this, as it's pretty much a personal preference thang!

If I'm not gonna use it for more than a day, sure.
I also turn on airplane mode when I'm reading via Kindle or anything else that doesn't require wifi.
On a semi related note, does anyone else find the screen is too bright if you're in a dark room reading, even if you have brightness on the lowest setting?

So far I never see any difference to turn AIRPLANE MODE on... but anyway some people believe so... let say that work... hu hu hu
well
to answer I never turn off my tablet, neither turn off the wifi
I try to not use AUTO brightness, set brightness to medium.
I will turn it off... well... actually I do not.
to muqali. on lowest setting? on dark room lowest setting I think it's fine (but I have an antiglare screen... that dim the light)

muqali said:
If I'm not gonna use it for more than a day
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Not use it for more than a day??
That is crazy talk! I'd suffer some serrrrrious withdrawal
On to the question, no, my tablet stays on 24/7. The closest it gets to off is booting into recovery, but then it's right back on.
All my backups, security scans and cloud syncs are scheduled for the wee hours of the morning so wifi stays on at night too. Also, my iconia is my alarm clock, which is very useful for a shift worker who needs different alarms on different days.

only if the battery is low and Im to lazy to go charge it

I only turn my tablet off in order to reboot when it freezes up or gets laggy (maybe once a week). The rest of the time, it's on standby or being used.

I leave it on sometimes, other times I will randomly turn it off. I mean, its not a phone.. no reason it should be on 24/7. I don't even leave my PC on 24/7 - as it saves a lot of electricity to turn it off.
My phone (Droid X) however, stays on 24/7 =P

Yeah, I've been leaving mine on and its been just fine. I notice it turns off wifi or I guess at least disconnects when the screen is off so I'm sure that helps. At nights I guess I can turn airplane mode on and that should help. I'm impressed though with the battery so far.

I always turn it off when done, unless I know I will be using again in a short.

muqali said:
On a semi related note, does anyone else find the screen is too bright if you're in a dark room reading, even if you have brightness on the lowest setting?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I use the Nook app as my eBook reader instead of the Kindle app. The Nook app has a separate brightness control within the app, and it allows me to turn even the white page brightness down to where it's very comfortable to read even in a pitch dark room. The nice thing about this is when I'm done reading and exit the Nook app, the global brightness settings for the tablet are restored so my dark wood wallpaper isn't too dark.
I'm not sure if the Kindle app has its own brightness control or not, but it might be with looking into.

muqali said:
If I'm not gonna use it for more than a day, sure.
I also turn on airplane mode when I'm reading via Kindle or anything else that doesn't require wifi.
On a semi related note, does anyone else find the screen is too bright if you're in a dark room reading, even if you have brightness on the lowest setting?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
yes, I noticed too, it's too damn bright, but not as bright as my phone, on the good side screen comparison between iconia, transformer, zoom and ipad2 the iconia gets praise cuz it's super dark black... you can notice easily (like me) if you're in the dark and look the status bar

I do not. I don't really ever turn mine off actually, except if the battery is at low and I'm out and not able to charge it, but that rarely happens.
I don't turn my PC off either. Turns out it doesn't save as much energy for me vs. time. I'd save roughly $90 a year if I diligently turned my PC and HTPC off...my PC however serves as the file server for everything in my home and I'm also very random in terms of bed times so it would cost me so much time (and maybe some parts issues as well) turning it on and off every time I needed to use it.