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 (Update 7/2014: Google Currents has since been replaced by Google Play Newsstand, which manages memory much more efficiently, without the same battery drain.)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.
Related
Ive been using juice plotter to check on my huge batter drain over the last few days since installing darkstone froyo v2, ive been slowly adding different apps to control the power consumption. I understand all rooted android roms have similar issues, hopefully a combination of these apps will help.
from stock darkstone froyo (ie no power control apps) i was losing 90% of battery in 7 hours. This was with wifi/gps/bluetooth off and not much usage. I also found the phone Stopping at 93% charge when plugged in. To fix this leave it plugged in and turn the phone off for 15 mins. Reboot android and It will have reached the full 100%. I think the android rom I have has issues charging on USB so I disabled the charge on USB in the settings.
Ok here are my personal findings I have on various power saving apps.
APP: JUICE PLOTTER
RATING: 4/5
BATTERY SAVED: N/A
PRICE: FREE from app store
shows a graphical chart of power consumption vs time , good for diagnosing how much extra power draw your activated features have (ie wifi, bluetooth) shows the time these features start and end at also, be it manually started or automatically.
APP: APP KILLER
RATING: 4/5
BATTERY SAVED: 30 - 60 mins on a full battery
PRICE: FREE, Pro upgrade is minimal cost from app store (gives extra features)
I set mine to aggressive killing. this improved my battery slightly, probably increased battery by about 30mins to 1 hr on a full charge. The main thing I like with this app is the automatic, set time, multiple killing of other apps. Unfortunaly i found the app killing not to permenant as some restart again a little while after. This has minimal battery save for my programs but depending what your apps/services are consuming on terms of resources, it can save much more. The auto kill stops the phone from been bogged down, it is much quicker to respond once its stopped other apps and wakes from sleep quicker. This app also shows you a list of all current running apps and services that you can quit, switch to etc. I found stock android to have this sort of task manager feature missing.
APP: SETCPU
RATING: 3.5/5
PRICE: free on XDA (donation recommended ) small price from app store.
BATTERY SAVE: about 1 hr - much Cooler running phone temp.
This app is very good as it can set you CPU speed to save battery. Mine is set to 833mhz when used, 255mhz in idle. 432mhz when the screen is off. This Saves small amounts of battery but still has a decent response and speed, also improvements on wake up from sleep. You can save more power with more conservative speeds, although your phone may be less responsive. On the flip side push up the MHz to increase speed and responsiveness of your hd2 for increased battery usage.
Upon heavy use of my phone with a high CPU speed I saw a slight battery drop with SETCPU, probably due to my CPU speed being at 1033mhz at the time.
CLEANED MY EMAIL INBOX
BATTERY SAVING: 7 hrs
I found that mobile web was constantly running on android. as I hadn't cleaned my email inbox fully a few emails from a month or so ago kept been synced to my phone to notify me. Once I deleted these My battery saved near to 7 hrs per full battery. I assume it was constantly downloading the old emails. So make sure you email account is maintained.
APP: TASKER
PRICE: just under £4. Cheaper from developers site
RATING: 4.5/5
BATTERY SAVE: 15 HRS
This is the greatest power saving app I've used.
I've set my mobile data to automatically be off. Every half hour it will turn on for 5 mins to update emails, news, weather etc. It will also enable web when I unlock the Phone. Disable web once I've turned off the screen. It also stops syncing at night so it doesn't wake me with a notification sound. This saves me an extra 15 hrs on a full battery.
One thing I'm doing next is to stop certain apps from booting until I need them. sort of a scalpel approach as apposed to app killers kill em all method.
one issue i found is the learning curve to be quite high on tasker but it wll only take 20 mins to get the hang of how to do what i did above. Hopefully the deveoper will make an easier interface but its still very good. The power saving feature of tasker is only a small part of the tasks this phone can do. It can literally Automise most tasks for your android.
Wth all these apps my battery now lasts on average for 24hrs upon normal usage, 30hrs+ on light usage (better than my win mob) and around 18 hrs on heavy usage.
Hope this helps any one looking for a decent power app. feel free to add your experience with these and oter power saving methods for android HD2
interesting thx.. so tasker is just a automater it doesn't actually stop the apps from staying open in the background or can it? thats the thing annoying me i kill all apps then i go check and i see useless apps still running in the background and i don't want to have to uninstall the apps just to disable them from running in the background. btw did u try the text to speech on incoming calls? im thinking bout purchasing it.
jay_jay_n said:
interesting thx.. so tasker is just a automater it doesn't actually stop the apps from staying open in the background or can it? thats the thing annoying me i kill all apps then i go check and i see useless apps still running in the background and i don't want to have to uninstall the apps just to disable them from running in the background. btw did u try the text to speech on incoming calls? im thinking bout purchasing it.
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yeah tasker can be made to stop indivdual programs from booting rather than app killers stop em all. tasker keeps em stopped until you want to run them of course. you have to select scripts to do this tought. The program is amazing, you can auto set your phone to go silent when you walk into work, cinema etc etc by using GPS. Auto connect to car bluetooth once you get in your car, connect it for calls then stop bluetooth once you get out. Have your phone read you your messages once you have navigator on in the car, so you dont need to touch it. send an automatic sms reply to certain people, ie work collegues if your in a meeting..... its a full automisation program, the options are endless if you know what scripts to select to get it working.
I sadly can only do basic ones but in willing to learn, there are a few tutorials online for certain tasks, im just hoping the developer will release updates to make it easier for the advanced tasks.
lol ive just read this back and BTW i dont represent the developer in anyway, i only bought the app 3 days ago. I did a bit of research on it as thought it was a bit expensive and im glad i did buy it, it depends what functionality you want with your phone i suppose. I bought it as it cures my power options and i can taunt my mates who have iphones (i received a lot of stick when it had winmob on as the main as it kept having issues and wasnt very fun for me to use).
beatts said:
yeah tasker can be made to stop indivdual programs from booting rather than app killers stop em all. tasker keeps em stopped until you want to run them of course. you have to select scripts to do this tought. The program is amazing, you can auto set your phone to go silent when you walk into work, cinema etc etc by using GPS. Auto connect to car bluetooth once you get in your car, connect it for calls then stop bluetooth once you get out. Have your phone read you your messages once you have navigator on in the car, so you dont need to touch it. send an automatic sms reply to certain people, ie work collegues if your in a meeting..... its a full automisation program, the options are endless if you know what scripts to select to get it working.
I sadly can only do basic ones but in willing to learn, there are a few tutorials online for certain tasks, im just hoping the developer will release updates to make it easier for the advanced tasks.
lol ive just read this back and BTW i dont represent the developer in anyway, i only bought the app 3 days ago. I did a bit of research on it as though it was a bit expensive and im glad i did buy it, it depends what functonalty you want with your phone i suppose.
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great thx.. yeah ive been trying to find a good app that would help make things a bit easier especially when driving and reading txt messages is a plus, if u recieve calls does tasker say aloud the caller name while the ringtone is still ringing or does it replace the ringer? ive had issues with other speech announcers.
jay_jay_n said:
great thx.. yeah ive been trying to find a good app that would help make things a bit easier especially when driving and reading txt messages is a plus, if u recieve calls does tasker say aloud the caller name while the ringtone is still ringing or does it replace the ringer? ive had issues with other speech announcers.
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Im not sure in all honestly, ive not really got around to looking into other tasks apart from battery power saving ones. ive read a few of the posts on the developers website forum and he seems very good and swift at answering questions on the apps features. He also has a suggestion page for users to add stuff. Its one of the reasons that swayed me into buying it as hes clearly spent a lot of time on the development of the app, is very active on his site and seems update the app with newer features. His site link is on marketplace with his app.
Update; I've just checked my battery as I left if off charge last night. It was 48% when I went to sleep its now 40%. This averages at 1% per hour!!! Battery usage has now increased that I'm using it.
How do you setup your tasker? I got it but have no idea how to use...
why i cant find tasker in market??
elitishtc said:
why i cant find tasker in market??
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Tut, use your head and look elsewhere
http://tasker.dinglisch.net/download.html
bates_1974 said:
Tut, use your head and look elsewhere
http://tasker.dinglisch.net/download.html
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sometimes the obvious is far away..
thanks
I keep reading on here about how either someones battery life is either awesome or great or this or that. It seems that many folks on here with great battery life are old pros at milking their phones for the best battery life possible, while others may not know the best methods for getting the optimal battery life they want.
So here are some tips for getting the battery life you want:
1) Calibrate your battery by letting if completely discharge and then charge it using the wall charger it came with. Do this at least three times so the phone has a chance to get real statistics.
Update: It is recommended that you do not do this very often as some say it could damage the battery in the long term. You should do this early on in the life of the phone as the damage if any would be minimal. This needs to be done regardless. It is the only way for the phone to get an accurate full/zero reading.
Update 2: I have found that after doing a factory reset, you need to do this step again. After a factory reset on 4.1.83 (most recent update), my battery life dropped considerably. After letting it discharge fully and then charging it with the phone off again, I was back to normal battery use.
2) Set wifi to sleep when the phone is not in use. Unless you are streaming data such as pandora or other data intensive programs with the screen off, you do not need it on (I will talk about background data in a moment for those who are going to mention that the phone still does data while it is sleeping). You can change the setting by going to Settings > Wireless networks > wifi settings > menu button > advanced > wifi sleep policy
ofek said:
You should write that after settings it you need to click on menu button->save.
If you will not do this step, every reboot it will restored to "Never" option.
Sent from my Motorola Atrix 4G
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3) Disable motoblur's account settings sync over cell data. This setting causes all of your account information to sync over your data connection when wifi is not available. This should be disabled as it will constantly sync and drain your battery even when the screen is off. Really do you need you facebook contacts that are synced to your contacts to be updated every five minutes? Settings > Data manager > Data Delivery > social apps > sync over wifi.
Update: Only disable the Social Apps that sync over background, do not disable the Background data. Disabling background data will cause certain things to not work properly, like for instance the gmail app.
Update 2: If you are using the Twitter/facebook/whatever apps (real apps) you should go ahead and remove the associated accounts from Motoblur. You do not need them to sync twice as motoblur will sync them with it's account and then the apps will sync. The downside to this though is that any contact pictures you have synced from those accounts will no longer show up in contacts forcing you to manually add pictures to your contacts.
4) remove widgets. Widgets drain batteries when they are active. Most of them are useless and really serve no purpose other than to try and make you feel important about yourself. I mean really, how useful is a facebook widget that only shows one or two peoples updates? Trash the ones you can live without. If you are using a launcher other than motoblur, go and load motoblur and make certain there are none running on that launcher as those are still active even if you use another launcher.
5) live wallpapers suck battery like crazy. While they are nice eye candy to view, they are not worth the drain they cause. Even when you are in a app, just like the widgets, they are draining your battery.
Update: Some live wallpapers are better on battery drain than others, but they still drain battery either way. I will not use a live wallpaper as it serves no purpose other than eye candy, and eye candy on a phone I can live without.
6) Task killers. Yeah not going to touch this one as everyone who reads these forums should know better by now.
7) check individual programs as you install them and make certain they do not autoupdate content. Pulse news reader is a good example of a program that pulls data in the background even when you haven't used it in weeks. Really is it going to kill you to hit refresh when you load it?
Update: If you are using the AT&T program "Mark the Spot", it constantly is checking device performance and is constantly checking your location for it to "work". Be sure to watch this app as it drains a lot of battery through out the day.
8) turn off bluetooth, gps, and wifi when you are not actively using them. Wifi when on is always scanning the area for networks, bluetooth is always actively broadcasting (on some phones) and who needs gps when you aren't on the move.
Update: If you are experiencing a switch from H+ to Edge frequently such as in your home where you have wifi running and do not have a AT&T cell device, then turn off your data connection. Your phone is constantly trying to connect to the H+ network when it isn't already connected and draining power. If you are on WiFi, then your data connection is not needed.
I have heard Tasker is great for setting up an automatic script on your phone to do it for you so you don't have to think about it, but remember that all extra programs including tasker eat away at your battery and without real world testing, I can not promise you will see an improvement or a loss in battery.
You can also use APNDroid to do it manually if you would rather have full controll of your data connection.
9) Quit watching porn on your phone. Use your computer for that. Ok maybe I am the only one who does this but I doubt it. Alot if the free poem sites use flash videos and the more you use flash the faster your battery drains.
Update: Yes I know this is hard (no pun intended) for some of you to do, but the idea is sound. Using flash videos (the bulk (again no pun intended) of porn videos use flash).
These are not the only ways to have a great battery and this information may not be useful to you, but I can go nearly 20 hours of moderate to heavy phone use and still have anywhere from 40 to 60 percent battery left at the end of the day.
If anyone has any other advice that they feel should be listed here, please let me know and I will gladly add it to the mix.
Good luck folks.
Addition (5/12/11)
10) For those of you with the .83 update, please keep in mind that the update now forces you onto the EDGE (2G) Network if it can receive a better signal/stable connection. If you notice you are on EDGE more often than the H+ network, then disable your data connection. What is happening is that even though you have a solid connection to the EDGE network, your phone is constantly seeking the H+/3G networks thus using much more battery life than before. If you are at home or somewhere where your phone can connect to a wifi network, consider turning off the Data network. You should also disable your data connection whenever you are in a No Signal area. Again the same problem happens when you have no signal.
Sent from my MB860 using XDA App
Advice from other Members:
From Deggy
I would like to add to the OP's list of things to do to improve battery life:
Turn off date when not in use for a long period of time like work or school. Settings -> Date manager -> Date delivery -> uncheck Backround data and Data enabled. Don't worry, you'll still get your texts and phone calls.
The Market is a big drainer. Market -> hit menu -> settings -> change notify me -> do not notify me.
Those two are the big ones to worry about IMO.
The other tips are either cliche stuff or other people said already. Wifi off, GPS off, brightness down to 0-20%, ect. Auto sync is killer.
I unplug my phone at 9AM and come home from work at 9PM and my phone says 75% with moderate use (Circle battery widget uses 1% increments). 3-4 phone calls. A LOT of texting (wifey likes text me). Internet during 30 minute lunch. Play Words with Friends a good amount.
I don't use live wallpaper but I do use a darker colored static one. Only got 4-5 widgets on my screen. 3 home screens. Using Launcher Pro.
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pookeyster said:
In some of the other battery threads, ppl have been commenting on how they've had success in extending the battery life after a hard factory reset. What that basically does is it deletes and regenerates the batterystats.bin file in /data/system and if the battery was essentially mis-calibrated prior to the reset, the reset fixes it thus giving better measurements. ie. perhaps after 10hrs of usage the phone might say u have 5% left, but in reality you could have 40% left.. the regeneratin of batterystats.bin would recalculate that correctly
if you want the benefits of having that reset process but rather not go through having to restore all ur apps/back them up.. u could always manually go and delete the batterystats.bin file (only if you're rooted). i would recommend deleting the file after fully charging the phone overnight then unplug it so that it generates the file again. if you'd prefer an app to do this for you automatically you could always go to the marketplace and get 'battery calibration' app for free and it does the same thing
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cybal said:
My want to include details about corp email sync. Using "push data" can really chew up the battery and is probably not better then retrieving email every 15 or 30 mins for most people. There may also be a problem with setting a long history time such as 1 month.
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The following was posted on the MotoAtrix forums on Motorola's website. https://supportforums.motorola.com/thread/51776
I've seen a lot of posts in a lot of threads about how to save battery life on the Atrix. So, I figured I'd start a consolidated thread on the matter. These are the tips 'n tricks I've used, and I can get 2 days of battery life on the Atrix now.
1. When I first got the Atrix, before turning it on, I charged it for 4 hours. After turning it on, I let it run until it died, then re-charged for 8 hours. I did that for a full week. They say that this isn't needed with the new-fangled batteries, but I have always done this, and have always gotten great results.
2. Live wallpapers are not your friend, especially in two circumstances: 1. you use your phone a lot, and 2. you use the stock unlock screen where everytime the phone wakes the live wallpaper is playing. Granted, they don't eat up much battery, but if you're looking to get every ounce/percentage out of your phone, it's a luxury you can leave at home.
3. Did you install a new launcher? If so, did you clear out BLUR? I had my BLUR interface up and running with widgets and shortcuts, etc, etc. When I switched to ADW I noticed an increase in battery drain. I re-loaded BLUR and deleted all apps, widgets, etc so BLUR is blank. I now have great battery life with ADW running.
4. Widgets - ugh. They're pretty, they're big, they're animated, and they eat battery like bees eat pollen. Be mindful of them, and be willing to accept the consequences of the "cool factor".
5. Screen timeout. Yes, it's annoying to unlock your phone every 5 minutes, but you do save battery life with a 1-minute or less timeout option set.
6. Close your apps! Many apps, games especially, are fantastic at running in the background on Android, but they're sucking battery. They all restore to your previous position quite well, so if you're done for a few hours, exit it instead of just going back to your launcher screen.
7. "back" vs. "home" - the back button (the reverse arrow) does a much better job of closing down programs than the home button which just brings up your home screen, leaving whatever you were doing to hungrily consume battery like zombies on a corpse.
8. "manage apps" is your friend - go to your app tray, hit the menu button, and select "manage apps" - you can see all the running apps and kill them selectively. Some, like Facebook, Skype, and others, will stay there as long as the phone is on once you use it, unless you kill it. Be forwarned though, you'll stop getting notifications if you do this - another informed tradeoff. I do this once every few days, or if the Atrix seems sluggish.
9. Screen brightness - the "auto" setting doesn't work all that well, but I highly recommend leaving it there, and/or using a screen brightness toggle widget on your home screen to manage this carefully. Screen brightness on maximum will yield the best viewing experience but it does drain battery the fastest of all.
10. Choose your BLUR accounts wisely - like widgets, if you have LinkedIn and Facebook connected through BLUR, it will run ALL THE TIME. Using the native apps from the market will definitely decrease your overall drain and give you better control over when and how your battery is consumed by those services.
11. Auto-kill or be killed - A good rule of thumb for me is to only auto-end a task if you know exactly what it is, and it didn't come with the phone. Chances are if you don't recognize it, even if it looks like something you don't need running, leave it be. If it's something you installed from the Market, and you want it to auto-end, have a field day. If you put something on the auto-end list that the Atrix needs, it will just keep re-starting it. This draws processor time and battery and isn't worth it.
12. (credit: Itsallgood) Check your profile - "settings -> battery" and look at the bottom half of the screen. The Atrix supports multiple battery saving profiles that allows you to control "night time" and whether to actively sync data all the time, never, or only during certain hours. Push mail and active data sync consumes battery at a steady pace. In addition, 3rd party apps (like Settings Profiles) can be downloaded to further tweak and customize everything from vibrate mode, screen, data sync, and more. The more customized your experience to fit your needs only when you need specific services, the better your battery life will be.
Anyway - that's some to get started, feel free to add more!
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Click to collapse
Sent from my MB860 using XDA App
wow nice ill try it i have my atrix for a couple of days and i have been like dissapointed i dont wanna do a factory reset or anything like it ill try ur guide and let u kno
Personally, I don't see the point of disabling everything that makes an Android fun and unique.... but, ill see how the battery is stock vs this once it arrives.
Thx
Sent from my Desire HD using XDA App
Mr.Kakarot said:
Personally, I don't see the point of disabling everything that makes an Android fun and unique.... but, ill see how the battery is stock vs this once it arrives.
Thx
Sent from my Desire HD using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You don't have to disable everything, but the things above such as the background data syncs serve no purpose other than to drain a battery. The sync will complete during the next wifi connection and by time you access your contacts it will be done. Besides it'd not like all your contacts change every 30 minutes.
The idea is not so much to limit the experience of android, but to remove the unused features that do nothing for.you. I mean who really needs a youtube widget when the shortcut gets you to youtube just as easily and doesn't drain your battery.
It's the same idea as startup programs on your computer. They serve no purpose other than to slow your system down. Sure quicktime or itunes might load a few seconds faster, but how often do you really load those programs.
Sent from my MB860 using XDA App
#9 = cant do
u know how they monitor work computer ?
Great Post
The only propblem now following your advice is that my gmail email does not upgrade (sync) on its own
keithr1475 said:
The only propblem now following your advice is that my gmail email does not upgrade (sync) on its own
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Click to collapse
Are you using the gmail app or the default app? Mine works just fine.
Sent from my MB860 using XDA App
I'm using the Gmail APP
the gmail app doesnt sync on its own because you turn off auto sync
i recommend you use the power control widget and adjust those accordingly
Definitely a good list of things, but felt like commenting on the live wallpapers thing. From what I've experienced, it seems like it depends a lot on the wallpaper used. I initially thought the live wallpaper was one of the main reasons for the short battery life when I first got the phone so I switched to a normal wallpaper. I had that for about a week and generally saw a lot of improvements in battery life as a result of better management and the calibration cycles. After that week, I came across a live wallpaper I liked and decided to enjoy that feature for a bit more. If anything, it seemed like my battery life got a bit better. I've tested it a little, and there's no doubt that some of my live wallpapers drain battery more than others. I've tried switching between a standard wallpaper and my live wallpaper (galaxy live) and I really don't see much of a difference, if any, between the 2.
Question: Does freezing the blur home screen (via titanium backup) disable the widgets on it? I'm assuming it does, since it essentially makes that home screen non-existent as far as the phone is concerned.
Darrell, There are some really good suggestions. They also apply to other android phones too probably. I had a myTouch4G for a week until I decided that T-Mob just wasn't as good a value to me as AT&T. So I went back. I'll get an Atrix soon, or maybe some Tegra that comes out in a month or 2.
How do you switch to Motoblur from Launcher Pro and back again? Will I lose the customization that I've done?
Edit: Home Launcher
DarrellRaines said:
1) Calibrate your battery by letting if completely discharge and then charge it using the wall charger it came with. Do this at least three times so the phone has a chance to get real statistics.
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Click to collapse
I read somewhere in this forum that you shouldnt let the battery run all the way down in the initial calibration week. Anybody know about this?
psymont said:
I read somewhere in this forum that you shouldnt let the battery run all the way down in the initial calibration week. Anybody know about this?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Modern lithium batteries actually die faster if you fully drain them then recharge to full. I'm not saying you can't do it every so often for calibration purposes but it isn't recommended as a every day thing.
Sent from my MB860 using Tapatalk
We aren't running them down for the batteries health, but more so that the phone will understand what full and what dead actually is.
Do not do this often as there is no point. As for damaging the battery, one website says it is bad while others say it is good. Do so at your own risk. I do not have a degree in science, so I can not say either way, however the steps above done once the phone is calibrated will help.
Sent from my MB860 using XDA App
After 12 hours of moderate to heavy use today, I still have 50% battery remaining.
For the guy who's email stopped working, do not turn off all background data. That will stop the push settings I believe.
Sent from my MB860 using XDA App
wait....quit looking at porn on my phone?!??!!?
impossible!
no matter, im not having battery life issues.
Darrel this works i just did the wallpaper step and wow my battery stood up all day from 7am now is at%15 10pm
send from my unrooted atrix using xda app
gambit_pr said:
Darrel this works i just did the wallpaper step and wow my battery stood up all day from 7am now is at%15 10pm
send from my unrooted atrix using xda app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Glad I could help.
Sent from my MB860 using XDA App
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).
Hi guys, I know that some people say to disable location services and/or GPS because they drain the battery (under Android system in battery usage). I just want to clarify. I came from an iPhone, and on the iPhone I leave location and GPS on, but as long as the app is closed, the GPS will NOT run (just that its functionality remain on) so there is no drain.
Is this the same on Android? Is it okay to leave them on but not run any location-based apps?
Bump...
It'll constantly bounce the GPS signal AFAIK, so will use it up. buuuut, on 4.4.2, you can edit your location preferences GPS accuracy etc and it tells you battery use on it. However I believe it's on perma unless you disable it totally
I wouldn't be so sure. I have GPS, WIFI, BT and all other crap 24/7 and I loose about 3% charge over about 7hrs sleep, personally I don't think it's worth bothering or lifting my finger to shut it off. Also when I drive I see my correct location on the map, after screen goes off and I need to check again few min later, the map shows my last location and it takes few seconds to update to new one. If it was working with screen off it should have been updated right away, no? At least it's working in some low power mode. I think what really kills the battery is all those push services like e-mail etc, especially when not set properly, but the best way is to test yourself.
fterh said:
Hi guys, I know that some people say to disable location services and/or GPS because they drain the battery (under Android system in battery usage). I just want to clarify. I came from an iPhone, and on the iPhone I leave location and GPS on, but as long as the app is closed, the GPS will NOT run (just that its functionality remain on) so there is no drain.
Is this the same on Android? Is it okay to leave them on but not run any location-based apps?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Technically 100% the same.
However for practical reasons things are not quite the same - as long as you have many, many apps and your data (WiFi and/or Mobile) active certain apps will try to connect from time-to-time, and some will try to get a location. Unfortunately Google Services is one of those, and an older version of that was generating a really huge amount of power consumption. The problem is reported to be a lot better now but I can not confirm since I am anyway keeping my data connections OFF for most of the time when I am not really using those.
xclub_101 said:
Technically 100% the same.
However for practical reasons things are not quite the same - as long as you have many, many apps and your data (WiFi and/or Mobile) active certain apps will try to connect from time-to-time, and some will try to get a location. Unfortunately Google Services is one of those, and an older version of that was generating a really huge amount of power consumption. The problem is reported to be a lot better now but I can not confirm since I am anyway keeping my data connections OFF for most of the time when I am not really using those.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I guess this is one of the few things that iOS is better than Android at - managing how apps run. I use Greenify to freeze inactive apps, but the limitation is that I will not receive push notifications. On iOS apps are frozen yet push notifications are functional (that's ironically the downside of iOS too - no true multitasking). I don't disable my data connections because I want my push notifications, but I do turn off GPS. :/
fterh said:
I guess this is one of the few things that iOS is better than Android at - managing how apps run.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, when coming from a situation when there was absolutely no multitasking at all (and that was successfully sold as a "feature" for quite some time) I can really see that being easier
fterh said:
I use Greenify to freeze inactive apps, but the limitation is that I will not receive push notifications.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think the latest Greenify PRO version has something to improve that too. But I will have to test a lot more to see the real limits of that.
[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!
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