Database Users

Battery Life And You: Tips From The Advice Basket

In the DInc forum more than probably any other forum on XDA, there is a copious amount of battery life related threads. How to extend your battery life, what kernel is best, what ROM is best, what extended batteries work, what applications will help, combinations of CPU and brightness, all kinds of jazz. Truth be told, most people who have come to a "solid conclusion" about what is best for their battery life are misleading themselves, and others. Why? Well..
#1. There are too many variables.
Your average joe who posts on here claiming they got XX amount of battery life compared to average joe number two's claim of getting YY hours tells no one anything. The fact of the matter is that in these phones, there are SO many things that act as variables on battery life that most people don't even consider. The obvious ones are data usage, WiFi connectivity, screen brightness, and CPU clocks to name a few. But what a lot of people don't consider are things like signal strength. My battery life personally is bad through the week because my school has absolutely terrible service. My battery life triples throughout the day with Airplane Mode on and WiFi enabled. It's well known in the cell phone consumer society that the better your signal is, the easier your radio will be on your battery. If you're teetering on very poor service, or none at all, your radio is constantly searching for signal so it can get you back on the network as soon as possible. This also applies to the WiFi radio. Some people leave theirs on all the time, some don't. Same for Bluetooth, GPS, anything. There are too many variables for your average person to cover to be able to accurately claim that "this app" or "this ROM" or "this method" does exactly "this" to your battery life.
#2. You're probably undereducated about how your battery works.
Don't get me wrong on this one, we have a lot of very intelligent people here at XDA, many far more intelligent than I, that keep this place rolling on a daily basis, but far too many of the people who try to make factual claims about battery life don't know what they're talking about. The most prolific example of this is the argument between total discharges, and interval charging. There are people who argue that allowing your battery to completely discharge and then charge back to full is the best way to preserve battery life. Then there are some who are adamant about charging whenever a charger is present, regardless of battery percentage. While very few of us here, myself included, are battery technicians or something of the sort, there is factual data to support the idea that Lithium Ion batteries do not have any sort of memory like NiCad and other batteries do. While this may be true, on the other hand, fully charging and discharging your phone allows it to more accurately determine what voltage your battery is producing and thus gives a better percentage reading. Your battery life percentage on your phone is no clear indicator and is nothing more than the phone's mathematical way of processing the output of the battery and translating it into a more useful term for people like you and I. This is why wiping battery stats and completely draining a fully charged battery seems to help with battery life, because you won't see as many violent drops in percentage because the phone can more accurately calculate the power usage. That being said, wiping battery stats does nothing more for you than that. It does not magically make your battery superpowered and won't make dinner for you.
#3. All batteries are different.
Extended batteries are an interesting thing. You can buy two of the same make and model from the same place, and the two batteries can perform completely differently. This is because no two batteries are the same. Quality control issues, differences in materials, shelf life, production date, and all kinds of other factors go into how well a battery will perform. Some people get great experiences from the $10 eBay batteries and some get experiences worse than stock. Some people see quadrupled life out of OEM extended batteries, and some see minimal gains. This also applies to the stock battery that comes with the phone. That being said, mAh ratings are also relative and not all batteries live up to their true claims. A battery said to operate at 2500 mAh may not ever reach that capacity and it may run at a true value of 2000 mAh. The case will rarely ever be reversed, but you see the point. Take battery specifications with a grain of salt, because you aren't always going to get what you pay for.
#4. All phones are different.
The hardware in your phone may or may not be the same as the hardware in my phone, and one of the biggest differences in the DInc with this respect is the SLCD and AMOLED screens. AMOLED screens can save or expel more battery than SLCD screens depending on what you are viewing. A person with an AMOLED who uses primarily dark-themed apps and a dark background may see better life than someone identical who uses light-themed apps and a lighter background. Not to mention that all of the hardware in these phones aren't identical and sometimes parts slip through with lower efficiencies or defects that may or may not affect your battery life, and you will likely never know.
#5. ROMs/Kernels behave erratically.
The Warm Z ROM I use on my phone might deliver totally different results for you than it does for me. Same goes for kernels. We have found time and time again that kernel and ROM changes are not universal for battery life and everybody gets different experiences. You have to try out what fits you, and if you're that interested in finding the perfect balance, you'll just have to try them all. That's a long, painstaking process, but there's no solid evidence to tell you what will be optimal for your setup.
Now...
All that being said, I want you to understand I am not bashing anyone who tries to make a good conclusive result for how to improve battery life. Some methods are common sense and surefire, and some are wives tales. There are some great threads on battery life and topics related to it, two of which I will link to here:
Effects of CPU Frequency and Screen Brightness on Power Consumption
Your Battery Gauge Is Lying To You
These are both by XDA Member byrong, and he uses principles of science and the scientific method to make conclusive data in relation to battery life and how certain variables affect it. He eliminated as many variables as possible in his study and produced linear data that coincides with common sense ideas relating to smartphones and battery life. Note he does not make claims of how long your battery will last, or what kind of effects to expect from each setting, but he produces solid data that allows you to make your own interpretation.
At the end of the day, battery life boils down to balancing out functionality for conservativeness. If you're the kind of person who doesn't need auto sync'ing and push notifications, then by all means disable those things and keep your phone alive a little longer. If you're always by a charger throughout your work day, leave it all on! It's all preference, and there is no solid set method to making your battery all it can be. No ROM, kernel, app, wipe, or other method is going to be the 'be-all-end-all' of battery life extension. Simply see what works for you, and take your own results with a grain of salt. If you test one method one day, and another one the next, and you see that method A gave you 4 more hours than method B, take into account that you were driving through an area with no signal on your way home from work during the usage of method B, or you were playing a game on method B or you did less browsing on method A. Keep your trials as scientific as possible if you want to get real solid results.
Above all, just use your phone and enjoy it. If you never go more than 12 hours without being around a charger, and your phone lasts 15 hours, there's no real purpose in trying to sacrifice more things you use and enjoy to try and get a bigger and better number. Charging a phone, even just a little bit, doesn't take forever, and you can get a valuable amount of juice out of 15 minutes on the plug. Use common sense and don't overthink it. Everybody uses something a little different. That's why we have these phones, because we all want something a little different.

Reserved for future use...

This is great; very informative. Thank you.
Sent from my Magnolia Incredible

Thank you. I plan on updating the second post with a more comprehensive set of links to other articles about battery life that may be found useful.

Cool "A person with an AMOLED who uses primarily dark-themed apps and a dark background may see better life than someone identical who uses light-themed apps and a lighter background"
I guess that's why my phone digs on the Magnolia Rom,
or at least Steves last version it was all black.

Excellent write up. We need more threads like this one by sensible authors who actually take the time to research the topic they are posting about. Thank you for adding knowledge and integrity to this community.
Much love my friend

When I get the chance I'll scour the forums to try and find some more useful threads on battery life and consolidate them here.

[Q] Thinking about buying this phone [Looking for advice]

Hello,
I currently own a LG Optimus 4X HD and I really do not really like the battery life, which is quite bad for me (Around 2h SOT, 3 if I'm lucky). I'm on the market for a new phone and I've been looking at the S5, HTC One M8 and Note 3.
I already looked at the main battery life thread, but what should I expect with medium usage throughout the day and little to no social app use and also with stock firmware, only root, Greenify and disabling the bloatware?
How do you think this phone compares with the other two listed? I am leaning towards this phone mainly because of the IP67 protection it offers.
I would be buying this phone in Europe.

Seems a rather pointless exercise, given that you've read the battery use thread. Medium usage is a vague description. Battery life is highly dependent on what apps you use as well as how long they are used. And it only takes one or two bad apps e.g. Tunein or Skype to put a big dent in your battery life.
One person will tell you that his medium usage takes him 14 hours. And another will say that medium use sees the battery run out in 8 hours. To answer your question something like 10 - 11 hours total, including 6 - 8 hours of screen time. But the error margin on any such guess..
.

Thanks. Yes I realize that it's hard to predict the battery life, but that would surely last me long enough. Also, is Skype really a battery hog? I never heard about that one.

Then you don't read the forum much as there have been a lot of threads about Skype. Presumably because Skype is constantly polling the camera and connection status. The problems may or may not have been resolved in recent updates, but a lot of people have had Skype put a big dent in their batteries recently.
e.g. http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2660470
.

i have owned the m8 and now have the s5
I would say battery wise for me they were both on par with each other and both would last me the day with medium to heavy use (streaming tv, watching the odd youtube video etc)
The thing i would say is that with the s5 you do have the option to go for a larger battery not that i have done so myself yet as have not had the need...all i ask is that it gets me to the end of the day having done whatever i needed it to do.
If your not really an app intensive user then it will easily get you through the day and beyond...assuming your in a reasonable signal area. I have personally found that the biggest drain on any phone ive had has often been down to having poor or weak signal in the area i have been in.

What's your battery life?

Guys, please post your battery life screenshots. Mine is fine :laugh:

Dont have screenies but my SOT is 3 and half hours . Pac rom Lp 5.1 Caf D802 .

There is already a thread about battery life where users posted their screens...anyway your screen in the first post is useless to determine battery life. Dont mean to be rude but it really is useless, because if you barely use the phone, you can reach 120h+ easily. You have to give more information. Even the screen on time is not accurate to determine battery life, because there are some users who use their phone like an e-reader and get massive amounts of screen time that are impossible to reproduce when using the phone on normal conditions. Not everyone uses the phone in the same conditions. A good way to determine it would be the screenshot like you gave, another one with the apps showing consumption, another one with screen time and a screenshot of cpu spy or any other cpu measuring app(because this will make it easy to spot how those e-readers get so much sot, usually their lowest cpu frequency is used a LOT, unlike normal users)

always 6-6.5 hours sot. can hold up to 3 days or more with light usage using Cloudyg2 2.2.

Fyi, cloudy g2 is not the reason you get 6h+ sot... unless you're significantly reducing performance and/or screen brightness. No rom can beat physics(and logic).
I average 5h sot over 2-3 days with wifi/data/sync/auto brightness on. Can easily go a week in standby if check it a few times a day. Running stock sprint lollipop with latest zvi update.

Well that's depressing....I have a battery life of maybe 4 hours with 1 to 1,5 hours of screen on time........I made a post here http://forum.xda-developers.com/lg-g2/help/battery-messed-t3297770.
If anybody has a suggestion I would be more than pleased. Been using the phone for +2 years. And looking at the screenshots of yours, I hadn't had that in a loooongloooong time

At full charge, plugging in earphone and listening to music or videos on youtube , i get like 3 and half and sometimes 4 hours depending on the rom. Screen is set to the lowest. I dont install much app, especially which connects to the internet silently in the backgroud. Disable location services and all too helps. At idle with wifi on and phone radio is 90% or more good signals, it lasts for about 3 or 2 and half days (depends on kernel too) . What rom you using @deereper ??Have you tried reducing google service battery drain via script and all ?

deereper, and anyone else getting under 3h sot, your battery is shot. I had similar battery performance until I replaced it. In my experience custom roms/kernels may make a very minor difference but have much worse performance and stability.

Yeah, I ordered a new battery.
I really don't want to but a new phone just for the battery.
And yes, with those battery stats it doesn't matter if you run stock or aosp

It's D802 btw, auto brightness 0%, wifi data gps always on. SOT 6-6.5hours only with continuous usage, if add in standby SOT average around 4.5-5 hours

HOW I DO IT - 3 day Battery Life with 15 hours of Screen on time on my Moto Z Play

Intro -
Firstly, for people who have doubts and want proof, see attached pictures.
As you can see, I am able to use my phone fluidly for a full 3 days, while using a heavy browser and apps like WhatsApp and FB lite while clocking in an average of 5 hours of screen on time every day.
For people who already get this long of a battery life or get an even better battery life, I am all ears and it would not hurt you to check out what I did to boost my battery life, as it would only make your life better. :fingers-crossed:
What did I do?
1.) I used these apps as replacements for stock/popular apps
2.) I employed these techniques in a personal combination comfortable to me
Full disclosure (things critics would like to know):
My ROM was stock, but heavily personally modified by applying 1.) and 2.) in combination.
I don't charge my phone with the stock *Turbocharger* as it leads to overheating and less efficient charging, I instead use my old Nexus 4 charger.
My phone was never on a 4G/LTE *DATA* connection but Wi-Fi was ALWAYS on.
My phone didn't get any signal for almost 30% of the time because of the area I live in and FYI looking for a network actually drains more battery.
My screen's brightness level was at minimum *most* of the time.
I was never playing any hardcore games that would have drained battery life.
Note -
My phone used to switch off automatically sometimes because the area I am in is really cold, and according to research lower temperatures can cause your phone to shut down automatically/arbitrarily.
Also, any other errors you might see/assume in my results are accidental, as I enjoy 3 days of battery life on a regular basis.
Additionally, as you can see in my attached screenshots, 15 hours of screen on time (meaning 15 hours of actual phone usage) takes away 50% of my Moto Z Play's battery. The rest of my 50% battery is spent on *processing* (that is, all the other tasks and hardware) when my phone's screen is active (for 15 hours) and also when it's on standby (in doze mode for 2.4 days=57 hours (3days-15hours) (when my screen is off).
So you could say that my phone has a total standby time of 6+ (2*50%=2*3days) days on standby (if the screen is never activated) because processing required is negligible in standby/doze state.
P.S. You will forget to charge your phone if it has a battery life of 3 days LOL.

Battery Durability of MIDO on various roms

The reason for this thread's existence is simple, to find the best combination of ROM+KERNEL for MIDO which yeilds the best battery life with optimised and good performance.
I request posters to:
1. Post atleast screenshots of one whole battery cycle with SOT (Screen on time) and battery graph.
2. The ROM which yeilds the described SOT with Kernel being used with it, preferably with Kernel settings if being used.
3. Any other battery optimisation made to yeilds more battery out of the phone such as GREENIFY or others.
NOTE: IF YOU CAN POST SCREENSHOTS OF GSAM BATTERY MONITOR TOO.
Thx guys.

Sorry to ask that but don't you think that this has no sense?
You can't include some important things into your comparison, like screen brightness, network usage, network coverage, network settings (2G/3G/LTE), sensor settings.
Even watching the same YouTube video in 720p or [email protected] on an identical device makes a huge difference. And this are really just a few examples...

Well thx for bringing that up!
SilentEYE said:
Sorry to ask that but don't you think that this has no sense?
You can't include some important things into your comparison, like screen brightness, network usage, network coverage, network settings (2G/3G/LTE), sensor settings.
Even watching the same YouTube video in 720p or [email protected] on an identical device makes a huge difference. And this are really just a few examples...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I did consider those except the sensor settings. i know the usage per person is different for everyone and also it depends on the battery deterioration too but i couldn't really ask ppl to explain all their intricate settings. I just want a good amount of data for ppl that helps them decide which rom and kernel to use.
ALSO I THINK PPL ARE SMART ENOUGH THAT THEY REALIZE IT DIFFERS FROM USAGE TO USAGE.
Thx for some insight.

Then you could make statistics with medium usage on different combinations.
For some basic stats you can also pick up the stats from "real screen on time" thread.
One more thing to consider is that some people have 18h SOT with 3 days of usage and this breaks the average usage time on this device by far (and is not representative at all on normal usage). Therefore you probably have to exclude the best and worst SOTs, to achieve comparable results, between the ROMs.