Database Users

How I nearly tripled my battery life!

If you just wanna see my tips then skip over the next few paragraphs lol!
Hi! I am not sure if this exactly has been posted already, or if it's common knowledge and I am just slow lol, but the last couple days I found out how to maximize the battery life on my phone by (imho) a huge amount. And I wanted to share with the community.
So before I did this, I'd generally get maybe six to eight hours of uptime before the battery was critically low. This was really frustrating because by the time I got home from work my phone would be almost dead. So I'd charge it in my car for a little bit, but then when I went out I'd have to turn off Wifi, GPS, Bluetooth, brightness all the way down etc. just to have enough battery to survive the night.
But now I managed to get 18-24 hours out of a single charge, without having to manually touch the settings too too much (GPS/Bluetooth when I need them.) Now I think a lot of this depends on your personal usage, but for me this worked great. And here is how I did it:
1. Disabling/making less frequent updates in apps. For me this was Twidroid, Facebook, and NewsRob. I realized that I keep notifications off for these apps (I don't need to see a notification everytime someone I follow tweets you know?) and that even when they were all set to auto-refresh every 30 minutes or whatever, I STILL always hit refresh when I went in anyway. So I disable automatic updating. Obviously this depends on your usage, but for me, I didn't need up to the minute social networking information, and manually refresh anyway. But I went through all my apps that updated automatically and changed the setting.
2. Task Killing. In a perfect world, Android would efficiently manage it's own app load, but unfortunately the world isn't perfect. I found that if I know I'm going to be putting my phone down for a while, take a second and kill all the runnings apps. I use Astro, but there are countless apps that can do this for you. This is something I don't do frequently, but for example, if I'm going to go to bed and I don't have my charger, but want my phone on in case of an emergency, I'll kill all the running apps.
3. Brightness. After weeks of changing it back and forth because I don't really love the way it auto adjusts, I just said f**k it and put in auto. While sometimes the level of brightness it selects seems a little whack, it's definitely saved battery life. And saves me the trouble of changing it myself. I also found that setting the timeout to 15 seconds seemed to improve battery life.
4. Juice Defender. You can find this app on the marketplace. It has two modes, easy and advanced. If you want, you can go into the advanced and set schedules and all kinds of stuff. But for me, I just went into easy and hit enable. From what I understand, what this does is that if the screen is off, it disables network access for 14 minutes, turns it back on for 1, then off again for 14 etc. So, something like Gmail which is push will only be able to access the network every 15 minutes. Unless you are on WiFi. Now, if you NEED push e-mail and don't have WiFi, this isn't a very good solution. But according the stats in the app itself this has given me a 99% increase in battery life, and I believe it.
5. The trackball. This is perhaps the weirdest of my findings. The trackball light apparently can DESTROY the battery life. The other morning at around 80% I let my alarm on the phone go off and didn't stop it, so the trackball was flashing really fast. Without a couple hours the phone was completely dead. Nuts right? So I found that if I disable the trackball light when I know that I won't be able to dismiss my notifications quickly (like in a meeting or sleeping or whatnot) I'm able to avoid this happening.
6. GPS/Bluetooth. Again, this might seem very case specific, but I use bluetooth ONLY with my rokr headset when I'm on campus at night, and I use GPS only for navigation. So I keep the off when I'm not using them. With the power strip widget this isn't very difficult.
Anyway, that's it really. Like I said, maybe this is all common knowledge and I am just stupid haha. But I figured if not, I was pretty thrilled to go from 6 hours to 24 hours without having to do too much. BTW, some weird things I found didn't have an effect as much as I thought they would - 2g/3g, I actually got MORE battery life when I had 3g enabled. And WiFi was the same way, even when I didn't have a wifi connection, the difference in life with having it on or off was negligible.
Anyway, I hope this is helpful! If I remember anything else I'll add it.

I really like this guide and I'm going to use it when I get my n1. I like all (and will try) of the steps except #5.. the trackball notifications is just too sweet to ever turn off imo. Thanks for the guide.

I'm really surprised to hear that your LED light in the trackball destroyed your battery life

I don't bother killing apps anymore. Since they're not in focus their not using the CPU so whats the point. (right?)
I dont have rubbish notifications on either, nor bluetooth/GPS unless needed. Ive got auto brightness on too.... might try juicedefender in future actually, it does sound good.
So what did you triple your battery life from anyway... 12 hours?

cymru said:
So what did you triple your battery life from anyway... 12 hours?
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only about 6-8 hours.
crachel said:
I'm really surprised to hear that your LED light in the trackball destroyed your battery life
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I was too but I duplicated that scenario a few times to make sure. Also, it might matter that I am running trackball succession and color hacks.

Trackball succession is killing your battery, not the trackball light.

only about 6-8 hours.
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Oh....
Mines gets over 48 hours no problems anyway.

cymru said:
Oh....
Mines gets over 48 hours no problems anyway.
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Geez, whats your secret?

ChillRays said:
Geez, whats your secret?
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I second that, holy crap lol.

cymru said:
Oh....
Mines gets over 48 hours no problems anyway.
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!!! Were you hit by lightening as a child or something? I can only conclude your natural charge is keeping it going :->
Also - OP - nice set of tips - thanks

cymru said:
Oh....
Mines gets over 48 hours no problems anyway.
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Wow... I only get that good of a battery life if I turn my N1 off!

Are you guys being serious?!
I am indeed consistently getting 48 hours battery life...

cymru said:
Are you guys being serious?!
I am indeed consistently getting 48 hours battery life...
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48 is on the high side of things... I usually go to bed with about 40% remaining, and put it on the charger overnight... I get up at 8AM and go to bed around 12AM. So I am getting about 26 hours out of mine.
Edit:
Accidently typed in 36 when I meant to type 26. Fixed.

I have a noob question, which this forum is how I get most of my N1 knowledge...
Which uses up more battery life, 3G or wifi?
Thanks to whoever replies.. (my best guess would be 3G)

pjcforpres said:
48 is on the high side of things... I usually go to bed with about 40% remaining, and put it on the charger overnight... I get up at 8AM and go to bed around 12AM. So I am getting about 36 hours out of mine.
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That's actually 26 hours.

muncheese said:
That's actually 26 hours.
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Which is still a lot. I'd really like to know how you are doing this. Do you make any voice calls? Do you text/e-mail a lot? Watch videos? Browse the web? Play music etc.?
I mean my usage is based on maybe an hour a day of talking on the phone, and a few hundred text messages, maybe a couple e-mails, frequent twitter/Facebook updates, and maybe a couple hours a day of playing games, watching videos, reading news etc.
I imagine if I just left the phone there it'd be close to 26-30 hours, but not with regular use.

cymru said:
I don't bother killing apps anymore. Since they're not in focus their not using the CPU so whats the point. (right?)
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Erm, this is not correct, is it?
The whole point of multitasking means things still carry on when not in focus. If you leave everything running, they will all try and use data and CPU cycles, no?

Some nice suggestions there c0wb0ycliche! Thanks.
A couple of other thoughts/suggestions...
1. In the choices of kernels, pershoots is regarded as being excellent with battery life (partly from being undervolted I imagine) and the fact it's also overclocked at the same time ain't so bad either.
2. Not sure how much extra juice is saved by not using a Live Wallpaper, but if we're talking about battery savings here it might as well be said.

I would not be surprised if a large majority of people who get 25+ hrs hook onto wifi networks for a majority of the data usage. When switching to wifi the phone steps down to 2g mode for phone services.
AndyCr15 said:
Erm, this is not correct, is it?
The whole point of multitasking means things still carry on when not in focus. If you leave everything running, they will all try and use data and CPU cycles, no?
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No. Some applications have sister services that do this, but not all applications.

Namuna said:
1. In the choices of kernels, pershoots is regarded as being excellent with battery life (partly from being undervolted I imagine) and the fact it's also overclocked at the same time ain't so bad either.
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Good point, has anyone mentioned SetCPU? If you set up a profile, it will lower your clock speed to 300mhz while the screen is off. Saves quite a bit of power.

40 hours!

For those you said it can't be done it can!
First, i wanna say big thanks to IntersectRaven and his kernels you can find here:
40 hours
Light/Moderate use, lots of texts, some browsing and some calls.
here:
..still got 10% left

Have you been using the 925 or the 800?

Fking show off... Pffft! hahaha j/k bro good shyet!!!!
Enom + 0429 925mV kernel by IR = Heaven I have the same, and I go 32hours with 15% left.

S_Dot said:
For those you said it can't be done it can!
First, i wanna say big thanks to IntersectRaven and his kernels you can find here:
40 hours
Light/Moderate use, lots of texts, some browsing and some calls.
here:
..still got 10% left
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You didn't use Market or WiFi or any other apps? Whats your screen brightness set at?

Sistum Id said:
You didn't use Market or WiFi or any other apps? Whats your screen brightness set at?
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Auto.. I used market actually probably downloaded and updated like 3 apps..
I dont think i hopped on wifi.. maybe once

This sounds too good to be true. The best i've had is this:
I know it could have lasted a while longer but thats when i had to charge it for the night and i highly doubt i could have stretched that anywhere near 40 hours the way i use my phone. This is with persiansown's 925 btw

S_Dot said:
Auto.. I used market actually probably downloaded and updated like 3 apps..
I dont think i hopped on wifi.. maybe once
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so now what? Using 3g is better than wifi???? =( I'm lost only because I keep hearing conflicting reports.

ChillRays said:
so now what? Using 3g is better than wifi???? =( I'm lost only because I keep hearing conflicting reports.
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Wifi uses more battery than 3G

I think i'm going to try IntersecRaven's kernel tomorrow. Anyone know what the difference is between his BFS and CFS release?

S_Dot said:
Wifi uses more battery than 3G
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This is untrue, wifi most definitely use less power than 3g.
3g eats mad battery vs wifi. .

temperbad said:
This is untrue, wifi most definitely use less power than 3g.
3g eats mad battery vs wifi. .
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see what I mean. lol.. This is what I thought. So basically Mike Tyson could get up to 60 hours if he used more wifi? Insane.

ChillRays said:
see what I mean. lol.. This is what I thought. So basically Mike Tyson could get up to 60 hours if he used more wifi? Insane.
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Sort of... 3G uses less power than WiFi in some ways, and more in others...
In general, WiFi uses less for data because it is faster and thus spends less time fully charged up. But 3G uses less power when charged, but at slower speeds, so it ends up using more... ie, WiFi uses, say, 3power x 1sec=3 where as 3G uses 2power x 2sec=4.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=669497
That is a sticky at the top of this forum, read the first post it has a chart showing what uses what.

pjcforpres said:
Sort of... 3G uses less power than WiFi in some ways, and more in others...
In general, WiFi uses less for data because it is faster and thus spends less time fully charged up. But 3G uses less power when charged, but at slower speeds, so it ends up using more... ie, WiFi uses, say, 3power x 1sec=3 where as 3G uses 2power x 2sec=4.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=669497
That is a sticky at the top of this forum, read the first post it has a chart showing what uses what.
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I see, I'm starting to get it. Thanks

S_Dot said:
For those you said it can't be done it can!
First, i wanna say big thanks to IntersectRaven and his kernels you can find here:
40 hours
Light/Moderate use, lots of texts, some browsing and some calls.
here:
..still got 10% left
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
3% screen usage? Did you even use it at all? next time can you include the usage for each of the items listed in the list? would be helpful for comparisons

40 hours only?
I reached 3 days with this kernel meaning 72h and yes I used wifi,market,camera,sms... but all in light to moderate use.
My N1 is 5 weeks old so perhaps the battery cycles are beginning to make it last more too.
The minimum battery I have now is 48h when using ''Men's health'' app for an hour (lot of screen usage) while at body building.
I wonder if GPS will eat battery too fast

PhantomRampage said:
This sounds too good to be true. The best i've had is this:
I know it could have lasted a while longer but thats when i had to charge it for the night and i highly doubt i could have stretched that anywhere near 40 hours the way i use my phone. This is with persiansown's 925 btw
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i kind of agree... idk man, its kind of like a "you had to be there" kind of thing

damn...this makes me wanna root...I'm using stock and hardly get upto 20hrs....My battery died, it was 10hrs nw...I only talked on it for like 30mins..piece a S*****

ram130 said:
damn...this makes me wanna root...I'm using stock and hardly get upto 20hrs....My battery died, it was 10hrs nw...I only talked on it for like 30mins..piece a S*****
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Are you sure you only used it for a 30 minute voice call? There's definitely something fishy there, it isn't normal behavior. If you have 3G on and you're in a place with bad reception a lot, or you have screen on (especially with max brightness), it can take up a lot of battery.
Install something like Spare Parts from the market which can show you battery usage history and use it to check whether you have any rogue apps running. If there's nothing suspicious there, you probably have a faulty battery. Any games using the rotation sensor even when they should be closed take up a lot of battery.

paulk_ said:
Are you sure you only used it for a 30 minute voice call? There's definitely something fishy there, it isn't normal behavior. If you have 3G on and you're in a place with bad reception a lot, or you have screen on (especially with max brightness), it can take up a lot of battery.
Install something like Spare Parts from the market which can show you battery usage history and use it to check whether you have any rogue apps running. If there's nothing suspicious there, you probably have a faulty battery. Any games using the rotation sensor even when they should be closed take up a lot of battery.
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Well I'm in Manhattan, NY. Even though my signal is very strong outside(-51dBm) while in door its around -90dBm to 111dBm. SO I guess that could be a slight cause. I have it my phone on "gsm auto(PRL)" which has help. I also have the brightness on AUTO and everything else I do with this phone like texting, reading and the occasional browsing does not pass 20min. So a total of hour.
Now even after a fresh charge I loose 10% in 5hrs without every turning the screen on. This my second swap and I have 3 batteries. They all do the same thing. I just installed Spare Parts, lets see how this goes.

I have original stock rom unlocked
and currently it's been on 18 hours and I still have 77% battery left!

[Q] Screen on time?

All of you who are using not rooted stock Nexus 4,how is your battery life?What's the average screen on time that you get?Mine lasts about 3hrs+
and i wonder if this is an okay time for a stock kernel.

Misho111 said:
All of you who are using not rooted stock Nexus 4,how is your battery life?What's the average screen on time that you get?Mine lasts about 3hrs+
and i wonder if this is an okay time for a stock kernel.
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that is ok. screen on time will differ for everyone as everyone uses their devices differently, and set up differently. battery life is dependent on how you personally use the device, how you set it up, what apps you use, and very much the quality of your phone/data signal.kernels dont give you extra battery life, no matter how often you read that or how much someone else claims.

simms22 said:
that is ok. screen on time will differ for everyone as everyone uses their devices differently, and set up differently. battery life is dependent on how you personally use the device, how you set it up, what apps you use, and very much the quality of your phone/data signal.kernels dont give you extra battery life, no matter how often you read that or how much someone else claims.
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All right,but still I've seen people who can squeeze out up to 5 hrs of screen on time.However still depending on the aforementioned factors how is this possible?

Misho111 said:
All right,but still I've seen people who can squeeze out up to 5 hrs of screen on time.However still depending on the aforementioned factors how is this possible?
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i see around 5 hours sot. my signal and data quality are fabulous(nyc), lots of years of practicing setting up properly, and years of not using crappy apps, like facebook. and i keep my brightness around 20%.

[Q] Is My Battery Performance Right?

Hi I've recently just bought my Note 4 and coming from my iPhone 5 where the battery was terrible I'm just unsure if my battery is okay on my note. I have it rooted through chainfires custom rom and I read that sometimes roms can affect battery performance in a negative way and I hadn't had my phone long, a day if that before I rooted so I can't really compare stock battery to having the custom rom installed. I've posted pics of my battery performance and also I've noticed my battery drop 1% every 4-5 mins whilst growing the Internet through WiFi is this normal? I have done things already like turning off GPS, locations services , Bluetooth, voice search , Google voice and NFC ect also my brightness is set to auto. Any help would be very much appreciated thank you.

Everything looks just about fine. Enjoy your new phone :victory:

pedmond said:
Everything looks just about fine. Enjoy your new phone :victory:
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Thanks for clarifying I've just been obsessing over battery life because of my previous phone lol, also just to ask is the usage of the Android os and android system fine ? As when I've seen other people's they have been much lower. Thanks.

Blade3377 said:
Thanks for clarifying I've just been obsessing over battery life because of my previous phone lol, also just to ask is the usage of the Android os and android system fine ? As when I've seen other people's they have been much lower. Thanks.
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Yeah, I get more or less the same. You have a day with 5h SoT and 25% left, meaning you could get at least one more hour of screen. That's as good as it gets. You could probably improve even on that, but you would have to block some apps or functions, reduce luminosity etc. In my opinion, it's not worth it.

pedmond said:
Yeah, I get more or less the same. You have a day with 5h SoT and 25% left, meaning you could get at least one more hour of screen. That's as good as it gets. You could probably improve even on that, but you would have to block some apps or functions, reduce luminosity etc. In my opinion, it's not worth it.
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Ahh great thanks you for your help , I take it you have the same phone then lol. Well I'm glad everything's fine and it's normal it's put my mind at ease now maybe I can enjoy the phone more instead of constantly worrying about the battery lol.

Uploaded some benchmarks and battery stats.

A few days of using pure stock, I have made a folder containing screenshots of my benchmarks and battery.
https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B1HrZkG4KQuiNlR3WldpZ3ZGZk0

How do you get such a good battery life? Please tell us!

LMcR92 said:
A few days of using pure stock, I have made a folder containing screenshots of my benchmarks and battery.
https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B1HrZkG4KQuiNlR3WldpZ3ZGZk0
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That's impressive. What kind of screen on time were you getting with your prior phone?

tranemonk33 said:
That's impressive. What kind of screen on time were you getting with your prior phone?
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I had a Sony Xperia Z3+ and when it was pure stock I would get 3-4 hours but that was with a disadvantage, I had to tailer myself to not game or use it heavily as it had the notorious SD810 and would easily hit 80°c while browsing and playing simple games. When a kernel came out SOT didn't improve much just user ex and heat. So yeah this 3T tops it in all my main areas sound, camera and can use it however I feel. :highfive:

First charge.

TheSaboteurr said:
How do you get such a good battery life? Please tell us!
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I haven't done anything, using dark theme's where possible but other than that it's just my daily usage but constantly. Today been using it on YouTube, Tidal streaming, browsing and playing pinout. Sitting at 25% 6H 48M SoT. I f**king love this phone. Just wait till I root and get the tweaks back on

Did you even use your phone? I bet you just enabled so the screen doesnt turn off and placed it on desk.. Thats unfair if you did that as the cpu is running on low mhz all the time

Some people get good battery on every device and some people always get bad battery. I always get great battery on all my phones and this one is no exception. I've hit 10, 11, and 12 hours screen on time and have not done anything to save battery.

Isus <3 said:
Did you even use your phone? I bet you just enabled so the screen doesnt turn off and placed it on desk.. Thats unfair if you did that as the cpu is running on low mhz all the time
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No I used it. Why would I "just sit it on a desk"?

LMcR92 said:
No I used it. Why would I "just sit it on a desk"?
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To hype up and get attention. I really dont understand how can only you get such good battery life while the rest of us are having significantly worse stats
I believe you tho, 3400mah is not a small battery plus you posted a lot of stats /graphs and details about your battery usage

Isus <3 said:
To hype up and get attention. I really dont understand how can only you get such good battery life while the rest of us are having significantly worse stats
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Yeah because I come on XDA for attention
Temperature changes wouldn't happen if it was having a holiday on a desk? Or high constant WiFi data if I wasn't streaming music.

LMcR92 said:
Yeah because I come on XDA for attention
Temperature changes wouldn't happen if it was having a holiday on a desk? Or high constant WiFi data if I wasn't streaming music.
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People do a lot of stuff here just to get likes xD

I get 7-8 hours sot, using my 3T as any other phone.

I used to get aswell 7-8h on the Oneplus One, constantly on WiFi (with LTE it was worse, 5h SoT). Mainly using chrome, tapatalk, flipboard. (no games).
Now on the 3T its pretty the same (7-8h SoT on WiFi).
ofc games will drain it alot more. its depending on usage.
you also get different results when ure on Enterprise WiFis (high dtim interval, authentication system, etc.), then your WiFi could consume much(!) more battery.
at my work, even 4G takes less power than WiFi. While at home, wifi takes nearly nothing (8h idle on wifi = 1-2% max. drain)

Notor1ouS- said:
I used to get aswell 7-8h on the Oneplus One, constantly on WiFi (with LTE it was worse, 5h SoT). Mainly using chrome, tapatalk, flipboard. (no games).
Now on the 3T its pretty the same (7-8h SoT on WiFi).
ofc games will drain it alot more. its depending on usage.
you also get different results when ure on Enterprise WiFis (high dtim interval, authentication system, etc.), then your WiFi could consume much(!) more battery.
at my work, even 4G takes less power than WiFi. While at home, wifi takes nearly nothing (8h idle on wifi = 1-2% max. drain)
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Make a good point about the WIFI. My Asus has this option, I enabled when I got it.

Isus <3 said:
People do a lot of stuff here just to get likes xD
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I get your point, but this is not the case. See my print screens in this thread -> http://forum.xda-developers.com/one...ife-sd821-400mah-t3505786/page10#post69935470
Its helluva device (the combo of HW and well optimized OS).

LMcR92 said:
Make a good point about the WIFI. My Asus has this option, I enabled when I got it.
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which asus one is that?

Notor1ouS- said:
which asus one is that?
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Dsl-ac56u been going strong but want to upgrade soon.

Pretty good battery here. Getting 7 hrs most times although my s7 edge exynos would give me somewhere from 5 hrs to 6.5 hrs sot, O3T SOT is amazing.

Hi @LMcR92 bud very good scores and stats