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First, the set up.
I have an Incredible running Skyraider 2.52 with the 2.6.32.15-adrynalyne kernel. I use SetCPU to set some rather aggressive battery preservation, chief among them being the profile that sets the CPU to 245mHz on screen off (using the Powersave scaling so as to eliminate CPU polling). I have Autokiller set to near absurd levels (the Ultimate preset). I even use Autorun Killer to disable some nonsense apps from starting at boot. Needless to say, battery is a priority.
Also, I should note that I am using the 1750 mah Seido battery.
This morning, I charged my phone to 100% (even a little beyond that, as I charged it with the phone off, but not until I hit the green). I unplugged the phone from my car charger at 9:20 AM. Wifi, Bluetooth, and mobile network were all off. I literally did not touch my phone for the next ten minutes, and yet...
By 9:30 AM, I was at 90%!
I quickly started up Froyo Task Killer, which allows me to force stop programs through Android's own task management. I closed several useless but likeable apps (like ONN and G4) and put my phone back in my pocket.
By 12:47 PM, after not touching the phone again, I was at 80%.
Clearly, you can see the difference in battery usage while otherwise in standby.
Is this a clear case for killing tasks, or is there something else at play? I know that task killers are a cause for serious debate, and 2.2 doesn't play nice with them, but this is a pretty weird case.
You're making an assumption that the battery discharge rate (or rather the displayed rate) is linear. In my experience, this is not the case.
You make an excellent point. However, in most ordinary circumstances, and certainly while running stock Eclair, I usually found that the first 10% battery drain took longer, certainly longer than 10 minutes.
Either way, 1% per hour is, all strange battery magic aside, pretty remarkable for a phone that is in standby with screen off in pocket. Especially when given the lengths I've gone to in attempts to extend said battery life.
once froyo hit i uninstalled my task killer.... haven't looked back since.
I currently run SystemPanel by NextApp.
It will prove to you that task killing is practically a placebo but I highly recommend it just to be aware of whats ACTUALLY killing your battery.
I use the stock battery and the OEM 1500mah. I am pretty happy with what I can get out of the extra capacity battery.
Try turning off 3G when you don't need it using the HTC widget.
If you can't stand the stock apps that always start up on your phone but don't want to delete them do as I did and get the full version of titanium backup (3.99) and freeze all the apps. Out will pretty much just like the name says, freeze the apps. You can then thaw them out when you need them.
I got almost 2 days up time and like 12 of those were up on the 1500 battery. Now I have the 2150 i am at 50 hours up and 10 hours awake with still 50 percent to go, that's first charge too, can't wait till it breaks in
Oh and I was reading somewhere that one of the roms has a problem like that. It might be the skyraider
Sent from my Incredible using tapatalk.
mihneagabriel said:
If you can't stand the stock apps that always start up on your phone but don't want to delete them do as I did and get the full version of titanium backup (3.99) and freeze all the apps. Out will pretty much just like the name says, freeze the apps. You can then thaw them out when you need them.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Autostarts would probably be an easier way of doing this.
kensikora said:
You make an excellent point. However, in most ordinary circumstances, and certainly while running stock Eclair, I usually found that the first 10% battery drain took longer, certainly longer than 10 minutes.
Either way, 1% per hour is, all strange battery magic aside, pretty remarkable for a phone that is in standby with screen off in pocket. Especially when given the lengths I've gone to in attempts to extend said battery life.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
why would you bother having a smartphone if your intent is to leave it in the pocket? I get about 24+ hrs uptime one one charge (stock bat). Generally on WiFi, GPS, and Max Brightness for half of it.
Charge at work since I'm at my desk and no problems. Battery life is great, but if you don't want to use the phone in attempts to get max life, seems quite pointless to own such a powerful device.
Skyraider 3.1
You can go into battery info in the settings and see what is causing battery drain.
In my experience, most drain is when I'm inside a building with poor reception and my phone is on overdrive trying to find signal. Usually I turn on airplane mode and use WiFi if that's the case.
Sent from my ADR6300 using XDA App
Maybe its the kernel. Also I would stop killing the apps, not to save battery but because since they were stopped by the user, the Android system might start them up again almost instantaneously. But this depends on core processes and weather Android is done processing any info or other stuff from that app.
Sent from my ADR6300 using XDA App
MMBosstones86 said:
why would you bother having a smartphone if your intent is to leave it in the pocket?
Skyraider 3.1
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I am not aiming for battery life alone, but I like to leave work and not need to recharge for an hour before I head out. I leave it in my pocket at work because, well, I'm at work. Although I do usually get in a few levels of Angry Birds or Shoot U.
The question is, how can I minimize battery use when my phone is idle so that I have the battery to screw around with it when I want to or have time.
Sent from my ADR6300 using XDA App
mihneagabriel said:
If you can't stand the stock apps that always start up on your phone but don't want to delete them do as I did and get the full version of titanium backup (3.99) and freeze all the apps.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I never knew what that did. I knew the feature existed, but hadn't bothered looking into it. I already bought the full version for totally hands-free installs, so I guess I can now take care of Peep and Flickr.
sl0wd0wn said:
Autostarts would probably be an easier way of doing this.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I had never heard of Autostarts. I seem to find that any apps that aim to disable startup entries always fail to list the apps I am most interested in blocking, but for 90 cents, I am definitely willing to give it a shot.
Edit: I haven't had a chance to determine its effect on battery life, but Autostarts is brilliant. It makes so much more sense to actually change startup entries than to try and stop a task after it starts. I also was unaware of how many events trigger apps to start. That is one powerful app.
Sent from my ADR6300 using XDA App
The 10% drop at the beginning has nothing to do with apps or task killing. It's a bug, the battery isn't telling the software the correct percentage it is at. Killing apps won't do anything to fix it.
If you want to 'fix' it, do a bump charge. Turn off your phone when it hits green, keep it charging till it hits green again.
ok so I used my phone for about 3 hours last night tweaking things and playing with stuff and didn't charge it overnight and used it a bunch today and the battery indicator looked like it was at about 70%. probably not accurate, but the fact that it's even still on amazes me because it's probably got 8 hours of playing with it and 6 hours of standby and still going strong.
I think a full drain then a full charge might reset the battery indicator for accuracy, I wish we had like a "current widget" for WP7 to see the ma drain.
how you guys doing on HD2 WP7 battery drain? Mine seems to be even better than WM6.5
I have the exact opposite experience as you. My HD2[7]'s battery life is crap. It was fully charged last night and I had left it in my drawer with the Wi-fi off. After coming from work a half hour ago, I saw that the battery was almost drained.
Also, shouldn't the battery icon show the plug when the phone is being charged? My phone is on and booted into WP7, the red light is showing but the battery icon shows no animation or the plug. EDIT: WTF IT FROZE ON ME, I had to remove the battery!
Finally, what's with the random reboots? I've seen 2 already.
sclip said:
Finally, what's with the random reboots? I've seen 2 already.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think its something related to the SD cards you are using.
If the Sd card you are using is not compatible with WP7 then you will get random reboots.
And the main thing here is that there is no specific way to know which SD card will work and which wont work with WP7
By the way my battery is somewhat draining faster than the Android I was using on my HD2
05081983 said:
I think its something related to the SD cards you are using.
If the Sd card you are using is not compatible with WP7 then you will get random reboots.
And the main thing here is that there is no specific way to know which SD card will work and which wont work with WP7
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
we know which sd cards work on official wp7 devices.
nrfitchett4 said:
we know which sd cards work on official wp7 devices.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What I meant to say was, we don't know which SD card will work with WP7 on HD2.
I wasn't talking about the official WP7
Well the stock 16gig TMOUS card works just fine.
my battery seems to be fine, i use my scale based on my school schedual. with android from 7 am to 4 pm around 50 to 40 percent.
today running wp7 i unplugged it around 8is and about 6 is it had very little black on the battery icon. im going ot charge it up fully, then kill it, to see if that helps reset the battery stats
Well when i first flashed WP7 my battery was over lasting.. After i manually rebooted because i just felt like doing so, my battery has started to drain a little bit to fast.
Are there any marketplace apps that can monitor this stuff yet?
Update: Last night, after making sure that my phone was fully charged, I turned off the wifi and removed the SIM card and didn't touch the phone again until a half hour ago (about 12 hours standby time in total). The indicator is showing about 50% battery life remaining. This SUCKS, and any helpful comments about this will be appreciated.
just considering its not supposed to be on the phone...
also what theme are you using
and since microsd polling it may have a lot of impact on standard battery life...
plus, let's be real, it is an htc...they're not battery efficient
domineus said:
just considering its not supposed to be on the phone...
also what theme are you using
and since microsd polling it may have a lot of impact on standard battery life...
plus, let's be real, it is an htc...they're not battery efficient
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Here are my settings: Dark background theme, purple (hate the color normally, but somehow manages to look nice on the HD2), 30 seconds lockscreen timeout, Wifi off, Location off.
I tried removing the MicroSD, but the phone then becomes unusable with frequent freezes and reboots. I'd love to check if the card is affecting battery life if the damn phone would let me to.
sclip said:
I have the exact opposite experience as you. My HD2[7]'s battery life is crap. It was fully charged last night and I had left it in my drawer with the Wi-fi off. After coming from work a half hour ago, I saw that the battery was almost drained.
Also, shouldn't the battery icon show the plug when the phone is being charged? My phone is on and booted into WP7, the red light is showing but the battery icon shows no animation or the plug. EDIT: WTF IT FROZE ON ME, I had to remove the battery!
Finally, what's with the random reboots? I've seen 2 already.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
HTC puts bad batteries in their 4.3" phones. They've been using 1230 mAh batteries forever (over a year). Blackberry curves come with 1150 mAh batteries so you can see what that size is somewhat optimized for: feature phones and smartphones with small non-touch screens.
Most smartphones with a 4"+ screen running Android or WP7 have 1400+ mAh batteries (the i4 and Droid X also have 1400, Galaxy S and Incredible have 1500). That's why the battery life is bad.
And it's also the reason why I've never really given the phone much consideration - the battery and the TFT LCD screen they used on it.
That being said, the battery life depends on you usage. When I used my HD2 as myprimary device the battery life was terrible. Once I got my Vibrant and used it only as a PMP, the battery life was terrific because it didn't have a SIM Card and I only used it on WiFi and to play Music and Videos.
But people who use Curve 3Gs as their primary devices and are constantly BBMing and/or SMSing people in addition to calls report days-worth of uptime (emphasis on the plural).
My battery life is on par with what it was on android (about 12-16 hours with moderate usage of web, email, facebook, and heavy twitter) and its configured the same was as my android:
1) wifi is on when I need it (maybe 20-45 minutes a day for some marketplace downloads or something)
2) location is always on
3) screen is set to manual, low and 3 minute time-out
4) I have 3 IMAP email accounts that check between every 15 minutes and every 30 minutes.
5) I have a VERY active twitter account that updates every few minutes (not sure exactly as it doesn't appear to be live tile integrated)
6) facebook and google sync
7) HTC HUB is usually running updating the weather and stocks as often as it likes
8) dark brown theme
9) ringer off and no haptic feedback
Hope that helps anyone.
I do agree that the HTC supplied battery is sub-standard. Does anyone know where I can see what the battery percentage is acutally at? I only have the icon in the top right.
Just as a bit of information, my HD7 gets significantly better battery life than my sister's Galaxy phone. Also, those of you removing the SIM, make sure you also enable airplane mode, incase the phone continues to still search for signal... Battery size isn't as important as power management, though I do agree I wish we had a bigger battery on our HD7s... we might have sacrificed a little space for it though...
I think the battery meter is off. After about an hour of playing with Netflix, Zune and watching videos with the ign app my battery meter indicated that I had a lil juice left. I went to sleep without charging the phone. I was sure it would be dead when I woke but it wasn't. I was able to get about 2 more hrs out of it while using the Zune player streaming a playlist I saw.
Sent from my HD2 Windows Phone 7 using Board Express.
There is no third party multi-tasking in WP7 and Android Users usually have more apps/services updating stuff in the background. Yes, WP7 will get better battery life than lots of Android Phones and even theHD2 with the same battery in it due to that simple fact along, nevermind all the other exceptions and the obvious disclaimer: different use patterns are different.
N8ter said:
There is no third party multi-tasking in WP7 and Android Users usually have more apps/services updating stuff in the background. Yes, WP7 will get better battery life than lots of Android Phones and even theHD2 with the same battery in it due to that simple fact along, nevermind all the other exceptions and the obvious disclaimer: different use patterns are different.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have ATK or whatever it is installed on her phone, not sure if the AMOLED screen uses more juice though
Don't get me started on task killers and android. ATK may be causing the poor battery life. Those process and apps you think your killing are just gonna restart and cause more battery drain. Android does not need task killers. I suggest trying auto killer wich tweaks androids internal memory management to be more or less aggrsive. Phone must be rooted though.
Sent from my HTC Glacier using XDA App
MvP77 said:
Don't get me started on task killers and android. ATK may be causing the poor battery life. Those process and apps you think your killing are just gonna restart and cause more battery drain. Android does not need task killers. I suggest trying auto killer wich tweaks androids internal memory management to be more or less aggrsive. Phone must be rooted though.
Sent from my HTC Glacier using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I won't have much luck with that lol, her phone, her rules... I might convince her some day though
I've been testing the HD2 Extended Battery on WP7 for the whole day. After watching a few shows and one movie on Netflix, doing normal texting and web browsing, heavy amount of calling, the battery still has about 40% juice. The test started at 8am, and now posting 40% at 11:20.
Bring in Copy/Paste, turn-by-turn voice navigation and fix for camera focus (2-step button), this HD2 will be the holy grail of all phones. I have fallen in love with WP7 already. However, Android is kept on the second SD card for navigation.
My only problem is Android doesn't support the extended battery as far as I've seen thus far. Do you guys have a solution to that? I'd hate to carry extra battery around all the time. Although, I could just carry the extended battery for long journey.
How could android not be supporting it? It's not like it needs a driver. Sounds like Android is just chewing through the battery that fast. The battery isn't software dependent.
RustyGrom said:
How could android not be supporting it? It's not like it needs a driver. Sounds like Android is just chewing through the battery that fast. The battery isn't software dependent.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's what I would think as well. However, none of the Android kernels have support for the extended battery. Some attempts were made, but to no avail. Apparently, improper reporting of CPU temp causes Android to shutdown in order to avoid damage.
Am I the only one who thinks that Microsoft is doing really well with the platform? They launched last year have had one issue (with the Nodo update) and are already ahead of schedule on there Mango update.
To me honestly my Dell Venue Pro looks better then my brothers android phone it may not have as many features but it has all I look for in a phone. I just don't see why everyone is complaining so much :s?
Oh and if I have missed something about the platform please tell me
No, you are not the only one.
I had WP7, then some friends tried to persuade me to pass to Android, i used it for a month until I trow it out of my car window (It was a Nexus One, so exactly the same hardware as LG E900 I was using and I am currently using).
Far too bored from system lockup, too much energy consumption from the OS an applications, Android is just a bunch of buggy software.
Now back to WP7 and breathing again, no need to travel with battery charger, fast and reliable os...
What kind of battery life do you get on wp7? I get around 10 hours while my android phone usually gets 26-30.
For all the strong points on wp7 battery performance is not one
Sent from my Xoom using Tapatalk
BlackDino said:
What kind of battery life do you get on wp7? I get around 10 hours while my android phone usually gets 26-30.
For all the strong points on wp7 battery performance is not one
Sent from my Xoom using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have to agree with this. My Focus is horrid for BL. I have all syncing set to manual and even deleted all apps that required syncing data except the weather app. My Focus, not being used, will drain the battery in less than 2 days...remember, I said not being used...the screen is always off, the sim is out and the wifi sleeping.
My Androids are much better. Even my HD2 with Android lasts several days with mild usage. My iPhone is unmatched, though. It just lasts and lasts. I can go a week with mild usage and still have 75% battery.
MS needs to focus on the BL.
BlackDino said:
What kind of battery life do you get on wp7? I get around 10 hours while my android phone usually gets 26-30.
For all the strong points on wp7 battery performance is not one
Sent from my Xoom using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Must be low utilization....
---------- Post added at 08:33 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:26 PM ----------
MartyLK said:
I have to agree with this. My Focus is horrid for BL. I have all syncing set to manual and even deleted all apps that required syncing data except the weather app. My Focus, not being used, will drain the battery in less than 2 days...remember, I said not being used...the screen is always off, the sim is out and the wifi sleeping.
My Androids are much better. Even my HD2 with Android lasts several days with mild usage. My iPhone is unmatched, though. It just lasts and lasts. I can go a week with mild usage and still have 75% battery.
MS needs to focus on the BL.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Totally disagree, I have the 1.3 focus and have no problem getting through a 12 hour work day with moderate to heavy use.
I think comparing Android battery performance to WP isn't a direct comparison since Android runs on a plethora of different hardware with different battery sizes, cpus, gpus, etc, etc... WP has what, less than 10 models currently on the market?
Although that's soon to change.
I do know this for a fact: My colleague had a Samsung Infuse and her battery wouldn't last 8 hours. Returned it for an iphone cause the Mango wasn't even close to RTM at the time.
That's probably because her battery is 1400 mah and mine is 1500 mah. Also her CPU is 1.5 ghz and mine is 1.0 ghz.. After that, then the OS would come in to play.
---------- Post added at 08:42 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:33 PM ----------
dilzo said:
Am I the only one who thinks that Microsoft is doing really well with the platform? They launched last year have had one issue (with the Nodo update) and are already ahead of schedule on there Mango update.
To me honestly my Dell Venue Pro looks better then my brothers android phone it may not have as many features but it has all I look for in a phone. I just don't see why everyone is complaining so much :s?
Oh and if I have missed something about the platform please tell me
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No, and millions of others including myself think it's doing well too.
But remember, there's a lot of money at stake and people will do/say anything to try to stop their camp from potentially losing any market share.
Be patient. MS has some very big things coming. It's a long term plan, and time will reveal it. And only then will the doubters finally see what's going on.
But the haters, there's nothing that can be said for them except please leave this forum and keep your nonsense to yourselves.
If you are basing your assumption that you are the "only one" off of the forum posts on XDA (or on any forum really), don't.
Its a well known fact that complaints are much louder than praise. But the number of people complaining is minute compared to the many others who are too busy using and enjoying their phones to bother with any forums.
Especially here on XDA, where one of the reasons we're all here is because we see something that could be improved or better, and we gather here as enthusiasts and developers to make those improvements. Its only natural that these improvements are based off of complaints that people make here.
Its not a perfect platform, but then again, no platform is. And for being only 1 year into the platform, its doing quite well both in terms of the app Marketplace, and the general development of the platform.
MartyLK said:
I have to agree with this. My Focus is horrid for BL. I have all syncing set to manual and even deleted all apps that required syncing data except the weather app. My Focus, not being used, will drain the battery in less than 2 days...remember, I said not being used...the screen is always off, the sim is out and the wifi sleeping.
My Androids are much better. Even my HD2 with Android lasts several days with mild usage. My iPhone is unmatched, though. It just lasts and lasts. I can go a week with mild usage and still have 75% battery.
MS needs to focus on the BL.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
How do you get that much battery life out of you iPhone? Everyone I know with an iPhone, especially the iPhone 4, can't get through a whole day without looking for a charger at the end of the day. With a battery pack case, they can make it through two days. I'm just wondering.
Sent from my Samsung Focus using XDA Windows Phone 7 App
mikroland said:
I do know this for a fact: My colleague had a Samsung Infuse and her battery wouldn't last 8 hours. Returned it for an iphone cause the Mango wasn't even close to RTM at the time.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Totally disagree. I had an Infuse and the battery life was the best of my Android. It would last a long time. Much longer than 8 hours.
---------- Post added at 08:07 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:02 PM ----------
jallenashley said:
How do you get that much battery life out of you iPhone? Everyone I know with an iPhone, especially the iPhone 4, can't get through a whole day without looking for a charger at the end of the day. With a battery pack case, they can make it through two days. I'm just wondering.
Sent from my Samsung Focus using XDA Windows Phone 7 App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm a mild user. I rarely make phone calls and do minimal things with it. It's my main phone and I keep it with me all the time, but it basically just sits in my belt case and once in a while I'll pull it out and check emails, market apps and do some other things with it.
But if I do make or receive calls, it will drain much more than it does. But there is no exaggeration about the BL I see with it. I can go several days forgetting about it and when I do think about it I figure it might need charging. But I pull it out and look and it's barely moved away from a full charge.
And this is the same type usage I do with my others phones, except my Focus. My Focus just sits at home in its pouch never used. But the battery will drain in less than 2 days.
I wouldn't really consider an idle phone a good benchmark for battery life, though it is the easiest. It is non-standard usage and probably not something they are optimizing around.
PG2G said:
I wouldn't really consider an idle phone a good benchmark for battery life, though it is the easiest. It is non-standard usage and probably not something they are optimizing around.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The only idle phone I have is my Focus. And all of my Androids and my iPhone are used, but used minimally. For music on my iPhone, I get around 50 hours. The standby time on the iPhone is literal and true. The standby time on the Androids isn't. The standby time on my WP7 phone is the most horrendous I've seen since my Blackberry Pearl Flip.
My surround battery life is great. I don't use it much for talking but i do use it to check my fantasy football scores, constant emails withour exchange server (push mail), comcast home email, yahoo (for fantasy football) and text messaging. I also use the internet frequently off 3G throughout the day and usually have an app update or 2 and in the morning i use the fm radio for my 40 min walk with the dog and mp3's for another 30 min walk after work.. After all this i'm at 30% - 40% battery life. Also my charge time is up to 90% with only about a 45 min charge. Surrounds have 1500m batteries.
Android obvious has superior hardware...they needed it to run their laggy OS.
Samsung infuse with custom rom eaquals 10 -12 hours of battery life moderate usage and no lag. Its overclocked to 1.6 ghz also. I left wp7 2 months ago and feel free all of a sudden. I really was pulling for wp7 for a while but unfortunately its not gonna make it.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I997 using XDA App
Well, I was comparing two similar hardware phones (LG E900 with Nexus One); the have same CPU, RAM, DISPLAY and more or less, battery (50ma minus for the Nexus One).
I make exactly the same use of both phones, since my habits didn't changed in 3 months.
So yes, I will never come back to Android, for battery life, for reliability, for buggy OS, for smoothliness......
I find the two day battery for the completely idle (all radios off) Focus to be a bit surprising. I had mine in a similar situation for a few days and all indications pointed to it lasting around a week. It's definitely short of my old Touch Pro 2's month of full idle, but it's an unrealistic test either way. And we'll see what the new firmware with the official Mango update brings to the table.
I'm a reasonably light phone user in general, and I have no real qualms with the battery life I get on the Focus... at least after setting the screen brightness to low. It's pretty obvious that the screen is going to be a huge power draw when having it on high with a light-coloured display for a few minutes makes the entire device hot. Another strong point is the consistency of the battery meter - my Blackberry could end a day with anywhere from 90% to 40% battery remaining on very similar cross-day usage profiles, while my Focus idles at a very predictable 1.5-2%/hr with 3G, one EAS push account, and The Weather Network's live tile.
For a full wake-to-sleep 18-20h day to rarely consume more than 50% battery is totally reasonable, especially when the device doesn't freeze, crash, lag, or generally spaz out without regular reboots unlike every other mobile I've owned.
random_n said:
I find the two day battery for the completely idle (all radios off) Focus to be a bit surprising. I had mine in a similar situation for a few days and all indications pointed to it lasting around a week. It's definitely short of my old Touch Pro 2's month of full idle, but it's an unrealistic test either way. And we'll see what the new firmware with the official Mango update brings to the table.
I'm a reasonably light phone user in general, and I have no real qualms with the battery life I get on the Focus... at least after setting the screen brightness to low. It's pretty obvious that the screen is going to be a huge power draw when having it on high with a light-coloured display for a few minutes makes the entire device hot. Another strong point is the consistency of the battery meter - my Blackberry could end a day with anywhere from 90% to 40% battery remaining on very similar cross-day usage profiles, while my Focus idles at a very predictable 1.5-2%/hr with 3G, one EAS push account, and The Weather Network's live tile.
For a full wake-to-sleep 18-20h day to rarely consume more than 50% battery is totally reasonable, especially when the device doesn't freeze, crash, lag, or generally spaz out without regular reboots unlike every other mobile I've owned.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What hardware revision do you have, v1.3 or v1.4?
I'm actually surprised at your battery life, MartyLK. My Samsung Omnia 7 (which I assume is the same as the Focus in terms of hardware) easily lasts a day and a half with all radios on, push email/notifications, and light usage (usually web browsing or videos). It seems strange that your Focus would only last 2 days when sitting completely idle.
Yeah my HTC surround has a really small battery (1230mAh) and it lasts almost a full day with moderate usage.
wp7 might not have the best idle-time batterylife. but on moderate use, they last about as long.
and with mango, batterylife while using improved massively. can't wait for mango with actual updated device drivers. can't be long anymore.
omnia 7 here.
but in the end, nothing beats my dumpphone from nokia that i use at work. idle time of two to three weeks.
hope to see wp7 go more into that direction. instead of upping the performance (which is not needed), use the more efficient newer hardware for longer batterylife.
and yes, so far all friends who have a wp7 are very happy with it. except they still don't have mango, and have seen it on mine
I think battery life is a useless topic, especially in Android. People used to flashing custom roms and kernels can never have same battery life on all roms or all the kernels and themes they are flashing.
Besides their are a lot of settings and culprit apps in Android which can eat away your battery if not recognized and managed.
So, battery life largely depends on user habits as well.
Just got my focus today. Have yet to see things in here.
With these larger screens and powerful processors, I can't say I'm totally surprised at the lower battery life compared to all the iPhones. They have smaller screens and the O/S is more tightly controlled and optimized for the hardware to maximize battery life.
With that said, I must admit, I'm somewhat disappointed with the battery life on this S3. I've now had it for two weeks so after lots of tweaking, rooting, apps installs and configs, battery and task monitoring, etc, I've kind of settled into my normal usage pattern which is typically pretty easy on the phone as more than 50% of the time I'm working from my home office with the phone plugged into USB so it is rare I have to leave in the morning and go the whole day without having to eventually sit back down at my computer and plug the phone back in.
However on the weekends, with kids sports and such, I'm now seeing the limitations on battery life on this phone. I have it set to:
Auto Display Brightness
No updating of apps unless on WiFi
GPS and Wifi turned off when I leave the houose (automatically via Llama - I turn them on only when I need them)
Power Saver Mode, all options except CPU power saving checked. (Kind of bought the phone for fast CPU although I'm not a gamer - just a multitasker and web browser)
Auto Screen Tone Turned On
Most other specific apps that have option to not download data except wifi I have that option turned on (aside from Taptu news feeds - 2 hour updates and Alerts from ESPN ScoreCenter - get maybe a couple alerts every few hours)
Haptic feedback turned off
Here's where I was shocked. First time I did some serious browsing was in a movie theater where I got there early and had about 20 min to burn so I did constant web browsing over the LTE connection. Watched batter plummet about 15% in 15 min. Whoa!
So is this just "how it is" with this phone that heavy LTE data usage eats battery like no tomorrow?
Other thing I noticed, is Using GSam, I see a task usually being in the top 3 or 4 most of the time with around 15-20% of the App Battery Usage total. It's called "System (*wakelock*)" and when I look at properties it shows around 6-8 wakelocks and Included Packages is just one "PowerAMP Full Version Unlocker" Included Processes: *wakelock* and com.maxmpx.audioplayer. But this is when I'm not using PowerAMP. In fact it happens after phone has been rebooted and I have never launched PowerAMP once!
I did notice something similar on the HTC One X+ I tried then exchanged for the S3 where I found a task associated with beats audio was eating up CPU/Battery when no music app was open as if it was periodically scanning my large MP3 library of 2,600 songs. Maybe PowerAmp is doing something similar?
I've found I'm not the only one noticing this:
http://forum.powerampapp.com/index.php?/topic/2662-battery-drain/
Well, first off, i think the main reason why the iPhone gets better battery life isn't because of the smaller screen or iOS being "optimized for the hardware". It's probably more due to the fact that it doesn't really run much of anything in the background. Very few apps actually continue to run when you leave them. It's kind of a pseudo-multitasking environment.
As for the S3's battery life.... it could be PowerAmp causing it. I also don't see why you'd want to keep power saving on the CPU off. It doesn't really seem to have that much of an impact on performance that i've seen while generally using the phone for web browsing and such. And no matter what phone you're on, LTE will kill the battery in no time flat.
I think you should give some time to settle your battery first...even after flashing a new rom its take couple of days for the battery to settle down. The first day i used my phone, the battery doed in 4 hours...now after 4 months it lasts for 15-16 hrs of normal to heavy use.
LTE does eat lots of battery, whenever i go in LTE area i have to switch my data off to keep my phone alive. That's why people like to have the ability to switch between LTE and HSPA+. Search to find that mod.
You can never compare iPhone with S3. As the above poster said, there is no multitasking in iPhones. The screen is small and not as good as S3. SAMLOED screen takes lots of battery.
viny2cool said:
I think you should give some time to settle your battery first...even after flashing a new rom its take couple of days for the battery to settle down. The first day i used my phone, the battery doed in 4 hours...now after 4 months it lasts for 15-16 hrs of normal to heavy use.
LTE does eat lots of battery, whenever i go in LTE area i have to switch my data off to keep my phone alive. That's why people like to have the ability to switch between LTE and HSPA+. Search to find that mod.
You can never compare iPhone with S3. As the above poster said, there is no multitasking in iPhones. The screen is small and not as good as S3. SAMLOED screen takes lots of battery.
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I totally agree with you. You have to give it time to settle in. You can also run a battery calibration to try and help as well. I have LTE here in Omaha and I usually get at least 15 hours before I need to charge my battery. I have a QCell battery and it works awesome.
I will live with the battery life so I can actually see the screen without having to squint my eyes. I used to have an iPhone as well but that was years ago now and Android will always be the best.
Don't get me wrong, as a "Power User" coming from the iOS Jailbreak world, hardware and customization-wise, I love this phone a lot more than I like my iPhone - but mostly it's the big screen that I'm enjoying. Have had a couple crashes in the first two weeks which never happened in iOS but no biggie.
So I suspect its primarily the LTE, but combined with large screen, true multitasking O/S, etc, obviously battery life is a challenge. I would slightly criticize Samsung for maybe being a little too obsessed with keeping the phone thin. I know you can buy the bigger batteries with a replacement cover but that looks like it really adds major thickness to phone. They should have went for a 2500-2700 mah battery and increased the thickness slightly IMHO.
But hey, at least the battery is removable. So I can spend little money and get a QCell, charge it and keep it in my car or on my desk and if I know I'm not going to be able to charge the phone all day, just pop the extra battery in my jacket pocket.
The LTE usage is a bit of a mystery to me. You would figure, with LTE, you can download files faster so you spend less time actually using the phone. But obviously it appears the energy consumption is trumping the increased efficiency in data transfer! Too bad.
Why the battery 'breaks in' over time is even more of a mystery. This latest battery technology should not have any sort of break-in or memory issues. But I'm no battery expert. But my gut says there's something else at play. I've seen many threads over past couple of years that discuss an issue relating to Android doing some sort of "media scan" after boot and/or periodically. Maybe the battery break-in is more about the databases the O/S is creating and updating in the background "settling down" more than anything to do with the characteristics of the physical battery changing?
One thing is for certain though, battery life IS a common issue for most higher-end Android smartphone users. Not a deal breaker in the least for me, but will be interesting to see how the phone "seasons" over time regarding battery. I used Titanium Backup to freeze Power Amp and downloaded N7 instead just to rule Power Amp out. I just took a 1.5 hour shopping trip. Didn't use LTE data. But spent about 45 minutes at the grocery store using their wifi to access all my coupons and shopping lists. Battery was 97% when I left house, 77% when I got home. Ouch. Well, that was probably more like a 2 hour round trip. Still 20% in 2 hours is not good especially considering I had 0 talk time and wasn't using LTE data.
The crazy thing is, Gsam says 12% screen, 86% apps. Under apps it says 23.6% Kernel, 19.3% Media, 19.3% N7 Player!!! And I didn't play any music!!!! This is leading me more and more to believe this all has something to do with having an extremely large music collection (2600 songs) on the phone and the phone is building a database and it just takes time. Pure guess.
Get his app disable autostart of the applications that are not needed. Also, get betterbatterystats to get a more detailed idea of whats going on with your phone.
how bad is your battery life? fwiw my wife's iPhone 5 gets horrendous battery life. makes the s3 look like a miser.
16 - 20 hours would be reasonable IMHO, or a average drain of 4-5% per hour. assuming you're actually using the thing... I never understood people who cripple the thing and never touch it in order to get max life.
Russ77 said:
how bad is your battery life? fwiw my wife's iPhone 5 gets horrendous battery life. makes the s3 look like a miser.
16 - 20 hours would be reasonable IMHO, or a average drain of 4-5% per hour. assuming you're actually using the thing... I never understood people who cripple the thing and never touch it in order to get max life.
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Iphone5 has a bigger screen then previous apples and it's also Lte. It's multitask has been improved too. It's not a secret its battery life plummeted.
Sent from my SGH-I747M using xda app-developers app
You know when someone pushes away an iPhone groupy I'm pretty sympathetic but this post is just a noob rage idiotic post. I didn't even read through all your points but will just say you need to spend more time learning
-there is autobrightness on root (and non rooted) and in fact autobrightness doesn't necessarily save battery...as much utiltiy as having say a brightness notification in the app bar or something like lux that allows you to control brigntness by environment/app etc
-it says nothing of what you have running in the background, spam apps, wakelocks etc (bbs) The fact your apps and music is taking up more battery than say cell tower stanbdy and screen display is an obvious red flag
- says nothing of how you checked your connections and how reception is in your area
Another point is the iphone 4 and 5 are MUCH thicker than the galaxy s3...they hold relative to the backgroudn processes etc running, a much larger and thicker battery. The same physical thickness of the s3 battery you could buy a battery with nearly twice as much juice.
We dont' know how you optimized your phone for your uses or whether you cleaned up processes, apps etc, how cleanly you flashed. Go and learn then come back and cry
Wow.... you tell him to learn then come back and cry.... say it's a "noob rage idiotic post".... and yet:
jazee said:
Other thing I noticed, is Using GSam, I see a task usually being in the top 3 or 4 most of the time with around 15-20% of the App Battery Usage total. It's called "System (*wakelock*)" and when I look at properties it shows around 6-8 wakelocks and Included Packages is just one "PowerAMP Full Version Unlocker" Included Processes: *wakelock* and com.maxmpx.audioplayer. But this is when I'm not using PowerAMP. In fact it happens after phone has been rebooted and I have never launched PowerAMP once!
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I'm sorry... but exactly what did he not mention about wakelock's?
You obviously didn't read the first sentence of my second most before you posted this, which said:
Don't get me wrong, as a "Power User" coming from the iOS Jailbreak world, hardware and customization-wise, I love this phone a lot more than I like my iPhone
I know all about Better Battery Stats, bla bla bla. I'm no idiot. Just giving some initial impressions and asking for a little further guidance.
zetsui said:
You know when someone pushes away an iPhone groupy I'm pretty sympathetic but this post is just a noob rage idiotic post. I didn't even read through all your points but will just say you need to spend more time learning
-there is autobrightness on root (and non rooted) and in fact autobrightness doesn't necessarily save battery...as much utiltiy as having say a brightness notification in the app bar or something like lux that allows you to control brigntness by environment/app etc
-it says nothing of what you have running in the background, spam apps, wakelocks etc (bbs) The fact your apps and music is taking up more battery than say cell tower stanbdy and screen display is an obvious red flag
- says nothing of how you checked your connections and how reception is in your area
Another point is the iphone 4 and 5 are MUCH thicker than the galaxy s3...they hold relative to the backgroudn processes etc running, a much larger and thicker battery. The same physical thickness of the s3 battery you could buy a battery with nearly twice as much juice.
We dont' know how you optimized your phone for your uses or whether you cleaned up processes, apps etc, how cleanly you flashed. Go and learn then come back and cry
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Well here's an update. As I mentioned, I froze PowerAmp and installed N7 instead. I could have swore I reset the GSAM battery monitor, AFTER N7 scanned all my media files. Yet once again, like PowerAmp (via System *wakelock*) N7 was third highest battery eater over 2 hours of "normal" usage WITHOUT LTE Data Use, only Wifi and NO TALK TIME and WITHOUT USING N7!
So I dumped N7 and installed Player Pro. Just went out again for 2 hours to my son's basketball practice. Spent the 1.5 hour practice reading e-mail and doing some web surfing ALL ON LTE! Battery went down like no more than 10% !! At the beginning of the practice I played a song in Player Pro for a few seconds then backed out of the app. Checked GSAM 2 hours later, no significant PlayerPro battery usage!
It is more and more looking like something is going on with PowerAmp and N7 regarding cataloging of large music collections. So I'll stick with Player Pro and see how things go over the next few days.
Thanks to those with the constructive criticism. This has been one of the pluses of moving to Android. There's a lot larger population of "Power Users" than on iPhone that are willing to help someone relatively new to the platform.
yea... that's the one thing i had a feeling it might have been doing, but wasn't exactly sure as i've never really been that media-crazy with my phones. Good to see that you found the issue, though.
jazee said:
Why the battery 'breaks in' over time is even more of a mystery. This latest battery technology should not have any sort of break-in or memory issues. But I'm no battery expert. But my gut says there's something else at play.
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Yeah, "battery break-in" is a bit of a misnomer. What's actually happening is that the stats the OS keeps on the battery capacity and usage are being rebuilt. It takes a few charge cycles for your system to "learn" what it needs to accurately show you remaining capacity, etc.
jazee said:
So I dumped N7 and installed Player Pro. Just went out again for 2 hours to my son's basketball practice. Spent the 1.5 hour practice reading e-mail and doing some web surfing ALL ON LTE! Battery went down like no more than 10% !! At the beginning of the practice I played a song in Player Pro for a few seconds then backed out of the app. Checked GSAM 2 hours later, no significant PlayerPro battery usage!
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Good move! I use PlayerPro and I love it. It's one of my few "must haves", not least of which is its ability to sync ratings back to iTunes with iSyncr. None of the other major players have this. This is important for me as I'm also an iOS refugee and I still have all my music in iTunes.
jazee said:
Well here's an update. As I mentioned, I froze PowerAmp and installed N7 instead. I could have swore I reset the GSAM battery monitor, AFTER N7 scanned all my media files. Yet once again, like PowerAmp (via System *wakelock*) N7 was third highest battery eater over 2 hours of "normal" usage WITHOUT LTE Data Use, only Wifi and NO TALK TIME and WITHOUT USING N7!
So I dumped N7 and installed Player Pro. Just went out again for 2 hours to my son's basketball practice. Spent the 1.5 hour practice reading e-mail and doing some web surfing ALL ON LTE! Battery went down like no more than 10% !! At the beginning of the practice I played a song in Player Pro for a few seconds then backed out of the app. Checked GSAM 2 hours later, no significant PlayerPro battery usage!
It is more and more looking like something is going on with PowerAmp and N7 regarding cataloging of large music collections. So I'll stick with Player Pro and see how things go over the next few days.
Thanks to those with the constructive criticism. This has been one of the pluses of moving to Android. There's a lot larger population of "Power Users" than on iPhone that are willing to help someone relatively new to the platform.
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power user here too coming from iphone 3g, 3gs, 4 to samsung skyrocket, note, nexus to the current at&t sgs3. all have been jailbroken and rooted for "customization" purposes and the first thing i noticed going to the android phones was how poor the battery life was when compared to any iOS device; even when the devices were stock. I can deal with it because of how much customization i can do with android that i can't do on iOS so for that reason alone i stick with android. and also nothing apple has done has impressed me with their iPhone series yet. might pick up an iPad mini retina one day :laugh:
anyways, back to your battery issue. have you tried going to stock rom or formatting just to make sure its not a hardware issue? i know for mine, one time my data partition that had my music had some corrupt file that had the media scanner always running and killing my battery. i had tried everything and there was no way that in 8 hrs i'd have < 30% left with no usage. i finally deleted and formatted everything, went to pure stock with no files except for my contacts and no email sync. then i got 15 to 20 hours... that's usual for the sgs3, a tad less than my old iphone 4. that told me my battery wasn't bad.
i ended up keeping an eye on wakelocks and re-installing all my apps and putting all my music back on and my battery issue dissapeared and i'm happy. still have poweramp installed, but moved to using google music for cloud and local music. what made me really happy was going to a hyperion battery and the slimmer extended sedio case for 2 to 3 days of battery life on this sucker for a decent price. :good: still have the stock batter for backup too!
I'm not on a Custom ROM. Just rooted.
I installed Better Battery Stats to see how it worked. Don't like it as much as GSAM. Seems you can get a bit lower-level process info upfront, but the graphing is barely readable and it doesn't show percent usage of battery for each process. Just number of s(econds) and blue and red line? Maybe I'm missing a setting? I think BBS may be popular as maybe it existed before GSAM (formerly Badass Battery Monitor I think) or maybe there is just something about BBS that I haven't realized yet is a major advantage over GSAM? They both do the job. Sorry for going off on a tangent.
The process hogging the battery the most now is Google Maps and I know from searching and reading this is VERY common. It can be related to ANY app wanting to poll your location. I'm not yet sure though if the usage is excessive. Looks like not. I turned off all of the Location settings in Maps (but left "Location and Google search" in main Location Setting ON as I read that really defeats a lot of functionality. Google Now wasn't happy I turned of Location History (in Maps) but I still get the current commute times and local weather on my Google Now so I have yet to discover any big disadvantage of turning off most (not all) of the Location settings in Maps if you don't want to share your location or see your location history.
Apparently Google Now and potentially other apps like Facebook, etc. want to use Google Maps to poll where you are. One user said turning off History helped on the battery - makes sense as now Google Now isn't constantly trying to see where you are even if the phone is just sitting on your nightstand! I hate that big brother feeling so anytime an app has an option to turn location awareness off, I usually use it. When I go to use Maps I just turn the GPS on. But I still need to learn what I'm missing out on, when turning off some of these settings. Now I'd like to figure out how to get GPS to turn on automatically any time Maps is manually launched and then turned off automatically anytime maps is closed! That would be nice. Surprised that function isn't built-in to Android as opposed to just prompting you to take you to settings. Guess I may have to break down and learn how to code in Tasker instead of using Llama for my automation needs.
I've left the phone unplugged for what, 8 hours now. Very light usage today. I'm at 80%. BBS is showing 3.5%/hour. That's 28 hours. But like I said, no talk time on the phone today, a half dozen texts, no web browsing and maybe 30 min of total app usage so I would expect 3.5%/hour.
Bottom line is it looks like I don't have any major issues like I had on the stupid HTC One X+ that was getting hot. Seems like the media player switch is what did the trick. I'm just curious why apps as popular as N7 and PowerAmp would be any different. It could have been just timing in that I switch to Pro Player about the time the O/S was done doing it cataloging of the media or whatever it does. I'm sure 2,600 high bitrate songs (14GB) of songs on the sdcard is pretty above average for your typical Android User. Wish there was more in-depth technical documentation on some of these processes though published by Google for us Power Users to read if so desired. Guess that's why we have XDA Forum.
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Duh, just saw the first condition in Llama is "Active Application" the problem is, I only want the GPS to turn on when I manually launch the app myself. I hope an app trying to use Maps in the background doesn't trigger the GPS on. Guess I'll find out.
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I forgot why this isn't possible. Google doesn't want to allow ANY apps to turn GPS on/off automatically due to privacy issues. Is there a setting to let the user decide this? Make me feel like they're treating me like an idiot!