Develop Bugs

Battert Usage - Former iPhone User Surprised - 4G LTE? PowerAMP Wakelock?

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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Click to collapse

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.
-- add --
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!

Standby Battery Life?

I know there are threads regarding battery life out there, but most are all about usage and screen on time. My Note seems to be on par or at least close as far as screen on time. However, I'm just curious as to what all of you are experiencing as far as standby time. I've gone through the battery life guide and turned off most features I don't use, but the standby time still seems pretty lame. From a full charge, its been 3d 5h on battery with zero screen on time other than checking the battery stats right now, and it's down to 9%. Android OS consumed 57% and Google Play Services 33%.
I know I'm comparing Apple and Oranges here, but my 4th gen iPad I have for work hardly drains at all without use. After a week of standby, the iPad will only drop about 5-10%. I feel like this tablet should be capable of the same, and possibly will be after I root and find a good rom (also don't like to see any Apple product out-perform any android based product). Am I alone here?
Basic setup: Stock Rom (not rooted), Nova Launcher (prime), GPS off, Bluetooth off, reading mode off, multi-window off, screen mirroring off, s pen detection off, all samsung crap off (air view, etc), and others. Basically the only thing on is wifi.

I only have wifi off during standby and it drops 1-2% every 12 hours

You might have a tough time getting people to compare their standby time with yours... most people on this forum either use their tablet for work and if not are too in love with their baby to let it sit there untouched for days on end When I couldn't use mine for 12 hours, it dropped about 3% with WiFi and GPS on
Sent from my SM-P605 using Tapatalk

Yeah it is too hard to not touch it for days on end to test this. Turning off wifi while in sleep mode will help a lot. Go to the Connections tab in settings and hit the hardware menu key, then choose Advanced, and change Keep wifi on during sleep to never. That has helped me a ton. Right now mine is at 2d 7h 40m uptime with 4h screen time and it's at 32%. Even with that setting on, my iPad mini still gets better battery life. I have left it sitting for 2 days before without touching it and found it sitting at 92% battery life with wifi always on. My guess is it's something to do with the OS and iOS is just more efficient. That's why even with weaker hardware it can still outperform android tablets.
Also I'm still running a lot of the things you have turned off. You might want to also try Greenify. It has a non root working mode now, but works best in root. You can also try Wakelock Detector to see what apps are waking your cpu, so you can see what to Greenify. If you root you can also try an app to freeze apps as well like Titanium Backup and Rom Toolbox.

yeah, forgot about greenify. you have to be rooted though an need either the donation version to greenify play services(that's the battery killer) or use titanium to make it a user app to greenify with the free version. it's sad that google is the worst culprit with battery drain on all my devices.

I get 1-2% battery drop every 24hrs of standby. WiFi must be off, it not hard to just pull notification bar down and touch the wifi section off whenever you think you wont use the tablet for a while - takes like 2 seconds.
Sent from Galaxy Note 10.1 2014 Edition via Tapatalk.

I have yet to try my battery life with wifi off, so I think that'll be next. I really don't need it connected while the screen is off, so I'll change that setting first.
I figured it might be difficult to get a good response for this question because I too have a hard time putting the thing down. Was just traveling for work and had it in my bag those 3 and noticed the battery drop. I appreciate all the suggestions and welcome any future ones. In the mean time, I'll be experimenting as well and report back if I find anything causing the drop.

Battery drain high or average?

I got a good deal on an open box WiFI only Galaxy Tab S 10.5 at Best Buy. I've been trying to put it through it's paces to make sure there wasn't a good reason it was an open box unit. So far all is well, but I can't tell if I'm getting a shorter battery life than I should. I read reviews with people talking about 8 - 10 hours of local video, but it's so hard to know what else they did since they don't detail exactly what they did very often (brightness level? Video used? Airplane mode? Task killer preventing anything else from running much? etc...)
Anyway, just to get a ballpark, I charged mine to 100%, left it charging for a little while once it hit the 100%, and I've been watching Netflix on 50-70% brightness since I took it off the charger (and a brief 10 minute period when the WiFi slowed down). It looks like it's going to manage about 4 and a half hours of streaming Netflix over WiFi after a fresh system restore (so, some Gmail and Google Sync activity in the background, but nothing else extra installed).
Does that seem low or similar to what others would expect with non-stop Netflix streaming?

Well I stream on YouTube with 30 percent brightness and get around 8 hours as this tablet is really bright for me. No mods are any changes. When I tweaked the kernel settings I got 9 hours screen on time. I measured these by watching/looping a YouTube video continuously. You'll start to get more after a few charging cycles since your tablet is still new.

Unfortunately it seems like something else is up with this tablet. As soon as I install any form of battery monitoring widget or app, it starts randomly rebooting and the battery life remaining percentage jumps up after each boot. It may not be the battery monitoring app actually causing it - but it seems to only happen when one is installed (and I've tried a few).
Seems there probably IS a reason this was a returned open box unit. Oh well, guess I'll exchange it for a new one tomorrow when the supposed one year free Netflix deal starts so I can get in on that promo.

evancg said:
Unfortunately it seems like something else is up with this tablet. As soon as I install any form of battery monitoring widget or app, it starts randomly rebooting and the battery life remaining percentage jumps up after each boot. It may not be the battery monitoring app actually causing it - but it seems to only happen when one is installed (and I've tried a few).
Seems there probably IS a reason this was a returned open box unit. Oh well, guess I'll exchange it for a new one tomorrow when the supposed one year free Netflix deal starts so I can get in on that promo.
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Just in case anyone sees this and wonders the same thing - after returning the above mentioned open box unit and buying one new, I conducted a similar test under similar conditions (good WiFi connection streaming Netflix around 50% brightness with a recently factory restored Galaxy Tab S 10.5).
After 5 hours, I was down to about 60% battery - so clearly the open box unit had severe battery issues.

In your experience, how does wifi/BT/nfc standby affects battery?

Just want to know your thoughts about having wifi or Bluetooth enabled all the time, even with no connection or pairing with nothing, regarding battery life
I ask this because my test would not be accurate as I always use the phone differently (moving to different places, calling, music) apart from playing with kernel and other settings... So can't really tell the difference in that
Please don't tell me, just turn them off when leaving home or leaving your car. My point is to get it connected/paired with no need to unlock phone, turn on... etc... xD
About NFC I saw a module to enable it when screen off. But I read comments that it causes big drain, obviously

On the previous build MH19C I was pretty sure if wifi 5GHz is enabled and available, it will drain and also wake like crazy. This happens in my office but not at home where I don't have a 5GHz wifi or even wifi ac, but is widely used in office, with multiple physical AP's. Now already on the May update, I no longer enable 5Ghz wifi and backgroud scanning just to be safe.

Less than other devices due to the Android Sensor Hub and Doze.

while not in wifi i have data which drains tons of battery anyway, so i dont even bother with any miniscule effect wifi scanning might have. i would advise you to put it off your head too, there are thousands of tiny unessecary battery drainers in your phone, it would sap your mental health trying to deal with anything more than the big ones (data/screen/bugged apps) for only few % of battery.
if the phone is able to last till bedtime or return to home, then it does not matter to meddle with anything. charge it every night and if comes to worse it charges to 50% in few minutes

Thanks for responses
Giorgos Chatziioannou said:
while not in wifi i have data which drains tons of battery anyway, so i dont even bother with any miniscule effect wifi scanning might have. i would advise you to put it off your head too, there are thousands of tiny unessecary battery drainers in your phone, it would sap your mental health trying to deal with anything more than the big ones (data/screen/bugged apps) for only few % of battery.
if the phone is able to last till bedtime or return to home, then it does not matter to meddle with anything. charge it every night and if comes to worse it charges to 50% in few minutes
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Exactly, that's why I want to know if the % is noticeable or not
It's a good advice. However it's also good to keep things in order because battery cicles are limited in phones and my goal is to keep the 5x more than 2 years xD
So I wouldn't be fine just getting at the end of the day, it's good to preserve and not drain unnecessary drain, considering this battery is not removable, plus it is already 'bad' being new haha
Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk

Javi22 said:
Thanks for responses
Exactly, that's why I want to know if the % is noticeable or not
It's a good advice. However it's also good to keep things in order because battery cicles are limited in phones and my goal is to keep the 5x more than 2 years xD
So I wouldn't be fine just getting at the end of the day, it's good to preserve and not drain unnecessary drain, considering this battery is not removable, plus it is already 'bad' being new haha
Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk
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i dont know about battery cyrcles, but replacing battery on 5x is not hard - watch a video about it as to not make any hasty mistake, and its piece of cake.
also its better if the battery is not too low when recharged and not too hot. 5x already has a annoyingly protective temp threshold so you dont need to worry about ruining your battery that way, while its better to recharge every night (or more often if you need) even if there is plenty of juice in the phone cause that is healthier for the battery.

If reducing battery cycles is your main goal, you have to turn them off.
I'm keeping wlan (connected at least 50% of the time with decent-v good connection)/bt (most of the time no connection, only in car and for bt speakers) switched on all day and they together take 7-8% battery on (my) average use (~10-15% left before charging every night), of course much less (in relation) when heavily using the phone.

emp504 said:
If reducing battery cycles is your main goal, you have to turn them off.
I'm keeping wlan (connected at least 50% of the time with decent-v good connection)/bt (most of the time no connection, only in car and for bt speakers) switched on all day and they together take 7-8% battery on (my) average use (~10-15% left before charging every night), of course much less (in relation) when heavily using the phone.
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Thanks
That's what I wanted, some numbers about your experience
Fine then. Once I get some rom and kernel stable I will check for myself. For now it will be disabled when not using (tasker helps too)

Battery Performance Testing

I saw some other threads out there (mainly on samsung's site) complaining about battery drain issues. I found them because I was having battery drain issues. So why am I starting a new thread? because I'm not complaining here. I am as scientifically as I have the patients for documenting what my battery life is while playing with various settings. I am starting by trying to get the most extreme positive battery life as possible. Then I will work my way back with features I would like to use to determine what is worth it and what is not. Feel free to join in the conversation with your own tests and results as well as requests for me of additional information on my settings or tests you would like to see. The more conversation here I see the longer I'm likely to continue running tests.
Hardware
46mm Bluetooth Galaxy Watch
Note: I also have access to a 42mm Bluetooth Rose Gold Galaxy watch and 2 Gear Classic watches.
Background
I started doing this because I upgraded to the 46mm Galaxy watch because I was only getting ~2.5 days out of my wonderful Gear S2 Classic. The advertized 4 to 5 day battery life with rumors of 7 days was just too good to pass up on. Plus I found an open box for a very reasonable price. By day 3 I was noticing that my battery life was terrible. At best it was the same as my Classic.
So I ran a little test. I wiped the phone Saturday morning. Charged to 100% and waited for the show. By 15 hours I was at 85%. That would total out to 4.16 days of battery life. Well not exciting but it does meet the advertized performance. So I turned on goodnight mode and went to sleep. 5 hours later I woke up and I was at 65% battery. By 29 hours I was at 50% (granted I left goodnight mode on for a lot of that).
After finding out that samsung customer support knows NOTHING about their own products (told me that my S2 didn't have sleep tracking, that the 42mm and 46mm had the same battery capacity, and asked me what color my 46mm BT watch was) I returned it to the store and got a new one. Since then I've been running various tests.
If you have questions about a given test please include the Test # in your post.
Test 1:
Always On Display - Off
Brightness - 3
Screen Timeout - 10 Sec
Good Night Mode - On From 11pm to 7am
Bezel Wake-up - On
Wake Up Gesture - Off
Bluetooth - On
NFC - Off
Notifications - On
Turn On Screen (Notifications) - Off
Samsung Health (Heart Rate) - Manual Only
Samsung Health (Step Tracking) - Off
Samusng Health (Sleep Tracking) - On
Samusng Health (Automatic Excersize Detection) - Off
Screen Capture - Off
Watch Face - Basic (3 Different)
OS Version - 4.0.0.1
Test Length - 2 Days
Battery Drained - 1% every 1:45 to 2 hours. Estimated at 8 days.
So this is the extreme test. Low brightness. No novelty features. No workouts.
I have 4 gmail accounts and 2 email accounts so there is a lot going on there. I've disabled instant messaging notifications and facebook becuase I just find them annoying. If I got a message I looked at it. Check the time whenever I felt like it. I would consider it normal usage. Everytime I would change a little setting I would charge back to 100% so I could get a solid measurement.
What a great number on this. Add in how fast this thing charges and it's a dream. I don't like to shower with watches on so I'll just throw it on the charger for 15-20 minutes and I feel like I might be recovering an entire day's usage. What have I learned? I'm keeping this watch and I'm turning some features back on.
Test 2:
Same settings as test 1 except I'll be putting the brightness up to 5. This is my preferred setting. This will be a short test. Probably let it drop 2% during the busy time of work. Then I'll be moving on to test 3. This will be done today.
Results
This went really well. still about 7.5 days of use estimated. And it was a very busy time for me message wise. This was a small test so I'm moving on.
Test 3:
Also a short test to be completed today. I'm going to put a fancier watch face on. The ones I've been testing with so far were very basic and mostly black. Tomcat has some bonus features but the other two were very very basic.
Edit - Changing this test. Found a watch face I really liked but instead of needing more color it needs more brightness. Brightness of 7 on this one so you can see the detail as it's a really dark face with grey on black text. Watch face is Stealth by ZWF ($1). I'll probably let this one run the rest of the day.
Results
Had great results on this. so these settings were left for my 3 day trip.
Test 4:
This test will be for the rest of the week. Almost a performance test the other direction. I'm going on a trip to the north woods MN with no internet. Just lots of hiking. For this I'll be turning back on heart rate and step tracking. Also When hiking I'll use exercise detection with GPS. But still no automatic exercise detection. I suspect that that feature drains a fair amount of battery given how effective it is.
Results
Well I'm back from the trip in 3 days of heavy use. Flash light app. 15k steps a day. 10+ flights of stairs registered a day. I still had just over 50% battery. After charging up and letting it run for the last 2 days of more normal use I'm seeing about 10% battery used a day. Here is my opinion on some of the settings as I've seen them.
Always On Display - Can be a huge impact on the battery life. Based on my small experiments with it I think it would last a couple of days but not much more. For me it's not worth it.
Brightness - With my other chosen settings this isn't a major impact since the screen isn't on much. I've been running at 7 and still getting 10% per day.
Screen Timeout - 10 Sec is good enough for me. As long as you are interacting with the watch it says on. No point in unnecessary screen time.
Good Night Mode - Slightly improves battery life at night. I'm seeing about 1% every 3 hours. Turns on automatically so there is no real need to turn it on manually.
Bezel Wake-up - This was a big one for me. I can't express how often I bumped the bezel turning on the screen. I'm happy to use the button to turn it on.
Wake Up Gesture - Same as above. Leave it off if you want the best battery life.
Bluetooth - Required on for use of the watch. Ignore people who tell you to turn it off unless you have LTE. Even then Bluetooth is more efficient than LTE.
NFC - I've had this on for most of my testing. No impact to battery. I'm leaving it on.
Notifications - What's the point of the watch without notifications. I do leave it off for facebook because I find the frequency irritating.
Turn On Screen (Notifications) - Leave this off. Unless you are planning on looking at every message that comes in then this is wasted screen time. It's a definite off for me.
Samsung Health (Heart Rate) - I'm leaving this one off for now. I'll run a test with it on once I have good solid data on my current preferred settings but I suspect (based on the time that I had it on) that it's taking a few percentage per day.
Samsung Health (Step Tracking) - Turning this back on had no impact on my battery life. I'm not sure it ever actually turned off in the first place. Which is good news since I like this feature.
Samusng Health (Sleep Tracking) - Leave it on. No real impact on battery life from what I can see. Again. I'm not sure turning it off is really possible.
Samusng Health (Automatic Excersize Detection) - I have this on for Running and Cycling on and everything else off.
Screen Capture - Why? never tried it since I don't care. Off
Watch Face - I tried a few here. Nothing too colorful since I don't like the style but with the screen off most of the time then it doesn't seem to matter much.
If you are seeing poor battery life then try these settings out. Your usage can change the results however if you are down in the 3 day or less range without AOD then I would return your watch and get a new one like I did.

I'm done with my testing for now. I'm happy with my settings. If anyone has questions let me know but in summary the battery life on this thing is amazing. I can charge the battery to 100% while I'm in the shower after a day's use.

Getting 6 days of battery life

Ranop11 said:
Getting 6 days of battery life
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With HRM on that seems consistent with me. I went 3 days without any charging of normal use (including a couple of phone calls) and ended with 53% battery life. I'm going to get it charged up and see how things go with AOD. I'm guessing based on my short tests it's going to drop down to around 3 days.

I have the 46mm. I'm happy getting 2+ days while having Always On enabled and brightness at 7. Previously with my S2 Classic, I could barely limp to the end of the day with those settings, and sometimes it didn't quite make it, depending on use. I generally recharge it every day anyway, but it's nice that it only needs a brief charge at this rate, and I can disable Always On any time I need it to last longer. I guess I'm just old school and feel like the watch doesn't "feel like a watch" if I can't look at it any time and see the time.
The only power-eating feature I don't use is gesture wake... because it will annoyingly not activate sometimes when you want it to, and of course it activates dozens of times or more every day when you don't intend for it to. I looked forward to trying this again with the Galaxy Watch and the battery life that would make this feasible to use, but in the end I disabled it.

Apart from intensive fitness tracking, step counter is pretty hungry battery eater. I observed that during work hours ( 9a.m. - 3 p.m. ) when I do not move much battery consumption is in average 4-5%. total As I get home and move more ( 4p.m. - 11 p.m. ) it is 15-20%.
I left switched it on as I like it

sancmat said:
Good Night Mode - On From 11pm to 7am
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How do you set Good Night Mode to a schedule or automatic? I can't find any schedule or automatic detection settings for it anywhere on the phone or watch.
sancmat said:
Samsung Health (Step Tracking) - Off
Samsung Health (Automatic Exercise Detection) - Off
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Same question as above for all the Samsung Health stuff. I found a setting for manual heart rate but can't find how to turn actually off the things quoted above. All I can find is an option to disable notifications, nothing else. I can't find any settings for them anywhere on the phone or watch.
Thank you for the help!

Maniac78 said:
How do you set Good Night Mode to a schedule or automatic? I can't find any schedule or automatic detection settings for it anywhere on the phone or watch.
Same question as above for all the Samsung Health stuff. I found a setting for manual heart rate but can't find how to turn actually off the things quoted above. All I can find is an option to disable notifications, nothing else. I can't find any settings for them anywhere on the phone or watch.
Thank you for the help!
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You have to go into the Samsung health app on the watch itself. Scroll all the way down and you'll see settings.

davtse said:
You have to go into the Samsung health app on the watch itself. Scroll all the way down and you'll see settings.
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That's odd, I have very little under the Samsung Health App settings. All I see is:
Profile, Units, Workout Detection (Healthy Pace, Cycling, Elliptical, Rowing, Dynamic), Inactive Alerts (off/on), Help
And I can't find any of those options under any of those settings menus.
Samsung Gear app on my phone says all apps and the watch OS are up to date. So not sure why I wouldn't have those options but it's not a big deal anyway, I was just curious.

Maniac78 said:
That's odd, I have very little under the Samsung Health App settings. All I see is:
Profile, Units, Workout Detection (Healthy Pace, Cycling, Elliptical, Rowing, Dynamic), Inactive Alerts (off/on), Help
And I can't find any of those options under any of those settings menus.
Samsung Gear app on my phone says all apps and the watch OS are up to date. So not sure why I wouldn't have those options but it's not a big deal anyway, I was just curious.
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On app on the watch itself? Weird mine has those settings.

The watch it's self. However I don't see any relevant settings in the phone app either.

Something I have noticed since the recent uodate is Samsung Health being #1 in battery usage. During my time with the S3 and the month or so with the Galaxy, watch faces has always been the main user. After the recent uodate, Health is always first now. I don't notice a decrease in battery drain so maybe it's how they calculate usage now.

I have a 42mm galaxy watch , in your opinion what would be the best settings to get maximum battery life.