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Hi Guys,
I actually have a HD7m but my dad quite liked the 4.3 inch screen and was now asking me to buy a similar handset. We went out and he was quite impressed with the Desire HD.
But the catch, when I researched online, I found out the battery issue on practically every thread and community.
Now my problem: He is an old man and can get cranky at times. Currently owes a Nokia C6 and is pissed with the touch screen. So is it wise to buy him Desire HD even with the bad battery life?
Or worse case scenario, I swap my HD7 for his Desire HD????
Should I go for it or should can you guys suggest something else equally fluid??
It doesn't have battery issues once calibrated. I have 1-5mA battery drain on standby, that's even when running MSN and CallerID2Voice App in the background. And I can still get hours out of it when using it. Just recharge it every-night. I doubt your dad will be a smartphone addicted guy.
FirefighterDown said:
It doesn't have battery issues once calibrated. I have 1-5mA battery drain on standby, that's even when running MSN and CallerID2Voice App in the background. And I can still get hours out of it when using it. Just recharge it every-night. I doubt your dad will be a smartphone addicted guy.
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Click to collapse
Hey,
Thanx...no he isn't a smart phone addicted guy. But the battery was so obvious an issue, I had to ask the experts here. Also, what exactly do you mean by 'calibrated'?
I mean, I have been an Android user before, but not quite sure what calibration is ?
He is a simple user with checking some mails everyday, music and some websites may be...thats about it, HTC Sense and all makes no difference to him actually...
If its battery life your after, buy a Johns Phone, you get 3 weeks between charges.
After you battery has been "run in" and calibrated you will get at least a day with light usage. Remember this is a powerful smartphone.
circleofomega said:
Hey,
Thanx...no he isn't a smart phone addicted guy. But the battery was so obvious an issue, I had to ask the experts here. Also, what exactly do you mean by 'calibrated'?
I mean, I have been an Android user before, but not quite sure what calibration is ?
He is a simple user with checking some mails everyday, music and some websites may be...thats about it, HTC Sense and all makes no difference to him actually...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The battery calibration concerns only those who are using a custom rom. (here's a short article with app that does it for you if you're interested). I wouldn't recommend the DHD for my own father. Whatever you do to it you'll almost always have to charge it overnight, with stock rom it could be even twice a day. This isn't a problem for smartphone enthusiasts, but for oldschool people (like my father) who think phones should last a week without charging this can be quite off-putting. The DHD is also starting to get kinda old already, so you might wanna take a look at some newer phones. A good alternative could be the Desire S, as it has almost the same features with a slightly better battery.
And to those who can't admit that the DHD has bad battery life I just have to say that the out-of-the-box battery life could and should be a lot better. To get it lasting as it should takes a bit of effort which shouldn't be required from a normal user.
Hawks556 said:
The battery calibration concerns only those who are using a custom rom. (here's a short article with app that does it for you if you're interested). I wouldn't recommend the DHD for my own father. Whatever you do to it you'll almost always have to charge it overnight, with stock rom it could be even twice a day. This isn't a problem for smartphone enthusiasts, but for oldschool people (like my father) who think phones should last a week without charging this can be quite off-putting. The DHD is also starting to get kinda old already, so you might wanna take a look at some newer phones. A good alternative could be the Desire S, as it has almost the same features with a slightly better battery.
And to those who can't admit that the DHD has bad battery life I just have to say that the out-of-the-box battery life could and should be a lot better. To get it lasting as it should takes a bit of effort which shouldn't be required from a normal user.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanx so much...that was really helpful...albeit your explanation on battery life, I just wanted to add that he was in love with the 4.3 inch screen...and only HD7 is the other device with that screen size...So I think Desire S is also a good option...let me check with him...
Again, Thanx!
depend on what you consider a good battery life, some may say getting a day is good enough, but some define good as atleast 2 days.
Hawks556 said:
And to those who can't admit that the DHD has bad battery life I just have to say that the out-of-the-box battery life could and should be a lot better. To get it lasting as it should takes a bit of effort which shouldn't be required from a normal user.
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Click to collapse
Absolutely right. I'm tired of hearing people evangelising that the DHD's battery is fine. It patently is not. Even when you severly rein back the device's features (features which HTC flaunted to get us all hooked), one ends up with 25-30% at the day's end.... And if you have a 'heavy' day of calls/browsing etc, you'll have to top up to get through the day.
But I still regard HTC as just about the best of a bad bunch...
Ok, sorry to hijack this thread a little.
The battery is fine, there are no issues with the battery. Your problem with the battery is that its small. Before you bought the phone did you not look into the battery capacity? I did, I knew it was smaller than the Desire's battery. Out-of-the-box it will act like any other lithium-ion battery that is just out-of-the-box. That "bit of effort" , what, plugging in your charger when it requires a charge.
These guides to correctly charge lithium-ion batteries are largely mumbo jumbo (charge to 100%, turn off, charge again for 250,000 hours, turn on, drain battery, rinse & repeat). Just charge it overnight, when your asleep.
Any smartphone with comparable usage will last around the same time and require a daily charge. If you want a phone that will last days between charges, don't buy a smartphone.
If you turn off all the bells & whistles, use 2G only and use it only for calls & sms', just like a regular phone. It will last days between charges.
If you want a powerful smartphone with a large screen, and lots of features, your battery is going to pay for it.
andyharney said:
Ok, sorry to hijack this thread a little.
Before you bought the phone did you not look into the battery capacity? I did, I knew it was smaller than the Desire's battery. Out-of-the-box it will act like any other lithium-ion battery that is just out-of-the-box. That "bit of effort" , what, plugging in your charger when it requires a charge.
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Click to collapse
I'm not sure anybody on this forum expects days of use between charges - we're not daft. What I expect is to not have power-saving mode kick in by late afternoon when I'm nowhere near a charger, and I've not used the thing particularly heavily.
It's not right to conclude that others didn't read up on the battery before purchasing. You have no basis for drawing such conclusions.
HTC marketed the DHD on the basis that it's architecture was such that it didn't need a higher-capacity battery to do its job. Based on the fact that I'd had pretty good experiences with my previous HTCs, I saw no reason to doubt this.
In any case, just because you don't mind charging your phone part-way through a day, doesn't mean that everybody else should be happy with that.
I don't Say ! ^^
baste07 said:
depend on what you consider a good battery life, some may say getting a day is good enough, but some define good as atleast 2 days.
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Click to collapse
That's why I said that there are "oldschool people" (like my father) who think the battery should last a week. I don't mind charging the phone every night, but there are people who can't cope with such a "short" battery life. That's why the battery life of the DHD should be taken under consideration when buying a new phone.
andyharney said:
Ok, sorry to hijack this thread a little.
The battery is fine, there are no issues with the battery. Your problem with the battery is that its small. Before you bought the phone did you not look into the battery capacity? I did, I knew it was smaller than the Desire's battery. Out-of-the-box it will act like any other lithium-ion battery that is just out-of-the-box. That "bit of effort" , what, plugging in your charger when it requires a charge.
Any smartphone with comparable usage will last around the same time and require a daily charge. If you want a phone that will last days between charges, don't buy a smartphone.
If you turn off all the bells & whistles, use 2G only and use it only for calls & sms', just like a regular phone. It will last days between charges.
If you want a powerful smartphone with a large screen, and lots of features, your battery is going to pay for it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I didn't mean that the battery was bad quality or anything, just that it is a bit too small for such a powerful phone. And yes I was aware of the battery capacity and I don't mind, but again there are people that require more from their phones.
And the instructions to close connections when you're not using them and turning down the screen brightness etc. are plain stupid. I bought a smartphone so that I can get my email whenever and wherever and to enjoy the big screen and not so that I can receive emails only when I choose to and so that I have to squint to see something from the screen when the brightness is set to the lowest. This is just a couple of the features I need ofcourse, but for me it's important to always receive emails instantly and not only when I can afford to spend some battery on internet connection.
When I was still running stock rom I could barely get through a day at work (8 hours). I had mobile network on the whole time and the screen brightness set at about 50% (which I think should be used at 100% all the time to really enjoy the screen) I talked for about half an hour during the days, sent 10 texts and listened to music/played/surfed on the internet for about 3 hours in all. When I got home I had to charge it. This ofcourse is everything one could need, but there are smartphones with better battery life.
Now of ofcourse when I have a custom rom that's tweaked and everything there's no problem with battery life, but that shouldn't be necessary to do and it's quite a lot to ask just so you can have a decent battery life. That's why I was talking about out-of-the-box battery life.
Hawks556 said:
That's why I said that there are "oldschool people" (like my father) who think the battery should last a week. I don't mind charging the phone every night, but there are people who can't cope with such a "short" battery life. That's why the battery life of the DHD should be taken under consideration when buying a new phone.
I didn't mean that the battery was bad quality or anything, just that it is a bit too small for such a powerful phone. And yes I was aware of the battery capacity and I don't mind, but again there are people that require more from their phones.
And the instructions to close connections when you're not using them and turning down the screen brightness etc. are plain stupid. I bought a smartphone so that I can get my email whenever and wherever and to enjoy the big screen and not so that I can receive emails only when I choose to and so that I have to squint to see something from the screen when the brightness is set to the lowest. This is just a couple of the features I need ofcourse, but for me it's important to always receive emails instantly and not only when I can afford to spend some battery on internet connection.
When I was still running stock rom I could barely get through a day at work (8 hours). I had mobile network on the whole time and the screen brightness set at about 50% (which I think should be used at 100% all the time to really enjoy the screen) I talked for about half an hour during the days, sent 10 texts and listened to music/played/surfed on the internet for about 3 hours in all. When I got home I had to charge it. This ofcourse is everything one could need, but there are smartphones with better battery life.
Now of ofcourse when I have a custom rom that's tweaked and everything there's no problem with battery life, but that shouldn't be necessary to do and it's quite a lot to ask just so you can have a decent battery life. That's why I was talking about out-of-the-box battery life.
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Click to collapse
If you want to receive emails and text, I find that GSM is fine for that. If you want to go internet browsing, just switch on to 3G.
Smartphones these days have basically a different definition of battery life to the old nokia symbian and similar phones of old. Those could go up to a week. Smartphones on the other hand are considered awesome if they can last 3.
I do have to say ultimately I think HTC sold the battery life a bit short on the DHD. 1230mah I think is really just making way for all the other top-of-the-line features that it had when it came out.
HTC have released a great number of variants of this phone now, all with better iterations of design and also with bigger batteries because of this.
1400-1500mah (or even above) I think is really what you need with a 4.3" display phone. 1230 would be far more acceptable for a <4" display. Although it can be made quite livable for a day or two with an excellent custom rom, I don't really think it's enough for a basic consumer using the standard rom. That and the speaker/audio out are the two biggest pitfalls of the DHD imo.
Sensation is now HTC's newest 4.3" phone which has a good 1500mah battery. I hope Sense 3.0 doesn't wear it down too fast!
Ultimate thoughts: Although it's a great phone, I think it's a power user's phone more than anything. You will definitely only get the best out of it by customising to it's best potential, which is also when you get acceptable battery life. If you don't, it really does seem a waste.
Hawks556 said:
When I was still running stock rom I could barely get through a day at work (8 hours). I had mobile network on the whole time and the screen brightness set at about 50% (which I think should be used at 100% all the time to really enjoy the screen) I talked for about half an hour during the days, sent 10 texts and listened to music/played/surfed on the internet for about 3 hours in all. When I got home I had to charge it. This ofcourse is everything one could need, but there are smartphones with better battery life.
Now of ofcourse when I have a custom rom that's tweaked and everything there's no problem with battery life
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Click to collapse
+1
I had the same sort of expectancy out of the battery using it moderately during a day at work out of the box. However with custom ROM installed I have found the battery to last easily the whole day with the same usage and probably have approx 40 - 50% left after 15hrs on battery.
just my 2c
andyharney said:
Ok, sorry to hijack this thread a little.
The battery is fine, there are no issues with the battery. Your problem with the battery is that its small. Before you bought the phone did you not look into the battery capacity? I did, I knew it was smaller than the Desire's battery. Out-of-the-box it will act like any other lithium-ion battery that is just out-of-the-box. That "bit of effort" , what, plugging in your charger when it requires a charge.
These guides to correctly charge lithium-ion batteries are largely mumbo jumbo (charge to 100%, turn off, charge again for 250,000 hours, turn on, drain battery, rinse & repeat). Just charge it overnight, when your asleep.
Any smartphone with comparable usage will last around the same time and require a daily charge. If you want a phone that will last days between charges, don't buy a smartphone.
If you turn off all the bells & whistles, use 2G only and use it only for calls & sms', just like a regular phone. It will last days between charges.
If you want a powerful smartphone with a large screen, and lots of features, your battery is going to pay for it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I am extremely sorry but I disagree with u completely. You are talking as if you buy an expensive car but dont drive it too much as it eats a lot of fuel. If you want to just drive around, why dont you just get yourself a mopet. The point is, i have bought an expensive car TO DRIVE it around. If I buy a smartphone and not use its SMART features, why am I buying it for??? If I practically shut all the reasons why I bought this phone, WHY the hell am I buying it??
There is an old saying that comes to mind that it takes guts to stay in the minority. If the battery is flawed, ACCEPT it.
Anyways, I have got my answer. Thanx for your reply nonetheless.
As everyone says depends on usage.
For one thing i went from 80mA down to 8mA just by updating the radio which came stock.
Now with a different rom and kernel I get -1mA on standby, juicedefender is also a nice app. The battery life depends on your setup though, I easily get 2 days of moderate use/music/games/calls etc.
jpinky said:
As everyone says depends on usage.
For one thing i went from 80mA down to 8mA just by updating the radio which came stock.
Now with a different rom and kernel I get -1mA on standby, juicedefender is also a nice app. The battery life depends on your setup though, I easily get 2 days of moderate use/music/games/calls etc.
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Click to collapse
Hey thanx man...But was just wondering, with very moderate usage, will it still be over in no time?
Also, the other thing worrying me is the memory card issue...I cant afford to lose one card after another once I buy an expensive phone, u know what I mean...
The battery life is acceptable with moderate use on stock rom, if you're a power user you will have to stay close to a charger
There's no memory card issue from the DHD's part, it's just the crappy "freebie" sdcard (samsung?) which comes with the phone that stops working. The people who are complaining that the DHD breaks sdcards are those who buy cheap, bad quality sdcards or get a warranty replacement for the original one, which will be just as bad. The solution to this is to buy a better quality microsd card (costs about 15€) if the original stops working. Mine's still working great though.
Hawks556 said:
The battery life is acceptable with moderate use on stock rom, if you're a power user you will have to stay close to a charger
There's no memory card issue from the DHD's part, it's just the crappy "freebie" sdcard (samsung?) which comes with the phone that stops working. The people who are complaining that the DHD breaks sdcards are those who buy cheap, bad quality sdcards or get a warranty replacement for the original one, which will be just as bad. The solution to this is to buy a better quality microsd card (costs about 15€) if the original stops working. Mine's still working great though.
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Click to collapse
After receiving a replacement 'new' phone, and having problems with my SD Card from the very second it switched on, I complained to HTC about the issue and the man on the end of the phone admitted around 500,000 phones that had been dispatched has been shipped with KNOWN issues & SD Card incapabilities. If you went out today and bought a brand spanking new card, in theory the phone WOULD NOT and the SD Card WOULD NOT fail.
mjt said:
I'm not sure anybody on this forum expects days of use between charges - we're not daft. What I expect is to not have power-saving mode kick in by late afternoon when I'm nowhere near a charger, and I've not used the thing particularly heavily.
It's not right to conclude that others didn't read up on the battery before purchasing. You have no basis for drawing such conclusions.
HTC marketed the DHD on the basis that it's architecture was such that it didn't need a higher-capacity battery to do its job. Based on the fact that I'd had pretty good experiences with my previous HTCs, I saw no reason to doubt this.
In any case, just because you don't mind charging your phone part-way through a day, doesn't mean that everybody else should be happy with that.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't mean to hijack you here mate, but you assume/claim that:
'HTC marketed the DHD on the basis that it's architecture was such that it didn't need a higher-capacity battery to do its job.'
Well I take it that you assume this on the basis that Leprechauns are real and are roaming New York city as we speak? If HTC were doing any market research at all, they would realize that even devices with smaller screens have a bigger battery than the one they have put into the DhD, including the Desire Z & Desire's batteries?
I remember when I was looking at reviews for the original Desire, as I fancied one, the main complaints were the battery life, and the fact people only got a day's charge on it. So I thought fair do's, big screen, big price to pay? If HTC had done any research, they would have realized that people wanted better battery life, a better quality screen, better sound quality?
You want to know what the real reason is behind HTC putting a small battery inside the Device? Well it's the fact that the entire thing was rushed, and I mean rushed? There's evidence of this in the build quality, the software, the placing of different things within the phone and also the bad batch issues HTC experienced.
The HD was leaked in September/October, it was released by November, this is not normal for any device that becomes 'leaked'. HTC used a bad screen, imported most of the software from the original Desire, obviously making edits to make it Sense 2.0, but you can clearly see they didn't change everything? If you set the Android Pattern Lock Screen, you can see that it doesn't fill the whole screen, the IME is the standard HTC one with some arrows slapped in at the bottom? They didn't even change the size of the keyboard?, this is more evident if you use the IME in landscape mode, its hard.
What sort of company places an Antenna in the Battery Cover? It's true, remove your Battery Cover and you'll loose all signal? Pretty risky move for HTC, seeing as the Battery Cover is VERY easy to 'accidently' break, and frankly your screwed then right? It's like they designed the phone, forgot the Antenna, then quickly though 'Where the f*** is this going?' and decided to place it there? In my opinion, and a few others, they did this with the battery, they made the device too thin, and in reality they just couldn't fit everything in. The Desire S which is slightly thicker, packs a brilliant battery. Problem solved.
The build quality of the phone, is not one of a £500 price tag. Some parts of the phone squeak whereas others just do not feel adequate to the pricing of the device. There again we live in a world where no matter how much you pay, something always seems to be wrong.
Sorry if I have offended any HTC lovers, all attacks on my and opinions against me are welcome, don't get me wrong, I love my phone and I can cope with charging the battery every night. Chao.
So I switched from the iphone with edge to the Tmo S2 with Jugg 5.0 ROM + Go Launcher. I really appreciate the 4g speed. However, the overall experience is not as smooth as the iphone and the battery life sucks big time. I normally have to constantly plug the phone in whenever I can. It works ok when I'm at work but when I'm out all day my battery won't last more than half a day. It's so bad to the extent that I have to turn off my phone and turn on when I need to call or text so I can keep the phone alive the whole day. I tried Juice Defender but it didn't help my battery at all.
Yesterday I spent a few hours on XDA and I came up with these solution to my battery problem:
+DarkSide Digital Warfare v2.7 ROM (couldn't find 2.5.1 version)
+Flash Synergy Kernel over (supposed to give better battery)
+SetCPU app (auto detection)
+Zeam launcher
So far, it seems to be better on the battery. Is there anything else I could add to make my battery last longer? I need the phone to last at least the whole day without charge. I'm constantly on 4g looking up stocks, reading news, email, google voice, grooveip, facebook, turn by turn navigation, music, netflix, youtube ...
Thanks,
Welcome to Android.
From what it appears, you seem to be a heavy user. The most you can get out of a Android device with heavy usage is 3/4 of a day (14-18hrs) tops.
You have 2 choices, either you travel with the power cord not to far away and plug it when you need it or you invest a whooping 10$ and buy another battery.
There are tricks to keeping your battery healthy but lasting all day as a heavy user will be very difficult.
If this is a new phone it takes a week or so for the battery to settle in a hold a charge well. After a week or so you'll notice your battery is lasting longer. Also make sure that nothing is keeping your phone awake 100%. Some apps don't play nice and cause issues. Welcome to Android.
Note: navigation kills battery fast, when your using it try to plug into a car charger or something.
Sent from my SGH-T989 using xda premium
There are a lot of things you can do to improve battery.
1. Juice Defender (which you say you have already tried)
2. Limit the number of widgets you run or run no widgets like I do
3. Turn the screen brightness down all the way
4. Don't use Live Wallpaper, also, try to pick a dark coloured wallpaper since white/light colours seem to use up more battery.
5. Uninstall apps you don't use.
6. Turn off GPS unless you need to use it.
7. Turn off sync completely or only have your gmail sync. I don't need to be notified when I get a facebook message so I don't need it syncing every few minutes or every hour, I can check that manually myself.
8. Turn off animations.
9. Close background apps that are running that you aren't using.
10. Use Task Manager to close open apps when you are done using it. Task Manger is your friend.
11. Enable Power Saver Mode.
etc etc.
Those are the main things that I tend to do. I plug my phone in every night before I go to bed as well so I am not sure how long my battery actually lasts. But typically after 16hrs of use I still have 60% battery when I go to bed.
Currently my phone has been on for 7hrs 15mins and I have 87% battery. So you can do the math. I am not as heavy a user as you seem to be, but hope this helps. Peace.
Check out this video it helps show you how to save battery. Enjoy!
Thanks for the inputs guys. I should have said I was looking for Rom/Mod/Scripts/Apps... that can be flashed onto the rooted phone. I have done all the basic battery saving housekeepings as listed by Chochiwpg.
Chochiwpg said:
1. Juice Defender (which you say you have already tried)
2. Limit the number of widgets you run or run no widgets like I do
3. Turn the screen brightness down all the way
4. Don't use Live Wallpaper, also, try to pick a dark coloured wallpaper since white/light colours seem to use up more battery.
5. Uninstall apps you don't use.
6. Turn off GPS unless you need to use it.
7. Turn off sync completely or only have your gmail sync. I don't need to be notified when I get a facebook message so I don't need it syncing every few minutes or every hour, I can check that manually myself.
8. Turn off animations.
9. Close background apps that are running that you aren't using.
10. Use Task Manager to close open apps when you are done using it. Task Manger is your friend.
11. Enable Power Saver Mode.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm up 5hr 45mins on battery and my battery is at 41%. Let's see if it will last for today. I will put Juice Defender in tonight to test out the battery tomorrow.
DroidNo0b said:
Thanks for the inputs guys. I should have said I was looking for Rom/Mod/Scripts/Apps... that can be flashed onto the rooted phone. I have done all the basic battery saving housekeepings as listed by Chochiwpg.
I'm up 5hr 45mins on battery and my battery is at 41%. Let's see if it will last for today. I will put Juice Defender in tonight to test out the battery tomorrow.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You could run Juggernaut with Faux Kernel and Gideon's battery scripts. Or Telus T989D stock ROM lightly tweaked with same kernel and script. Got good results on those as well. Good luck.
Btw, has anyone had tremendous increase in battery life using the after market extended battery?
Thanks,
Use fox star rom
Sent from my Galaxy SII T-mobile using xda premium
DroidNo0b said:
Btw, has anyone had tremendous increase in battery life using the after market extended battery?
Thanks,
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you are talking about extended batteries that don't require a custom enlarged back cover, you will not get the battery increase that you are looking for, not even close. I cannot speak for the heavy duty ones that require an enlarged back as I do not own one
Gideon's scripts are great with Juggs. Underclock it as well like 384-1080 is a great setting. Also let die all the way down and charge all the way up and repeat for a few cycles. And don't stare at your phone every few seconds either lol! Another thing are the notification lighting buttons at the bottom. Drop to 1.5 seconds.
Sent from my SGH-T989 using xda premium
yoft1 said:
If you are talking about extended batteries that don't require a custom enlarged back cover, you will not get the battery increase that you are looking for, not even close. I cannot speak for the heavy duty ones that require an enlarged back as I do not own one
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have the extended 3800mah battery. It's insanely fat and makes the phone look hideous. On top of that I really don't feel like the battery lasts all that long at all. It's in my pocket all day at school and by 3:30 I'm at 35%. This thing cost me 65$. Total ripoff. I'd suggest spending 20$ and buying two more regular batteries. See what that does for you all
Sent from my SGH-T989 using XDA
A few things you can do on ANY ROM to improve battery life.
*) Decrease screen timeout to the lowest possible setting.
*) Adjust screen brightness to the lowest level you can tolerate.
*) Decrease the backlight key timeout to the lowest setting ( or off if you have the option )
*) Be sure to only have wifi and gps on if you are using them.
Those will help quite a bit in general however, a ROM like Juggs is meant to really take advantage of the power of your device so its probably wise to move to a different one if max battery is your goal. I love Juggs but had to move on to the AOSP stuff. Also, heed the advice above, allow the ROM a few days to "settle" before making a switch or even a judgement of its performance.
Thanks for the replies guys. So my phone lasted for 9hrs today which is a little bit of improvement. I was streaming netflix for half an hr on the train on the way back home so that may have drained the battery. I have just installed JD, will post back how it goes tomorrow.
So the extended battery is a no go eh. I really don't want to lug around a few extra batteries. I want to carry as little as possible. I normally carry my phone and my ipad but now I tend to not use the ipad much now because the S2 screen is pretty gigantic for a phone.
DroidNo0b said:
Thanks for the inputs guys. I should have said I was looking for Rom/Mod/Scripts/Apps... that can be flashed onto the rooted phone. I have done all the basic battery saving housekeepings as listed by Chochiwpg.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I know the point was already made but just to reiterate, you can get 2 Anker extended batteries (same size as regular battery) and a universal charger for like $20. This will leave you with three batteries. One for the charger, one for the pocket, and one for the phone. With this system its pretty easy to always have one full battery ready to go and one charging. The battery is small and can just go in your pocket, or maybe even in your wallet depending on your preferences. It solves the problem completely. I don't think you are going to do much better because if you are a heavy user then your battery is going to be used because your phone isn't going to be sleeping.
Good luck.
tablador said:
I know the point was already made but just to reiterate, you can get 2 Anker extended batteries (same size as regular battery) and a universal charger for like $20. This will leave you with three batteries. One for the charger, one for the pocket, and one for the phone. With this system its pretty easy to always have one full battery ready to go and one charging. The battery is small and can just go in your pocket, or maybe even in your wallet depending on your preferences. It solves the problem completely. I don't think you are going to do much better because if you are a heavy user then your battery is going to be used because your phone isn't going to be sleeping.
Good luck.
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If you read my post above. I'm against the idea lugging around too many things. It's also a hassle to swap the battery and keep them all charged. I may be a heavy user but it's not like I use the phone all the time. I use the phone heavily early in the morning on the way to work and after 5pm on the way home after work. The commute each way is roughly 45 mins. In between the commutes i make a few calls and texts through GV. I don't think i'm that of a really heavy user.
Anyway, it's noon and I'm at 75% with JD on and setCPU to 384-1084mhz which is pretty promising.
Questions go in the Q&A section
Since you changed kernals, you aren't going to benefit from TDJ's battsaver script you can use with the stock 2.7 kernal.
Go lower on the max frequency. Something below 800 mhz. Setting a negative gloval mV doesn't hurt, and if you can get to -62.5, that's great.
Oh, and when using data, try GSM only...
To be honest, the larger problem with battery life is typically the user. There's no real magic on making the phone last longer other than using it less. If you're going to be power using the hell out of it by using 4g for hours streaming media, your battery is going to be ****.
8Fishes said:
Since you changed kernals, you aren't going to benefit from TDJ's battsaver script you can use with the stock 2.7 kernal.
Go lower on the max frequency. Something below 800 mhz. Setting a negative gloval mV doesn't hurt, and if you can get to -62.5, that's great.
Oh, and when using data, try GSM only...
To be honest, the larger problem with battery life is typically the user. There's no real magic on making the phone last longer other than using it less. If you're going to be power using the hell out of it by using 4g for hours streaming media, your battery is going to be ****.
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Click to collapse
Don't you think it is ironic for me to switch from the iphone to the S2 because I couldn't stand the slow 2g Edge connection then have to lower data speed to GSM (2g) just so I can use the S2 long enough?
I think the S2 is one heck of a device but the OS and Apps are not running very efficiently.
I tried the ICS ROM ARKSIDE.UCLE2:: x[BETA07.1] in the last 2 days with setCPU at 384-1026Mhz. I have had great battery life. I got home at 12 am yesterday with a 2% battery. Today it's been 7 hrs on battery and my battery is at 70%. I don't know if it is the ROM, setCPU or a combination of the two but I'm pretty happy with the phone right now. ICS is awesome too.
I highly recommend that solution to anyone having a short battery life problem with their S2.
It is a little ironic since you did bring up the comparison. What I was attempting to do was to bring the phone more into spec of an iphone to get similar battery life. You're probably going to even get better runtimes due to the battery having a much larger capacity and better screen technology. All that superior hardware packed in the t989 is going to need more juice to run.
It's great you're getting good runtimes now. From my personal experience, once I drop down to the single digit percentages, it starts lasting a lot longer per percent. If you wanted to squeeze all you can from the device, those 2000mah aftermarket cells might add another 15~30 minutes.
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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Click to collapse
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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Click to collapse
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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Click to collapse
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.
-- add --
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!
Okay I have a question for the masses here. Why are YOU obsessed with battery life on your SGS3?
I've been through my fair share of cell phones with the latest 3 being the Galaxy S, SII and now the SIII. I've been through a long list of custom roms as well as time spent on stock roms and not once I have I installed a battery monitoring app like Juice Defender, nor have I been interested in undervolting or underclocking as I don't feel the extra battery life outweighs the instability of the phone and the time spend finding the exact perfect values to prevent reboots. As long as I have battery life to get my through the day (which I always have MORE than enough, I'm happy. I'm not a heavy user but my phone gets a workout during the day and I'm never far from a charger which is the awesome thing about having a USB connector to do the charging.
So I ask the question, what is the obsession with battery life? Are you trying to go green and get the most between charges as to not waste power recharging? Do you use your phone so much during the day that you can't make it through the school or work day without it going dead? Are you off the grid living in the bush and only get to charge when you are in town every couple days? Is it bragging rights you are looking for? Why did you spend big bucks to buy an extended battery? Why don't you use the phone the way it was intended to be used and turn off syncing apps just to save a bit of battery? Why do you turn screen brightness down to minimum and leave it there all the time when we have big beautiful screens that look so much better when they are correctly lit up for our surroundings?
I just find it interesting that every ROM thread and every kernel thread and a good portion of the threads in Q/A sections are littered with questions and discussions and arguments about battery life. How to get better battery life, why is my battery draining so fast on such and such rom, what is a good screen on time amount per charge. I don't understand nor can I find an interest in spending time to dissect and analyze everything just to squeeze an extra half hour of screen time out of my phone.
So why? Why are YOU so interested in the battery life of your phone. I'm not looking to make fun of anyone here. Just curious what the obsession is all about and why you are so interested. How does it make your phone or your life easier and better. Maybe I'm missing something.
Well for me, my battery life really sucked and didnt understand why so I started researching and i found out from stock you can do tweaks to improve it and so on and so on.
When I say my battery sucked on stock though it was really bad. I couldnt go a whole day. I would get about 10-15 hours of on time with less than a hour of screen time and my phone would be dead.
I dont care for going 2 days without a charge, I just wanted to go morning to night and still have some juice left. which i wasnt able to do before.
flexfulton said:
Okay I have a question for the masses here. Why are YOU obsessed with battery life on your SGS3?
I've been through my fair share of cell phones with the latest 3 being the Galaxy S, SII and now the SIII. I've been through a long list of custom roms as well as time spent on stock roms and not once I have I installed a battery monitoring app like Juice Defender, nor have I been interested in undervolting or underclocking as I don't feel the extra battery life outweighs the instability of the phone and the time spend finding the exact perfect values to prevent reboots. As long as I have battery life to get my through the day (which I always have MORE than enough, I'm happy. I'm not a heavy user but my phone gets a workout during the day and I'm never far from a charger which is the awesome thing about having a USB connector to do the charging.
So I ask the question, what is the obsession with battery life? Are you trying to go green and get the most between charges as to not waste power recharging? Do you use your phone so much during the day that you can't make it through the school or work day without it going dead? Are you off the grid living in the bush and only get to charge when you are in town every couple days? Is it bragging rights you are looking for? Why did you spend big bucks to buy an extended battery? Why don't you use the phone the way it was intended to be used and turn off syncing apps just to save a bit of battery? Why do you turn screen brightness down to minimum and leave it there all the time when we have big beautiful screens that look so much better when they are correctly lit up for our surroundings?
I just find it interesting that every ROM thread and every kernel thread and a good portion of the threads in Q/A sections are littered with questions and discussions and arguments about battery life. How to get better battery life, why is my battery draining so fast on such and such rom, what is a good screen on time amount per charge. I don't understand nor can I find an interest in spending time to dissect and analyze everything just to squeeze an extra half hour of screen time out of my phone.
So why? Why are YOU so interested in the battery life of your phone. I'm not looking to make fun of anyone here. Just curious what the obsession is all about and why you are so interested. How does it make your phone or your life easier and better. Maybe I'm missing something.
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Actually, battery life can have quite a few hours difference depending on your settings, apps, kernel settings and ROM you run. So yes, it does matter if you can get 3.5hrs on screen instead of 1.5hrs.
People don't want to have to carry their charger with them all the time in fear of their phone dying on them in the middle of the day.
For me it is just the simple fact that I can run my phone for almost 2 full days without a charge (not kidding either). But I would venture to say that for most, it is because of the whole reason why many are here. We're Tweakers and no I don't mean Meth addicts. We do it because we can. I don't undervolt at all but I do overclock my kernels a bit (not max) but have found a really nice balance that will give me plenty of time using my phone and not having to worry about charging. Yup, I use my phone.
I smile to myself when I see these screen shots and the line is smooth and flat. Not sure if you are a skier or not but a good analogy is if you see a Double-Black Diamond (expert/steep), there is something wrong. If you see a Blue-Square (intermediate/nice slope) then you are good to go. Green-Circle (begginner/very low gradiant) means that noting is running.
Btw moving to Q&A
I feel the same as the OP. I don't OC/UV for pretty much the same reasons. I don't care. I have run Juice Defender in the past on stock setting values because I was basically lazy and didn't feel like tweaking the sh*t out of it to get the "best" battery life. Not to mention I don't like that it literally turns off your cell radio and initializes it in incremental intervals. I have actually been running an app called One Power that is free on the Play Store and have found it does improve my battery life mostly when my device is idle. But I, like you, am hardly obsessed with getting the best battery life. I don't use extended batteries because I hate how they make the phone twice as thick and I tend to avoid anything non-OEM for obvious reasons. I'm basically happy if I can get through a day on a single charge. I do have a 2nd OEM battery I keep charged in case I don't have time to fully charge up. Our expectations of getting days worth of use on a single charge is just ridiculous and unrealistic. If I cared that much I'd switch to Verizon and get a RAZR Maxx. But that ain't happening anytime soon! Besides, not all phones are created equal so - what works for one person may not work for another. I feel discussions of battery life in ROM development threads are a waste of time and serve only to clutter and detract from development of the ROM. Apps, use, etc are huge variables and will vary greatly from one user to the next. So, when people say "battery life on this ROM is great!" I usually roll my eyes and ignore the post.
Sent from my Nexus 7
t3chn0s1s said:
... I have actually been running an app called One Power that is free on the Play Store and have found it does improve my battery life mostly when my device is idle. <SNIP> I feel discussions of battery life in ROM development threads are a waste of time and serve only to clutter and detract from development of the ROM. Apps, use, etc are huge variables and will vary greatly from one user to the next. So, when people say "battery life on this ROM is great!" I usually roll my eyes and ignore the post.
Sent from my Nexus 7
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Hey, can you shoot me a PM with more about that App. I'll check it out tonight but can you give me more info on it from a real-life user and not some Market desc/review.
Also, report those stupid posts in the Dev threads and we can delete those. I saw one the other day about 5 hours after a ROM came out (new thread and all) stating that the battery life was "Awesome!!!". How in the heck could you know after 5 hours of the ROM being posted (he was not a tester either), let alone being flashed. Rediculousness.
Woodrube said:
Hey, can you shoot me a PM with more about that App. I'll check it out tonight but can you give me more info on it from a real-life user and not some Market desc/review.
Also, report those stupid posts in the Dev threads and we can delete those. I saw one the other day about 5 hours after a ROM came out (new thread and all) stating that the battery life was "Awesome!!!". How in the heck could you know after 5 hours of the ROM being posted (he was not a tester either), let alone being flashed. Rediculousness.
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Sure. I just use the default settings the app comes with but you can tweak it to your liking. Will send you a PM shortly.
Edit: I couldn't agree with you more on the battery life postings 5 hours after a ROM has dropped. That's absolutely ridiculous and impossible to gauge so soon. You gotta give it at least a couple days to be able to accurately judge the battery life.
Sent from my Nexus 7
t3chn0s1s said:
Sure. I just use the default settings the app comes with but you can tweak it to your liking. Will send you a PM shortly.
Edit: I couldn't agree with you more on the battery life postings 5 hours after a ROM has dropped. That's absolutely ridiculous and impossible to gauge so soon. You gotta give it at least a couple days to be able to accurately judge the battery life.
Sent from my Nexus 7
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to use the app, root is mandatory? i didnt root my phone, i installed the app, and it shows all the required settings, but when I try to customize, it needs root, my question is, if we use the existing mods, i can use the app, without rooting the device. right?
TIA
atrix4nag said:
to use the app, root is mandatory? i didnt root my phone, i installed the app, and it shows all the required settings, but when I try to customize, it needs root, my question is, if we use the existing mods, i can use the app, without rooting the device. right?
TIA
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Yes. My dad uses the app on his unrooted Galaxy Nexus with no problems. You just can't tweak the settings unless you have root.
Sent from my Galaxy S III
t3chn0s1s said:
Sure. I just use the default settings the app comes with but you can tweak it to your liking. Will send you a PM shortly.
Edit: I couldn't agree with you more on the battery life postings 5 hours after a ROM has dropped. That's absolutely ridiculous and impossible to gauge so soon. You gotta give it at least a couple days to be able to accurately judge the battery life.
Sent from my Nexus 7
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Well it didn't take long for even this thread to turn into people discussing how to get better battery life out of their phone! haha. Figures eh?
I work a blue collar job so I need my battery to last all day. I'm not at a desk whee I can charge.......
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747 using xda premium
My friend lost his son and since his phone didn't have juice, he couldn't call 911 fast enough. Had to plug in the charger for like 2 mins first. That's why.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747 using xda app-developers app
I'm generally indifferent about battery life and attempts to prolong it for 2 reasons.
1. The settings and customization done by the manufacturer are stable values tested and balancing between battery life and the features of the phone.
2.Everyone know what they're getting jnto when they buy a phone with ~4 inch screen,has LTE and top of the line features. It's rather obvious that battery life won't be great, if it isn't then you might as well just go back to the candy bar phones, if you expect the best and the newest AND battery life.I certainly didn't expect my phone to run for 10+ hours when I got it... and besides buying the best phone on the market and then turning everything off to conserve battery life just defeats the purpose. Just buy an extended battery, buy the extra battery OEM and bring a spare along, or have an external charger as well as a 2amp usb charger.
Edit: When I initially got the phone, it was getting 6-8 hours on a charge after a couple of months 12-14 hours per charge. The same thing happen on the JB OTA, Im getting between 10-18 hours depending on my Reddit, Twitter, Gmail and Engadget usage, though I have to admit there are sometimes problems with some apps preventing deep sleep and occasionally what seems to be memory leaks with apps constantly using the data connection.
Sent from my SGH-I747M using xda premium
I like pushing it to see how far the battery can go. I could make it through the day before, but with some compromises. I bought an extended battery and flashed a new rom (which came with some good kernel settings to mess with), and now I can keep everything on and go two days without a charge.
For me it's more about getting what I'm used to--recently switched to gs3 from an iPhone 4, which had amazing battery life. I got around 8 hours screen on with that and initially only 3 with the gs3. So I tweaked away and now it's back to what I expect!
Edit: also I tweaked my way to better battery life because I can--why settle for something that could be better?
Sent from my SGH-I747 using xda app-developers app
I picked up a T-Mobile S4 on amazon for a pretty good price. This price wasn't "too good to be true" or anything like that, it was just a fair price for what I think is already a decently "mature" device.
Anyway, the phone is in like new condition and the owner had it presumably for about 6 months at least. I know this because he indicated that he had it in an otter-like case for that amount of time.
The first thing I immediately noticed was how fast the battery drained. He shipped the phone with the battery fully charged but still I just noticed that customizing things and changing settings I seemed to lose battery very quickly. My experience may be biased by my past two devices the Xperia Z Ultra and the Note 2 both which have large batteries, however, I installed CarbonRom and still experience what I believe to be abnormal battery drain.
Also, the top half of the phone gets noticeably warm from normal usage like web browsing or flipping through app settings. I do NOT game. The is a distinct difference between how the top half of the phone feels versus the bottom half. It's mostly centralized around the camera. I used gsam to check the temperature of the battery and it does seem normal, however, my brightness is like ~20% and I don't know, my friend who is also on Carbon says he gets amazing battery life. I feel let down by how quickly this thing drains and as I continue to say I don't think it is normal. I ordered a spare RAVPower 2600mah battery to see if there's a problem with the battery but I'm really not hopeful.
What do you guys think?
I too was disappointed with the M919 when I first got it. I have another S4 (i9505) which is rooted I get great battery life using the same sim card. My guess is the LTE radio is what sucks up the juice.
I have rooted it today just to install intelli3g and it does help save battery life. This app automatically switches to 2G, 3G, 4G and LTE depending on what you tell it to do. It's like a tasker type app.
Try to disable apps like google+ and the like if you haven't done so.
Also don't forget to disable Wifi scanning and Wifi on during sleep.
And if you really don't need "Data" to be on all the time, turn it off.
Dajinn said:
I picked up a T-Mobile S4 on amazon for a pretty good price. This price wasn't "too good to be true" or anything like that, it was just a fair price for what I think is already a decently "mature" device.
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A bad battery would be my first thought. It's logical. It fits the facts you present. And it's a common problem.
Plus it's a $10 fix.
I would doubt the drain was software related if you get the same bad battery results with a completely different ROM.
And I'd doubt that it's hardware related because a hardware fault that will drain the battery fast is likely a hardware fault that will prevent the phone from working at all. battery drain is caused by short circuits. Electronics don't work and play well with short circuits.
So I think you are being reasonable by trying a new battery. I don't think it's unreasonable to expect it to help.
If you want to squeeze out every possible second of battery life, check out the link in my signature about battery like while idle as well. It'll show you how to improve your battery life.