Related
This guide is not meant to be as a whole and is not meant to be followed from beginning to end. There are several recommendations based on my own experience, some of them will give you big battery savings, some of them minor ones; I tried to recopile every config that helps to save battery, but every config is not suitable for everyone. (I´ll point it at the beginning of every section in bold blue).
You'll need a Rooted Galaxy Nexus, with a custom ROM and a custom Kernel.
The custom ROM will give you the ability to make a deep configuration of the device in terms of options. I'm actually using Liquidsmooth v1.25, but AOKP, CM9 and SlimICS have the same options (if not more) than my actual.
Some custom Kernels will give you the ability to change the CPU frequency and voltage, kernels are the main reason of some drainings or fantastic battery life, choose wise.
The normal Galaxy Nexus battery life is about 4 hours screen time. If you are not achieving this, the main reasons could be:
1. Some apps are draining your battery due to a continuous use (no deep sleep or continuous wake ups).
2. Screen too bright.
3. Bad kernels with draining problems.
4. Weak signal connections.
This guide is wrote by me, a simple user that is sharing his own experience of the last 4 and a half months with the device. Some statements may be wrong. I'll appreciate any positive recommendations in order to improve the guide and help the rest of the community to achieve the best battery life the device can give us.
I'm using actually Liquidsmooth v1.25 and PopcornKernel, in a GSM GNex with standrad battery (1700mAh), and I'm getting this results:
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SCREEN
Due to the big screen, this is one of the elements of the device that affects in a major way to the battery live. (Great Savings)
It has been checked that black themes have a great impact on the battery due to the fact that one black pixel does not consume any battery.
Some apps have a black theme option on them, if you choose it you will save some battery.
On the other hand the brightness is the other part in the screen that has a big impact on the battery. In a logic way, less the brightness more the battery life. (Greatest Savings)
Now the latest ROM's have a new amazing feature, we can change the interval the sensor works to achieve the ambient light, reduce the brightness minimum value (that's by defect way too high in low light conditions), and customize your prefered light levels (that are too way too high in default configuration).
By reducing the sample interval sensor a bit and reducing the minimum value a lot we can achieved abetter battery life in a great manner.
Also adjusting the light sensor levels to a more reliable one's that are by far lower than the default one's we'll achieved a more optimize system that consumes less battery.
Note: This are my actual, after 2 weeks of adjust, values but I'm still working on them, they are no 100% reliable.
CPU
The CPU is a great beast. In terms of battery is well adjusted, by as always, we can achieve a personal optimized system (this is Android, yeah!) that will balance performance and battery life. (Great Savings Underclock and Undervolt combo).
A very good speed and fluidness can be achieved with a very good optimized and well balanced performance-battery friendly system.. and yes, with the last advances in kernels and ROMs, we can have a perfectly smooth system with a top speed of 1000Mhz.
In the other hand Undervolt will help us to achieve a cooler system with some battery gain. With Undervolt we´ll limit the max. value of the Voltage for the specified frequency, if we have a kernel with Smartflex, this one we´ll allow lower voltages depending on the power need of the CPU.
Two important things:
1. It has been tested that the 700Mhz frequency is prefereable over the 300Mhz one, due to the drops on frequency signal of the phone.
2. Undervolt values are not the same for everyone, it can oscillate depending on the individual CPU. When I UV I always test my system with an Stability Test app.
Connections
GNex is a phone...also.. well, it's a super computer with phone capabilities. Due to the "always connected" philosophy the optimal baseband will save a lot of battery. An optimal Baseband and Radio (region optimized) will require less power and time to connect to the antennas and will have better connection always (less power irradiated). (Medium savings).
The Radio should be updated and region optimized, there's a magnificent post made by josteink that explains all the details concerning the Radios with links to every one available.(GSM)
[Radio] (GSM) Galaxy Nexus I9250 Baseband dumps collection & discussion
European Radio Recommended: XXKK6 (XXLA2 is giving too high "Phone Idle", resulting in drain problems)
For the CDMA version there is another magnificent post by ready5 with a compilation of every RADIO for the CDMA version of the GNex.
(CDMA) [RADIOS/HYBRIDS]*UPDATED* 4.0.4 FULL 2/6/2012 PLUS FRIED RADIO Halp!
In the GSM version on the other part the 3G, HSPDA consumes great great great battery juice. If you are not in WIFI and are not using the data connection, a great way to save battery life is changing from HSPDA or 3G to 2G networks (this is really noticeable if you travel a lot by car or train, cause you are continuing connecting a reconnecting from different radio antennas).
There's some ROMs as Liquidsmooth that allows when you are not on WIFI and after an specified delay, to change to 2G automatically (or low consuming) networks when you have the screen off. This is a great way to save battery when you are not at home, reducing the standby drain of the phone outdoors.
.
The automatic 2G when sleep is a main function of Juice defender. Thanks to a1exus for recommendation.
In the CDMA version the LTE consumes also great great great battery juice. If you are not in WIFI and are not using the data connection, a great way to save battery life is changing from LTE to 4G networks (this is really noticeable if you travel a lot by car or train, cause you are continuing connecting a reconnecting from different radio antennas).
Thanks to thenickisme for this!
WIFI
Wifi has a crazy history on the GNex. After talking and talking, posting and posting, it has been tested that WIFI always on while sleep is the best way to achieve a longer battery life. (Medium savings).
Also the new ROM's have amazing feature that change the WIFI interval (we normally stay at the same WIFI always), increasing the value will save batterty life reducing the continues scans that produce the WIFI Always ON requirement.
Services and Apps
The best thing of Android is that we can configure anything, one of the best and underestimated feature is the Freeze or Service Uninstall. We did it before in Windows and we can do it now. Through the Apps section in Preferences or the mythic Titanium Backup we can disable or uninstall an internal function of the systems that is normally used, giving more resources to the system and in some cases, saving some battery. (Low to Minimum Savings).
There are some ICS functions that no everyone uses. For example, I don't use any Bluetooth, NFC, Google Voice, Google Search or Speech function of the system, freezing or uninstalling them will optimize our system giving some battery juice.
Note: This is a dangerous thing if you don't understand what you're doing. Make always a Nandroid before Freezing or Uninstalling an essential function, just to be cautious.
According to the Apps we have to take in account the Background Syncing or Sync Interval, most of the time the apps don't need to be synced every 5 minutes, like weather, if we make longer updates we'll achieve a good saving battery related. (Great Savings if many apps with many connections).
Widgets, 5 homescreens full of widgets updating in real time could be detrimental to the battery live, take care when adding widgets and as said in the previous paragraph, change every widget preferences to update in longer times than usually they have by default. (Great Savings if many apps with many connections).
Bad Apps are the one's that not allow our device to deep sleep or wake up continuously our GNex. There are several on the market, Readability for example is a new one that wake up continuously our device attempting to download new articles, on the other part, some time ago Widgetlocker had some problems not letting deep sleep the GNexus (don't know now). (Great Savings if there is an apps giving deep sleep or wake ups problems).
Pointing on this, the best way to know if any app is not behaving well in the system is through 2 apps:
- BetterBatteryStats, that will look for any wake up of the device while sleep.
- CPU Spy, that will tell us if the device is deep sleeping ok or not.
Other things
There are other things that will help us in a great or minor manner to save battery life.
Sync Data usage (Google services like contacts, bookmarks, etc..) consumes battery, if you limit this usage, you´ll gain some juice. The new ROM's in the Powersaver tag will allow you to limit this sync usage. (Low Savings).
The Dial Pad Touch Tones and Vibration affects battery also (yepp it's true, and in a great way!), disabling this features will give you some extra battery juice. (Low to Medium Savings with combo sound plus vibration).
The Google Location services and Backup&Reset Data consumes great battery also, limiting this services will gave you some extra juice. (Medium Savings).
The last little thing that will help you save batt life will be the Automatic Date&Time option, disabling it will give you some extra juice also. (Lowest Savings, practical minimum).
Live Wallpapers, they are very nice but will drain your battery quickly. Static Wallpapers are preferred, and if posible, dark ones. (Medium to Great Savings).
Experimental
This are new tweaks that normally appear in new/advanced kernels, his use according to battery save is still not really tested or can have a detrimental on the physical conditions of the device/battery. Use them with caution or if you really know what you are doing.
[MOD][KERNEL]Battery Life eXtender (BLX), this is a tweak created by the popular Ezekeel and in his owns words: "Older types of rechargable batteries exhibited a 'memory effect' which made it neccessary to completely charge/discharge the battery when using to prevent degradation of the capacity. Modern Lithium-Ion batteries like in the Nexus S do not show this problem and thus it is not necessary to use the battery in complete (dis)charge cycles. In fact on the contrary, it is commonly accepted that both very low and very high charge states accelerate the degradation of the battery capacity (that is why you should store Li-Ion batteries at around 40% charge).
While a low charge state can be simply avoided by charging the device more often, the battery in the Nexus S by default is charged to around 95% capacity and I could not find any app or tweak to stop the charging at a lower capacity. Thus the only way was to use the manual override and pull the cable which is annoying since one had to monitor the charge state." (Unknown Savings).
Galaxy Nexus is charged by default to the 96% of this capacity, with this new tweak you can gain this 4% (don't know for sure if you can get the 101%) of battery life, in 4 hours screen time, more or less 10 minutes, but it can be detrimental on the long way to the battery physical life.
You can found this tweak in the last nightly of Franco's Kernel, and can be activated via his own app.
You can find more information in Ezekeel post here at XDA.
[MOD][KERNEL]Undervolt of IVA and CORE Voltage, new patches let undervolt the IVA (hardware media decoder) and CORE (GPU Voltage), I'vce been playing with this all the day and I've managed to undervolt a 15-20% de original frequencies. (Unknown Savings).
I understand that with this we are limiting the maximum voltage they can use, letting them to use lower ones according to GPU load. I'm not sure at this (GPU uses smartflex also ¿?) but with a descent of 20% on the voltage could result in longer battery life while playing games or seeing movies.
I'll try further undervolts, but this are my actuals on a stable system.
You can play with this voltages via the last nightly of Franco's Kernel, and via his own app.
Take care playing with this, could result in system instabilities, reboots, freezes, etc.
Links of interest
- BetterBatteryStats, A high battery drain is often a limiting factor for a great user experience.
With BetterBatteryStats you can analyse the behavior of your phone, find applications causing the phone to drain battery while it is supposed to be asleep and measure the effect of corrective action.
- CPU Spy, This is a simple app to display the time the CPU spends in each frequency state. This can be a useful tool in diagnosing battery problems or tweaking your over-clock settings.
It also displays the current kernel information.
- StabilityTest, StabilityTest is a stress-testing tool for android devices with error reporting.
StabilityTest is a CPU, GPU, RAM/memory stress-testing tool for your device, whether stock and unrooted (limited functionality) or rooted and overclocked with SetCPU, SetVsel or similar tools.
Extended Battery
At the end, the best way to extend the battery life is with an Extended Battery, they are not very expensive and only increase a little bit the thickness of the device. They can be bought at several places through the typical places as Ebay, Expansys or Amazon.
Important: Take in account that the CDMA and GSM versions have different batteries and they are not compatible, normally the GSM one is longer and black and the CDMA is wider and blue.
Borrowed from Buddy Revell
Calibration
Once a month we´ll have to calibrate our battery so that the information to be shown on screen is accurate and true. The steps are as follows.
1. Charge the Nexus until the indicator shows us is 100%.
2. Disconnect it and let it discharge until it turns off by herself.
3. Then load up fully charged. Note that this state is reached after one hour approx. since it shows that is already loaded.
Note: There are several apps in the Market that help calibrate the battery, although I have heard that in ICS Google has changed the file location does. Log of our battery so many of them may not work well if they are not updated.
great post especially for a new gnex user. will look through these options thoroughly.
Very nice. Thank you! Took a few suggestions.
Looks like I've got some work to do =D
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using XDA
edited out
Cool story bro! Lots of good tweaks to maximize battery.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using xda premium
What rom is that? You should state that ...
Awesome. Those custom backlight levels are going to save a good amount of battery. I tried using a filter, but it made using the phone in sunlight impossible.
It's working inside well and based on what I see from the custom levels, it should have no issues once I take it outside.
As for the underclocking, comparing iOS and Android isn't fair. iOS has an advantage with its closed ecosystem. I personally overclock the GNex to achieve the same snappiness I had on my iPhone 4S. Sure the underclocking will save battery, but I might as well be using an older phone if I'm going to underclock.
When it comes down to it, everyone's battery is >50% screen consumption. Your custom levels are going to tremendously increase battery life.
gogol said:
What rom is that? You should state that ...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's in my signature, Liquidsmooth v1.25.
myrdog said:
Awesome. Those custom backlight levels are going to save a good amount of battery. I tried using a filter, but it made using the phone in sunlight impossible.
It's working inside well and based on what I see from the custom levels, it should have no issues once I take it outside.
As for the underclocking, comparing iOS and Android isn't fair. iOS has an advantage with its closed ecosystem. I personally overclock the GNex to achieve the same snappiness I had on my iPhone 4S. Sure the underclocking will save battery, but I might as well be using an older phone if I'm going to underclock.
When it comes down to it, everyone's battery is >50% screen consumption. Your custom levels are going to tremendously increase battery life.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks
With the iPhone comparison I just tried to emphasize that sometimes underclocking results in the same snappiest system, but yes, is a little unfair though (but I can assure that with the latest Kernels and ROMs that have been released, I have a totally fast and smooth system with only 1000Mhz).
Well done good job
Good guide. Rather than seeing multiple thread's about awful battery life its nice to see people talk about how to maximize their battery life
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using xda premium
Good guide—thanks for taking the time to make it—but along with it’s very good parts, it has quite a few inaccuracies, is misleading in some places, doesn’t fully explain the ramification of making many of the changes that are proposed and makes questionable changes for very little gain. Amongst other things, my major issues with it are:
You wrongly assume a device that does not get four hours of screen time is not optimized—this would be incorrect as one can get four hours of screen time with the stock ROM and default configuration.
The stock ROM does not allow you to customize the backlight and CPU—so you should point this out.
It’s condescending to the iPhone (while the GN might be better in many ways, patronizing another device has no place in a “guide”).
BinkXDA said:
Good guide—thanks for taking the time to make it—but along with it’s very good parts, it has quite a few inaccuracies, is misleading in some places, doesn’t fully explain the ramification of making many of the changes that are proposed and makes questionable changes for very little gain. Amongst other things, my major issues with it are:
You wrongly assume a device that does not get four hours of screen time is not optimized—this would be incorrect as one can get four hours of screen time with the stock ROM and default configuration.
The stock ROM does not allow you to customize the backlight and CPU—so you should point this out.
It’s condescending to the iPhone (while the GN might be better in many ways, patronizing another device has no place in a “guide”).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks, but the guide tried to be a compilation of many procedures that would give you a longer batt life. Some of the recommendations give you maybe 4-5% more autonomy, some of them 0,5%, don't know because I'm not an engineer and don't have the tools and time to measure the actual rate of discharge of the device, I'm only a user that took some time in share his personal experience in the last 4 and a half months with the device.
1. It was a way of talking, did not tried to assume anything because was not thinking in anithing out of the people that are not having more that 3 hours batt time, was a simple way of selling something (a well/bad introduction depending on the eyes or mentality of the reader)
2. We are at XDA and this is a developer device, I asume a minimal technological base, I was assuming this. But I point this out because I also think that will help some people.
3. Tried to emphasize that while the over sold as an ultra-quick device is only 1Ghz Dual-Core, the GNex can be as fast and reliable as the iPhone 4S with the same speed, and also saving batt (and in addition you have 450 more Megaherzs if you want to use them.. if you root). It’s not condescending cause if I would have liked to buy an iPhone I would bought one as the 99% of the people here.
I am a simple user, as everyone here, trying to help people as people has helped me developing great ROMs and Kernels I like positive and concrete recommendations over vague and negative ones.
hey op,
SrTapir said:
If we take in account that the Mega-Ultra-Cool-Fashion-Posh and "Ultra Quick" iPhone 4S has a only Dual Core 1Ghz processor, we can assume that with the same speed we can achieved a very good optimized and well balanced performance-battery friendly system.. and yes, with the last advances in kernels and ROMs, we can have a perfectly smooth system with a top speed of 1000Mhz.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i think the iphone is clocked at 800mhz even it has 1ghz
king23adrianc said:
hey op,
i think the iphone is clocked at 800mhz even it has 1ghz
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ups!
SrTapir said:
Ups!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
First of all thanks to all the people for your comments!
I've updated the first post with your recommendations, and added a couple little things.
SrTapir said:
First of all thanks to all the people for your comments!
I've updated the first post with your recommendations, and added a couple little things.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The Calibration section is a little confusing. It only takes 1 hour to go from 0% to 100%?
Also, do you know anything about calibration with ROMs that only allow you to charge to 99%?
myrdog said:
The Calibration section is a little confusing. It only takes 1 hour to go from 0% to 100%?
Also, do you know anything about calibration with ROMs that only allow you to charge to 99%?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No, it takes 1 hour after the GNex indicates is fully charged. I'll try to change it in order to clarify.
No, sorry, maybe you can "delete battery logs" via recovery. (I never did it, and don't know if can be detrimental).
All,
In case you haven't noticed, the battery life of the Nitro HD is kinda bad... Then, when you add ICS into the mix, it gets worse.
When i first flashed the Leaked ICS ROM, I noticed that I was only getting about 8 to 9 hours of battery life with very light use. So, I endeavored to find a way to extend that time without buying an expensive extended battery.
Here are my findings:
GPS
Settings > Location Services
Now we all like the convenience of being able to pull out our phone and find the nearest gas station or fine dining experience. But when you think about it, in our day to day lives, we don't need directions that much.
GPS and Location Services are huge data and energy hogs. If you have ever seen how much can go on in the background when it comes to Location Services, you would cringe. So, set up your GPS like the screenshot below and you will see a little battery life improvement and data usage go down.
Display Brightness
Settings > Display > Brightness
On my Nitro, the display uses up the most energy by far. So, it only makes sense to lower the brightness a bit to save power.
Developer Options
Settings > Developer Options
The Nitro has a powerful 1.5GHz CPU which uses a ton of energy when in heavy use. Some of you might say, "But Matt, I don't use that many apps that need the CPU." Well, it's not that you use them. It's that the ones you have used are likely still running. For example, even though I always use the 'Exit' menu item in Slacker Radio, it will always show up as a running process in Task Manager.
In the Developer Options, there are a few useful ways to fix this problem.
First, check the box next to 'Don't keep activities'. This will cause whatever app you are using to stop completely as soon as it is not on the screen anymore. This is useful if you have the habit of using the 'Home' button when you are done with apps.
Next, set the 'Background process limit' to something other than the standard limit. I have mine set to 4 processes. This will keep processes that are not tied to any specific app in check.
If you use a lot of apps and games that have to render video, it might be a good idea to check the 'Force GPU rendering' box. This will force apps such as games to use the slightly less powerful GPU in the Nitro for video. Thus letting your CPU relax a bit. I have also noticed that heat doesn't build up as much with this box checked.
Lastly, if you want to know about more of the processes that hang in the background that may cause performance issues, you can check the 'Show all ANRs' box. Personally, I found it annoying.
Power Saver
Settings > Power Saver
I was really excited for this feature but also very skeptical. But, I gave it a try anyway. What this feature does is when your battery level gets to a certain percent that you choose, it will turn off power consuming features and change some settings to use less power. I have mine set to engage at 20% battery life.
The tips I have seen say to check every box. But, because of my profession, I have to have 'Auto-sync' left on for emails and such.
With the settings below, I usually see the last 20% of battery last about 4 to 5 hours of medium use.
CPU Clock
*Requires Root*
Unlike all the tips above, this one will require you to root your Nitro.
As I said before, the 1.5GHz CPU uses a ton of power. When you think about it, unless you are playing games all the time or doing some kind of complex calculation as part of your Quantum Physics experiment on you phone, you really don't need all that power. So, what I did was underclocked the CPU to 1GHZ. This gives me the power I need to do what I do but with more efficient energy consumption.
I used SetCPU for this but there are a few other choices out there that do the job just as good.
As you can see from the screenshot below, I have set the max frequency to 1026MHz and the min frequency to 384MHz (I have since set min to 192MHz). I set the governor to 'conservative' based on this post: LINK. But, I think that any of them will help in different ways.
If you are curious, I'm also inserting a screenshot of my benchmarks after the underclock.
CPU Sleep (Suggested by rani9990)
*Requires Root*
XDA user rani9990 suggested an app called CPU Sleeper that, essentially, puts additional cores into an offline mode while the screen is off.
I can see how this would be advantageous because when your phone is in sleep mode, it really doesn't need all that extra power.
I have had it on my phone since i got up this morning and have noticed a significant jump in battery life already.
Results
Before these tips, I was getting about 8 to 9 hours of medium use on a charge.
After, I get roughly 15 to 20 hours of medium use. (It varies from day to day but hovers between 15 and 20.)
If anybody has any other tips, please let me know so I can add them to the list.
You should also tell people to get CPU sleeper (root) saves tons of battery life for me.
Also, disabling haptic feedback saves battery.
Sent from my GT-I9300
! kick ass post!! well-done. fun read too.
thanks!!1
Sadly, battery life on this phone really sucks even with the optimizations. having compared both, I can say that the Nitro HD with optimizations and 3800 mAh Hyperion battery gets about the same battery life as a Galaxy Nexus on the stock ROM and stock battery.
996gt2 said:
Sadly, battery life on this phone really sucks even with the optimizations. having compared both, I can say that the Nitro HD with optimizations and 3800 mAh Hyperion battery gets about the same battery life as a Galaxy Nexus on the stock ROM and stock battery.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Perhaps check your running processes. With these tweaks in place, I unplugged my Nitro at 7:45is this morning and right now, at 2:15pm, I have 79% battery left and I've made two 15 to 20 minute phone calls and rebooted about 6 times because of some testing I've been doing for another thread.
Also, the Nitro does have a faster CPU that would take more power than the Nexus.
I have done all of this, in addition to in Settings/Wireless & networks there's "more..." click that and theres "Mobile networks".. and the option for "Use only 2g networks" I'm using that for only texting while at work and doing pretty decent with battery life. since 5:45 to now 10AM texting all throughout that time I'm at 85% battery.
Kct385 said:
I have done all of this, in addition to in Settings/Wireless & networks there's "more..." click that and theres "Mobile networks".. and the option for "Use only 2g networks" I'm using that for only texting while at work and doing pretty decent with battery life. since 5:45 to now 10AM texting all throughout that time I'm at 85% battery.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I actually don't have that option.
mattman86 said:
I actually don't have that option.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Uhmm.. maybe its a CM9 only feature.. sorry hijacking then.
i found many of these settings are available in cm9 and after making the changes, it appears to me they work very well. thanks again eh.
UPDATE: I refrained from plugging in my phone all day yesterday and got 14 hours and 32 minutes of medium to heavy use.
Sent/Recieved 191 text messages.
Spent 2 hours and 47 minutes on the phone.
Updated 7 apps from the Play Store.
Played Dead Space for roughly 35 minutes.
Checked Facebook 3 or 4 times.
Read a news article online.
I think the battery did pretty good this time around.
Thanks for helpful tips!
The only problem I got is that the screen turned to back (with music still on) when I started NinjaJump with "Force GPU rendering'" checked.
You don't want force GPU rendering checked...
mattman86 said:
Display Brightness
Settings > Display > Brightness
On my Nitro, the display uses up the most energy by far. So, it only makes sense to lower the brightness a bit to save power
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What I`ve noticed is that when I set Brightness to 100% I have 3...3,5 hours of wake working screen active time before battery exhausted. It's on ICS leak V18F. But if I set brightness to 30% or "auto" mode I got about 2....2,5max hours of screen active, it exhausts quicker
And secondly, on CM9 it helps me to check off "surface dithering" in 'performance' options. But on official ROMs we haven't this option available to tweak
I found that JuiceDefender has seriously saved me a whole lotta battery. Like seriously. I was getting 12 hours of medium to heavy usage before, and now i can hit 30 hours of medium usage. Then again, Data isn't turned on for me, I use the phone for Wifi and Calling.
rani9990 said:
I found that JuiceDefender has seriously saved me a whole lotta battery. Like seriously. I was getting 12 hours of medium to heavy usage before, and now i can hit 30 hours of medium usage. Then again, Data isn't turned on for me, I use the phone for Wifi and Calling.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
JuiceDefender saved me tons of battery also. But I noticed that it was always waking my phone up for a second at random times. Have you had that issue at all?
mattman86 said:
JuiceDefender saved me tons of battery also. But I noticed that it was always waking my phone up for a second at random times. Have you had that issue at all?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Nope, but I don't look at my phone every waking second. Maybe it did do it. But I'm getting a serious boost in battery life so I don't really care.
Sent from my LG-P930 using xda premium
For me keeping the wifi on (and thus connecting via wifi both at home and in the office) allows me to save battery..
To me it seems strange, because my old phone literally sucked battery while keeping wifi on, but on the nitro wifi consumes less than hsdpa data transfer.
I've added a link to my SetCPU Profiles file in the guide.
low antutu battery benchmark scores
Both stock and CM9 RC2 are disappointing: 250 and 328 respectively. I've applied the suggestions here and don't know if I'm doing something wrong.
I was rather happy with my phone with GB managed by Battery Defender from Infolife. I used to have 1,5 day with "Mostly Idle" usage. Now after upgrade to ICS I just got 10% down per hour on idle. So disappointed. I'll play with your settings a while. May be Battery Defender uninstall/reinstall can help too...
I'm not sure if this would be of an interest for general public but those who like numbers can skip "OMG this/that SuperBattery/ROM/app let my phone run forever" statements.
I had read somewhere about similar testing for other phones (such posts are very rare). So I was curious to do such tests for my T989. And here we go:
SGS2 T989, ICS stock rooted/debloated ROM.
No Juice/CPU keepers/defenders/sleepers etc.
All syncs are manual.
All tests are done with dark background at 20% brightness if not otherwise stated.
Most of the time current jumps up and down so some results are with Low/High mA range.
Cell signal was -84dBm (pretty good 4 bars).
CPU was at default range 384MHz -1.5Ghz, ondemand.
Anker 2200mAh battery was at 80% - around 4V. When voltage goes down, the current would go up but I didn't bother to calculate in Watts instead because knowing ballpark in Amperes let you calc budget easier.
Deep sleep test.
In deep sleep,current stays below 10mA some of the time but every 5 sec jumps to 40/50mA, every 15 sec to 150mA. So, something is running on background giving an average of 11mA (somewhere around 0.5% of charge per hour).
If I put phone in airplane mode then there would be no jumps and average current will be 3/4mA. Over 10 hours (overnight) phone would loose only 1-2% vs. 5% when not in airplane mode.
Interesting, my previous phone SG S 4G had low current 2/3mA even when not in airplane mode. Well, anything running/looping on background (like sleeper script) would only consume more energy.
So, if you don't need to pickup calls at night - your best battery savior is an airplane mode... otherwise just put phone on a charger.
AMOLED Screen brightness test was done in airplane mode, idle:
Dark background 20% - 80/90mA, 50% - 110mA, 100% - 130mA
White background 20% - 120/130mA, 50% - 170mA, 100% - 250/270mA
This should give you around 10 hours of screen time if you say just reading white text on black background during boring intercontinental flight.
GSM voice call screen off - 280mA, screen on (speakerphone) - 350mA
(So basically, I can talk non stop for 2200/280 = 7 hours straight, not saying that I would do it )
Market apps update on WiFi - 250/300mA
SpeedTest WiFi - 450/500mA,
4G - 600/900mA (900 most of the time when uploading) (actual 4G speed was around 18Mb down and 5Mb up)
Everybody saying "too much 4G data will kill your battery" - but how much is to much? We can see that 2200mA budget enough for 2200/900 = 2.4 hours of intensive 4G usage. (There is some CPU part in it too)
And my cell signal was pretty strong, so wicker signal would require even more current to get your bits back and forth to the cell tower.
Anyway, in my case 4G requires double vs. WiFi.
CPU stress test 1.5GHz (364 Native Benchmark) - 570/600mA,
1.3GHz (402 Native Benchmark) - 460/480mA,
1.0GHz (506 Native Benchmark) - 350/390mA
You can see with performance goes power consumption... lowering from 1.5 down to 1.3GHz can save you around 120mA...
NetFlix playing through WiFi - 200/300mA, 4G - 240/600mA (600mA when loading buffer)
So, you can expect about 2200/300 = 7 hours of NetFlix from one charge.
Pandora, screen off, 4G - 70/350mA (350 when loading buffer 1/5 of a time)
Google Music screen on, local - 150/200mA, WiFi - 300/340mA, 4G - 500/700mA
I think Google Music buffering more then Pandora and I was not waited long enough... GM should consume about the same as Pandora.
Dice MP4, HW decoder, local video - 150/200mA
Google Map idle WiFi - 250mA, with GPS on - 350/400mA
Game Quell Reflection - 400mA (all the time)
Angry Birds - 250/350mA
Well, here are some of my screen shots as an illustration. Enjoy.
So you are saying all these battery savers are making things worse?
Here's mine with AOKP ICS Eugene CPU sleeper and TDJ kernel
Truth is battery life varies hugely, with usage and app setups.
Sent from the pink Unicorn from the Darkside.
I am trying to show that with the given battery budget it's up to user how to spend it.
Knowing how stuff works (at least in general ) allow to plan actions.
Speaking about CPU sleeper - it loops in background (already not good), it's trying to put CPU1 offline regardless what kernel scheduler think about it meaning next moment kernel would wake up CPU1 back if needed, so in next 2 sec sleeper script would try to put it off again and so on and so on....
Do you really need those intensive background processes running? Like Google++ etc. - if answer is Yes then CPU script is counterproductive, it's fighting against your wishes, spending even more energy... if answer is No then you better make sure your phone is clean of such rough apps, so it would go to deep sleep on it's own...
Deep sleep is not exactly up to Samsung specs on this phone - 0.5% per hour - meaning 200 hours in standby with excellent signal and with 2200mA Anker battery... only in airplane mode T989 got 3/4mA. So, could sleeper scrip help in this situation? Ask the author. Because when I ask him he just congratulated myself and that's it.
Band aids are always less effective then the cure of the root problem. Band aids could/would produce side effects (like something stopped working).
If you don't need dual CPU power - get yourself a single core phone... or lower CPUs frequency. According to my tests decreasing CPU frequency by 15% will save you 25%.
If you don't want to flip airplane mode by yourself then get apps which will do it for you but there might be some other gotchas...
Just try to get to the bottom of the problem and avoid the idiocracy "when the plants crave for... you know what".
LoopDoGG79 said:
Here's mine with AOKP ICS Eugene CPU sleeper and TDJ kernel
Truth is battery life varies hugely, with usage and app setups.
Sent from the pink Unicorn from the Darkside.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Looks fine. 20% in 12 hours with light usage. Test idle overnight with and without CPU sleeper to see if this is placebo effect.
I just did some tests on endurance. 4 days with 1 hour of talk and 1 hour of screen time and still have 28% to go. Or previously I did 7:40 of screen time with 40% battery still to go...
Someone asked what is my settings, well here we go:
1. I don't use automatic sync anywhere. When I need something I just hit manual sync.
2. Most of the time I use fixed brightness about 20%. (sometimes I set more when I need it)
3. Observe system behavior periodically, especially when installing new app, using OS monitor or just simple terminal (top 10 command). Are there any processes running without any reason? If so, deal with them...
4. My "Screen On" CPU frequency range is limited to 1.3GHz. (usually I don't play games on a phone, I've got a tablet for it). This will cap max current and will save around 120mA.
5. "Screen Off" CPU is limited to 0.9GHz - for same reason, no need to use 1.5GHz CPU for background tasks.
6. If there is spotty 4G - better switch it Off. Sure this will delay reports on you going from your phone to Google servers but I don't care about it.
7. Use WiFi instead of 4G - it costs at least two times less for you battery.
8. Switch WiFi Off when non needed. Idle WiFi will not consume much more mAmps but will set internal connection status = DISCONNECTED which will prevent different processes wakening up and transmitting.
9. Overnight, I prefer use airplane mode... two reasons: I don't like to wake up due to some "wrong number" calls. Second, deep sleep mode is still consuming around 11mA and airplane mode is just 3mA. So, instead of 4% of charge per 8 hours my phone uses just 1%.
(FYI: Eugene told in other post that his best overnight idling was about 10%)
10.Last but not least by using dark background and reading white fonts on black screen can save another 50-70mA. Very handy if you like read a lot. That's how I've got 7:40 hours of screen time with 40% still left in battery.
When you look at your time and compare what you were running/doing - keep in mind that there will be about 80% of battery capacity available. (Fuel Gauge chip will show 0% when there is still 3.45V) Manufacturers rate batteries discharging them down to 3.3V.
If you want to post your results, please include at least screen time along with type of usage and other basic settings. Otherwise such posts would be useless in terms of objective comparison different ROMs and settings.
i got my telus refubrished phone few days ago, i am getting around 12 hours on factory settings, i didnt change them. i use the phone for calling emails and news.
is that normal, if not, could it be the battery
omarnajat said:
i got my telus refubrished phone few days ago, i am getting around 12 hours on factory settings, i didnt change them. i use the phone for calling emails and news.
is that normal, if not, could it be the battery
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, to say if your battery needs to be replaced you either have to test it on capacity tester or indirectly in your phone with some static (and well known load). Read the first post, choose benchmark/load, run it and then calculate your battery capacity approximation.
If your calculated capacity much less then 80% of rated one then probably you want to replace battery.
You may try to reset Fuel Gauge chip by removing full charged battery for several minutes from phone and try those tests again.
You can check for calibration errors by comparing voltage and what % Android reports.
100% - you should see 4.2 - 4.1V
50% - you should see 3.8-3.7V
1% - you should see around 3.45V
To answer on your other question "if this normal?" - one would need more information. Or you can analyze your usage pattern yourself based on metrics I provided at first post.
Really interesting post, thanks for taking the time to document and write this up. This is the sorta thing that is really great on XDA.
I went on a one week campout a few weeks ago. Put phone in airplane mode and unplugged around noon Monday, didn't plug it in again until around noon Saturday. Airplane mode the whole time, but I was also using Eugene's CPU Sleeper app and AOKP milestone 6 (July 15th release). Used phone for camera throughout the week, some very light reading and more than a few hours of gps on a long hike. Didn't think to take a screenshot though, so I can't back my claim. My battery was flirting with 0% by the time I plugged it in though, but that's still ~5 days. If I didn't use gps I could have easily gone much longer. Gps was the biggest battery killer.
Airplane mode is the best battery saver there is, but I like to be able to receive phone calls so I just let AOKP turn data off after about 10 minutes of screen off. Saves a lot of battery right there.
I have some crappy metro PCS
huawei ascend that I don't use at all. I turned it on airplane mode and left it for about a month and it was at 27 percent when I picked it up yesterday. I was running cm6 and I think I under clocked the prosessor running at 400mkz max
It has a 1500mah batt
my s2 has a extended 3650 mAh bat
Sent from my SGH-T989 on Jelly Bean goodness!
Edit: I just carry around an portable charger with me. I get about a week on my phone but you never know whats gonna happen
Updated to ICS 4.0.4 and looks like deep sleep got improvement.
Last night battery lost just 2% instead of 4% as expected for 8 hours on previous rom.
Ok so here are the tools I use
An automatic radio activation tool that will turn radios/wifi /gps OFF when screen is off - Juice Defender Ultimate is my choice
A CPU management tool - I use AnTuTu CPU Master but i hear that SetCPU is also very nice
Better Battery Stats
I Have setup Juice Defender (JD) to turn off my radios/wifi/bluetooth when the screen is off, to manage auto-synch, manage screen brightness but i DO NOT use it to manage CPU. I have also not setup any special App settings in JD, it just manages power consuming hardware (other than cpu)
My CPU tool (whichever you use) is used to setup profiles based on situations. Screen off, screen on, in call, etc.
There is never any reason for your CPU to be over 700mhz unless you are interacting with your phone. When you are on the phone 920 is all you will ever need. You can set the max above 1200 if you want or need the extra power but just remember that the cpu is always going to be a battery drain.
The #1 thing to remember is that if your not using your phone actively, it should be doing as close to nothing as possible.
Now I would love to hear from others on experiences and strategies or even critiques of my method. I know many will say that JD is not needed, bit i like not having to think about it.
I stick with Trickster Mod app for CPU/kernel settings. It's amazing. Also I never use Juice defender I use Tasker :thumbup:
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using xda app-developers app
aperseghin said:
Ok so here are the tools I use
An automatic radio activation tool that will turn radios/wifi /gps OFF when screen is off - Juice Defender Ultimate is my choice
A CPU management tool - I use AnTuTu CPU Master but i hear that SetCPU is also very nice
Better Battery Stats
I Have setup Juice Defender (JD) to turn off my radios/wifi/bluetooth when the screen is off, to manage auto-synch, manage screen brightness but i DO NOT use it to manage CPU. I have also not setup any special App settings in JD, it just manages power consuming hardware (other than cpu)
My CPU tool (whichever you use) is used to setup profiles based on situations. Screen off, screen on, in call, etc.
There is never any reason for your CPU to be over 700mhz unless you are interacting with your phone. When you are on the phone 920 is all you will ever need. You can set the max above 1200 if you want or need the extra power but just remember that the cpu is always going to be a battery drain.
The #1 thing to remember is that if your not using your phone actively, it should be doing as close to nothing as possible.
Now I would love to hear from others on experiences and strategies or even critiques of my method. I know many will say that JD is not needed, bit i like not having to think about it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Good idea starting this thread but I feel that you've opened up a can of worms
I've used JD before on my Dinc2 and I liked the fact that it can manage the radios but for me, I get a lot of emails and I like something on so I stopped using it. I did try some other apps like that but JD was my favorite by far!
Check out TricksterMOD from the app store it blows setcpu out of the water! It let's you do so much more and since I've found that I can't go back to anything else.
I usually don't undervolt, I feel like the kernel developers so a good job with their frequencies so I leave that alone lol but I have been recently checking out the governor settings to try and optimize a few things, that's a tricky topic lol
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2
Um.. wow.. i wasted money on a few other apps apparently, trickstermod looks amazing..
Not sure if this is the forum for this but a good discussion none the less.
What ROM you guys running for best battery life? I seem to get the most from aosp based roms and not cm10 or aokp ones.
Im using XenonHD with Tinys kernel. I saw HORRIBLE battery life until i took action to tame it. now its much better
aperseghin said:
Im using XenonHD with Tinys kernel. I saw HORRIBLE battery life until i took action to tame it. now its much better
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Mines close to stock on purpose but I don't mind people tuning it. What did you change that helped battery? There's bit much from a kernel perspective that will really help battery.
And this topic doesn't belong in development.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2
i guess it belongs in general but the idea was to get all the tidbits that we need together in one app specifically for our phones. like "The CDMA Galaxy nexus Super Battery saver app that does it all without all the stuff you dont need"
Just flash lean kernel and turn off mobile data when you're not using it. No need for these crazy battery saving apps. I get ~7 - 9 hours a day, easily.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using xda app-developers app
I consistently get 14 to 18 hrs. I've been using the battery for about 2 weeks now and its awesome.
Rom of Choice: Jelly Belly
http://rootzwiki.com/topic/28677-ro...jelly-bean-421-aosp-its-all-about-the-butter/
Battery of choice: Anker 2200mAh
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0078WL4YO/ref=oh_details_o01_s00_i02
Since radios are such a huge drain ...
I think my best move has been using an app called Profile. You can use it to turn off and on WIFI, Bluetooth and change the screen brightness at certain times on certain days. So at my usual time to go to work, WIFI gets shut off. At my usual time to get home, WIFI back on.
Also will change ringers, volumes and vibration on/off (always off uses battery).
24 hours no problem.
Costs a couple of bucks to get the time based control, but works for me.
Two tricks are using auto brightness and using WiFi whenever possible.
However, since I can't stand either of those options, using trickstermod to set max CPU speed while screen off, and setting color profile to morific typically helps my battery life.
Sent from my Transformer Pad TF300T using xda premium
gchild320 said:
Two tricks are using auto brightness and using WiFi whenever possible.
However, since I can't stand either of those options, using trickstermod to set max CPU speed while screen off, and setting color profile to morific typically helps my battery life.
Sent from my Transformer Pad TF300T using xda premium
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
CPU max is capped at 350 or 700 already there's no need to change it.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2
Yah why would you need to lower CPU on sleep when we have deep idle?
I use CM10 nightlies, and the latest dev snapshots of Imo's leankernel. Min frequency 230mhz, max 1350mhz, interactivex governor with his tweaks and sio i/o scheduler.
I get ~24 hours battery with decent screen-on time, from just texting, about 20 minutes on the phone, and websurfing on full wifi service wherever I go (stays connected even when sleeping, and we have cross-campus wifi here). 3g service only, no LTE here yet. Bluetooth off. NO apps--many of the market "powersaving" apps will just wake the phone from sleep and cycle a few times to write to the log file (any app that keeps track of power consumption, and half of them don't even use the system tools). GPS is on, but it's never initialized more than 1-2x a day for random needs.
Getting a lightweight kernel is a good choice for battery life saving, and getting one that actually keeps up with android mainline is pretty key.
I think it's most helpful to post your total 'screen on' time and time since charge. If someone tells me they get 14 hours, that means nothing. I can get a full day 16 hours with roughly 2 hours of screen on time, without limiting my phone via turning off mobile data, syncing, or using a juice defender app that disables a lot of things.
That, to me, is not very good at all. I saw that the Nexus 4 is getting about 4.5 hours of screen on time with a full day of being on with everything syncing, etc being on. 4.5 is actually pretty bad also compared to other devices these days.
No matter what I try I usually only get about 2.5 hours of screen on time. I under clock to a max of 750 screen off at 280 undervolted to in each setting.
I've tried many many kernels with many roms
Screen on time doesnt mean much me to me because i use my phone for personal and business use, which means I get quite a few calls.
I use the stock 4.1.1 image, rooted with SuperSu and debloated a bit. Also use Faux kernel 23m-sr and his control app.
I roughly get about 2.5 hours screen on time with light calls and about 1.5 with heavy calls - my off charger time is pretty good though as it easily gets me thru the day. I bought another OEM standard battery and just keep one fully charged at all times so I can swap. Works well for me.
I also keep 4g on - why not when you can swap batteries.
does leaving gps on all the time if you're not running any location apps bother the battery at all?
t1.8matt said:
does leaving gps on all the time if you're not running any location apps bother the battery at all?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No only when you use something requiring device GPS does it turn on. Most background stuff like Google Now uses tower fix so it's OK to leave it on.
---------- Post added at 07:48 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:43 PM ----------
Battery life is a pretty unique experience for everyone. Apps, ROM, kernel, signal, Wi-Fi time, brightness, etc. Won't say these type of threads are totally pointless but they are pretty close to it. Always good to share pointers on how to save a few minutes of juice though. Ultimately its a big screen and turning it off now and then is the best way to save but personally I leave all my services on because that's why I bought this thing and I keep a charger everywhere I go.
Android 4.2.1
CyanogenMod 10.1 Snapshot M1 (21/1/13)
Franco Kernel R364
I'm trying to maximize my battery time.
(Power mode BeastlyBattery 192MHz~1036MHz, Governor: Lazy, IO Scheduler: deadline, Screen of Max Frew: 384MHz)
I want to UV my CPU (and maybe IVA and GPU also, does it helps too?) to save some battery.
Should I just decrease the voltage a bit, use stability test app and keep going till there will be errors,
or I can just decrease like someone else on the web and then keep going..?
Can it do something to the device? (because Its just undervoltage..)
For how long I need to run the stability test?
I saw this topic:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1599025
and he says:
"1. It has been tested that the 700Mhz frequency is prefereable over the 300Mhz one, due to the drops on frequency signal of the phone."
Anyone tested this?
Does UV degrades preformance?
What is SmartFlex?
Anything else I need to know about that?
Im gonna make this one quick, so my apologies if I don't address your questions directly.
Prior to my Galaxy Nexus, I had a T-Mobile SGSII. I too had the belief that undervolting/clocking would improve my battery life substantially. It seemed to work but then I was only getting the results that I wanted to get, and thats because I went to extremes to lowering my screen brightness to minimum and using my phone a fraction of what I used to.
With the help of others and trial and error, my major conclusion is that undervolting/clocking, though normal headset use will not improve your battery life by a landslide. Android is so well optimized to save you as much battery as it can. Sure there are things here in there that interrupt that optimization such as bugs or kernel issues but that something even undervolting/clocking will not be able to solve.
If you do go into undervolting/clocking your device, please keep in mind that the most you will probably get out of it is maybe 45 minutes to 1hr extension, but thats not display time.
What you can do to improve your battery life is turn off whatever sync services you don't use, lower your screen brightness ( the display is the major battery hog in the GN and SAMOLED devices), use dark wallpapers and dark themes if apps support it, use wifi, disable 3G when not in use. The radio you use can also potentially affect your battery life and signal quality.
Those are just a few suggestions, the rest is up to you.
Good luck!
P.S. Kernels also add variation to the longevity of your battery life. It's been a very long time since I touched CM10 so I'm not gonna go and defame that ROM but do try something else that possibly offers better battery life. If MODs are a MUST for you, then you will be faced with a lower battery life compared to stock based ROM's. It won't be an extreme difference but the difference will be there. If I may suggest a ROM, try this one. I can honestly say I can get up to 3-4 hours of display time on it with about a 12 hour standby.
I read a lot on the web that it does help to battery time.. :S
anyone?
You're not going to see much difference. Running the cpu at a lower clock speed just means it will take longer to complete the same operation so you'll use just as much battery.
063_XOBX said:
You're not going to see much difference. Running the cpu at a lower clock speed just means it will take longer to complete the same operation so you'll use just as much battery.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
And undervoltage?
Different overnor?
Undervolting will have minimal effect during actual use and a governor is based on specific user needs. One might save me battery while another works better for your usage. You need to actually mess with setting instead of just asking others what they use.