This guide is a work in progress, please contribute to it so we can have a central place for battery info!
Table of Contents:
1. Quick Tips
2. Monitoring Battery Usage
3.The Nitty-Gritty Details
4.Frequently Asked Questions
5.References
6.Changelog
Quick Tips
NOTE: As with many devices in their early days, there seems to be a few bugs needing to be worked out. Some of which include:
High "Android OS" Battery % usage. Possible remedies include settings->Wifi->Advanced(menu)->Keep Wifi on ALWAYS when sleeping; Trying alternative kernels from the dev section; although 4.0.3 may have some improvements, early leaks are not yeilding substantial changes.
High "Media Server" battery % usage when using a media app with audio, video, etc.
High Preset voltage table in kernel can be fixed with UC Kernels, but proceed cautiously.
http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=22878
Battery Capacities. NOTE: The batteries are NOT interchangeable between GSM and LTE!
GSM: 1750mah
LTE: 1850mah
LTE extended battery: 2100mah
GSM extended battery: 2000mah
Settings that use us battery:
Screen brightness: Using the lowest comfortable setting will save a good bit of battery, espescially on such a large screen. App LogGraph can be used to change auto-brightness levels
Haptic feedback: Switch this setting off (Settings->Sound->Vibrate on touch). You may need to turn this off in alternative keyboards. Vibrations on button press, unlock, etc will use power for the vibrating motor. This includes vibrating for a call or text.
Button Sounds: Switch this setting off (Settings->Sound->"Dial pad touch tones"; "Touch Sounds"; "Screen Lock Sounds"). Speakers are small electro-magnets and require energy to move, consuming a small amount of power.
Sync: The more frequently your apps sync the more energy will be consumed. Turn off unnecessary syncs and reduce excessive syncing (Settings->Accounts & Sync->...) Alternative apps such as Juice Defender and Tasker can be used to control sync settings. Some ROMs are now incorporating this feature as well.
Antennas: The short of it: Use Wifi as often as you can, it scans for a connection less often than mobile data. BT, and GPS antennas use very little power when idling. This is the most often confused aspect of battery life. Read more in the "Nitty Gritty" section.
Live wallpaper: Requires greater CPU usage to run, and currently ICS lags in this CPU processing, as demonstrated when switching an older phone over to ICS and finding lag in the wallpaper.
Widgets: Higher refresh rates, sync intervals and greater changes in the widgets will consume energy more rapidly.
AMOLED Screen consume less power when displaying black.
Auto Rotate uses greater CPU and changes screen.
Apps for reducing battery usage:
Juice Defender - Very easy interface for switching wifi/bt/3g/etc on and off to save battery. Great first start. WARNING: Some users report greater battery consumption when USING juice defender. This may be due to certain settings they have or the app itself.
Tasker -Much more advanced, and less user friendly application for automating processes on android. Can be used to closely control the behavior of your phone.
Table of Contents:
1. Quick Tips
2. Monitoring Battery Usage
3.The Nitty-Gritty Details
4.Frequently Asked Questions
5.References
6.Changelog
Battery Monitoring
Standard Android OS Battery Usage Utility
Settings -> Battery
When entering this section, you will see two distinct sections:
Battery % graph, which shows the amount of battery used since unplugged, as well as a time on battery.
Individual App/Process battery usage. The Percentage here corresponds to the amount of battery used by the App/Process of the already used battery. NOT the total battery capacity.
Clicking on a process or app will bring up more details on that process. Some definitions used are as follows:
CPU Total - Total CPU usage in time
CPU Foreground Total - Total CPU usage while app is visible to user
Keep Awake - Total time app prevented phone from going into “Deep Sleep”
Screen on Time - Time screen was active (duh...)
Time on - Time process has been running
Battery Monitor Widget
I highly recommend this app. It gives you a wealth of information.
Battery % usage over very long periods of time
Battery voltage recording
Battery drain (mah and watts)
Battery capacity estimates (both in time and mah)
Battery conditioning status
Support for multiple batteries
Estimates for various conditions (watching video, audio, games, etc)
CPU Spy
I use this for one purpose: to see how much time my phone spends in each CPU frequency. And more importantly, how much time it is in deep sleep. Deep Sleep is the condition in which the phone suspends as much activity as it can. This is the lowest consumption state your phone can be in... besides being off
Table of Contents:
1. Quick Tips
2. Monitoring Battery Usage
3.The Nitty-Gritty Details
4.Frequently Asked Questions
5.References
6.Changelog
The Nitty Gritty
The key here is to think back to physics class. We have an energy storage device, and a few devices that consume energy and varying rates (power - NRG/Time)
Kernel Stuff
Adjusting Clock Speed - CPU and GPU frequenxcies will directly effect energy consumption when in use. That is to say, if your phone is just idling with the screen on, the CPU is using very little power. Much more is being eaten by the screen. There are two approaches to saving power in clock speed, both of which aim to reduce the time spent at higher frequencies.:
Reducing maximum clock speed.
Using cpu governer that keep the CPU at lower frequencies for longer periods of time. Power save, conservative, smartass, etc take different theories as how to achieve the best ballance between performance and energy efficiency.
[TIP] Use CPU spy to check much time the CPU spends in each frequency, and more importantly in deep sleep.
Adjustiing CPU Voltages - Using a kernel with an unlocked voltage table and setcpu to specify voltages for each individual frequency can lead to significant power savings from the CPU. When experimenting with voltages, do not check “set at boot” until you have established stable voltages.
Suggested Voltage testing: Coming soon...
Antennas
Wifi
Consumes more energy per time when trasmitting than mobile data, BUT...
Takes less time to transmit data, espescially large files, so it consumes overall less energy.
Wifi scans for a connection and pings the router less often than mobile data, thus consuming less energy at idle
Bluetooth
Consumes a small amount of power at idle to connect to new devices
Scanning for deveices consumes more energy
While connected, very little energy is consumed unless data is transmitted.
GPS
Unless an application specifically invokes the GPS antenna, it will not consume power
Using constant GPS updates (as in Navigation apps) will consume a large amount of power
Some apps will have bugs in them which will keep GPS on indefinitely. Try reinstalling those applications first, then remove if necessary.
Mobile Data
2G antennas consume the LEAST amount of energy at idle, but because they take so long to trasmit data, they can kill your battery.
3G antennas are Ok at idle, but take less time to transmit data, so are the best all around for traveling around metropilitan areas.
4G Antennas are FAST, but consume the most power. Best to leave these off when in transit, and used for stationary, stable connections
All Antennas consume much more power idling in areas of bad reception. So if you know you're going somewhere with poor reception, and don't need data, turn it off until needed (Settings->Wireless&Networks ->More ->Mobile Networks-> "Data Enabled"; "Data Roming" OFF; "Use Only 2G Networks"
Radios
Radios control how your phone connects to the mobile network. Specifically which proticols to use in which regions as well as how often to try to reconnect. This can lead to better or worse battery, signal, and network speeds.
Code:
NOTE: The Baseband is defined by 3 sets of codes. The first two are the Country Code, the next 2 denote the Year and Month (KK = 2011 November) and the last number denotes the Revision.
Country Code:
CE---> Belgium, Luxembourg, Netherlands
DC---> Thailand
DD---> India
DX---> Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Vietnam
DZ---> Malaysia, Singapore
JA---> South Africa
JC---> Algeria, Morocco, Nigeria, South Africa, Tunisia
JP---> Arabic, Algeria, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Morocco, Nigeria, Oman, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Syria
JV---> Tunisia, Turkey
UG---> North America
UH---> Latin America, The Caribbean
XE---> Bulgaria, Estonia, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Russia, Ukraine
XX---> Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Hungary, United Kingdom
XW---> Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Nordic, Spain, United Kingdom
ZC---> China, Hong Kong
ZH---> Hong Kong
ZS---> China, Hong Kong
ZT---> Taiwan
Table of Contents:
1. Quick Tips
2. Monitoring Battery Usage
3.The Nitty-Gritty Details
4.Frequently Asked Questions
5.References
6.Changelog
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: I just flashed a new rom or update, could that be the cause of battery issues?
A: Absolutely! A bad download, experimental features, or even settings that are not friendly with your device can greatly impact your battery life.
Q: What battery life should I expect out of my device?
A: That level can vary widely by usage. Generally, screen on time of 4+ hours is considered good.
Table of Contents:
1. Quick Tips
2. Monitoring Battery Usage
3.The Nitty-Gritty Details
4.Frequently Asked Questions
5.References
6.Changelog
References
References:
Better Battery Stats - http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1179809&highlight=battery
Battery Calibration The easy way - http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1024867&highlight=battery
Tasker Sync Control - http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1031743&highlight=battery
Tips Battery Usage - http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1374133&highlight=battery
SetCPU - https://market.android.com/details?id=com.mhuang.overclocking
Autostarts - https://market.android.com/details?id=com.elsdoerfer.android.autostarts
List of Battery wasting apps - http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1251897&highlight=battery
Build.prop & init.d stuff - http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1289554&highlight=battery
Battery monitor Widget - https://market.android.com/details?...d_apps#?t=W251bGwsMSwxLDEwOSwiY2NjNzEuYm13Il0.
System Tuner - https://market.android.com/details?...eloper#?t=W251bGwsMSwxLDEwMiwiY2NjNzEucG13Il0.
CPU Spy - https://market.android.com/details?id=com.bvalosek.cpuspy&hl=en
Juice Defender - https://market.android.com/details?...xLDEsImNvbS5sYXRlZHJvaWQuanVpY2VkZWZlbmRlciJd
Changelog
Code:
12/19/11 Basic Guide structure, info, etc
12/27/11 Added notes for current GNex issues; updated Nitty Gritty w/ antennas; added guides for settings.
Very nice thread. You might want to mention JuiceDefender as well, as that's a really useful utility too.
wanderfowl said:
Very nice thread. You might want to mention JuiceDefender as well, as that's a really useful utility too.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks, added that and tasker to the first post as apps that can help save battery
why many posts...
Hey instaed of reposting everything can you try putting all together in one post..???
I think this should be mentioned:
USE WIFI!!!
Using 3G uses about double the battery of wifi. Using 4G uses about triple the battery of wifi. If there is wifi near you, use it! Use wifi at work and at home if at all possible.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using XDA App
You should also mention this on-going issue with battery life:
http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=22878
For what its worth, my preliminary experiments seem to be showing that on the Galaxy Nexus, JuiceDefender uses more battery than it saves. FYI
is there any way to turn off the media server?
my battery is very inconsistent and at times I have horrendous drain
Not that it'll mean much, but Wi-Fi is the battery saver on this phone for me.
Light use all day, screen at 100% (which I turn off manually every time before putting it down)
E
verything on but bluetooth
Did some MP3 playback (2 hours), Lots of Tweetdeck, some maps - all while actually NOT on wifi (about 3 hours total) - the rest of the time I was at home.
I got about 18 hours before the phone shut off from a dead battery. The same without Wifi with 3G only would net me 8'ish. With 4G about 6ish - all with screen set to Auto.
So my casual and un-scienitific observation for my phone shows that there is something to be said about using WiFI instead of cellular service. I'll try and narrow it down further this week since I'm on vacation.
matt2053 said:
I think this should be mentioned:
USE WIFI!!!
Using 3G uses about double the battery of wifi. Using 4G uses about triple the battery of wifi. If there is wifi near you, use it! Use wifi at work and at home if at all possible.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Absolutely! Added a note for it, and a section in "Nitty Gritty" about all the antennas.
gogol said:
You should also mention this on-going issue with battery life:
http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=22878
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Added, thank you!
wanderfowl said:
For what its worth, my preliminary experiments seem to be showing that on the Galaxy Nexus, JuiceDefender uses more battery than it saves. FYI
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I had the same experience, but I like Tasker for finer grain control anyway. The main thing to be weary of is Location-based settings. Tasker has a guide called "Location Without Tears" to explain it.
jnyce87 said:
is there any way to turn off the media server?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Not currently. You could freeze it through titanium backup, but that would break a bunch of apps. Some devs are working on fixes for this and Android OS
jnyce87 said:
my battery is very inconsistent and at times I have horrendous drain
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
All Three attached photos show pretty good battery life. Keep in mind: for a device early in its development, 12 hours is great!
Sal Khan said:
Not that it'll mean much, but Wi-Fi is the battery saver on this phone for me.
Light use all day, screen at 100% (which I turn off manually every time before putting it down)
Everything on but bluetooth
Did some MP3 playback (2 hours), Lots of Tweetdeck, some maps - all while actually NOT on wifi (about 3 hours total) - the rest of the time I was at home.
I got about 18 hours before the phone shut off from a dead battery. The same without Wifi with 3G only would net me 8'ish. With 4G about 6ish - all with screen set to Auto.
So my casual and un-scienitific observation for my phone shows that there is something to be said about using WiFI instead of cellular service. I'll try and narrow it down further this week since I'm on vacation.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you for the perspective. I've added some sections referencing these issues.
I've been really surprised with the reviews about the battery life. So far I got the phone for a month ( in UK) and battery life is pretty good.
I have sync accounts, use the phone moderately (about 3 to 4 hours with screen on per day), no battery saving app or anything.
My daily routine is to unplug my phone from it's charger a 7am and every day I end up at night around 11pm with a battery around 40%... Some day I will forgot to plug it at night and be able to have it last almost for the entire next day (being careful though)
first week wasn't so good but after a few days battery improved significantly.
to me the key to save tons of battery life was to set the screen brightness to the second lowest level. It's really bright enough to my taste and literally since then I never got the phone to drain off within 20 hours after a full charge.
Also I have the wifi always on as mentioned earlier on the thread.
I have the GSM Nexus. I have had the phone for 1 week. My phone for phone calls, which drains the battery pretty quickly has not been real heavy as of late, but I have been typically seeing a 3% drop per hour of use. So right now I am at 78%, and have been up for 6h 48m.
Overall I am very happy with my battery life.
JOHN
Tubes6al4v said:
The key here is to think back to physics class. We have an energy storage device, and a few devices that consume energy and varying rates (power - NRG/Time)
...
Reducing maximum clock speed.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Is this really a good idea? Consider the following:
Higher clock speed means getting things done quicker. If the phone is running at 1400MHz with a voltage of 1225mV for one second, instead of running two seconds at 700MHz with a voltage of 900mV, what will demand the most energy?
(Voltages are the ones I'm using on my OC/UV'd Nexus, not the stock ones which are *way* high)
I'd rather focus on lowering the CPU voltage as low as it goes without instability than waste time with a slow phone
If i use my GNex normal i charge every two days, i like maximum display
By default, the Adaptive Connectivity option is on to sense and handoff between connections to supposedly improve battery life. That said, I've noticed with the feature on, the Pixel 6 Pro stays on LTE, instead of 5G a lot more often than Samsung devices. I also noticed that Wi-Fi signal would trail off a bit when not actively in use (maybe a low power sleep mode?). I'm testing it with that feature turned off now to see if it makes much difference. Granted, 5G quality varies heavily, so there are times when 4G would be better. What are your experiences with this feature?
Battery life has been outstanding on the Pixel 6 Pro by the way.
It's going to be somewhat subjective people's carrier and location. I'm in Tampa on T-Mobile and pretty much 5G everywhere with and okay amount of 5G UC.
There's lots of discussion that turning off adaptive connectivity would help people's battery life especially in poor 5G reception areas.
I'm wondering if this "adaptive connectivity" setting also sends the network to sleep altogether when the device is idle long enough. I've lately had issues with some smart home app (smartlife/tuya) not executing scheduled tasks while the phone is idle. The app itself reports to check the network, which is always fine when i do (when the device is awake). That got me to check all the power and network related controls and this adaptive connectivity is the only really new control where Google also doesn't give any insight on how it actually works. It would be helpful to get an idea of that. Just there's basically no real information on the net.
Oh and besides, i feel the battery life of the Pixel 6 pro is pretty lame actually. I guess that also pretty much depends on network availability - i work in a rural area where the network isn't great (Mobile and WiFi both not great). As long as the device is off, battery drops at an acceptable, yet not great rate. But when i activate the phone, already the screen burns down the battery so fast it's annoying me (I've already set it to 60Hz permanently). Videos, navigating, even music - all that really chews away capacity really fast. That's one reason I'd rather keep Adaptive Connectivity on. I don't want even more drain.
Sneakyghost said:
I'm wondering if this "adaptive connectivity" setting also sends the network to sleep altogether when the device is idle long enough. I've lately had issues with some smart home app (smartlife/tuya) not executing scheduled tasks while the phone is idle. The app itself reports to check the network, which is always fine when i do (when the device is awake). That got me to check all the power and network related controls and this adaptive connectivity is the only really new control where Google also doesn't give any insight on how it actually works. It would be helpful to get an idea of that. Just there's basically no real information on the net.
Oh and besides, i feel the battery life of the Pixel 6 pro is pretty lame actually. I guess that also pretty much depends on network availability - i work in a rural area where the network isn't great (Mobile and WiFi both not great). As long as the device is off, battery drops at an acceptable, yet not great rate. But when i activate the phone, already the screen burns down the battery so fast it's annoying me (I've already set it to 60Hz permanently). Videos, navigating, even music - all that really chews away capacity really fast. That's one reason I'd rather keep Adaptive Connectivity on. I don't want even more drain.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
My 6 pro lasts me pretty much the entire day with heavy usage. Before I charge it which is at around 9ish, I still have 17% left.
When I had it on I had lots of issues with the handoff from 5g/LTE and vice versa. Been turned off for the last 3 weeks and I just use LTE as preferred network with no issues. I do some gig work on the side and I can't be caught in the No Data limbo cuz the phone doesn't know what to do.
this is irrelevant but im comparing my wifi signal to my s21 ultra and it is pretty much the same. Same goes with my network speed
I played with adaptive connectivity and power and network settings a little more and got my SmartLife/Tuya to execute in background. It wasn't killed by adaptive connectivity, that does not seem to interfere with apps in this way at least. Seems to really rather deal with better handoffs between networks and not much more.
So basically I upgraded from a S10 Lite with Snapdragon 855 (7nm) to the S21 FE. This phone got a more efficient Snapdragon 888 (5nm), a smaller Screen, 2gb less ram, no micro SD support, but the same 4500 mAh battery and same os version. The power saving mode always on, never use 5g, 120hz off, almost every rarely used app forced to sleep.
How can it still be that the battery performance is worse than on the s10 lite? And by the way the s21 fe also heats up very fast...
I'm really disapointed with this phone for the same reasons. After doing some tricks I get an "acceptable" battery time but far away from my old S10e and Poco X3. Same, 20 minutes of gaming or photos and the device can be a barbecue.
It's sad 'cause it still a great and powerfull device.
Check in the terminal with the top command what the CPU uses the most when the phone is warming up.
The battery life may have worsened compared to the S10 lite.. it depends on the battery cycles and whether it was fast charged or drained/fully charged, etc.. also network coverage matters I.e. low signal consumes more battery than in airplane mode
Maybe you will find something interesting in this article: Best phone battery-saving tips
Thank you for all your answers. I have tried and searched everything on the internet on how to save more battery.
When I bought the FE charged it 2 times to 100% and used it until 0%. After that I activated protect battery so it only charges until 85% just like on my s10L. I know the longest lifespan of li-batteries is when you use and charge them between 30-80%. I never used fast charging always instantly turned off when device is new.
The most confusing even was that I always had battery saving mode on (s21 FE) and on s10L never only when I had to. And it was still worse.
With a day of use (Web Browsing, Chatting, Music, Watching Videos, No Social Media) I had to recharge the S21 FE during the day because it drained so fast (6-8h active usage). With s10L still come through a whole day with same scenario (9-11h active usage).
I mean it is a really good phone. It has good Perf. and great camera (although leaking gcam support). But in the end sold my s21 FE, because I'm so disappointed with the battery and also no dynamic refresh rate for the display. I returned to my 2 years old s10L and now I wait for the s22 FE or s23(+).
P.S. What I think what really kills the battery, is a bad heat management. It heats up very fast even if you only search sth. on amazon so maybe I dont know...