Battery Life on Wifi - Outstanding!! - Nexus One General

Basically, when I leave wi-fi on my phone has incredible battery life. If someone has already mentioned this feel free to bury this post, but to my knowledge it doesn't seem this has been posted yet.
With wi-fi off and 3g on
- Battery lost 5-6 percent per hour
Wi-fi on
- Battery lost 1-2 percent per hour (sometimes less than 1 percent depending on what your doing)
Right now after having my phone on for 34 hours my battery is still at 70 percent! I'm fairly certain this is because it disables the 3g radio altogether which apparently is a real battery hog. That or maybe my phone is just a fluke. I really don't know.
This also seems to be tied to the htc sense rom (correct me if im wrong) but if i remember correctly battery drainage increased when wifi was enabled in the stock rom. Currently, I'm using the latest htc sense rom from modaco, I'd really enjoy hearing if enabling wifi helps others extend their battery life.

your having better battery life with the Desire ROMs? that odd, my battery life with a Desire ROM was 20-30% worse compared to stock.

amlwaycooljr said:
Basically, when I leave wi-fi on my phone has incredible battery life. If someone has already mentioned this feel free to bury this post, but to my knowledge it doesn't seem this has been posted yet.
With wi-fi off and 3g on
- Battery lost 5-6 percent per hour
Wi-fi on
- Battery lost 1-2 percent per hour (sometimes less than 1 percent depending on what your doing)
Right now after having my phone on for 34 hours my battery is still at 70 percent! I'm fairly certain this is because it disables the 3g radio altogether which apparently is a real battery hog. That or maybe my phone is just a fluke. I really don't know.
This also seems to be tied to the htc sense rom (correct me if im wrong) but if i remember correctly battery drainage increased when wifi was enabled in the stock rom. Currently, I'm using the latest htc sense rom from modaco, I'd really enjoy hearing if enabling wifi helps others extend their battery life.
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Click to collapse
Actually, it's a well known fact that 3G uses more power on most (every?) phones than Wifi... so you're not alone.

Hey when you say WIFI on..do you mean WIFI and EDGE or did you completely disabled the radio?

I never would have thought having wifi on would extend battery life to such a great extent though, in most of the latest cell phone reviews and what not everyone recommends to have wifi off saves battery life but in this case just the opposite is true. I kinda knew the wifi was more efficient but I never expected such a large benefit from leaving wifi on all the time.
@ram130 I haven't actually touched the radios at all so I expect them all to be on or at the very least have edge on, I am able to receive and send calls and txt so I'm assuming at least some cell radio has to be on. All I did was use the htc sense rom and enable wifi.

The cellular radio is still on, but 3G/Edge (data) are disconnected. I don't know how Edge compares to Wifi, but 3G is a battery killer in comparison.

uansari1 said:
The cellular radio is still on, but 3G/Edge (data) are disconnected. I don't know how Edge compares to Wifi, but 3G is a battery killer in comparison.
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amlwaycooljr said:
I never would have thought having wifi on would extend battery life to such a great extent though, in most of the latest cell phone reviews and what not everyone recommends to have wifi off saves battery life but in this case just the opposite is true. I kinda knew the wifi was more efficient but I never expected such a large benefit from leaving wifi on all the time.
@ram130 I haven't actually touched the radios at all so I expect them all to be on or at the very least have edge on, I am able to receive and send calls and txt so I'm assuming at least some cell radio has to be on. All I did was use the htc sense rom and enable wifi.
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In other words you have "use 2G networks" checked right?
I'm gonna try this is now. I'm currently at 3hr 32m unplugged with 80% left. I have wifi enabled and on the stock rom. So I'll post back when I wake in a few a hours and see how it goes.
My only problem:
Wifi seems to disconnect alot during the hour regardless if sleep policy is set to NEVER. My wifi signal is -78dBm to -86dBm in my room and on channel 11(used wifi analyzer). Any suggestions why?

I have the same experience at home, I enable Wifi and leave the phone stay home for a couple of days and battery still 40%, when I go out and wifi is not connected, 3G kicks in and battery drops much faster.
I'm using cyanogen 5.0.4.1

Interesting. Did not know this!
I guess I won't feel so bad about leaving my phone on Wifi all day!
Also, does anyone know how much power is used by not having a radio signal and letting it constantly search? That seems to destroy my battery. But sometimes I am in an area with wifi but no radio access (deep within a building).

It's too bad this phone doesn't have UMA - that would make up for T-Mobile's lack of indoor coverage (at times), and probably improve battery life a lot in some cases.
But I have to say that on another phones I've used, especially WinMo devices, using WiFi instead of 3G seemed to always use more battery. But, it could very well be different on this phone...I'm definitely going to give this a try.

im not sure about the percentage but i agree,the battery drain is considerably more when searching for radio.im in a building most of the day and it doesnt take long.miss the UMA i had on my bberry.
Paul22000 said:
Interesting. Did not know this!
I guess I won't feel so bad about leaving my phone on Wifi all day!
Also, does anyone know how much power is used by not having a radio signal and letting it constantly search? That seems to destroy my battery. But sometimes I am in an area with wifi but no radio access (deep within a building).
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Click to collapse

I also Get. About 25% better battery on wifi

Well after 10hrs of the phone being on stand by I woke up. It was at 46%!! my god. Anyway I checked my email, read an article all taking around 15mins and guess what? I had 30% left!. I put it back to stand by for 3hrs and took a look at it and had about 16% left...
It is now charging after one hour with just 10min use of downloading apps ..Can ANYONE tell me why my battery is draining so much on wifi? When its on EDGE for the night after 10hr I would have around 70% left from a full charge. Anyone can help me out here?
I shall be getting a replacement battery for free Tuesday.
Stock android.

ram130 said:
Well after 10hrs of the phone being on stand by I woke up. It was at 46%!! my god. Anyway I checked my email, read an article all taking around 15mins and guess what? I had 30% left!. I put it back to stand by for 3hrs and took a look at it and had about 16% left...
It is now charging after one hour with just 10min use of downloading apps ..Can ANYONE tell me why my battery is draining so much on wifi? When its on EDGE for the night after 10hr I would have around 70% left from a full charge. Anyone can help me out here?
I shall be getting a replacement battery for free Tuesday.
Stock android.
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Did you set your phone to only use 2G networks also? If you're not charging, wifi will probably disable after not being used for a while..so it's probably rolling to 3G if you haven't disabled it.
I'm not saying it's convenient to constantly switch back and forth... but this explains why it may not be a good test of the battery life the way you're running it.

uansari1 said:
Did you set your phone to only use 2G networks also? If you're not charging, wifi will probably disable after not being used for a while..so it's probably rolling to 3G if you haven't disabled it.
I'm not saying it's convenient to constantly switch back and forth... but this explains why it may not be a good test of the battery life the way you're running it.
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Well yes I have it on 2G only. Any thing else could be contributing to it dying so fast?

Well I found a way to use my laptop as an AP. So I connected my N1 to it and getting full bars(-41dBm) in my room now. No wifi disconnects so far!(maybe it was my linksys before ?).. So far the battery is at 86% with some 3D games, been unplug for 1hr 50min now. I'll put it to stand by now and see how it looks after 10hrs.
I'm on a stock firmware(not rooted). 2G only selected.

The way I understand it is as follows:
Phone is on STANDBY:
3g==2g* which are both more efficient then wifi (that's why the default wifi policy turns wifi off if it's not being used)**
Phone is ACTIVE:
wifi is more efficient then 2g/3g because:
1) It's waaay faster and thus causes less battery drain* and
2) The AP (router) is much closer to the phone then the cell tower so in theory it doesn't need to use as much power to talk to the router.
*http://code.google.com/events/io/2009/sessions/CodingLifeBatteryLife.html
4:45min into it there is a power usage chart and 3G/EDGE idle power usage is about the same - also somewhere else in the video they talk about wifi vs 3g usage when transferring data.
** http://code.google.com/p/sipdroid/wiki/NewStandbyTechnique
States that 3g standby is more efficient then wifi

drak0 said:
** http://code.google.com/p/sipdroid/wiki/NewStandbyTechnique
States that 3g standby is more efficient then wifi
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Someone needs to test this ok. ...already testing wifi

Ok I'm at 11hrs 30min on wifi and its at 67% with light usage(checking email, news for 5min)..improvement? kinda, because since turning off my laptop it switched back to getting low signal(-81dBm) from the router in the next room. Weird? I'm still thinking. anyway I'm heading out so gonna use the phone more today, lets see if it gets me through the day.
Still no where near the thread starter 30hrs!! Maybe stock really sucks? bad battery anyone??

@ram130 I'm not sure how my battery is lasting as long as it has so far. I'm up to what would be an insane number, 65 hours 36 percent left .. this battery just wont die. I haven't the slightest idea how it's lasting this long I just leave wifi on all the time and turn wifi standby off. If anyone could explain how leaving wifi on more than quadruples my battery life I'd sure love to know.

Related

WiFi or 3G, which eats more Power?

i use WiFi @ home and work, 3G everywhere else.
my battery was over 50% before bed, woke up with am with 5% left.....
so 45% of my battery life was eaten up in 8 hours with NO use?
any thoughts?
Wifi seems to be a real battery eater on this device (along with GPS). I leave it switched off unless I'm actively using it, and have no problems with battery life (it would last >24 hours if I let it.. I charge overnight though).
As there's no 3G switch on the widget I don't ever switch that off so haven't seen what improvement that would give. Cell Standby is still the largest user of battery, so maybe it would.
Set wifi to sleep when screen turns off.
There's an option for that? Not seen that one..
muncheese said:
Set wifi to sleep when screen turns off.
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I didn't know you could do that, however, i already have that option selected....after i found it in the menu.
i guess i'll just have to experiment and see if 3G saves me power over the weekend.
Yeah I am pretty sure that option is the default. It still definitely drains more power with the WiFi enabled than without, sleeping or not. Not sure vs 3g, I disable or enable both as I need them.
I thought Wifi drains very little power ... with my phone on airplane mode and wifi only, the battery lasts over 30 hours with Meebo on, push e-mail on, and e-mail sync every 15 min.
Likewise, I have gps/wifi/2g/screen widgets on my main home page.
This doesn't exactly apply to the OP, but there's a nice app called "Y5 - Battery" in the market that switches off the WiFi radio in areas that you usually don't use WiFi.
Also, you can see what's draining your battery if you go to Settings > About Phone > Battery Use. There's some cool graphs showing where all your battery went since the last charge. Maybe you have a program that's running in the background that's sucking up all your battery.
I have had some battery drain issues since I received my N1 3 days ago. I found that Android 2.1 has a nice battery log (/d/battery_log) which updates every 50 - 55 seconds. In doing some tests to see what was killing my battery I can tell you that it isn't WiFi.
I would say that when in use, 3G draws a bit more than WiFi when actively used, but when WiFi is just idle it seems better than when 3G is connected and not in use.
In case anyone cares...I am still isolating all of the battery drain issues, but one of the biggest I have eliminated by uninstalling seems to be from BeautifulWidgets. I found it hard to believe, but my testing seems pretty clear. I also have a decent draw whenever I'm in the car with Bluetooth sync going. I would have had a hard time confirming this without this battery log file.
Wifi is extremely power efficient on this device.
I use the device on at&t edge and have the wifi turned on all day. the battery drain with pus email i about 4%/hour.
I think the combination of wifi PLUS being on an HSDPA network is killing your battery.
pus email? sounds gross
A quick calculation gives me 2.4% an hour, and that's with sync on, Wifi off, 3G on and using the phone a bit (not so much today). That's consistent with what I see normally - if you never actually used the phone you could push 3 days out of it.. but of course there wouldn't be much point in having it switched on then so it drops to about a day after a bit of driving w/bluetooth on, streaming music, etc.
Of course it's not really productive to look at battery life as 'how long can I make this last' (although knowing I can theoretically push it to 3 days plus is going to be useful on holiday). You work out your average day.. say up at 8am, turn in at midnight, so that's 16 hours actual time that it's needed (assuming you charge overnight like most do) - then fiddle with the settings based on your own use so you hit that comfortably. I'm probably being overconservative right now.. I'm finishing the day with nearly 50% battery left & need to ramp it up a bit Maybe a few more games of Frozen Bubble..
http://www.google.com/phone/static/en_US-nexusone_tech_specs.html
According to the Google spec sheet:
Power and battery
Removable 1400 mAH battery
Charges at 480mA from USB, at 980mA from supplied charger
Talk time Up to 10 hours on 2G
Up to 7 hours on 3G
Standby time Up to 290 hours on 2G
Up to 250 hours on 3G
Internet use Up to 5 hours on 3G
Up to 6.5 hours on Wi-Fi
Video playback Up to 7 hours
Audio playback Up to 20 hours
I'd love to see someone get 12 days of standby!
The specs for mobile phones are always a bit of a fiction.. maybe you could do that if you put it in airplane mode and if you never activated the display at all...
I had a Sony Erricson that claimed 800 hours (over a month!) of Standby. Never got it over 2 days..
Would be interesting to see if anyone has managed 10 hours or even 7 hours of talk time... personally I doubt it.
TonyHoyle said:
I'd love to see someone get 12 days of standby!
The specs for mobile phones are always a bit of a fiction.. maybe you could do that if you put it in airplane mode and if you never activated the display at all...
I had a Sony Erricson that claimed 800 hours (over a month!) of Standby. Never got it over 2 days..
Would be interesting to see if anyone has managed 10 hours or even 7 hours of talk time... personally I doubt it.
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Some phones in Airplane Mode when not used can do those kind of numbers though. My K800 lasted about 2 weeks in standby when running like above. Though that just proves how pointless such numbers are.
So when using wifi, is 3g auto turned off?
galaxys said:
So when using wifi, is 3g auto turned off?
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I would assume the data aspect is, but the 3G voice is still active, even with WiFi on.

low signal = horrid battery life!

at work today i guess i had a bad signal and i noticed i lost over 20% in less than 8 hours. whats the cause of this and is there a fix? i also notice the phone runs like **** on a low signal, very sluggish even when overclocked.
More power is bein pumped into the radio to keep the signal strong(er). Airplane mode is your friend. As for being slow, I don't know why but I also experience slowness in low-signal areas.
abcdfv said:
More power is bein pumped into the radio to keep the signal strong(er). Airplane mode is your friend. As for being slow, I don't know why but I also experience slowness in low-signal areas.
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must be an android thing because i never had this happen with winmo or my palm pre.
Turn off 'Background Syncing' in Accounts & Sync settings. That will greatly improve both your battery life and phone slowness in low-signal areas. I have terrible signal in my work building too (would almost completely drain my battery in an 8-hour day), and ever since I started turning off Background Sync while at work, my phone only drops to around 50% in a work day.
I really think it's more the syncing that sucks the battery down in low-signal areas, not the radio having to broadcast stronger.
I have bad signal strength at my house. I also have a Airave to make up for this however since it does not provide 3g my battery will drop like mad when I am home.
The fix for this in my case is to turn off my mobile network when I get home that way I can still receive calls and texts but it basically tells the phone to quit looking for 3g signal and sticks to just the basics.
I then use my wifi while at home to get on the market or have my gmail and other apps sync with the phone.
Hope that helps you out and you find a solution that works for you.
I noticed MUCH moreso on CM6 vs. Fresh 2.3.3 what a significantly negative impact having background data enabled in a low signal area can have on the phone. My workplace is a consistently terrible cell area and since switching to CM6, I have been not only plagued with terrible battery life (like 10-15% per hour with minimal usage!), but the phone was running like absolute poo.
Today I checked to be sure and to my surprise, background data WAS enabled! I promptly turned that off and the phone returned to it's former CM6 glory and battery life returned to non-workplace goodness.
I have a bad signal at work, so I force it to roaming. It saves my battery and my phone is more reliable. Just be careful not to use too many minutes or too much data.
MrGreg said:
I have a bad signal at work, so I force it to roaming. It saves my battery and my phone is more reliable. Just be careful not to use too many minutes or too much data.
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How do you set it to roam? Is this a setting or is there a code i can type in whenever I want it to only look to roam, then another when i want it to go back to regular, or even if i only want it to look for 1X or only look for 3G? One of the client sites i regularly travel to has great roaming 1X speeds once i can get it to switch to that but it must also have a weak roaming 3g tower somewhere because its always on 3g with one to zero bars.
I'm on Fresh though i'm apparently going to have to look into CM6 in the near future. I love this place.
Sent from my HERO200 using XDA App
ncadden said:
How do you set it to roam? Is this a setting or is there a code i can type in whenever I want it to only look to roam, then another when i want it to go back to regular, or even if i only want it to look for 1X or only look for 3G? One of the client sites i regularly travel to has great roaming 1X speeds once i can get it to switch to that but it must also have a weak roaming 3g tower somewhere because its always on 3g with one to zero bars.
I'm on Fresh though i'm apparently going to have to look into CM6 in the near future. I love this place.
Sent from my HERO200 using XDA App
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Click to collapse
You have a few options...
1. You are running Fresh on your Hero? Use the modded phone.apk from here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=745092
2. Use the PRL hack...you'll have to search for it, although I think the link is in the thread that I linked above
3. Download the app "Roam Control". Disclaimer, I am the dev, and yes it costs money.
4. Flash CM6.
Just recently stumbled upon an app called shutupbattery saver
It automatically kills your data when signal is low. You tell it what signal strength turns it off. Does wonders
Sent from my HERO200 using XDA App
markus_del_marko said:
must be an android thing because i never had this happen with winmo or my palm pre.
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No..not really. I had several TP2 windoze phones since May of this year and went back to my Hero. The battery life on the RC1 build when you follow what has been said here,will give you way more life than any of the phones I have ever had.I was lucky to see 4 hours of life even with little usage with the TP2's. While my CDMA Hero does drop to 80% with everything turned on in 7 hours,it slows down considerably after that. Just with mild web crawling and 20 minutes of talk time it took well over 60 hours to drain completely last weekend after resetting the battery stats on mine with everything turned off. I actually had to use it non stop for 4 hours to drain the thing so it would shut off and be drained. Any phone I have ever owned has always done better after letting them drain completely and then charging them to 100% a few times. We have 4 of them in our home,and mine last longer than any of the others..the other 3 are stock 2.1.6 roms.
Mac
Why are people complaining about losing a measly, small 20 percent of battery in 8 hours? I'd understand if it was 35 percent or more, but seriously? you're complaining becuase your battery can last 40 hours? Wow...
CM6 RC1 with collin_ph battery tweak rules the world.
what i do to save my battery i change the settings on my advance task killer Menu>settings>Auto kill level(crazy)then also change Auto kill frequency(when screen off) and that really seems to help me
You could also look in to JuiceDefender. It shuts off 3g when screen is locked, turns it back on for either 1 min every 15 mins or 2 mins every 30 to sync.
jerry43812 said:
Why are people complaining about losing a measly, small 20 percent of battery in 8 hours? I'd understand if it was 35 percent or more, but seriously? you're complaining becuase your battery can last 40 hours? Wow...
CM6 RC1 with collin_ph battery tweak rules the world.
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Click to collapse
not everyone runs the froyo rom. at least i won't until a sense port comes out. and yes when the phone has a low signal it runs like absolute ****.
I'm having this problem also on CM6. Unplugged my phone this morning, full charge. Went to the gym at 11:30 and worked out for an hour and a half. There is no signal in my gym. The phone was completely dead when I got back to my desk. So basically the 80% battery drained in 1.5 hours (assuming I lost 20% between 7am and 11:30 when I went to the gym) It was not nearly this bad on the stock ROM. I just insggtalled collin_ph but I doubt that will help in this scenario. I might just have to remember to put it in airplane mode before going to the gym.
My bigger worry is when I'm out riding my road bike in the country. If I'm in the middle of nowhere, the battery will drain FAST... and thats the place I'll likely need to call someone in an emergency.
In my opinion there are key steps to insure a good battery life I perform this process every time I turn my phone on for daily use
First in settings/wireless/mobile networks I turn off data also roam and I change the signal to home only then in account and sync I turn off automatic sync and back ground data also i make sure that wireless is off as well then I turn my attention to applications and I clear data and force close any running program I'm not using for example gmail e mail browser Google search blue tooth I only force close apks that I know wont affect the system and how it runs also I should mention that this is done after I had calibrated my battery also I in spare parts I choose to make my end button put my phone to sleep these two steps are only done once now back to the process I run the over clock widget with dead3nce 9/14 stable kernel but also with every stable release he has put out I set the feq to 710 Max and 710 min and diff feq when screen off with 384 Max and 245 min this setup gives me high performance and long battery life I get 14 plus hrs with heavy use before ill hit 50% so u can imagine with moderate use will b or even standby time so I basically kill my phone if I'm not using it its in what I think is its lowest power state that I can get it at but its still on and ready so wen Im ready to use it I activate it and turn on what I need when I'm done I kill it again short of turning it off just thought I put this out in case it helps also I'm running cm6 rc1 and the 8/22 nightly I switch back and forth because of themes but the process is the same and so are my results so hope this helps good luck
Sent from my HERO200 using XDA App
It's 3G. Turn off your Mobile data when you going to be in an area with a bad signal for a long time.
As someone else said the collin_ph battery tweak works wonders too.

The power consumption is huge

Yesterday, I was using the Google navigation on 3G network with the phone connected to a 500mA car charger. After 1hr, the battery dropped 20%...Anyone knows if a 1000mA car is enough??
Tonight, I was watching a Youtube HD video on 4G network (2/3 bars on 4G) with the phone connected to a 1000mA USB wall charger. After 10min, the battery dropped 2%...Well, even 1000mA cannot compensate the consumption of the battery.
The power consumption of this phone is ridiculous. Something must be wrong with the system/circuit design.
NOTE: I'm not complaining the battery but the power consumption of this phone. The charging cannot compensate the usage of the power. Think about a laptop. It's even more powerful, but you can use it freely without any concern about the battery as long as you plug it in an ac adapter. Why can't Epic 4G do this?
man i been seeing the same problems i was listen to the sprint radio while hooked up to the charge and would see it stay at the same percent for about a hr before it went up 1%. this battery issues is making me hate the phone right now and i cant find any rapid charge programs or settings for this yet. cant wait for some custom rom to come out that hopes to fix some of these issues
yup 4g is a battery hog which is why people are complaining about battery life,I suggest you turn it off, it's just not worth it IMO, which too bad cause we're paying extra afterall.
seven7dust said:
yup 4g is a battery hog which is why people are complaining about battery life,I suggest you turn it off, it's just not worth it IMO, which too bad cause we're paying extra afterall.
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I saw a post this morning. The 3G even consumes more battery on Epic 4G during browsing. so we can expect even worse under 3G.
I'm on my third Epic and they have all had battery drain issues. Battery manufacture dates ranged from July to mid August. Right now actually, I'm streaming some radio over 3g and have an AIM client running in the background and the batter is slowly draining while plugged into the charger included in the box.
I have tried a factory reset just to be sure any apps I installed weren't affecting anything and still no dice. Even with running navigation in the car while plugged into a usb charger the battery will drain about 1% every 5 minutes or so. I'm probably returning the phone for good in a few days
This is with 4G disabled, using SwitchPro widget to enable 3G. I also have background updates disabled(under accounts/sync), I manually do them periodically.
fookxixi said:
Yesterday, I was using the Google navigation on 3G network with the phone connected to a 500mA car charger. After 1hr, the battery dropped 20%...Anyone knows if a 1000mA car is enough.
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That shoul be more than enough. I use a Motorola-branded 850mA microUSB car charger (quite cheap on Amazon). On a recent day-long driving trip, it was sufficient to maintain the battery level while streaming audio over 3G and simultaneously running GPS tracking. I don't think a 500mA unit would have handled the load, however.
I'm really starting to think this phone is an epic fail. I get from 1.5 hours to 2 hours of use from a full charge! Thats with everything off, 4G, wifi, bluetooth, GPS. The sprint store manager wouldn't exchange my phone because he said their is nothing wrong with it. If it takes 6 hours to charge and then I get 2 hours of use, this phone is worthless to me!
syntax_erorr said:
I'm really starting to think this phone is an epic fail. I get from 1.5 hours to 2 hours of use from a full charge! Thats with everything off, 4G, wifi, bluetooth, GPS. The sprint store manager wouldn't exchange my phone because he said their is nothing wrong with it. If it takes 6 hours to charge and then I get 2 hours of use, this phone is worthless to me!
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Click to collapse
Yeah that doesn't sound right. I think most people would have a hard time making it last only 2 hours. Maybe gaming while running WiFi tether.
Keep in mind with CDMA, the lower the signal to the tower, the more power it takes to keep the connection active. For GSM this is less of an issue. How is the signal where you live?
An interesting side note. I plugged in my charger for my Bluetooth which is only 180ma and it went from 70% to "Fully Charged" in 10 seconds. When I unplugged the charger it went back to 70%. It really didn't like that low power feed.
Sorry if it came out orange. I used screenshot the app and that's what i got. Anywho, its a perfect combo what I've done. See the up time, nearly 15 hours up time. I only lost 35% of life during the time too as you can see how full the batt is.
Remedies: Autokiller set to extreme. ATK: Set to aggressive, with auto kill set to when screen is off. Interval every hour. Cachemate: all settings lit up, so it clears about 12-14 MB every hour or 1-2 every manual clear. Set CPU: Conservative 1000/100 with set to boot. Notice, set CPU resets itself every reboot for now, just make sure your good.
Then you should be good as I have for TWO days on one charge nearly 24 hrs ago.
Sent From The Moon
My battery has increased five fold with that evo fix after an hour and a half I've only used 6 percent of my battery
PlankLongBeard said:
Sorry if it came out orange. I used screenshot the app and that's what i got. Anywho, its a perfect combo what I've done. See the up time, nearly 15 hours up time. I only lost 35% of life during the time too as you can see how full the batt is.
Remedies: Autokiller set to extreme. ATK: Set to aggressive, with auto kill set to when screen is off. Interval every hour. Cachemate: all settings lit up, so it clears about 12-14 MB every hour or 1-2 every manual clear. Set CPU: Conservative 1000/100 with set to boot. Notice, set CPU resets itself every reboot for now, just make sure your good.
Then you should be good as I have for TWO days on one charge nearly 24 hrs ago.
Sent From The Moon
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I would love to see more info/screenshots on this. The one SS you included somehow ended up thumbnail sized only. 2 days is nuts, anything over 24h would be.
hey guys
I've been really happy with the battery life on my epic - I get about 12-14 hours with on-off use, 4G off. My battery is sitting at about 35% after playing a bunch of games for about 3 hours in between classes and it has been running off battery for about 8 hours, browsing the web, sending texts and downloading apps on both 3g and wifi.
I'm using Advanced Task Killer and its set to kill aggressively every half hour - it kills all apps except Juice Defender, itself and LauncherPro.
I'm running LauncherPro - if that matters - doubtful, but I didn't like touchwiz. And I'm running JuiceDefender on default settings. Basically it kills the 3G radio when screen is off unless its transferring > then 15kbs of data. The normal radio remains on for calls/texts.
lv2bll said:
My battery has increased five fold with that evo fix after an hour and a half I've only used 6 percent of my battery
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What is the EVO fix? I'd love to try some extra tips.
My two cents - a typical day puts me at home and at work for the majority of the day and night, which both have wi-fi. I've turned off "look for open networks", "never allow wi-fi to sleep" and I leave wi-fi on. After a full night of charge I took the phone off of the charger at 11am on Saturnday and it finally turned off Sunday at 8pm - 33 hours is pretty darn good, almost two days. However yesterday I took the phone off the charger after leaving work at 6:30pm (so no wi-fi, just 3G) and in just an hour with watching a 15 minute long normal quality YouTube video, a few texts and a short phone call I was down TWENTY PERCENT. What the heck.
Over wi-fi, like I said, I'm good - great battery life since I'm not waking up the 3G radio to do anything. But when I get out of those wi-fi areas that's when my battery starts to drop. Anandtech is getting similar results with awful 3G battery:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/3891/samsung-epic-4g-review-the-fastest-android-phone/8
Something is wrong with the 3G radio, and I hope Sprint & Samsung seriously do something about it.
You guys are all failing to look at "Cell standby" details.
Time without signal on this phone - no matter WHAT coverage area you're in - is ALWAYS > 50%. This is bull**** and a Samsung software issue. Take a look for yourself.
oxeneers said:
You guys are all failing to look at "Cell standby" details.
Time without signal on this phone - no matter WHAT coverage area you're in - is ALWAYS > 50%. This is bull**** and a Samsung software issue. Take a look for yourself.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I never had a problem with but I've been reading many having a problem with "Cel Standby" going out of control. Mine it at 17%. Highest I have saw it was in the upper 30's range after a full day (14hr)
Just an update on my usage from Pg.1:
oxeneers said:
You guys are all failing to look at "Cell standby" details.
Time without signal on this phone - no matter WHAT coverage area you're in - is ALWAYS > 50%. This is bull**** and a Samsung software issue. Take a look for yourself.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I am not seeing this issue. Never seen it above 3%. Besides most of the battery is going to the screen it seems. I am actually wondering if it reporting the usage correctly. If the screen was really take that much of the power, it should be lasting a lot longer.
People getting great battery life are reporting they are using task killers and data connection blockers. That isn't even where they majority of the power goes. The system tells us it is going to the screen. Not the tasks or data connections. It seems counter-intuitive.
oxeneers said:
You guys are all failing to look at "Cell standby" details.
Time without signal on this phone - no matter WHAT coverage area you're in - is ALWAYS > 50%. This is bull**** and a Samsung software issue. Take a look for yourself.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Turn airplane mode on then off. (settings -> Wireless & Networks)
This will solve the problem until the next time you reboot. You must do this after every reboot.
I'm working on a more scientific breakdown of power consumption. But here are some brief findings.
The highest power consumer is the display. Even on the lowest brightness setting it consumes more power than a normal LCD (I'm comparing it to my Evo). If the display is only showing a black background it is lower power, but then again if all it is showing is noting, it may as well not be on at all. If you actually want to display something on the screen, it consumes power like it's going out of style. So much for Super AMOLED being a power saver (total and completely false.)
The next highest power consumer is the 3G radio. Under similar circumstances (similar signal strength) the 3G radio is consuming more power than the 4G and Wifi radios combined. Wifi seems to consume the least, followed by 4G then 3G. This is crazy and if not fixed might be unacceptable.
Next is background apps, most specifically anything that uses the network (email syncing, social networking and location reporting services like latitude) being the worst. The sync settings on the Epic are not as robust as the Evo and I've struggled to gain control of gmail without just setting it to manual only. Do not use latitude and although some will speak out against task killers, having one to keep "maps" at bay is worth it alone.
Then there are more obvious things like live wallpaper. Or specifically anything using the CPU / GPU and GPS.
More to come, but right now, something must be done about the 3G radio and GPS or this phone could live up to the moniker of Epic fail. I really hope Sprint and Samsung are doing something because otherwise if the phone worked as it could, it would be awesome.

[Q] Crazy high cell standby killing my battery life?

Help!
I'm running the 81xx firmware on a direct-from-dell unlocked Streak.
My battery life has so far been abysmal, and looking at the battery usage screen, my cell standby is usually over 60% while idle is less than 20%, everything else like 2%. This isn't from weak signal, though; I am in a well-covered 3g-only area and my phone has reported only being disconnected about 4% of the time.
Another strange thing is, my data indicator is constantly switching between the H symbol and the 3g symbol.
Anybody know what's going on?
It might be that while you are well covered for 3g, you are marginal for HSDPA and that constant switching back and forth is using your battery. I have not tried it but have a look and see if you can disable HSDPA in settings somewhere and see if that helps.
i'm usually around 40% cell standby.. do u have any task killer apps installed? although people think those are useful they usually do more harm then good.
I have the same problem, and I used another Android phone in the same location (hence same cell coverage) with no such problems. I just took my phone off the charger and had the display on since then non-stop. Cell standby used as much battery as the display!! There's no way that is appropriate.
I'm running build 8102, but it was the same with 6941 before. Can't tell about 1.6 as I bought my streak used with 6941 on it.
What Android version are you guys running? Maybe we can find common denominators.. :/
Edit: here's a screen shot of the battery usage after a while off the charger with the screen on constantly:
http://i.imgur.com/3OrqZ.png
You must be Australian W0nk0
Do you think your antenna might be loose or defective?
I can't imagine the antenna to be loose really - but who knows, I bought mine used. If so, I think there is a signal strength value in " about phone" somewhere, no?
What signal strength are others getting? I'll post mine later, I'm on airplane mode right now so that I get some battery life.. :/
For signal strength, I am getting -75 to -95, and 9 to 12 for the two values while riding the train (not subway).
It also appears my battery life is quite good when my phone is in standby and not doing anything... the problem seems to come from net browsing or anything else that uses an active connection... Just browsng XDA is taking about 2% a minute!
Oh and my android is the 81xx 2.1 version with the modaco tweaks
Sent from my Dell Streak using XDA App
I had really high cell stand-by too. then i installed juicedefender, now my cell standby is down to about 29%.
I think the main thing is that it disables data connections while your screen is off and only turns it back on when the screen is on and unlocked. It also has a setting where it enables data connection periodically to allow background syncs and whatnot.
I'd recommend you guys give it a go, it had almost doubled my battery life!!
Mine shows,
cell stand by 50%
phone idle 44%
it seems quite common on the streak as I read in all the forums. I am on 2.1 stock rom? what's 1.6 like?

Wifi vs 3g power draw

My friend told me that staying connected to a wifi connection is less demanding powerwise. I always thought keeping the wifi attenna on would drain more power because ur running to attenndas at once. Anyone care to chime in with their opinions?
I have no real data to back this up, but it does seem like my battery lasts longer with wifi on. I believe the 3G radio shuts off when there is an active wifi connection but i could be wrong.
lilgrass71 said:
My friend told me that staying connected to a wifi connection is less demanding powerwise. I always thought keeping the wifi attenna on would drain more power because ur running to attenndas at once. Anyone care to chime in with their opinions?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Correct for the most part. So long as you're connected to a stable WiFi signal, of course.
3G data constantly looks for available HA's (Home Agents) to deliver the best upload/download speed, and, depending on how much you use your data, the constant on/off of using 3G causes the fast battery drain.
Modifying your HA in data settings will reduce the amount of ping attempts 3G will make, but you will still get the battery drain every time you use data. Keep in mind that sending SMS or making phone calls don't use 3G, but if you don't have 3G turned off, it will always switch to 1X during these processes. If you're a heavy texter, rule of thumb is to leave 3G off during the day unless you are going to be using it consistently for a period of time. This will save you a great amount of battery life.
Wifi is MUCH easier on battery for me.
^ Shift Faced
jesusice said:
Wifi is MUCH easier on battery for me.
^ Shift Faced
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I totally agree. At home my battery stays between 90-100% for a full 24 hours before it starts to drop on my Moment using the ubuntroid 4.2 ROM. If I pull my phone off the charger in the morning for work I'm at 70% by the time I get back home.

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