Battery life went from poor to awesome to even worse? - XPERIA X10 General

Bought my Xperia just over a month ago, and installed juicedefender and juiceplotter to help manage my power use.
At first, I did the whole charging cycle thing, and managed to get battery life up to nearly 20 hours after a week! In the past few weeks however, my phone barely lasts 10 hours now...the battery dies before I can get a chance to recharge. I am a heavy user, but that doesn't seem to explain the sudden drop in battery capacity.
Because of the drop in power over the last few weeks, I have set EVERYTHING to not update, and google sync has been set to sync every other day.
Will my battery just continue to get worse? or do I have a faulty battery?
don't get me wrong, I love my new phone...I just need to know if this is a typical problem, or if I need to get a new battery.
Thanks!

Hi - I'm getting about 40 hours out of mine.. I tend to switch mobile data off when I'm at home as I use wifi.. the problem seems mainly to lie with 3G.. so when I'm out and about I switch wifi off and mobile data on.. but I tend to keep to 2G (GSM) for background syncing etc.. and switch 3G(GSM/WCDMA preferred) on when I want to do any active stuff.. like internet browsing of using the XDA app... I also have my Wifi sleep policy set to "sleep when screen is off"..
What do you use your phone for? if you can tell me a bit about how your using your handset I might be able to give you some more specific advice.

Thanks for the fast reply!
I use juice defender to switch off 3G when the screen is off. It connects every 15 minutes, could that be the issue?
I've looked for a way to switch to GSM, but I can't seem to do it with my carrier(don't have the option in my settings).
I use a lot of data, up to 3 gigs per month 3G only(on average). 4 or 5 calls a day, and probably 100 texts per day. I keep my screen at around 25% brightness.

If you can't switch to GSM then maybe try switching mobile data off all together when you're not using it..(when travelling etc)... (far from ideal I know!).. but it might help.. I think that the 3G radio isn't sleeping properly.. the new software update which is due out anytime now MIGHT solve it.. but only if you're either on an unbranded handset (sound like you're not) or your carrier pushes the update through to you...
The other things you can try is to switch off "Search for updates automatically" in the phone settings... and switch of determine location by wireless networks (in the location settings menu)..

There was a thread about auto brightness causing constant cpu drain, leaving it autobrightness is thought to be battery kind`er.
Ive stopped using task managers and just use default android control and its good for my battery. I check the ram availability occasionaly and though it gets down to around 30 or 40 or meg it shows no slowdowns or hangups but I do reboot after charging every other night.

I'm experiencing similar behavior: poor, then good, then poor, then good again, of course with similar usage. I don't use any task killer and have 3G always on. I have tried 3 different batteries: the stock one, the one from my X1, and the 1800 mAh from Mugen: same pattern with every battery.
I definitely think that there's something bad in the design of the power circuitry and/or in the kernel.

Related

Battery live

Hi
Yesterday arrived my dev phone 1 and I am very hapy with it bu battery level is at 20% at 18:00. Is this normal?. I dont want to switch the band to 2g. I keep gmail synched with direct push but google talk not. anyone with same prpoblem?
Thanks
yeah, the standard battery in the G1 is ****ing terrible
not a lot you can do except buying an extended battery (which is a very good idea! )
The only thing I have found to extend my battery Life has been discussed previously a few times on these boards...
1. Turn off Wifi, when not in use. (Toggle WiFi from the Market is Great)
2. Turn off GPS, when not in use. (Toggle GPS from the Market also great)
3. Turn down the screen brightness.
4. (not sure if this makes a big difference) But sometimes if I do not need my feeds or background running apps throughout the day I will restart my phone, or run through a few applications that are not pulling web cache. This way you dont have auto update feedreaders in the background running. It seems like it works for me, but that could very well be wishful thinking. Also turning of things like Twitroid update etc...
Hope that helps.
recasper said:
The only thing I have found to extend my battery Life has been discussed previously a few times on these boards...
1. Turn off Wifi, when not in use. (Toggle WiFi from the Market is Great)
2. Turn off GPS, when not in use. (Toggle GPS from the Market also great)
3. Turn down the screen brightness.
4. (not sure if this makes a big difference) But sometimes if I do not need my feeds or background running apps throughout the day I will restart my phone, or run through a few applications that are not pulling web cache. This way you dont have auto update feedreaders in the background running. It seems like it works for me, but that could very well be wishful thinking. Also turning of things like Twitroid update etc...
Hope that helps.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i do #4 as well, it seems to help, since i have root i just go into terminal and type su [enter] reboot [enter] and when it turns back on its usually doing bettery with the battery
as for opening programs, would advanced task manager serve the same purpose (closing apps that arnt needed and using memory, because if its using memory isnt it in some way using battery power?)
Thanks.
I am porting CommMgrPro to Android (Similar to Locale but much more powerfull). In this way I will switch to 2G, turn Wifi off, disable connections, etc, etc, etc automatically depending on my location/weekday/hour.
Greetings
Dani
Hi All
I have a brand new G1 and, like you, I was suprised by the short battery life.
I also thought about selling the phone but apart from that problem I like it very much.
I noticed that the permanent 3g wireless connection was the real draining battery application.
So the solution I found now is: to disable the permanent connection. I downloaded APNdroid application from the market and I use it everytime I need to toggle connection on and off.
I also tried to leave the WIFI on and i saw that it does not consume much battery.
I did not tried with the GPS.
I am using a good tool to toggle and to fine check the battery level: Useful switchers
I can now say I am pretty satisfied with the phone.
Greeting
Lollo
lollonet said:
Hi All
I have a brand new G1 and, like you, I was suprised by the short battery life.
I also thought about selling the phone but apart from that problem I like it very much.
I noticed that the permanent 3g wireless connection was the real draining battery application.
So the solution I found now is: to disable the permanent connection. I downloaded APNdroid application from the market and I use it everytime I need to toggle connection on and off.
I also tried to leave the WIFI on and i saw that it does not consume much battery.
I did not tried with the GPS.
I am using a good tool to toggle and to fine check the battery level: Useful switchers
I can now say I am pretty satisfied with the phone.
Greeting
Lollo
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes. It was the same problem there was in HTC Hermes/TyNT and TouchPro/Diamond. I created bandswitch in the past and will create two little toggles to switch 3g/2g with and without time limit....
Conditioning
Try Conditioning the Battery...
I have gps on, 2g, brightness at 50% and screen timeout at 30 secs, everything syncing and I get around 5 or 6 hours of use...just like the company says I should.
Run your battery completely dead...
Charge your phone for around 8-12 hours...
Repeat for about 6 days...
You should see improved battery life.
I have 3g, wifi, bluetooth, brightness at 50% and screen timeout at 30 secs, everything syncing with 1-2 hours of music/video with 30 SMS, about 20 mins of calls......I am now getting about 8hrs on the new ones from HTC (the 04).
Interesting Battery
Well now that I have had a week of use I have noticed that the (old) "02" batteries would last about 4-5hrs and go until 1% before turning off, with a slow count down. The (new) "04" batteries stay at a high number (about 6-7hrs) until they get to 15% and within a few mins turn-off....as I recall I saw postings of 'quick' count downs, so I wonder if you either get a slow drain down with about 4hrs of use OR about 6 hrs of use with the last 15% a very quick shutdown....I'll keep monitoring these new HTC batteries to see if it was just one of those "weekend" things or if this is the trade off...was caught off guard as I had been getting 30 mins or so when I had 15% left and the G1 would stay on until 1%..."teach an old dog new tricks".....

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.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
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.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
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?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I would assume the data aspect is, but the 3G voice is still active, even with WiFi on.

Terrible battery life

Hi -
I've had my HTC HD2 a few days and although I'm happy with it's features, I'm really frustrated by the poor battery life. The first day I used it the battery was dead within under 12 hours from me starting to use it, and at the start it was fully charged. On this first day I did have email and weather etc on auto check though.
So last night I disabled weather, set email to manual checking and disabled a few other things, but did leave HSDPA and 3G on. There was a slight improvement today but not much, the battery lasted the full 12 hours, but with only 2% remaining.
Both days I don't think my usage was very high. I'd maybe had 10 minutes of phone calls, sent around 10 text messages, listened to 45 minutes of music, checked one or two websites, and played games on the phone for about 15 minutes. Imagine how it would be when I need to make several calls in a day.
I have searched the forum for tips on improving battery life but the main suggestions seem to say that I should disable HSDPA and 3G but one of the main functions of the phone is internet usage and I don't see why I should how to switch to manually putting these settings on and off each time I want to use the internet, just so I can get a longer battery life - the battery should be able to cope with moderate usage!
Does anyone have any further suggestions?
Thank you
Look for an application called 'Bandswitch', it can disconnect idle connections. THis way 3G won't be enabled when you don't need it, should save some battery.
Disable automatic screen brightness and set it to something like 30%.
Disable location services and stuff.
Give the battery some cycles to reach full potential.
But of course, gaming, internetting and listening to music will drain the battery faster. It lasts about 2 days for me with moderate use (some internet, some playing around, etc) which is pretty fair imo.
dagrim1 said:
Look for an application called 'Bandswitch', it can disconnect idle connections. THis way 3G won't be enabled when you don't need it, should save some battery.
Disable automatic screen brightness and set it to something like 30%.
Disable location services and stuff.
Give the battery some cycles to reach full potential.
But of course, gaming, internetting and listening to music will drain the battery faster. It lasts about 2 days for me with moderate use (some internet, some playing around, etc) which is pretty fair imo.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'll give that a try. So will it automatically enable it when I start browsing the internet or something?
I already changed the screen brightness and disabled location services though. That didn't seem to make a big difference.
And how much difference does giving the battery some cycles make?
Thanks.
dagrim1 said:
Look for an application called 'Bandswitch', it can disconnect idle connections. THis way 3G won't be enabled when you don't need it, should save some battery.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sorry, but it doesn't work that way
Bandswitch can definitely do 2 things- it can disconnect idle connections, which will reconnect when needed, but this won't switch the transport between 3G and GSM, and has little effect on battery life
Or it can be used to manually change between 3G and GSM, using whichever is selected for its current transport and then autodisconnecting if required. It is the action of switching to GSM which has the most impact on battery life, but there is no way to switch automatically between to 2 as it needs a phone radio off/on to execute the switch.
Poor 3G signal conditions will hammer the battery because the phone will continually hunt for the strongest signal and switch constantly between modes. If your 3G signal is less than 2 bars I'd suggest switching it to GSM until you are in a stronger signal area. Do this by going to Phone/Menu/ then scroll down to Band and from there switch between Auto and GSM. If that makes a difference then you could install a small utility to make the switch easier to access.
seems very odd, mine was fully charged around 11pm last night, have sent around 20 texts, 20 mins calls, had wifi on, done some browsing, abit of sat nav and its on 68% 20 hours later.
I get at least 24 hours with moderate use. Most of the time i get around 30 hours.
I have weather and peep updating automatically + email retrieval at every hour.
When I first got mine it was lasting less than 12 hours too.
Now I'm on ROM 1.61 and have the following settings:
HSDPA disabled
Weather update every 3 hours
Twitter updates ever 1 hours (though it actually only updates when I scroll to the Peep tab)
Facebook auto updates - Off
Stock auto updates - off
Bluetooth and Wifi off unless needed.
Screen brightness - 30%
Haptic feeback, Vibration - off
Push Email - On
I'm getting over 24 hours of life out of a full charge now. I have got the push email set to manual updates only during off-peak hours ie when I'm sleeping. During the night the charge drops around 1% per hour. It was at 47% when I went to sleep last night and was 40% when I woke 7 hours later. This seems to be typical overnight drop for me.
Over my first few days of tinkering and setting up I found the battery drain to be massive. Once you settle down to regular usage it is a lot lot better.
However, just to be careful, I do now have a desk cradle at work so I can charge my phone if I have to.
Prior to my most recent hard-reset I found that if I left the phone in stand-by over night, with it checking for email every 5 minutes, and weather every 15 minutes, the battery would go from 100% to zero in less than nine hours. And that's without using it at all! As an experiment I tried turning off everything that could possibly be using the data connection, and turning off 3G, so nothing was running at all except the phone in 2G mode listening for calls and texts. It still burned 20% of the battery overnight in stand-by.
Since doing a hard reset, if I repeat the second experiment then I find that overnight battery drain is now only 4% - so clearly some piece of software that I had installed prior to the reset was hammering the battery even in stand-by. Quite what it was, I'm not sure yet. (My current prime suspects are the task manager and 1% battery status icons).
If you're having battery drain issues then I suggest doing a hard-reset and then not installing anything remotely controversial for a day or two to see if that sorts out the drain. If it does, then you can start reinstalling things gradually to see what difference each one makes.
NeilM said:
Sorry, but it doesn't work that way
Bandswitch can definitely do 2 things- it can disconnect idle connections, which will reconnect when needed, but this won't switch the transport between 3G and GSM, and has little effect on battery life
Or it can be used to manually change between 3G and GSM, using whichever is selected for its current transport and then autodisconnecting if required. It is the action of switching to GSM which has the most impact on battery life, but there is no way to switch automatically between to 2 as it needs a phone radio off/on to execute the switch.
Poor 3G signal conditions will hammer the battery because the phone will continually hunt for the strongest signal and switch constantly between modes. If your 3G signal is less than 2 bars I'd suggest switching it to GSM until you are in a stronger signal area. Do this by going to Phone/Menu/ then scroll down to Band and from there switch between Auto and GSM. If that makes a difference then you could install a small utility to make the switch easier to access.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Oh, I misunderstood it then... thank you for clearing that up!
It's very interesting, to see the number of people who have battery draining problems. I have the french SFR ROM 1.44 and since the beginning found my battery life satisfying (I didn't expect long life, as my wife has to charge her iPhone every night).
My battery lasts in heavy use 24h (though it can go down to 18h when using internet by 3G/HSPDA for long period like 1h or more) and under "normal" daily use (checking e-mail regularly, 20 min phone calls, sending some SMS, 30 mins internet, 45 mins playing around / listening some music) around 1.5 days.
My settings are:
3G/HSDPA enabled
Weather update every 6 hours
Stock auto updates - every 8 hours
Bluetooth and Wifi off unless needed
Screen brightness - auto
Haptic feeback, Vibration - off
E-mail check: every 2 hours (POP3)
Faulty batteries? I think not....
Whilst I'm a master of google searching, I get worse results using the search facility on this forum than just using intuition.
Anyway, I just wanted to add my comments on battery life after owning a stock 1.43 phone from Vodafone UK. I was getting less than 8 hours life with everything on auto and making just a couple of shortish phone calls and a couple of quick browses. The rest of the time I was in standby and I thought that my phone was one of the worst out there. I had also installed Skype which I had running in the background which sometimes causes the phone not to go into auto-standby even though it would dim normally. I also noticed that I was in a very weak signal area and that my phone was constantly switching between 2G/3G/H which I understand can consume a lot of power. Also, I had stopped using wi-fi to see if that helped.
After reading a million threads, I decided to conduct an experiment last night. Usually if I charge the phone before going to sleep for 8 hours it is down to 70% when I wake up having been left in standby. So last night I disabled everything. Turned off 3G, data connections, My Location, Weather update, Stocks Update, FaceBook login, e-mail updates, Skype, bluetooth, wifi. In fact absolutely everything I could find that could be turned off except the basic 2G phone itself.
Guess what, I wake up 8 hours later... 96%.
16 hours later.... 81% with very light use.
Now I'm going to have to spend many days playing around with different settings to see which apps or functions are gobbling the power. I have a nasty feeling that the weak signal is half the problem
So cheer up! It's not ideal, but this is a brand new, smartfone with bugs - not a Nokia 6110. Higher capacity batteries and ROM updates will come. In the meantime you just have to figure out what is sucking up the juice on your HD2 and disable these functions if you don't need them or when you are not using them.
Good luck and enjoy it! The coolest phone around...
Rickster
Donations appreciated (That incompetent government and those reckless banks put me out of busines...)
Hello everyone,
like the majority of the owners of HD2, in order to optimise the duration of accumulator charge, I use Band connection control programs , to pass in 3G only when it is necessary. Thus, I have:
- phoneAlarm: to force the 2G mode the night, and also for differ quiet mode if I am in meeting, etc…. In particular, in the case which interests me there, I force the 2G the night and asks to pass to 2G the morning.
- WMlonglife (version for HD2): which normally loads himself to make the effective switch 2G towards 3G or 3G+ if an application program requiring it is launched, and otherwise to remain in 2G. It should be noted that WMlonglife has two applis, one for the configuration, and to make manually changes 2G 3G, WMbandswitch.
- recently, I tested Bandswitch v2.8
I meet the following phenomena, and I would like to know if others also have them, and/or if there are parameters to change so that it goes better.
Point A: Already some question about the icons of the bar of state in top.
There are always two icons side by side. Tell me if I interpret them well.
one with a letter: G= GSM, E= Edge, 3G = 3G, H = 3G+
This letter tellsonly that this kind of network is available, but it does not say that one is actually connected there. Is it well that?
To know in which mode one is actually connected, it is another icon, on its line, with the 1 to 4 bars of reception and a small letter, which should be looked at.
This small letter, it is “H " ==> connected in 3G+, “3G” ==> connected in 3G, “E” ==> connected in Edge
and finally a simple antenna, which I imagine wants to say that one is just connected in 2G, no data connection
Is what all that is correct?
Is there another mean of knowing in real-time the current mode of connexion (and thus mode of conso of the accumulator)?
Point B, use of Phonealarm:
like said in introduction, I force the 2G (mode GSM/GPRS) during the night, and to 6:00 of the morning, I pass it in mode “house” where I put “Car”, by also putting the pin number at it, because it seems that for this transition, one needs the pin number (is it the radio cycle on-off?)
There, the first thing, they is that every morning, when I unlock it I find myself with the screen for input of the pin number, where it is enough to make cancel (because the code already entered via PA and even already connected). Moreover, if one tries to enter a pin number, then he refuses the input.
on the other hand, at this time, the telephone seems to remain in Edge icon “E”, and does not pass in H. On the other hand, so there I reset, then he will connect to H with the boot
Have you also this history of pin number?
For hangs, it is as if WMlonglife did not take the hand to force a 3G mode or 3G+….
this brings me to the point C
Point C: WMbandswitch… after a software reset, my Tel. is connected automatically towards the 3G network (or 3G+) of orange. On the other hand the morning (after to automatic wake up through PA), it remains in E. When I test action manually a passage in 3G with WMbandswitch, it does not change anything. I tested with radio operator chip on Samsung, or Qualcomm (WCDMA). similar behavior….
To check out, I then loaded and installed Bandswitch 2.8, and tried to change into 3G, and there I see appearing the letter H. so, there is a difference with WMlonglife, which would seem to show that WMlonglife does not manage to make the switch towards 3G.
Which radio chip put in WMlonglife?
Have you to it even thing?
Poind D: use of bandswitch 2.8 (on xda): I tested. Hard to know if that is interfaced well with all the remainder. Of your experiment, which one would you advise? It does not have the system of “whitelist” like WMlonglife…
Here is, in synthesis, to summarise my questions
- Has: major significance of the icons
- B: phonealarm and switch of the 3G mode (after a forcing in 2G the night)
- C: WMbandswitch, and configuration/use for HD2
- D: alternative to WMlonglife?
For info, with normal use of browsing, email and phone, I drop of about 50% battery for 24h, that is not so bad, but I 'd like to make sure about the Bandswitch thing...
Thank you in advance for all…
vdelab

Really poor battery.

Hi guys, please bear with us on this one.
This is my 2nd Android phone, I used to have an Hero about 6 months ago. i really liked the front end but the screen was small so I upgraded to an HD2 which I still have. On the HD2 the screen is huge but Win Mobile lets it down a bit. The marketplace is expensive and very limited and the amount of apps for Win Mobile seem to be getting less and less, especially supproting the 800x480 WVGA screen on the HD2.
Anyway I was due an upgrade and Orange offered me the X10 for £20 which i couldn't refuse. I am trying to like the phone but the biggest issue for me is the battery. I did the usual of leaving it plugged in for 16 hours as recommended by orange etc. If the phone is on standby I seem to get around 8 hours and the battery will be down to about 40% remaining charge. That is on standby with the top button pressed and the phone on a black screen. This is really poor considering the HD2 can run almost 2 days on standby before loosing 60% of its charge.
Anybody got any suggestions on how to improve this? Would it be wise for me to do the debrand as mentioned in other threads? It is currently on build R1FA014.
Thanks for the help.
The battery will improve in time, after a few weeks of use the X10 will loose 1-2% of battery each 2 hours (at least my X10 R1FA016 and two of my friends X10 R1FA014 do). This is with 3G on, wifi sometimes on, GPS sometimes on. Just give it some time. I think the X10 is one of the best smartphones out there. There is an extensive thread on Power Usage which can be found here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=657265
In the end it comes down to:
-Give it some time
-Disable auto search for software updates (settings>about phone>update)
-Wifi seems to drain sometimes
-Streaming drains.
Thanks for the pointers Vin87, I have got wifi turned off now but I am at work for the next 7 hours and I only have about 28% charge remaining
I'm going to have a good read through the thread you mentioned all 50+ pages LOL.
I do like the phone and for the cost I am going to keep it and hopefully we will get some new updates soon?
It gets better...way better. 13 hours since my last charge, and it's at 71%. I've been using it every now and then, Facebook, sending emails ect.
Great battery life now!
From a work perspective, I miss the X10 having a dock.
With my G900 each time I returned to my desk,I would throw it the dock and so it was receiving a charge throughout the day, the X10 is more fiddly as you need to play around the the flap and then figure out which way to plug in the mini-USB cable...
I wish they had chosen a better connector than the mini-USB as the standard, as it's not that easy to quickly connect it....
I could almost throw my G900 at the charging cable and it would connect.
Basically (if you want to use the smartphone):
1. In the beginning you will use the phone a lot. Installing apps, trying apps, games, music etc. so the battery drains faster. When you will stop pushing the phone to the limit will be better
2. Wait for a week, the batter will get better.
3. Get a task killer/boot manager and set it to autokill moxier. Don't kill other apps
4. Set facebook/twitter sync at 1h (or more) if you are not a hardcore fan of this social platforms.
5. Email: if you need instant notification there is not much you can do. If you don't need it, disable background sync and sync manually.
6. Disable location using wireless networks.
7. Wifi/3G: if you need instant notifications, wifi will drain your battery pretty fast but if you don't have 3G data plan like me, there is no other choice. If you have a good 3G plan, you can set wifi sleep policy to turn off wifi when phone goes to "sleep". Also, you can use this together with Juice defender free to turn 3G on 2 min every 3min to get notifications so, you will save even more battery.
8. Enable bluetoot/gps only when you use them and keep them disabled when not.
9. Set brightness to manual and around 25% when you are indoor and "sleep time" (screen timeout) to 30sec
10. Oh, i forgot, disable search for software updates and if you didn't install too many things, try a factory defaults. Some people did a SD card format (be sure you save everything first) and reported battery improvement.
If you want to use the dumbphone inside then turn everything off (BT, GPS, 3G, WIFI, Twitter/Facebook, email, background sync, etc.) and your dumbphone will last way longer

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.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
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.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
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!
Click to expand...
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
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
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.

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