[Q] EPIC 8 hour max battery life -- is this normal? - Epic 4G General

I am LUCKY to get 8 hours of battery life on my brand new stock Epic.. I usually get 4-6 hours. It will NOT last through a normal day of work without putting it on the charger around lunchtime. I take it off the charger around 6:30 AM and I am usually home by 4PM and have to immediately go and charge my phone.
Even if I put it on airplane mode, kill all running applications, and shut the screen off to standby, the phone still seems to suck battery life down very quickly (~5% in 20 minutes on airplane mode, wtf???).. So airplane mode doesn't help.. And I really DON'T want to put it in airplane mode to conserve battery because then my phone is completely useless -- it won't even ring when my wife calls..
Is my battery defective? Please tell me it is... This can't be right..
Are there processes still running that use lots of CPU, even when the stock sprint "task manager" program shows that nothing is running? Is there anything I can do to improve this if I root the phone? How about custom roms? I would really like to run Froyo/Gingerbread anyway.. If anyone has any suggestions to help to make my battery life not such an EPIC FAIL, I would greatly appreciate it.
EDIT: Also wanted to comment on the SLOW CHARGING. With the stock Samsung wall charger, it takes at least a couple of hours to get a full charge. With a USB cable plugged into a PC overnight, it only gets to about 50%. Compared with my previous phone, the HTC TP2, this is really really REALLY slow. It charged in 30-60 minutes and the battery lasted much longer.
I did notice that Samsung only provides a 0.7 amp charger, versus a 1.0A charger for the TP2. Why does Samsung limit the charge current like this? And apparently there is no nueBattery mod driver for android
UPDATE: JuiceDefender looks very promising. Installed the free version and my battery is only down to 95% after one hour. Thanks for the suggestion.

FWIW, I'm getting about the same 8ish hours on mine running DK28. I'm losing about 4% an hour without touching it. I'm seeing some people claiming insane battery life (18 hours with heavy browsing on wifi) I wish I knew how they were managing that.

Wait, it won't even ring when you're wife calls? and you're complaining?

First, the airplane mode means you switch the phone to airplane mode first then switch it back so you won't have time without signal problem which can cause battery drain.
I am able to get 10+ hrs at least by doing the following
1) use airplane mode trick so no TWS
2) use titanium backup to remove a bunch of stock junk
3) use titanium to freeze certain applications (DRM, MediaHub, Qik etc)
4) Have as few applications as possible that constantly pull data

Just yesterday I had 1 day 17 hours before switching
Yesterday when it finally gave up the ghost with the battery indicator blinking i checked my stats.
I had 1 day, 17 hours unplugged. Screen time was around 2 hours and some minutes. I had 45 minutes of talk time.
One thing i will add is I purchased a charger with two batteries off Ebay. Previously when charging with the stock charger as soon as I pulled it off the charger it would read 97%. With the seperate charger it reads 100% for quite awhile before it starts to drop.
And for the record I purchased this charger and two batteries of Ebay for a winning bid of $0.01, plus $9.95 S&H. It was a steal in my opinion.

Unless you are getting near 12 hours of battery life, one of 3 things is occurring:
1) You are using the phone an insane amount
2) You messed something up
3) The battery is defective
For the record, its almost always number 2.
I suggest doing a Factory reset, which will wipe everything off the phone. Then without installing anything or setting your facebook to update every 15 seconds, see how long the battery life lasts. If it is still only 4-6 hours, then your battery is most likely defective.

well of course it won't ring if your wife calls if its in airplane mode. That radio is turned off.

8 hours? That's it? I wouldn't call that normal, but that's just me...
I just plugged my phone in after 4 1/2 days (108 hours) running on a stock 1500maH battery, running Quantum Rom 1.5 (DK17), no special apps running to disable data (aka Juice Defender, etc.), not in airplane mode at all, with the DRM software running, in other words, a more or less 'Stock' configuration (taking into account any differences in the base Rom).
Granted, I barely used the phone in the last 4 days though

muyoso said:
I suggest doing a Factory reset, which will wipe everything off the phone. Then without installing anything or setting your facebook to update every 15 seconds, see how long the battery life lasts. If it is still only 4-6 hours, then your battery is most likely defective.
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Click to collapse
I'll do that. For the record, I've got fbook set to never update, and seesmic once every 6 hrs.

Koadic said:
8 hours? That's it? I wouldn't call that normal, but that's just me...
I just plugged my phone in after 4 1/2 days (108 hours) running on a stock 1500maH battery, running Quantum Rom 1.5 (DK17), no special apps running to disable data (aka Juice Defender, etc.), not in airplane mode at all, with the DRM software running, in other words, a more or less 'Stock' configuration (taking into account any differences in the base Rom).
Granted, I barely used the phone in the last 4 days though
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Click to collapse
LOL at screen on for 52 minutes total. That is 11.5 minutes a day.

muyoso said:
LOL at screen on for 52 minutes total. That is 11.5 minutes a day.
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Click to collapse
Like I said, barely touched my phone in the last 4 days... been feeling a little under the weather so have been at home a lot and in bed doing all my internet stuff and gaming (pogo) on a laptop instead of on my phone.

Since I updated to the leaked Froyo, my battery life has plummeted. It lasts maybe 1/3-1/2 as long as it used to. Turning off 3G has helped immensely though, so that must be the culprit. I used to be able to leave 3G on while at work and make it to bedtime before having to charge it. Or if I shut it off at night (which I usually do), it would make it through my commute to work the next morning. Now, I'm lucky to get through the work day unless I turn off 3G. Huge difference in battery life for me since updating. I'm hoping they fix this in the official release of Froyo.

Well, I've recently found out that if you flash via update.zip while the USB is plugged in, you'll mess up the battery calibration of your device. This is what I did, and i'm pretty sure the cause of my problems. I did find a fix, and here it is:
siliconaddict said:
This is the procedure that works for me:
The following steps should significantly extend the battery life on your phone:
1. Let the battery drain close to empty (5% or less).
2. Connect the phone to the charger (AC or USB, USB is better) while powered on and allow the phone to charge until the notification LED is green, indicating the device is fully charged and untill the voltage is at least 4187mV. A higher voltage like 4192mV or more is even better. Use a tool like Overcharged or Battery Indicator to monitor this. Note that a green notification LED does not automatically mean that the voltage is good too.
A higher voltage means in practice that it will take longer to discharge, a lower voltage means that the battery will discharge a lot quicker! The difference can be quite significant!
3. Disconnect the phone from the charger and power it off.
4. Reconnect the phone to the charger while powered off and allow the phone to charge until the notification LED is green. The notification LED may turn green immediately. Leave it on the charger for another hour.
5. Disconnect the phone from the charger and power it on.
6. Once the phone is powered on completely (has restarted fully) wait 2 minutes and power it off again.
7. Reconnect the phone to the charger while powered off and allow the phone to charge until the notification LED is green. The notification LED may turn green immediately. Leave it on the charger for another hour.
8. Leave the phone on the charger and reboot into the ClockWorkMod recovery menu and wipe the battery stats via -> Advanced -> Wipe battery stats.
9. Disconnect the phone from the charger, restart the phone and start using it as normal.
From then on always let the battery drain close to empty (5% or less) as often as possible and then charge untill the voltage is at least 4187mV. A higher voltage like 4192mV or more is even better.
Normally you will have to do this only once. However, on all Android ROMs, if you flash a ROM while charging or during the first boot screen on, first boot mucks up the levels Android thinks the phone is at, i.e. Android will think you’re at 100% when maybe you’re only 90% or whatever. So in theory you will need to repeat this every time you flash a ROM while charging!
Better is to make sure the battery is charged before you flash a ROM and just remove the USB/charge cable before you flash a ROM. Put it back in (if you must) after the first boot screen (when the custom screen or whatever shows).
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There is a shorter version that also seems to work well:
vidler said:
So combining the two bits of info we've compiled, the best way to calibrate your battery is as follows
1: Charge phone whilst on till LED is green.
2: Disconnect phone from charger, power it off.
3: Reconnect to charger with phone powered off and allow to charge till LED is green.
4: Disconnect the phone from charger, power it on. Once completely powered on, turn it off again and reconnect to charger until LED is green.
5: Reboot into recovery (back button held at same time as power button) and wipe battery stats.
Battery should now be calibrated.
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Click to collapse
From what I've been told, you don't have to wipe the stats (you need root to do that) but it helps if you can.
I think this may also stem from interrupting the inital charge of the device. I know I did this on both my wife's device and mine (plus my added fubar of flashing with the USB in). Anyway, hopefully I can report some good news tomorrow.
If y'all are really interested in reading a 51 page thread on this, go here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=755903

I get 4 or 5 hours if that. I can barely make it to 6. But i probably use my phone more than the average person. Because i take public transportation and browse, stream, email and have 4g connected on my commute back and fourth.

diego1985 said:
I get 4 or 5 hours if that. I can barely make it to 6. But i probably use my phone more than the average person. Because i take public transportation and browse, stream, email and have 4g connected on my commute back and fourth.
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I've been running JuiceDefender for about 5 hours now and I am loving it.. I still have 75% and I can still receive calls just fine.. It turns off data when the screen is off, but turns it on at scheduled times (default is 1 min every 15 min) so that your emails/twitters/etc can update like normal. The paid version has even more features so I bought it..

Never mind im dumb for not reading his post. Already answered my question sorry.

sleebus.jones said:
Well, I've recently found out that if you flash via update.zip while the USB is plugged in, you'll mess up the battery calibration of your device. This is what I did, and i'm pretty sure the cause of my problems. I did find a fix, and here it is:
There is a shorter version that also seems to work well:
From what I've been told, you don't have to wipe the stats (you need root to do that) but it helps if you can.
I think this may also stem from interrupting the inital charge of the device. I know I did this on both my wife's device and mine (plus my added fubar of flashing with the USB in). Anyway, hopefully I can report some good news tomorrow.
If y'all are really interested in reading a 51 page thread on this, go here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=755903
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Click to collapse
Decided not to quote the whole thing but I'm in the process of doing this right now! Took 2 hours to drain my batt from full (running everything and keeping my phone searching for gps constantly in a place where it would also be searching for signal makes quick work of a battery!).

knyque said:
Wait, it won't even ring when you're wife calls? and you're complaining?
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*golf clap*

diego1985 said:
I definitely need to try that out. Can you still receive calls or no?
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA App
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Yes, with juice defender I can receive calls and my gmail/twitter/facebook/etc. are all already up-to-date whenever I pick up my phone. It works exactly as before, except my battery is not constantly being drained now.
I guess the downsides are that I might not get a new email notification for 15 minutes, and that there is a service running in the background that may cause some slowdown. Neither has been a problem for me so far. I highly recommend this application for Epic 4G owners. Problem solved, basically.

I usually get 12hrs with moderate use (~2hrs with screen on, half of that is usually on the browser). I turn background data off bc I don't have a twitter and I rarely check Facebook so when I do I just use the browser.
I also noticed that wifi burns more battery on DK28, on 2.1 I would hardly lose any battery on standby with wifi, now I get a 3-4% drain per hour... But with 3g on now I lose less then 1% an hour, it used to be a battery hog.

Related

Battery life

Hello
Just got my blackstone, had it for a few days and i need to charge it every day, almost 2 times a day with moderate use. I turned off 3G, turned down the backlight. But still, if i just mess with it a little, in settings and so on, i can litteratly see the battery life getting lower. An hour ago it was 100%, now its on 83%. Any one who got some pointers on this?
Thanks.
I had a similar issue with mine, got it a couple of weeks ago with a stock Orange UK rom onboard.
Battery hasn't fully depleted, but I usually charge it everynight as it quick charges.
I've since put Dutty's 3.9XT Turbo rom on and battery life has been a lot better.
For example, charged overnight last night (from 59%) and am now at 90% after a few texts and emails. Normally I struggle to hold a 3G signal in my office so its alternating between G, 3G and H all the time, which also drains the battery, and have a push mail application running in the background.
I also charge it in the car in my cradle to and from work. Could probably get two days at a push if I needed to, but it would require charging in the car as well to do that.
Thanks. I flashed it with the energy rom, and the battery really sucks. What does actually the "H" mean, when that is in the status field? "E" is edge, G is 3g, but "H" is?
Try disabling 3g to see better battery life. I think my battry life is quite good without 3g. Running latest energy rom. H is hspda I think. Disable that also to check the affect on battery life.
Thanks. Ive done all that. 7 hours ago the battery was at 100%, now its at 15%. Ive texted 5 messages, and made 2 phonecalls. If i go into settings f.example, press a little, i can see the % gone down a few. Something must seriously be wrong.
bthelastman said:
Thanks. Ive done all that. 7 hours ago the battery was at 100%, now its at 15%. Ive texted 5 messages, and made 2 phonecalls. If i go into settings f.example, press a little, i can see the % gone down a few. Something must seriously be wrong.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, somethings up with it. To compare I took mine off the charger 7 hours ago sent 4 emails, used gps 3 times, browsed several sites for a total of about 45 min., made two short calls and I'm down to 75%. Thats all on edge.
bthelastman said:
Thanks. Ive done all that. 7 hours ago the battery was at 100%, now its at 15%. Ive texted 5 messages, and made 2 phonecalls. If i go into settings f.example, press a little, i can see the % gone down a few. Something must seriously be wrong.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Definitely sounds like a more serious issue.
I have 3G and HSDPA on all the time and still get through about 25% battery during most of the day, with a few texts, a call or two and some email/browsing etc.
I also make sure that I close any other applications that I've finished with to calm memory and processor usage down.
Thanks. Yes, it sounds like an issue. Wish i had you guys battery. I can litteratly see the % go down, if i go to settings, press something go back and so on. Bought a new 1350mah battery on ebay, hope that would do the trick. Its bugging me sooo much, breaking swet becouse of it, lol.
Did you also turn off bluetooth and wireless? I get three days out of mine without 3G.
Yeah, all that stuff is off. Only edge is on. The battery must be faulty, thats the only thing i can think of. Example, made a phonecall now for 5 minutes, it dropped 10% on the battery.
bthelastman said:
Yeah, all that stuff is off. Only edge is on. The battery must be faulty, thats the only thing i can think of. Example, made a phonecall now for 5 minutes, it dropped 10% on the battery.
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Click to collapse
bthelastman,
Try these following steps to recalibrate your battery.
1) Turn off the phone.
2) Let it charge overnight and don't unplug it.
3) In the morning, use the phone till it is down to 10% (Don't go lower than this number).
4) Turn off the phone, and do a full-charge again.
Repeat these steps 2 ~ 3 times and see if the battery gets better. Sometimes, it is not that the battery is bad, but merely the calibration is a little off. Always try to charge your phone when it is turned off, it keeps the accuracy of the battery lasting much longer without having to do a full-discharge.
Let us know how this works out for you.
Cheers.
Cheers.
Thank you PoisonWolf, i will test this out. Thanks.
PoisonWolf said:
bthelastman,
Try these following steps to recalibrate your battery.
1) Turn off the phone.
2) Let it charge overnight and don't unplug it.
3) In the morning, use the phone till it is down to 10% (Don't go lower than this number).
4) Turn off the phone, and do a full-charge again.
Repeat these steps 2 ~ 3 times and see if the battery gets better. Sometimes, it is not that the battery is bad, but merely the calibration is a little off. Always try to charge your phone when it is turned off, it keeps the accuracy of the battery lasting much longer without having to do a full-discharge.
Let us know how this works out for you.
Cheers.
Cheers.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
PoisonWolf mate these techniques used to work on old battery but the new lithium batteries don't need these manual calibration process...
akash_nu said:
PoisonWolf mate these techniques used to work on old battery but the new lithium batteries don't need these manual calibration process...
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Click to collapse
akash_nu,
I beg to disagree. What I am saying is, sometimes, the battery in itself can hold the right amount of charge, but the onboard motherboard thinks it is not holding the right amount of charge. The full-discharge helps correct this issue.
If you don't believe me, keep charging your TouchHD whenever it is at 80 ~ 90% for a couple of months and you'll notice a "drop" in how fast your battery drains.
Cheers.
I definitely agree with this.
My Touch HD kept dying after a couple of hours, even when charging it over night. So I turned my phone off and charged it over night with a wall charger (instead of USB) and then it lasted for 48 hours with the same usage.
I think the battery tells the phone it is fully charged even when it is not. So like you say, it just needs recalibrating.
Not sure why the post appeared twice, I only submitted once!
Hi,
The button to the top wright of the phone, to close apps, the screwdriver icon says 59%. I guess that means running 59% of its power of whatever?
Shouldnt it say like 0%, since no apps are running?
Thanks.
After eight months and having my battery give me 2 minutes of talktime on a four hour charge, Orange UK have replaced it for me FOC.
bthelastman said:
Hi,
The button to the top wright of the phone, to close apps, the screwdriver icon says 59%. I guess that means running 59% of its power of whatever?
Shouldnt it say like 0%, since no apps are running?
Thanks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That % shows the amount of free RAM your device has, not how much power it is consuming..
Not sure why you are having this problem, I use BB Connect all day at work and am on the phone for several hours, I don't have 3G in the US but notice if I have WiFI on it drains the battery fast.
Are you sure you don't have a program running that is always looking for the internet? You could try HD tweaks and turn off the internet all together and see if that helps.

Battery ran down in standby

I left my nexus one, which I just got on Friday, next to the TV and it was fully charged. When I came back to it about 4 hours later it had turned its self off and wouldn't turn on until I connected the charger. The battery was at 0%, anyone seen anything similar?
I have now left the phone off, connected to an AC charger and will turn it back on only when it's fully charged!
Sounds like you got yourself a defective unit.
Charger it fully then let it completely die. After it dies charge it again fully see if that helps.
Charging via the USB cable does not seem to be very efficient/reliable. Using the AC charger is quite fast, and much more reliable.
Also check the apps that are running in the background, and turn off the ones you don't need. I discovered that the animated wallpaper was quite a drain... since I switched to a static wallpaper image, battery life has improved significantly.
It has the star field wall paper, but I didn't think that would run when the phone is locked and the screen was blanked. I'll leave it to fully charge, using an old nokia charger from a n85.
So the recommendation is to run it tomorrow until it dies then charge in the off state and only turn on when it's fully charged?
I have had a G1 for the last year.
n0ahg said:
It has the star field wall paper, but I didn't think that would run when the phone is locked and the screen was blanked. I'll leave it to fully charge, using an old nokia charger from a n85.
So the recommendation is to run it tomorrow until it dies then charge in the off state and only turn on when it's fully charged?
I have had a G1 for the last year.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, and use the charger that came with the N1.
n0ahg said:
I left my nexus one, which I just got on Friday, next to the TV and it was fully charged. When I came back to it about 4 hours later it had turned its self off and wouldn't turn on until I connected the charger. The battery was at 0%, anyone seen anything similar?
I have now left the phone off, connected to an AC charger and will turn it back on only when it's fully charged!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have the same problem. I got the phone approx. 1 week ago. before i go to work, I would have a fully charged phone. during lunch break break, ( about 4 hrs later from fully charged) its below half already! then 2 hrs later, its at to the point where it says connect your charger. Finally, off work, Phone is turned off and dead at 0% battery life. When im working, i dont even use the phone to browse or anything. just check the time on it and put it back on standby. I dont know whats wrong. Ive also rooted the phone btw with MoDaCo's rom. Any suggestions?
It was fulling charged again about 3 hours ago, not I've left it without wi-fi and with a static wallpaper and the battery is still full. I wonder if the wi-fi or the live wallpapers keep running even when the screen is off. I have checked and wi-fi is set to sleep when screen is off :-/
While modern batteries don't have the "memory" problems that cause them to lose life, they can suffer from miscalibration which will cause them to inaccurately report their remaining charge. If they report a very low charge to the phone (when this may not necessarily be true) the phone will probably turn itself off.
To recalibrate your battery, force it to drain completely. Even after the phone turns itself off, turn it on a few times more. I can't guarantee this is good for your phone, but it should get the last of the juice out. Then, when you let it charge, let it charge LONG after it reports being full, at least a few hours, to make sure it's completely full.
Sounds like something isn't quite right with your phone tbh. I have the star field wallpaper, wifi on and it's checking e-mails for 2 accounts every 15 mins.
I've also had some phone calls, been surfing the web, market and generally played around with it since I just got it on friday.
I checked the battery info on the phone now and it's been 15 hours since I charged it and it's now on 46% still. In my (limited) experience the battery seems to hold up pretty good on this phone.
That's the weird thing, it was fine Friday night and Saturday night and that was including quite a bit of playing with around
I received my phone last week. the battery was fine the first four days. after that the same problem stated above happened to me. the battery dies every 4 or 5 hours even in standby with no GPRS, WIFI or BT.
I did a complete wipe-out and the problem was gone.
I think that there were something that is draining the battery and gone with the wipeout.
by the way, i was using MCR and still using it.
thanks.
It has now been sitting for another 7 hours without wi-fi or starfield and the battery is still showing full. I'll now enable wi-fi and see how that goes. Then I'll try statfield later on. I'm wondering if the starfield keeps running even if the screen is blanked.
Actually it's showing 92% in the About page whereas the icon look full :-/
First day with nexus at work. Unplugged it from the main charge at 6:30 am at till 1:00 pm its was turned off. Made 3 short calls, no wifi, bluetooth, or gps and screen set to auto dim.
Only 6 1/2 hours is not long enough. I wish there was like a juice pack for nexus like the iphone. I could buy another battery but cannot be bothered carrying too many bits with me and opening it and changing.
Aslo charging through usb is very very slow.
my phone did this yesterday too, first time ever. I dunno why it drained so fast, something must have kept the screen on in my pocket or something.
Here's what I found.
I got my phone friday, took it off the charger and went to bed. When I woke it up was dead. What I do know is that since I'm with Roger's in Canada I don't get the 3G. I think it was searching for a 3G signal all night and that's what killed it. Try limiting it to 2G and see how the battery stands. I went a full two days without a charge, playing with it every chance I got and wifi turned on.
I'll try the 3g thing as the phone reception is poor in the room I left it. It is at 79% with the star fields wallpaper and wi-fi enabled (sleeps when screen off)
n0ahg said:
It has the star field wall paper, but I didn't think that would run when the phone is locked and the screen was blanked. I'll leave it to fully charge, using an old nokia charger from a n85.
So the recommendation is to run it tomorrow until it dies then charge in the off state and only turn on when it's fully charged?
I have had a G1 for the last year.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The star field wallpaper KILLS my battery even when the phone is idle with the screen off, just FYI... I switched to a default regular wallpaper and it has been fine since.
bradyonly said:
Here's what I found.
I got my phone friday, took it off the charger and went to bed. When I woke it up was dead. What I do know is that since I'm with Roger's in Canada I don't get the 3G. I think it was searching for a 3G signal all night and that's what killed it. Try limiting it to 2G and see how the battery stands. I went a full two days without a charge, playing with it every chance I got and wifi turned on.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
thanks i will try 2g setting tomorrow.
There gotta be something wrong with your phones or some software that is draining it.
Like I said on the previous page I use:
WiFi on
Star Field live wallpaper, with the background image nontheless
Some GPS use
Several phone calls
Some texting
Browsing the web
Screen brightness at maximum
2 email accounts updating every 15 mins
My battery still lives through the day with ease and I'm usually at 40% when I go to bed at around 1 am. I would call HTC or do a thorough check at what software is running.
edit:
Oh and I have 3G on with low reception (1 bar) where I live.

Battery sucks, so I went to the Sprint store and...

I know that battery life has been a hot topic among EVO 4G users. I have seen both sides of the spectrum with some getting an entire day or more out of their phones, while some, like myself, see 5-7 hours at the most. I finally went to my local Sprint Store/Repair Center where I was told that my battery life was "normal" and that EVO users should "except to charge your phone two or three times a day". Then the rep handed me a spare battery at no charge to me and told me to have a nice day.
So, here's the deal. I am a non-rooted, non-anything user. Is the only way to see a 24 hour charge to root my phone and flash a custom ROM? He did mention that Froyo would "increase your battery life a lot". Whenever that's going to happen. Sorry to add another thread on battery life, but I want to make an informed decision, as well as know if this rep was just brushing me off with 5-7 hour being "normal" and then handing me an extra battery for free.
So you got a free battery and all it cost you was having to talk to a fool? Sounds good to me.
I routinely charge every other night with my moderate usage. 5-7 hours would only make sense if I was streaming Pandora all day with 1 bar.
5-7 hrs? are you constantly downloading things? heavy usage? or just on stand-by most of the time? if your using your phone casually, like 3-4 calls ~ 15-20 min each call and have emails coming in at about 2-3/hr and you surf the web about 1hr/day on your phone... 5-7 hrs is not very good... usually you would need to make calls that are 30+ min with heavy browser usage and be in a really ****ty signal area while playing games and texting every 5minutes for you to get such ****ty battery life... there are a lot of forums out there with tips/tricks in improving battery life so don't expect people to start posting them here as there are THOUSANDS of posts on battery life on androidcentral.com and other such sites...
good luck... you should be able to get at least 12hrs on one charge with little to moderate usage -- again google and read for forums out there as there is a TON of information.
I'm curious, are you in a 4G or 3G area? if you have 4G on where there is no 4G, your phone will constantly search for a 4G signal, same with wifi. I find that 3G is pretty fast where I live. 1.2MB down. so I never really turn on 4G or wifi. I've been getting about 14-20 hrs depending on use, but that was only the few times I made it through a day without plugging it in to add music, or try to root it (without success) and stuff. today I unplugged it at 9:40 am, and have been using it pretty heavy. about 15 minutes of streaming video, 45 minutes of music playback, 35 minutes of internet use, constant messaging, some pictures, google talk, fringe running, as well as qik in the background, actually all kind of apps pop up in the background. I am at 50% battery at 5:00 pm. I think that's not bad compared to the N1 I just sold. I will say that I think Advanced Task Killer, from the markets probably helps the battery life. I highly recommend it. make sure you set it up to auto kill apps in the background. I think I get a couple of extra hours this way.
Found on Android Central Forum: (and it works, I get about 15-18 hours)
CHARGING EVO BATTERY FOR MAXIMUM LIFE:
You can charge your battery the following way to see if that helps improve the battery life on your device.
1.Connect the phone to the charger and charge the device until the LED turned green with the phone powered ON
2.Disconnect the phone, and power it OFF.
3.Reconnect the phone to the charger, and charge the device until the LED turns green again.
4.Disconnect the phone, power it ON and then power it OFF.
5.Reconnect the phone to the charger and charge until the LED turns green again.
6.Power ON and use.
My battery appears to have the same issue as well. My backlight is at 8%, auto sync is disabled for all services, always on mobile data is disabled, my network is set to CDMA, I'm not overclocked at all. I've done all the other battery saving tricks and I've done all the battery charging tricks.
I played Raging Thunder 2 for less than half an hour this afternoon, and my battery dropped down to 58%. I'm aware that games are pretty intensive, but isn't this a bit much?
EVOKeith said:
I know that battery life has been a hot topic among EVO 4G users. I have seen both sides of the spectrum with some getting an entire day or more out of their phones, while some, like myself, see 5-7 hours at the most. I finally went to my local Sprint Store/Repair Center where I was told that my battery life was "normal" and that EVO users should "except to charge your phone two or three times a day". Then the rep handed me a spare battery at no charge to me and told me to have a nice day.
So, here's the deal. I am a non-rooted, non-anything user. Is the only way to see a 24 hour charge to root my phone and flash a custom ROM? He did mention that Froyo would "increase your battery life a lot". Whenever that's going to happen. Sorry to add another thread on battery life, but I want to make an informed decision, as well as know if this rep was just brushing me off with 5-7 hour being "normal" and then handing me an extra battery for free.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Holy ****!
I'm not a "heavy user" and I turn off all sync and radios until I need them. In this state the phone will still recieve phone calls and text msgs. I turn on either wifi or mobile network access when I want to surf and enable bluetooth when I drive to connect to hand free in the car. I turn everything off when I'm done using each. I have all the power widgets right on my home screen so it only takes a second to turn on/off as needed. Using this way I have gone over 3 days before charging several times. I know this doesn't work for everyone, but I'd rather decide when I'm going to use my phone for what than to be at the beck and call of my phone. YMMV
GaryJ51 said:
I'm not a "heavy user" and I turn off all sync and radios until I need them. In this state the phone will still recieve phone calls and text msgs. I turn on either wifi or mobile network access when I want to surf and enable bluetooth when I drive to connect to hand free in the car. I turn everything off when I'm done using each. I have all the power widgets right on my home screen so it only takes a second to turn on/off as needed. Using this way I have gone over 3 days before charging several times. I know this doesn't work for everyone, but I'd rather decide when I'm going to use my phone for what than to be at the beck and call of my phone. YMMV
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Why don't you just use it normally and charge each night?
Just lazy.
Yeah, I've done all the tips and tricks and charge with power on the power off and charge, wash, rinse, repeat. Nothing works. I'm curious to see if the "free" battery they gave me will last longer.
I was in the same boat as you.
I have a fix and it should work.
turn on always on mobile data and enable auto sync
I posted a thread about getting rediculous battery and someone told me to do that and it worked.
go to settings all the way to the bottom to about phone Ans then choose battery. I bet ur up time and away time are the same. if they are that means something is keeping your phone on even tho the screen is off. doing what I told you above with a restart should fix the problem. also when you restart it its not going to instantly go to sleep leave your phone for like an hour and then check the up and awake time and it should be different. hope that helps.
and enable data when roaming.
Without specifics about what you have the phone doing and what kind of signal you have at home/work/etc, this is a totally irrelevant discussion. In my experience, the only thing that actually kills the battery quickly on the Evo or any other phone is poor cell signal.
I get well over a day on my evo... Running the netarchy kernel along with setcpu profiles. I have my phone set to clock to a max of about 384mhz when the phone screen is off.
I did the battery recharge trick and it helped a lot. I also have my display timeout set to 30 seconds.
5-7 hours before i rooted i would get 10-12 easy since rooting and loaded the.bakedsnackes rom i get avg 19 hours
sent with my evo from a secret place
Dump the Mail app and use Gmail to pop your accounts
If you are using the MAIL app that comes with the OS, that is likely the culprit. Especially if you are syncing more that one account. That can kill the battery very fast.
**try using the gmail app, and set it up so that it pops your pop mail accounts for you and pushes them to your phone. Then disable the built-in mail app and never use it again. This alone should double your battery life. It worked on the Hero and it works in the Evo.**
Do you by any chance use Yelp? I did an experiment last week with Yelp. Without the Yelp service running in the background, I would lose less than 8% of my battery overnight. With the Yelp service in the background, I lost about 50%. I've emailed Yelp to see if they can disable the Yelp service if I don't login to my Yelp account through the app.
Putting my phone on wifi made it so in the morning (4 hrs of low signal then to 50% battery), I put ti on the school's wifi and it was 80%.
tadtam said:
Found on Android Central Forum: (and it works, I get about 15-18 hours)
CHARGING EVO BATTERY FOR MAXIMUM LIFE:
You can charge your battery the following way to see if that helps improve the battery life on your device.
1.Connect the phone to the charger and charge the device until the LED turned green with the phone powered ON
2.Disconnect the phone, and power it OFF.
3.Reconnect the phone to the charger, and charge the device until the LED turns green again.
4.Disconnect the phone, power it ON and then power it OFF.
5.Reconnect the phone to the charger and charge until the LED turns green again.
6.Power ON and use.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I would avoid doing this. Lithium-Ion Batteries (found in the Evo and almost all other phones and laptops) can only go through a certain number of charge cycles. This method will not help prolong battery life.

[Battery Stats] I didn't bring my phone to work today

I had everything turned off. No email, no sync, no wifi, no gps, nothing. I fully charged the battery and unplugged it before I left. Display was never turned on. I wanted to see a completely isolated battery test. The only applications I had active according to my task manager was Launcher Pro.
Time on 10 hours 20 minutes
Battery life left 60%
Battery used 40%
Cell Standby - 40%
Phone Idle - 30%
Android System 20%
Calls (1 missed call) 5%
Display 3%
Maps 2% (Why does maps show up?)
Again this is with absolutely 0 use or syncing going on. Left phone at home, turned on and immediately checked stats when I got back from work.
According to this small test I can't even last a day on a full charge even if I left it completely alone.
Thoughts?
Running stock JI6
Holy stewart Gilligan Griffin.
Why does everyone need to make a thread for personalized information regarding their battery life?!?
I had a g1 n then mytouch n I've never seen such whining over battery life. If I see one more battery thread.......
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App
at least your reply was helpful.
sj_martin said:
Running stock JI6
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
In 1.5 day of standby with every radio off and no sim, my phone only lost about 5% with stock JI6.
I think it is a cool idea. I find that 5% usage for one missed call is very bad. I have really suspected that voice calls kill this battery and that seems to add evidence. 5% for a missed call? That is messed up.
I think this is the aspect of battery life that doesn't get addressed enough: drain during standby. Of course everyone expects to lose some power while the display is on and syncing/other processes are running--but what about when the phone is left untouched? Here are 3 ideas:
3g is a notorious battery drain even when the phone is not being used--use 2g instead.
Freeze or uninstall media hub and other running processes that attempt to run/connect to servers in the background. I removed dmservice, media hub, and all drm processes and this seemed to be helpful.
Use a custom rom--these appear to hold power in standby better than stock roms do.
grennis said:
I think it is a cool idea. I find that 5% usage for one missed call is very bad. I have really suspected that voice calls kill this battery and that seems to add evidence. 5% for a missed call? That is messed up.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
To add further detail usage time was 45 seconds for the missed call.
sj_martin said:
I had everything turned off. No email, no sync, no wifi, no gps, nothing. I fully charged the battery and unplugged it before I left. Display was never turned on. I wanted to see a completely isolated battery test. The only applications I had active according to my task manager was Launcher Pro.
Time on 10 hours 20 minutes
Battery life left 60%
Battery used 40%
Cell Standby - 40%
Phone Idle - 30%
Android System 20%
Calls (1 missed call) 5%
Display 3%
Maps 2% (Why does maps show up?)
Again this is with absolutely 0 use or syncing going on. Left phone at home, turned on and immediately checked stats when I got back from work.
According to this small test I can't even last a day on a full charge even if I left it completely alone.
Thoughts?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Cell Standby indicates that there is an activity that polls something from the network.
if you are so concerned about what it might be, you can see when and how much data is being used by going to your TMO account online and check for the data usage - one of the good features TMO put in place is actually tell you when your phone connected to get what amount of data over the data connection, does not tell you what it was doing though.
Yeah, something is going very wrong in your phone. When my phone is on standby with just 2G on it drains less than 1% per hour. I would definitely recommend getting rid of the drm service and media hub (and Daily Briefing). I also use Autostarts to keep all kinds of random programs from starting at inappropriate times (Really Slacker, does your app need to launch every time the time zone changes?)
Kubernetes said:
I would definitely recommend getting rid of the drm service
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It is.... DrmUA.apk?
According to Samsung the phone should last 450 hours in standby mode...
Anyway, yeah, I'd be curious to see the same test done with 2g only.
ackattacker said:
According to Samsung the phone should last 450 hours in standby mode...
Anyway, yeah, I'd be curious to see the same test done with 2g only.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
450 hours rofl.
Looks like i'm going to go off stock and try out some roms now. I assume bionix 1.9 is the new hotness out there? Going to flash and try the same test again and post results.
ackattacker said:
According to Samsung the phone should last 450 hours in standby mode...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I wonder if Samsung's definition of "standby mode" is what the rest of us call "off".
I've never had any kind of batt life with this phone...charge everday overnight...start work at 8, use here and there for navi (around 10 mins max, maybe 2x a day) about 30 min avg talk...and mp3 player...get home by 4 and always at 30% or (most often ) less...have had stock/ bionix roms, never changed, no matter what build....it's pathetic..called tmo, they said there are no known issues with batt on this phone...wow...do a google search on it..anyways, they are sending out a new batt..I hope I just got a bad one...seems very random tho, some ppl have all radios on ,screen all the way up and get 10+ hrs...if i left my screen on (say navi on) for more then an hour straight I'd be out of battery..very weird..praying new batt is better...
copied from team whiskey site:
Code:
Battery Conditioning
Does it seem like youre just not getting the battery life you should from your phone? Do all your other friends keep going while you slowly putter into a shutdown? Well pout no more! Simply follow these steps to clear your batter information from the phone and your phone will act better then new! :)
1. Charge phone completely, leave plugged into power
2. Boot into recovery
3. Wipe battery stats
4. Reboot to normal
5. Remove power cable
6. Drain that sucker all the way
7. Recharge fully
8. Rejoice!"
I turned my phone off today. Then I left the house. When I got back the battery was glad to see me. Seriously, I've read just about everyone and almost started my own battery disturbance thread. I've come up with a new thought at least for me. I don't care any more. I have electricity. I have a spare battery and a charger. If my phone wants to last a whole day. Yay! If I use it more because of some game with angry birds or cards or dice, great. I've reached that Mark Twain moment somewhat tweaked when he said,
“Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter.”
I'll tweak it with the last 27% of battery left in my feeble vibrant to:
"battery is an issue of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it won't matter".
Enough already I say! Lets spare the air. Batteries are meant to be used
Back to the regular reading of all the battery threads now.
I think I had the same issue as you. Cell standby was the biggest drain. When you tap on that, do you see 50% time without signal? If that's the case, this seems to be a bug in Android which was somehow introduced in JI6. The best solution I've found so far is after every boot to put your phone in flight mode for a few seconds and back. This fixes the radio glitch, your time without signal should go down way under 50%, and battery drain should stop. Hope that helps.
You should recondition your battery:
Fully charge
Reboot into recovery wipe battery information
Reboot into OS
Unplug power cable
Let battery FULLY drain (do not plug in until fully dead)
FULLY charge battery (do not unplug until fully charged)
This reconditioning should be done after every ROM flash.

[Q] How can I test if battery is bad or phone isn't charging properly?

Does anyone have any suggestions on what I can do to test which one might be bad? Any app you know of that can monitor things and tell me if a rogue app is killing the battery or if the battery is bad?
I was running mik 1.1 and was using it pretty heavily with gaming and downloading stuff. The phone died after about 7 hours. I thought that maybe the rom or cwm or something else might be killing the battery. Something strange though is that, like I said, I ran the battery until the phone shut off. Then I left it off and put it in a wall wart charger for about 8 hours and the status light was still orange. My gf had the phone and told me once she left it plugged in overnight and in the morning it was only at like 50 something percent. I thought maybe the charger went bad so I gave her another one and she didn't say anything else about it. I'm starting to wonder if maybe the phone's battery has a weak or bad cell. I kinda doubt that there's something wrong with the charging circuitry of the phone but there could be, anything is possible. I will probably take it to the repair center and tell them about it and see what they say. I tried looking on htc's site for oem replacement batteries but couldn't find anything. I found lots of aftermarket but I didn't want to go that route.
I don't know if it would not be a good idea or not to try and use my original evo battery just flipped over. I suppose if that's the only thing I have to try and troubleshoot this problem then it will have to do.
Can anyone give me suggestions or has something similar happened to you?
Now let me see if I can find that evo battery..........
Spare parts, in the market if not on your rom by default, had a battery information tab that will indicate battery health as well as what kind of plug the phone detects when charging (usb, ac, or none)
Sent from my PG06100 using XDA App
Like danaff37 said, spare parts can be useful. Also try CPU Spy, free from the market, which shows what % of the time your CPU spends at each frequency, but this actually more relevant for determining if your phone is properly sleeping..
For proper charging you can get an app like CurrentWidget or Battery Monitor Widget which tells your the current consumed during usage or current injected during charging, as well as the voltage in mV. Full charge should reach around 4200 mV, and when charging the current should be around ~800 mA for lower % battery left.
Thanks for your input. I found the evo battery and did the same thing as before. I ran it until the phone shut off and then put it one the (same) charger and went to bed. About seven hours later, it was still orange charging. Both times the phone was off. Now something that could be a possibility is the charger is weak or bad. When I put my evo on it, it charges seemingly fine. I should try using the battery until it shuts off again and use a different charger and see what happens. Six to eight hours charging, with the phone off, coming from a dead battery, on a Motorola charger that has a rated output of eight hundred milliamps at five volts. I have others at different output rates and a two amp charger intended for an ipad. Some might say that the charger is too much for the phone. The charging circuitry only pulls as much amperage from the charger as the phone was designed to. Now on the other hand if I put a smaller output charger on, say one hundred and fifty milliamps, it will take longer to charge the phone than usual. "They" say trickle charging is better. Whatever. I will post my results if I find any. Or, I just might trade the phone in for a nexus s or an evo 3d.
I was just about ready to throw in the towel and say the phone was defective, but then things started happening. I will fill you in on what I have done in the meantime. Okay so the flipped over evo battery kinda works but not completely. It will charge but not to 100% and green light. To test this, I took the evo battery out of the shift. It didn't seem to want to go more than 98 or 99%. I put the battery into the evo and after a few minutes the light went green. This was initially off. Then I booted the evo and let it go to sleep. After it booted the light went orange then green after a few minutes. Okay so the evo battery is capable of going to 100%. These charging tests were done with a different charger.
I forgot to tell you, I let the evo battery charge while I was at work and the phone was off. So the battery was charging roughly twenty hours and still no green light. I suspect that even though the positive and negative terminals aligned with the correct tabs on the shift, the center two contacts must be different internally than the shift battery. I speculate that those center tabs are for the battery and phone to communicate to each other during it's charging state. I am guessing that the battery tells the phone it is fully charged and to go trickle charge and perhaps the evo battery wasn't communicating to the phone or the phone didn't know when to say it is done charging. The battery never got hot either.
The shift was rooted, running mikshift 1.1 and the latest clockworkmod recovery. Here is where I suspect that there still might be charging bugs with that setup. I used the pcxx.zip file that when booting into the bootloader, would flash the phone back to stock everything. After trying this and assuming that the phone was back to stock, I kept going with my what the hell is going on with this phone battery charging test. A note about the flipped evo battery. Yes it will work in a pinch but it won't charge properly. Luck has it that the notches in the battery and phone allow it to work in a shift. Only thing is, the shift battery won't work in the evo. The tabs are on the wrong side and the phone's tabs won't allow the contacts on the battery to meet up with the phone's terminals.
Okay, where was I? Trying different chargers wouldn't make the shift green light full charge. I tried the same chargers on the evo with it's original battery in and it would green light after a few minutes on or off. There wasn't anything wrong with the chargers. Oh and another note, while using the battery monitor widget, I noticed that both phones wouldn't pull more than a little over three hundred milliamps of power from the charger to the battery. Interesting to know how much it really pulls from the charger.
Anywho, I tried something different for my process of elimination testing. I actually ruu flashed the shift back to factory and guess what happened..... The battery and phone were charging both on and off all the way to green full charge at 100%! I think I'm getting somewhere with this! All my luck, either it is a known bug somewhere in the forum in a place I haven't stumbled across or I'm the only one that this is happening to. It doesn't really matter I guess.
My conclusion, which isn't scientific by any stretch of the imagination, is that the phone isn't truely back to factory unless you ruu it. The pcxximg.zip doesn't put everything back to stock. I haven't narrowed it down to what is causing this behavior. I don't think it is root. It could be cwm recovery or the rom or both. I didn't try the stock rooted zip either. I suppose I could go further with this investigation but I am too lazy to now. I might root it again and just leave things stock rooted. I might activate this phone in the morning and run it all day tomorrow and see how it acts. I will have to charge it a few times during the day to keep the levels up when I really use the phone heavily. I've written enough for now. Does anyone have anything to ask or add to this topic?
Since the latest update to CWM phone-off charging finally works again but the light never turns green. It charges fully but with the phone off the LED never turns green. It's not just you.
EDIT: If this is not the actual question I apologize. The posts were far too long to actually read
^ Shift Faced
OK. I thought something might have been broken.
Forgive me, I am truly a newbie to Android after having a BB for 8 years. This battery thing is killing me. I am on my 2nd Evo Shift, the 1st one wouldn't last for more than 2 hours with barely any usage so they gave me a new one. This one barely lasts 5 hours. I am barely running anything. I took it into the store and they thought I was going to be running all these programs, but I kill everything. They told me the "battery trick" about turning off the phone and unplugging it and plugging it back in 10 times so I did that but I am not getting any more life out of the battery. My display is constantly using at least 70% of the battery it says even if I turn it down very low or if I set it to choose its setting. Do you have any advice for me? I am not running a task killer, I kill all the programs I am not using. I have no widgets running because I am afraid to use the battery, I only have 2 screens out of the 7 with things on them. I am being help hostage by my cool phone that I want to use but am scared to kill the battery! (sorry for the long post)
Ok if you use a lot apps just close them after (for stock 2.2) . Even on stock you can literally stream music and movies for about 4-6 hours. (sometimes a lot more) . The background info that runs doesn't use a lot of juice , but if you want you can go to your home screen any of them hit menu (but not with the app drawer open) select settings go to accounts and sync turn off background info and just turn it on manually when needed such as the android market . You can also turn off the auto sync and just manually choose to sync , like in the clock (and gmail etc.) it will say no weather after you click it , just hit menu you will see a little sync button option to sync and voila you have weather . So when you visit the market it will automatically ask you to turn it on (background info as will all apps that need this) . And the screen on any android is a battery killer . So when not using your phone simply tapp your power button to turn your screen off and lock (and to keep from pocket dialing lol) . But if all you do is text , emails , and web surfing (surfing drains more but no where near as much as streaming) you can literally do that all day , the screen will actually suck the most power . If manually turning off your apps is too much . Just turn your phone off (not just the screen) and on . If a new app didn't turn off after you start your phone back up you know that will be a problem later . So when not using your phone turn off your screen it will last soooo much longer . I only make a call or two and a couple of texts maybe a few minutes of internet with opera mini . My battery lasts over 24 hrs , but I barely use my phone . Hope that helps .
Sent from my HTC Vision using XDA App
BTW if you have a bunch of apps running in the background video games etc ... and you charge your phone all night and in the morning it is not charged . You should probably turn your apps off . Or simply power your phone off which shuts off most apps . Then turn it back on . The phone should not take all night to charge , it should only take an hour or 2 . 3 hours max .
Sent from my HTC Vision using XDA App
i suggest watchdog lite,it monitors cpu usage and alerts you when 1 uses more than your max threshold.if this helps,please click thanks.
When you changed ROMs, did you do it with a full charge? If not, your battery stats file is probably messed up.. Ive used Battery Calibrator free from the market in the past to fix that problem.. I believe a brand new battery on the Shift shows about 4200mV when fully charged or just slightly below that.. Run the app, when it gets close, calibrate (which essentially just deletes the battery stats file and creates a new one)

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