Database Users

[Q] Tips to extend battery life? Anyone?

Hey guys,
Just got my Epic yesterday.. coming from the G1 with lots of experience loading and tweaking ROMs and dealing with same/similar battery issues.
After unpacking the Epic I used it and let it drain down to zero before recharging it; after a full recharge, I loaded up the 7 screens with widgets and ran a live wallpaper (fish). I didn't really use the phone much at all and the phone went from 100% battery down to zero in the span of only four hours!!! Geeze, you've got to be kidding me - four hours battery life?? WTF????!!
Back to the drawing board: I rooted it and ran SetCPU with some power saving profiles. Removed the live wallpaper and went to stock wallpaper. Set display power off at 30 seconds. Note that 4G remains off since there's no 4G in my area..
Couple of questions:
1. Is there any way to toggle 2G/3G like there was on my old G1? I know that was a power saver.
2. I didn't stop to read all the documentation yet (typical male, I know) but is there any way to wake this thing up from sleep mode besides pressing the power button? I can see that power button breaking for as much use as it's getting from me constantly having to wake this thing up!
3. My brightness setting is set to auto - since the display is usually the biggest drain on these things, is there a recommended manual brightness setting (percentage) that seems to work well for you and saves on battery power?
I'm waiting for the Seideo Extended Battery (just like many of you) and am wondering if I should keep the Epic since I'm on the Sprint 30-day Easy Return program.
Appreciate hearing from everyone!
Chris R.

I don't have 4G where I am. But, I have a all black wallpaper(uses less power) and unrooted. I easily get about 12-18hr out of my phone wit normal use(text, talk, and surfing the net with skyfire). Only thing that really kills my battery are games(Robo Defense can take over 30min to play one game).

Thanks for the reply - situation NOT improving
Thanks for the reply.. unfortunately, the situation is not improving...
I tried setting a Sleep Profile using SetCPU that would under-clock the CPU (using the stock kernel) once the screen dimmed and the phone went into Sleep Mode. Unfortunately, as mentioned in another thread here, the result was that the phone froze and required a battery-pull to reset.
I'm really starting to lose my enthusiasm for this device; as beautiful a display and as responsive a CPU/GPU, all of that doesn't mean much if you don't have good power management built into the firmware. At 6PM this evening I pulled it off the charger at 67% charged, it's now 8:35 PM, only 2.5 hours later and I'm down to 22%. I'm in a decent coverage area and get 2-4 bars of 3G strength so I don't think it's an issue of the radio being the culprit; in-fact if you check the battery stats it reports that that lovely Display is accountable for 78% of the battery usage! So I guess we're paying a hefty price for these 4-inch AMOLED displays!
I read somewhere else that the most recent update (DI07) has caused the battery performance to decrease; since my unit is brand-new it immediately went and installed DI07 shortly after the first boot-up so I have nothing to compare it to.. can anyone comment on that?
Thanks!
Chris R.

I'm sure custom ROMs will put performance / battery life on the top of the list but until then, I use JuiceDefender beta and have seen pretty good results with it. It shuts off data whenever the screen is off and since my screen is off a good amount (only use my phone if I need to check email, call, and / or text, which is rare when I'm at work). Other than that, yes, use black wallpaper, lower brightness to the min. in the OS and browser, and don't leave apps that constantly use 3G open (things like ebuddy, pandora, etc.). 3G really destroys battery life so minimal use of 3G data would maximize battery life. Maybe the devs can figure out a way to get at least one full day of battery life on this phone. I'm hoping that is the case.
As to your post, yes, DI07 has resulted in poorer battery life, for whatever reason. I was definitely getting a few hours more with the older firmware. I would not lose hope yet. As disappointed as you are (and all of us are, I can assure you of that), the devs are really starting to push out nice ROMs already, and in a few weeks to a month, I bet we will see some solid battery life. Hell, even 2.2 should yield much better results. Patience

Thanks for the tip!
nimaim said:
I'm sure custom ROMs will put performance / battery life on the top of the list but until then, I use JuiceDefender beta and have seen pretty good results with it. It shuts off data whenever the screen is off and since my screen is off a good amount (only use my phone if I need to check email, call, and / or text, which is rare when I'm at work).
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Click to collapse
Thanks for the reply! Also thanks for the tip regarding JuiceDefender! What a great app! will give it some more time and report results back here.
Thanks again!
Chris R.

nimaim said:
I'm sure custom ROMs will put performance / battery life on the top of the list but until then, I use JuiceDefender beta and have seen pretty good results with it. It shuts off data whenever the screen is off and since my screen is off a good amount (only use my phone if I need to check email, call, and / or text, which is rare when I'm at work). Other than that, yes, use black wallpaper, lower brightness to the min. in the OS and browser, and don't leave apps that constantly use 3G open (things like ebuddy, pandora, etc.). 3G really destroys battery life so minimal use of 3G data would maximize battery life. Maybe the devs can figure out a way to get at least one full day of battery life on this phone. I'm hoping that is the case.
As to your post, yes, DI07 has resulted in poorer battery life, for whatever reason. I was definitely getting a few hours more with the older firmware. I would not lose hope yet. As disappointed as you are (and all of us are, I can assure you of that), the devs are really starting to push out nice ROMs already, and in a few weeks to a month, I bet we will see some solid battery life. Hell, even 2.2 should yield much better results. Patience
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DI07 has hurt my battery life substantially. In fact, my battery drains very close to twice as fast now with the update. I don't understand what they did. My phone certainly doesn't seem any faster, my display is dimmer, and battery life sucks. I'm going to have to go back to DG27 so I can use my phone all day. With DI07 it always dies on me by mid afternoon. With DG27 it was still running by 11pm at night without even a battery low warning.

juice defender ftw
also, use advanced task killer with low security settings to kill all the background processes. Set the autokill to when the screen turns off. This keeps everything pretty well managed and helps with battery as well

JUICE DEFENDER BATTERY!!! Saved my phone from flying out of my car window at 10 in the morning........

here is a link to a thread I started.
Sharing my juice defender settings. I also use ultimate juice.
http://forum.ppcgeeks.com/sprint-epic-4g/133933-sharing-my-juice-defender-settings.html
I can get a day and a half (or slightly longer) out of a single charge.
YMMV.
Hope this helps

Advanced task killer + Juice Defender. You could also get some custom roms and Kernals that would help boost it.
But that's your best hope. Keep off 4g, wifi, bluetooth, etc.

compujock said:
DI07 has hurt my battery life substantially. In fact, my battery drains very close to twice as fast now with the update. I don't understand what they did. My phone certainly doesn't seem any faster, my display is dimmer, and battery life sucks. I'm going to have to go back to DG27 so I can use my phone all day. With DI07 it always dies on me by mid afternoon. With DG27 it was still running by 11pm at night without even a battery low warning.
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Look here- try stopping the DRM service and see if that helps your battery life with D107

jimmyz said:
Look here- try stopping the DRM service and see if that helps your battery life with D107
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Ah, the evils of DRM can strike in unexpected ways...
I wasn't really having a battery problem but I just turned DRM off, so we'll see if battery life improves anyway.
I had a whole long post here that got wiped with the xda disk array failure, so I'll just sum that up here too:
1) Use wi-fi if possible - it REALLY helps
2) 4G does not seem to use the battery any more than 3G, although hunting for 4G does and 4G coverage is not as extensive as 3G even in 4G areas. So it's still best to leave it off if you're moving around.
3) Dim your screen and use a dark, static background. AMOLED screens don't work like LCD's; they use more power the more pixels are lit and the brighter they are.
4) GPS also kills your battery - leave that off unless you need it too.
I think that's it. I get about 18 hours on DI07 (even before trying the DRM thing; maybe I can get to a full day!).
One thing I'm noticing after checking DRM - I've got Google Maps' LocationService popping up about every 10 seconds, and I can't seem to shut it off permanently. (I went into Lattitude and turned that off, not sure what else to do.) That can't be helping... anyone know how to get rid of that?

I'm using juice defender and a constant email junkie, but lite use on other aspects of the phone. It goes off charger at 5:30 am and I'm about 67% at around 3p. It then goes in the car charger on the way home. This has much better battery life than the Pre or the Hero as with both I had to turn off email to get it to last throughout the day.
I don't expect these phones to last days, but I expect any phone that I get to last the business day. I've always been one to charge overnight.

Wifi drains battery more from what I've read.
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA App

I've heard the opposite that wifi (as long as it's connected) uses up less battery than 3g/4g. Any of them will suck the battery dry if they're searching, so make sure you have a connection to one of them.

Hi everyone, new to the forum. Just started checking it out when the Epic was released and this is my first post. Anyways, here's my question. My phone's been off the charger for 7 hours and 17 minutes and it is now down to 15%.
Display 79%
Cell standby 7%
Android System 4%
Phone idle 2%
Swype 2%
I've gone into the display settings and I thought I had set everything up optimally. The brightness is always very low. The screen timeout is 15 seconds and the keyboard matches that. I don't know what else I can do to cripple the phone to get the battery to last longer.
I have had wifi on, 4g off, bluetooth off, gps off. Really all I have done this afternoon while watching NFL games is check my yahoo fantasy score, play 2 games of WordFeud, and check twitter and facebook. I purchased Juice Defender a week ago and it has been running all day.
Any suggestions for how I can reduce the drain from the display? My background is a black and white picture of a friend of mine, which I thought would help.
Don't get me wrong, I love this phone. But the battery life I've seen is just terrible. I'd love to buy the extended battery from Seidio whenever its available, at least that would make it last longer even if the settings aren't tweaked.

Do you have juice defender installed?

Yep. Its installed and running now.
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA App

bagelicious said:
Hi everyone, new to the forum. Just started checking it out when the Epic was released and this is my first post. Anyways, here's my question. My phone's been off the charger for 7 hours and 17 minutes and it is now down to 15%.
Display 79%
Cell standby 7%
Android System 4%
Phone idle 2%
Swype 2%
I've gone into the display settings and I thought I had set everything up optimally. The brightness is always very low. The screen timeout is 15 seconds and the keyboard matches that. I don't know what else I can do to cripple the phone to get the battery to last longer.
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There are only two reasons for your display to be using that much battery:
a) it's too bright, or
b) you're using it a lot.
If you're using the phone a lot, your battery's going to run out pretty quick and there's no way around that. If you're using it a "normal" amount, which to me means maybe an hour *total* per day of having the display on, then the other culprit is going to be your brightness. (Some would argue that's less than a normal amount, but think about it... you get a new phone, you're going to play with it for a week or two until you've seen all the cool stuff. But at some point you're going to start putting it away most of the time and just using it when someone calls you, you get a message/email or maybe to play a game or two while waiting for the train.)
Set your brightness *all* the way down, just as a test for a couple days. Make sure all the "power saving" features of the display are turned *off* (auto brightness, and whatever that "picture detection" feature's called, I can't remember). You just want the display as dim as possible all the time, just to see what happens. See what the battery usage says after a day or two of this.
My bet is that you'll see a drop, and then as you get into a more normal usage pattern it'll drop further still. You can raise the brightness a couple ticks then as you learn how to stretch your battery out.
Personally, my display is rarely over 15% or so of my usage. Today it's 29%, but it's a Sunday and I don't have anything better to do but play around on my phone.
btw, it's still the first day I've tried this but that DRM thing might be working. It's almost 9PM and I'm still on like 80% battery, and like I said I have been using the phone off and on throughout the day.

That has helped tremendously. I installed it pretty much when I got the phone and I'm able to last the whole work day with 67% left. (10 hour day)

Insane Battery Life

I'm hitting 41 hours and still have 19% battery life. I noticed it took around 10 full charges before my phone started to get this great battery life. I've been using it as normal and even listened to howard stern for a couple of hours yesterday. Talked on the phone a bunch of times around 30 texts and even used my 4g for a few minutes. I've never had an andorid phone last this long for me even when I had my Optimus S which I thought was awesome.
Anyone else getting this awesome battery life? I'll post screen shots when its about dead as I dont want to plug the phone into usb to get the pics.

Charging twice a day here. Its worse than my hero.
Sent from my bathroom, with toilet paper.

Zardos66 said:
Charging twice a day here. Its worse than my hero.
Sent from my bathroom, with toilet paper.
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I would investigate as that shouldnt be. My shift lasts almost 2.5x my hero. I bet if I had your phone in front of my I could find out whats killing it soo fast.
Is your phone getting hot? I would do a full system wipe and start over from scratch and see if it doesnt get better after you try the things I've listed below. Note, I didnt have this great of battery life until 6 days after I purchased the phone and charged and discharged numerous times. The first few days the battery life was not good at all.
A little list of things to do, check and or disable;
1. Use spare parts and find out whats killing your battery ie partial wake usage, cpu etc.
2. Turn your window animations from all to only some animations
3. Turn off automatic display and keep it around 20-30%
4. I have auto sync off on all my appz (E-mail, Gmail, Facebook etc.). I update my E-mail and such manually.
5. Turn off data when not using it. I find data accounts for around 15-25% of juice used and thats just when on idle.
6. Only use widgets on the homescreen if you really have to (Running widgets use a lot of power over time)
7. Use Android Hackers tool from the market and it will break down how long your cpu was in a certain state. ie my cpu spent 65% at 245mhz and 28% at 806mhz.
8. Keep off 4G, Bluetooth, wirless networks for location and GPS if not using it (GPS uses less power than wireless networks and is more accurate anyway) I assigned Quick Settings to open when I hold down the search button. That makes it easy to enable/disable any of these setting within seconds.
9. Turn off google talk and make sure it doesnt sign in automatically (most people dont realise this)
10. Turn screen timeout to 15 or 30 seconds (if longer your phone can keep the display on accidentally while in your pocket if a button is pressed, wasting power)
11. Dont use a task killer unless its to kill an app you know drains your battery and therefore must be closed to save juice
12. Check your apps. Some apps keep using cpu etc because they were not programed correctly. (some appz I've found to drain my battery are; Yahoo Mail, Craigslist, AndTorrent and the market if a download is hung up. There are a few others I cant remember off the top of my head) If your phone is getting hot for no apparent reason this may be the cause.
13. Calibrate your battery by bump charging (charge your phone till its full while on, turn it off and charge till its full again. Then bump charge it around 5-7 times) Wipe battery stats if applicable. If you have a car charger, plug your phone in on the way to work to account for the little bit of drain that occurs once the phone is fully charged yet still on the charger.
Remember you can get china made batteries for very cheap. I paid $12 for 2 batteries and a wall charger off ebay. This phone uses the same batteries as the Hero and Evo by the way.

fifedogg said:
I would investigate as that shouldnt be. My shift lasts almost 2.5x my hero. I bet if I had your phone in front of my I could find out whats killing it soo fast.
I noticed Yahoo mail and Craigs list apps I downloaded from the market have a memory/cpu leak that kills your phone super fast.
Is your phone getting hot? I would do a full system wipe and start over from scratch and see if it doesnt get better. Note to that I didnt have this great of battery life until 6 days after I purchased the phone. The first few days the battery life was not good at all.
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yahoo mail DESTROYED my battery life on my hero so i havent used it in forever...sad to see it still had that problem....also I stopped using any battery widgets that show the exact percentage (as these are usually wrong anyway) and went back to using stock browser (Miren browser, while I really liked it, was eating my...)....i now check my battery through the settings....I was having varying battery life but after recalibrating by letting it die all the way then charging it up full i most recently got like 30 hours off the charger with moderate use and got down to 10%....coulda probably squeezed out a few more hours too if i left it idle....not too bad

StAlphonso said:
yahoo mail DESTROYED my battery life on my hero so i havent used it in forever...sad to see it still had that problem....also I stopped using any battery widgets that show the exact percentage (as these are usually wrong anyway) and went back to using stock browser (Miren browser, while I really liked it, was eating my...)....i now check my battery through the settings....I was having varying battery life but after recalibrating by letting it die all the way then charging it up full i most recently got like 30 hours off the charger with moderate use and got down to 10%....coulda probably squeezed out a few more hours too if i left it idle....not too bad
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I find that Battery indicator doesnt draw much power if any as I've always used it and never had a problem. The maker of the app states it uses no extra power. I love the circular battery indicator version found in the market. Its not a widget, it stays in the upper left corner of your notification bar. You should give it a try.

Phone doesn't get hot. I've started from scratch twice, I've ##DATA# reset. I had terrible service and data speeds before I did that and it did a number on my battery. Now it'd fine, but it just drains while doing nothing.
I never use task killers or auto sync, I live with spare parts and and monitor it, no real partial wake usage to speak of. I know how to save battery, my hero get 20+ hours with use and auto-sync on.
I'm thinking my battery might be bad. Feels like your talking down to me too, captain.
Sent from my bathroom, with toilet paper.

I haven't had mine a week yet, but atm I'm not getting half the battery life I did outta my Hero running AOSP's Gingerbread alpha.
I'm blaming the crap bloat that's part of the stock ROM.
With the display set to 15-20% I've got the display accounting for 69% of the battery usage. :/
Turning off sync is not an option and I feel defeats the purpose of a smart phone. Additionally, I fail to see the point in paying for 4G and not using it. (I do turn it off if I'm out of area for it or don't expect to be using much data.)
So thus far I'm disappointed in the battery life... but still think it'll improve vastly once rooted and cleaned up.
EDIT: Just did a test running Angry Birds for about 10 minutes... maybe 15. It ate up 9% of the battery in that time. Added another 1% to the display usage.

Zardos66 said:
Phone doesn't get hot. I've started from scratch twice, I've ##DATA# reset. I had terrible service and data speeds before I did that and it did a number on my battery. Now it'd fine, but it just drains while doing nothing.
I never use task killers or auto sync, I live with spare parts and and monitor it, no real partial wake usage to speak of. I know how to save battery, my hero get 20+ hours with use and auto-sync on.
I'm thinking my battery might be bad. Feels like your talking down to me too, captain.
Sent from my bathroom, with toilet paper.
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Click to collapse
I'm just trying to give advice so that other people understand what to do to get the most out of the battery. This wasnt meant to be just directed to you. Sorry for trying to help you out, Captain.

StAlphonso said:
... (Miren browser, while I really liked it, was eating my...)...
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Miren's latest update last week is supposed to have "reduced battery usage". I've had no problems. Maybe time to come back to the Light..?

I was able to hit the 48 hour mark with light use.

fifedogg said:
I was able to hit the 48 hour mark with light use.
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hey that's really impressive. I thought my 20 hours battery life was pretty good...kudos to you.

def getting better bat supply. especially from my hero which only lasted about 6-8 hours, just got my shift yesterday afternoon. from a full charge: Constant texting, facebook, Zenonia 2 (Downloaded wifi), Snes emu + 11 roms (3G), and customizing it to my hearts content. almost 12 hrs later had 20% until i plugged it up at work.
so far this thing is a golden brick to me

Just out of curiosity, how do you calibrate the battery? Just in case my battery life doesn't match the reports (I know my luck )

tatonka_hero said:
Just out of curiosity, how do you calibrate the battery? Just in case my battery life doesn't match the reports (I know my luck )
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Its under # 13 on my 3rd post.

getting great battery life isn't that surprising given you've got a 1500mah battery much like the evo and epic however 48 hours is rather impressive.
Sent from my cm7 Evo 4G!

Working on calibrating my wifes battery and damn this thing is hard to kill. Even with with everything running for 5 hours its still over 20% finally decided to bring out the big guns. Turned on navigation and the flashlight. I'll post when I see the battery life after calibration.
Sent from my cm7 Evo 4G!
Edit: Phone plugged in at 7:53pm PST. Now to see how long it takes to charge.
Edit #2: Phone finally fully charged almost an hour after my evo finished its 0 to 100 at 12:19am
Edit #3: Holy F***. This phone takes forever to die and to die. Finally on the second off charge. I wouldn't still be doing this but for the fact that its saturday.

Atrix Battery Life

I have been letting a couple of days go by to see how the battery is and I have got to say that I am highly not impressed. I love the phone and even like Blur but the battery is really a let down. I know that the first day or so that I use the phone heavily because of course.. ITS NEW. But today I have been real busy at work and have maybe text a few people, made 2 calls, and looked up a number using google maps and my battery is now down to 60%. In battery manager, it says 5h 2m 25s since unplugged which would be me taking the phone off the charger this morning and heading to work. Other stats are:
Display 35% 29m 52s
Phone Idle 26% 4h 32m 47s
Voice Calls 24% 6m 45s
Cell Standby 11% 5h 4m 5s
Wi-Fi 6% 1h 51m 56s
From looking at these battery stats and usage, does it even seem correct to be at 60% battery? This is at the least very minimal usage for a phone.

Yet another battery thread... One thing before people start complaining: don't estimate battery life based on battery gauge! Complain once the battery is dead and you HAVE to charge. That's the real mileage you'll get from your battery (and give it a few days to calibrate). The gauge is not a good indicator.

I am a new Atrix user too and so far the battery life is 12hrs or less. Maybe that is not impressive. Coming from the N1, its alright in my book.
I do want to say to everyone complaining about the battery life:
It can take a week or more for the battery to settle into the routine and perform to its maximum ability. Lets start the conversation again later next week on where our battery is at.

Yesterday I got 13 hrs between unplugging the phone, and getting the 15% warning. Not all that bad. Not great, but definitely could be worse.

mine has yet to drop below 30% and im pretty much browsing the web and texting all day. I dont care what kind of phone you have but making voice calls and playing games/watching videos kills battery with a quickness no matter how big a battery you have. . The atrix in my personal usage is just as good as my ip4 was.

the atrix was very good on battery life compare to other android phones i've had

Have the Atrix and Epic 4G and the Atrix lasts easily twice as long as the Epic.
I have to keep he Epic pluged in for my hour comute with pandora, just to make sure I have enough battery to make it for the trip home. Normal usage during the day with brightness all the way down, wifi off, BT off, sync On.
Had the Atrix today (day one after full night charge, unpluged at 6:30a), kept BT On, WiFi On, Brightness 100%, Sync On, Exchange Sync On, Auto off/standby set to 15 minutes, Pandora on via BT for my hour trip (unpluged), forest Live Background, Weather Widget etc.,downloaded everyting I could think of/find, constant e-mail, and constant "whatsApp" till noon (lunch), wache YouTube Videos for my whole hour lunch (still full bright mind you). Created 10 minute Install Video with 720p for work, then uploaded via WiFi, not USB. More Texing, Calls and Downloads. .... FINALLY haed to plug it in at 2:30p, with 5% battery left, I think I could have made it till 3 for sure.
That's a full 8 hours of NonStop Use of everything. I expect to get Morning-Night life from normal usage.
Final word. Test it first. I did and it's Great, not just good. The receiving end of all my texts and e-mail blasting and video look ups has an iPhone. He had to charge his at 2:30 too, but has his iPhone set to max battery save (brightness 15%, wifi off, sync off, etc.) But was using as intensly as I was
... okay I'm done ...
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA App

Well I must have a bad battery or something then because I am not doing nearly half the stuff that you are doing and am now at 30%. Is there any special charging methods or anything that I should try to squeeze out a few more hours on this puppy?

playin4sheezy said:
Well I must have a bad battery or something then because I am not doing nearly half the stuff that you are doing and am now at 30%. Is there any special charging methods or anything that I should try to squeeze out a few more hours on this puppy?
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Click to collapse
may be you have several internet connected background service running behind the scene?

My attitude towards the battery is a mixed bag.
1) PRO: It blows away the battery for the Eris (which I'm coming from)
2) CON: As these phones come to be computers with phone capability, it's really time for manufacturers to try their hardest for better batteries. I'd eagerly accept a phone twice as thick as this one if it meant double the battery life.
I find mine is only good for 10 hours (much less with heavy usage, but low calling time). I expected more.

snlu178 said:
I am a new Atrix user too and so far the battery life is 12hrs or less. Maybe that is not impressive. Coming from the N1, its alright in my book.
I do want to say to everyone complaining about the battery life:
It can take a week or more for the battery to settle into the routine and perform to its maximum ability. Lets start the conversation again later next week on where our battery is at.
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I really call bull on this.
Coming from the world of Airsoft, I'm no stranger to battery performance.
Most of these performance myths are hold overs from the Ni-Cad days and don't apply to modern batteries.

Call Bull all you want. But it was true to the N1 and so far its been true to my battery. It does not last the first few days and gets better after a few charge cycles.
Frankly, everyone believes whatever they want on batteries. I for one take it as a user by user experience. I watch my battery life a lot, but I also like to have Google Reader and Google Listen syncing.

I'm at 30% right now and 12 hours unplugged. What I wouldcall moderate use. Its not as good as my captivate on custom rom / kernel but its far from bad enough.for me to complain about
Sent from my MB860 using XDA App

Andriod sucks the battery, bigger battery on Atrix didn't help much. Google need to optimize the OS for better battery management. I am disappointed coming from Samsung Focus & iPhone 4, both have superior battery life. BTW, I am on Day#4, conditioning the battery didn't help any so far..

Within Range
Looking at all the comments - I would say the Atrix is within range -- I knew when I saw the 1950 mAh (or whatever the exact spec) that the tegra processor must really be a power hog -- the new processor, along with the huge screen is going to draw a lot of power. Comparing to other phones with single core processors and screens even 20% smaller is not reasonable.

Definitely a good point... going to be interesting to see how well other dual core are going to hold up. That will be a better comparison.

Is that battery really a 1930mAH? The size looks like any 1500mAH battery isn't it?

I managed to get close to 16 hours of 'normal' use, meaning I wasn't trying to drain it, nor was I trying to conserve battery. I took the phone off the charger at 3pm and made it all the way to 2pm the following day with about 20% left. That's 23 hours, but I subtracted out the time the phone was on while I was asleep, 8 hours (nighttime mode).

Hmm hearing all these replies i believe i have a defective battery. I unplugged mine today at 5:15AM and now it's 2:18PM and it's just gave me the 15% beep. I've sent about 25 texts and played some words with friends. I've got watchdog installed and no apps seem to be out of control. I'm wondering if a factory reset would fix the issue or if i should return it.

True2TheGame said:
Hmm hearing all these replies i believe i have a defective battery. I unplugged mine today at 5:15AM and now it's 2:18PM and it's just gave me the 15% beep. I've sent about 25 texts and played some words with friends. I've got watchdog installed and no apps seem to be out of control. I'm wondering if a factory reset would fix the issue or if i should return it.
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try going to your dialer and entering *#*#INFO#*#*
Look under the battery usage and check the different items. Is anything using a significant amount? it could be a rogue app.
I will say MotoBlur has a lot running in the background. About twice as much as vanilla android.
I have turned most of this off and I do know that is helping my battery life.

Almost 30+ hours == EC01 + SuperClean 2.9.2

I again wanted to say thank you to all involved in making the Fascinate the best phone it can be.
I have instantly noticed a considerable battery life improvement using this radio.
Just thanks.
And juice defender doesn't hurt either..

You must not be using your phone at all, mine only gives my around 7 hours.

Really? Only 30 hours? My white fascinate could go for 3 days with light usage and 2 with moderate. I bet you it could last for 4 days if I didn't do anything but text or call people. Oh and don't use battery apps, they don't do crap honestly. The only thing that kills your phone is games and the screen being on. But if you use your stock Froyo task manager then you're good.

I am confused a little but mostly dissapointed in how people report usage and battery life around here. I think for the most part it is simply a result of how subjective the term "use" is defined in all it's various "states". For instance what I consider "heavy usage" might be beyond what a lot of people would consider to even be reasonably expected. On the other hand you can have another person who thinks using their phone once for a few minutes every hour is heavy usage. Some seem to be reporting standby time like it is normal usage, which depending on your definition could be true. Some people seem to be obviously "lengthening" their "epeen" for some unknown sad reason which is the part that is dissapointing.
I can say, once, I left mine on after using it all day Friday, set it on a table at home and I can't remember why but I didn't touch it again till Sunday afternoon. It literally only used a few percent battery life. This is abnormal usage to me. This might be "normal" for some people.
Some people like myself are device addicts. I don't go anywhere without my phone. I rarely make calls on it. I rarely use my powerful desktop for any casual pc use like web surfing, IRC, listening to music, personal gmail and work email via exchange. I do all of that on my phone. My day consists of picking up the phone fully charged at 7:30am, at work by 7:45, and then once in my cube the headphones get plugged in and between voodoo sound and power amp I get pretty lost in the tunes. All the while I am getting constant email delivery notices. I probably look something up on my phone a few times a day. It is on wifi all day at work and home.
Once home I stay on it after dinner....once the kids are away, the wife and I sit in the living room and she on her laptop and me on my phone we kinda watch shows together while surfing or whatever. So hours of constant use in the evening. My screen is on a lot because I don't go long without doing something on it.
I have recently been getting around 14-18 hours if I run it to dead on the 2.9.2 + latest Voodoo sound enabled kernel floating around but was on eb01 radio. I flashed ec01 radio tonight hopefully to see better battery life but there's no way in hell I would be expecting anything close to 30 hours or days!? Not unless I laid my phone down and walked away for a few days, then sure. I consider myself to be a fairly heavy user.
Sent from my SCH-I500 using XDA Premium App

In my case Syn Ack is right about the screen. This past weekend I gave my phone a real test. I put EC01 on, got rid of most of the bloat and left the phone in that state. Didn't install any extra apps that would run in the background. Only had 1 home screen with nothing on it but a black wallpaper. The phone looks boring as ****. lol
From what I saw, the only things eating battery was having the screen on, a small bit of time with no signal, followed by android system and any other apps I may have used which didn't make up much compared to the screen.
I love the screen, but it's like a high maintenance girlfriend. Its sucking the life outta this phone.
Sent from my SCH-I500 using XDA App

DeezNotes said:
I love the screen, but it's like a high maintenance girlfriend. Its sucking the life outta this phone.
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Click to collapse
That's pretty much par for the course. The screen is always the biggest battery drain in any phone out there, out of any piece of hardware in any phone. Trying to keep the screen's brightness as low as possible, and it off whenever you don't need it on, are probably the best things you can do to improve your battery life (followed by deleting crappy widgets like the Facebook one that keep your network up constantly).
Then again, I set my screen to have a 2 minute timeout, because the 15 or so second default way too often caused the screen to turn off on me while I was reading something and I generally use the power button to turn it off when I'm done. I figure, as long as I can make it till night, that's good enough for this phone 95% of the time (the other 5%, I can generally plan ahead).

I honestly don't see poor battery life as in issue for this phone.
Mine will last for 3 days of extremely light usage, 2 days with light-ish usage, and if I hammer on it and play some games, 14 hours or so, it'll beep at me.
IMO, this is not an issue. I have seen the battery life increase with the latest updates (OC Kernel from imnutz, SFC2.9.2, EC01 radio) - and I was happy before.
I also don;t think that you can really count on what other people see as anything but a hopeful ballpark figure. We all know that each of the phones HW is a little different. We all know that our setups vary greatly. We all know that we use the phone differently.
So, hoping that something will be a be all, end all guide as to how long your phone will stay powered depends on so many variables that you have to tweak it for your use.
FWIW, I run live wallpaper, 7 screens and use OC steps up to 1400 and I am very pleased, dare I say impressed with the life I get out of the phone. I also keep a spare battery fully charged - I guess this helps me care less and just ooh and ahh when it lasts more than a day.

Mine gets 150 hours...... Turned off.
Sent from my SCH-I500 using XDA App

With the phone sleeping (screen off), my battery drops at MOST 2% per hour. I don't use but a couple of widgets, Facebook and weather. My sync time for Facebook is 1 hour and weather is 2 hours.
For me, when I was referring to my 2-3 days of battery life:
Light usage (3 days): a few phone calls a day, < 25 texts, no internet, no market, no games, no battery control apps except using Task Manager wisely.
Moderate usage (2 days): regular phone calls, < 50 texts, some internet, maybe a game or 2 but not for long, Task manager.
Heavy usage (1.5 days): regular phone calls, texting all the time, heavy internet, games, rom flashing, playing music a bunch.
Super ridiculously heavy (1 day): phone/text/internet/games/music, all nonstop heavy usage.
Super light (3+): Data (3G) off, a couple calls, light texting, using Task manager wisely. It can happen...
One thing I have come to find out is that not only your screen is the number 1 factor but if you live in an area that phases your phone in and out of 3G very often, your phone could easily drain 10% per hour. The IT building here on my campus has god awful reception and it drains at 10% per hour but when I go home I only see 1-2% not doing anything at all. Wifi is a battery drainer too.
There were a few nights where I remember hitting task manager and clearing out every single task and everything possible running, turning off data, and turning the screen off and the phone did not even lose 1% of battery over 9 hours. Perfect reception.
So if you see terrible battery, try using your screen a little less, or turn down the brightness. Try a *228 for your radio towers update. Cell standby can you get hard if you're in bad reception.
The best thing you could do to save your battery is kill all of your tasks, turn off data, turn your screen off, and change your sync intervals to 1hour+.

i'm on ec01 for about 12 hours now, sFc, in nemesis OTB kernal underclocked using volt settings gives me about a 8 hours with the amount of usage I put it through. Serious wifi, network usage, processor spiking and multi-tasking. Overall what one would expect from android.

jpaulwaite said:
i'm on ec01 for about 12 hours now, sFc, in nemesis OTB kernal underclocked using volt settings gives me about a 8 hours with the amount of usage I put it through. Serious wifi, network usage, processor spiking and multi-tasking. Overall what one would expect from android.
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Heavy user, this seems about right. Your battery goes from 100% to what % before you recharge?

[DISCUSS] Battery Life.

Most threads about battery are quite outdated, so I decided to start a new one.
And so recently my battery is starting to get less muscular.. My Xperia Play is 4 and a half months old, and one hour of consistent 3G usage can drop the battery down from 65% to 24%. I'm not very sure whether that is the norm, but if it is, that's bad battery life, in my opinion.
The Android 'Battery Use' page shows that most of my battery is drained from Cell Standby and System Idle (30%).
My wireless and GPS is always off. Am on 2.3.4 rooted.
Also, Gameboid consumes battery like a beast (even more than 3G), but I guess that's due to the high processing power required for emulation..
Is there any way I can improve the battery life?

Personally I found battery life to be terrible on 2.3.4 so I downgraded to R800i_4.0.A.2.368_World. I'm running 122M-1.5Ghz with scary and BFQ, on top of that I undervolted every frequency as much as I could using incredicontrol (Id give you the values but they vary by device). I always leave wifi, bluetooth, gps and data off when not using them, turned off automatic clock updates (there was a battery draining bug with this a while ago) and I run at 10% brightness with autobrightness off. With this set up I lose maybe 3-5% per night, so for around 6-8hrs in standby while I sleep. Ive got similar results on both cyanogen and stock. That being said I don't have a data plan so I do save a lot by not having data on, but a 40% drop in an hour isn't normal - Ive played an N64 emu which runs the processor full speed for that long and only experienced a 15-20% drop.

imho, the best battery life i've experienced is on 2.3.4.. when i'm on 2.3.3 i always lost 30-40% overnight (wifi, bluetooth, 3g, etc are turned off) stock rom, locked BL..

According to some folks, if you're charging your phone and let it stay plugged in for a while after it hits 100% that screws with the battery life.

On 2.3.4 rooted with all the facebook, timescape and other bloat removed my battery is pretty good. Wifi is on 247 and it reverts to hspda when out. Data syncs hourly, and i have contacts, hotmail and gmail syncing.
The other day i was sitting at 57% after 1 day 3 hours, and that included a half hour go on fpse, might have been more.

Battery life seems good to me. I get 1 day usage then charge over night. I do use my phone quite a lot for this (Tapatalk), Phandroid app, Engadget app, Joystiq app and browser. Wifi and GPS is always on.
At a guess I'm using the phone for about 1 hour a time, about 7 times a day... So like 7 hours web use, phone calls and texts, syncing is set to every hour with FiX on.
When I was on 2.3.3 I'd be lucky to get 10 hours out of the battery but 2.3.4 is awesome.
Edit. Obviously I play games too. Forgot to mention that.
Sent from my R800i using Tapatalk

BuckM said:
With this set up I lose maybe 3-5% per night, so for around 6-8hrs in standby while I sleep. Ive got similar results on both cyanogen and stock. That being said I don't have a data plan so I do save a lot by not having data on, but a 40% drop in an hour isn't normal - Ive played an N64 emu which runs the processor full speed for that long and only experienced a 15-20% drop.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Actually I get similar idle battery drain rates as you, but personally I'm not very concerned with battery drain as long as it's not so much. I'm more troubled with battery life on consistent usage, which I feel the Xperia Play (or at least mine) sucks at.
When I play Gameboid, I get the same fast battery drop too - 40-50% in one hour.
brochador said:
imho, the best battery life i've experienced is on 2.3.4.. when i'm on 2.3.3 i always lost 30-40% overnight (wifi, bluetooth, 3g, etc are turned off) stock rom, locked BL..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Woah, 30-40% is insane! Glad that it's fixed for you.
Erikwithafro said:
According to some folks, if you're charging your phone and let it stay plugged in for a while after it hits 100% that screws with the battery life.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yep, I read that from a lot of places too. I admit I used to do that (and have since stopped doing that), but sometimes I can't help it if I forgot to charge at night before I sleep (and have to charge overnight to ensure I have battery the next day).
gbesta said:
On 2.3.4 rooted with all the facebook, timescape and other bloat removed my battery is pretty good. Wifi is on 247 and it reverts to hspda when out. Data syncs hourly, and i have contacts, hotmail and gmail syncing.
The other day i was sitting at 57% after 1 day 3 hours, and that included a half hour go on fpse, might have been more.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I envy your battery life One thing, if you remove Facebook, will your Facebook contacts picture sync go away too?
And did you remove the bloat stuff by deleting them from /system/app?
kupo5131 said:
Battery life seems good to me. I get 1 day usage then charge over night. I do use my phone quite a lot for this (Tapatalk), Phandroid app, Engadget app, Joystiq app and browser. Wifi and GPS is always on.
At a guess I'm using the phone for about 1 hour a time, about 7 times a day... So like 7 hours web use, phone calls and texts, syncing is set to every hour with FiX on.
When I was on 2.3.3 I'd be lucky to get 10 hours out of the battery but 2.3.4 is awesome.
Edit. Obviously I play games too. Forgot to mention that.
Sent from my R800i using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sigh, I could never get such good battery life..

All the more reason to undervolt, in standby undervolting doesn't have much of an effect on the phone since the processor is either in deep sleep or running at its lowest speed. Also using a governer like scary or smartass helps keep your device running at a lower frequency when possible. Like I said 2.3.4 was terrible for me, 10% drain overnight or more, but apparently YMMV with this. That being said 40-50% drain in an hour is crazy no matter what you're doing on the phone, like I said running N64oid for an hour drops me 15-20% keeping in mind this is at 1.5GHz with sound and the backlight constantly on. If all else fails you can always wipe everything and start fresh, carrying over the same settings while jumping around firmware can lead to some undesirable results. Anyway good luck and keep us posted

The facebook sync option doesn't appear on my anymore, although it used to. To clean it up all i did was :
Purchase Titanium Bakup
Freeze the things I wanted to remove and test rebooting, only freezing a few more each time
Backed up every app
Slowly uninstalled each one with a reboot every couple of apps
Enjoyed my faster phone with better battery life
I use the gmail sync and life.contacts for contact pics

I get amazing battery life on 2.3.4.
In stand-by I lose 1% every 3'rd hours. It's very good in use too. Yesterday I had my day with heaviest use so far and texted like crazy the whole day and a lot of phone calls. Some surfing, gaming and updating of apps between that. Basically the phone was frequently used the whole day with short periods of stand-by in between. At night when I went to bed the battery was at 40%.
Earlier this week I used it minimally for 2 days. The battery dropped 10% for each of those days. But that was very minimal use.
So in short. I have not experiences better battery life on any other Android phone. What takes the most power is emulating. It can suck up like 20% in an hour depending on which emulator I use.

I got my Play at the beginning of the week and with quite intensive use, without WiFi or 3g, I scraped an 8am to 6pmish day on the battery. Admittedly with a fair bit of gaming.
However, that was only waiting for my 2600mAh battery to arrive and now I'm using it, I would recommend it for the bulk. You don't notice it after half an hour or so and I have no issues with gaming on the go whereas I always thought it may die on the stock.

mine drops 4 - 5% /hour..... much faster than b4.... dn no w is goin on w/ ma PLAY.....

I found that since updating to 2.3.4 my battery drains quicker. Usually charge overnight and battery would be around 15% bedtime. (7am - 11pm approximately)
Now I'm finding that by 6pm I'm having to charge it and that's without gaming
brought to you by the XDA app on my badass Android toy

Three times in my first week and a half of ownership I awoke to find it completely dead despite fully charging it or nearly fully charging it before bed. I usually sleep with my phone next to my head so that I can ensure that the alarm will wake me up. That and the lack of a timer function really irk me about this phone. I really hate having to create and save an alarm when I know I only have 45 minutes or 2 hours to sleep (I work a grave shift and have inconsistent sleep schedules during the day). It adds insult to injury when something changes that lets me get another 5, 10, 20 minutes or so and I can't easily add it. On top of that, I have to go back and delete all the alarms I made throughout the day!

Erikwithafro said:
According to some folks, if you're charging your phone and let it stay plugged in for a while after it hits 100% that screws with the battery life.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thats crap. Infact you should leave your phone plugged in a good 30/45 mins after it says fully charged if you want a full charge

AndroHero said:
Thats crap. Infact you should leave your phone plugged in a good 30/45 mins after it says fully charged if you want a full charge
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Isn't it also beneficial to Li-ion's health to keep them at max charge whenever possible?...

markcyst said:
Isn't it also beneficial to Li-ion's health to keep them at max charge whenever possible?...
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Click to collapse
Not at true max but at what the battery controller considers max. True maximum will drastically decrease the total cycles just like true minimum only to gain longer cycles in the short-term. When you store a battery it's best to stop at 75-80% because it will lose stored energy slower and not spend nearly as much time near 100%, which is still a trade-off between long cycles and more cycles.

What do you guys think to this?
ebay.co.uk/itm/GOLD-2430MAH-BATTERY-SONY-ERICSSON-XPERIA-PLAY-/190598210396?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_3&hash=item2c6089e35c
(Please add the WWW)
Its the same size as the standard stock battery so there's no extra bulk... But gives an extra 930mah?
To be honest, I am somewhat tempted... However the question is, will it explode in my pocket and result in me losing half my leg? It's quite a big risk to take! There also might be a voltage difference, however I cannot see anything on that.
Im currently on 1.6Ghz, undervolted. And I just played Order and Chaos for 35 minutes and went from 86% to 63% - I've had bad luck in the past regarding phone batteries, I remember replacing my G1 battery around 7 times, but at these rates my Play would be dead after around 3 hours or less of gaming.

how do you update to 2.3.4 it wont show me =[ please someone answer me :/

Spizzy01 said:
What do you guys think to this?
ebay.co.uk/itm/GOLD-2430MAH-BATTERY-SONY-ERICSSON-XPERIA-PLAY-/190598210396?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_3&hash=item2c6089e35c
(Please add the WWW)
Its the same size as the standard stock battery so there's no extra bulk... But gives an extra 930mah?
To be honest, I am somewhat tempted... However the question is, will it explode in my pocket and result in me losing half my leg? It's quite a big risk to take! There also might be a voltage difference, however I cannot see anything on that.
Im currently on 1.6Ghz, undervolted. And I just played Order and Chaos for 35 minutes and went from 86% to 63% - I've had bad luck in the past regarding phone batteries, I remember replacing my G1 battery around 7 times, but at these rates my Play would be dead after around 3 hours or less of gaming.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You have to expect that with any phone playing an online game. Wifi/screen/GPU/CPU are going at full wack at the same time. What dya expect?