Database Users

Android Battery Test Reveals Droid X Lasts Longest, AMOLED Handsets Trail

I think, for internet reading this is a good test and producing the results we might expect, but for more general purposes this test is flawed. http://blog.laptopmag.com/android-b...d-handsets-trail/comment-page-1#comment-50669
Method:
"
First, we download My Settings and Advanced Task Killer, two free apps that are useful regardless.
Then, we open My Settings, and do the following:
Turn screen brightness to 40%, and turn off auto brightness.
Turn off Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS location, cell location, and auto sync.
Deactivate screen timeout; that is, make sure the screen stays on indefinitely.
In the Web browser, we turn off Flash support and plug-ins.
We placed the phone in an area that was receiving at least 4 bars of service."
I'm not trying to overly just support the device because I have it, I think many of us knew we wouldn't have great performance when reading black text on white background. So, this only tests on LCD's strength and AMOLED's weakness. Next, the SAMOLED specifically is way to bright to be reading indoors at this % brightness, LCD maybe not quite as much so it'd be best to have like either most common setting (you'd actually need to have devices report this for something accurate, not going to happen), auto brightness would've even been better even though you have manufactures (I think) being able to have too much control over 'perceived' best practice. They removed plug-ins, something I think the Streak might struggle with next to the mighty decoding ability of the hummingbird.
Also, one important thing to note is, they didn't make note of the fact that the Galaxy phones have independent brightness control within the internet browser, perhaps this was set too high/low, I'm not sure how it plays relative to the general brightness (e.g. does it add to the setting to make it even brighter within the browser? Does it override the setting for the browser?). Them not acknowledging this setting gives me some pause, even though it could come at the cost of the battery life even more.
Last and most important, we do more than just browse the internet on our phones. We do need things like video tests, white text on black backgrounds, gaming, audio and other tests run.
In the end, this'll confirm what some users have complained about when it comes to their battery life.

Battery Life Guide

Hello everybody! The purpose of this guide is to show you some free ways to greatly increase your battery life on the Droid X. First this guide assumes you have the Gingerbread kernel, root access, and are comfortable with ClockworkMod Recovery. If you have not installed a few roms, SBF’ed, or backed up your phone, learn how to and practice it a few times. I am not responsible if you fubar and have to SBF your phone. This guide is specifically written for the Droid X, but since the Droid 2 uses the same innards, you can probably use this guide interchangeably with that phone. Not all the steps in this guide only apply to the Droid X so I will say something on the steps that can be used on other Android devices.
First I'm going to start with basic things you do not want to do if you plan on saving battery. (All Devices)
Battery Saver Apps: Battery saving apps like Juice Defender are bad ideas. As I will explain later, many apps expect an always on data connection and prevent your processor from going into deep sleep when they are waiting for that data connection to come back on. Not to mention a battery saver is just another app and service that is running in the background potentially using battery.
Wipe Battery Stats: A Google developer has confirmed that the batterystats.bin does not hold battery calibration information. It holds information to compute battery usage information. The same information you see under “Battery Usage” in settings. Wiping this file just wastes your time.
Hungry Apps: Apps that use excessive notifications keep the processor from going into deep sleep. Facebook is the number 1 culprit here. Go into the app settings and turn of notifications. Use your back button to exit apps when you are done.
Automatic Backlight: On the Droid X, the Automatic Brightness setting is useless. Minimum brightness is too high by default. Either turn it off and set brightness manually or take the step I did that comes up later in this guide.
Wifi: Wifi when you are in range of a router uses less power than your 3G connection and is faster anyways. Wifi when you are not in the range of a router is a battery killer and should be avoided. Use your notification toggles if you have them. Get a widget if you don’t.
GPS: GPS should be turned off at all times unless you are actively using it. Nobody cares where you were when you posted on Facebook.
App killers: App Killers are good for hunting down and killing an app once in a while but are usually pointless. Android automatically loads apps into free memory for quicker starts. Why have your app killer wake up the phone from its idle, kill all of your apps to free up memory, and then have Android automatically reload most of those apps back into memory?
Bluetooth: Bluetooth headsets are best left in the car where you have your phone on a charger. If you need to use one off the charger, don’t forget to turn off your Bluetooth when you are done.
Charging: Charge as often as possible. Follow the same battery saving strategies you usually do when your phone is off the charger. It makes your phone charge faster. Keep in mind the mA rating on the charger. The stock one is 850mA. Do not exceed this rating. USB is ~500mA depending on other devices attached to the computer. The higher the rating, the faster the charge. Do not let the battery get very hot. Do not let your battery level drop below 10 very often. Low charge levels on Li-Ion batteries can damage them. Alternately, do not reputedly plug and unplug your phone once your battery shows 100. Android charges to 100 and lets it use up battery for a few percentages before it starts charging again. This is to prevent overcharging and damaging your battery. If you plug and unplug it repeatedly, it tricks Android into charging it more and more. Keep in mind that li-ion batteries lose capacity over time whether you use them or not. Replace them when they are no longer keeping you happy.
Step 1. Selecting a Rom
Liberty 3 forum topic: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1368049
Really for the purpose of this guide the only rom worth picking is Liberty 3. This rom is based on Motorola code which is known for good battery life and has init.d support baked in. It also has the power toggles in the notification bar and has pretty good customization. The 2nd-init roms that have init.d will work too but have issues with battery life. From this point forward I am going to assume you are going to be using Liberty 3 but the steps should work the same for other roms as long as there is init.d support.
Step 2. Installing the Rom
Use CWM to install the rom like you normally would. Start up and follow the usual setup wizard. Once you are able to get to settings, click on Liberty Settings, then Performance, then Start-up Tweaks, then uncheck everything except "Enable start-up tweaks." These settings interfere with the next step and are going to be duplicated by the next step.
Step 3. Install jakebitesmod
Jakebitesmod forum topic: http://rootzwiki.com/topic/3435-mods-jakebitesmods-v18-for-d2-ota-gb-kernel-all-roms-mods/ (Please consider donating to this developer as this script helps a lot of people.)
Jakebitesmod has some good scripts to optimize many things in Android. Pretty much anything that speeds up Android can have a small improvement on your battery life. We are specifically going to use his script to under volt the processor and set the governor at boot without using an app. Copy the linked file to your SD card and boot into CWM again to flash this. Restart your phone like normal.
Step 4. Configure jakebitesmod
Open Terminal Emulator and type “su”. This should prompt Superuser for root permission. Allow the permissions and move on. Type “modcentral”. This should bring up a little text menu of things to do. The menu option we are gonna be looking for is “1”. Read the safety issues and if you want to move forward press “Y”. From here we are going to select “1”. This option will leave you with the stock processor speeds but change the voltages on the processor to lower settings. This is generally safe because lower voltages should only cause problems with freezing and crashing, but should not physically be harmful to the processor. Voltage also makes much more of a difference on power than clock speed so this should save us a good chunk of battery. Push “Y” to continue and set the voltages and speeds at boot. Press enter a couple times and it should tell you it succeeded. Yay. From here we want to go to menu option “3”. Governors control when the processor jumps up or down in speed based on some magic formula that takes into account how much work your processor is expected to be doing. Personally I agree with jakebites and I chose interactiveX. It jumps up in speed fast enough not to appear like the phone is laggy and drops back down fast enough to save battery. It also automatically drops down to the lowest speed while the screen is off. After you have made your choice push “Y” and enter a few more times. Once we are back to a menu we can just hit the back button and exit the Terminal Emulator.
Step 4. Adjusting the Backlighting (All Devices)
The Droid X’s backlight settings is a real pain. The lowest brightness setting it will dip down to is 20. This is way too bright for darkness. You know what I mean if you have browsed at night in bed. Luckily there is an app for that. Download “Custom Auto Brightness” from the Market and install it. It ends up being called LogGraph in the app drawer for some odd reason. Open this and hit you menu key and then select “Preferences”. Select calibrate sensor and follow the directions on the screen. Then go to check brightness range and follow the directions on the screen. Then back out to the main screen and make sure “Demonstrate….” is checked. Push the left “Select sensor reading” and observe the line on the graph move. These are the levels of light the ambient light sensor are going to report at. So say you have the sensor reading slider set to 10. You move the bottom slider to a value of 2. This means that your backlight will be at its lowest level when your sensor says the light in the room is at a level of 10. You can adjust these to what you prefer, but for the best battery savings turn your readings at 1 and 10 to a value of 2. This will keep your backlight nice and low while you are in a dark room but still let your backlight jump up while you are outside. Once these are set head back into the preferences and make sure that all of the checks are enabled except “Foreground mode” and “Bypass hysteresis”. Once that is done hit the back button until you close the app and then turn your screen off and on. If you brightness is way lower than it was before you are golden. If not double check the guide.
Step 5. Install Your Normal Apps (All Devices)
The next steps require your normal apps to be installed and signed into those apps like normal.
Step 6. Set Your Sync Times (All Devices)
Install the app “AutoSync Account Activator” from the Market. Open and accept the agreement. Now you should see some apps listed. I get “Google” and “Facebook” but yours may vary depending on what you have installed. The process should be similar for each app. First off, click on “Google”. The first page called “Connections” lists you connections. Click on connections you would like your account to be able to sync on. Cellular is an obvious one but really you should have your wifi on and have it activated in this while you are home. The next screen, “Periodic Sync”, controls how often your apps sync. Unless you use your Google Calendar often, set that to “1 day”. Contacts should also be “1 day”. Gmail should be set accordingly to how often you care about your email. Others may show up. Set them to according to your judgment. Just keep in mind the more often you sync, the more battery you will use. If you do not use the service at all you can select “No period”. If you have one set to no period you should also set it in the next page to “Always off”. All of the rest should be set to auto.
Step 7. Observing What You Apps Are Doing and What to Do About It (All Devices)
This step is subdivided for the benefit of your eyes.
XDA Edition BetterBatteryStats forum topic: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1179809 (The link is at very bottom of 2nd post. Please purchase from the developer on Market if you use this more than a few times.)
A. This final step will ultimately probably figure out why you were getting bad battery. Android’s power management relies on what are called “wake locks”. Wake locks are things apps can create to tell Android’s power management to prevent the phone from going into deep sleep. Deep sleep is a state your processer goes into to basically shut itself off. A good example of a wake lock is when you are playing an mp3 and your screen is off. Normally when your screen is off your device wants to get into deep sleep asap. The audio service creates a wake lock to prevent your processor from entering deep sleep, because this would stop the mp3 playback. Most of the naughty apps out there use wake locks to keep data connections alive and use them to keep updating and keep notifications going. They tend not to give up that wake lock when they should and keep your phone from going to sleep. Apps that shut off your data connection, like Juice Defender, will cause even good behaving apps to freak out and keep their wake locks active while they wait for the data connection.
B. To look for these wake lock hogs we have a couple apps to get. The first one is from the link. It’s the XDA Edition of BetterBatteryStats. The second is CPU Spy from the Market. To use BetterBatteryStats just dump it on your sd card, use a file explorer to open it, enable Unknown Sources, and install it. Then open it, plug in your phone, unplug your phone, and use it like normal for a few hours. When you are ready, open the app, click on the first drop down, and select “Partial Wakelock”. Make sure the second drop down says “Since Unplugged”. Whatever apps are listed at the top are the apps that are keeping your phone from sleeping. My top 3 are DownloadManager (I was using Market and turned off my screen.), PowerAMP scan, and the PowerAMP service, but only the DownloadManager used any significant time. CPU Spy can be used to see how often your processor is going into deep sleep. Once you find your bad apps, you can look around in them and see if there are any settings in there to either turn off notifications, increase the time between updates, or anything else you may think is keeping the app busy.
C. If there is nothing there you can change, you can consider preventing it from starting. If you do not have ROM Toolbox Lite, download it. Open it and click on “Auto Start Manager”. Then scroll the screen sideways to get to the menu that says “Applications”. Click on apps and you will see two actions that we will be looking at. They are “boot completed” and “connectivity changed”. Apps like games, media players, internet radios, Facebook, etc, do not need to be started at boot and do not need to be started when connectivity has changed. Unselecting these will keep apps like Facebook from starting when you turn your phone on and when you switch from 3G to wifi.
D. If you ultimately can’t figure out why an app is keeping its wake lock for so long you may have to consider if the app is worth the lost battery life. Unfortunately there are just those apps out there that are poorly written. Consider sending an email to the developer explaining your problem and ask what you can do to fix it. If they don’t replay politely give them some poor feedback with a good explanation in the Market. They may look into the problem and correct it.
In Closing...
Thanks to everyone for reading, or at least skimming, my guide. I really hope this helps and saves time for a lot of people. If there are any issues anybody runs into I’ll try to help and explain the best I can. I apologize for any mistakes, errors, or bad sentence structure. If anybody has anything to add I will definitely consider adding it as long as it is free, easy to do, and produces results. If I broke any forum rules please notify me before deleting this topic. I’ll be happy to fix the issue.
About wake locks: http://forum.xda-developers.com/wiki/Wakelocks
Li-Ion batteries: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-ion_battery#Battery_charging_procedure
Batterystats.bin information: http://www.androidcentral.com/wiping-battery-stats-doesnt-improve-battery-life-says-google-engineer
(Edit 1: Added instructions to delete default init.d scripts installed with Liberty. They seem to conflict with jakebitesmod's voltage settings. They didn't want to stick through reboots. All of the script's functions are duplicated by jakebitesmod anyways.)
(Edit 2: Turns out that deleting the init.d scripts isn't needed. Instructions updated.)

Really great advice. I don't even have a Droid X. I have a One X but this is still very relevant.
Thank you

Great guide. You should include CPU Governor such as BoostedASSv2. It helped me get good battery life (as so others).

Androids energy efficiency?

Uhh, I cannot post this in development as I am still a newby :-(
However:
Hello,
I came from Symbian (Nokia C7-00) and liked the phone very much. Everything worked the way it should. (I was especially interested in office functionality.)
Now I bought a Galaxy Note and I really love the hardware.
But I discovered that it uses much energy and it doesn't like to sleep as often as it could. (I already returned to Android GB, which gives a better experience, but there still is room for improvement.)
1. Sometimes even though the phone simply lies around and does nothing, the last app that I forgot to close is hindering the CPU from sleeping. Why? The is no need.
2. At night I am used to turn the phone into flight mode. However I found out that this isn't the best thing for Android. In the morning, when the email app goes to push phase, the phone leaves sleep mode and seems to excitedly wait for the flight mode to get switched off. This uses *quite* a bit of battery!
These things seem strange to me. My impression is that Android is not really optimised for cell phones. If the screen is off, there is no need for CPU time, doesn't it? There is nothing urgent to do; everything could be done slowly; no hurry.
I guess the battery could last *much* longer if this would be improved.
Greetings,
corcov

corcovo said:
Uhh, I cannot post this in development as I am still a newby :-(
However:
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Which is handy, because this thread has nothing to do with development and thus saved you from some abuse!
Regards,
Dave
Sent from my GT-N7000 using Tapatalk 2

But I already know how to click the "thanks" button

corcovo said:
But I already know how to click the "thanks" button
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Doesn't matter.
Development, if you did not create IT, then it does not belong in development. Remember that. Otherwise you will get flamed.

Android is a mobile OS, so of course it is optimised for smart phones - not ordinary cell phones. Android acts like a computer and, if you keep a computer running Crysis 2 for example, it would burn more power than a computer just playing some music off of iTunes.
In terms of improving your battery, check your brightness. You can download widgets to adjust the brightness right from the home screens. I use these to set my brightness to its lowest whilst at home (perfectly adequate for night and indoor use away from sunlight) and turn it onto automatic when I go outside. This has saved my a bunch of battery.
If you are running a stock Samsung ROM, turn on power saving mode. I always leave it on and, frankly, I have no idea as to what it actually does. I haven't noticed a performance drop in the slightest, but if it saves a bit of battery it is worth it. Also, you could try Juice Defender or some other battery saving apps which work for some people - others not.
Finally, ensure you haven't left GPS, Bluetooth or WiFi on when not needed. Try downloading CPU Spy to check your phone deep sleeps, yet mine even without it ever deep sleeping gets around 16 hours of battery life which is still the best I have ever gotten on a smart phone. Bettery Battery Stats can show you wake-locks (apps that are keeping your phone active) also.

Brad387 said:
Android is a mobile OS, so of course it is optimised for smart phones - not ordinary cell phones.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I see. Well it might be a nice feature if one could add an "now be a cell phone"-option for energy enhancement, which means: if screen if off, sleep.
c.

corcovo said:
1. Sometimes even though the phone simply lies around and does nothing, the last app that I forgot to close is hindering the CPU from sleeping. Why? The is no need.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There are some legitimate needs for keeping the CPU from sleeping for a short period of time - such as finishing a sync operation (otherwise, the radio power spent beginning the sync is wasted). Unfortunately, some poorly written applications (Facebook for example) abuse the wakelock mechanisms and hold wakelocks when it is not justified.
2. At night I am used to turn the phone into flight mode. However I found out that this isn't the best thing for Android. In the morning, when the email app goes to push phase, the phone leaves sleep mode and seems to excitedly wait for the flight mode to get switched off. This uses *quite* a bit of battery!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is not something I have ever encountered myself. "push" relies on the server to trigger something - in airplane mode, this trigger can't happen.
These things seem strange to me. My impression is that Android is not really optimised for cell phones. If the screen is off, there is no need for CPU time, doesn't it? There is nothing urgent to do; everything could be done slowly; no hurry.
I guess the battery could last *much* longer if this would be improved.
Greetings,
corcov
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Android is well optimized for cell phones - However, it assumes that third-party applications follow Google's recommendations for power management. Unfortunately, many of them do not. The number of IM applications which choose to use their own proprietary and poorly optimized network protocols (such as Skype, it's atrocious) as opposed to Google C2DM (optimized and efficient) is astonishing.
An interesting note was that I believe much of the focus at Google I/O was on reminding app developers that they need to play nice with the system and other apps.
There are some cases where there are device-specific nonoptimalities. Compared to most Nexus devices, Exynos devices have an absurdly long time to resume from wake (1000 milliseconds), and during that resume cycle CPU frequency is locked to 800 MHz and cpuidle is disabled. This is one of the #1 causes of power drain on our device. This is also exclusively a Samsung kernel/hardware architecture problem that does not affect the Nexus S (similar CPU, but completely different modem interface) or the Galaxy Nexus (different CPU/modem interface).
In the case of our device, the modem is hung off of the CPU on a USB bus - this makes for very long resume times.
Here are obvious reasons the CPU should occasionally turn on when the screen is off:
1) MP3 playback in the background
2) Handling of background syncs - e.g. when an email or Google Talk IM comes in, wake the CPU, handle it, and pop a notification sound, then go back to sleep. Normally, this means the CPU sleeps while waiting for an interrupt from the WLAN chipset or the cellular radio. Unfortunately, some apps drive incoming data to the device far too frequently. (See my above rant about Skype's network protocols being crap compared to Google's C2DM protocol.)
3) Handling of scheduled wakeups (alarms, calendar events, etc) - these are rare and almost never consume power
Most power drain is from item 2, with third-party apps frequently behaving extremely poorly compared to Google's own application suite and sync protocols.

Now this an extensive answer which is very informative and helpful for me since insights are always soothing. Love it. Thanks!

not much to add after Entropy, but if you feel the need to get some control over battery usage you could try betterbatterystats app (and the thread) to identify battery eaters, besides that, there are few apps to check what is going on with your system when it sleeps:
- CPU Spy to show cpu states time
- Autorun Manager or Autostarts to disable triggers causing apps like FB to run without reason (those which you will find with betterbatterystats)
- Battery Monitor Widget, to check battery current consumption (mA) - this app is generally not recommended, because Note's hardware does not report the actual current, so the readings are highly estimated and because when poorly configured it can drain your battery faster, BUT otoh with refresh rate set at 5 minutes or more, it can give you some approximate orientation on how much battery you lose (better than counting %/hour by yourself) at negligible battery usage
- also, if you feel the need to disable net and sync during night, you could automate it using "lama", which is free, and in my experience does not eat much battery by itself
- and last but not least, avoid taskillers, those apps may have adverse effect, i.e. self restarting apps (by the triggers mentioned above), will get killed then restarted and so on and so on, leading to much higher battery drain

[Q] Android location services and GPS

Hi guys, I know that some people say to disable location services and/or GPS because they drain the battery (under Android system in battery usage). I just want to clarify. I came from an iPhone, and on the iPhone I leave location and GPS on, but as long as the app is closed, the GPS will NOT run (just that its functionality remain on) so there is no drain.
Is this the same on Android? Is it okay to leave them on but not run any location-based apps?

Bump...

It'll constantly bounce the GPS signal AFAIK, so will use it up. buuuut, on 4.4.2, you can edit your location preferences GPS accuracy etc and it tells you battery use on it. However I believe it's on perma unless you disable it totally

I wouldn't be so sure. I have GPS, WIFI, BT and all other crap 24/7 and I loose about 3% charge over about 7hrs sleep, personally I don't think it's worth bothering or lifting my finger to shut it off. Also when I drive I see my correct location on the map, after screen goes off and I need to check again few min later, the map shows my last location and it takes few seconds to update to new one. If it was working with screen off it should have been updated right away, no? At least it's working in some low power mode. I think what really kills the battery is all those push services like e-mail etc, especially when not set properly, but the best way is to test yourself.

fterh said:
Hi guys, I know that some people say to disable location services and/or GPS because they drain the battery (under Android system in battery usage). I just want to clarify. I came from an iPhone, and on the iPhone I leave location and GPS on, but as long as the app is closed, the GPS will NOT run (just that its functionality remain on) so there is no drain.
Is this the same on Android? Is it okay to leave them on but not run any location-based apps?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Technically 100% the same.
However for practical reasons things are not quite the same - as long as you have many, many apps and your data (WiFi and/or Mobile) active certain apps will try to connect from time-to-time, and some will try to get a location. Unfortunately Google Services is one of those, and an older version of that was generating a really huge amount of power consumption. The problem is reported to be a lot better now but I can not confirm since I am anyway keeping my data connections OFF for most of the time when I am not really using those.

xclub_101 said:
Technically 100% the same.
However for practical reasons things are not quite the same - as long as you have many, many apps and your data (WiFi and/or Mobile) active certain apps will try to connect from time-to-time, and some will try to get a location. Unfortunately Google Services is one of those, and an older version of that was generating a really huge amount of power consumption. The problem is reported to be a lot better now but I can not confirm since I am anyway keeping my data connections OFF for most of the time when I am not really using those.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I guess this is one of the few things that iOS is better than Android at - managing how apps run. I use Greenify to freeze inactive apps, but the limitation is that I will not receive push notifications. On iOS apps are frozen yet push notifications are functional (that's ironically the downside of iOS too - no true multitasking). I don't disable my data connections because I want my push notifications, but I do turn off GPS. :/

fterh said:
I guess this is one of the few things that iOS is better than Android at - managing how apps run.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, when coming from a situation when there was absolutely no multitasking at all (and that was successfully sold as a "feature" for quite some time) I can really see that being easier
fterh said:
I use Greenify to freeze inactive apps, but the limitation is that I will not receive push notifications.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think the latest Greenify PRO version has something to improve that too. But I will have to test a lot more to see the real limits of that.

[Solved]Samsung Galaxy S5 battery drain so instantly!

Battery Saving Tips
1. Keeping mobile data (i.e., 4G or 3G) or wifi on all of the time uses battery. Ask yourself if you really need to be notified in real time about every new email, Facebook post, or tweet. If it isn't that important, then keep mobile data and wifi off until you really need it. Although most devices make it easy to toggle wifi off and on, it's a little more inconvenient to toggle mobile data with the stock controls. I like Power Toggles, which is very customizable and easy to use; another popular choice is Widgetsoid.
2. The biggest power drain is usually from the screen. The longer it's on and the brighter it is, the faster your battery drains. Adjust your screen timeout so that it turns off after 30-60 seconds of idle. Turn the brightness down to 50% or less, which is usually more than enough for indoor lighting. Automatic brightness may or may not help save battery--some think that constant sensing and screen adjustment may actually contribute to battery use.
3. Many apps (e.g., Facebook) by default will try to refresh their data on the web at certain intervals. In order to do so, they have to partially wake the device up from sleep, then try to access the web, and then refresh data, all of which uses battery. If you don't need realtime updates, you can typically change to manual refresh in the app's Settings, which prevents the app from waking up the device. For Facebook, all you need to do when you open the app is just swipe down, and your newsfeed will manually refresh to what's current.
4. Google Currents is notorious for being a memory and battery hog. Many people have reported that battery life improved significantly after changing its refresh setting to manual and/or disabling Google Currents completely. (Update 7/2014: Google Currents has since been replaced by Google Play Newsstand, which manages memory much more efficiently, without the same battery drain.)
5. Along the same lines, consider turning off the device's Background Sync. You can find the switch to turn it on or off under Settings/Accounts/Google, but it's easier to use the stock Power Control toggle or the better Power Toggles or Widgetsoid apps. Turning off Background Sync means the device is spending less time and energy syncing your Google account. If Background Sync is off, you can always manually refresh any of the Google apps within their respective menus.
6. Some apps partially wake a device up from sleep (called a "wake lock") numerous times a day to do things like trying to check the web for data updates as well as reporting location data. Install an app to detect wake locks like Wake Lock Detector. Let it run for the better part of a day, then open it and find out what apps are responsible for the most wake locks. (Update 7/2014: KitKat no longer allows apps like this to report wakelocks unless your rooted.)
7. #6 is how I discovered that Google Maps was burning up a fair amount of battery due to its Location Reporting (previously for Latitude, now used for Google+). If Location Reporting is turned on, then Maps causes very frequent wake locks to check location and report it. I don't think Latitude was that popular--I certainly didn't use it, because I don't really want other people to know exactly where I am, so I turn off Location Reporting by opening Maps, tapping Settings/Google Location Settings, and turning off Location Reporting. Note that this does not affect the ability of your apps to use your location to refine searches, for example.
8. Widgets are definitely a cool feature that makes Android unique, but some of them also contribute to battery drain--specifically the ones that need to access the web to update their information (think weather widgets). Review your widget use and remove the ones you really don't use.
9. Live wallpapers, another feature that distinguishes Android, can also use up power like crazy--typically the ones that are very graphics/animation intensive, or the ones that also access the web for information like weather. Use static wallpapers instead, but if they're too boring.
10. Vibrate uses a lot of power. Do you really need your phone to ring and vibrate at the same time? Do you really need the haptic feedback when you're typing (especially if you're using Swype-style gesture typing)? Turn off vibrate.
11. GPS is another big power-sucker. For most location-based apps, using Google Location Services (based on the wifi hotspot's MAC address or by triangulating your nearest cell towers) is enough, since it generally locates you accurately within about 100 meters. Use GPS only if you need a more precise location, like if you're driving and using Navigation. Otherwise, turn off GPS by changing the setting to "Battery Saving."
12. You never know what kinds of processes the bloatware on your device might be responsible for, but they might be contributing to battery use as well. Go to Settings/Apps/All Apps, go through the list, and disable any bloatware apps that you don't need. Be cautious that you don't disable an important system app--if you aren't sure, just post a question in one of the AC Forums, and someone is bound to know.
13. Understand how Android utilizes RAM, and resist the urge to use task killers. To understand how things work, read this article by the esteemed Jerry Hildenbrand here, as well as this guide by Ambassador extraordinaire Golfdriver97. Apps that you kill manually will often restart on their own, which in itself takes a little bit of CPU and battery power--so if it's happening hundreds of times a day, it can become significant. The main reason to use a task killer is if there is some runaway process that you know is bogging the system down and won't shut down on its own. It might still restart on its own--if the cycle keeps happening, it's probably a problem with the app, which should be uninstalled or disabled.
14. Poor cell reception kills battery, because the radio is working overtime to try to establish the connection. If you know you're going to be in an area of poor reception for a while, consider turning on Airplane Mode to temporarily shut off your cell radio. You can get some idea of how much time you're spending in an area of poor signal by going to Settings/Battery, tapping Cell Standby (if it's there), and seeing if it says how much time without signal there was.
15. If none of the above tips are helping, then try wiping the cache partition, which is the portion of memory where Android stores a lot of temporary data. It's a little different from clearing the cache of individual apps, because the cache partition also stores a lot of temporary data used by the system. You need to access your device's recovery menu in order to wipe the cache partition, and this process varies with the device, so the best way to learn how to do it is to do a web search for "wipe cache partition [your device name]."

Not really a fan of threads like this, basically they say turn the cool features of your phone off to save it's battery? Yes I still read them in case someone comes up with something interesting or innovative but generally all the same don't use some of the best features of your phone.
We're not iPhone users buy spare battery.
Sent from my SM-G900F using XDA Free mobile app

Try a custom kernel

So is there a fix for battery drain? i keep reading all these threads about basically turning off everything no your phone. my problem is i used to have everything on my phone on and still was a good 50% battery life left at the end of the day. this was with heavy use as well. a lot internet surfing, youtube, gaming, location was turned on. I was loving my battery life. Now, seemingly over night my battery is horrible. i cannot make it to the end of the day with almost no use, i now have to charge it half way through the day to get it to last me until 9 oclock or so. my battery is now at 70-80% after a couple hours with absolutely no use. any idea or fix for what has caused this sudden drain of my battery?

Personally I use apps that close apps that automatically (autorun pro is my favourite) start block ad's etc I get a good days usage from mine.
It's a compromise but I carry a spare battery as well
Sent from my SM-G900F using XDA Free mobile app

So I found out my issue was my email app. I cleared the data on it and now I'm back to having a 50% battery left at the end of a day with heavy use.
---------- Post added at 08:36 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:28 PM ----------
So I found out my issue was my email app. I cleared the data on it and now I'm back to having a 50% battery left at the end of a day with heavy use.

Turning off all features that make a phone "smart" is like buying a luxury Mercedes and ignore all those functions and use it as if it's a cheap Chinese car! If I want to use my phone just for SMS and Call why not buy a Nokia 1100 and buy a tablet to check my emails, viber and all other apps!
I bought a Galaxy S5 to utilize those functions. Anyway, previously my phone used to drain its battery in 6 hours! by adjusting my setting to the following I could increase the battery life to 14 hours! (I know it is still low but way better than 6 hours!)
1. Decrease the BRIGHTNESS as low as possible. For casual use we do not need a bright screen! whenever you wanna check an important photo you may increase the brightness temporary. (only by this you can have extra 2 hours or more)
2. Turn off unnecessary syncs, I do not need to have my contacts synced with 10 servers! Allow your phone to sync them with only one account ( I did it for Google only and turned off Samsung acc. dropbox, ChatOn and ...)
3. Do not add so many email accounts to your phone! Just add those you use frequently ( I have 5 emails and only 2 of them are vital for me!)
4. Set your location to use wifi only, and turn your GPS on only when you want to have a turn-by-turn navigation ( built in GPS can drain you battery in less than 1 hour!)
5. Turn off Push notifications for Games. ( you do not miss anything if you attend to your games 1 hour late!)
6. Uninstall those communication apps that are not necessary, you do not need to have BBM, Viber, Line, Whatsapp, Telegram, Hulu, Wechat and ... Keep those that you use frequently (In my case I kept Viber and Whatsapp only)
7. Uninstall any Anti-virus app! The likelihood of getting malware or virus if you install apps from Google Store is almost zero, so you only allocate some RAM to an useless app for doing nothing! If you wanna have any I recommend "360 Security" as I learned it uses only 6 mb of RAM and you can turn off real time protection.
By doing the above things I could get 8 hours extra from my phone!

It also a good idea to check which apps 'Autorun' when your phone restarts. SD Maid (maybe PRO version) has an AppControl option that lets you toggle autorun on or off.