Normal Battery Drain?

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Grillrd

Senior Member
Aug 19, 2010
201
31
Pennsylvania
So after 2 hours and 3 minutes...my battery is at 25% ...since starting to write this message it has dropped 3%. The display is taking up 80% of use. Screen brightness is about a centimeter from the far left side. Screen has been on about 90% of the time...however...after only 2 hours and now at 23%...I'm a little concerned. Any suggestions?

Sent from my SCH-I510 using Tapatalk
 

Grillrd

Senior Member
Aug 19, 2010
201
31
Pennsylvania
I does pull less power but having it on all the time while at work will still drain your battery pretty quickly and why want you have this on all the time?

It was more of a test to see how long it lasts with the screen on. I am a little concerned though because lets say I'm sitting in an airport or on a plane watching a movie(I travel for business). My old Droid X could get me through that. But I'm thinking that it wouldn't be an option if my battery is dieing after 2 1/2 hours with the screen on.

Coming from the droid x, kernels weren't an option so I don't know much about them. Would an enhanced kernel be able to help with this drain or am I SOL?
 

ghettomuffin

Senior Member
Jan 15, 2011
120
29
Rochester, MN
I'm having battery issues as well and hoping someone can help. I heard people are getting great battery life with this device, but so far mine is about the same as the thunderbolt was. My charge says its mostly the display taking up the battery life, but I've done all I can to help this. My screen time out is at 15 seconds and my brightness is at about 20%. I am running ADW EX but I wouldn't think that would cause this. Anyone have any other ideas?

Sent from my Xoom using XDA App
 

lpsquall

Member
Dec 3, 2008
45
0
I'm having battery issues as well and hoping someone can help. I heard people are getting great battery life with this device, but so far mine is about the same as the thunderbolt was. My charge says its mostly the display taking up the battery life, but I've done all I can to help this. My screen time out is at 15 seconds and my brightness is at about 20%. I am running ADW EX but I wouldn't think that would cause this. Anyone have any other ideas?

Sent from my Xoom using XDA App

I am on the same boat as you. I thought rooting my phone and freezing apps would help with my battery but it seems to be about the same.
 

imnuts

Inactive Recognized Developer
Jul 27, 2007
3,808
3,174
West Chester
www.imnuts.org
The screen does use less power, but a significant amount of the power savings comes from displaying black, as black uses no power on the display, where it does for LCD displays. For me, the Display is usually responsible for 65-80% of the power drain, so your usage seems somewhat normal. Custom kernels can help with drain some, but what can be tweaked with a kernel won't help with the display draining the battery.
 

Grillrd

Senior Member
Aug 19, 2010
201
31
Pennsylvania
The screen does use less power, but a significant amount of the power savings comes from displaying black, as black uses no power on the display, where it does for LCD displays. For me, the Display is usually responsible for 65-80% of the power drain, so your usage seems somewhat normal. Custom kernels can help with drain some, but what can be tweaked with a kernel won't help with the display draining the battery.

Thank you for the explanation. Looks like I'll be using dark wallpapers.

Sent from my SCH-I510 using Tapatalk
 

hokulus

Senior Member
Dec 6, 2007
104
8
New Orleans
Potential Solutions?

So besides reducing screen timeout to minimum, turning off background data, and cutting off literally every single connection (wifi, BT, 3g/4g, gps, everything) except 1x for calls and texts, removing bloat, are there ANY other measures one could take to enhance the stock battery life? I find myself talking on the phone for roughly 1hr per day but I do send nearly 500 text messages daily thus my screen is on a good portion of the time. I have to charge this phone twice per day at 2.5hrs per charge, it sits near an outlet for 5 hours a day heh... In fact even though I live in a 4g area I can't really use that feature because it beast's the battery down like a ravenous monster even with ALL other services disabled, not making calls, just texting and syncing email.

Task killers:
To me the task killing programs (ATK, ATM, etc) do actually kill background tasks and sometimes even services depending on your particular settings but since they just restart automatically does it not use MORE cpu time to re-run the damn things than just leaving them in the first place?

Launchers:
I have found no significant difference whatsoever between battery life under TouchWiz and LauncherPro. If anything its worse with LP because of the nifty graphical effects.

Kernels:
I'm pretty sure I read somewhere people were experiencing better life with the v4 voodoo kernel however I've noticed no difference at all there either with regard to battery life.

Running the phone with no services and charging it twice daily seems fairly extreme, eh? The extended battery is tempting, but one thing that attracted me to this device was its slim design. I don't care if its a little thicker and all but that ext battery is a freaking monster! Forget having a case with it too, at least for now.

Thoughts, suggestions?

hok
 

rmanaka

Senior Member
Jul 15, 2005
705
54
I find myself talking on the phone for roughly 1hr per day but I do send nearly 500 text messages daily thus my screen is on a good portion of the time. I have to charge this phone twice per day at 2.5hrs per charge, it sits near an outlet for 5 hours a day heh...

Thoughts, suggestions?

hok

500 text/day? Wow, you must be under 20 with thumbs/pointing fingers of steel! If your average text message takes 30 seconds, your screen is on and the screen/keyscan interrupts are running full bore about 4.5 hours a day just texting...when do you have time for Angry Birds?

Maybe a thin white text on black background for your screen theme? Just kidding (sort of), but I'm amazed at the talk/text times; gettin old, I guess!:rolleyes:
 

rmanaka

Senior Member
Jul 15, 2005
705
54
The screen does use less power, but a significant amount of the power savings comes from displaying black, as black uses no power on the display, where it does for LCD displays. For me, the Display is usually responsible for 65-80% of the power drain, so your usage seems somewhat normal. Custom kernels can help with drain some, but what can be tweaked with a kernel won't help with the display draining the battery.

Seems like this explains while some report great battery and others terrible times...depends on what somebody considers "normal" to "light" usage and while some consider "texting" light usage if the screen is on black text on white background the whole day, there goes the battery stats. Same with screen on sitting doing nothing (maybe displaying time)...

Should "Battery Life" be normalized or adjusted something similar to "Time Between Charges" divided by ("Time Screen Display is On" times "percent White pixel counts")? Are there any battery stats / device stats / display stats that can help figuring out a "Battery Life Index"?

Sorry for the random thoughts....
 

hokulus

Senior Member
Dec 6, 2007
104
8
New Orleans
500 text/day? Wow, you must be under 20 with thumbs/pointing fingers of steel! If your average text message takes 30 seconds, your screen is on and the screen/keyscan interrupts are running full bore about 4.5 hours a day just texting...when do you have time for Angry Birds?

Actually I've been keeping track and the screen is on 3-4 hours per day, plus the haptic feedback, interrupts, etc. Doesn't take me anywhere near 30s to send a text message, few seconds TOPS for most of them and I never said it was light usage haha. Just asked if anyone knows of other measures I did not list which I may employ to extend it more.


hok
 
Jun 26, 2008
17
6
Behind U
The vooodoo kernel will help a bit as it uses a much more optimized file system so your phone will spend less time cache thrashing and reading/writing large downloads.

Essentially though it is down to how long your screen is on and how many accounts you have syncing in the background, also if you don't need full 1ghz for texting/calling smoothly then use setcpu with an ondemand or interactive type scheduler and set the max to like 700-800mhz...
 

angry english

Senior Member
Oct 7, 2010
308
95
Fairborn Ohio
Seems like this explains while some report great battery and others terrible times...depends on what somebody considers "normal" to "light" usage and while some consider "texting" light usage if the screen is on black text on white background the whole day, there goes the battery stats. Same with screen on sitting doing nothing (maybe displaying time)...

This....

BUT i will say that the battery life on this phone takes a great big dump on the TB`s battery, now thats a bad battery life, i would consider myslef a heavy user i make around and receive around 100 calls a day, around 100 emails and around 75-125 texts per 8 hour working day

i can get through my day putting my charge on charge ONCE for around 30 mins, my thunderbolt had to be plugged in most times, 2-3 hours max for total battery death ( 3 hours is extreme generous, was more like 2 hours ), i carried 3 batteries with my thunderbolt.

The charge for me is great, on a par with my old galaxy S for battery life, if only they coukd give me iPhone battery life, for as much as people dont like the iPhone, it sure does sip the juice

Myphone ie ed2 stock, no rooted.....YET im waiting for a stable CWM