[How to] --->You Want Better Battery Life:::Read This

Attaining 20+ hours of battery life is not only possible it is totally attainable with most phone configurations. The secret to making this happen is, understanding what are the contributing factors are and knowing what to do first.

This guide will help. After reading this guide, you will be able to understand how to end power eating culprits and answer those same questions we see over and over in the threads...... that is .... solving the passive battery drain and get the 20 hours of battery life we all want and desire.


I have tried to get almost everything I can think of and put it in one place. We have all seen the threads that say, “Please help with my battery issue”, “Does undervolting save you battery life” or “Getting horrible battery life” (and yes I did use the…SEARCH Button…and these are titles directly from the Q & A section).

Post 1: Tips and Tricks
Post 2: Roms/Kernels, OverClocking/Undervolting and Memory Management
Post 3: Apps (for your download pleasure)

I will be using satirical stories and anecdotes to get my point across below. Not meant to offend or point fingers at anyone. I am just using real life references to get to the point. Also I am not much for fancy colors. I tried it at the top here but not so much further down. If there is something specific I want to call attention too, I will BOLD it and maybe RED it too.

This is not a GUIDE to get better battery life but rather a GUIDEline to get it. What is the difference, you say? A Guide is a step by step process that you must/should follow to get the outcome that the person who created it wanted you to get [A+B+C+D should = E]. A Guideline is more of a recommendation that allows some choice or flexibility in the understanding, execution or use [A +B-(C+D) can = E].

As we all know, all Vibrants are not created equal and so if something works for one person and not the other, then is it a software, hardware or human error. Chances are it is a combination of all three. Hopefully this can slim those down a bit and answer some questions that you might have or have seen.

**Special thanks to NOOB_IN_N33D for his help in gathering info, especially the MIUI/CM7 parts below. Do yourself a favor and hit up his Guide- Easily Flash MIUI for Vibrant. It has themes, modems, kernels,… and he really put a lot of time and effort into it. It is stickied in the QA section so it shouldn’t be too hard to find. Hit his thanks button please.**


TopShelf10 has this to say about getting the most out of your battery life

the problem is, people want to believe that they can save battery without changing their usage habits. this simply is not possible. no rom or kernel will realistically do this for you. if you remove 1 brick from a bag full of 15 bricks, the bag will be lighter, but still very heavy. you need to download "spare parts" or "process monitor" from the market and start analyzing the way your apps are acting. also look into data syncs that are happening in the background. apps that stay open behind your back/what they are doing 9an app called "autostarts" can prevent apps from self-running under certain scenarios). animation speed. polling for notifications. gps. wifi scans. overclocking. cpu/ram usage. proper sleep. widgets. brightness. 2g/3g. data usage. call time. text volume. - THESE are the things that really affect your battery life.

bottom line is, if you truly want to save battery you are going to have to get your hands dirty...there simply isnt a one-click (or one-flash) solution.

Click to expand...

Click to collapse

Below is a list of fundamental things that can be done without rooting or custom ROM/Kernels. (Standard disclaimer applies: You use it, you set it and you are responsible)

1. Be Realistic -
Do you really think that you can get two whole days out of your battery? If you do, then you must have a very important pile of papers it is sitting on to not even pick up your phone for that long. These are phones. These are mini-computers. These are arcade games. And they want, dare I say, need to be played with, talked on or downloaded to. USE YOUR PHONE.

2. Syncing –
I know you are very important and you need to know what LeBron is doing right now, just in case you get a cup for a coffee and he might be in Starbucks at the same time and you get your picture taken with him and upload it to Facebook, Twitter or Google+. That is fine and I applaud you for it and will probably download the picture and Photoshop myself in your place. This is not the problem. Syncing your accounts is. That is what is causing battery drain. Do you really need to have your FB widget (see widgets section) streaming all day long? Does Kim K.’s endorsement of a potato chip really affect your everyday life? I doubt it. Kill them (not LeBron or Kim K. but rather the auto-syncing). Every time you “friend” someone their numbers, contact info gets sync’d to your phone. Also, there are settings in Facebook, Twitter and Google+ that you can upload pictures instantly. Don’t do that. Once you do, it is out in the Ether-World and just swallowed a bunch of battery doing it too.

Settings>Accounts and Sync>Auto-sync>uncheck it

3. Widgets –
They look cool. But widgets are nothing more than RAM and battery hungry monsters that you purposely put in your home screen. Think about it. What does a widget really do? All it really does is monitor an app that you have running. So not only is it running and taking up battery and RAM but the app that it is linked to is running in the background al’ a Facebook, Twitter, Google+, CNBC, MSNBC, BBC,… the list goes on and on because they want us to put THEM on our home page. What a great marketing campaign the widget is. “Hey look at me new home screen” “Cool. Hey what widget is that?” “Oh, it is X” “Nice, I’ll have to download that tonight when I get home” and then and there they have you and your battery.

4. Apps –
You have to pay attention to your apps. I repeat. You have to pay attention to your apps. Especially if they run in the background. This can be anything from a harmless .99c game to a monster like Live Wallpaper. The battery drain threat is twofold here because the app is running in the background but it could also be using its anonymous data collection abilities and sending that back to the Mothership. Ever wonder why you have a H with up and down arrows in your status bar when your phone is just sitting there? This is because some app is transmitting data, whether you are using it or not. There are apps in the market that monitor these situations like Watchdog or kill the data link when the lock screen is enabled like Juice Defender (see Apps below) or you can adjust app permissions like LBE Privacy Guard. Data transfer is #2 on the What Kills My Battery list.

5. Display/ Wifi/ Airplane Mode/ Animations –

Display:
#1 when it comes to what is eating your battery. Always has been and always will be. Accept it and try to do something about it. This part is easy. Just lower the brightness. You can use Auto or set it as a brightness that is low but you are still able to see well enough to function. Live Wallpapers fall into this category. They are cool to look at but static ones take up less RAM and also less display because they are not running all the time in the background. These screens are bright at 100%, so tone it down. (see Apps below).

WIFI:

Another helpful tip is setting your WIFI sleep policy to Never. This can be done by going here Setting>Wireless>WIFI> Menu key>Advanced>WIFI Sleep Policy and set it to Never.

Airplane Mode Toggle:

NOOB_IN_N33D found this helpful trick too. Phazeman...
"Toggle the airplane mode on/off 3 times in a row, that will reduce your Cell Standby battery usage.
It should only be necessary to do it once after flashing but if you think Cell Standby uses too much power at some stage you could toggle again the airplane mode"…Phazeman

Animations: Set Settings > Display > Animations to "Off or Med. animations.


These are 5 fundamental things that you can do to help reduce battery drain and get some more life out of your phone. Anyone can do these. All you have to do is watch your phone and use some common sense. “Why does my battery drain after only 6 hours? All I was doing was checking Facebook.” Do you really need to be on Facebook for that long of a time? I doubt it. How many services do you have running? How many tasks do you have running? (Android does a good job of shutting down tasks on its own, but if you are using a task killer, it takes more juice to start up an app than to turn it back on, so to say.) Think of it like an airplane. Takes more fuel to get up in the clouds, but once you are up there, it is pretty much coasting along with way less burn.

Special thanks to Oka1, NOOB_IN N33D and chamonix

**THE PETITION ** We need your support!!!​

Hit the thanks button

Useful Apps to prolong battery life

These are some apps that will help you get the most of your battery life. I will put a brief descpition of them and you can also click on their names to take you directly to their market link. Note that some of these are ROOT apps and almost all of them also have PAID versions that greatly expand their functionality. Use the free ones and see how you like them and then kick in for the PAID ones if you want. The only one that I really suggest paying for right out of the gate to get the most out of your battery is Juice Defender Plus.


Batstat Widget –

I know, I know. Above I said that widgets were nothing more that monitoring apps on your home page, but this one works great, has low memory and is very, very simple. It shows Charge in %, Volts to know when you are FULLY charged and Temperature F/C to tell you that your phone is getting hot and exactly how hot it is.

BetterBatteryStats –

This app will show you what exactly is eating at your battery. Processes, Running Services, Wakelocks, Partial Wakelocks. It is a PAID app but for XDA users it is free. See here for more extensive details, instructions, screenies, change-logs,... and credits go to Chamonix and his development team for this app.

Batter Calibrator –

When you flash a new ROM, it is always best to wipe the old battery stats associated with that ROM, so you can start fresh as a daisy. How this works is you plug you phone in and charge to 100%, do not mess with it or surf the net (I do this overnight). While still plugged in, hit the apps, grant SU permission and hit the Calibrate Battery button. Grant SU permission again and once done, unplug your phone. Your Batterystats.bin has been deleted. You running your phone down by just using it normally. Most say to run it until it shuts off, but I have had bad experiences doing this, so I let it get to 10-15% and plug it in then. Charge fully up to 100% (again no surfing or games) and you will notice a dramatic increase in battery life.

**Note that this can be done two other ways. You can boot into CWR or Custom Recovery and go to Advanced Settings and there will be the Wipe Batterystats.bin option. Or you can do it manually by going into /data/system/ and deleting the batterystats.bin in there. Any of the three methods work to get the entirely same result in the end. I just like using the app or manually myself. **

Why battery calibration is important and what it is doing.

The app and what it does is more for when you are flashing a ROM and have around 60% and then once booted up fully, you charge it up to 100%. Decided you don't like your ROM and go back to your original ROM via backup, it will show 60% instead of the 100 or 90% you had before you went back to back up b/c you backed up the batstat bin when you nandroided your original ROM.

How about this for an example:

ROM: Deranged9 70% (and you made a backup) Then went to Zendroid, charged and hit calibrate battery at 100%. Used Zendroid for a few hours and decided it wasn't your bag. Your battery is at 50%. You flash back to your Deranged ROM and you know for a fact you had 50% before you flashed back, but now once totally booted, you are showing 70%. This is why you use the battery calibrator after you flash a ROM. Gotta create a new batstat bin for you "fresh" ROM (even though it is a backup).

Recently there has been information debunking this process. I will post it below, however I know what it says, but I also know what I've seen/experienced too. Here is the post by Dianne Hackborn, a Google Dev on her G+ account.

Dianne Hackborn - Jan 12, 2012 - Public
Today's myth debunking:
"The battery indicator in the status/notification bar is a reflection of the batterystats.bin file in the data/system/ directory."
No, it does not.
This file is used to maintain, across reboots, low-level data about the kinds of operations the device and your apps are doing between battery changes. That is, it is solely used to compute the blame for battery usage shown in the "Battery Use" UI in settings.
That is, it has deeply significant things like "app X held a wake lock for 2 minutes" and "the screen was on at 60% brightness for 10 minutes."
It has no impact on the current battery level shown to you.
It has no impact on your battery life.
Deleting it is not going to do anything to make your more device more fantastic and wonderful... well, unless you have some deep hatred for seeing anything shown in the battery usage UI. And anyway, it is reset every time you unplug from power with a relatively full charge (thus why the battery usage UI data resets at that point), so this would be a much easier way to make it go away.

Click to expand...

Click to collapse

JuiceDefender (Plus) [Since I use JD+, that is what I am going to refer too.]

This app’s ability to kill Radio/Data has NO EFFECT on phone calls or messaging. You will still get that call in the middle of the night you were expecting.

If you set it to custom, the go into the settings tab on the right and then all the way at the bottom, there is two buttons to push, The first in Interactive which will pull up Juice Defender for up for any app that isn't already configured and the other is Configure Apps. This is the one that you can customize on an app-to-app basis where if you are no using an app and the screen is locked, it kills the radio/data traffic for that app.

Say you are listening to IHeartRadio, this you would want either Enable or Enable/off (which means the screen will be locked but the radio/data will be working). Now take the browser. If you are not using the browser, then you don't need it transmitting data right? So you would set that one to Enable (which means that it will only enable data traffic when that app is being used).

Juice Defender only works when the screen is locked (WidgetLocker lock screens interfere with JuiceDefender), don't forget and all widgets are battery drains b/c all they really are is a monitoring app and if it is tied to something like Facebook or Google+, then that data will be running constantly.

Settings:

Enable = Radio/data on when app is in use (front)
Enable/off = Radio/data on for background apps (when screen is locked)
Disable = Disables radio/data traffic completely when that app is running
Do Nothing = What is says

Examples:

Angry Birds = Disable (Here is a little known trick that I use for this and any game with Ads. With this and something like Adfree, no more ads in Angry Birds even though the ads are embedded in the .apk)
Pandora/Jango/ Tune-in = Enable/Off (this will keep your battery temp down when streaming)
Browser/ Market = Enable (not enable/off b/c then it will keep your radio/data open)
Beautiful Widgets = Enable/off
mClock/Clockr = Enable/off
SMS/MMS = Enable or Do Nothing (why would you push disable)


I have been using JD+ for over a year on 3 different phones and multiple ROMs and have noticed a considerable difference in battery life. Just takes some time to figure out YOUR settings and what YOU like. I have also used it on Stock kernel and had no problems either.

LBE Privacy Guard

This will go good with JuiceDefender, as they both prevent unwanted data transfer. Protect your privacy by controlling the permission of each application to access your sensitive data. Block malicious operation from Mal-wares and Trojans. Block unwanted network traffic if you don’t have a unlimited data plan. Find out which application is trying to steal your privacy by checking the security log.

RAM Munchers eat battery too. These will fix that for you.

Autostarts (paid-CAUTION this is for advanced users)

Keep control over your phone: See what applications do behind your back.

Shows you what apps run on phone startup, and what other events trigger in the background. Root users can disable unwanted autostarts and speed up their phone boot.

Watchdog

See what is eating your RAM. Hint: if it is using RAM,then probably it is also using battery too.

Spare Parts

Spare Parts allows you to enable some settings
that are not found in the default setting menu

Process Monitor

List the running process on your Android device.
Long click item to kill application or open application.


Fastboot –

This is a handy little app that kills all your services at once and lets them restart back up. I use this right before I hit the lock screen, so that if any app-services are running that I don’t have configured in Juice Defender Plus they will be killed, frees up about 50-70mb of memory, and then I lock the screen and JD takes over. This one is optional if you want it or not. I like it just fine and it works for me.

Matte Screen Filter –

Puts a sort of Dim setting on your screen. Almost like a display overlay, ok? And I did mean to rhyme those. I don’t use it because I have my display set how I want it but you can.


And might as well hit this thanks button too for the Hat Trick

Change Log:
12/22/11 - Per chamonix (BetterBatteryStats dev) took out apk and input his thread to get most updated version, stats, change log [still free for XDA users though]

1/9/12 - Took out actual APKs and put in market links. Click on the name and it will direct you to the market link for the free version that app.

1/23/12 - Added more battery apps and some RAM monitoring/killing apps.

ROMs/Kernels, Overclocking/Undervolting and Memory Management

ROMs are key things to think about when it comes to battery life. They can be fully established and working fine, can be RCs and still in development or they can be Alpha/Betas and completely experimental or just beginning. Choosing the best ROM or Kernel is going to depend on what YOU want out of your phone. Do you want a stable 2.2 ROM that has great battery life but not the customizability as MIUI or CM7? Do you want a Gingerbread AOSP ROM that has memory leak issues? There is the rub because CM7 and MIUI have fantastic customization possibilities Gingerbread is well Gingerbread but it has its own issues, and 2.2’s are about as basic as they come. However 2.2’s, because they are so old and overworked, have been Optimized to their fullest and some outstanding tweaks have really brought them to the forefront in daily drivers. Again, the choice is up to you.

Kernels go hand-in-hand with your ROM. Does the kernel support Overclocking or Undervolting. How much RAM and what tweaks are included in the kernel? Does THIS kernel work with THAT ROM? These are all spelled out for you in the OP of each kernel (and ROM) for you to find out. Read them because if you don’t, you’ll bork your phone and then your next post will be, “Help. I Bricked my phone”.

Froyo Kernels (see here) and read their OPs. Many can be Overclocked and some can be Undervolted
Battery Friendly Kernels for MIUI/CM7:
Glitch and Bali-CM (there are others but NOOB_IN_N33D gave me these to put in here). Read their OPs to find out more of what they do.

Overclocking/Undervolting –

If you don’t already know what Overclocking is, well it is pretty much self-explanatory. You can Overclock your CPU above the clock-speed that Samsung, T-Mobile governed it at. This can be done with apps like Tegrak’s Overclock (for stock kernels), SetCPU (here and here), CPUtuner,…Generally have to be ROOTed to do these but if you are flashing ROMs and Kernels then you probably already are. UnderVolting is basically what it sounds like too. You are Undervolting your CPU to conserve battery.

This can be one of the best ways for a more advanced user to save battery. Overclocking is great to see those really cool Quadrant scores. Wow!!! But it also ramps up the battery drain, as well as temperature which can shorten your battery’s TOTAL life. If you want to Overclock to 1.2-1.7 just to see what you score on Quadrant or SmartBench, then do it for that time. Most ROMs/Kernels run stable and smooth at or about 1.0-1.2 with minimal effects on battery (as long as you do tweaks in above post). If you decide to Undervolt you can use Pimp My CPU or Voltage Control to do this but take care to step it down slowly until you find the right settings for you or you will see random reboots or phone freezes and those suck trying to diagnose.


***Please note that whether you Overclock or Undervolt, do NOT “Set on Boot” until you know that they are going to work. Otherwise if it doesn’t work and your phone randomly reboots, you will get into a boot cycle (not a bootloop) because you put them in “Set on Boot”. You must test before you should do this.***

Glitch (Kernel for MIUI/CM7) –very brief overview-See its OP for more
- Up to 1.7GHz CPU OC with added bus/GPU OC (Thanks to morfic for the great base of work)
- Undervolting using Pimp my CPU or Voltage Control

Bali_CM (Kernel for MIUI/CM7) –very brief overview-See its OP for more
- OC/UV up to 1.4GHz (Safe boot to 1GHz) [require SetCPU from market]
- Multiple CPU governor, smartass included (default: ondemand)
- Multiple IO scheduler (default: BFQ)
- CIFS support
- Support SetCPU screen off 100/400 profile

NOOB_IN_N33D is running MIUI and is having great battery life for a 2.3.x ROM. He has given me his settings for Overclocking and Undervolting to put in this guide.

**Please note that these are HIS settings for HIS set-up. They may not work for you but it is a good idea to see what I am talking about when it comes to OC/UV**

N00B_IN_N33D's OC/UV

KaintFM's OC/UV


Memory Management

Did you know that you can also free up some internal memory space by just basic maintenance? You can install a Cache Cleaner from the market. I use Cache Cleaner NG (root) and CacheMate (root) which will clear your cache for you, Cache Cleaner NG will even clear your cache on your SDcard. Open Root Explorer and if you see a bunch of free floating cache files, those need to go. Wasted space. Small in the scheme of your SDcard, but still wasted.


So here we go (best part is at the bottom though):

Ok so you go into XDA on your phone, go to the themes page and look at what and how people are theming their phones or see some pix of someone's SetCPU profiles. All those develop a cache that takes up space on your phone. Now lets say that you go to the market and look through some apps or update your apps (more on this later). This also generates cache, usually up to 2-4mb. Ever try to download something from the market and it says something like "not enough space". This not needed cache may be some of the reason.

Here are some tricks and apps that some of you may know and also some tricks that I have found that I am sure most don't know about.

SOME GOOD LOW MEMORY APPS:

Cache Cleaner NG and Cache Mate (both root and free-Cache Mate has a paid but the free one works just fine.)

Diskusage (free) ~ This one will show you a graphical version of your /data/apps and also you SD card to show you exactly what is taking up so much space. You can click on that item and hit "Show" and it will take you to the app's page in Manager Applications. It also has a root function too that will allow you to see what is in /system, /cache, /data,…

Some sort of file manager to get to some things I'll mention below. (I use Root Explorer)


SOME MEMORY CLEARING TIPS AND TRICKS:

Home Launcher ~ If you have a 3rd party home launcher, see if it has the ability to long-press an icon to take you to its screen in the Manage Apps section. I use ADWex and if you long-press on say Market, it takes me to the same place as is I were to go to Settings->Applications->Manage Apps->Market. Instead of all that, just long-press on the icon and BAM! it takes you there. Here you can clear out your cache for the market or delete the data (if you need to do that). Or clear the cache of the XDA app b/c you looked at too many pix.

Browsers ~ These develop cache that takes up memory and space, especially the stock browser. If you use a 3rd party, you can get the settings to clear cache, cookies, passwords,…on exit. I use Dolphin, but I am pretty sure that most have something like this on them. (side note: most 3rd party browsers once exited will not run in the background unlike the stock one)

Media ~ So you download a bunch of mp3's from the net or click on some pix and save it to your SD card. Or maybe you just felt like wiping your card and having a fresh start. Every time you reboot, you phone will scan media. No big deal, but the more you criss-cross things from PC to phone and back again, it can create a bunch of double files in your media cache on the phone. With the proper placement of .nomedia files (this prevents your media scanner from doing just that, scanning media- i.e. pix, jpegs,…Don’t place a .nomedia in your music, album art or DCIM files**bad).
Every once in a while, I'll hit the Diskusage or go to Manage apps and clear the media cache. Then I got to my file manager and the DCIM->Thumbs and delete the .Thumbnails files (should be 2). Unmount the SD card and remount to start the media scan, pull up the Gallery and wait for the thumbs to come back (depending on how many you have, this could take awhile). By doing this you can get almost 5 mb back if you have a bunch of double scans in your media folder.

AND NOW FOR SOME TIPS THAT MOST COULD NOT KNOW:

LOSTDIR - Lets say that you have your phone plugged into your PC and for some reason you, in a fit of rage, jerk the plug out without unmounting it first. This creates a file that is put into your LOST DIR folder on your SD card. Anytime you don't safely unmount the SD card, it will create a file in that folder. In the scheme of the SD card, it isn't too much, but I don't like having useless items free floating about.

TOMBSTONES - So you are downloading an update from the market and for some reason your phone freezes and the Force Close-Retry-Wait doesn't work out for you. You have to do a battery pull. Frustrating I know and the memory takes a hit too. Every time you have to do a battery pull because of a freeze up or something of the like, it creates a TOMBSTONE file in /data. These are useless and can be deleted. If you are flashing ROMs and are constantly having to do battery pulls b/c market crashes or an app freezes, then you are creating a Tombstone file.

**Here is where your file manager (with root) will help. Go into /data and scroll all the way to the bottom and open /tombstone. There should be some files in there and depending on how many there are, I could be a nice chunk of wasted memory. Just select all and delete. They are not needed. Your internal memory should go up by doing this.

LOST & FOUND - Same scenario, but now go into /data/ cache or /cache and you'll see Dalvik-Cache (don’t mess with this), Lost & Found and Recovery. If you tried to download an app and it got frozen for some reason and had to do a battery pull, the apk will be free floating in there, uninstalled (free floating radical). You can delete this. While it isn't in the Dalvik-Cache folder, it is taking up space. Once you are able to download something completely and correctly from the market, it will populate into Dalvik-Cache correctly and won't be a free radical, as I like to say.

Change Log:
1/23/12 - Added more MIUI OC/UV settings; memory management tips, tricks, apps.
Hit this thanks button too

Guide looks awesome bro!

Update: Also, thanks for including a link to my guide! Really appreciate that!

Sent from my SGH-T959 (Samsung Vibrant)

Awesome, your guide is from now on "stickied"!