Battery life on custom roms

[eccezarathustra]

Ok, I have been flashing for a few months trying to optimize my phone. My last rom was serendipity 6.2, with sp 59 and jl2. I restored to stock (bc I wanted to try something else and hadn't done that in a few weeks) my battery life on serendipity was atrocious.. 6 hours with medium usage. (hardly any calls or messages, looking things up or reading xda briefly) . I spent today on stock, after about 20 hours of light usage I am at 60% left. Now I did flash with a full battery serendipity, wiped battery stats and cleared cache and after several charge cycles and a few days battery life was still awful. I was about to get a new battery. Now I don't mean to single out serendipity, I've had bad battery life on paragon, dilli, and a few others (this time it just got unbearably bad), but why should battery life be so bad on custom roms? Am I alone on this? I hesitate to flash again bc I'm loving having a phone that won't die if I touch it, but I miss the functionality of the device with a custom 2.2.1 on it. Advice or opinions please.

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[Redine761]

I'm having the same problem. Everybody keeps saying they've got excellent battery life and what not with custom roms but mine doesn't seem so good. Wifi is off, I've wiped battery stats, I've used the rom for several days letting everything get situated before I begin thinking about if its good battery life or not. Maybe I'm just expecting too much or I watch my battery a lil bit too much, idk it just seems pretty bad. If I stay on the internet for 20 minutes I've already dropped about 3%



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[zelendel]

The normal Batt live on this phone with normal use is between 12 to 16 hours

 

[eccezarathustra]

I'm thinking part of it may be psychological and part may be usage.

Psychological in the sense that I have an expectation of an improvement, practical in that with my stock rom I haven't reinstalled certain apps like xda and pulse where I spend a lot of time reading and thus using the screen.

That being said I was still experiencing drains of 8% or more per hour when the phone was idle, wifi and gps off.

There is a way to check the cpu's time in each state, but I can't remember where the file is. If someone can, please let me know. I'm curious if under the custom rom my phone wasn't properly scaling down.

I'll probably flash something new tomorrow morning unless I see something shiny and new in the dev forum.

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[eccezarathustra]

So 6 hours seems a bit low then? Could it just be a cumulative effect of flashing rom on top of rom with restoring to stock?

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[zelendel]

So 6 hours seems a bit low then? Could it just be a cumulative effect of flashing rom on top of rom with restoring to stock?

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Yeah 6 hrs does seem a bit low. There are many things that can contribute to it. If you are bouncing between H and 3g on a custom rom will drain it like crazy, I had to disable H and stick with 3g and that helped. could also look at OS monitor to find what is running in the background.

 

[eccezarathustra]

Ok, I did notice that recently I was jumping between h and 3g. I was experimenting with some of the new modems. Should I try finding a better modem for my location?

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[zelendel]

Ok, I did notice that recently I was jumping between h and 3g. I was experimenting with some of the new modems. Should I try finding a better modem for my location?

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I would try others, as well as disable H in the hidden menus, and see how it fairs

 

[fractaline]

@ zelendel.... so by H i assume you mean data... i see alot of back and forth when data is on. i know when data is off i'm still using wcdma from the gsm status, but it doesn't show the 3g icon.
i need my data because i'm from the states but living in australia and alot of my comunications are thru email/facebook.
when i look at battery usage i see rarely more than 5% from cell....usually 90 something from display ( i fiddle with it alot).
can't expect too much cause it's a powerhouse with a tiny battery........


for me the big Q at present is... can we top up the charge regularly or is it always best to let a full cycle run? if i knew it was fine to keep it topped i'd stay 50%+ most of the time i think................

 

[crystalhand]

It is not great to keep it topped off. The lithium battery will wear out faster and lose charging capacity over time. this process is sped up the more time the battery spends at a high charge

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[Pierce533]

Visit the Samsung web site and read the battery specs for the Captivate. The stock battery is only rated for 5 hours and 50 minutes of active phone use (which means the display is active). In sleep mode (display and other features of the phone are shutdown) the battery is rated for up to 300 hours (12.5 days).

I have NEVER seen a stock Captivate last for over 3 days in sleep mode. As for active phone use (display is active) my experience with several of the custom ROMS (Cognition, Paragon, Andromeda, and now my favorite, Continuum) is that the battery life is either on par with the stock ROM, or exceeds it. The kernels on some of these custom ROMs are more efficient than that of the stock ROM due to the many tweaks and cleaning up of bloated apps and code by the developer.

I can't bring myself to keep a stock ROM now that I have used some excellent custom ROMs like those I name above.

As for flashing custom ROMs and seeing fast battery drain goes... I have had that experience with those I listed, but usually I was able to resolve the issue by ensuring my battery was at 100% (meaning showing that amount both on and off) and reflashing, or finding the cause of the high battery usage and going from there (e.g. I have had to reflash modems). Another thing I do, mainly out of habit from compiling code and deploying it in dev and test environments, is to make sure that I am working from a known good baseline ROM before flashing a custom ROM. In this case I always return to the stock ROM you can flash through Odin One Click. That way if you have battery problems after flashing a custom ROM you can have a good idea as to what is causing those problems. This is, of course, just a matter of personal preference. Some have repeatedly flashed one custom ROM over another with no issues. YMMV

 

[zelendel]

@ zelendel.... so by H i assume you mean data... i see alot of back and forth when data is on. i know when data is off i'm still using wcdma from the gsm status, but it doesn't show the 3g icon.
i need my data because i'm from the states but living in australia and alot of my comunications are thru email/facebook.
when i look at battery usage i see rarely more than 5% from cell....usually 90 something from display ( i fiddle with it alot).
can't expect too much cause it's a powerhouse with a tiny battery........


for me the big Q at present is... can we top up the charge regularly or is it always best to let a full cycle run? if i knew it was fine to keep it topped i'd stay 50%+ most of the time i think................

No what I mean is disable HSDPA I think is the term lol. Sense you go back and forth I would say to disable that and just use 3g only.

 

[jivy26]

If you don't know the code to get too the menu download sgstools it has the hidden menu keys.

 

[Redine761]

Sorry but where can I find the hidden menus?

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EDIT: just saw the last post thanks

 

[SSJ_Gomike]

I am the opposite, I got horrible battery on stock. Could not even make it through my work day without it dying on my way home unless I charged it midday. Now I am running Serendipity 6.2 and unplug at 7:30am and it is now 8:30pm my time and I have 30% remaining....

I have also tried other customs roms with noticeable improvements in battery life over stock but for me Serendipity gives me the best performance and battery.


Sent from my Galaxy S Captivate with Serendipity

 

[assaace]

try apex5.1 room with tl3 modem comb

i used about 50 phone call, 2 hour websurfing, email sending, checking.

i still have 41% left, 1day 10hour 50 min.

 

[Redine761]

Could I have a faulty battery? I rooted and rommed cuz of my battery life being terrible but It still is bad

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[devadvance]

I had the exact same issue as you. I tried Darky's 9.3 first, then Serendipity 6.2, then Cognition 4.2.1. Each had major battery drain, meaning 6-8 hours with moderate use, and even without any usage it would drain 25% over 3 hours.

Use One-Click to flash back to stock JF6, then immediate do a Master Clear from the One-Click program after it has finished booting. Obviously move everything to an external SD or the computer prior to all of this, and make sure the external SD and SIM are out when flashing.

My battery has lasted for 14 hours today, and I'm only down to 54%. This is with about 1hr 20min screen on, ~30min voice calls, and always connected via 3G/H with background sync on, weather widget, and moderate web browsing.

Current setup: Serendipity 6.2, Speedmod K13C, JK4 Modem

 

[eccezarathustra]

Trying again

I couldnt keep myself away from custom roms, how i missed tethering, the custom theming, non marketplace apps and so much more...

Im trying Dilli's 7.1.1, bump charging at the moment...

Last night I drained my battery to 5% when i finally fell asleep... 6 hours later it was at 4%. Finally it drained and would not power on at all. Not even the backlights. Plugged it in for an hour and thought to take the sim card out so i would have a phone for the hours it would take to charge. When i plugged it back in the phone jumped from approximately 10% to 40% charged...

Oh well.

 

[Funzy32]

I have also been bouncing around flashing diff roms like crazy. I have to say though, I am using Continuum v4 with Hardcores speedmod Kernel K13D. I have been doing pretty good on this combo. Lasts for most the day with normal use.