Adjustments, tips and tricks to maximize Battery Life on Samsung Galaxy S6/edge

erasat

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Hi Guys.

Some of you know that I'm always around here trying to help as much as I can based on my own experience and all I read around different sites and forums. Last year I created a thread with some tips and tricks that I had done to my S5 and the amazing results I got from them. So here I'll try to do something similar with what I've found so far for the past 2 days that I've used my new Galaxy S6 edge.

I'd appreciate that if you don't like them or deep inside you know that your agenda is just to hate on any product Samsung make, or even those whose mentality is that they buy a Smartphone and they are not suppose to do anything to it or disable any features to get a good battery life, then this isn't your thread, please don't even post here and keep going to other threads. Like I read earlier today from a great post, I can leave my TV, Computer, radio or any other electronic device on all the time, but I don't, I just turn them on when I need them, that should be the mentality for those of us that bought a Galaxy S6/edge knowing it only has a 2550-2600 mAh battery on a 5.1" QHD screen, in doing so Samsung managed to build a wonderful piece of work, thin, light and beautifully, obviously it won't provide the same battery life of a phablet or a phone with a lot bigger battery, so I don't really know what miracle the people that been just complaining here were expecting. There seems to be a Wifi bug affecting some of you, those who have tried everything and it still draining really bad, I'd simply say that you should return that phone and get a new one, because as you are reading here and over XDA, there are a lot of us with very good and even great battery life averaging above 5.5 hours of Screen on time.

For the rest of you that really want to do whatever is there to try to maximize the battery life, you can try the following tricks or tips, the same ones I've been doing in my past 7 phones over the last year, and ALL of them have given me great battery life, my S6 edge so far is around the same battery life I had with my S5 and LG G3, more than the 4-4.5 hours I was getting with the Moto X 2014, less than the Note 4 that gave me around 6-6.5 SoT, and my OnePlus One that was giving me until yesterday morning 5.5 - 6hrs, the undisputable champion on this department is the Sony Xperia Z3 that I managed to get always over 7 hours of SoT and some days around 9. BUT, all of them with greater battery life had a lot bigger battery and just a 1080p display (With the exception of Note 4).

**NOTE** The following recommendations to disable certain apps is not to cripple the features of your phone, but to limit resources used by multiple redundant apps (weather, news, social networks, email, calendar, search/voice recognition, cloud services), the many versions of which all run in the background simultaneously.

So let's begin, for those of you that don't have your device yet, or you that don't mind to do a Full Reset I'd say that if you get a new device, just wait for your carrier's new Update, let it update and then go to Recovery Mode (Turn Off device, Press Power, Volume Up and Home button at the same time until you see on screen the Recovery mode information then let off the buttons and follow the prompts to Clear Cache and data for a Full reset). If you have your device and is already running with everything set and you don't like the idea of doing everything again, just go to the Recovery Mode and do only the Clear Cache and reboot.

Begin the setting and first thing to do is to turn off VoLTE and Wifi calling (If available), Smart network and Scanning Always Available (last 2 in Wifi Settings), none of these are needed for me. And Wifi Calling and VoLTE you can always turn them on when you really need them.

Screenshot_2015-04-11-22-16-12.png Screenshot_2015-04-11-22-16-32.png

After that disable all Bloatware you don't need or use from Samsung, Google, Microsoft and Your Carrier (In My Case T-Mobile).

Screenshot_2015-04-11-21-37-42.png Screenshot_2015-04-11-21-37-50.png Screenshot_2015-04-11-21-37-55.png

All the Toggles are there for a reason, like I mentioned above, you have a smartphone, but letting all the features and options on all the time is a bad idea, the toggles help you turn on/off them in a second, why waste resources and battery on something you won't need for the moment? here is how I always have them.

Screenshot_2015-04-11-21-39-42.png

Brightness is one of the most important part of your battery life, and this is one area that is very personal, but let me tell you, I also was one of the guys that always had the brightness cranked up, one day I realized that this was not needed and I adjusted my eyes in a day or so to very low brightness settings, to the point that when it's above 50% it hurts my eyes, just give it a try to see if you get used to it, but do it with a positive mentality, set the brightness very low, 20-25% indoors and on a low light room and stay there reading and doing stuff, you'll see that you will get used to it, then go as low as you can honestly can go and give it a day or 2 and you'll see that you won't go back. I NEVER, EVER use any of my phones with Brightness over 25%, actually I always use between 15-20% in AMOLED displays, the 25% was on my LG G3, and with the option to use Auto brightness while Outside in all of them.

Screenshot_2015-04-11-21-36-39.png

*Accounts Sync settings *

Google Accounts - This is something that I'd say is very important, I've been doing this with all my devices during all these years and all of them have given me very good battery life, even better than what it was expected from them. Go to Settings- Accounts and check all your Account Sync Settings, in particular Google and Samsung ones. By default, Google Sync ALL services from all the Google Apps you have enabled on the device, totally unnecessary and a huge battery drain. I have 2 Google Accounts, 1 personal and 1 from work, in my Work's account I just have syncing Calendar and Gmail, in my personal account I have most of them because one way or the other I need them, but there are others like Google Play Movies and Google Newstand that I have them off simply because when I want to read my News Magazines I just go to the ones I want and simply refresh them, that way I just use battery refreshing those and not to auto sync every article of every magazine I have in my library.

Samsung Accounts are also another one that you either use them or not, if you are like me that don't use any of their services I simply turn off sync completely, why having them on all of the time like it comes by default?

The same applies for any other Account you may have set, go one by one and check what you really need and for the rest simply turn sync off for those.

Some extra optional things worth mentioning:

1-) Turn Off Hot Word Detection Always Listening in Google Search. Having this on all the time will undeniably use battery that you are really wasting if you don't need it.
2-) Set a Dark or Black Theme/Wallpaper - AMOLED screens turn off pixels not in used, so having Black or dark screens, wallpaper and menus will definitely give you a boost on battery life.
3-) Until a possible Wifi bug is confirmed and fixed, try to see if your Wifi Router is 2.4ghz capable and even when it's maybe a 5ghz one, set it as a 2.4ghz connection, nothing scientific but it seems that most of us without any Cell Standby drain issue have Wifi routers with 2.4ghz and a couple of people with the issue have reported having 5ghz routers.
4-) I'm not running any of the Edge features, I really bought the edge for the looks, no need for Night Clock or any favorite edge features, if in the future there are some new edge feature I may like I'll definitely reconsider. Regular S6 users, this doesn't apply to you.
5-) S Voice is disabled - I forgot to add it to the above screenshots. You must go to Settings-Applications-Applications Manager-All and look for it in order to disable.
6-) Report diagnostic Info - It has been reported by some users that turning this off helps preventing wakelocks, turning it off doesn't seem to affect anything. Go to Settings- Privacy and safety.
7-) Some new reports and tests have shown that for some people with Standby drain issues disabling ANT+ Plugins service and ANT Radio Service has helped a lot. Look for both in Application Manager in the All or Downloaded tabs.
:cool: A new option that was fixed with 5.1.1 update- if you go to
Settings-Battery there is a Detail button, if you enter there, you can Auto Stop ALL apps that you don't need to be running in the background once you close it, it should definitely helps on standby time. If you decide to use but, just remember to not auto stop apps that you need to run in the background for notifications or any other purposes. If you need more info about it, check this article.

So that's it, if I think on something more I'll definitely add it here, so for last, I got this at 9:00AM yesterday and with my first full charge I managed to get 5 hours and 10 mins of SoT in my T-Mobile S6 edge. Today hasn't been different, it has been even better, I'm almost averaging 5.75 hours of SoT, so you can see that doing what I did above, may help you also. Good luck.

Screenshot_2015-04-11-21-37-06.png Screenshot_2015-04-11-21-37-13.png
 
Last edited:

jcp007

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Re: Adjustments, tips ans tricks to maximize Battery Life on Samsung Galaxy S6/edge

Hi Guys.

Some of you know that I'm always around here trying to help as much as I can based on my own experience and all I read around different sites and forums. Last year I created a thread with some tips and tricks that I had done to my S5 and the amazing results I got from them. So here I'll try to do something similar with what I've found so far for the past 2 days that I've used my new Galaxy S6 edge.

I'd appreciate that if you simply don't like them or deep inside you know that your agenda is just to hate on any product Samsung make, or those whose only mind set is that they bought a Smartphone and they are not suppose to do anything to it or disable any features to get a good battery life, then this isn't your thread, please don't even post here and keep going to other threads. Like I read earlier today from a masterful post, I can leave my TV, Computer, radio or any other electronic device on all the time, but I don't, I just turn them on when I need them, that's exactly the mind set for those of you that bought a Galaxy S6/edge knowing it has only a 2600 mAh on a QHD screen, in doing so Samsung managed to build a wonderful peace of work, think, light and beautifully, obviously it won't provide the same battery life of a phablet or a phone with a battery a lot bigger, so I don't really know what miracle the people that been just complaining here were expecting. There seems to be a Wifi bug affecting some of you, those who have tried everything and it still draining really bad, I'd simply say that you should return that phone and get a new one, because as you are reading here and over XDA, there are a lot of us with very good and even great battery life averaging above 5.5 hours of Screen on time.

For the rest of you that really wants to do whatever is there to try to maximize the battery life, you can try the following tricks or tips, the same ones I've been doing in my past 7 phones over the last year, and ALL of them hae given me great battery life, my S6 edge so far is around the same battery life I had with my S5 and LG G3, more than the 4-4.5 hours I was getting with the Moto X 2014, less than the Note 4 that gave me around 6-6.5 SoT, and my OnePlus One that was giving me until yesterday morning 5.5 - 6hrs, the undisputable champion on this department is the Sony Xperia Z3 that I managed to get always over 7 hours of SoT and some days around 9. BUT, all of them with greater battery life had a lot bigger battery and just a 1080p display (With the exception of Note 4).

So let's begin, for those of you that don't have your device yet, or you that don't mind to do a Full Reset I'd say that if you get a new device, just wait for your carrier's new Update, let it update and then go to Recovery Mode (Turn Off device, Press Power, Volume Up and Home button at the same time until you see on screen the Recovery mode information then let off the buttons and follow the prompts to Clear Cache and data for a Full reset). If you have your device and is already running with everything set and you don't like the idea of doing everything again, just go to the Recovery Mode and do only the Clear Cache and reboot.

Begin setting it and first thing to do is to turn off VoLTE and Wifi calling (If available), Smart network and Scanning Always Available (last 2 in Wifi Settings), none of these are needed for me. And Wifi Calling and VoLTE you can always turn them on when you really need them.

View attachment 170967 View attachment 170968

After that disable all Bloatware you don't need or use from Samsung, Google, Microsoft and T-Mobile.

View attachment 170969 View attachment 170970 View attachment 170971

All the Toggles are there for a reason, like I mentioned above, you have a smartphone, but letting all the features and options on all the time is a bad idea, the toggles help you turn on/off them in a second, why waste resources and battery on something you won't need for the moment, here is how I always have them.

View attachment 170972

Brightness is one of the most important part of your battery life, and this is one area that is very personal, but let me tell you, I also was one of the guys that always had the brightness cranked up, one day I realized that this was not needed and I adjusted my eyes in a day or so to very low brightness settings, to the point that when it's above 50% it hurts my eyes, just give it a try to see if you get used to it, but do it with a positive mind set, set the brightness very low, 20-25% indoors and on a low light room and stay there reading and doing stuff, you'll see that you will get used to it, then go as low as you can honestly can and give it a day or 2 and you'll see that you won;t go back. I NEVER, EVER use any of my phones with Brightness over 25%, actually I always use between 15-20% in AMOLED displays, the 25% was my LG G3, and with the option to use Auto brightness while Outside.

View attachment 170973

Some extra optional things worth mentioning:

1-) Turn Off Hot Word Detection Always Listening in Google Search. Having this on all the time will undeniably use battery that you are really wasting if you don't need it.
2-) Set a Dark or Black Theme/Wallpaper - AMOLED screens turn off pixels not in used, so having Black or dark screens, wallpaper and menus will definitely give you a boost on battery life.
3-) Until Possible wifi bug is confirmed and fixed, try see if your Wifi Router is 2.4ghzcapable and even when it maybe is 5ghz set it as a 2.4ghz connection, nothing scientific but it seems that most of us without any Cell Standby drain issue have Wifi routers with 2.4ghz and a couple of people with the issue have reported having 5ghz routers.

So that it is, if I think on something more I'll definitely add it here, so for last, I got this at 9:00AM yesterday and with my first full charge I managed to get 5 hours and 10 mins of SoT in my T-Mobile S6 edge. Today hasn't been different, it has been even better, I'm almost averaging 5.75 hours of SoT, so you can see that doing what I did above, may help you also. Good luck.

View attachment 170975 View attachment 170976

Looks like you've covered off the basics. Manage your apps by closing ones that you aren't using. Turn off Location toggle.
 

erasat

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Re: Adjustments, tips ans tricks to maximize Battery Life on Samsung Galaxy S6/edge



Looks like you've covered off the basics. Manage your apps by closing ones that you aren't using. Turn off Location toggle.

These are really the first things I always do when I get a new device, and like I've said dozens of times, I've always managed to get great battery life from all of them including the Moto X 2014 that everybody know that is a charging nightmare with it's 2300 mAh battery, I was having 4-4.5 SoT on it, so I knew, that I was going to get easily over 5 hours on the S6,
 

erasat

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Re: Adjustments, tips ans tricks to maximize Battery Life on Samsung Galaxy S6/edge

I ended up my 2nd day and 2nd full charge cycle with 5.5 hours of SoT. Very good if you ask me.
 

warpdrive

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Re: Adjustments, tips ans tricks to maximize Battery Life on Samsung Galaxy S6/edge

Looking good. I always like threads that give hints and tips.

Posted via the Android Central App
 

Kalvin Kerns

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Re: Adjustments, tips ans tricks to maximize Battery Life on Samsung Galaxy S6/edge

Thank you!

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jcp007

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Re: Adjustments, tips ans tricks to maximize Battery Life on Samsung Galaxy S6/edge

I ended up my 2nd day and 2nd full charge cycle with 5.5 hours of SoT. Very good if you ask me.

Not if you are a naysayer that wants at least seven hours SOT.
 

erasat

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Re: Adjustments, tips ans tricks to maximize Battery Life on Samsung Galaxy S6/edge

Not if you are a naysayer that wants at least seven hours SOT.

Yeah, it's sad when people come to this forums and use its resources complaining and not paying it forward when somebody give them ideas and suggestions to fix their issues.

I don't understand why some prefer to keep complaining instead of simply try some suggestions given to them and simply post back if it works or not, that way others with similar issues can benefit from it and not act like selfish pricks.
 

erasat

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Re: Adjustments, tips ans tricks to maximize Battery Life on Samsung Galaxy S6/edge

Third day and even when it was a lighter usage day I still used 2 hours of SoT and still at 64%, for an average of about 6 hours of SoT. I unplugged it at 8:30 am today.

Screenshot_2015-04-12-20-53-56.png Screenshot_2015-04-12-20-54-02.png Screenshot_2015-04-12-20-54-10.png
 
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tpence2177

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Re: Adjustments, tips ans tricks to maximize Battery Life on Samsung Galaxy S6/edge

Thanks! Going to definitely look into more of these as the days go by!
 

erasat

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Re: Adjustments, tips ans tricks to maximize Battery Life on Samsung Galaxy S6/edge

I'll stop posting about this because I think that people that want to be helped listen and apply what is suggested to them and there are people that will never listen and follow them, and you can get tired of repeating the same again and again.

I'm getting over 5.5 hours of Screen On Time on average since the first day (Friday), today, I'm still at my 3rd full charge, I unplugged mine yesterday at 8:30am going for 28 hours already with 4 hours of SoT and I'm at still at 20% battery, last night I didn't charge it and when I went to sleep it was at 54%, today I woke up at 51%, so it just drained 3% overnight with all my accounts syncing as normal. As of last night usage I was going to average around 5.75 of SoT but I left it on all night on purpose, as it was day hours to see how much it could drain and you see, just 3%.

I don't doubt that some of you may have an issue, maybe a defective device, but hey, MOST of you are within the 14 days period to get a new one, just don't wait anymore, if you have done what it has been suggested by me and a lot others and still getting battery drain issues, it's time to get a replacement. This device has been proven and showed here that it can get a very good battery life, not Excellent (like an Xperia Z3 and other phablets with battery over 3000 mAh) but without a doubt very good, and if you take in consideration that it has a 2600 mAh and a QHD display, then you should appreciate this marvel of technology Samsung gas designed.

If you still need more than what it has been showed here, around 5-6 of SoT, then this is definitely not the device for you, that's the beauty of Android, you have choices...

But, for the last time, if you want to keep the phone begin with Wiping the cache in recovery Mode, and follow some of the suggestions that we have been giving to all of you and if after a day or so it won't get better then get a replacement or pay the restocking fee and get your money back, but at least do something about it, there won't be no magic solution for your issues you look for a fix yourself, or simply wait for Samsung and your carriers to fix whatever there is to fix, but if you ask me, besides the normal couple defective devices that occurs to all companies, with a couple of adjustments you may also be enjoying what the rest of us are, the best Android phone and possible best smartphone actually in the market.
 

wrmoore47

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Re: Adjustments, tips ans tricks to maximize Battery Life on Samsung Galaxy S6/edge

Thanks for this info. Out of curiosity, why is wiping the cache important?
 

erasat

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Thanks for this info. Out of curiosity, why is wiping the cache important?

Most of us if not all received an OTA update from all carriers after we received the device, it's always recommended to wipe cache after an update. Believe it or not, a lot of unexplained issues in all Android versions have been solved doing just that.
 

erasat

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I did a factory reset after I updated. Will it still help if I clear cache?

That's a good question, even when it makes totally sense to me that when you do the whole Wipe Data it deletes everything including cache, I always wipe cache first and then wipe data, old habit, but you can always go at the recover Menu and just do a Wipe Cache, it won't hurt a bit, but it can help you a lot.
 

erasat

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Well I finally decided to put it to the wireless charger as it's at 10% after 30 hours unplugged and 4 hours and 15 minutes of SoT.

I'm not posting more screenshots for a while as I'll begin using the 40-80% approach to try to maximize battery longevity, as per Lithium Battery experts, so the Battery stats won't be too accurate, well for me they will be, but may be not for others to try to understand it, as it won;t be showing the classic 100%-0% battery drain stats.

For those of you wondering what is the 40-80% approach is simply that for Sealed Battery devices like the S6/edge now, where you can't simply replace the battery when it just doesn't hold a charge, is recommended to charge it differently, the battery life depends completely on the charge cycles, according to them the best practice is not to fully charge it to 100 and then drain it completely, doing that can short the battery life extremely fast, they recommend instead something like keep charging your phone until no more than 80% and then use it until it's around 40% and put it to charge again until 80 and so on.

So from now on I'm doing this to see if I can make this battery last a lot longer, for those of you that would like to read about this, go to this link, How to Prolong Lithium-based Batteries - Battery University.
 

kobe008

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Re: Adjustments, tips ans tricks to maximize Battery Life on Samsung Galaxy S6/edge

I really think lowering screen brightness is the biggest key to longer battery life. You are correct in that after a day or two having brightness lower wont even be noticed anymore. My screen used to be #1 battery user by far when I was on auto brightness and since lowering to about 15% it doesn't even show up on my top 10 sometimes.
 

GMaster7

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Re: Adjustments, tips ans tricks to maximize Battery Life on Samsung Galaxy S6/edge

Just wanted to say thanks to erasat for this great post. I'll be following your instructions when I receive my Verizon S6 edge in the mail tomorrow and I'm hoping for some solid battery life. Thanks for your input and help.
 

anon(9409134)

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My battery life has sucked so far. This is from casual usage. Changed some settings and will send an updated picture tomorrow.

Posted via the Android Central App
 

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scarchelli

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Hi, i got my sprint s6 from best buy friday. After reading this thread and several others on the net, I've made countless tweaks for better battery life.

- brightness is down and auto
- wifi never scans
- bloatware is disabled/uninstalled
- location history is off and location is set to wifi and tower only no gps
- no apps running causing a problem according to the battery screen
- bt off, nfc off, wifi calling off, never messed with volte so i assume it's on, sync is on for my 3 emails and contacts, nothing else
- i have key vibration off
- i do have 3 tabs in internet opened if that matters
- i know I'm forgetting something lol

I can't post pictures it says until I have 10 posts, but SoT currently is a little more than 4 hours with 17% left. It seems to be going down 1% every 10 minutes or so. I have been leaving it next to me while I sit here with the screen on watching it. I have a galaxy tablet I use at home when I browse the web, however, right now, I am posting from the s6.

So, a little over 4 hours SoT, phone has been on for 13 hours with 3 hours remaining it says. 25% to the screen, 4% voice calls, 4% to cell standby, 4% google play services, 4% android system 3% android os

Look normal?

Thanks.

(Started typing this post 5 minutes ago at 17% and I have seen it at 16% for several minutes now.)
 

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