How to Improve Battery Life for the Samsung Epic 4G

**sylvio13** · 01-10-2011, 09:08 PM

I just downladed an app called Screen Filter because this epic screen is crazy bright. Allows you to dim screen brightness wa more. Developer says it will save battery life on Amoled screens. Just started using it but I gotta figure its gonna save a ton of battery life. Take it for a spin.

**ragnarokx** · 01-11-2011, 12:13 AM

That's a good point - the screen is the biggest battery drain of them all.

**imekul** · 01-11-2011, 11:51 PM

Originally Posted by sylvio13

I just downladed an app called Screen Filter because this epic screen is crazy bright. Allows you to dim screen brightness wa more. Developer says it will save battery life on Amoled screens. Just started using it but I gotta figure its gonna save a ton of battery life. Take it for a spin.

Hey, looks like a great app!

Do you happen to know if that app lets you disable or dim the lights on the touch buttons? Those get annoying when trying to read a dim screen in the dark.

Looks like the app has the ability to disable the lights on some touch buttons, but I don't think it's working for my Epic.

**Devtodi** · 01-12-2011, 11:06 AM

just downloaded it and it doesn't seem to be configurable...

**sylvio13** · 01-12-2011, 11:13 AM

No but that would be a great feature. Im betting that is a hardware restriction.

FYI if you place the icon on your homescreen it serves as "soft key" to dim with one touch.

**sylvio13** · 01-12-2011, 11:15 AM

**bojackson** · 01-14-2011, 04:40 PM

So i know there a million battery threads out there so i ran a simple search and didnt find what i was looking for. so here is my question. Is it true that if you charge your new phone for 6-8 hours right after after you buy, it improves battery life? a friend told me this about her vibrant and she claims it lasts her for two days before she charges. after she told me, i recalled hearing this for lap top batteries. if this is the case, should the same hold true if i buy a new battery and charge it for 6-8 hours?

**JMusic** · 01-14-2011, 05:15 PM

Originally Posted by bojackson

So i know there a million battery threads out there so i ran a simple search and didnt find what i was looking for. so here is my question. Is it true that if you charge your new phone for 6-8 hours right after after you buy, it improves battery life? a friend told me this about her vibrant and she claims it lasts her for two days before she charges. after she told me, i recalled hearing this for lap top batteries. if this is the case, should the same hold true if i buy a new battery and charge it for 6-8 hours?

Technically, scientifically, not true. However, in actuality it might help "calibrate" the phone to recognize a true full charge.

**BlackHawkA4** · 01-16-2011, 10:53 AM

40 minutes unplugged. 28 minutes screen time on. Text email, and little web. 20% battery gone.

I'm disgusted with that.

**bchalker** · 01-18-2011, 08:10 PM

With 2.2 do i still need to do the airplane toggle or did they fix it?

**Zor Omega** · 01-24-2011, 10:42 PM

I have DK28. I turn off the DRM, toggle airplane mode and stay on wifi when I can. I get about 10-12 hrs of moderate use. 7 hrs of heavy usage. Though today I got 20 hrs of light use being on wifi the whole time.

**robomav** · 02-10-2011, 03:27 PM

What widget or app do people like best for battery status since the default is not very accurate? I have a stock phone FYI.

Thanks.

**rando991** · 02-24-2011, 07:49 AM

Battery Indicator Pro. Also Fancy Widgets has an option to include Battery Status that shows percent in the widget.

**traumahawk** · 02-24-2011, 12:30 PM

i get about... double battery life... I can leave phone unhooked, keeping my current intensive usage up for over 16 hours and still have 25%+ left. even with my little tweaks i have noticed ZERO negative effects on speed or performance for the internet usage, txting, and gaming that i do.

~ (with ) set to aggressive.
~ (used to force my phone to roam when i loose sprint coverage so my device doesnt waste battery trying to find service again... we all have unlimited plans to have these phones- ie UNLIMITED ROAMING. make use of it).
~ (underclocked to 800mhz cap with setCPU, which is offered free to XDA-dev members).

**traumahawk** · 02-24-2011, 12:33 PM

Originally Posted by robomav

What widget or app do people like best for battery status since the default is not very accurate? I have a stock phone FYI.

Thanks.

root your phone and install TER minitheme... i saw one of the moderators on here has EB13.. guessing rooted and EXT4, with the TER theme running on top of it (just cant install TER. only the theme).

or if you are not interested in rooting and modifying your phone.. i used to use a widget called simply "". check it on appbrain. works great. free too.

**jonbgood** · 03-01-2011, 08:42 AM

Great blog post! Thank you and I look forward to trying this, however I do have a question. You said that the only time GPS uses battery is when an app is using it. Doesn't Locale constantly use it? So wouldnt this be counter productive?

**Windfrenzy** · 03-02-2011, 12:35 AM

Originally Posted by robomav

What widget or app do people like best for battery status since the default is not very accurate? I have a stock phone FYI.

Thanks.

I like circle battery widget.

**Windfrenzy** · 03-02-2011, 12:38 AM

Originally Posted by bchalker

With 2.2 do i still need to do the airplane toggle or did they fix it?

I have same question about EB13. Is DRM still a battery drain too?

**StoneRyno** · 03-04-2011, 04:39 PM

I'm new to both android and samsung epic 4G. I've had it for not quite to weeks now. I have gone through the basic set of power savings tips and applied most of them. The only thing I don't do out of them that I can think of is I don't set it to keep GPS off all the time. From the battery use section in settings the top 4 items are:

display (20% or higher)
cell standby (20% or higher)
voice calls (10 to 20%)
phone idle (at least 10%)

The few other items listed are 2 or 3%. Android assistant (by Aaron) typically the following are the top listed:

juiceplotter (5-10%)
dialer (5-10%)
ADWlauncher (5-10%)
batteryindicator (up to 5%)
swype (up to 5%)
the weather channel (up to 5%)

Everything else which is typically about 30 items are less than 1% down to 0% for some of them. With those details and the fact that I get 24 hours, with moderate use, between charges (I charge at about 10% left) with the stock battery. Am I optimized fairly good at this point? After about another week or so of use to get a good baseline I plan to use juicedefender and see how it works out.

Now for the running processes question. I like that I can see what it running I the background. But being new I'm not sure about anything in the processes list what's normal etc.

Market widget (not added to my launcher)
weather channel widget small (3 of it and I only have one instance of the widget in my launcher)
twitter widget (not added to my launcher)
netQfree widget (not added to my launcher)
mediahub (listed in green in android assistant, not sure what this one is)
youversion bible widget (not added to my launcher)
Latitude widget (2 of it and not added to my launcher)
analog clock widget (not added to my launcher)
power control widget (not added to my launcher)

The rest of the processes running are stuff I know what they are and that they should be running. But the ones I listed have me thinking "um I don't know" especially the couple that have more than one process running. So I wanted to get some experienced people helping me o the processes.

**StoneRyno** · 03-05-2011, 05:08 AM

Why was my thread merged here when it was not just about battery life optimization? I hope I get proper responses to my questions.

**ragnarokx** · 03-05-2011, 10:20 AM

There's nothing you can do about processes except uninstall the items or kill the processes. Nothing looks out of he ordinary. If you're looking to improve battery life, I would suggest taking a look at post #1.

**StoneRyno** · 03-06-2011, 08:20 AM

I'm just trying to understand how things work and what not, which is why I had started a new thread and instead I get merged and it appears like I thought nobody is seeing my post to help because of it. Sorry if I'm being to blunt but so far being a new android user is kind of frustrating when I'm not getting any help from my posts. Why are there processes running for widgets that aren't being used? Why do two of the widgets have more than one process? Are these processes using up battery? And/or impacting performance?

I'm not sure I understand the percentages thing. Because if I'm understanding it right the dialer which I assume is what the name implies is only used to dial as opposed to the voice calls which is the battery usage for the call itself. In other words the few seconds it takes to dial the calls uses 2.5 hours of battery? This based on 10% of 24 hours. As a result then if I didn't place any calls and only received calls then I'd get 26.5 hours out of the charge?

**jonbgood** · 03-08-2011, 09:48 PM

My battery life sucks still even after trying a few of these things. My battery usage always says 95% of it is used by Display and only 2 or 3 % used by Android system, wifi or things like that. I feel like this is inaccurate if my battery life is so bad. And my brightness is only at about 60%. Any thoughts?

**ragnarokx** · 03-08-2011, 11:39 PM

Display is by far the biggest battery hog. I usually keep my brightness at ~15%.

Some people say the app "Juice Defender" helps with their battery life.

If you have root access, that's where the real battery savings are - using an undervolted kernel is probably the best way to extend battery life. Custom ROMs with unneeded apps/processes removed also helps.

**StoneRyno** · 03-09-2011, 12:14 AM

Brightness was the very first thing I did when I got my epic. I still don't fully understand the battery use info because the percentages don't always make sense. Like i used google reader for 10 minutes and it said it used 13% and the point at which I used the app was 20 hours after unplugging the phone from the charger. I somehow suspect that isn't accurate. A few other things like ADWlauncher, dialer, and one or two other apps percentages vary wildly despite a fairly constant or constant usage pattern day to day.

But outside of that I have found ways to improve my time between charges. Despite no replies to help me understand how things work pertaining to battery use. I kill all of the widgets that I don't use in my launcher that from the battery use info are indicated to not be using battery. However because I went from 24 hours between charges to nearly double that due to killing all those widgets at start up it is clear they are using battery despite not being used in my launcher. There were I think 8 of them including some google talk thing that kept loading despite the fact I set it to not log me into google talk. Now i only have about 7 widgets that load at startup and those are for apps I use regularly so even if I kill them they get loaded back every time I use those apps. But that is fine as I have nearly obtained my goal of 48 hours between charges with light to moderate use. That means on days of heavy use I won't have to charge until I am going to bed for the night. I do have one or two apps I will be removing that appear from the info in battery use to drain more than I feel is worth the benefit of the apps. But will see after I go a week and establish a new baseline. Oh and then after that I'll be trying juicedefender.