How is battery life on Froyo EC05 so far? *poll added*

[mouseglider]

I have never gotten more then 4 hours screen on time with any update or any custom rom. That is what I would consider heavy use. ;-)


Then again I went on a carribean cruise for a week running bonsai 3.0. I put the phone in airplane mode and kept it inside our cabin and got 6 days. Yes DAYS on one charge.

So in my opinion battery life is directly related to screen on time and signal strength.

Right there should tell everyone with heavy battery drainage, that it is when the phone radio tries to connect or is connected to a weak signal will drain your battery. How much or how fast depends on the signal and how often things are updated. And when it is not connected and/or in the Airplane mode where the radios are not used or trying to search a weak signal, you will have GREAT battery life!

With that being said, if you have a ton of widgets constantly looking for data or even simply two apps like Twitter or Facebook that is constantly updating with a weak signal, you are going to drain your battery.

Now take another example of just the two apps Twitter and Facebook even with the same sync time with great signal and not so active Twitter or Facebook updates, your battery will last longer.

It is all in the setup and how you use your phone, so trying to compare two epics from two different users is almost a useless comparison. My wife uses Facebook all the time everyday all day, I use it once a week for about 15min each time - she has Facebook loaded with live widget updates - I only load Facebook itself when I want to use it with no widget updating in the background - who do you think is going to have the better battery life in just this scenario?

I started with DI18 -> EB13 -> EC05, and I would say each time my battery improved a small amount or stayed the same, but never got worse. But that was only after about a week worth of testing after each update. By that I mean, I don't even test battery drainage right away, because you are simply playing with it more than usual to either tryout/test new features. When you go back to normal usage, then you can test your battery drainage with a little more accuracy.

I get fantastic battery usage and consistancy for how I use it. And one last thing, all Samsung OEM batteries are not created equally, some are a little better, some are a little worse, so some problems may be the battery. I use four OEM stock batteries and three of them always sits in its own external charger and I rotate them on a pretty consistant usage pattern - trust me they are a little different, not by much, but still different.

 

[StoneRyno]

It is all in the setup and how you use your phone, so trying to compare two epics from two different users is almost a useless comparison. My wife uses Facebook all the time everyday all day, I use it once a week for about 15min each time - she has Facebook loaded with live widget updates - I only load Facebook itself when I want to use it with no widget updating in the background - who do you think is going to have the better battery life in just this scenario?

Assuming most other usage variables are the same you would be getting better battery life. This is a good example of why I request people complaining about bad battery life or asking for help to improve their battery life provide details of their usage. Generally without that info all you can do is suggest the typical things that effect battery life for everyone. But many times that is only the surface and there are other things within the usage patterns of each person that can be addressed to improve further.

 

[TechnoGeezer]

Where's the poll?

Coming from stock DI18 and battery life seems about the same. I don't get "poll", however. The only question is what previous ver. OS you had but no place to indicate better battery life or no change in BL.

 

[Jaggrey]

The poll initially was in a separate thread for those that had worse battery life than before. The poll was asking what ROM you came from to EC05 that resulted in you getting worse battery life, to see if there was any correlation.

 

[lancelot916]

I don't think the poll answered the actual question. It was a question about battery life but the poll choices were about software version. Odd.

 

[dead78]

bought my Epic with Eclair. never rooted, no roms, etc. battery life was mediocre before Froyo; it's f'ing horrific now.

 

[Jaggrey]

I don't think the poll answered the actual question. It was a question about battery life but the poll choices were about software version. Odd.

It was an effort to answer the question of if you were getting battery drain after coming from DI18 or EB13.

 

[rundown87]

Battery life is not good for me. Battery seems to drain more quickly on 2.2 just normally; however, sometimes I'll have oh say 65% battery left, then I'll check something using the browser for about 5 minutes, then I close the program and it shows I have like 7% left. This happens sometimes and it isn't only when I use the browser. It's really starting to tick me off because I feel like I need to have it on the charger all the time. I can't even leave it off the charger for 5 hours without being worried it is going to die.

 

[Jaggrey]

For real! I feel the same way. It was never this bad.

 

[StoneRyno]

I have a thought and don't know if it has been tried by those of you getting less battery use from a full charge as before updating. I know with li-on batteries there is not supposed to be a need to "deep cycle" (let the battery go all the way to auto power off the device). However in my experience over the last 6 or more years is that in some cases doing so will train the battery and/or device so to speak to know the capacity of the battery better. There is no benefit to doing this more than once unless it has never been done or has been a really long time. I'm assuming this would work though i have not tried this on mine since I haven't experienced a decrease. On my palm pre doing this about every 6 or 8 weeks put me back to normal when it got to a point where battery life was significantly reduced.

 

[carsalbuja]

so im trying something new guys, i was the usual guys barely getting 7 hours with easy to moderate use (all sync gps, wiffi bluetooth turned off, DRM stopped and phane mode trigered on and off right after start up to kill the famous signal bugg) so i rooted and intalled android firewall keeping all my phone setting like before. just the fired wall modified to let a couple of apps thru when it's on ( like messaging for mms pics, and internet browser) and this are my results so far (heavy heavy use) just watched a movie , listened to music for 2 hours , texted surfed the web, heavy use etc etc

http://a3.l3-images.myspacecdn.com/images02/116/0c270bfb573948e589e4d73dfb637229/l.jpg
almost save time but with ridiculous use and screen time up !
so now next testing is: im deleting the all famous battery tats see what happens i will post later

 

[carsalbuja]

 

[dead78]

I have a thought and don't know if it has been tried by those of you getting less battery use from a full charge as before updating. I know with li-on batteries there is not supposed to be a need to "deep cycle" (let the battery go all the way to auto power off the device). However in my experience over the last 6 or more years is that in some cases doing so will train the battery and/or device so to speak to know the capacity of the battery better. There is no benefit to doing this more than once unless it has never been done or has been a really long time. I'm assuming this would work though i have not tried this on mine since I haven't experienced a decrease. On my palm pre doing this about every 6 or 8 weeks put me back to normal when it got to a point where battery life was significantly reduced.

I've tried this several times and it's made absolutely no difference.

 

[StoneRyno]

After having done sufficient charge cycles since updating to EC05 I can confirm that on mine battery life is the same as before with DI18. I'm going to be changing to syndicate rom (EC05 based one) as soon as my battery is charged. I'm curious if I will gain more battery life using it.

 

[kugumby]

I think someone mentioned that they had the same issue I'm about to describe, but I searched this entire thread and couldn't find the post. I guess it was in another thread. My phone came with DI18. I did the EB13 update.zip from Samsungs website before it was pulled and had the same battery life I had before I updated, which is to say, not bad. (Leaving Wifi (set never to sleep) and GPS on per Jason Voegele's blog post.)

Since getting the EC05 update OTA, if I leave Wifi on, the battery drains to 25% remaining during a regular workday at the office. (On EB13, it may have gone down to 85-90% remaining on a normal day.) The Wifi signal I'm getting is a maxed out signal, so it isn't weak, but when I go to the Wifi settings, I can see the phone scan for other wireless networks about every 3 seconds. If I turn off Wifi and just use regular 3G service, I get the same or better battery life as I did on EB13 with Wifi on all of the time.

So, I have a workaround, but it would be nice to leave the Wifi on instead of having to turn it on if I want speedier data service in my office.

 

[StoneRyno]

I'm still pretty new so I want to let you know this is the only solution I can think of and there may be a better option, I'm thinking it might be best to go with a clean slate. That is to say wipe and flash EC05. There is an odin prerooted EC05 thread if you want to go that route or whatever the method is to flash EC05 as if it was what came on the device if you aren't wanting to be rooted. You can still backup data like SMS etc and just restore the data if you need to retain anything like that not stored out in the cloud.

 

[Jaggrey]

I wiped my phone (again) but this time I cleared the cache as suggested in another thread on another forum (Android Forums - View Single Post - Epic Battery Life Quadrupled after 2.21 update). My battery life has been much better. I also haven't put many apps back on aside from the ones I need, so we'll see when the battery life starts tanking again. Hopefully clearing the cache did it.

 

[carsalbuja]

final research done,
after 3 weeks of intence research and many different settings i have gone from 7 hours of light use battery life up to 1 days 9 hours! (33 hours) of moderate/heavy use WITHOUT HARD RESET OR ANY WIPE ALL MY APPS ARE THE SAME. so here it is the story:
after almost returning the phone and reading forums, i chated with a rep of samsung and told me that my battery probably wasn't using its whole capacity and he told me to do the next steps to open my battery to use full capacity.
plug phone to charger, open back cover and take battery out WHILE PHONE IS STILL CONECTED TO THE POWER CORD , wait 30 seconds place battery back in it now turn on phone and let it charge all the way up (preferebly over night) also, do this when battery is in between 10% and 40% , my battery when from 10% to 29% just by doig that he said it unleashed the other 20% of the battery that the systems wasnt recognizing. after my battery charged over night i also reseted my battery stast ( rooted , used root explorer) after reseting them i turned off my phone turned on and trigered the airplaine mode off for 10 sec and back on ( to kill the signal bug) then i forced stop the main battery drainer background programs/aaps/services known ( RDM, SNS and GOOGLE MAP (just the one with the map icon dont mess wit the other googles!!) and done!! i enjoyed 33 hours to texting, plying games listening to music for like 2 hours , 30 minutes of call time , 2hours + display time etc .... the point im trying t make here is that it is possible to acomplish this on the stock room !! just gotta play the cards right.
other setting i have
gps,bluetooth, wifi, data background, roamming settings (set to sprint only) all turned off , dark wallpaper, firewall ( only mms, internet browser and kick have direct access to the web everything else is restricted, when i want to use any other internet app i just on click disable the wall for a bit) if you are not rooted and dont play games too much juice defender is a great option for you i used for a bit and it worked great, the problem i had what that i turns off data when the screen is off so if someone sends you a picture u might now get it for like 2 hours or so.
good luck to you guys!

 

[StoneRyno]

Nice write up Ecarsalbuja. That sounds like the calibration thing I was trying to talk about not too long ago in the thread. I didn't know about the plugged in and pull the battery part of it though. I'm not familiar with battery stast, sounds like I got to read up on it. I think you may have a typo and instead of RDM I think you meant DRM. I don't have anything google map running in the background any more (on EC05 I did). But I still have DRM and SNS running in the background. I am still in the process of determining my baseline battery life with syndicate ROM, but on EC05 I got at least 24 hours on a full charge though not with as much use for some of the things you listed. Also I have GPS on and some of the other settings different than you listed. However I do use juice defender so it does it's thing to help offset some of that consumption. I don't have a firewall on mine I didn't even know there was such a thing. I do have norton security beta. Unless I'm mistaken that is virus/malware protection with some extra stuff.

 

[rando991]

I knew SNS and DRM were causing most of my drain and suspected the map one too, but you confirmed it. One question though? When you pulled the battery...did the phone need to be OFF or ON?