Battery help

[skinneejay]

To the people who are having great battery life please post what settings you are using and what apps are pulling data for you. Mine has been running down while nothing has changed for me app or syncing wise.

Sent from my Nexus S 4G

 

[feoysolo]

I don't know if mine has been great, but I think the thing that I noticed improved my battery life the most was using SetCPU. It requires rooting but that turned out to be remarkably simple. I easily get through a day so long as I am not without signal (3G or wifi) for too long.

 

[skinneejay]

Maybe I will give that a try. For some reason lately its been horrible. I have tried to pinpoint it but can't.

Sent from my Nexus S 4G

 

[chud]

Google Wallet has been pretty notorious lately. Have you set it up? If not, do that. Or, if you plan on never using it, just uninstall it.

 

[DeathsArrow]

What do you consider "bad" battery life? I typically go 24 hours+ on a charge, unless I'm using my device heavily.

 

[drummer7]

What do you consider "bad" battery life? I typically go 24 hours+ on a charge, unless I'm using my device heavily.

wow i only get about 11 hours. What are your settings

 

[kevincwelch]

I think the problem with these battery threads is that what everyone does with their phones is different, and I am sure there is some exaggeration going on as well.

What people consider "light," "moderate," and "heavy" use is so subjective. A hard core fanboy might consider 2-3 hours of Netflix streaming to be "light" use whereas I might consider "heavy" use checking my email every 30 minutes all day long.

the other thing is that people hardly ever post their stats. I am aware that some haven't rooted their phones and it just may be too cumbersome to post pictures, but you really should offer up something to let others know what is using your battery.

For example, I could have boasted 72 hours of battery life based on my use. Here, I have the screenshot to show it (figures 1 and 2 below). But if you look, the phone was basically idle. Nothing was running. Nothing. So, this is not even "light use."

Take another scenario. Figure 3 shows my battery life with another ROM and I've gotten 14 hours of use. Some with 4G. Some with Bluetooth. More activity. More screen on time. I would consider this "light use" for me. But, then I turned on GPS and did more media streaming and I landed up with about 1 day of battery life with more moderate-to-heavy use at the end of the day (notice the rapid decline in figure 4). Figure 5 breaks down how I used the phone with Oxygen ROM and franco kernel 0811 CFS as well as Paul627g's Simply Blue Theme. A bit more media used.

Screen on time is important as well. Figure 6 shows that on that day, I had 2h and 31m of screen on time and it occupied 37% of my battery. (Had it set to 10% screen brightness.)

In terms of settings, Figures 7-10 show how I have it set up in Voltage Control and NS Tools. Currently I am running Oxygen ROM 2.3.1 with franco's kernel 13 November release. Credit to ZiggSevo for the voltage recommendations.

Hopefully that makes sense. Also, notice the variability in the wifi and phone signal over these times. Signal quality and availability can also affect battery life.

What I have found that works for me and my phone is to charge fully before installing a new ROM and kernel. Once that's done, I calibrate the battery (wipe stats in CWM or with an app -- need to be rooted). I let the battery drain completely and then charge to max uninterrupted. The battery life "adjusts" over a day or two. I don't know why.

 

[skinneejay]

Does wiping the battery stats help out in the long run? I am rooted so booting up into CWM wouldn't be hard. I guess my question should have been more detailed in asking what people have syncing or updating in the background. I have since taking my twitter update to manual and friendcaster to push. Along with my gmail set to push. Do people turn off " use wireless networks " for location? Also under accounts Do you leave the "background data " checked and Auto- sync checked?

 

[chud]

Ive never wiped stats so I dunno.

I have Twitter installed but have never used it. I use Tweetdeck instead for Twitter and Facebook and those are both set to manual updates. I don't rely on either enough to need up to the minute info and any important Facebook stuff just gets emailed to me.

I don't know of a way to not have gmail always set to push.

I leave wireless networks on and 99 percent of the time i have Auto sync checked syncing one account. In that account I sync Docs, Wallet, Contacts, Gmail, Music, Instant Upload, Google+ and Calendar. Reader and Picasa I do manually.

Been getting 24 to 36 hours on a charge lately without even thinking about anything. I don't regularly use Maps or GPS or anything like that though.

 

[kevincwelch]

I have K9 set to poll every 30 minutes.
Gmail push for 3 accounts
Beautiful widgets updating weather every hour
Wifi Manager widget for switching wifi easily (only do it once or twice daily)
Business Calendar agenda widget on as well.

No Facebook, Twitter, or any other social media.

What I did notice is that Widgetlocker was using up a lot of my battery. Was draining 4-5% on idle with it installed and then when uninstalled, phone drained 2-3% per hour on idle...sucks; I liked it a lot.

 

[srdiamond#AC]

wow.... I am just amazed hearing some of these long battery lives... I have NEVER got thru a 12 hour day and rarely get thru half a day .... I have just gotten used to always having my phone plugged in the car or office or home..... I realized I have become paranoid about it after having lost a charge a few nights and not being near a charger.... must be time for a reformat to clean up everything.... anyone have any apps they recommend for saving my app list / settings before I do a hard reformat?

 

[Trun]

I have GPA 19 ROm, and have my processor set to underclock to 100Mhz when idle. I can get through nearly two days. Of course I pretty much only email and some very lite gaming and browsing.

 

[kevincwelch]

wow.... I am just amazed hearing some of these long battery lives... I have NEVER got thru a 12 hour day and rarely get thru half a day .... I have just gotten used to always having my phone plugged in the car or office or home..... I realized I have become paranoid about it after having lost a charge a few nights and not being near a charger.... must be time for a reformat to clean up everything.... anyone have any apps they recommend for saving my app list / settings before I do a hard reformat?

Some say to Odin back to stock if you're on a ROM. Not sure this is necessary, but some people have noticed that various kernels mess with the battery.

Root your phone if you haven't.

There are a few great ROMs out there; personally I have had the best success with Oxygen and GPA 19. Lots of good kernels, but I like matr1x and franco

With light use, I get 24 hours. With moderate use, about 16 hours.

 

[grantheppes]

Stock with matrix 9.5 kernel 100 low and 800 high on-demand governor. Get great battery life, but also have great coverage in NYC. 20- 30 hour battery

Sent from my Nexus S 4G using Tapatalk

 

[iBowToAndroid]

To the people who are having great battery life please post what settings you are using and what apps are pulling data for you. Mine has been running down while nothing has changed for me app or syncing wise.

Sent from my Nexus S 4G

It's not hard to get a full day on this phone, especially rooted.

Use Wifi whenever possible, keep Gmail, Calendar, anything you don't use, turned off. If you use other email, set it to sync as infrequently as possible. Use 4G sparingly. Turn your brightness all the way down. Underclock your processor in CM settings. Don't use a task killer or anti-virus. If you have other sports, weather, FB, other auto-updating apps etc, turn down the sync frequency on them.

 

[Trun]

It's not hard to get a full day on this phone, especially rooted.

Use Wifi whenever possible, keep Gmail, Calendar, anything you don't use, turned off. If you use other email, set it to sync as infrequently as possible. Use 4G sparingly. Turn your brightness all the way down. Underclock your processor in CM settings. Don't use a task killer or anti-virus. If you have other sports, weather, FB, other auto-updating apps etc, turn down the sync frequency on them.

Although all my sync settings are at defaults, and I use Lookout Mobile, and I just plugged my phone in today after 2 days 12 hours.

 

[mclasser]

JuiceDefender for me has been a Godsend. Before I couldn't make it through a full day, even with light use (only checked e-mail and Facebook time-to-time, and light web browsing and texting). With JuiceDefender, my battery life has nearly doubled. I make sure to keep wi-fi, GPS and bluetooth off unless I need to use them.

 

[grantheppes]

It's not hard to get a full day on this phone, especially rooted.

Use Wifi whenever possible, keep Gmail, Calendar, anything you don't use, turned off. If you use other email, set it to sync as infrequently as possible. Use 4G sparingly. Turn your brightness all the way down. Underclock your processor in CM settings. Don't use a task killer or anti-virus. If you have other sports, weather, FB, other auto-updating apps etc, turn down the sync frequency on them.

I keep 4G on all the time and I get 20 hours

Sent from my Nexus S 4G using Tapatalk

 

[iBowToAndroid]

Although all my sync settings are at defaults, and I use Lookout Mobile, and I just plugged my phone in today after 2 days 12 hours.

Lookout is crap. Nothing but a battery sucking piece of bloatware. Antivirus is redundant on Android and if you want it for ringing/locating if lost, there are other apps that will do that without them constantly running in the background like Lookout does.

JuiceDefender for me has been a Godsend. Before I couldn't make it through a full day, even with light use (only checked e-mail and Facebook time-to-time, and light web browsing and texting). With JuiceDefender, my battery life has nearly doubled. I make sure to keep wi-fi, GPS and bluetooth off unless I need to use them.

JD is definitely worth looking into for anyone who wants better battery life, who doesn't need constant email sync/notifications, etc.

I keep 4G on all the time and I get 20 hours

Sent from my Nexus S 4G using Tapatalk

On a rooted phone, not surprised. Now imagine the kind of life you'd get on 3G

 

[jtexans]

I had to complete remove Google+ from my phone. About 2 weeks ago, it was killing it for some reason.