A little obsessed about battery life

[Erm10]

I've had several generations of Galaxy phones so I know the usual tips. I have auto sync off, usually have location off, dont use crapps like Facebook, have disabled carrier and Samsung bloat, I have Material Dark theme with brightness usually at 30% or so...on and on. I just picked up an s7 edge (tmobile) about a week ago (updated to Nougat right away) and trying to maximize. Some observations and questions so far:

- Several nights I have gone to sleep letting video play and I can probably get 10+hrs SOT doing that. Why is it much less (more like 4 -5 hours)doing simple everyday stuff like texting, emails, some web browsing etc?

- Is the battery drain indicator in GSAM accurate? I have seen it running as low as -20 MaH and as high as -1000MaH but there doesn't seem to be much ryhme or reason to it. I can shut down everything and it still says it's draining at high number and other times it's very low.

- Does having Wifi on really drain battery that much? If I'm at home with good cell signal and unlimited data, am I better off turning wifi off?

- Does lowering screen res from WQHD (2560x1440) to FHD (1920x1080) really make much difference in terms of what your eye can see and\or battery life?

Thoughts\Comments? Thanks

 

[Gary02468]

Many people might benefit from asking themselves how much battery life they really need. For some, battery life seems to be like a game score that they maximize just because they can. They expend a lot of time and effort, and sacrifice many of the features that make the phone useful and expensive.

I place my phone on wireless charges at my desk and at my bedside. My car has a mount and charger that I use for long drives. As a result, my phone rarely needs to go for more than a few hours without charging. The only exception is when I'm traveling and sightseeing, frequently using Maps, Translate, web browsing, and taking photos. But it's easy to carry a charging brick in that situation.

So battery life just isn't something I need to worry about. Others' needs may differ, of course; and if some like to play the battery game for its own sake, there's nothing wrong with that either. Just ask yourself though what your goal is.

 

[bandofbrothers2112]

There are so many battery saving tips on the net now which some do help and others not so much. Imo.

To be honest the best battery saving tip I was given a few years ago was to turn off the battery % sign and enjoy the phone.

I'm on Nougat with pretty much almost everything enabled, use my phone quite heavily and get approximately 2 days usage between charges.

Using Nougat default theme right now although I have used Material Black but because I like it and not so much for the amount of juice it may save.

Background and Location Services enabled.

I rarely use my Home Broadband WiFi due to the amount of data I have in my mobile data plan but that said I personally think WiFi does not hog battery resources as much as people think. No scientific data just my personal experience.

I'm in the bracket of people who are not wanting to micro manage my phones features thus possibly throttling it's usefulness to me.

Battery usage / standby / screen on time stats is a subjective one.

 

[chanchan05]

Lol I'm a pretty heavy user and I charge up to 2-3x per day, onece I hit 50%. I did notice it though that battery drain on stanby doesn't seem to be equal through the day.

 

[Erm10]

"I'm on Nougat with pretty much almost everything enabled, use my phone quite heavily and get approximately 2 days usage between charges. "

If this were the case for me, I would definitely stop obsessing about it. Unfortunately, I am nowhere close and don't understand how you can possibly get that.

 

[bandofbrothers2112]

Lol I'm a pretty heavy user and I charge up to 2-3x per day, onece I hit 50%. I did notice it though that battery drain on stanby doesn't seem to be equal through the day.

May I ask why you put the phone on charge at 50% ?

 

[bandofbrothers2112]

"I'm on Nougat with pretty much almost everything enabled, use my phone quite heavily and get approximately 2 days usage between charges. "

If this were the case for me, I would definitely stop obsessing about it. Unfortunately, I am nowhere close and don't understand how you can possibly get that.

Possibly because we all have different usage habits, the phone settings set at what we need and use different apps.

 

[Erm10]

"Possibly because we all have different usage habits, the phone settings set at what we need and use different apps."

Yes, but I have disabled many things that are said to be battery drains and you have not. I am a light to moderate user and you are a heavy user yet you go 2+ days between charges and I would be lucky to get to the evening on day 1. Most days all I do is make a few calls, send some texts, manually check emails a few times, some twitter and some web stuff.

Baffling.

 

[bandofbrothers2112]

I see what your saying.

 

[chanchan05]

May I ask why you put the phone on charge at 50% ?

Because that's how you take good care of the battery to make it last longer.

Here's a post I made a while back that I just paste when I need to explain. Lol.

Anyway the gist is, basically, batteries work by ion movement, and like a machine, these ions wear out over time due to use. And similar to machines, heavy use wears them out more. You're more likely to break an engine by running it for 1 day at max rev, than running it over a month at half capacity. The smaller the depth of discharge, the lower the wear. Lab tests have concluded that when you constantly discharge from 100 to 0, it allows you betwrrn 300-500 charge cycles before it starts to break down and not hold charges. More specifically, when you reach that magic number your battery can only hold 75% of it's original charge. That's typically 1-2 years of use if you charge once a day. And heavy abusers charge more than once a day, so that decreases the time span to however many weeks it takes them to reach 500 charge cycles. Now, the increase in charge cycles is exponential, not arithmetical. So a depth of discharge to 50 before recharging will not give you 600-1000 charges. Rather it will give you 1200-1500 charge cycles. Mathematically, draining a 3600mah to zero for 300 charges gives you 1080000mah to burn through however short your battery life will be. On the other hand, using only 50% of the battery before recharging gives you 2160000mah to burn through before it expires after at least 1200 charge cycles. In other words, it stored twice more power for you to use. If you say, charge once every 24hrs, going always from 100 to 0 gives you at least 300 days. Recharging twice a day at 50% gives your battery at least 600 days of use before battery capacity deteriorates noticeably. Discharging to 75% before recharging actually gives you 2000-2500 charge cycles, making it even longer. Basically the point is, always plug the phone in when given the chance. Don't wait for 50%, or whatever. 40% is an arbitrary number actually, not sure why it's chosen. Also, this is why one of the choices to auto activate power saving in the S7 is at 50%, so that it keeps the battery up as close to 50% as possible when you get the chance to plug in.
*
As for charging to 80%, this is because partial charge is better than full charge for lithium ion batteries. The ions are placed on stress to hold charges. Maximum stress is at 100% charge. And like everything else, stuff tends to break more. So not running it to 100% all the time will reduce overall stress experienced and increase the time before deterioration occurs. Personally I charge to 90%, and discharge to 40% or above. That's a 50% depth of charge, so that's good for up to 1500 charge cycles, plus whatever number of cycles the decrease in max stress gives me.

However, note that environmental temperatures also play a role in battery longevity.

 

[anon(27512)]

Seems odd to me to turn off everything. I love leaving the resolution high and having the best performance. I don't mind occasionally charging during the day.

 

[LineKill]

Seems odd to me to turn off everything. I love leaving the resolution high and having the best performance. I don't mind occasionally charging during the day.

I would agree. What's the point in buying a high end phone if you're just going to turn off and disable all of its features.

 

[LeoRex]

It might sound counterintuitive, but watching video is quite efficient. Your not tapping away at the screen, rendering widows, etc. It's basically just passing along data and it doesn't have to do much heavy lifting.

As for WiFi, if you are in a strong WiFi signal, it sips power. LTE, even a good signal, uses a fair amount more power.. think about it, instead of communicating with a WiFi router 20 feet away, it's chatting with a tower a thousand feet away. If the WiFi signal is junk, that'd be a different story.

Oh, and when is disconnected, WiFi uses pretty much no power. It's only listening, not transmitting. Powering it off when you are mobile is more trouble then it's worth.

 

[bandofbrothers2112]

Ok @chanchan05

Everyone to their own habits.

Personally I do not let my phone go below 20% and try not to charge it fully to 100%

 

[MetalKore]

Many people might benefit from asking themselves how much battery life they really need. For some, battery life seems to be like a game score that they maximize just because they can. They expend a lot of time and effort, and sacrifice many of the features that make the phone useful and expensive.

I place my phone on wireless charges at my desk and at my bedside. My car has a mount and charger that I use for long drives. As a result, my phone rarely needs to go for more than a few hours without charging. The only exception is when I'm traveling and sightseeing, frequently using Maps, Translate, web browsing, and taking photos. But it's easy to carry a charging brick in that situation.

So battery life just isn't something I need to worry about. Others' needs may differ, of course; and if some like to play the battery game for its own sake, there's nothing wrong with that either. Just ask yourself though what your goal is.

I like your explanation of playing the "battery game". I think this is me lol. I'm not really a heavy user, and I always have some sort of charging method with me. Maybe all of the posts I see about battery life have made me paranoid about my own usage. I think I can stop obsessing over my battery stats now.

 

[Kasper610]

"I'm on Nougat with pretty much almost everything enabled, use my phone quite heavily and get approximately 2 days usage between charges. "

If this were the case for me, I would definitely stop obsessing about it. Unfortunately, I am nowhere close and don't understand how you can possibly get that.

I've been using Android since the G1...Long enough to know 100% that if your a "Heavy user" you are NOT getting 2 days on one charge...Impossible...Our definition of "Heavy" has to be extremely different...

 

[Erm10]

I've been using Android since the G1...Long enough to know 100% that if your a "Heavy user" you are NOT getting 2 days on one charge...Impossible...Our definition of "Heavy" has to be extremely different...

AMEN to that!

 

[KPMcClave]

I would agree. What's the point in buying a high end phone if you're just going to turn off and disable all of its features.

Because many of them I don't use.

People (rightfully) ***** about bloatware (apps forced on us that do things we don't want or need...or we have preferred apps that we think do things better), and then epxect people to just leave everything lit up otherwise. I would think if you understand the former, you'd also understand the latter.

I'm not picking on you personally, magerb. I see this "why would you cripple your expensive phone" response in every discussion of battery life since the dawn of time.

Nobody is advising anyone to turn off the featurss they want or need. I assume, for most of us, that leaves a good sized list of features we don't want or need. Why let them leech battery (and other resources) on your expensive phone?

 

[LineKill]

@KPMcClave I was not really talking about the OP's post. I was agreeing with what deadp1xel had said. I guess it had come across wrong and I should have worded it differently.