How to Improve Battery Life for the Samsung Epic 4G

[jvoegele]

[Reposting as a top-level post since not everyone follows the battery life thread.]

I have written a detailed blog post about how to get improved battery life for the Samsung Epic 4G. I thought I would share it here since it seems like a common problem for many people on this forum:

Unweaving the Rainbow: How to Improve Battery Life for the Samsung Epic 4G

Hope it helps.

 

[caliskimmer]

Ok, I'll sticky this as this looks like it'd benefit many.

 

[ragnarokx]

And I'm going to un-sticky the other battery life thread so we can get this fresh one going

 

[DaveInFL]

I'll give this a try, as so far I haven't had the best success with my battery. Maybe 8 hours max per day. I did install Juice Defender and that has helped.

 

[ericdives]

Since the release of the DI18 update I haven't noticed much difference between killing the DRM service and leaving it running.

 

[rangers28]

What's with the Airplane toggle thing? I could have sworn that when I read about the toggle trick, that I only did it once and it worked right away. But the last two times I restarted my phone (once on purpose, and once because the battery totally died), I toggled Airplane mode, but then I checked maybe 20 minutes later and my TWS was around 17%, so I had to toggle it again. But by the time I noticed, I had lost about 15% of my battery life So is twice the magic number? Or is there some sequence or time to leave Airplane mode on before toggling it off again?

 

[ragnarokx]

What's with the Airplane toggle thing? I could have sworn that when I read about the toggle trick, that I only did it once and it worked right away. But the last two times I restarted my phone (once on purpose, and once because the battery totally died), I toggled Airplane mode, but then I checked maybe 20 minutes later and my TWS was around 17%, so I had to toggle it again. But by the time I noticed, I had lost about 15% of my battery life So is twice the magic number? Or is there some sequence or time to leave Airplane mode on before toggling it off again?

Are you sure you weren't in an area without signal, and that the 17% was actually correct? In my experience if the toggle trick is not done TWS is much higher, about 50%.

 

[rangers28]

Ragnar:
No, I was in my house, and I'm in Northern NJ, and basically everywhere I go I get great coverage. I know that's not it because as soon as I do the second toggle, the cell standby percentage moves lower and lower until it eventually drops to 0% after a while

 

[ragnarokx]

Ragnar:
No, I was in my house, and I'm in Northern NJ, and basically everywhere I go I get great coverage. I know that's not it because as soon as I do the second toggle, the cell standby percentage moves lower and lower until it eventually drops to 0% after a while

Interesting. It is annoying to have to toggle airplane mode twice, but at least you know the fix. I hope I'm not building expectations up too much in thinking Froyo will save us from this problem.

 

[shaundizzle]

do you have the latest update?

something on your phone is not right. you probably have some app sucking up all your cpu or your phone is never sleeping.

i can easily go 12 hours without a charge. and i use my phone all day - listen to last.fm/ browse the internet/ play angry birds/ probably 50 texts total in a day at max/ maybe 10 minutes of phone calls.

but i usually charge it before i have to worry about it getting low.

 

[gigatigga]

I would warn everyone to skip the Startup Auditor Free app. This thing ended up force closing on boot, which boots apparently before the home screen (i hadn't even disabled the drm service in it yet) and i had to hard reset my phone. I'm not an android/computer n00b either. Really an awful app to be recommending anyone install.

 

[jvoegele]

I would warn everyone to skip the Startup Auditor Free app. This thing ended up force closing on boot, which boots apparently before the home screen (i hadn't even disabled the drm service in it yet) and i had to hard reset my phone. I'm not an android/computer n00b either. Really an awful app to be recommending anyone install.

Perhaps there is a bug in the free version? I'm not sure. I use the paid version and have not had any problems whatsoever. That said, there are other apps on the market that offer similar functionality so feel free to experiment. If anyone has any experience, positive or negative, with any startup auditor apps please share for the benefit of everyone here.

 

[DaveInFL]

I installed Startup Manager and removed the items mentioned from starting up. I have also turned off 4G as I'm not in an area that has coverage, and I turned off Bluetooth. What a difference that made yesterday. I was over 50% even at 10pm. Today I have turned Bluetooth back on but left 4G off, I want to see what happens today.

I also uninstalled Juice Defender and the App Killer that I had installed.

If I can make it to 10pm with even 20% of battery life left I will be well happy

 

[Njphenom]

Nice

 

[rando991]

Does anyone know what the Airplane Mode trick actually does? How does it improve battery life?

 

[heymista]

Jason, Battery life was one of my concerns when I decided to purchase the Epic. Thanks for the great info in your blog. It made me realize that the Juice Defender app was hurting battery life by turning off wifi while I was at home when the phone sleeps. I changed the settings on Juice Defender to never turn off wifi while in range, but it disables it if I'm not near a known network. My 3G signal is not very good at home so disabling wifi would certainly cause additional drain.

I work out of the house for several days, and then travel several days at a time. I bought a few spare batteries and chargers to accomodate my travel needs. I start the day with 2 spare charged batteries. I bought the samsung OEM spare battery and charger with stand. I notice that my batteries are 99-100% charged when using the Samsung charger as opposed to 95-97% when using the phone to charge the battery. I have seen a few complaints on batteries not fully charging, so I thought I would offer my observation.

I also bought a pair of "samsung" batteries and another wall charger for just $25. The batteries have a samsung label, but I noticed the name on the label does not include the upside down V for the A in the Samsung name. Even though they are clearly not the OEM batteries, they still provide comparable performance (90% +/-) at a great price. I don't want to appear like a marketer of etailers so I will just say I found them at the large river in s. america.

I'm hoping 2.2 will include some efficiencies that help battery life. Thanks again for the tips.

 

[rando991]

I have the pay version of Auditor and so far so good.

 

[milominderbinde]

...I changed the settings on Juice Defender to never turn off wifi while in range, but it disables it if I'm not near a known network. My 3G signal is not very good at home so disabling wifi would certainly cause additional drain...

I took all the tricks I could find here and in all the other battery life threads and compiled them into the Getting Started with Android - Tips and Tricks section on Battery Life Tips and Tricks. Getting JuiceDefender properly set up can make a big difference. It is a list of general tips not specific to any one phone. Hopefully they will fix the Epic's DRM and Low Cell Signal bugs. But the advice still stand: CHeck to see what processes, app, and widgets are taking your battery.

Thanks for so many great ideas here and in the old thread.

 

[whatev]

[Reposting as a top-level post since not everyone follows the battery life thread.]

I have written a detailed blog post about how to get improved battery life for the Samsung Epic 4G. I thought I would share it here since it seems like a common problem for many people on this forum:

Unweaving the Rainbow: How to Improve Battery Life for the Samsung Epic 4G

Hope it helps.

Super helpful post, thanks Jason!

 

[jrdatrackstar1223]

I just discovered the trick where you can adjust your screen brightness using the top status bar. You just slide your finger across the top (from left to right or vice versa) as if there is an actual slider up there to drag across the screen. I never knew this, and now I dont need to use auto brightness anymore because I was sick of using the homescreen power widget. Android is the shiz lol.

Also, I just swapped to another Epic due to the screen being lose and I think I found the culprit for my battery drain. I had the Touch to Talk app installed on my phone, and that has to constantly run in the background to receive chirps. After going through and installing all my old apps on this new Epic and forgetting to install TiKL, I noticed my battery life went back to the 24-36 hour range again. Here's to hoping that fixed the problem.

BTW.....this keyboard skip is annoying and has been happening on all the Epics I've had. Makes me wish we had a keyboard-less Galaxy S device even more than I originally did when I first saw the Galaxy S devices and the price of the Epic (unless its just a software problem).