Need Battery Help... Desperately!

[j0esmoe13]

New Android user here. Recently switched to the SGSII when my firm allowed us to venture away from Blackberry in favor of Android or iPhones. I've had my SGSII for a few days now and, to be honest, the battery life is abysmal. I know it won't be like a BB phone, but I literally unplugged my phone this morning at 100% and was down to 90% within 30 minutes. Later in the day i left my phone in the car for 1 hour and it dropped from 66% to 54%. I had no missed calls and no messages over the hour.

Here are the steps I've taken since I got the phone (all done before today) to help improve battery life.

Force close the stock apps (media hub, social hub, etc)
Altered sync schedule (for gmail and MS Active sync) to run only every hour.
Vibration turned completely off
Bluetooth, WiFi and GPS off when not using it
Turn off automatic background syncing of apps
Set wallpaper to black
Brightness tuned to 0
Removed unused (stock) apps
Removed all widgets (weather, facebook, etc)
Fully close out apps when not in use

Outside of rooting the phone (which I may do down the road) what else can I do? I love this phone but am constantly babysitting the battery. Having to turn on/off bluetooth and GPS whenever I want to use it is ridiculous to me. There has to be things I'm missing here. Thanks!

 

[Onth]

I bought the JuiceDefender Ultimate and it helps a lot, try that

 

[mtucker]

New Android user here. Recently switched to the SGSII when my firm allowed us to venture away from Blackberry in favor of Android or iPhones. I've had my SGSII for a few days now and, to be honest, the battery life is abysmal. I know it won't be like a BB phone, but I literally unplugged my phone this morning at 100% and was down to 90% within 30 minutes. Later in the day i left my phone in the car for 1 hour and it dropped from 66% to 54%. I had no missed calls and no messages over the hour.

Here are the steps I've taken since I got the phone (all done before today) to help improve battery life.

Force close the stock apps (media hub, social hub, etc)
Altered sync schedule (for gmail and MS Active sync) to run only every hour.
Vibration turned completely off
Bluetooth, WiFi and GPS off when not using it
Turn off automatic background syncing of apps
Set wallpaper to black
Brightness tuned to 0
Removed unused (stock) apps
Removed all widgets (weather, facebook, etc)
Fully close out apps when not in use

Outside of rooting the phone (which I may do down the road) what else can I do? I love this phone but am constantly babysitting the battery. Having to turn on/off bluetooth and GPS whenever I want to use it is ridiculous to me. There has to be things I'm missing here. Thanks!

I did most of those items when I was getting poor battery life. I didn't turn my brightness all the way down, but put it on auto. I did turn off auto-synch (settings, accounts and synch, uncheck auto-synch). After that my battery life doubled. I have been going through and turning things back on day by day to see who is the battery hog. My findings are that bluetooth (on all the time) draws almost nothing, wifi on all the time doesn't take too much, but if you are using wifi that is weak it will draw a few percent more over the day (my work wifi is weak, but HSPA+ is great there). Live wallpaper doesn't do much battery sucking. Next I am going to leave GPS on all the time since it isn't suppose to be truly on unless a app is using it. I am guessing the auto-synch was the battery hog and should know for sure in another day or two (trying to change one thing a day at a time).

The first thing I tried was Juice Defender, but I saw very little improvement using that.

 

[BugDad25]

At least you can find out what is using the battery up. Go to Menu, Settings, About Phone and Battery Usage.

That will show you how long phone has been on battery and what has used what percentage of the battery.

I am currently at 6hr 2 min and still have 71% battery left. Have been using normal including running a lot of speed tests.

I have found battery life on the S II to be better than the Captivate and I am alble to go all day without any problem as long as I am not using GPS maps for too long (but that in car and I can always use car charger). Bottom line for me, I am happy with battery life. Anyone else OK?

P.s.: Wifi was on except when doing speed checks on 3G/4G (20% of battery was running a bunch of speed tests), screen auto bright, Auto sync on mail and calendar, weather and other widgets running including ESPN Sports center following the games, blue bubble (non-animated) wallpaper, blue tooth was off (normally on during the week)

 

[cwells]

That doesn't sound right at all, try to see what's eating your battery. Juice defender from what I heard is great but even so you shouldn't be losing that much battery. See what's eating your battery if all else fails do a factory reset. If that fails I would exchange it.

 

[jermneedscoffee]

Might want to turn off auto brightness. What is your typical usage like? Are you a heavy video streamer, gaming, etc?

Another thing, I hear that the battery life tends to get better after a few days usage and charges.

 

[j0esmoe13]

Juice Defender has worked great thus far. The difference is huge! For those who asked, I am not a gamer at all. Phone is used primarily for 'normal' uses like web and calls. I will continue to make tweaks and report back. Thanks for the suggestions so far.