Battery Life / Issues Thread

[timberga]

Alright Android Experts.....I'd appreciate a little feedback on my battery usage. I've tracked my usage a bit over the 1st week with my phone. I'm coming from the excellent battery life of the iPhone4.....so I'm somewhat unsure what to expect with the SGSII. I know that it supposedly has some of the best battery life of all the currently available Android handsets, but I'm expecting a little bit more I guess.......

With that being said, here is how I have my phone setup:

- Stock unrooted
- NO live wallpaper
- Battery Solo widget and Accuweather widget only
- Keep WIFI OFF mainly, as I only have it at home since my work WIFI SUCKS
- Screen Brightness marker set just to the right of the checkbox border (~15% maybe?)
- All Animations Shown
- Timeout of 30 sec
- Auto adjust screen power by analyzing image and adjusting LCD brightness is CHECKED
- NO POWERSAVE MODE (yet)
- GPS ON Always....I use location services to frequently
- Accounts:
- Background Data CHECKED
- Auto-Sync NOT CHECKED
- Have 4 accounts:
- 2 Microsoft Exchange Activesync accounts set to PUSH during the PEAK schedule
o 1st Account Peak Schedule: M-F 8 AM - 9:30 PM
o 2nd Account Peak Schedule: M-F 5 PM - 9:30 PM
- 1 Facebook Account
- 1 GMAIL Account

If I need to provide any other information let me know. Please see my attached screen caps for battery usage and battery usage graphs.....any help or suggestions are very appreciated!

 

[Kevin OQuinn]

Looks great to me for how you're using your phone.

Sent from my SGS II

 

[SteveISU]

My battery life has really improved over the week. Just turning off auto brightness did the trick.

 

[timberga]

My battery life has really improved over the week. Just turning off auto brightness did the trick.

How does your battery stats and usage patterns compare with mine? Just curious.

 

[iskor12]

As I posted in another thread...I have done some research on this battery and the reviews that are coming in are great for it. On average, people are experiencing a 30-40% increase in the life of the battery without increasing the size of the phone. I will be purchasing the battery on Friday and I will post a full review after I use it for a week.

GOLD 2430MAH BATTERY FOR SAMSUNG I9100 GALAXY S II 2 | eBay

FYI: this isn't spam. I too went from an Iphone 4 to this phone and to be honest, the battery life on the Galaxy S2 is horrible in comparison. (IMO)

 

[pairenoid]

i think yours looks like its dying a bit faster than mine

i can go 15+ hours and still be in 30 with mild use, and when i look at yours its similar to mine minus phonecalls which i dont even have 1% of, so maybe that kills the battery fast

right now i had my phone unplugged at100% at around 10, woke up at 9 and its 98%

after a week my battery greatly improved, i have my brightness around 1/5 of the bar, no wifi unless i use, no APN unless i use(well i leave it on sometimes dont seem to matter much), no auto sync but like every 4 hours my facebook will update, i play like 10-20 minutes of games everyday, facebook a total of 5 minutes a day

i start the day with around 90-100% at 8 am and always come back with at MINIMUM 20% after 8 hours(and 9hours of sleep so about 16 + hours if you want to count the time i didnt use it at all)

the only time im in the red and have to charge after work is when i play a lot of games, they really drain the battery. If i dont touch games or fb i can easily come back with 40-70%

games make all the difference i noticed, which is a shame because one reason i was excited for smart phones was the gaming library :/

the longest i went was 1 day 3 hours and i still had 30% battery life that included about 10 minutes of gaming/2 minutes of gps/ 3 minutes of browsing ? lol just estimates but i was shocked at how long it lasts if you barely use it

 

[SteveISU]

How does your battery stats and usage patterns compare with mine? Just curious.

Pretty comparable. I used the timer on the clock to time my workout, so it was on for an entire hour between 7 and 8. I was at about 60% when I snapped these.

 

[pairenoid]

so i havent touched my phone at all since last night cept for a text and im at 18 hours 94%

just goes to show that without use, it doesnt drain at all

 

[0n3_kn0WN]

I've gone over 15 hours now since a full charge this morning, i'm sitting at 38% battery, and I'd say moderate usage overall. I believe the battery life is improving since the first few days, but either way its an improvement over the iPhone 3Gs I was using. Mainly i get the tasks done quicker due to the processing power of the phone, so sleep it quicker.

 

[SteveISU]

I'm on 14hrs and I'm at 48% and I've used it a ton. ESP since I put this tapatalk thing on.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I777 using Tapatalk

 

[iskor12]

OK...How do you guys capture your screens?

 

[asuprice]

OK...How do you guys capture your screens?

Home button and power/unlock button at the same time.

 

[Shermdiggity]

I'm new to Android. I bought my SGSII the day it came out. In fact, I was waiting in line. I absolutely love my phone. Coming from Blackberry, where I was used to great battery life I knew that the battery life of this phone wouldn't be as good, but I'm not getting even my lowered expectations. Here is how I use the phone:

I leave in the morning around 7:30 with 100% life. I make a few calls on the way to work (less than 10 minutes). At work, I'll check news using AP Mobile or a News & Weather app 3 or 4 times a day. I'll check Facebook 4 or 5 times and I'll perhaps send a couple of tweets using UberSocial (I'm careful to actually exit Facebook and Twitter when I'm done). I have 2 Yahoo accounts on push delivery (probably get 20-25 emails a day) 2 gmail accounts on push delivery (these accounts are only for activation purposes so no mail goes here). I also probably send/receive 20 texts during the workday. By 5pm, I'm down to 30% battery life (that is 70% usage in <9 hours). I have screen brightness at about 25-30% and the screen goes dark after 30 seconds.

Again, with Android I expected battery life to suffer compared to Blackberry, but I did expect better than this. Help!! Seriously, an ideas on how to improve this? What am I missing? Do you think I just got a bad battery, should I request a different phone or buy a new battery?

Signed -- Loving Android and my SGSII, hating my battery life

 

[pairenoid]

ugh the battery is so inconsistent

at home or when im out the battery will not even drain 1% per hour, but at work when its idle i lose 3-5 % per hour
WTF!?
i even have better reception at work

 

[timberga]

Looks great to me for how you're using your phone.

Sent from my SGS II

So If I'm not satisfied with my battery life, what top things would you change based on what I listed to improve battery life?

 

[Emcee]

I'm new to Android. I bought my SGSII the day it came out. In fact, I was waiting in line. I absolutely love my phone. Coming from Blackberry, where I was used to great battery life I knew that the battery life of this phone wouldn't be as good, but I'm not getting even my lowered expectations. Here is how I use the phone:

I leave in the morning around 7:30 with 100% life. I make a few calls on the way to work (less than 10 minutes). At work, I'll check news using AP Mobile or a News & Weather app 3 or 4 times a day. I'll check Facebook 4 or 5 times and I'll perhaps send a couple of tweets using UberSocial (I'm careful to actually exit Facebook and Twitter when I'm done). I have 2 Yahoo accounts on push delivery (probably get 20-25 emails a day) 2 gmail accounts on push delivery (these accounts are only for activation purposes so no mail goes here). I also probably send/receive 20 texts during the workday. By 5pm, I'm down to 30% battery life (that is 70% usage in <9 hours). I have screen brightness at about 25-30% and the screen goes dark after 30 seconds.

Again, with Android I expected battery life to suffer compared to Blackberry, but I did expect better than this. Help!! Seriously, an ideas on how to improve this? What am I missing? Do you think I just got a bad battery, should I request a different phone or buy a new battery?

Signed -- Loving Android and my SGSII, hating my battery life

That doesn't seem too bad. I have read that AP Mobile tends to keep updating even if you tell it not to, so it might be sapping power that way. Try using something else.

 

[iskor12]

ugh the battery is so inconsistent

at home or when im out the battery will not even drain 1% per hour, but at work when its idle i lose 3-5 % per hour
WTF!?
i even have better reception at work

Are you connected to WiFi at home? If so...there's your reason.

 

[iskor12]

So If I'm not satisfied with my battery life, what top things would you change based on what I listed to improve battery life?

Try out an app called JuiceDefender. It improved my battery life enough to where I decided to buy Juicedefender Ultimate and that also made another improvement.

 

[derande]

i've had a weird problem with Juice Defender (free version). it would randomly light up my screen every 5-minutes or so. i couldn't figure out what was causing this so after uninstalling JD, it quit and then after reinstalling it returned.
couldn't find any settings that would cause the screen to turn on, so i've kept it uninstalled.

 

[mtucker]

..........By 5pm, I'm down to 30% battery life (that is 70% usage in <9 hours)........................

I was right there with you. I came from an iPhone 4 and was getting bummed about battery life on the GSII. I did a little searching and tried all of the easy to implement suggestions for improving battery life. I now leave work at 6PM with high 70% battery life instead of 30%. Here is what I did (these seem to be suggested often on the web).

1. Set screen brightness to auto (I would like it a little brighter than auto gives me, but the brightness is adequate).
2. Bluetooth off unless I am using it (which is rare since I am not in the car often).
3. Turned off auto-synch (no longer synchs e-mail,facebook.....) I really don't miss hearing e-mail alert every 10 minutes. I check when I want to.
4. Turn off wifi unless I need it. I turn it on at home so I can stream movies off my media server, faster downloads, Android Remote for iTunes.......
5. Turned GPS off. I read that GPS is only used when needed, but at least I know now when it is being used because the apps have to ask to turn it on.
6. Went from a live wallpaper to a dark standard wallpaper.

I did these things Saturday and have had four great days of battery life. My plan is to start turning things back on to see if one of these is the main culprit. From what I have read, I think that will be the auto-synching. Today Bluetooth goes back on all the time. If that is good, I will leave wifi on all the time and see how it goes.