Battery Life on the Epic 4G

[qwertyasdfasdf]

I'm possibly thinking about jumping ship from my Optimus S to an Epic (I hate how little space I have while typing on this thing!), but I kinda like the fact that my Optimus has good battery life. I'm not expecting the 24ish hour battery life I get from my Optimus. But assuming light use (i.e. basically no gaming, mostly web browsing and some texting and a few calls in my case), how long does an Epic running an undervolted custom ROM last?

 

[Paul627g]

I'm possibly thinking about jumping ship from my Optimus S to an Epic (I hate how little space I have while typing on this thing!), but I kinda like the fact that my Optimus has good battery life. I'm not expecting the 24ish hour battery life I get from my Optimus. But assuming light use (i.e. basically no gaming, mostly web browsing and some texting and a few calls in my case), how long does an Epic running an undervolted custom ROM last?

Running custom ROMs with the undervolt, like new the Bonsai v1.1.1 you can get some good battery life for more basic usage like your describing. I just pulled 26 hrs with 15% left on the battery for some phone calls, mainly web surfing and playing some Angry Birds...

Thats more on the extreme end for battery but you should definately see somewhere in the mid to upper teens for battery life on a custom ROM using the undervolt.

 

[jrz5024]

If you don't mind installing a custom rom and tinkering a bit, you can get 24 hours, easy.

 

[IAmSixNine]

I am running ACS Fozen 1.1.1 and can get thru the day with light to normal usage and still have about 30% battery life remaining.
Yes its possible but one of the biggest factors is signal strenght. Anywhere you get low signal expect the battery to die faster.

 

[DocB1973]

Don't screw with the rooting - just buy an extended battery and you'll be good to go.

 

[rando991]

The other BIG thing is, you need to download Spare Parts from the Market (it's free). Plug in your phone to charge it, then unplug it, leave it alone for several minutes.

Now open Spare Parts. Select Battery History and ensure "Other Usage" is selected and then "Since last unplugged". Now check the bar that says "Running" it should say say something low in % but if it shows 75 or 85% or greater even though your phone has been off for several minutes after freshly unplugging, then you have something keeping the phone from sleeping thus wasting battery. If toggling to airplane mode and leaving it like this for several more minutes doesn't significantly reduce this number then it's not the phone searching for a signal, but most likely a recently updated or installed app that is preventing you from sleeping. So you either have to uninstall apps one by one until you find the culprit or do a factory reset and start over by adding apps back one by one until you find one that prevents the sleeping. When you update apps, though, expect the problem to come back because it's not always just one app that causes the problem.

 

[Jaggrey]

I used to get good battery life, then slowly it got worse, with my phone essentially never sleeping for some odd reason. Then I exchanged my phone for a new (refurb) at Sprint and WOW what a difference! Ever since I did that I haven't had to use the other two batteries and the extra charger I bought. So either it was a rogue app (tho I have most of what was on here before) or my last phone just developed some issues.

Alternatively, you can check out the Motorola XPRT. I plan on getting that for my fiance since she loves her Optimus but REALLY misses a keyboard. So for her it's either that or whatever the Optimus Slide materializes into. The 1860 mah battery for the XPRT is a huge plus also.

 

[jrz5024]

Don't screw with the rooting - just buy an extended battery and you'll be good to go.

Yes of course, why fix the problem for free when you can pay for the privilege of a sloppy workaround?

 

[Joescan09]

If you have the phone setup correctly getting 16 to 24 hours of battery life everyday isn't a problem. I personally run a Evo and get 24 hours every single day unless I'm being a super user for some reason. My wife has an Epic and she gets 20 hours everyday and she makes a ton of calls.

 

[Sahmbo1]

Agreed, somewhat. My average use included 30+ texts a day, a couple of pics, maybe a video, couple of games of Sudoku and other random games, couple of facebook checks and posts and maybe 1-2 calls for a total of 30 or so minutes, a 15 minute GPS upload for family tracking (I travel a lot) and some active updating widgets. I can go all day, 6am to 10/11pm on a single charge with room to spare. My JuicePlotter estimates my battery remaining at the end of the day to 3-4 hours which puts me roughly in the 20 to 24 hour range. When I first got the phone, maybe 12 hours on a good day until I tinkered with some apps and with the assist of JuiceDefender.
*Note: Rooted but no custom ROM.