Better battery life guide/help (How long does your battery last?)

[Mobius360]

Have any of you tried JuiceDedfender and had luck with the battery? Also the BatteryIndicator program? A friend with an EVO mentioned them to me.

 

[ericdives]

Today's stats: 100% to 66%, includes an overnight stint:

16h 42m 42s
Cell Standby 35% (no time without signal)
Phone idle 26%
Display 23%
Android OS 7%
Wi-Fi 4%
Angry Birds 3%
Android System 3%

This is with 3G off (via Power Control Plus) and WiFi on to no sleep.

Spare Parts reports:
Running: 21% 3h 22m 14s
Screen on: 3.6% 35m 10s
WiFi on: 100%
WiFi running: 100%

Even with WiFi on, I think it significantly improves battery life to turn 3G off. No good data on that, mind you ... just a feeling.

BTW: No juice defender, no ATK.

 

[arewin]

3G Off/

I appologize for the dumb question, but can you still receive/make calls if both 3G and 4G are off? Would I have to turn on 3G when I wanted to make or receive?

Thanks
arewin

 

[jvoegele]

How to Improve Battery Life for the Samsung Epic 4G

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.

 

[ericdives]

I appologize for the dumb question, but can you still receive/make calls if both 3G and 4G are off? Would I have to turn on 3G when I wanted to make or receive?

Phone calls can be received with 3G/4G off. MMS (at least on the Epic) probably won't go through until data is back on.

With both off, you still have a radio active (1X or 2G I think, I haven't taken the time to fully research a proper answer to your query) that can accept phone calls.

 

[ragnarokx]

Phone calls can be received with 3G/4G off. MMS (at least on the Epic) probably won't go through until data is back on.

With both off, you still have a radio active (1X or 2G I think, I haven't taken the time to fully research a proper answer to your query) that can accept phone calls.

It's 1X. I don't believe there is a way to turn off only 3G and have 2G still on (yet).

 

[arewin]

ragnarokx,

Thank you and ericdives for answering my question. The next dumb question, how do I "clidk to thank you and ericdives"?

Thanks again

arewin

 

[ragnarokx]

ragnarokx,

Thank you and ericdives for answering my question. The next dumb question, how do I "clidk to thank you and ericdives"?

Thanks again

arewin

On the bottom right corner of each post in a thread there is a square button labeled "Thanks" with a little thumbs up picture on it. I encourage people to click that instead of making a thanks post to keep the threads around here less cluttered

 

[KC2UUZ]

Today I managed 8 Hours while playing back a book using the Audible app. As well as phone calls, and messaging. I'll call that pretty darn good. OH, and Blue tooth was enabled the whole time!

 

[arewin]

When I wrote: "Thank you and ericdives for answering my question. The next dumb question, how do I "clidk to thank you and ericdives"? I was using my laptop at home. I'm sure that the thanks button was not there, but hey I'm old and could have just been having a senior moment. So I did click the buttons for both posts,

Thanks,
arewin

 

[scottmc129]

My Epic has had a major break through in my battery life. I am happy to report that DRM and MH have not been turned off for the last 2 days. Also Wifi has been on the whole time. granted i have not been connected to my router the whole time, but it is green and on.

1 day 8 hours 41s since unplugged
voice calls 46% (50m57s)
Display 18%(1h28m 58s
cell standby 18%(1d8h28m 34s, time without 1%)
phone idle 13%1d6h59m42s)
wifi 2%(time on 1d8h28m39s
system 2%(cpu usage 13m58s, cpu foreground 38s)

i still have about 40% left on my blue battery bar. i will try to update this and see how far it goes.


this is the 2nd time this has happened. i cant explain it but it is awesome!! i have never been able to go to bed and wake up with all sorts of juice left.

i am on the lated update and stock with wifi never sleeping. DRM and MH do not seem to be a battery threat anymore. at least, for me

 

[arewin]

I have just installed Juice Defender (free version) and using it as installed. I'll see if it helps. I have a question about the status of TRAFFIC, it is listed as "Leave Data/WiFi enabled while >50KB/15s", what does this mean? I can guess that JD will leave the Data connection ON, even if it is scheduled OFF, if the phone is sending/receiving data at a rate greater than 50KB/15s. Is this close?

Thanks
arewin

 

[Marshmallow713]

So I'm at only 2 hours with half my battery gone. All I've done is listen to podcasts through listen at work with the screen mainly off.

Stats:

Display: 32%
Media Server 24%
Cell Standby 15% (2% without signal) But my 3G is constantly dropping and re-adding itself. I'm sick of that beeping noise when it drops
Phone Idle: 10%
Android System 10%
Android OS 4%
Android Core Apps and Listen = 4% together

Any ideas? I swear I can't get more than a few hours out of it anymore. I can plug in at work, it just seems kind rediculous. The dropping and re-adding constantly worries me as well.

 

[ericdives]

Marshmallow713:

Couple of things:

- Is your phone unusually warm? Might need to power it off and power it back on. There could be a hidden process burning through your CPU

- Have you tried toggling Airplane Mode? That might fix your 3G issue - unless you're in an area with sucky coverage

- Do you have Spare Parts? It can provide you with additional information that might clue you in to what's wasting your battery

As I'm updating it regularly, I'll take the opportunity to point you at my blog's Epic Battery post ...

 

[Marshmallow713]

- It does warm sometimes, but a reboot doesn't seem to help, and actually sometimes will drop the battery way down (perhaps its not reading the batter correctly to begin with).

- I do the toggle for 3g and so far it hasn't helped the issue, even though I have a great signal here.

- I just got spare parts but havn't seen any info in it that's very helpful

I think it might just be that Listen is a battery hog for some reason. If I'm not using it or if I'm even playing music or anything else the battery seems to last a lot longer. I don't know if anyone else is using Listen but I'd be curious about your battery life.

 

[mcp6530]

Anyone use your phone as a hotspot with 3g/4g? I do and it kills the battery within two or three hours. I can go from 100% to 20% in like 2 hours without using the screen or anything. I guess thats a testiment to how much battery gets used when using 4g...or 3g for that matter.

 

[drizek]

Battery Left widget is now calibrated at 22:43. Pretty amazing considering the fact that it used to die in 4 or 5 hours when I first got it.

I'm using the Epic Experience ROM with the Phoenix 1.48 kernel. Overclocked to 1.2Ghz and with interactive governor.

This is much better than I was getting with the MixUp kernel, which was about 13 or 14 hours and I was using the slower conservative governor.

 

[rando991]

Does anybody know exactly what the airplane mode trick actually does to improve battery life???

 

[arewin]

Rando991

This is a link to a web page which lists several items that can improve battery life.

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


This is the description about the Airport toggle:

The Airplane Mode Toggle Trick
One of the biggest drains on a mobile phone battery is when there is a weak signal and the cellular radio frequently scans for a signal. Not much can be done about this when reception truly is weak or there is no signal whatsoever. However, there is an insidious bug in the current Epic firmware that "tricks" the phone into thinking it does not have a signal, and causing the power drain while the phone is scanning for a good signal&emdash;even though it already has one!
You can tell if you are affected by this bug by checking your battery usage:

(Menu) → Settings → About phone → Battery use → Cell standby
On this screen you will see a line that reads "Time without a signal". If you've been in a good coverage area but the percentage on this line is high (say 50% or so) then you are suffering from the bug described previously.
Now, how to fix it? Until Samsung or Sprint provides us with an update, there is a simple trick that works around this bug. All you have to do is put your phone in airplane mode. Hold down the power button on your phone until the pop-up menu appears and then select Airplane mode. Wait approximately 15 seconds, then repeat the process to take your phone back out of airplane mode. For reasons that are not clear to anyone, this airplane mode toggle will prevent the false weak signal bug and the battery drain that goes along with it.
One important thing to note is that this workaround does not survive a power cycle. You will need to repeat this process every time you restart your phone

arewin