[How To] [Discussion] Improve Battery Life

[gunnermike53]

Every couple of days someone posts something like ?my battery life sucks?, or ?I lose 26.2% an hour?. This has only gotten worse since Froyo has been leaked. Lots of suggestions are given to help improve the battery life, some good, some not so much. So I have done some research into Lion batteries in hopes of helping every one improve battery life.

1. Lithium ion batteries are not like NiCad batteries. They do not develop memories. They do not need to be fully discharged and then fully charged. A partial charge is not harmful. A full discharge is. If a lithium ion battery gets fully discharged it is dead, forever. If a lithium ion battery gets overcharged, it is dead, forever.
2. The battery pack in our Fascinate, and in fact all lithium ion batteries, is a computer unto itself. This computer stops the battery from charging when it gets to 100% and prevents the battery from being used past 1 %( this varies from battery type to battery type, .5% to 5%). It also tells the phone how much charge the battery has left. It is not the phone that monitors your battery, but this computer.
3. Battery life will vary from user to user. My battery will not last as long as someone who only flashes 1 ROM a day. Likewise their battery will not last as long as someone who flashes a new ROM once a month. I?m simplifying it, but you get what I am saying. There are many things that contribute to charge loss. I will list some basic tips and apps later. One of the biggest reasons that battery life can be poor is the phone not understanding what the battery is saying.
4. The battery needs to be initialized at least once, sometimes more if you do a lot of flashing of ROM?s and kernels. Because the phone does not actually monitor the battery, but instead receives information from the batteries minicomputer, the phone can get confused. When you first get the phone, it should be charged for 5-6 hours before using it?..yeah right! Who does that? So what to do?

 

[gunnermike53]

Meathod 1

Note: Make sure to only do this when the battery is completely charged to 100%. Do that by charging to 100%, turn phone off with charger still attached, charge to 100% while off, turn on, let it charge to 100% again, then run terminal emulator.

1. Charge the battery to 100%


2. Get a terminal emulator from the market


3. Open terminal emulator, type “su” next to the $ sign and press enter
a. You should get a pop up that says “super user permission granted”
b. You should see a # sign

4. Next to the # sign type "bstats” and press enter
a. Your phone will reboot

5. It will take 2 or 3 days to know for sure if this worked or not. If not, re-do steps 1-4

6. Continually reboot until your battery consistantly shows 3-5%.
a. The goal here is to deplete the battery as fast and as safe as possible. You want to reboot the phone until you continually get around 4 % - 2 %. The battery its self will not let the phone ask for too much. There are other posts on other forums that will say you can stop at 10 %. This is not always the case. After several restarts my phone got to 41 %. And magically the next boot it showed 7 %. The next boot was 14 % then back down to 10 % and on it went, up and down. An hour later my phone was down to 4 %.

7. After you get a consistent charge reporting and are down to 2-4%, charge your phone to 100%.
a. It is best to do this last step with the phone off

Steps 1-4 may be nessicary each time you flash a new ROM.

Steps 5-7 should put your phone back in sync with your battery. 5-7 may not be nessicary for everyone and should only be done if steps 1-4 dont work. Again, it may take 2 or 3 days to know if this worked.



If you are not on Superclean 2.6 or higher (ie. DarkRevenge, Superclean 2.4) you need to download this and install through CWM:

http://forum.androidcentral.com/ver...-hacks/61103-script-delete-battery-stats.html

 

[gunnermike53]

Battery Saving Tips

1. Dim the screen.

2. Limit background data and auto sync

3. Use darker backgrounds

4. Don’t use live wallpapers

5. Put the phone in airplane mode if you know you are not going to have signal

6. Turn off Wifi if you aren’t using it.

7. Disconnect from unused Bluetooth devices. If you aren’t using those head phones, disconnect from them.

8. Turn off Bluetooth*

9. Turn off GPS*

10. Use darker or black key boards

11. Dont use app killers.



*Only for current 2.2 ROM's. Does not apply to 2.1 ROM's.

 

[gunnermike53]

Battery Saving Apps

1. Juice Defender

2. Juice Plotter

3. Set CPU

This is not a complete list. This thread is also ment to be a discusion so please speak up if you have other tips or apps.

 

[JaeKar99]

Hey! Welcome to your new digs. Not that I can offer a lot.. I can definitely tell ya that booting, flashing, backing up, and restoring definitely has a major draw on the battery. As evidenced by all the flashing and restoring I have done recently..

 

[Sta11i0n]

I like where you're going with this mike. It is definitely a much needed thread that will hopefully get sticky'd when complete.

 

[jackmei2]

thanks for cleaning up the thread Mike. I didn't do the massive reboot thing as you did tho, call it laziness. I just waited until my battery was reported at around 5% and then did the reboot thing to make sure it was reporting correctly and then did the rest of your instructions.

also, something else that could be included in there is that when flashing a rom, you should do it when your battery is fully charged. seems to have helped me ever since

 

[gunnermike53]

also, something else that could be included in there is that when flashing a rom, you should do it when your battery is fully charged. seems to have helped me ever since

good point. thank you

thanks for cleaning up the thread Mike. I didn't do the massive reboot thing as you did tho, call it laziness. I just waited until my battery was reported at around 5% and then did the reboot thing to make sure it was reporting correctly and then did the rest of your instructions.

you may not have cought the update i did. i pointed out that steps 5-7 arent always nessicary. only if 1-4 dont work.

thanks for your input.

 

[gunnermike53]

also, something else that could be included in there is that when flashing a rom, you should do it when your battery is fully charged. seems to have helped me ever since

done.

 

[joebob2000]

"Stay out of marginal cell reception areas" is near the top of my list, for me this alone is the difference between a charge lasting me 18 hours and it lasting me 36 hours. And I don't mean "no signal" areas where it is better off in airplane mode, i mean "0 bars of 3g" where the battery dies faster than a red shirt on an away mission. "Avoid SC 2.9" is up there, too. I just havent gotten the life out of my phone since jumping to froyo, it has been steadily going down since SC 2.0 and 2.9 is the worst yet. If it weren't for how well the froyo email app worked, i would be leaving it to the hipsters and going back to eclair.

 

[gunnermike53]

dies faster than a red shirt on an away mission.

lol. your such a nerd!!!


oh, wait, i knew imediatley what you ment....

 

[Ytaay]

lol. your such a nerd!!!


oh, wait, i knew imediatley what you ment....

lol so did I!

oh no ...:'(

 

[k rock]

Just gave this a try, so far everything seemed to work. Now the waiting. If i get better results I will post back to let people know.

 

[djlim4]

I've gotten in the habit of letting my phone charge to 100%, then powering down and letting it charge to 100% before booting up and starting my day.
This always seems to hold my battery at 100% for a longer period of time.

But, like many on this forum, I'm flashing something new every couple of days and never really get to test out my battery after the initial 2-3 day period of calibrating.

My question for anyone out there is, once the battery has been properly calibrated, is it still necessary to power down the phone and let it hit 100% to get a full charge? cuz it's a little tedious sometimes

And i'm just assuming this, but if the extra time it takes is shorter between being 100% charged with power on then 100% charged with power off, does that mean it's "better calibrated" than if it takes a real long time to get to 100% after powering down?

 

[gunnermike53]

I've gotten in the habit of letting my phone charge to 100%, then powering down and letting it charge to 100% before booting up and starting my day.
This always seems to hold my battery at 100% for a longer period of time.

But, like many on this forum, I'm flashing something new every couple of days and never really get to test out my battery after the initial 2-3 day period of calibrating.

My question for anyone out there is, once the battery has been properly calibrated, is it still necessary to power down the phone and let it hit 100% to get a full charge? cuz it's a little tedious sometimes

And i'm just assuming this, but if the extra time it takes is shorter between being 100% charged with power on then 100% charged with power off, does that mean it's "better calibrated" than if it takes a real long time to get to 100% after powering down?

You only need to do steps 5-7 if 1-4 don't do it for you. If you go 2 or 3 days between roms, try flashing new rom with battery at 100%.
Sent from my SCH-I500 using Tapatalk

 

[Landshark]

Nice job buddy. Gets right down to the nuts and bolts of it.

 

[Landshark]

I've gotten in the habit of letting my phone charge to 100%, then powering down and letting it charge to 100% before booting up and starting my day.
This always seems to hold my battery at 100% for a longer period of time.

But, like many on this forum, I'm flashing something new every couple of days and never really get to test out my battery after the initial 2-3 day period of calibrating.

My question for anyone out there is, once the battery has been properly calibrated, is it still necessary to power down the phone and let it hit 100% to get a full charge? cuz it's a little tedious sometimes

And i'm just assuming this, but if the extra time it takes is shorter between being 100% charged with power on then 100% charged with power off, does that mean it's "better calibrated" than if it takes a real long time to get to 100% after powering down?

Yes, you are correct djlim4. The quicker it takes for the battery to get to 100% full charge after you turn it off, the better calibrated it is. That also means it is only necessary to turn your phone off and charge to 100% the one time right before you run the bstats script in terminal emulator. It's kind of a wasted step when after you calibrate the phone and battery, you are probably only charging it at most about half of one percent when you do that.

 

[vluc]

May want to add a comment on how to run the battery script that folks download so they know.

Go to terminal emulator
type su
run bstats.

Device will jump to start screen (Samsung), then reboot.

 

[gunnermike53]

May want to add a comment on how to run the battery script that folks download so they know.

Go to terminal emulator
type su
run bstats.

Device will jump to start screen (Samsung), then reboot.

its the same scrypt. you just flash in cwm before sc 2.6 and its aleady there 2.6 and up.

 

[eibbed0001]

It seems like opinions vary on whether or not the phone uses more battery power with Wi-Fi or 3G. I have the phone set to Wi-Fi when I'm at home with my wireless network. When I leave I switch to 3G so my phone doesn't search for wireless networks to join.

Does Wi-Fi under those conditions use more power or does turning it off when away from home avoid that?

Even after following the steps in this forum topic I still feel like the battery drains more quickly than I'd like. My answer to that is to leave it plugged in when I'm at home and am sitting at the computer with the phone right next to me. Might as well...

I guess it's all about expectations. Maybe I'm expecting too much but I don't like to see it get down to 30% every day. My screen uses about 85% of the power. Pretty will cost ya!