How to Improve Battery Life for the Samsung Epic 4G

[kevincwelch]

Extending your battery

Well, at the risk of sounding pretentious, I found that the best way to extend my battery life was to get rid of everything Sprint had on my phone.

I wiped it clean and installed SyndicateROM Frozen/Vision Kernel. With JuiceDefender and moderate daily use, I take it off the charger around 6:30am and when I put it back on the charger around 7 or 8pm, I still have about 30-40% battery left. About 6 hours of that time is spent in an area without wifi and poor 3G signal.

I think that's pretty good.

I was lucky to scrape by 12 hours with JD and the stock OS.

 

[Since9600]

@kevincwelch, very true... I always get an average of 18-24 hours by eliminating the Sprint/Samsung garbage period!.. I am running a deodexed stock EB 13.. I never disable anything, 4G is usually off as rarely needed, but I do keep my screen brightness down whilst indoors.. I don't use Juice Defender or any of those apps either..

 

[StoneRyno]

never mind. i installed the juice defender pro and there is a wifi location feature that auto enables/disables wifi when in range of a saved connection. the default setting for the app is to turn off all connections when the phone is sleeping and sync periodically. they have a setting to keep wifi turned on all the time when in range of a network (still auto disables when out of range), but they do not recommend it (says it drains battery). is it better for the battery to always keep wifi connected when in range to prevent constant connection/disconnection, or let the app turn off all connections when not in use?

On my epic if I keep wifi on 24/7 even when not in range, wifi consumed 12%, according to the battery use info, after depleting a full charge. Letting juice defender automatically toggle it and not setting a home wifi so that it turns off until, I assume according to, the connectivity schedule choice I made of two hours; wifi only consumed 1% or less according to battery use info. Which means an estimated at least an extra 4 hours from a full charge compared to the time from a full charge before.

Back history of my battery life since I first obtained my epic as I try to recall the details. Stock preloaded version (DI18 I believe) 18 hours from full charge with no use at all and not really optimized for best battery savings (no juice defender and set only couple settings to save battery). Optimizing things (including killing junk processes) but still without using juice defender I managed to get 24 hours from a full charge with little to no use. Add in juice defender using, if I recall correctly, the default settings; I got 24 hours on a full charge with moderate use and 16 hours with heavy use. At this point I decided it was time to try out custom ROMs, syndicate ROM being my first choice and am still in the process of evaluating, starting out I'm getting 48 hours from a full charge with little to no use. I upgraded to juice defender ultimate and currently testing the full charge duration with wifi toggle enabled and 8 hours night mode. But since my connectivity schedule frequency is 2 hours this means only 4 less times it is turned on for 2 minutes to allow syncing. I suspect that with these increased power savings choices over the default ones I'll see 48 hours from a full charge with moderate use.

 

[Devtodi]

any info on how to recalibrate my battery?

 

[scoob]

any info on how to recalibrate my battery?

Here is a simpy way.
I found this, I think it was written by someone at XDA-Developers. It works pretty well for me.

https://market.android.com/details?id=com.nema.batterycalibration

 

[StoneRyno]

Reading the description of the app linked to isn't that the same as deleting the battery stats thing from CWM?

 

[scoob]

Hey Stone, I believe it does the same as CWM but without having to reboot and all...

 

[StoneRyno]

Hey Stone, I believe it does the same as CWM but without having to reboot and all...

Cool beans I have tons of apps so I didn't want to add another if I didn't need to. I reboot after each full charge cycle so it is of no consequence for me to use CWM to do it.

 

[kevincwelch]

I don't use Juice Defender or any of those apps either..

I'm hot and cold on the whole JuiceDefender thing.

Have SRF 1.1.1 with TWZ, and there are some times when I am in a low signal area without wifi that my phone definitely needs JD. Beyond that, I don't think JD helps. So, as a result, a couple times of the week I use JD (ultimate).

 

[StoneRyno]

Sometimes I can't tell if juicedefender or anything else that has helped improve how much I get out a full charge but then it may very well be that those times there is some other variable I can't account for that causes the anomaly. Before I tried to improve battery life outside of the basics brightness, screen timeout, simple settings like that would only get less than 24 hours. Certainly wouldn't make it through a day that needed heavy use.

Then I found out about juicedefender which with the right settings got me significant more so that with moderate to heavy use it looked like I would make it through a day on a single charge. Then I looked into riding myself of the bloatware and tasks that would refuse to go away that I didn't need running. Killing off those tasks didn't do much since they just keep coming back but for a couple. So then I went with SFR figuring the custom ROM was best for getting rid of some of the junk. Which did and seen a significant increase about as much improvement as I seen from juicedefender on stock. Then I found out about the built in android memory thing where you can change the values and that appears to work most of the time keep the unwanted tasks from running such as widgets you aren't using.

In total all of that increased the most I can get out of a full charge to 48 hours with light to no use. Which means I can definitely go a whole day with heavy use. The strange thing is that as I mentioned at the beginning of my post sometimes there is the anomaly and I only get 24 hours out of a full charge and I can never identify the cause. If I were to put a percentage gain to each thing I'd say I get 40% from juicedefender 40% from SFR and 20% from the altered values on the built in android memory thing.

 

[rando991]

Eplain "...Then I found out about the built in android memory thing where you can change the values..."

thanks

 

[StoneRyno]

Eplain "...Then I found out about the built in android memory thing where you can change the values..."

thanks

I don't know what it's called but both GalaxyTuner and AutoKiller have features to set the values. AutoKiller has some preset options for easy settings. I'm clueless as to what the different parameters are exactly. I just used the ultimate preset. I may try one of the slightly less agressive presets to see if it makes a difference in anything. As I'm not sure if any of it impacts active use scenarios.

 

[rando991]

I don't know what it's called but both GalaxyTuner and AutoKiller have features to set the values. AutoKiller has some preset options for easy settings. I'm clueless as to what the different parameters are exactly. I just used the ultimate preset. I may try one of the slightly less agressive presets to see if it makes a difference in anything. As I'm not sure if any of it impacts active use scenarios.

Hmmm, I've been using Adv Task Killer with Auto turned off (I use it manually, as that is what the XDA guys {Randomking} recommends). But I know the stock Task Manager has RAM options for clearing memory, one is Level 1 which never really does anything (always saying "0 apps killed"). The other is Level 2 which is more aggressive and it actually kills a process that will prevent you from SENDING text (not receive text curiously enough) until you reboot your phone, so I don't use it anymore. I'm curious with your Autokiller now so see if when you use that memory cleaner if it will let your text send and then repost with your results. thanks

 

[StoneRyno]

Hmmm, I've been using Adv Task Killer with Auto turned off (I use it manually, as that is what the XDA guys {Randomking} recommends). But I know the stock Task Manager has RAM options for clearing memory, one is Level 1 which never really does anything (always saying "0 apps killed"). The other is Level 2 which is more aggressive and it actually kills a process that will prevent you from SENDING text (not receive text curiously enough) until you reboot your phone, so I don't use it anymore. I'm curious with your Autokiller now so see if when you use that memory cleaner if it will let your text send and then repost with your results. thanks

The app itself can be used to kill tasks but I don't use that feature. I only installed it to change the memory parameters. It does have a brief description of each parameter. GalaxyTuner mentions some defining points for values such as if this parameter is set below xxx expect such and such and if it is set over xxx expect it to do such and such. I really haven't taken the time to find out details to really take advantage of and tweak them to suit my usage.