How's your Battery Life?

[Nimocone]

I'm probably missing an easy button, but how do you turn off the network besides Airplane Mode?

 

[_Zguy__]

My battery life after flashing Perception Build 7 on Monday has been awful. Currently at 82% about 3 hours after unplugging with a full charge.

It just dropped another point as I typed that!

All I've done is send/receive 4 IM's, about 20 minutes on the internet (not using WiFi) and 10-15 minutes in the market.

I have no problem plugging the phone in -- I do it every time I'm in my car, but if I'm away from a power source for any length of time I'm worried this thing will drain in no time.

Mine with cognition doesn't lose a lot while im using but when im not using it it loses 10% in an hour
browsing the internet is only 15% loss an hour

 

[InnocuousScreenname]

Hey folks. I conditioned my battery the last couple of days, letting it drain, then fully charge due to flashing/calibration issues. Anyhow, it does seem to help, but I came across another issue, a bug in the OS.

I'm not sure if the stock ROM has the same issue, but when I came to work this morning, my battery life dropped fifteen percent in about an hour and a half with very, very light usage (couple of text messages, about two minutes of interweb surfing). I wondered what the heck was going on. When I checked my battery usage stats, my cell standby accounted for 30% of my battery usage.

So, I tap Cell Standby and see that my time without signal was 50%! My cell's radio was searching for a signal half the time, even though a signal was readily available. I did not understand how this could be, as I always have my phone on EDGE, unless I need GPS or I want to do some quick browsing if a Wifi connection isn't available, and I get five bars of EDGE signal strength at work.

Anyhow, after a quick search, I found that this was a bug that can be fixed via this method:

1) Go the dialer.
2) Enter *#*#4636#*#*
3) Tap "Phone Information"
3) Scroll down and tap "Turn off Radio", and of course, wait for your phone to show the no signal icon in your notification bar
4) Turn the radio back on.

This fixed the bug, and since that first hour and a half, I've gone from about 85% battery to 72% in the last three and a half hours, with moderate to heavy usage, (listening to music on my phone right now, actually) and my cell standby has taken up 6% of my battery usage, and Time without signal is 0%.

Hope this helps some folks out there.

 

[txdistancerider]

I have to agree with this post. My battery life sucked the first several days but like you mentioned I was playing with the phone ALOT! As I got it configured my way and got more used to it even though I still use it quite a bit I am noticing the battery lasts through the day.

 

[the3dgm]

Just switched from a Blackberry Bold 9000, now that's a phone with bad battery life, to the Captivate on Black Friday. After the initial charge the phone died every time the screen turned off. Per AT&T recommendation sent it to Samsung rather than returning to Radio Shack. Bad component replaced.

Since it's been returned it has worked fine and in two weeks of moderate use has only needed charged three times.

Current use, 2d 17hrs 45 min since last plugged in, and that was for about 15 minutes trying to get the USB drivers to work on my Vista machine. I've had three phone calls of 30, 40 and 45 minutes, a dozen calls of 1 and 2 minutes, surfed the web a half dozen times, been to the market place six or seven times. Replace the floating Bubbles with a direct port of the Droid X background, the HAL eye and the word Droid, free at the market, loaded the 'Jewels' game and a few other apps to try. WiFi is completely off since it connects but will not override 3G. Battery remaining 65%

Best battery life I've ever had with a phone other than a old LG Vu.

 

[thresherhorn]

Just switched from a Blackberry Bold 9000, now that's a phone with bad battery life, to the Captivate on Black Friday. After the initial charge the phone died every time the screen turned off. Per AT&T recommendation sent it to Samsung rather than returning to Radio Shack. Bad component replaced.

Since it's been returned it has worked fine and in two weeks of moderate use has only needed charged three times.

Current use, 2d 17hrs 45 min since last plugged in, and that was for about 15 minutes trying to get the USB drivers to work on my Vista machine. I've had three phone calls of 30, 40 and 45 minutes, a dozen calls of 1 and 2 minutes, surfed the web a half dozen times, been to the market place six or seven times. Replace the floating Bubbles with a direct port of the Droid X background, the HAL eye and the word Droid, free at the market, loaded the 'Jewels' game and a few other apps to try. WiFi is completely off since it connects but will not override 3G. Battery remaining 65%

Best battery life I've ever had with a phone other than a old LG Vu.

Jeez, I wish I had your battery life. Granted I took AT&T up on their "1c refurb" deal, so I guess I cant complain to much.

Currently only squeezing out 14-18 hours per charge out of my captivate with moderate use. I guess it's not a huge deal as it will get me through a day, but going from an LG Shine (battery life of 1 charge: roughly 5 days) to a Captivate (less than a day), it sure is unbelievably noticeable.

Moderate use entails: roughly 30 minutes of total internet browsing, 100+ text messages a day, 1-2 15 minute phone calls, searching the apps store for roughly 20 minutes total in a day, and roughly 20-30 minutes of "gaming".

I've tried everything beside flashing different roms/ underclocking/ and buying a new battery.

I sometimes run her til she quits and give her a full powered off charge, lowest brightness with autobrightness disabled, always cycle the radio to ensure no "time without signal" bug, and have tested "Juice defender" (free version) to schedule data for me. Currently at home I have it running on wifi exclusively with no dropped wifi problems (and as ive researched, it seems this is the more battery friendly option of the two (3G vs wifi)).

In short, I dont know what else to do. I've read through numerous forums about this smartphone's battery life and 16-24 hours per charge is about the norm.... But im dying for your stats the3dgm

 

[the3dgm]

Jeez, I wish I had your battery life. Granted I took AT&T up on their "1c refurb" deal, so I guess I cant complain to much.

Currently only squeezing out 14-18 hours per charge out of my captivate with moderate use. I guess it's not a huge deal as it will get me through a day, but going from an LG Shine (battery life of 1 charge: roughly 5 days) to a Captivate (less than a day), it sure is unbelievably noticeable.

Moderate use entails: roughly 30 minutes of total internet browsing, 100+ text messages a day, 1-2 15 minute phone calls, searching the apps store for roughly 20 minutes total in a day, and roughly 20-30 minutes of "gaming".

I've tried everything beside flashing different roms/ underclocking/ and buying a new battery.

I sometimes run her til she quits and give her a full powered off charge, lowest brightness with autobrightness disabled, always cycle the radio to ensure no "time without signal" bug, and have tested "Juice defender" (free version) to schedule data for me. Currently at home I have it running on wifi exclusively with no dropped wifi problems (and as ive researched, it seems this is the more battery friendly option of the two (3G vs wifi)).

In short, I dont know what else to do. I've read through numerous forums about this smartphone's battery life and 16-24 hours per charge is about the norm.... But im dying for your stats the3dgm

My guess, I've just got lucky! I have noticed that once the battery hits 3 days the percent of battery power left drops rapidly. Since my post I've only had 4 short calls, three messages and it's now 3days 17 hours 45 minutes but percent remaining is 27.

My old LG Vu, like your Shine, also got at least 5 days per charge!

Playing games may not be helping and if you call Samsung support they will suggest a new battery. (worst case, you'd have a back up!)

Hope it gets better for you thresherhorn!

 

[hopeless111]

If I go all out I wont get more than 6-7 hrs.

 

[netposer]

I'm probably missing an easy button, but how do you turn off the network besides Airplane Mode?

You have to download a 3rd party app to do this.

Within the first 5 minutes of owning my captivate I spent 30 minutes looking for a "Connections Manager" app/util or something close.

You can turn off the WiFi and BT radios but not the cell radio (wtf?).

I sometimes use the app "Quick Settings" to attempt to toggle on the cell radio. Even this app reports the status of the cell radio wrong most of the time.

I miss my Blackberry Torch where you could 'click' the date at the top of the home screen and down pops a screen where you can manage all the radios in the device. Talk about useful. You can quickly uncheck any radio then check it to force the device to reconnect to the cell, wifi, or BT. Which is so convenient.

Wonder if new versions of Android will include the ability to toggle off any radio easily?

 

[Kage_]

Yes, 2.2 has a setting to disable mobile data. The only way to disable it on 2.1 is to use an app like APNDroid which changes the APN's so the phone can't connect over the network. I still use APNDroid on 2.2 since there's no direct way to get to the disable data.

 

[asuprice]

My phone is about a week old(Stock ROM and everything)
Today:
Cell Standby:34%(23%without signal)
Display:34% (Time on 13m12s)
Phone Idle: 22%
Android System: 4%(CPU usage 2m22s)
PingChat: 2%
Advanced Task Killer 2%
Android OS 2%

90% Battery Left, 3hrs 30 min since unplugged

Is this good or bad? I've sent 0 emails or texts and made 0 calls. Sent 2and recieved 2 messages via pingchat, recieved and deleted 4 emails.

 

[the3dgm]

Tell us what it is tomorrow morning and they we'll have a better idea.

 

[asuprice]

Tell us what it is tomorrow morning and they we'll have a better idea.

It will be at 0 tomorrow morning if I don't plug it in. haha. 10% seems like a big loss though for not doing anything, but I'm coming from a BB so I know I need to get used to the battery life not being as good.

 

[the3dgm]

I've read here that the average battery life is 12 to 15 hours, mine is averaging more than 96 hours per charge. It's now at 1 day 14 hours + and I've spent a lot of time at the app store reading about, downloading, installing and removing apps, though I've kept three. I've deleted about 40 or so e-mails and spent a lot of time admiring my new interface look! lol I've still got 76 percent of my battery left.

The good news is most of these guys around here say it gets better with use.

 

[asuprice]

Tell us what it is tomorrow morning and they we'll have a better idea.

Today:
Display:38% (time on 1hr 19min)
Voice Calls:20%(7m37s)
Cell Standby:15%(9%without signal)
Maps: 10%(GPS 9m45s)
Phone Idle:9%
Android System:4%
Android OS:2%

Time since unplugged 8 hrs 47 minutes Battery at 40%

 

[Kage_]

Part of your issue is the time w/o signal... When you don't have a signal the phone has to expend a lot of power to try and contact the tower... You may want to consider an app like Tasker that you can put your phone into airplane mode automatically when you don't have a signal and then turn it off some time later...

 

[Kromen]

I'm getting about 12 hours of battery when it's unplugged and I'm severely using it. I have it set up for the display to go black after a minute when I'm not touching it and I also installed Android task manager to make sure the unwanted programs are running, like music player. That seems to pop up once in a while on it's own. Other than the phone, the only other programs that are constantly running are the clock and AVG.

 

[InnocuousScreenname]

Display on 1 hour, 48 min, 17 seconds
Cell Standby 13 hours, 37 minutes 18 seconds, 0 % without signal
Voicecalls 11 minutes, 57 seconds.
Phone Idle, 12 hours, 25 minutes, 48 seconds
GPS 1 minute, 8 seconds

Time spent without sleeping 4 hours 2 minutes 35 seconds

Listened to Winamp for 1 hour 1 minute 52 seconds.

Battery at 56%.

 

[thunderstar2500]

This is very relevant. How to isolate and fix battery drain (and maybe lag, too) - xda-developers. TheYar over at xda does a wonderful job describing the ins and outs of battery usage and such. Note: if this has been posted before, please disregard.

 

[Raffs824]

i keep an extra battery with me. Mine usually runs out about 4:00 p