Night and day difference

[Chris3D]

So I broke down and picked up another Fascinate on Friday (free at Best Buy). I had researched all the other Android phones, and none were rated appreciably better in terms of battery life, signal strength, call quality, etc. so I figured all those things were just par for the course. The plain 'ol cell I was using was a major POS, and I figured it'd be easier to live with a few issues if the Fascinate was free.

As soon as I got home with the new phone, I rooted, de-binged and de-bloated, and the phone has been great. No lag, and it's been off the charger for 26 hours now and still has about 1/3 battery remaining. Took it on a hike in the woods yesterday (spotty signal coverage), took some video, some photos, made some calls, browsed the web and spent a decent amount of time fiddling with it and it's still going strong.

The first one I had would be stone dead in 8 to 10 hours of almost zero use, which is a major part of why I returned it. When I'd take video, I could literally watch the battery drain, and it'd loose about 1/3 of the battery just sitting in standby overnight.

Not sure what's different about this one, but so far, it's a huge improvement. Now if we could just figure out the side-tone thing...

 

[joebob2000]

Did you root and debloat the first one?

 

[namebrandon]

Glad to hear things are better Chris!

 

[Chris3D]

Nope, the first one wasn't rooted or debloated, I didn't want any issues if I decided to return it. But I did frequently kill any of the services I wasn't using (manually, not with an automatic task killer), and the battery life was still terrible. One night, I had taken it off the charger with a full charge, went out for dinner and started a movie playing for my son to watch, and I was getting 20% battery warning messages before the movie finished, and the screen was always set to the dimmest setting.

I have to think there was just something wrong with the first one. I can't imagine even Verizon would find it acceptable if their pre-installed apps reduced the battery life by upwards of 70%.

 

[packerbacker]

I'm so terrified to root because I don't know what all is involved with doing so (lagfix, roms, it's all confusing), but I would LOVE to have better battery life.

 

[Chris3D]

There's nothing to rooting, basically all it does is give you full access to all parts of the OS - read/write access to all parts of the file system(s), allows you to give that permission to other apps, etc. By itself, rooting doesn't make any major changes to the OS, it just gives you the permission to do so, if you choose. It's pretty simple and safe, and then you can debloat the phone simply by renaming the files of the apps you want to remove.

The various lag fixes and roms replace major parts of the OS with tweaked ones, and yea, I'd be a little cautious on that. Seems all the lag fixes cause many more problems than they solve. But you don't have to lag fix or load a new rom just because you root.

 

[voghan]

Rooting and flashing roms gets addictive. It isn't too hard, just nerve racking. It's too bad there aren't more roms available. It doesn't take much to tweak this phone into an awesome phone though.

Sent from my SCH-I500 using Tapatalk

 

[kravitzoo]

when you say debloat what are you removing, can you explain a little more.
Thanks

 

[Chris3D]

when you say debloat what are you removing, can you explain a little more.
Thanks

Removing all the pre-installed garbage Verizon puts on the phone - CityID, Skype (although I do use Skype, but the Verizon/Android version is a scam and a sham), Bing, Vcast, etc. Read more here:

http://forum.androidcentral.com/fascinate-roms-hacks/34208-apps-safe-remove-once-rooted.html

 

[packerbacker]

thanks to those of you who explained it a little better. i truly appreciate that... i'm still too scared to do it.

 

[ragnarokx]

thanks to those of you who explained it a little better. i truly appreciate that... i'm still too scared to do it.

Don't worry - once you find that one feature that you really want (wireless/wired tether, roam control, Froyo/Gingerbread before official release, etc.) you'll overcome your gun-shyness

 

[joebob2000]

Removing all the pre-installed garbage Verizon puts on the phone - CityID, Skype (although I do use Skype, but the Verizon/Android version is a scam and a sham), Bing, Vcast, etc. Read more here:

http://forum.androidcentral.com/fascinate-roms-hacks/34208-apps-safe-remove-once-rooted.html

Is CityID the service that matches phone numbers to locations in the dialer? Will the dialer still do that after cityID is removed?

 

[Chris3D]

Is CityID the service that matches phone numbers to locations in the dialer? Will the dialer still do that after cityID is removed?

Yes, that's CityID, and no, the dialer won't do that after it's removed but since I had no intentions of paying $3 a month for the service after the trial ran out, I'm fine with that.

 

[fatkidkustomz]

So does rooting and de-bloating really improve battery life that much? Because I'm having the same issues. About 8 hours on a full charge, if I'm nice to the phone. For instance today, I talked about 2 hours, surfed the web for around 30 minutes, and maybe 100 texts at most.

No app killers, no GPS, no wifi. Disabled auto screen adjustment, and set it at a little below halfway. Pretty much every tip I've seen, I've done. I unplugged at 7am and was getting low battery notifications by 2pm.

I don't need this thing to last for days, but I need to get at least a day out of it. Like a solid 24 hours. I just can't believe that people would be content with this. What good is a phone with so much "bling", if you actually use it and have to plug in every 4-6 hours?

I'd like to be able to play around all day, then actually be able to make a call after work to see what my friends are up to, without having to say, "Oh, well my phone's about to die... I'll call you back as soon as I get to a charger."

I know it's got a ton more features (which I absolutely love), a beautiful screen (which I love), and all kinds of other cool stuff. My BB Storm didn't have any of that. But I could hammer on that phone ALL day, and at 10-11pm, it was still just laughing at me with enough battery to last until last call. I don't want to go back to it... but if this issue can't be solved, I may just have to.

 

[Chris3D]

Since I rooted and de-bloated my second one as soon as I got home, I can't say with 100% certainty if it was because of that, or if my first phone was bad/had a bad battery, but I'm now getting a solid 30+ hours on a charge, and that's with a decent amount of use - phone calls, texts, photos, email, browsing, etc.

Like you, my first one struggled to get more than 8 to 10 hours, and that was babying the thing with almost no useage. Yea, it really made owning the thing pointless, but the new one has been great so far.

What's your signal strength like? That's the only thing I can think of that would drastically impact the battery even when the phone is used sparingly - if it's always running the radio at full power to find/maintain a signal.

If you're getting a good signal but still getting lousy battery life, I'd definitely get it replaced because there's clearly something wrong. If you want to try rooting, just follow the instructions in the roms/hacks sub-forum. Its really simple to do/undo. The phone is really great with good battery life.

 

[fatkidkustomz]

Well I'm currently in the rooting process right now. So I'm hoping that's my issue. Worst case I figure I can return it to stock and go swap it out. Hopefully. If not, I guess that's what I get for being impatient, lol.

I'm definitely getting decent signal strength. I haven't really been out in the county with weak signal much with this thing. And I've done the *228 to update roaming.

If I can get 30 hours on a charge with moderate usage, I'll definitely be a very happy camper for the next 2 years.

 

[fatkidkustomz]

OK I rooted, got root explorer and started playing. Well I accidentally deleted the Blockbuster app instead of moving it. Whoops. Can anyone send that to me?

Also, if this doesn't fix my battery problem, what else can I do? Maybe I did get a faulty phone or battery. Been off charge for 2 hours and already down to 90%. Can I un-root and take it back to swap it out? I know I killed the warranty by rooting, so if not, I'll just have to deal with it.

 

[Chris3D]

This is the list of apps I've moved to the SD card, and it assumes you're using a 3rd party launcher like ADW or Launcher Pro since it moves the stock Samsung TouchWiz launcher and all the widgets. Also, make sure you've moved Skype since I'm pretty sure that's running all the time in the background by default.

BackupAssistant.apk
BackupAssistant.odex
Blockbuster_Stub_v0_2_build_12-unsigned-signed.apk
BuddiesNow.apk
BuddiesNow.odex
CarHome.apk
CarHome.odex
CityID_1.0.27_vzw.sch.i500_12118-release.apk
DeskHome.apk
DeskHome.odex
Dlna.apk
Dlna.odex
DualClock.apk
DualClock.odex
DualClock2.apk
DualClock2.odex
Final_Schi500_3.0.3.3_07262010.apk
FullbatPopup.apk
FullbatPopup.odex
i500_411Search-debug_20100604_KST.apk
I500_BingSearchAndroid_07152010.apk.old
I500_MyVerizon_05202010.apk
i500_VCASTTones_QA_060310_1436.apk
LatinIME.apk
LatinIME.odex
LatinImeTutorial.apk
LiveWallpapers.apk
LiveWallpapers.odex
LiveWallpapersPicker.apk
LiveWallpapersPicker.odex
MagicSmokeWallpapers.apk
MagicSmokeWallpapers.odex
MobileAP.apk
MobileAP.odex
NFSSInstallerSamsungEmbed_1.1.64.apk
redding-7648-signed-zipped.apk
SamsungSetupWizard.apk
SamsungSetupWizard.odex
SamsungWidget_AnalogClock1.apk
SamsungWidget_AnalogClock1.odex
SamsungWidget_AnalogClock2.apk
SamsungWidget_AnalogClock2.odex
SamsungWidget_AnalogClock3.apk
SamsungWidget_AnalogClock3.odex
SamsungWidget_AnalogClock4.apk
SamsungWidget_AnalogClock4.odex
SamsungWidget_CalendarClock.apk
SamsungWidget_CalendarClock.odex
SamsungWidget_DigitalClock1.apk
SamsungWidget_DigitalClock1.odex
SamsungWidget_DigitalClock2.apk
SamsungWidget_DigitalClock2.odex
SamsungWidget_FeedAndUpdate.apk
SamsungWidget_FeedAndUpdate.odex
SamsungWidget_ProgramMonitor.apk
SamsungWidget_ProgramMonitor.odex
SamsungWidget_WeatherClock.apk
SamsungWidget_WeatherClock.odex
Skype_mobile.1.0.0.19.live.apk
TATLiveWallpapersAurora.apk
TATLiveWallpapersAurora.odex
TATLiveWallpapersBlueSea.apk
TATLiveWallpapersBlueSea.odex
TATLiveWallpapersConnection.apk
TATLiveWallpapersConnection.odex
TATLiveWallpapersDandelion.apk
TATLiveWallpapersDandelion.odex
TATLiveWallpapersFlow.apk
TATLiveWallpapersFlow.odex
TATLiveWallpapersForest.apk
TATLiveWallpapersForest.odex
TATLiveWallpapersLayersOfLight.apk
TATLiveWallpapersLayersOfLight.odex
TATLiveWallpapersLuminescence.apk
TATLiveWallpapersLuminescence.odex
TATLiveWallpapersOceanWave.apk
TATLiveWallpapersOceanWave.odex
TATLiveWallpapersSpark.apk
TATLiveWallpapersSpark.odex
TetrisInstallerSamsungEMBED.apk
TouchWiz30Launcher.apk
TouchWiz30Launcher.odex
VCastMusic.apk
VCastVideo.apk
vnav_4.7.0.258_i500_rel_PROD_signed.apk
WriteandGo.apk
WriteandGo.odex

As for dropping to 90% in two hours, there's a couple things to keep in mind. Even with the phone sitting on the charger, once it reaches 100%, the battery stops charging and won't start again until it gets down to 95%. So it's possible to take the phone off the charger with what you expect to be a fill charge, and immediately drop down to 95 to 96% or so. The best way to test is to keep an eye on it and as soon as the full battery popup opens, take it off the charger, that way you *know* you're starting with 100%.

Also, with active use, the battery does seem to fall a bit quickly, but where you make up the time is when your not using the phone. I think that was the issue with my first one - that even when it wasn't being used, something was still significantly draining the battery. Even if I left the phone alone and just checked it once an hour, the battery would always have dropped noticeably.

So make sure you remove a few key apps (Skype, CityID, MobileAP, or all of the ones listed above) and give it a try. Charge it up completely, take it off the charger and just use it without paying too much attention to the battery and see how long it lasts. If you're still not getting a solid 24+ hours or more, just un-root it and exchange it for a new one. There's instructions on how to un-root, or if you run into any problems, you can always ask here.

 

[joebob2000]

Thanks for the details, Chris. I decided to root my phone last night to start the debloat process with the backup script in one of the other threads. It was a pretty smooth process. By chance, did you pay much attention to the battery stats on the old phone, like which thing usually ranked highest as far as the estimated usage? Mine is always one of two things, cell standby or display. I can see that daylight usage (with the brightness maxed out) will have a pretty big impact, but the cell standby frustrates me since i am in an area with pretty consistent coverage yet it insists that "time without signal" is anywhere from 15 to 40%.

I did let it sit overnight (after debloat) with nothing but the default tasks running and after about 12 hours on the clock, it still had over 80% charge. I think I am on the right track with the debloat so far.

 

[fatkidkustomz]

Thanks for the list Chris. I'm not a fan of 3rd party launchers just yet though. I played with launcher pro for a little bit and didn't really like it. So I'm assuming if I go down your list and just dont touch anything with TW in it I should be fine?

I did notice as I was backing up the vzw apps I was planning on moving to the SD card that a lot of them came up with a notice that it had to stop the app before backup. I think that alone puts me on the right track.

Also, would you mind sending me the blockbuster .apk file if you still have it? I deleted it on accident and I know I'm going to need it if froyo ever comes around.