Real world battery life.

[feoysolo]

Okay, I hope this doesn't annoy anyone too much...

I have been using my Epic for about two months now and have been generally underwhelmed with the battery life. I followed the tips in the stickied post and for exactly one day it appeared that my phone would last a fair bit longer than the usual 12 hours that it tops out usually, but sadly that didn't last.

I've seen comments from folks saying they are in the 20 - 36 hour range for battery life, and that just sounds amazing.

So I am setting up this poll to get an idea if my experience is typical or if I am in the minority and should continue to try and figure out my battery life concerns. It might be helpful if anyone feels like posting a general idea of their setup and usage pattern below.

Or maybe everyone is sick and tired of the battery life discussion, in which case I apologize in advance. I couldn't find a thread asking this exact question though, for what it's worth.

EDIT: Just realized I probably should have included a 12-16 hour option then a 16-20... oops.

 

[estebancam]

Ever since the latest OTA update, I have gotten consistently about 15 hours of battery life per day with moderate usage. Before then, I was in the 9 hour mark, except the days when I remembered to shut off the DRM application. The OTA update seemed to fix that battery hog issue.

 

[bfguns]

i brought an 2800 mAh battery. end of the day, i'd still have 65-70% left on it.

 

[derryj3]

i brought an 2800 mAh battery. end of the day, i'd still have 65-70% left on it.

Got a link to that battery man? help me out.

 

[Paul627g]

Got a link to that battery man? help me out.

Here is a few for you too check out..

Epic 4G 2800Mah Battery with New Back

Epic 4g 3500mah battery w/ new back

Innocell 3000mAh Extended Life Battery from Seidoonline.com

Out of all of these I would probably go with Seido, simply for the quality/reputation of the products they sell. Just my opinion though..

 

[bonanzabucks]

I’m rooted with an undervolted kernel. With moderate usage and using Ultimate Juice, I can easily last over a day. I doubt it would be the case if I used another ROM or without Ultimate Juice. Before rooting, the battery would probably last me 14 hours.

 

[derryj3]

Here is a few for you too check out..

Epic 4G 2800Mah Battery with New Back

Epic 4g 3500mah battery w/ new back

Innocell 3000mAh Extended Life Battery from Seidoonline.com

Out of all of these I would probably go with Seido, simply for the quality/reputation of the products they sell. Just my opinion though..

Thank you!

 

[zak]

I find it really depends on what I'm doing, normal work day where I'm not using it for much more than emails and text and such it will generally go the whole day without needing a charge. (6am to 10-11pm)
Heavier use, it's probably more in the 8 to 12 hour range

 

[Donmeister85]

I've actually been quite impressed with my battery life. Having done my research before buying the phone, I read on several reviews that the battery life left a lot to be desired. So when I bought the Epic, I remained skeptical that I'd even keep it as battery life is one of those make or break things with me, aside from the GPS issues and supposedly laggy camera. Coming from the Palm Pre with a Mugen Power 1400mAH battery, the Epic in most cases outlasts it. I usually pull it off the charger around 5:30 to 6am before work and it's around bedtime when I'm plugging it back in to charge. I text all day, light browsing here and there. A few phone calls. Data is usually left on all day. My office gets low reception too.

One of the things I use (I don't know for sure how it helps; been using it for the past week and a half) is CPU tuner. I have a profile set for when the screen is off to lower the CPU frequency to 800MHz. If the battery gets to like 10%, then it's set to go to a powersave mode with even more aggressive power savings. It's been working quite well for me!

 

[dchawk81]

I don't put much stock in people's battery life claims. Their "heavy use" is probably my "barely touched it."

I can burn through a battery in as little as three hours, or go as long as 20. The latter means it was in standby most of the time, screen off and hibernating.

 

[ejohnnyk]

I get horrible signal strength at work -- so if it's not on the charger at my desk -- my battery is dead before I leave the office.

On the weekends, I can last about 12 hours before needing a charge, but that's with very heavy use (Pandora, GPS, lots of Facebook/Twitter updates, pics/vids, etc.).

 

[milominderbinde]

I have been adding the tips from all the battery life threads into the Getting Started with Android section on Extending Battery Life. In particular, Juicedefender seems to be the key because it turns things on and off automatically as you need them.

 

[dead78]

I'm coming from the Palm Pre, so all claims about poor battery life are pretty unimpressive to me. That piece of junk would run down to 50% in two hours.

That being said, after a month with this new device, the Epic is a bit better, but it's basically crippled by use of the GPS and most of the more aggressive real time services. It's kind of tiresome to buy a phone with extensive features only to be forced into disabling 90% of them in order to prolong battery life. And my mediocre battery life has been experienced with hardly any actual phone use to speak of - I've probably used less than one total hour of talk time in the month I've owned the thing.

 

[jrz5024]

I've found that the biggest battery killer is the cell radio. Even though battery use says the screen takes up 50% at a minimum (even set at 40% brightness all the time), it seems that I get much more variation depending on my cell connection. With a strong signal, or when I'm on wi-fi, it lasts much longer than when I'm inside all day and the radio is broadcasting it's heart out.

Typically I'll get at least 8 - 10 hours, and I use my phone almost constantly, texting, pandora-ing and browsing. If I let it sit in my pocket it can get a few more, maybe up to 14, but rarely longer than that.

 

[derryj3]

See the thing is, my battery is horrible...but everything else is Perfect. I've never had a GPS issue or sticky keyboard or anything like that.

So I guess its a trade off lol.

 

[feoysolo]

Well I finally got around to following the instructions on this post and so far my battery life is much improved. Last night after 12 hours of fairly light use my phone still reported that it had 50% charge remaining. A week or so ago I had been using the phone rather heavily (GPS navigation for half an hour, screen on for nearly three hours, about thirty minutes of phone calls and a lot of texts and emails) and it still lasted ten hours before I charged it at a reported 3% battery remaining.

I also used the Startup Auditor full version to stop the samsung DRM process from starting as described in this post which I think helps a bit. Also have the screen brightness set to "Auto" which seems to work a good deal better than it did with the stock rom.

Before flashing the new rom, I tried Juice Defender with the default settings and noticed very little if any difference in the longevity of my Epic's battery.

I have had a couple issues with the new rom (locked up while playing Angry Birds last night and required a battery pull, for example), but the increased battery life makes it totally worth the little bit of effort it took to update the phone with a custom rom and file system.

 

[BBooDad]

The Truly Epic ROM made a huge improvement in battery life for me.

 

[Ricey20]

Likewise, in the Truly Epic ROM thread I posted "2 1/2 hours of voice calls, 2 hours of playing minisquadron, some random market update downloads and 50mb dropbox transfer over wifi and I was at 35% with 11 hours unplugged from AC. At stock it would have told me to plug in my phone or have died already."

 

[Paul627g]

Just to throw this one out there. My wife is running Bonsai EXT4 filesystem v1.1.2 on her phone. She does dozens and dozens of text each day, about the same in phone calls, uses various apps, medium internet usage and also to boot has Twitter and Linked In running all day long constantly getting updates. I would put her in the HEAVY usage range.

She gets about an average of 10-14 hours out of her stock battery each day. She returns home with about 10 percent or less on her phone.

 

[primebeatz]

I don't put much stock in people's battery life claims. Their "heavy use" is probably my "barely touched it."

I can burn through a battery in as little as three hours, or go as long as 20. The latter means it was in standby most of the time, screen off and hibernating.

Me too