S7 Edge Battery Life... (New to Android)

[JordySimo]

Apologies if you've seen the same question asked over and over again but the fact I'm new to Android after being with Apple for years, I thought I'd get some info from people on here.

Had my S7 Edge for around a week now and I'm slightly disappointed because I've got this quality screen but can't enjoy it that much because of the battery drain. How are we supposed to enjoy the specs and features of a top smartphone when batteries don't keep up? (At least for me any way)

Screen and Android System are always at the top of my battery usage list. (My screen is always set to a quarter). I asked Samsung about these packages but they said the warranty would be void if I removed any. So that's out of the question.

One day I will get close to 5 hours SOT, but days like today, I'm getting under 4 hours. I even changed my phone carrier to try and reduce the cell standby battery drain but the time without signal is always at around 70-80% so I'm sure that won't be helping. I have altered pretty much every setting you can think of to improve the battery life, but more suggestions are welcome. I mainly use the phone for social media, browsing the web, watching a little bit of YouTube at times and obviously texting.

I really want to find a solution so that I'm comfortably getting over 5 hours SOT with plenty of battery spare because it's a great phone. I see people getting around 6 hours SOT and I'm just baffled.

 

[ZOMMBIE1]

Hit up the theme store for some black themes. Stop Disable or uninstall any unused bloat. Even try a 3rd party launcher (Nova prime) if you haven't already.

 

[Lepa79]

Didn't expect miracles here. 5 HOURS SOT is as good as it gets. Majority of folks on s7 edge average 4 to 4.5 hours SOT. Sorry but android is not IOS. Android Nougat supposed to have doze on the go, so technically your battery should hold more juice when your phone is not being used.

 

[popkurn611]

Apologies if you've seen the same question asked over and over again but the fact I'm new to Android after being with Apple for years, I thought I'd get some info from people on here.

Had my S7 Edge for around a week now and I'm slightly disappointed because I've got this quality screen but can't enjoy it that much because of the battery drain. How are we supposed to enjoy the specs and features of a top smartphone when batteries don't keep up? (At least for me any way)

Screen and Android System are always at the top of my battery usage list. (My screen is always set to a quarter). I asked Samsung about these packages but they said the warranty would be void if I removed any. So that's out of the question.

One day I will get close to 5 hours SOT, but days like today, I'm getting under 4 hours. I even changed my phone carrier to try and reduce the cell standby battery drain but the time without signal is always at around 70-80% so I'm sure that won't be helping. I have altered pretty much every setting you can think of to improve the battery life, but more suggestions are welcome. I mainly use the phone for social media, browsing the web, watching a little bit of YouTube at times and obviously texting.

I really want to find a solution so that I'm comfortably getting over 5 hours SOT with plenty of battery spare because it's a great phone. I see people getting around 6 hours SOT and I'm just baffled.

I'm lucky if I get over 3 hours SOT with the s7 edge. That's why I am now on the pixel and it kills in the battery Dept. Android OS was never great with managing battery life compared to iOS , but now that the pixel is out there is some outstanding battery life with amazing standby time.

 

[Dngrsone]

Turn off NFC, GPS, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi if not using... That's pretty much all you can do (avoid social networking apps).

 

[lammy8]

Ignore that screenshot, meant to post this one. This was with some battery saving mode.enabled on Nougat, best I've had so far. Includes just over 3hrs of SOT.

 

[lammy8]

Turn of NFC, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi if not using... That's pretty much all you can do (avoid social networking apps).

NFC uses 0.5% battery life per the entire cycle. Hardly worth turning off. Other radios are if you're not using them though, as well as disabling WiFi and Bluetooth scanning, even when they're turned off.

 

[LeoRex]

To be honest, any radio that isn't in use is drawing next to no power. WiFi, for example, is only listening for a configured end point... which pulls almost no power.

It's usually screen and signal. A screen at full brightness pulls a lot more juice than, say, 50%. And a poor mobile or active WiFi signal will drain orders of magnitude more than a strong one.

If your usage is the same but there's a lot of variance in the power usage, there's some sort of power eating gremlin in play. I would suggest downloading a battery monitoring app like GSAM to get more useful information... The stock battery tool is pretty bare.

 

[B. Diddy]

Your cell signal looks like it might be pretty lousy. The screenshot shows no bars, and your Cell Standby is at 15%. Poor signal makes the phone work harder to maintain the signal, which uses battery (and which is reflected in Cell Standby). Install GSam Battery Monitor to give a better idea of what your cell signal strength is like throughout the day.

 

[talberry]

Hit up the theme store for some black themes. Stop Disable or uninstall any unused bloat. Even try a 3rd party launcher (Nova prime) if you haven't already.

Would a third party launcher help save battery?

 

[ZOMMBIE1]

Would a third party launcher help save battery?

Just saying it's worth it to try with and without. Might help or you just might like the other launcher better than TouchWiz

 

[Lepa79]

Would a third party launcher help save battery?

No. Believe it or not, touchwize launcher is optimized to run on Samsung phones.

I use Nova Prime just because I like it more than touchwize. It has no effect on battery savings. Some launchers might actually cause battery issues compares to stock launchers.

 

[LeoRex]

I've spent a fair amount of my time fussing with battery junk over the years, and one thing that I've come to conclude is that, short of some drastic alteration in how you use your phone, there's a very limited number of things you can do to make big gains in your power consumption. Much of the time, it is being governed by things beyond your control.

A really poor signal is a power vampire because it is often a continuous drain because it's always in the background... Based on what I've seen, a really strong signal draws as little as 0.1%/h, maybe less. Now, a poor signal can push that background load above 1%/h, perhaps even more. Now, 1% might not seem like much, but project that over a full day and that 1%/h becomes a quarter of your full charge... which translates to 1 or 2 hours of screen time.

So a constantly poor signal could mean the difference between 3 or 4 hours and 5 or 6.

This is also one of the hardest things to fix. I don't have the best signal at my house (-115dbm or so). Now, I called T-Mobile and brought this to their attention and they sent out a LTE signal booster, free of charge, which boosted that signal to -75/-80dbm. A -40dbm improvement is massive... and I immediately saw a difference. My 6P, when left alone for extended periods (like on my nightstand overnight) drains 0.2%/h give or take.

Now, one of the biggest differences between iPhones and Android phones is background... iOS pretty much shuts itself down when you power off the screen and puts severe limits on background processing. An Android phone, on the other hand, can be a busy busy bee with the screen off. Google Location services keeps constantly aware of your device's location, to assist with things like Google Now, which can automatically give you a mall's store directory and map when you walk in the door, or warn you that there's an accident on the road up ahead that is causing a big traffic jam... or a weather app that will let you know that it'll start raining in an hour, etc. If you are out and about, all those background processes drain power, but there that power isn't wasted since the phone is trying to keep you aware. I use me some Google services... lots of them... from traffic alerts, to calendar appointment reminders to bills and stuff I ordered, etc. If I turned that all off, I could probably get an extra hour of screen usage a day, but those benefits far outweigh the power consumption... at least for me.

Sure, you could turn all that background stuff off, mimicking more of how an iPhone works, but what good is a smartphone if you turn off the things that makes it smart? But if you don't want or need anything like that, the option is there to dial that all back.

 

[Nerka255]

just try battery saver apk like

[Link redacted by Mod] or https://forums.androidcentral.com/e.../details?id=com.dianxinos.dxbs&token=ED4Or_Tx

 

[B. Diddy]

I would strongly recommend against DU apps. They're in the same league as Cheetah Mobile, and often associated with adware and/or malware.

 

[Morty2264]

I'm sure others have mentioned some similar tips and tricks, but here's what I do/don't do to improve my battery life:

- turn off data/Wi-Fi at night to conserve battery/Internet usage
- turn display down to 50% if not lower; turn down to 0% if you know you won't be using the phone for a while (i.e., if you're at work, for example, or at the movies)
- having your phone set to Vibrate does consume more power - set your notifications for sound only; not "vibrate and sound," etc
- disable apps running in the background; especially apps that you may not use often that are battery leeches (i.e., Facebook, Facebook Messenger)
- use dark/black wallpapers/themes to conserve battery usage - the Zedge app has a ton of great wallpapers (as well as other cool stuff - icon packs, too!) to choose from!

 

[JordySimo]

Does battery life improve after so many charges or something? My battery seems to be giving better results just as I was starting to criticise it, making me look a fool. So yeah, I've mostly been using Nova Prime Launcher since I bought the phone, NFC turned off, app power saving set to 'always' for every app, notifications on for most needed apps and a few other altered settings.

Today I'm currently doing well with my SOT at just over 3 hours with 48% left on my battery so things have definitely improved somehow. But here's some images of the past couple days....