Screen using ~80% of my battery

[nlombardi3]

What percentage of your battery is used by your screen on a regular charge? Whenever my battery drops to 15% it gives an option to see what has been using the battery and every time the screen is using 70%-80%, which seems absurdly high.

I keep my screen on auto most days, but even when I keep it at a constant 20% it uses just as much. Any thoughts on what could be causing this? I have also been getting much worse battery life the past few days (4.5 hours of moderate use), any help would be greatly appreciated!

 

[th0r615]

I'm pretty sure thats about right... on my TB the screen is about 70% and even on my old N1 it was the same.

 

[VideoEngineerAJS]

Yeah as the previous post stated, that's about normal. You have to realize that a screen as big and bold as the Thunderbolt's will take a lot of battery. Also, constantly checking the battery status doesn't really help all that much as it just keeps lighting up the screen.

 

[FutureTBoltOwner]

basically what everyone above me has said ... the screen for this phone is huge for a phone so that luxury will undoubtedly use a lot of the battery

another thing I always look to is my use ... when I don't use the phone a lot i.e. am not constantly turning the screen on and off the lowest I've managed to see my screen use was around 32% and the average for minimal use for me is usually around 40-45% ... now when I get to moderate to heavy use this easily shoots up to 60+% with the average for heavy use being around 70-72% and I have my screen somewhere between 25-30 in terms of my brightness setting.

 

[realitydigg]

Two things... One you can always see what is using your battery by going to Settings > about Phone > Battery > Battery Use

Second remember that what you are seeig is a percentage of the whole, so if you were to set your screen to 100% brightness. Unplug it, and leave it on your desk for 16 hours then check battery use. Itwould be a low percentage. If you wereto set your screen to 10% and play angrybirds until the phone dies it would likely show a high % basically 80% with a lot of screen on - given that the screen is big and thirsty is reasonable. 80% with little screen on time is not.

When indoors i find the screen plenty bright at very low numbers like 10%. I have a black / very dark background as well. When i go outsite i put it on auto or tap teh brightness widget till i can see the screen

 

[h2opoloplyr_11]

well i have read somewhere before that you have to take into account that the OS is reading the percentage as a whole. So lets say you have all other apps and services using 30% of the battery, that then leaves the screen to show its using 70% to total 100%.

I have had the same setting on my nexus one and i have a bunch of apps and services. Most of the times the screen would be at 70%, but i got it down to 30% just cause everything else is eating up the battery. And even if i do mid brightness and almost all the way down, it still showed at around 70% usage for the screen. again, the OS rounding it to equal 100%

 

[Xharakov]

That's a pretty normal percentage for the screen, but as said, it's just showing a percentage of the whole usage spectrum of the phone.
An easy way to test this out: Just make a couple phone calls, then check your battery usage: you'll see an entry for phone calls with a certain percentage, and you'll see that your display percentage has dipped a good bit lower.

 

[I Monarch]

When indoors i find the screen plenty bright at very low numbers like 10%. I have a black / very dark background as well. When i go outsite i put it on auto or tap teh brightness widget till i can see the screen

Setting your Thunderbolt to a black / dark wallpaper will not help your battery life at all. If you owned a Super AMOLED-equipped device, such as the Galaxy S series, then it would. The TB's LCD display uses just as much power to produce whites, yellows, and reds as it does black. No difference there, bro.

 

[realitydigg]

Setting your Thunderbolt to a black / dark wallpaper will not help your battery life at all. If you owned a Super AMOLED-equipped device, such as the Galaxy S series, then it would. The TB's LCD display uses just as much power to produce whites, yellows, and reds as it does black. No difference there, bro.

Agreed. What it does for me is makes it easy to read at a low % maybe it is just my eyes, but black looks like black on low settings and even grey is readable. White looks muddy at low brightness and everything else can look washed out - which in turn makes me want to brighten up the whole display... Kind of like calibrating your TV for a dark room over a bright one. The eye can see more subtlety

 

[I Monarch]

Maybe you could also test out the theory that's been mentioned on here before that there's no discernible affect on battery life between 20% and 70% brightness. That'd be something that would be hard for me to believe, but that's what I've heard. I'd keep an extra charger around for that day.