Tweaks to improve your battery life and responsiveness.

[tcaudill01]

First I apologize for this being so long but there is a lot of info here.
Second, I am making no promise that these tweaks will allow your phone to go for 8 weeks between charges, run faster than a Cray super computer, or bring forth world peace. These are just things I have done to my phone that have improved my battery life.
As of today, my phone has been off charge for 11hrs 51 minutes and I have 68% battery left. This has been light use. 32 minutes of calls about 15 minutes of gaming and maybe 10 minutes to check some thing on the net. This gives me an average battery drain of 2.7% per hour. This is pretty damn good.

Let start by looking at things that suck your battery life.

Screen: That NOVA screen of ours looks nice, but it is a battery hog. At 100% brightness, your battery will drop like a stone off a bridge.

Cell Signal: If you cell signal is weak (1 bar) then your battery is not going to last long even in standby. In areas with worse coverage (weaker signal due to distance or constructional obstructions) the phone has to transmit more powerful signal draining more power from the battery. Make a call or start data transmitting and it drops even faster as the signal increases even more. Have doubts? Get in a poor signal area and make a call or surf for a few minutes. Feel the back of your phone. Getting warm? Now repeat with 4 or 5 bars and feel. Warm now?

3G: This ties into the cell signal to a degree in that the more data traffic, the stronger and clearer the signal needs to be.

Un-necessary data/connections Data syncing, GPS, bluetooth and wifi. Even if you aren't using these, if they are on they are draining power.

Now lets try to improve yours. Almost all of these methods require root access, CWM is good but not required. All Apps mentioned are available through the market.

Diclaimer time: If you break your phone attempting to do things you shouldn't, I am not responsible.

BATTERY CALIBRATION

We will start with a basic necessity for good battery performance. CALIBRATION.
Calibration is the process where you get your battery to hold as much charge as it can and the battery meter to display the correct reading. I think when you do this, you will be suprised how much more charge your battery takes than the phone thinks it needs.

1. Charge your phone 100% while it’s on.
2. Use root explorer, astro, or file manager of choice and go to /data/system and find batterystat.bin. Delete it.
3. Immediately power off and allow charge it up to 100%. (This may take longer than you think)
4. Power it on, and charge it to 100%.
5. Go back to step 2 and repeat one more time.

Your battery should now have it's maximum charge.
NOTE I have read on some of the Optimus Black boards that a 5 volt charger will provide longer battery usage than the 4.8 volt charger that comes with our phone. I have not tested this so I am not sure.

TWEAKS

These are a little complicated but I have done them and they did make some difference. You will need one of the previous file managers mentioned above and a text editor like notepad (NOT a word processor).

1. With your file manager, go to /system/ directory and find the build.prop file and copy this to yourSD card.
2. Make a copy of this original file and sore it somewhere in case you mess up.
3. Either connect the phone to the PC or use a card reader to access the build.prop file on the SD.
4. With the text editor, open the file and add the following text.

# VM Heapsize; 512MB RAM = 48 is better
dalvik.vm.heapsize=48m

# Render UI with GPU
debug.sf.hw=1

# Helps scrolling responsiveness
windowsmgr.max_events_per_sec=150

# Save battery
wifi.supplicant_scan_interval=180
pm.sleep_mode=1
ro.ril.disable.power.collapse=0

# Increase overall touch responsiveness
debug.performance.tuning=1
video.accelerate.hw=1

# Signal tweaks
ro.ril.hsxpa=2
ro.ril.gprsclass=10
ro.ril.hep=1
ro.ril.enable.dtm=1
ro.ril.hsdpa.category=10
ro.ril.enable.a53=1
ro.ril.enable.3g.prefix=1
ro.ril.htcmaskw1.bitmask=4294967295
ro.ril.htcmaskw1=14449
ro.ril.hsupa.category=5

5. Save the file back to the SD.
6. From the phone, use the file manager to copy your edited file back to the original /system/ location overwriting the original.
7. Reboot the phone.

EXTENDED CONTROLS

This app from the market, has a free and paid version and it is an easy way to control mutiple functions on the phone. You can use it to turn data sync, gps, wifi, bluetooth and many more on & off. It will also allow you to toggle betwwen 2G and 3G when you don't need it.

SETTINGS

The following settings in the Setting's Menu will really help cut down on battery usage.

Wireless and network settings.
WiFi - Off until needed, then back off again
Bluetooth - Same as wifi

Sound.
Haptic feedback - Off

Display settings.
Brightness - Either "automatic" with power savings or manual at approx 30% brightness.
Animation - Off (Debatable, I've read arguments both ways)
Screen timeout - 1 minute or less

Location and security.
Use wireless networks - On
Use GPS satellites - Off until needed, then back off again

Accounts and sync
Background data - On (For extreme conservation of power, turn this off. Use extend controls to toggle it)
Auto-sync - off


Thats all of my tricks for saving power on our phones.

All of these suggestions came from the net and most were found on Android Central, XDA, or Android forums. Thanks to all the people on those forums for their contributions.

 

[dishe]

Some of this is good advice, but others are silly things we shouldn't need to jump through in order to use our phone. Like haptic feedback- I have that on my current phone and love it. Why should I have to disable it or apps that update in the background?

I wonder if much of the problem has to do with Lg's implementation of gingerbread. Remember when they released ginger for the Optimus S, and Sprint quickly pulled the update? Everyone had problems with it and wanted to go back to Froyo.

The Optimus Black is a Froyo device. The marquee is ginger. Maybe there is a good reason the European Black hasn't been updated yet?

 

[jojocat#AC]

Hey tcaudill01, thanks for writing all of this up!

On the various build.prop tweak, can you comment on what the various tweaks are doing? I'm curious about the bit for signal, don't know if that's the cell radio or not but I am one of those stuck with bad signal quite a bit of the day. The "ro.ril.gprsclass=10" one doesn't make sense to me, since I thought gprs was only and extension of gsm and not cdma.

Lacking root, my battery extending method has been to install JuiceDefender, which seems to help quite a bit. One aspect that seems very hard to control without something like juicedefender is the sync frequency of the various google services I use with this phone. These all use push synchronization, and as such would seem to require and always available 2G/3G/WiFi signal. There is an "on/off" toggle for sync in gingerbread, but JuiceDefender will automatically turn it on/off at a set interval. My exchange mail account lets me change from "push" sync to a set interval like this, and that has always made a dramatic difference on my past phones.

Anyway, great work and thanks for any followup.

 

[two-rocks]

Some of the TWEAKS are pulled from the OB and had little effect for me.

Under the battery calibration area, no such file exists for my Marquee (batterystat.bin) (EDIT - never mind it was operator error [tried a different file explorer!] giving it a try now....)

Also, isn't the following for the US :

ro.ril.hsxpa=1 (one instead of two)
ro.ril.gprsclass=10

I honestly have no idea what they do, but I though I read that somewhere....thanks!

 

[dishe]

yes, those are gsm modem settings and at best have no effect on the cdma marquee. At worst, it might be confusing to the OS, looking for equipment that does not exist.

 

[nosajsam]

First I apologize for this being so long but there is a lot of info here.
Second, I am making no promise that these tweaks will allow your phone to go for 8 weeks between charges, run faster than a Cray super computer, or bring forth world peace. These are just things I have done to my phone that have improved my battery life.
As of today, my phone has been off charge for 11hrs 51 minutes and I have 68% battery left. This has been light use. 32 minutes of calls about 15 minutes of gaming and maybe 10 minutes to check some thing on the net. This gives me an average battery drain of 2.7% per hour. This is pretty damn good.

Let start by looking at things that suck your battery life.

Screen: That NOVA screen of ours looks nice, but it is a battery hog. At 100% brightness, your battery will drop like a stone off a bridge.

Cell Signal: If you cell signal is weak (1 bar) then your battery is not going to last long even in standby. In areas with worse coverage (weaker signal due to distance or constructional obstructions) the phone has to transmit more powerful signal draining more power from the battery. Make a call or start data transmitting and it drops even faster as the signal increases even more. Have doubts? Get in a poor signal area and make a call or surf for a few minutes. Feel the back of your phone. Getting warm? Now repeat with 4 or 5 bars and feel. Warm now?

3G: This ties into the cell signal to a degree in that the more data traffic, the stronger and clearer the signal needs to be.

Un-necessary data/connections Data syncing, GPS, bluetooth and wifi. Even if you aren't using these, if they are on they are draining power.

Now lets try to improve yours. Almost all of these methods require root access, CWM is good but not required. All Apps mentioned are available through the market.

Diclaimer time: If you break your phone attempting to do things you shouldn't, I am not responsible.

BATTERY CALIBRATION

We will start with a basic necessity for good battery performance. CALIBRATION.
Calibration is the process where you get your battery to hold as much charge as it can and the battery meter to display the correct reading. I think when you do this, you will be suprised how much more charge your battery takes than the phone thinks it needs.

1. Charge your phone 100% while it?s on.
2. Use root explorer, astro, or file manager of choice and go to /data/system and find batterystat.bin. Delete it.
3. Immediately power off and allow charge it up to 100%. (This may take longer than you think)
4. Power it on, and charge it to 100%.
5. Go back to step 2 and repeat one more time.

Your battery should now have it's maximum charge.
NOTE I have read on some of the Optimus Black boards that a 5 volt charger will provide longer battery usage than the 4.8 volt charger that comes with our phone. I have not tested this so I am not sure.

TWEAKS

These are a little complicated but I have done them and they did make some difference. You will need one of the previous file managers mentioned above and a text editor like notepad (NOT a word processor).

1. With your file manager, go to /system/ directory and find the build.prop file and copy this to yourSD card.
2. Make a copy of this original file and sore it somewhere in case you mess up.
3. Either connect the phone to the PC or use a card reader to access the build.prop file on the SD.
4. With the text editor, open the file and add the following text.

# VM Heapsize; 512MB RAM = 48 is better
dalvik.vm.heapsize=48m

# Render UI with GPU
debug.sf.hw=1

# Helps scrolling responsiveness
windowsmgr.max_events_per_sec=150

# Save battery
wifi.supplicant_scan_interval=180
pm.sleep_mode=1
ro.ril.disable.power.collapse=0

# Increase overall touch responsiveness
debug.performance.tuning=1
video.accelerate.hw=1

# Signal tweaks
ro.ril.hsxpa=2
ro.ril.gprsclass=10
ro.ril.hep=1
ro.ril.enable.dtm=1
ro.ril.hsdpa.category=10
ro.ril.enable.a53=1
ro.ril.enable.3g.prefix=1
ro.ril.htcmaskw1.bitmask=4294967295
ro.ril.htcmaskw1=14449
ro.ril.hsupa.category=5

5. Save the file back to the SD.
6. From the phone, use the file manager to copy your edited file back to the original /system/ location overwriting the original.
7. Reboot the phone.

EXTENDED CONTROLS

This app from the market, has a free and paid version and it is an easy way to control mutiple functions on the phone. You can use it to turn data sync, gps, wifi, bluetooth and many more on & off. It will also allow you to toggle betwwen 2G and 3G when you don't need it.

SETTINGS

The following settings in the Setting's Menu will really help cut down on battery usage.

Wireless and network settings.
WiFi - Off until needed, then back off again
Bluetooth - Same as wifi

Sound.
Haptic feedback - Off

Display settings.
Brightness - Either "automatic" with power savings or manual at approx 30% brightness.
Animation - Off (Debatable, I've read arguments both ways)
Screen timeout - 1 minute or less

Location and security.
Use wireless networks - On
Use GPS satellites - Off until needed, then back off again

Accounts and sync
Background data - On (For extreme conservation of power, turn this off. Use extend controls to toggle it)
Auto-sync - off


Thats all of my tricks for saving power on our phones.

All of these suggestions came from the net and most were found on Android Central, XDA, or Android forums. Thanks to all the people on those forums for their contributions.

very cool...thx again!

couple questions regarding the Extended Controls app.
1) is it doing really anything different than the Power Controls widget??
2) I wasn't able to find a setting in either one that disables the "Background Data". Could anyone point me in the right direction here?

 

[tcaudill01]

Okay guys, multiple response to multiple posts.

First, my bit. I only shared what I had implemented on my own phone that I found to improve battery life. I did not guarantee that all would work for everyone. I also am not forcing anyone to use them. It's simple, if you don't like or don't trust what I do then don't use it. Flaming me in PM's for trying to help is not cool and I can always quit posting if that is what you prefer.

Now to the replies.

DISHE I do not disagree with you that we should not have to disable mutiple things to get our phones to last more than a few hours. I fondly remember my Nokia 8650 that would last for 3 or 4 days with heavy use. That Nokia also did not have a beutiful and bright 4 inch diplay, 3G, GPS, Wifi, bluetooth, and a 1GHz processor while weighing less than 4 oz and half the thickness of a deck of cards.
It's a situation of form over function. To get everything we want in a package this small, something has to give. Unfortunately, its usually the battery size that is sacrificed.

I also agree that GB uses more battery than Froyo. This comes from my experience with the Captivate and upgrading from 2.2 to 2.3, afterwards I did experience a significant drop in battery life and the captivate forums are full of posts from people who experienced the same thing.

JOJOCAT Yes, gprs is for GSM and not CDMS. This was copied from the Opti Black forum and I left it in for two reasons.
1) Our build.prop refers to GSM a couple of times.
ro.cdma.home.operator.numeric=310120
gsm.operator.alpha=Sprint
gsm.operator.numeric=310120
gsm.operator.iso-country=us
2) I didn't figure it would do much harm.

I have not used Juice Defender so I can't comment. I have read posts both pro and con. Let us know your experience. It maybe something that we all can benefit from.

two-rocks You are correct that some of the tweaks are from the Black. We are hardware identical so they should work and for me they have. Sorry they didn't help you.
Please re-read about batterystat.bin. It is in the file system on your phone in the /data/system/ subdirectory.
As for ro.ril.hsxpa, my info came from (Know) YOUR BUILD.PROP, in the third section. Also, if you google "sprint build.prop ro.ril.hsxpa" you will find that setting the ro.hil.hsxpa=2 is a common recommendation to improve signal on Sprint Androids.

nosajsam Extended contol allows you to customize what the toggles do and the number visible. It allows you to toggle several things the basic power widget does not.
Background data is under "Settings", "Accounts & sync". There you have two selection boxes, "Background data" and "Auto-sync"

Hope this answers some questions and gives some reasons for why I put tjings in here.

 

[nosajsam]

Okay guys, multiple response to multiple posts.

First, my bit. I only shared what I had implemented on my own phone that I found to improve battery life. I did not guarantee that all would work for everyone. I also am not forcing anyone to use them. It's simple, if you don't like or don't trust what I do then don't use it. Flaming me in PM's for trying to help is not cool and I can always quit posting if that is what you prefer.

Now to the replies.

DISHE I do not disagree with you that we should not have to disable mutiple things to get our phones to last more than a few hours. I fondly remember my Nokia 8650 that would last for 3 or 4 days with heavy use. That Nokia also did not have a beutiful and bright 4 inch diplay, 3G, GPS, Wifi, bluetooth, and a 1GHz processor while weighing less than 4 oz and half the thickness of a deck of cards.
It's a situation of form over function. To get everything we want in a package this small, something has to give. Unfortunately, its usually the battery size that is sacrificed.

I also agree that GB uses more battery than Froyo. This comes from my experience with the Captivate and upgrading from 2.2 to 2.3, afterwards I did experience a significant drop in battery life and the captivate forums are full of posts from people who experienced the same thing.

JOJOCAT Yes, gprs is for GSM and not CDMS. This was copied from the Opti Black forum and I left it in for two reasons.
1) Our build.prop refers to GSM a couple of times.
ro.cdma.home.operator.numeric=310120
gsm.operator.alpha=Sprint
gsm.operator.numeric=310120
gsm.operator.iso-country=us
2) I didn't figure it would do much harm.

I have not used Juice Defender so I can't comment. I have read posts both pro and con. Let us know your experience. It maybe something that we all can benefit from.

two-rocks You are correct that some of the tweaks are from the Black. We are hardware identical so they should work and for me they have. Sorry they didn't help you.
Please re-read about batterystat.bin. It is in the file system on your phone in the /data/system/ subdirectory.
As for ro.ril.hsxpa, my info came from (Know) YOUR BUILD.PROP, in the third section. Also, if you google "sprint build.prop ro.ril.hsxpa" you will find that setting the ro.hil.hsxpa=2 is a common recommendation to improve signal on Sprint Androids.

nosajsam Extended contol allows you to customize what the toggles do and the number visible. It allows you to toggle several things the basic power widget does not.
Background data is under "Settings", "Accounts & sync". There you have two selection boxes, "Background data" and "Auto-sync"

Hope this answers some questions and gives some reasons for why I put tjings in here.

tcaudill01,
thx again for everything you have done w/ this phone & sharing your tips. Regarding my question above, is there a way to toggle the "Background Data" on/off thru Extended Controls widget or only by going into the settings as you described?

seems that w/ certain things (like GPS) it brings me to a setting screen rather than just an on/off toggle

Also, I know it has an option for Wi-Fi Tether on/off but it seems to only control the stock wi-fi hotspot. do you know of a a way (without creating a shortcut) that allows Extended Controls app to toggle the Wireless Tether 2.0.7 app on/off?

 

[tcaudill01]

tcaudill01,
thx again for everything you have done w/ this phone & sharing your tips. Regarding my question above, is there a way to toggle the "Background Data" on/off thru Extended Controls widget or only by going into the settings as you described?

seems that w/ certain things (like GPS) it brings me to a setting screen rather than just an on/off toggle

Also, I know it has an option for Wi-Fi Tether on/off but it seems to only control the stock wi-fi hotspot. do you know of a a way (without creating a shortcut) that allows Extended Controls app to toggle the Wireless Tether 2.0.7 app on/off?

Extended Controls(EC) will allow you to toggle the gps, data network, auto sync, or force sync.You can also do custom shortcuts for quicker access to setting. I do not see a direct lnk to toggle background data.

I was able to set a custom shortcut in EC that takes me straight to the "Press to Start Tethering" button but not a direct toggle from EC itself.

Hope this answers your questions.

 

[dishe]

DISHE I do not disagree with you that we should not have to disable mutiple things to get our phones to last more than a few hours. I fondly remember my Nokia 8650 that would last for 3 or 4 days with heavy use. That Nokia also did not have a beutiful and bright 4 inch diplay, 3G, GPS, Wifi, bluetooth, and a 1GHz processor while weighing less than 4 oz and half the thickness of a deck of cards.
It's a situation of form over function. To get everything we want in a package this small, something has to give. Unfortunately, its usually the battery size that is sacrificed.

No one is comparing the Marquee to a simple feature phone (well, aside from you apparently). Back in the days of the HTC Touch Pro, I needed a spare battery to make it through the day, but that was excusable for the hardware. The Touch Pro was the most powerful hardware available at the time, so some caveats were expected, especially as technology progresses.

In the case of the Marquee, it is a no-frills lower end Android device. There are many other Android phones with similar features, bigger displays, faster processors and lower price points that don't exhibit these problems. It should therefore not be considered acceptable to "just deal with it". There is no excuse for this other than some sort of defect (hopefully software based) that LG must address. Turning off features that are standard to Android don't seem like a worthy compromise.

Especially if you consider the device it is replacing, the Optimus S, had such excellent battery life.
There are perks to having a lower end device (see here: Opinion: Why I use an LG Optimus instead of a “Superphone” | Techcitement* ), otherwise I don't understand why someone would pick this over an EVO-brand or Galaxy SII.

If you want to save money and get a device that still packs a punch, the Optimus or even Kyocera Milano (review just posted here) seem to be better options IMO.

I also agree that GB uses more battery than Froyo. This comes from my experience with the Captivate and upgrading from 2.2 to 2.3, afterwards I did experience a significant drop in battery life and the captivate forums are full of posts from people who experienced the same thing.

This should not be. GB is really a cleaner version of Froyo- the code is supposed to be more efficient and more APIs to make application development smoother and simpler. I have actually seen some devices get faster upon upgrading to GB, but your mileage may vary I suppose.

Either way, it would appear that LG is having trouble with Gingerbread. I think in order to make the Marquee work better, we may need to work with the Optimus Black folks on porting a Froyo rom that will support the CDMA hardware.
I'm not sure if there is enough interest for such a thing to happen, but it would sure be fascinating.

 

[nosajsam]

No one is comparing the Marquee to a simple feature phone (well, aside from you apparently). Back in the days of the HTC Touch Pro, I needed a spare battery to make it through the day, but that was excusable for the hardware. The Touch Pro was the most powerful hardware available at the time, so some caveats were expected, especially as technology progresses.

In the case of the Marquee, it is a no-frills lower end Android device. There are many other Android phones with similar features, bigger displays, faster processors and lower price points that don't exhibit these problems. It should therefore not be considered acceptable to "just deal with it". There is no excuse for this other than some sort of defect (hopefully software based) that LG must address. Turning off features that are standard to Android don't seem like a worthy compromise.

Especially if you consider the device it is replacing, the Optimus S, had such excellent battery life.
There are perks to having a lower end device (see here: Opinion: Why I use an LG Optimus instead of a ?Superphone? | Techcitement* ), otherwise I don't understand why someone would pick this over an EVO-brand or Galaxy SII.

If you want to save money and get a device that still packs a punch, the Optimus or even Kyocera Milano (review just posted here) seem to be better options IMO.



This should not be. GB is really a cleaner version of Froyo- the code is supposed to be more efficient and more APIs to make application development smoother and simpler. I have actually seen some devices get faster upon upgrading to GB, but your mileage may vary I suppose.

Either way, it would appear that LG is having trouble with Gingerbread. I think in order to make the Marquee work better, we may need to work with the Optimus Black folks on porting a Froyo rom that will support the CDMA hardware.
I'm not sure if there is enough interest for such a thing to happen, but it would sure be fascinating.

Not trying to start a problem here but I don't agree with your comments. Coming here & being negative does nothing to move this thread forward. The purpose of this thread was to improve the battery life & performance....none of your comments do that.

It appears that your expectations of this phone are very high. Almost every phone ESPECIALLY the Optimus S needs its tweaks to perform better. I personally like the Marquee alot. For me, it is performing extremely well & I highly recommend it. Especially, since I am on a Sprint Sero Premium plan & I did not have to upgrade my plan to have this phone like I would with a 4G or Iphone. I expect every newly released phone to have it's share of problems. The Motorola Photon is having issues w/ Gingerbread also right now, the Epic Touch is having heat issues, etc, etc....bottom line is we are always the guinea pigs when a new product comes out.

Keep in mind, very rarely phones are being compared accurately. Just cause its android phone doesn't mean were comparing apples to apples here. You can't compare this phone w/ an EVO, Galaxy sII or Optimus S as they are all completely different.

As for your Froyo comment, I would rather not take a step back but rather see improvements with the most current OS we can use. I feel in time that both LG & Sprint will release updates that enhance the Marquees performance. Until then I am going to keep looking for ways to improve the battery life. Feel free to contribute any suggestions, tips or ideas that you have found useful.

 

[dishe]

Not trying to start a problem here but I don't agree with your comments. Coming here & being negative does nothing to move this thread forward. The purpose of this thread was to improve the battery life & performance....none of your comments do that.

Fair enough, my comments do not help promote the purpose of the thread.

But at the same time, I found the topic rather misleading and needed to vent that here.
You don't even know how much I want this phone to work- I'm also on a SERO-P plan, and currently using an Optimus S. I intended to use it temporarily until upgrading to a 4G keyboarded phone, but when the lack of options surfaced (Epic original was buggy, Evo Shift lacked front camera), I found the Optimus to be a very solid performer for the price- enough that I've kept it until now.

When I heard about the Marquee, I literally waited and counted down the days until its release. A 3G phone (which meant I could keep my plan) with modern specs? Yes please! When none of my local stores had one to look at, I came here looking for initial impressions. And I was very sad to hear all the dissapointed folks who went through multiple handsets only to give up.

When I saw your thread, I really got my hopes up. I thought perhaps someone had found the solution. Make this phone work at least as well as the predecessors. But no, you are recommending that we turn off some (arguably) vital portions of the phone to make it stand up to the competition. I mean, if the goal is really to improve your battery life, why not just recommend airplane mode until you need to make a phone call? Where does one draw the line?

Perhaps it is my own fault for my assumptions and I shouldn't have aimed any hostility towards you- I apologize for that. But my hopes are being shattered around this handset and I'm feeling very disappointed right now.

It appears that your expectations of this phone are very high.

No, not really. You'd be surprised. If this were my first Android handset, that would be a different story. Sadly, LG's own Optimus really raised the bar for budget handsets. Now we know that LG should know better.

Almost every phone ESPECIALLY the Optimus S needs its tweaks to perform better.

Out of the box, the Optimus S is a solid performer. Even without JIT and Stagefright enabled, the Optimus flew through menus and had a FPS higher than the EVO 4G at gaming. Not to mention a battery that could easily last all day. With no tweaks.
Tweaks can make anything better, granted, but that is relative. The marquee is starting off lower than it should. And I don't think that is unreasonable to be upset about.

Keep in mind, very rarely phones are being compared accurately. Just cause its android phone doesn't mean were comparing apples to apples here. You can't compare this phone w/ an EVO, Galaxy sII or Optimus S as they are all completely different.

Completely? I would have to disagree there. What makes these so very different, exactly?
Its not like some of these are sliders, or bizarre square shaped phones or blackberry style keyboarded models...Considering these all have the same OS, same form factor and similar features, I'd say they are expected to be used in roughly similar ways and compared side by side.
But this is neither here nor there.

As for your Froyo comment, I would rather not take a step back but rather see improvements with the most current OS we can use. I feel in time that both LG & Sprint will release updates that enhance the Marquees performance. Until then I am going to keep looking for ways to improve the battery life. Feel free to contribute any suggestions, tips or ideas that you have found useful.

Agreed, but the Optimus Black has excellent reviews and the marquee does not. Until LG and Sprint work out the problem here, it would be nice to have options. There really isn't much GB offers that Froyo can't do. But to each their own.

 

[hoovhartid]

Remember people? the OP said simply??These are just things I have done to my phone that have improved my battery life?

In the case of the Marquee, it is a no-frills lower end Android device. There are many other Android phones with similar features, bigger displays, faster processors and lower price points that don't exhibit these problems.

I don?t know of any phones that have a bigger display than 4 inches and a processor faster than 1gHz priced lower than $99 (or $79 or $50 if you count BB and RC)

It should therefore not be considered acceptable to "just deal with it".

No one said ?just deal with it??in fact I thought the purpose of this thread was just the opposite. There are ways to make the battery last longer, and that?s what we are doing here?

There is no excuse for this other than some sort of defect (hopefully software based) that LG must address. Turning off features that are standard to Android don't seem like a worthy compromise.

You may be correct about a defect?but when making the Marquee battery last longer you have two options?1)Do nothing about and sit here until LG corrects it?or? 2) compromise the use of some features until #1 happends?

Especially if you consider the device it is replacing, the Optimus S, had such excellent battery life.

Not at first?it took time to get it where it is now?and most of that didn?t come from LG, it came from people like Tcuadill01 putting in their time to tweak it. Many people are still working on tweaks to that phone. The optimus S also had other problems including an SD card issue, and some differences in screen hardware that took some time to get right. Nothing is perfect on its release, but people working hard in forums like this one help to get things closer to where we want them. The Marquee is a baby?the Optimus S has been around the block a few times. If you want clean and done (and last years technology) then sure ?maybe the Optimus S if for you. But if you already have a Marquee and want better battery life out of it?then I think we should try to stay on point here and move forward with this new LG release.

If you want to save money and get a device that still packs a punch, the Optimus or even Kyocera Milano (review just posted here) seem to be better options IMO.

again, this may be true and good advice, but its not helping the thread. It also seems inconsiderate to people who have been working hard to make the marquee better. That?s not fair to them?

This should not be. GB is really a cleaner version of Froyo- the code is supposed to be more efficient and more APIs to make application development smoother and simpler. I have actually seen some devices get faster upon upgrading to GB, but your mileage may vary I suppose.
Either way, it would appear that LG is having trouble with Gingerbread. I think in order to make the Marquee work better, we may need to work with the Optimus Black folks on porting a Froyo rom that will support the CDMA hardware.
I'm not sure if there is enough interest for such a thing to happen, but it would sure be fascinating.

This may allow better battery life?but I?m not sure the OB really has THAT much more battery than the Marquee?.does it? Does anyone know?

And while I agree, it would be an interesting project, I personally would prefer to continue building on the GB foundation while looking forward to ICS. I think even ppl in the OB forums are thinking that way. They asked tcaudill01 for a copy of his GB so they can port it to their OB?s.

To Dishe;
I?m sorry if this looks like a personal attack on you?it was never meant to be. You had many opinions (some I agree with and some I don?t) and I took advantage of that to make my point? which is this;

MANY people work really hard to make things better. It takes a lot of trial and error on these devices and for every one good or positive upswing there are many let downs and disappointments along the way. These forums are a chance to help each other out and bring the good to each other faster. It disappoints me to read the following;

Flaming me in PM's for trying to help is not cool and I can always quit posting if that is what you prefer.

It takes a lot of time and effort from a lot of people to get these devices to work great. While I believe we are all here for the same purpose?I feel we sometimes need to be reminded to leave the negativity out. I personally really appreciate the efforts of tcaudill01 for being the first (that I know of) to root the Marquee, as well as being the tester for Clockworkmod and many other programs that were designed to make these devices better.
He?s trying?and doing a great job?better than any other contribution I have seen about the Marquee so far.

While I too have my disappointments about the Marquee, I'm hoping that users like tcaudill01 don't give up on it. The potential is there.

 

[tcaudill01]

Dishe,

Our phone isn't perfect and I doubt it ever will be. We are all just trying to make it better a little bit at a time. With time, as knowledge and developement of the Marquee grow, it will improve. The other four Androids I have owned have all gotten significantly better as developers worked on improvements and users had new ideas.

I personally apologize to you for making you feel "mislead" with the topic heading. I was simply sharing what i had found through other boards and with personal experience to take our phone from barely making it 8 hours on a charge to pushing 24 hours. Yes, I did have to disable some things to achieve this, but at least it's functional and i can get through my day without charging.

If you want the phone to improve, then get involved with making it better instead of tearing it down. The code I ripped from our phone is posted for everyone to access. Take it, tear it apart and help us build a better ROM.

Or,if you are truly as unhappy with your phone as you seem, the best advice I can give is to take it back and exchange for one you like better. If I am not mistaken, both Sprint and BestBuy offer 30 day exchanges and they still have the Optimus S you love so much in stock.

 

[dishe]

I apologize, I really should have vented in a new thread instead of highjacking this one.

I do want to see this device improve. Hope to see some new developments soon.

 

[nosajsam]

tcaudill01,
I want to thank you again as after having & using this phone for the last 18 days your post has been the most useful. You hit the nail on the head w/ these tips. I personally didn't do every one but by keeping Data Sync, GPS, Bluetooth & Wifi off (when they aren't being used), I have been able to consistently get 18-24 hours on a full charge.

On a separate (but related) note, I have read multiple threads & websites since receiving the Marquee & your post mirrors suggestions that users of the Optimus Black have done to increase their battery life as well.

Optimus Black battery life - Android @ MoDaCo

Thanks again for your continued contributions to these forums.

 

[ericksbigdee]

thanks for sharing.

 

[Guppeh]

TWEAKS

Just curious, but what do folks here think about this guy's comments regarding build.prop tweaks? While the guide is intended for ICS, he also makes some obserations concerning Gingerbread:
Series: Examining build.prop tweaks for Android ICS: A comprehensive guide ? Jeff Mixon