How To Improve Battery Life

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gunnermike53

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Every couple of days someone posts something like “my battery life sucks”, or “I lose 26.2% an hour”. Lots of suggestions are given to help improve the battery life, some good, some not so much. So I have done some research into Lion batteries in hopes of helping every one improve battery life.
First off, lithium ion batteries are not like NiCad batteries. They do not develop memories. They do not need to be fully discharged and then fully charged. A partial charge is not harmful. A full discharge is. If a lithium ion battery gets fully discharged it is dead, forever. If a lithium ion battery gets overcharged, it is dead, forever. Because of this the battery pack in our Fascinate, and in fact all lithium ion batteries, is a computer unto itself. This computer stops the battery from charging when it gets to 100% and prevents the battery from being used past 1 %(this varies from battery type to battery type, .5% to 5%). It also tells the phone how much charge the battery has left. It is not the phone that monitors your battery, but this computer.
Battery life will vary from user to user. My battery will not last as long as someone who only flashes 1 ROM a day. Likewise their battery will not last as long as someone who flashes a new ROM once a month. I’m simplifying it, but you get what I am saying. There are many things that contribute to charge loss. I will list some basic tips and apps later. One of the biggest reasons that battery life can be poor is the phone not understanding what the battery is saying.
First things first.
1. First of all the battery needs to be initialized at least once, sometimes more if you do a lot of flashing of ROM’s and kernels. Because the phone does not actually monitor the battery, but instead receives information from the batteries minicomputer, the phone can get confused. When you first get the phone, it should be charged for 5-6 hours before using it…..yeah right! Who does that? So what to do?
a. Charge the battery to 100%
b. Reboot to recovery
c. Advanced>clear battery stats
d. Reboot phone
e. Keep rebooting your phone. The goal here is to deplete the battery as fast and as safe as possible. You want to reboot the phone until you continually get around 4 % - 2 %. The battery its self will not let the phone ask for too much. There are other posts on other forums that will say you can stop at 10 %. This is not always the case. After several restarts my phone got to 41 %. And magically the next boot it showed 7 %. The next boot was 14 % then back down to 10 % and on it went, up and down. An hour later my phone was down to 4 %, but it was now reporting consistent numbers.
f. After you get a consistent charge reporting and are down to 2-4%, charge your phone to 100%.
Doing this should put your phone back in sync with your battery. This not only provides you with a more accurate reading, but the phone and apps can now properly allocate power.
Other tips.
1. Dim the screen.
2. Limit background data and auto sync
3. Use darker backgrounds
4. Don’t use live wallpapers
5. Put the phone in airplane mode if you know you are not going to have signal
6. Turn off Wifi if you aren’t using it.
7. Disconnect from unused Bluetooth devices. If you aren’t using those head phones, disconnect from them. It isn’t necessary to turn off blue tooth or gps believe it or not. They don’t use power unless currently being used.
8. Juice defender. An app that turns mobile data on and off according to a schedule.
9. Juice plotter gives you an idea of how much time you have left on you current charge based on the usage since being charged.
10. Use undervolted kernels.
This isn’t everything by any means. So please post your ideas and let me know if I got something wrong.

Note: The clear bat stats isnt working in our current cwm. I'm sure at some point this will be fixed. Until then:I straight up stole this from Sharkster, so make sure you thank him.

You can't wipe battery stats in cwm. It is not working. If you are running superclean 2.6 or higher it includes Adrynalyne's battery stat script. You have to download terminal emulator from the market, open it up, type su next to the $ sign, should say super user permission granted and you should see a # sign. Next to the # sign type bstats. After a few seconds you phone will reboot. Make sure to only do this when the battery is completely charged to 100%. Do that by charging to 100%, turn phone off with charger still attached, charge to 100% while off, turn on, let it charge to 100% again, then run terminal emulator.
 
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McBane

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So how long does it take to reboot the phone until the battery dies? :)

Clearing battery stats and just letting it run down to 5% on its own seems to have worked for me.
 

AmanteNJ

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For some reason on my phone after clearing the battery stats. I turned off the GPS which looks like is the one draining the battery and not the data.

Pulled it off from the charger after a full battery charge notification showed up and left it idle for 8 hours and from 98% it went down to 96% after 8 hours. I also noticed that even with the wifi on as long as you have a stable connection where you at, the battery wont drain as much. I am not sure if this is because of the leaked version and maybe will be fixed on the official version of 2.2
 

gunnermike53

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For some reason on my phone after clearing the battery stats. I turned off the GPS which looks like is the one draining the battery and not the data.

Pulled it off from the charger after a full battery charge notification showed up and left it idle for 8 hours and from 98% it went down to 96% after 8 hours. I also noticed that even with the wifi on as long as you have a stable connection where you at, the battery wont drain as much. I am not sure if this is because of the leaked version and maybe will be fixed on the official version of 2.2

did you drain your battery or just clear battery stats?
 

AmanteNJ

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did you drain your battery or just clear battery stats?

drained it until it turned off by it self, charged until full, clear battery stats then unplug the charger ... so far my phone doesnt drain while its idle so i believe its the gps cause i even turn on bluetooth, wife and data. left it at 70% 2 hours ago and it's still 70% right now.:D
 

gunnermike53

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drained it until it turned off by it self, charged until full, clear battery stats then unplug the charger ... so far my phone doesnt drain while its idle so i believe its the gps cause i even turn on bluetooth, wife and data. left it at 70% 2 hours ago and it's still 70% right now.:D

the idle gps shouldnt drain your battery. "SHOULD'NT"..... try turning bt and wifi off and turning on gps. let it sit idle again for a while and see what happens.
 

afbar1114

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so i have figured out that themes will cause issues with dl30 such as bad battery life, lag, and lock ups. i had a theme and my battery was dieing faster then i have ever seen this could be because most themes have battery fixes in them and since battery fixes dont work with dl30 right now the battery fix in the theme could be causing it. this is what i did mind you i had the new cwm_froyo installed for recovery:
1. start up in red recovery
2. wipe data
3. wipe chache
4. wipe dalvaik cache
5. wipe battery stats
6. install froyo ROM of choice
7. wipe chace again
8. wipe dalvaik cache again
9. wipe battery stats again
10. reboot phone
11. once all apps are installed reboot in to recovery again and wipe chache once more then restart phone.

i did this and my battery is good and no lock ups, no bad battery life, and no lag. the phone also runs cooler.

EDIT: i am running eb01 now and have juice defender. my battery life is the best i have seen yet this may be do to the fact that we have a matching modem and kernel for eb01. i havent flashed a theme for eb01 but will soon so i will update with my results
 
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tnez21

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what does clearing data do? I mean what will I lose when I do it? I always wipe the other two but never data....just wondering my battery is okay but def not as good as it used to be on DL09.
 

afbar1114

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what does clearing data do? I mean what will I lose when I do it? I always wipe the other two but never data....just wondering my battery is okay but def not as good as it used to be on DL09.

yea u will loose every thing you did and have to redo it but if your having battery life issues and lag or lockups. then i would do it. if not dont worry.
 

JaeKar99

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So far so good. I have used this procedure in the past to 'reset' the phone battery relationship.

The discharge pattern for DL30 and DL09 is almost identical. I did also reduce the use profile of the GPS running by turning off the Google and Verizon location assistance switches in the background.

Running only the android core apps, NoLED, and Swype... I have only lost 29% battery over 23 hours... On top of that I flashed a new theme, rebooted into recovery 4 times to play with the new cwm, and backed up my ROM. Multiple texts, updated from the market, IM's several folks, and made a few phone calls. Did not turn off the data sync at night and did not switch on the airplane mode.

Display and Cell standby are the greatest consumer of battery at this time.

I can say the process is effective. I would guess like many of my coworkers many people start to get freaked by the battery indicator getting below 50% and putting the charger on.. Not needed yet.
 

Sheepdog Elite

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Using the processes here I've enjoyed almost 50% battery life gain after some flashing left my battery life in the crapper.

My work day is almost the same all the time, so my usage is fairly consistent.

Also contributing is a reboot after the first boot with a new theme to ensure no hiccups from my new theme. (I think it caused my phone to stick in the "awake" state even with the screen off.)
 

tnez21

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when you wipe batt stats should I be getting a confirmation message like when you wipe cache/dalvik cache. Mine's not and I'm wondering if its even wiping batt stats at all.

Sent from my Froyo Fascinate using Tapatalk
 

AmanteNJ

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yup it will just take you back to the reboot option ... anyway gunnermike53, i tried the bluetooth off and wifi off just the data and gps on my battery is draining so much it went from 85% to 66% in 4 hours of the phone being idle. but when i do the opposite it just go down 1% for every hour. Strange but i will do this for now until the official release and see if there are any changes.

Also using themes like the super dark v1 helped the battery by a ton but i am having display problems with it. The display wont stay on while plugged in on the car dock like before so end up removing the theme, i guess it disables the car mode which shows up from the stock dl30.
 

gunnermike53

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yup it will just take you back to the reboot option ... anyway gunnermike53, i tried the bluetooth off and wifi off just the data and gps on my battery is draining so much it went from 85% to 66% in 4 hours of the phone being idle. but when i do the opposite it just go down 1% for every hour. Strange but i will do this for now until the official release and see if there are any changes.

Also using themes like the super dark v1 helped the battery by a ton but i am having display problems with it. The display wont stay on while plugged in on the car dock like before so end up removing the theme, i guess it disables the car mode which shows up from the stock dl30.

that super wierd about the gps draining you battery. it shouldnt do that. and a theme shouldnt change your power settings. wierd. which car dock are you using? have you tried the blackish storm port theme?
 
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