Battery life for the S4, and smartphones in general

[johnriii]

I know this forum is specific to the S4, but I need to post this somewhere, and I am buying an S4 in about 30 days. over the past 2 years, I have become very aware (and disappointed) regarding battery life for most smartphones. I have read everything I could find on how to save battery life, and MOST of them agree on certain things: turn off wifi, use dark wallpapers, turn off notifications, turn off LTE, etc. however, I did read an article on android police that kind of debunked a lot of what I had learned.

DROID DNA Battery Life Impressions: It's Not Nearly As Bad As You Think (With Stats, Methodology)

according to that article, as long as you have a strong LTE signal, your phone is not struggling, which in turn helps battery life. if this is true, then I'm getting the best battery life possible with my Rezound, even with WiFi turned on. Wifi kicks in when I get home, turning off my data connection.when I leave home, it goes back to the data connection. during the day, I get alerts that wifi is present, but nothing to indicate my battery life is suffering because it's on. again, the Rezound has one of the smaller batteries, so I still have to plug in by 2pm , but it's not as bad reported.

so all of that to ask this: is anyone having issues with their S4 battery life, and what do you do to maximize it? and, leaving WiFi turned on, is that a bad thing, good thing, or a non issue? I've always believed that you always manually toggle wifi, but maybe I'm wrong. thanks in advance for any input on this.

 

[804hokie]

I plan on purchasing the S4 Developer Edition very soon, but I have plenty of experience in tweaking smartphones to enhance battery life.

On my rooted Droid Bionic, I swear by the Greenify app. It hibernates a lot of background activities, and makes a huge difference.

 

[Cigar-Junkie]

I leave everything on and make it all day. I do nothing to save battery but I also don't play games, watch YouTube or movies.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 2

 

[monsieurms]

My view, expressed elsewhere, is that battery life pretty much sucks on everything these days. Phone technology has vastly exceeded battery technology. You have real computers operating on a tiny battery.

I've taken a "I don't care" view and I make sure to get a phone with removable batteries as compensation---but I"m NOT turning off GPS, wi-fi, bluetooth, background syncs, going into power saver, turning this off and that off, in other words, removing half of what made the phone so magical in the first place. In my daily life, I'm always near a charger. I top off a lot and rarely let it drop below 70%, which is good both for safety in not having the battery die and for battery health. It is mostly an issue with travel. That's where removable batteries come in, a mandatory feature IMHO.

 

[paintdrinkingpete]

My view, expressed elsewhere, is that battery life pretty much sucks on everything these days. Phone technology has vastly exceeded battery technology. You have real computers operating on a tiny battery.

I've taken a "I don't care" view and I make sure to get a phone with removable batteries as compensation---but I"m NOT turning off GPS, wi-fi, bluetooth, background syncs, going into power saver, turning this off and that off, in other words, removing half of what made the phone so magical in the first place. In my daily life, I'm always near a charger. I top off a lot and rarely let it drop below 70%, which is good both for safety in not having the battery die and for battery health. It is mostly an issue with travel. That's where removable batteries come in, a mandatory feature IMHO.

I agree 100% with this. I am NOT going to cripple my device and/or constantly worry about turning stuff on and off just a get a little more juice. I've also found that for the most part, these services (wifi, BT, GPS, syncs, etc), don't actually drain the battery that much at all unless they're being constantly used. The biggest threats to battery are (1) weak signal, which you usually can't do much about if you're stuck in an area that doesn't have good coverage or (2) apps that have inefficient use of resources or are poorly designed and suck up too much power.

Case in point: Here is a screen shot from my phone I took over the weekend. Granted, I was busy most of the day prior to when this was taken, so my screen time was fairly low compared to my normal use, but that only re-iterates that services like GPS, Bluetooth, WIFI, mobile data, and sync (all of which were ON during this entire time) don't suck up that much power just be being turned on...

 

[johnriii]

My view, expressed elsewhere, is that battery life pretty much sucks on everything these days. Phone technology has vastly exceeded battery technology. You have real computers operating on a tiny battery.

I've taken a "I don't care" view and I make sure to get a phone with removable batteries as compensation---but I"m NOT turning off GPS, wi-fi, bluetooth, background syncs, going into power saver, turning this off and that off, in other words, removing half of what made the phone so magical in the first place. In my daily life, I'm always near a charger. I top off a lot and rarely let it drop below 70%, which is good both for safety in not having the battery die and for battery health. It is mostly an issue with travel. That's where removable batteries come in, a mandatory feature IMHO.

this makes a ton of sense. I'm on verizon, and like I stated, my Rezound gets much better battery life than advertized, and I'm a moderate to heavy user. my standby time is much better than you would think, so I'm expecting MUCH better battery life from my new shiny S4 starting 30 days from now!!

 

[johnriii]

I agree 100% with this. I am NOT going to cripple my device and/or constantly worry about turning stuff on and off just a get a little more juice. I've also found that for the most part, these services (wifi, BT, GPS, syncs, etc), don't actually drain the battery that much at all unless they're being constantly used. The biggest threats to battery are (1) weak signal, which you usually can't do much about if you're stuck in an area that doesn't have good coverage or (2) apps that have inefficient use of resources or are poorly designed and suck up too much power.

Case in point: Here is a screen shot from my phone I took over the weekend. Granted, I was busy most of the day prior to when this was taken, so my screen time was fairly low compared to my normal use, but that only re-iterates that services like GPS, Bluetooth, WIFI, mobile data, and sync (all of which were ON during this entire time) don't suck up that much power just be being turned on...

View attachment 72369

I bet you my paranoia comes from my year with the notoriously bad battery life of the Thunderbolt. I could unplug it at 0600, and by 1000 I would easily be down under 50%, with my normal usage. maybe the radio was screwy, or maybe the phone just plain sucked (literally) but I'm now known as a battery mizer, and almost disdain going anywhere that a charger can't be readily used. I went to a Royals ballgame last summer, and started with 100% when I parked. by the time I got back to my car, I was down to 71%, which was not bad, for that phone. here's hoping that my paranoia will wane with the purchase of alledgedly a much better device.

 

[paintdrinkingpete]

I bet you my paranoia comes from my year with the notoriously bad battery life of the Thunderbolt. I could unplug it at 0600, and by 1000 I would easily be down under 50%, with my normal usage. maybe the radio was screwy, or maybe the phone just plain sucked (literally) but I'm now known as a battery mizer, and almost disdain going anywhere that a charger can't be readily used. I went to a Royals ballgame last summer, and started with 100% when I parked. by the time I got back to my car, I was down to 71%, which was not bad, for that phone. here's hoping that my paranoia will wane with the purchase of alledgedly a much better device.

I had a Thunderbolt. S4 is night and day compared it when it comes to battery life.

 

[tytlyf]

I've been messing around with different apps and settings etc and was able to achieve the following this morning when I charged. I'm mostly on a wifi network and leave mobile data disable when on wifi. I also use the phone in a somewhat dark environment the majority of the time so I can use the lowest screen brightness setting.