Android Battery Usage

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199 posts

Master Geek

#411953 2-Dec-2010 09:41

lokhor: Hey fallen what device/firmware are you running?

Btw here's my latest stats:
48% after 15h22m
Display 81% (Time on 1h19m)
Cell Standby 10% (0% time without signal)
Phone Idle 4%
Endomondo 2% (went for a 30 minute walk)
Wifi 2%

This is on one of my chinese batteries. Screen appears to have such a huge usage it's insane, that's on the lowest brightness for nearly the entire time as well.

Vodafone sourced phone Samsung Galaxy i9000, running standard Android 2.1, kernal 2.6.29, build ECLAIR.SRJH1.

Latest stats:
86% after 3h37m
Display 69% (Time on 54m)
Cell Standby 15% (2% time without signal)
Phone idle 8%
Internet 2%
Wifi On 9.8% (time on 21m)

APN data is off and have turned off Background data and Autosync.

lokhor

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#412032 2-Dec-2010 11:59

All comments are my own opinion, and not that of my employer unless explicitly stated.

lokhor

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#412362 3-Dec-2010 08:58

In case anyone is interested in reading about Lithium Ion batteries:
http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries

All comments are my own opinion, and not that of my employer unless explicitly stated.

ArtooDetoo

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#412394 3-Dec-2010 10:03

lokhor: In case anyone is interested in reading about Lithium Ion batteries:
http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries

Well it looks like I got the "full charge before using it" part of my battery voodoo right. Sadly, I then undid my good work by discharging it completely again. Poo.

At least I know better now.

I wonder if Neets read that link... [snicker]

Oh wait... she gets better battery mileage than anybody. Cancel that snicker.

Cheers,
R2D2

Galaxy S has gone to its new owner. HTC Sensation has gone to its new
owner. Galaxy S3 has gone to its new owner. Now using Galaxy Note 3. Skipping Note 4 I think...

lokhor

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#412411 3-Dec-2010 10:55

Maybe I should try running without a lagfix. Last time I found it unbearable but perhaps the speedmod kernel is good enough. I'm kinda pissed that my extended battery still hasn't arrived. also can't find a legit oem battery - all the ones I've seen say Samsung but are fakes.

All comments are my own opinion, and not that of my employer unless explicitly stated.

lofreq

334 posts

Ultimate Geek

#413234 5-Dec-2010 23:53

hi guys, just contributing my experiences here in case it helps someone

im a new owner of a galaxy S i9000T running on XT - ive been struggling with battery life as with everyone here ever since getting the phone and trying to learn the best way to manage the apps and usage on the phone

on the original Eclair firmware i was getting around 18 hrs battery life out of the box, no task managers, auto screen brightness, 3g on, wifi off, bluetooth off, gps off. this was horrendous but after alot of research advising to give the phone some time, this started increasing. against the advice of some people, i started using Advanced Task Killer to kill most things on 'screen off', i set screen brightness to 20%, disabled background data and autosync, and also disabled 3G when i didnt need it (Easily toggled with Switchpro). i also installed Battery Snap to watch how my battery was discharging over time. this helped me get from 7am off charger to about 20-30% next morning, better, but not useful heading to work on 20% so i was still top-up charging all night to compensate. finally i inadvertently deep cycled the battery - from 100% to 0% and recharged back to 100%. all of a sudden, battery life became phenomenal. when the screen was locked and off over night, it would only lose 2-3%, compared to like 10% usually. around 48hrs usable battery life.

then the Froyo 2.2 TNZ firmware became available, and i took the plunge. unfortunately i stupidly did the flash with the battery on 60-70% - Flash was successful (it now reports as "Froyo.DOJP2" - but now battery life went straight thru the floor. taking it off the charger at 100% and just flicking thru the homescreens and menus would chuck it to 97% in like 1-2mins. turning on wifi and reading one page of engadget (about 7mins use) would bring it to 89%. getting to work doing nothing else, and youre at 60%, it was ridiculous. more research and it seemed many others had the same outcome. only one person said they managed to fix this by doing another deep cycle to 'reset' the battery indicator, ie charge to 100%, drain to 0%, remove battery, wait 60sec, replace battery, charge phone to 100% while off, remove battery again, wait 60sec, replace, turn on. sounded ridiculous but i had nothing to lose so i tried it

now all of a sudden, battery life is good again. battery discharges slightly faster than Eclair during regular use (wifi, 3g browsing market, etc) but i managed 24hours of mild 3g, wifi, txt and calls and got it to 44%, then another 24hours of the same got to 7%, finally dying after 51hours. phone has Palmary Weather installed (3hr updates), Clockr, Battery Snap, Switchpro, Calwidget as the main widgets running, email set to never sync, Facebook set to 12hr sync. plus the phone seems to suggest i am 50% without cell signal as well!! so i dont know how much more id get if it was not searching for a signal half the time literally.

so all i can say is that, this battery cycle thing, had the biggest positive effect on my battery performance. i also took the advice on 2.2 being much better at managing resources than a task killer, so i have removed ATK, and i got rid of System Panel despite paying for it, as it reported itself as being one of the highest CPU users. my next step will be killing Battery Snap because it too records historical data constantly which is probably unnecessary, to be honest. screen still 20%, wifi gps BT off, 3g only used as necessary. also set Wifi sleep on screen off under advanced settings.

tonight im going to remove battery snap and recharge to 100%, and test from monday, using it normally, and see how far it goes. regardless, 51hours with the speed froyo runs at, is outstanding to me....! if anyone can recommend a historical battery usage app that takes a reading with gaps larger than 1min (which is the largest BAttery Snap goes to) id be keen as, so please let me know!

Galaxy Note 3 SM-N9005, on Telecom 4G LTE. ROM: Stock Touchwiz, Android 4.3, XUDMJ6 MODEM: MJ4 Kernel: Stock (for now...:)

ArtooDetoo

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#413274 6-Dec-2010 07:46

lofreq: if anyone can recommend a historical battery usage app that takes a reading with gaps larger than 1min (which is the largest BAttery Snap goes to) id be keen as, so please let me know!

Interesting. Thanks for your observations. I deep cycled my battery when I first got my SGS through ignorance. It was deliberate and as I've read since, (see the battery university link in this thread), supposedly counter-productive. But my battery performance seems pretty darn good, so maybe received wisdom is wrong in this case. Who knows.

Try Battery Bar. It has variable time slice so it gets around your issue with the too-frequent snapshots. The only glitch I've found so far is that while your phone is plugged in, the screen sometimes doesn't unlock. Unplugging the phone resolves it immediately and it doesn't crash anything, but it's a bug which I've notified to the dev.

Did I mention that it's free?

Cheers,
R2D2

Galaxy S has gone to its new owner. HTC Sensation has gone to its new
owner. Galaxy S3 has gone to its new owner. Now using Galaxy Note 3. Skipping Note 4 I think...

Samsung

Shop now on Samsung phones, tablets, TVs and more (affiliate link).

lofreq

334 posts

Ultimate Geek

#413289 6-Dec-2010 08:27

agreed, continuous cycling of a Li-ion battery would not be a good idea based on how Li-ion works... but in this case it seems an occasional cycle is necessary to 'calibrate' the phone - benefits the phone (and thus your assumed discharge rate (and thus ones sanity)). i assume the phone uses calculations of battery voltage and current draw to figure out how much juice it has to play with, based on recent charge time, time unplugged and so on - and it then uses that to govern the phones operation. i am guessing that constant random 'topup' charging is enough to bump it out of sync so it starts thinking the same 0.01V drop is a 2% drop one day, and a 10% drop the next.. hence the wild discharge rates people sometimes experience

thanks for the tip on batterybar, will give it a crack now. i really love BatterySnap, just wish it wasnt so determined to log battery state so frequently!

Galaxy Note 3 SM-N9005, on Telecom 4G LTE. ROM: Stock Touchwiz, Android 4.3, XUDMJ6 MODEM: MJ4 Kernel: Stock (for now...:)

lokhor

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#413298 6-Dec-2010 08:55

Look up Battery Diviner. I'm giving it a good run it has several states of battery prediction based on usage.

lofreq can you have a look at the screen on time next time your battery gets to less than 15%?

I have a feeling that people who barely use their phones get much much longer battery life.
btw I have tried that cycling the battery stuff with no change in battery life.

All comments are my own opinion, and not that of my employer unless explicitly stated.

oxnsox

1923 posts

Uber Geek

#413608 6-Dec-2010 16:57

FWIW... There was a similar sort of routine for Desire (and N1?) owners. The original process came through an HTC support source I think.

What you are effectively doing is recalibrating and realigning the battery and battery gauge. So it's important to follow the process (eg: if says remove the battery, then remove the battery. Don't just turn the device off). Sure it may be a bit inconvenient to go thru the process but the upside is worth it.

ArtooDetoo

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#414226 7-Dec-2010 20:05

lokhor: I'm kinda pissed that my extended battery still hasn't arrived. also can't find a legit oem battery - all the ones I've seen say Samsung but are fakes.

http://www.exportprive.com/samsung-extended-battery-galaxy-i9000-eb575152vu-p-13715.html

This seems legit, if a little expensive compared to the fakes. But, heck, it might be your answer.

Cheers.
R2D2

Galaxy S has gone to its new owner. HTC Sensation has gone to its new
owner. Galaxy S3 has gone to its new owner. Now using Galaxy Note 3. Skipping Note 4 I think...

lokhor

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#414400 8-Dec-2010 07:32

I managed to get over 24hours of battery before i hit 15% yesterday! first time ever and had around 2.5-3 hours of on screen usage (forgot to check at the end).

All comments are my own opinion, and not that of my employer unless explicitly stated.

ArtooDetoo

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#414418 8-Dec-2010 08:35

lokhor: I managed to get over 24hours of battery before i hit 15% yesterday! first time ever and had around 2.5-3 hours of on screen usage (forgot to check at the end).

Coolio. What was the secret (other than not using it, obviously)?

My battery is indicating 5% charge remaining at the moment and I'll leave it off charge to see how low it'll actually go before it switches off. Should be educational.

Once it's off, I intend to put it on charge with the SGS switched off untill it shows 100%. Then I'll do another set of measurements down to 15% battery. At present though, the screen is still the major user (~75-80%) so I'm thinking I might tweak the screen time-out and brightness settings to trim that back a gnat's. My nirvana would be 2 days without having to charge. Probably an unrealistic goal, but it's worth a shot.

Cheers,
R2D2

Update: 4% indicated. Still able to web-surf and play audio. Hmmm...
Update: Music player now generated "Battery Low" still at 4%
Update: 3% indicated and AppBrain still runs...
Update: 3% - Sent an SMS successfully

Galaxy S has gone to its new owner. HTC Sensation has gone to its new
owner. Galaxy S3 has gone to its new owner. Now using Galaxy Note 3. Skipping Note 4 I think...

fallen

199 posts

Master Geek

#414425 8-Dec-2010 08:43

My battery usually lasts about 2 days with moderate use. Fully charged the battery last night and current stats:
87%
Display 75% (time on 54m)
Cell standby 10% (2h 30m)
Wifi 16.5% (1h 10m)

I have been using Battery Diviner (free version), based on my usage history, my battery will discharge in approximately 32h 15m.

Still running stock Android 2.1 on my Samsung Galaxy.

lofreq

334 posts

Ultimate Geek

#414428 8-Dec-2010 08:46

my galaxy took AAAGES to die in the last 5-7%. it went for almost 2 hours before i got bored waiting and started streaming youtube videos, took an 8min video to shut it down.

after doing my battery cycle and remove/wait/replace of the battery each way, BatterySnap reports 2days flat of estimated battery life, from a full charge. id believe this now, i defnitely get over 32 hours from it with my kind of usage, and a solid 20+ hours with lots of downloads/market browsing on 3g/syncing/wifi browsing. but not with any video or music playing, which may be the difference for some people

currently i feel confident with the battery easily outlasting a full day before i get to a charger, so battling my next conundrum - how to keep SIM vs Phone vs facebook vs google contacts all in sync with latest profile photos and whatnot. its an absolute nightmare! duplicated records, out of sync lists, fields that arent populated or matching, concatenated fields... sigh. making me mental. ive import/exported deleted and relinked entries for what seems like forever... and still not really figured out a foolproof method.

the only saving grace is now, with froyo, the phone (touchwood so far) always is detected by Kies when plugged in - unlike Eclair's one in 20 chances...

Galaxy Note 3 SM-N9005, on Telecom 4G LTE. ROM: Stock Touchwiz, Android 4.3, XUDMJ6 MODEM: MJ4 Kernel: Stock (for now...:)

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