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Help Terrible battery life, firmware issue?

D

DrCereal

Newbie
I've had the Galaxy for over 3 weeks now, and it seems that no matter what I do, I can't get the battery to last a day even. Even killing apps, shutting of all networks and GPS, even turning on Airplane mode... the battery drains at alarming rates.

It seem that the Galaxy simply does not go to sleep. On analyzing the battery history, the phone seems to be spending ridiculous times running with the screen off. From about 90% when running "normally" to even 20% to 30% with everything turned off.

I'd like to hear other people's experiences. I'm hoping I don't have a defective unit.

Best,

C.
 
It's doing background syncing of data, which is probably what's killing your battery life. That, and along with the fact that Android is not very power efficient (looking at the battery lives of the HTC Magic, Hero and the Dream)
 
Turn off:
- background data
- Auto sync (google)
- Install taskiller and put the widget on your home screen. Then reboot the phone and watch what 'icons' u see running there. These are programs that autostart even when you're not using them. A good example of a battery killer is BBC news!
- Remove ALL widgets from your homescreen (excpect taskiller, thats known to be ok)

THEN.. work backwards from there! Background data makes a huge difference, as does autosync.

Oh and use 2g only - 3g kills battery on all phones. Its only worth leaving 3g on if you really must have fast data all the time, or you're in a good 3g area and have alot of background data going on.

Its all a balance.
 
kam187 said:
Turn off:
- background data
- Auto sync (google)
- Install taskiller and put the widget on your home screen. Then reboot the phone and watch what 'icons' u see running there. These are programs that autostart even when you're not using them. A good example of a battery killer is BBC news!
- Remove ALL widgets from your homescreen (excpect taskiller, thats known to be ok)

THEN.. work backwards from there! Background data makes a huge difference, as does autosync.

Oh and use 2g only - 3g kills battery on all phones. Its only worth leaving 3g on if you really must have fast data all the time, or you're in a good 3g area and have alot of background data going on.

Its all a balance.
Click to expand...

for me the battery isn't issue at all as i went to bed with 94% and woke up seing 92% so i assume no to bad but i dont run any widgets the screen brightness is a little bit less than half (found it sooooo bright had to lower,lol) then no wifi and assume no autosyncing with google or anythning as till now i down have WAP or Wifi and i assume im running old firmware (didnt update or anythning) but made some calls wrote plenty of messages (just love full qwerty so much faster than my n73) listened to some music and wathched some clips and from 100% it went to 94% in about 3-4 hours.so thats my experience
 
Yeah its probably because you don't have your APN setup. Once you do watch what happens! Oh and make sure you have a data plan or it'll cost you alot... OR turn all the data stuff off as above.
 
I appreciate everyone's help. However, even doing extreme measures, my phone is still running with the screen off, for at least 11% of the time. That's extremely better than the normal 80% but, let's analyze:

I kill (repeatedly) all running apps using Taskiller. Basically nothing is running. Turned of 3g, wifi, and gps. Turned off background syncing. I basically neutered the phone and turned it an old-style music phone. Sure, the battery now lasts for more than a day... but at what cost. Not only that, even with all these measures, it is still not sleeping as much as it should! 11% means that it is awake and running (with the screen off), for 7 minutes of every hour. What the bleep is it doing for 7 minutes every hour?
 
Hmm wierd. If you rooted it you might be able to see the scheduled tasks. But I bet its just android, or some broken task in the new firmware :(

We're hoping for a new firmware this week when its released in the UK
 
Here's my recent finding.

I was driving with my mates couple hours ago and I had about 30-40% of battery left. As I came back home it was empty (?!). Well I just 15minutes ago connected it to charger and it started from 4 prosents. Here's the weird bit: 5 minutes after I connected it (remember, 4% left at first) it was indicating that I had 42% already :confused:

There is really something cheeky going on with this phone and the battery...
 
Usage reports :)

Well, from 100 to 60 it took about 4h (minor/average usage), from 60 to 40 it took over 7h (heavier usage). Now its 38 as I am writing this (with galaxy ;) and I am expectin to see same kind of freefall soon as seen between 100 and 60. Lets see...
 
qqtba said:
Usage reports :)

Well, from 100 to 60 it took about 4h (minor/average usage), from 60 to 40 it took over 7h (heavier usage). Now its 38 as I am writing this (with galaxy ;) and I am expectin to see same kind of freefall soon as seen between 100 and 60. Lets see...
Click to expand...

Well just as I expected, it drained whithin half an hour after quoted message (3G and painful amount of apps running though :o). But the hell with it, it's soooo good in every other aspect that it doesn't matter that much. I am still glad if the firmware would improve it a bit ;)

But I am still wondering that recharging issue. It did it again just minutes ago :confused: Does anyone else have this kind of issue? Spare parts is indicating that battery health is good.
 
Yes, I have the same issue.

Also, I'm doing more and more research on the other battery issue: apps keeping the phone on. I've taken to "spying" on my phone. Every once in a while I'll take it out, and run Taskiller to see what's running. I've pretty much uninstalled any app that could be the "culprit".

I'm starting to think that it's a kernel interrupt issue. My guess is that somehow, in the Galaxy, apps do not relinquish use of the CPU as they should. Perhaps they're keeping network interfaces on, and the phone doesn't go to sleep because of this. More details as I get them.
 
qqtba said:
Well just as I expected, it drained whithin half an hour after quoted message (3G and painful amount of apps running though :o). But the hell with it, it's soooo good in every other aspect that it doesn't matter that much. I am still glad if the firmware would improve it a bit ;)

But I am still wondering that recharging issue. It did it again just minutes ago :confused: Does anyone else have this kind of issue? Spare parts is indicating that battery health is good.
Click to expand...

I'm wondering how many hours can you listen to mp3's or watch videos with your Galaxy?
 
How long has everyone's battery life been? I have to say im pretty disappointed with the battery life lasting me about day and a half with light to medium use. I had a Nokia n85 before this and the battery on it with heavy camera use (40+ pics a day) and fm transmitter active would last me 2 days and ive heard that Tmobile MyTouch (aka HTC Magic) battery lasts 2-3 days.
 
the fact that everyone suggests that you should turn off auto syncing, 3g, etc. that make a good smartphone is just appalling to me. I'm coming from a Blackberry that did auto-syncing, WiFi all day, etc and it would last an entire day.

I love the phone and I have developed certain habits, like if i'm sitting at my desk and plug it into the usb or driving I always plug it into car charger. I'm hoping they have addressed this issue with donut, eclair (1.6, 2.0 or whatever the darn thing is going to be called).
 
Guys,

I'm having a HUUUUGE battery life improvement jusst by upgrading firmware from G6 to H7. When I say huge, it's almost two times better! So check you fw and post it here.
 
The syncing on android phones right now sucks!

The basic problem comes down to the way you notify the phone there's something new on the server that needs syncing.

Mobile phones have private IP addresses and so you can't form an incoming connection from the internet to them. So, the only way for the server to initiate a sync would be if you already had an outbound connection to the server up.

So everyone (except blackberry) use battery continuously to maintain this outbound connection. The most efficient way to do this would be to let the baseband handle it with a TCP keep alive. This would need some clever programming but would leave the main CPU able to sleep for extended periods of time.

Right now no body does that, and infact most implementations actually send data at the application level to keep the server connection up, and not just the TCP link.

Blackberry cheated, because they put a server at the network which has a private address. This is why blackberry's are able to sync so well without using masses of power - but also why you have to pay extra for the blackberry service.

Googles implementation right now seems quite basic, and it should improve massivly in the next few updates. But for now its not great. In any case I dont use gmail for my mail, and my contacts don't need to be synced back to google so i turn auto sync off and leave it off!
 
basically do what they said in 2nd post..
and also i love the app "APNdroid" (free on marketplace). it basically blocks internet access with 1 click (and unblocks). after i started using that i have no problems with battery anymore..
 
I have just finished my first test of the battery and the results
are excellent. I disconnected the battery from the charger last
Sunday at 01:00 and it survived Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and
Wednesday (today) till 18:00. That is when I got a popup that
battery is less than 5% full and now it's charging again. I have
the H7 firmware.

So that comes out 89 hours (almost four days) on one charge,
which is amazing!

Usage pattern each day: a couple of calls, some SMSs, Google
Talk is on, listening to music for about 40 minutes, playing with
camera and barcode scanner for about half an hour, browsing the
Android Market and testing apps for another half an hour or so,
WiFi on for about an hour, GPS off, 3G off, 2G on, synching with
Google accounts on.

I know it's not heavy usage. Also, I have excellent coverage.
However, I still think the result is very good.

I think that users with problems shouldn't exclude the possibility
that their battery is damaged in some way. Samsung probably built
hundreds of thousands of these devices, it is not beyond the realm
of possible that some shipped with hardware defects.
 
Thats not fair i cant even get 2 days out of it with same if not little less usage, although my wifi is on most of the time. I gotta say tho last night i went to H7 from H2 and battery life has improved.
 
Hi All,

Finally got my i7500 at the weekend and I've been doing a few experiments with battery life (I moved to H7 to make the APNs work and get a markplace icon, thanks to kam187 - you're a lifesaver).

Wifi off, sync off
100% - 85% after 9hrs 19mins

Wifi off, sync off, background off,
99% - 99% after 8hrs 27mins

Wifi off, sync off, apn off (using apndroid)
87% - 84% after 8hrs 55mins

I usually terminated all applications bar the few needed..

It seems that background, if it can access some data connection hurts even though it's not actually doing something, but background with the APNs set to invalid values also drains battery, but only a third as bad.

I've been running netmeter to take a look at the processor usage (haven't found a working data transfer monitoring app for the i7500) and I've not seen any real background processor usage, it only normally spikes when you use it.

However (and this is unrelated to battery usage - other than improving it when it shutdown overnight) I've had my phone shut down roughly every 36 hrs... I don't know if this is a memory leak, or counter somewhere, or the 36hrs is pretty random and I was just lucky... I'm still tracking it to find out.

ZeeToo.
 
ZeeToo said:
Hi All,


Wifi off, sync off, background off,
99% - 99% after 8hrs 27mins
Click to expand...

Does it mean that during this scenario you had EDGE connection active and the battery stayed on the 99% after 8hrs??? That may mean that instead changing APN types to stop connecting, we'd better be off with just turning off "Background data". ?!
 
Sorry, I forgot to mention that - it's not in my notes as I didn't realise why it was a problem till I phoned o2 yesterday.

Unfortunately, due to not having a 3g sim yet I can't get anything other than GPRS... I'll get an updated sim through the post shortly, no luck yet though.

I've manually entered the APNs that should support 3g in my phone, and I can occasionally get a 3g or E symbol, but the moment it actually does any data transfer it drops down to G (I presume GPRS based on the awful speed).

When I get the sim I intend to find out (my gf's iPhone gets 3G in the flat so I can check the overnight results for both 3g and Edge) but that probably won't be till next week.

I'm trying to finish up an app (shamelessly based on netmeter - love opensource android apps that I can grab the source for :) ) that'll track battery usage over time as it's something that needs some tweaking..

Anyway, I'll update when I have more information on the 2g, 3g drain.

ZeeToo.
 
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