• After 15+ years, we've made a big change: Android Forums is now Early Bird Club. Learn more here.

Battery Life Thread

M

Member 385453

Guest
Post up how much battery life you are getting.

So far yesterday I ended up with 24% battery left at the end of the day (about 15hrs). Moderate use.

Today I am at 43%. Awake time 10hrs and 13hrs since last unplugged. This is the third day I've had this phone. I dropped my screen brightness down to about 30%, still plenty bright for me.

Power usage today:
Display 43%
Voice Calls 32%
System 14%
Standby 6%
Phone Idle 5%

There is about 45min worth of gaming, 1hr of talk time, 30 text msgs, downloading a couple apps, some web surfing, tried out the FM radio, did about 10 speed tests and played around with the phone.

There is probably an app to display all of this. Anyone know of a good one let me know.
 
^Excellent and intriguing results!

OK - monitoring apps:

Spare Parts (free) gives some interesting power-use perspectives. Trick with it is when you get to the screen with the pink bars - those are just display, they're live and you can use them to drill down for details.

System Panel Lite (free) is another great app to see what the phone in general is doing, the paid version does even more.

Another _really_ good one is Android System Info by Electric Sheep (also free) - use that one sparingly, it's kinda a battery hog compared to others, but will tell volumes about your phone in trade for the extra power it uses.
 
through about 10 hours of my phone being unplugged I went from 100% to 9%. That being said, while at work this evening I was religiously using ESPN score center to refresh as much as possible (roughly 4 straight hours). Sent atleast 20-30 text messages and set-up news hub, and read some articles. I am happy with these results.
 
I'm hitting 43 hours with 13% battery left. I posted a thread on how I was able to do this. This phone has insane potential to last a long time. I've never had an android phone last me this long.
 
These are the things I do to get insane battery life if thats what your looking for;

little things to do, check and or disable;

1. Use spare parts and find out whats killing your battery ie partial wake usage, cpu etc.
2. Turn your window animations from all to only some animations
3. Turn off automatic display and keep it around 20-30%
4. I have auto sync off on all my appz (E-mail, Gmail, Facebook etc.). I update my E-mail and such manually.
5. Turn off data when not using it. I find data accounts for around 15-25% of juice used and thats just when on idle.
6. Only use widgets on the homescreen if you really have to (Running widgets use a lot of power over time)
7. Use Android Hackers tool from the market and it will break down how long your cpu was in a certain state. ie my cpu spent 65% at 245mhz and 28% at 806mhz.
8. Keep off 4G, Bluetooth, wirless networks for location and GPS if not using it (GPS uses less power than wireless networks and is more accurate anyway) I assigned Quick Settings to open when I hold down the search button. That makes it easy to enable/disable any of these setting within seconds.
9. Turn off google talk and make sure it doesnt sign in automatically (most people dont realise this)
10. Turn screen timeout to 15 or 30 seconds (if longer your phone can keep the display on accidentally while in your pocket if a button is pressed, wasting power)
11. Dont use a task killer unless its to kill an app you know drains your battery and therefore must be closed to save juice
12. Check your apps. Some apps keep using cpu etc because they were not programed correctly. (some appz I've found to drain my battery are; Yahoo Mail, Craigslist, AndTorrent and the market if a download is hung up. There are a few others I cant remember off the top of my head) If your phone is getting hot for no apparent reason this may be the cause.
13. Calibrate your battery by bump charging (charge your phone till its full while on, turn it off and charge till its full again. Then bump charge it around 5-7 times. I dont do this very often) Wipe battery stats if applicable. If you have a car charger, plug your phone in on the way to work to account for the little bit of drain that occurs once the phone is fully charged yet still on the charger.

Remember you can get china made batteries for very cheap. I paid $12 for 2 batteries and a wall charger off ebay. This phone uses the same batteries as the Hero and Evo by the way.

Screen Shots will be posted once I get down to 5%.
 
sounds like you dont have very much fun with your phone with that usage and settings. I just charge my phone before I go to bed and I am good to go without sacrificing all the key features of a smart phone.

43 hours is still pretty amazing though. Good job.
 
You can save even more battery life by putting it in airplane mode. Better yet, just turn it off. So what if you made 43 hours without using the phone. The real science is to see how much stuff you can use/run while still lasting an entire day. i.e. how frequently can I poll for emails, have this widget update, or have the weather refresh while still lasting a whole day.

I do agree with the "bump charging" because your battery hasn't learned its limits unless you push it there.
 
sounds like you dont have very much fun with your phone with that usage and settings. I just charge my phone before I go to bed and I am good to go without sacrificing all the key features of a smart phone.

43 hours is still pretty amazing though. Good job.
Sure I have plenty of fun. I usually dont care to see how long the phone will last but figured I would just see this time what she can take before dying. I dont use facebook etc. I only check my mail once per day anyways. I listen to Howard Stern, check my MMA news and play angry birds the most. I usually just use my phone and charge it every night but I thought I would see how long she will go before dying on me and lets just say I'm amazed.

You can save even more battery life by putting it in airplane mode. Better yet, just turn it off. So what if you made 43 hours without using the phone. The real science is to see how much stuff you can use/run while still lasting an entire day. i.e. how frequently can I poll for emails, have this widget update, or have the weather refresh while still lasting a whole day.

I do agree with the "bump charging" because your battery hasn't learned its limits unless you push it there.
I made this thread for people who dont know how the Android OS operates and wants to learn to make there battery last longer. Believe me when I say I've been using the phone. I have at least 1.5 hrs of talk time during this period and have sent over 50 texts plus downloaded and listened to around 1.5hrs of howard stern. Just because I dont check my E-mail and Facebook all day doesnt mean shes not being used. I have no need for updating widgets besides the clock/weather. I'm using my phone the way I always do minus the heavy internet usage on 4G. I'm pointing this out because I've never had an android phone last this long on me, not because I'm trying to brag or whatever. Amateur Android users can learn how to get great battery life if they want with this phone.
 
Turning off Always-on Mobile Data is also a big help for many. As you move through the day, if you hit a fringy kinda reception area, your phone will start working to maintain full 3G data, when you don't need that at all - unless you have some critical twitter or something you simply must monitor, for example (no sarcasm).

PS - I've merged your thread with the one you've seen already for this topic.
 
I was able to get 48 hours on light use with one charge.
 

Attachments

  • screenshot_28.jpg
    screenshot_28.jpg
    165.9 KB · Views: 143
  • screenshot_29.jpg
    screenshot_29.jpg
    50.8 KB · Views: 144
  • screenshot_31.jpg
    screenshot_31.jpg
    67.5 KB · Views: 152
Also

drocap2 for root users - Android app on AppBrain

ShootMe (Screen Grabber) - Android app on AppBrain

If you're not rooted and ok with installing the Android Software Developer Kit (SDK) then this:

http://androidforums.com/eris-all-things-root/95807-how-screenshot.html#post907674

Here's the SDK:

Android SDK | Android Developers

If you're planning on permanent rooting, you might want to grab the SDK anyway.

To enable debugging - homescreen -> Menu -> Settings -> Applications -> Development -> USB Debugging (check)
 
Remember you can get china made batteries for very cheap. I paid $12 for 2 batteries and a wall charger off ebay. This phone uses the same batteries as the Hero and Evo by the way.

Screen Shots will be posted once I get down to 5%.

You should have seen my face when I flipped me Hero's battery upside and slapped it in, fits like a glove.:eek:

I knew the contacts were on a different side, but i didnt think to just flip the battery over. Woot free battery! My Hero got pretty awesome battery life too.
 
I do agree with the "bump charging" because your battery hasn't learned its limits unless you push it there.

Huh? So is the learning in the lithium-ion battery or in the phone?

I would guess that the battery management widget in the phone was programmed with the characteristic discharge curve of that type of battery.

Also, LiON batteries degrade from the moment they are sealed at the factory, aint nothin you nor I can do about it except watch it happen. It's sad, really. :-(
 
EVO Shift Battery saving tips:

Under Menu - Settings – Personalize:
Don't use a scene
Set home wallpaper to a picture or solid background or one of the provided pictures.

Under Menu - Settings - Wireless&Networks:
Wi-Fi off
Bluetooth off unless you use it
Sprint Hotspot off
4G off unless it is available
Mobile networks needs to have a check in the box

Under Menu - Settings - Sound:
Sound Profile set to normal
Volume, turn everything up all the way so your main sound controls the level of everything.
Vibrate uncheck
Audible touch tones set to off
Audible selection uncheck
Screen lock sounds uncheck
Vibrate feedback uncheck

Under Menu - Settings - Display
Animation set to use no animations
Screen timeout set to 30 seconds
Notification flash open and uncheck all the boxes unless you need them.

Under Menu - Settings - Accounts and Sync
News turn off if you don't use it
Stocks turn off if you don't use it
Weather turn off if you don't use it, (you may want the HTC clock/weather widget on your desktop
so you may want to leave weather checked and set the update schedule to every hour. If you want
severe weather alerts, you can go to the weather channel and sign up for severe weather alerts only and they will text them to your phone when they happen.)

Under Menu - Settings - Location:
Use Wireless Networks check this box
Location setting allow network to detect your position
Use GPS satellites uncheck and leave off unless you need it for navigation or Google maps. (If
anything needs it the program will prompt you to turn it on, just remember to go in and turn it
off when you are finished, you can also add a shortcut on your desktop to turn this on and off.)

Under Menu - Settings - Language&Keyboard:
Touch input then Text input you can turn on and off word prediction and text prediction for
all your keyboards on screen and the slide out keyboard. You could turn off vibrate for your
onscreen keyboards to save a little battery.

Under menu - Settings - Accessibility
Turn this off

Under Menu - Settings - About Phone
Battery you can see a battery graph in here as well as what is using your battery. It has a
total up time timer as well as how much your phone has been screen on. To reset these you
have to power off and pull the battery. Great way to tell how long your phone has lasted on
a charge and how much use you got out of it.

Tips
- Remove everything from all your home screens, just click and hold object until it highlights and then drag to the trash can that appears on the bottom of the screen. Anything that is out there can be put back on.

- Only put on the things you need like shortcuts to programs or people you call and text a lot and only use widgets that don’t seem to use much battery.

- If you setup email accounts using the built in email, there are some good settings in there for your accounts and it is the first phone I have not needed to use K9 mail on. You can set the days you want to sync, you can set peak time and off peak time hours like 6am – 8pm sync every hour and then off peak would be 8:01pm to 5:59am and you can have it not sync at all or sync at a different rate. Under General settings you can turn off sync when I open mail to save some battery. You can also only ask for a sound and task bar notification for new email and turn off the vibrate.

- Once you have your phone setup like above, then maybe try adding apps or other things like scenes and see how your run time is affected. With my phone setup like the above, I got right at 50 hours of up time and right at 9 hours of awake time. Lasted me from 6am in the morning through day 1, through night 1, through day 2 and was dead shut off at 7:30pm evening of day 2. Monitoring 3 email accounts hourly, lots of texting and light use of everything else, market, internet along with a few calls here and there with Bluetooth on and connected during the days of use, volume all the way up. HTC clock and weather widget running with weather update set to 1 hour. No screen brightness adjustments, just set to auto.
 

Attachments

  • IMAG0009.jpg
    IMAG0009.jpg
    854.4 KB · Views: 116
  • IMAG0010.jpg
    IMAG0010.jpg
    770 KB · Views: 134
I unplugged my Shift yesterday at 7 AM, 32 hours later I just dropped to 30% after a day and a half of what I would call light usage.

Probably sent a received 15-20 texts
A few short phone calls (maybe 10 mins total)
Read and deleted a few dozen e-mails over the course of each day
Posted on Facebook half a dozen times
Maybe 15-20 minutes of web surfing
Did a couple of sudoku puzzles

All background data and syncs are turned on for two Gmail accounts, Facebook, and one daily update from my Exchanger server at work.

GPS is ON
WiFi is OFF
4G is OFF except when doing web surfing
Bluetooth is OFF
Screen Brightness is AUTO

Hopefully it will last until I go to bed tonight. Even with light use I call two days out of an Android device's battery freaking spectacular!

One program I found is a serious power hog over the weekend is Angry Birds, it's fun, but runs your processor hard and sucks up the battery juice!
 
Is there such a thing as a high capacity battery for the Evo Shift? I don't have one yet so I don't know how it's constructed, but I woud think that the sliding part would jam up against the thicker high-cap battery.

Thanx in advance.
 
Everybody should download the battery widget by curvefish. it is the best app for battery that i have found. Gives you a battery indicator, with the percentage of the battery, color indicators so like 70-100 % green 69-35 orange, 35-0 red but you choose colors and %'s. the heat of your battery in either fara. or cels. if your phone is plugged into charge. and more. the best way to monitor usage of battery.
 
The built in battery meter has been dead on perfect on this phone. Nice line broken up into equal length cells. Each cell lasts the same amount of time, none of the 1/2 battery then going red all of a sudden like on my last phone.
 
Everybody should download the battery widget by curvefish. it is the best app for battery that i have found. Gives you a battery indicator, with the percentage of the battery, color indicators so like 70-100 % green 69-35 orange, 35-0 red but you choose colors and %'s. the heat of your battery in either fara. or cels. if your phone is plugged into charge. and more. the best way to monitor usage of battery.

Is it a battery hog ? ..... I haven't used a battery widget since dating back to june with my evo and it sucked down the juice faster then ever .... coming from an epic which had the most innaccurate battery meter I've ever used I'm pleased so far afcter todays use .. I'm pleased to get 8 hours without a charge. I'm a heavy phone user on average days n I refuse to tone down settings.
 
Ha me too, i have screen on the brightest setting, everything on full blast. BALLS TO THE WALL!

to be honest, since i have had the battery widget on my phone i cant tell a difference in performance of the battery. I will keep an eye out since you have brought up that question and get back to you on that.
 
i have gotten 36 hours off my last charge so far... the battery isnt below half yet. that is with wifi, gps, and 4g turned off. ALSO WITH NO IM CLIENT RUNNING...

this is with moderate usage, FB Twicca and k9 every 2 hours and gmail set on push, 3 or 4 phone calls, a hundred or 2 Txts and light pandora use.

i turned on my IM client (meebo) about 2 hours ago so i expect the battery to go down much quicker now but compared to my Moment.... this blows it out of the water

i would be thrilled with 12 hours no charging but this is surpassing that
 
Back
Top Bottom