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Help Battery life !!!!

C

celticfan32

Lurker
I bought my Samsung Nexus last week and one of the reasons I bought this phone was due to the feedback about the battery life and how it was meant to be the best battery for an android phone... To say Im DISSAPPOINTED would be an understatement... Im very lucky to get between 7-8 hours usage in a day and that is only for calls and text and very little internet use... Anyone else out there with the same problems with their battery and is anyone getting in and around the 24 hours of usage... Any replies would be greatly appreciated...
 
Modern Li-Ion batteries do not have a memory and do not need to be conditioned, but Android needs to be taught exactly what a full charge represents so that it can manage power appropriately.

One of the things I recommend all new phone owners to do is to perform a deep power cycle.

Let your phone discharge completely, keep it on until you are warned about low battery and then just let it run out. Most phone will shut down automatically around 5%.

Plug the phone into the original a/c charger, not the usb cable. Let it charge to full uninterrupted.

When the phone says full, unplug the phone from the charge and reboot. Once the phone is completely restarted, plug it back into the charger and shut the phone off. Even if it says fully charged, let it charge for at least one more hour.

Unplug the charger and reboot the phone one more time. Now you should start seeing (possibly significantly) longer charge times.

Without a deep power cycle, it doesn't know the true capacity of the battery. Be advised that you should only need to do this once as regularly deep cycling the battery can harm it. Li-Ion batteries perform better and last longer with incremental charges.
 
lunatic59 said:
Modern Li-Ion batteries do not have a memory and do not need to be conditioned, but Android needs to be taught exactly what a full charge represents so that it can manage power appropriately.

One of the things I recommend all new phone owners to do is to perform a deep power cycle.

Let your phone discharge completely, keep it on until you are warned about low battery and then just let it run out. Most phone will shut down automatically around 5%.

Plug the phone into the original a/c charger, not the usb cable. Let it charge to full uninterrupted.

When the phone says full, unplug the phone from the charge and reboot. Once the phone is completely restarted, plug it back into the charger and shut the phone off. Even if it says fully charged, let it charge for at least one more hour.

Unplug the charger and reboot the phone one more time. Now you should start seeing (possibly significantly) longer charge times.

Without a deep power cycle, it doesn't know the true capacity of the battery. Be advised that you should only need to do this once as regularly deep cycling the battery can harm it. Li-Ion batteries perform better and last longer with incremental charges.
Click to expand...

I will definitely give that a try
 
im 2 days into my Nexus,, its the same as my SG2 for batt life,,,

I agree for about the first week complete draining and full charge of the battery,,

also if you are new to android, do some reading,, when it gets down to it android phones are more like a pocket computer,, and if you dont watch it lots of stuff will still be going on in the background if you are not sure how or what to shut down,
 
Had no idea that was the case, Lunatic - that the OS had an adaptive battery management thing going on. I'll have to keep that in mind when I get the new phone.
 
Just got 28 hours out of the second full charge, granted it was fairly light use and I was asleep for some of it. A few games, some web, text, email, market and calls. I thought that was ok, loads better than my old desire.
 
lunatic59 said:
Modern Li-Ion batteries do not have a memory and do not need to be conditioned, but Android needs to be taught exactly what a full charge represents so that it can manage power appropriately.

One of the things I recommend all new phone owners to do is to perform a deep power cycle.

Let your phone discharge completely, keep it on until you are warned about low battery and then just let it run out. Most phone will shut down automatically around 5%.

Plug the phone into the original a/c charger, not the usb cable. Let it charge to full uninterrupted.

When the phone says full, unplug the phone from the charge and reboot. Once the phone is completely restarted, plug it back into the charger and shut the phone off. Even if it says fully charged, let it charge for at least one more hour.

Unplug the charger and reboot the phone one more time. Now you should start seeing (possibly significantly) longer charge times.

Without a deep power cycle, it doesn't know the true capacity of the battery. Be advised that you should only need to do this once as regularly deep cycling the battery can harm it. Li-Ion batteries perform better and last longer with incremental charges.
Click to expand...

I've been doing this with all my Android phones and this is a perfect process to maximize it's battery.
 
Why would the software not know the charge capacity of the battery?? I would assume the engineers know how much juice is in every GN battery.
 
Thai said:
Why would the software not know the charge capacity of the battery?? I would assume the engineers know how much juice is in every GN battery.
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If the software was programmed with the capacity of the battery then what would happen if you put in an extended battery? Phones like the iPhone could get away with the battery be programmed into the OS since there's no variation, but without a sealed battery this just doesn't seem possible.
 
Thai said:
Why would the software not know the charge capacity of the battery?? I would assume the engineers know how much juice is in every GN battery.
Click to expand...

It is a dynamic process for many reasons, the most important being that every battery, even from the same lot, will have variations in voltage and amperes. It will be minuscule, but to hard code capacity into a device would cause problems with overcharging, insufficient charging and inaccurate reporting. Even the same battery will have different discharge rates over its life.

Let's say you have a new phone with a battery rated for 1400mA. After a year it may only store 1200mA. If it was coded to report charge based on 1400mA, it would tell you you had 40% charge and when it reached nominal voltage a few minutes later it would shut off without warning.
 
This is my first smartphone. With my old dumbphone I was in the habit of plugging my phone into my ac charger at bedtime and leaving it plugged in all night. I assume that this is not a good idea with this phone.

Also I have only had the phone about a week, and I have not let the charge "run out". I have been plugging it into the ac charger when my phone has prompted me for low battery at about 14%. Is it too late for a deep discharge to be beneficial?
 
steevo1 said:
This is my first smartphone. With my old dumbphone I was in the habit of plugging my phone into my ac charger at bedtime and leaving it plugged in all night. I assume that this is not a good idea with this phone.

Also I have only had the phone about a week, and I have not let the charge "run out". I have been plugging it into the ac charger when my phone has prompted me for low battery at about 14%. Is it too late for a deep discharge to be beneficial?
Click to expand...

Most phones nowadays will cutoff the charge when it reaches maximum and not resume until it drops below 90%. Since LiIon batteries actually like incremental charges, it should not harm your battery to leave it plugged in.

The deep discharge really doesn't do anything at all to the battery, it just adjusts the data tables on the phone's reporting so it can manage power more accurately. So, no, it's not too late. Even after a year it would be beneficial, but you would have to clear the previous battery stats for it to have much of an impact against a year's worth of data.
 
Turn off all your GPS, Bluetooth, 4g, wifi when you're not using it. I guarantee you will see a 100% battery life increase. On top of that get rid of all those stupid active widgets you don't use. uninstall stuff that runs in the backround.

How to tell? Go to settings, applications, running applications - all those apps running kills your battery life. Uninstall what you don't use. You'll easily increase your battery life another 20%.
 
pragmatous said:
Turn off all your crap. GPS, Bluetooth, 4g, wifi when you're not using it. I guarantee you will see a 100% battery life increase. On top of that get rid of all those stupid active widgets you don't use. uninstall crap that runs in the backround.

How to tell? Go to settings, applications, running applications - all those apps running kills your battery life. Uninstall what you don't use. You'll easily increase your battery life another 20%.

It just irritates me how people complain about battery life but has all this crap running.
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First off I think someone needs to calm down just a tad. Some people are not that technically savvy and that's why they're here to post their experience/issue to get feedback. While I agree with your advice I think you need to rethink your approach.
 
:P it's my pet peeve

NecoD said:
First off I think someone needs to calm down just a tad. Some people are not that technically savvy and that's why they're here to post their experience/issue to get feedback. While I agree with your advice I think you need to rethink your approach.
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I'm from New York tho that's how we help when it's a pet peeve lol.

I wasn't trying to be malicious just text interpreted differently than intended heh :p

EarlyMon said:
Regardless, there's no need to talk with such invective to others.

If you feel you have helpful suggestions, post them.

If you want to offer attitude about it, it's simply better to find a thread that doesn't bother you as much.

And there's no cause for harsh language here. ;)
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steevo1 said:
This is my first smartphone. With my old dumbphone I was in the habit of plugging my phone into my ac charger at bedtime and leaving it plugged in all night. I assume that this is not a good idea with this phone.

Also I have only had the phone about a week, and I have not let the charge "run out". I have been plugging it into the ac charger when my phone has prompted me for low battery at about 14%. Is it too late for a deep discharge to be beneficial?
Click to expand...

Nothing wrong with leaving the phone on the charger overnight.

The phone won't trickle charge - the phone will hit 100% and then disconnect the charging circuit, running off of the battery until it hits a manufacturer-defined point (typically around 95%, give or take) and then start charging up again.

Exactly like a laptop.

But - the device will typically always show 100% in these cases. Then, you take it off the charger, the monitors wake up, and a few minutes later, it displays the actual charge (anywhere between say around 93% to 100% at that point). This leads to the false confusion that the battery is wrong or the phone/battery needs tweaking - when it's actually fine and working as designed.

That's the biggest misunderstanding about smartphone battery performance. ;)

And there's no benefit to a deep discharge - if anything, it's harmful, and full discharge should be avoided except as an occasional occurrence of using the phone naturally.

More info here -

http://androidforums.com/samsung-ga...ver-wanted-know-about-batteries-chargers.html

Hope this helps!
 
pragmatous said:
I'm from New York tho that's how we help when it's a pet peeve lol.

I wasn't trying to be malicious just text interpreted differently than intended heh :p
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Nice to meet you, I'm from Detroit.

I appreciate your good intentions, just remember - this ain't Detroit or New York up in here. ;)
 
the method that Lunatic suggested is very helpful. It is pretty much a form of "bump" charging. Bump charging was huge in helping the Inc1 get better battery life. I'm a firm believer in doing it for a few charges on a new device so the software learns the limits of the battery.
 
trophynuts said:
the method that Lunatic suggested is very helpful. It is pretty much a form of "bump" charging. Bump charging was huge in helping the Inc1 get better battery life. I'm a firm believer in doing it for a few charges on a new device so the software learns the limits of the battery.
Click to expand...

I've done that as well in the past, but what's it's really doing is "calibrating the battery" (as he identifies in other terms).

In other words, Android keeps a data file that it constantly updates so that the phone knows that certain battery levels correspond to certain charge percentages.

On the older generation phones that you and I have owned, this seemed to make a big difference.

I think with the new dual core phones and their updated battery tech (everything improves, after all), you'll find it's likely very sufficient to just use the phone normally for a week or two and marvel as the battery life seems to naturally increase (self-calibrating that battery info by use over time).

The fast-cal method outlined can't hurt and may still help.

But knowing what I know now, I shy away from intentional deep discharging. Once in a while is OK.

PS - If you're rooted, just use Battery Calibrator by Potente.
 
agreed i never really do a complete discharge. Also "if your rooted" I always wipe battery stats via Clokwork after installing a new Rom.
 
OP, I will tell you it sounds like you have something installed on your phone that is draining your battery. With heavy use I still easily can get 12+ hours on a charge. With normal use I get around 15-19 hours. And with light use a day ago I got 28 hours on a charge. I keep bluetooth, gps, and wifi all turned on. My phone is set for push email, facebook syncing, and auto brightness. When the phone is in idle it seems to drain about 2%/hr so that should give you a little bit of a reference point. If your phone is draining more than that, then you may need to take a look at what you have running in the background.
 
My NExus battery life was every bit a great as my SG2. It would get me though the day and still have 40-50% left when I put it on the charger before bed.
 
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