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Display taking 37% of battery life

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smartguy75

Member
Just got the Epic 4G touch. Man awesome phone. I am coming from HTC Evo. I have been observing past three days since I got the phone, under the battery usage, I see Display taking 37% of the battery. My Evo display percentage was very less. Is that normal or do I have a defective piece?

Can anyone please advise and explain why the display is taking so much percentage?
 
Keep in mind two things:

1) It is percentage of a whole. If your phone battery only went down 5 percent of total and it was because of you staring in wonder, then that number will be very high -- say 70% of 5%.

2)It is a new phone and I'm sure you ARE staring at the screen in wonder. If so, there's your answer. Resist turning it on all day and check usage at the end of the day, after a healthy run on the battery. I bet it'll be very different.

With those said, make sure you have auto brightness set on OR turn down the brightness level to just below where you think it is OK. Your eyes will adjust pretty quickly to the new level if your lighting is fairly constant.
 
The way I understood was Super Amoled Plus actually helps conserve battery because black leds are off and utilizes low power consumption. I am occasionally turning the phone on to check my emails or text messages if I get a notification. I play words with friends for few mins for few moves. I mean I am not extra-ordinarily keeping my display on for long time. I consistently see display taking 37% all the time. Also this morning it was showing 80% despite my phone was restarted after complete battery charge and I was driving to work without using it. When I opened to check the battery usage it was showing 80% for few mins. It dropped back to 37% in 20 mins. So wondering what's going on.

kenn said:
Keep in mind two things:

1) It is percentage of a whole. If your phone battery only went down 5 percent of total and it was because of you staring in wonder, then that number will be very high -- say 70% of 5%.

2)It is a new phone and I'm sure you ARE staring at the screen in wonder. If so, there's your answer. Resist turning it on all day and check usage at the end of the day, after a healthy run on the battery. I bet it'll be very different.

With those said, make sure you have auto brightness set on OR turn down the brightness level to just below where you think it is OK. Your eyes will adjust pretty quickly to the new level if your lighting is fairly constant.
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smartguy75 said:
My battery drain today from 99% to 50% in almost 2 hours. I was playing words with friends for almost 30 mins with screen on. Is that a normal behaviour?
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Probably. It all depends. Was it over 4g? Were you moving tiles back and forth the whole time? Do you sync your emails/weather/twitter every 5 minutes? All of this can add up to using half your battery in 2 hours. Just turn everything off you're not using and you'll be okay.

The bug to watch out for: AndroidOS using 50+% of battery. If you get this bug, return the phone. Doesn't sound like you have this one though.
 
It wasn't over 4G. It was only on 3G. Yes, I was moving back and forth tiles. Only syncing I do is Gmail which is push instead of pull and Weather which is set to every 3 hours.

Just checked it, Words with Friends is consuming 40% now and Display is 33%. Android OS is 16%. But I believe it was 36 % yesterday. Is my phone has faults then or it is an expected behaviour?

LxMxFxD said:
Probably. It all depends. Was it over 4g? Were you moving tiles back and forth the whole time? Do you sync your emails/weather/twitter every 5 minutes? All of this can add up to using half your battery in 2 hours. Just turn everything off you're not using and you'll be okay.

The bug to watch out for: AndroidOS using 50+% of battery. If you get this bug, return the phone. Doesn't sound like you have this one though.
Click to expand...
 
Sounds like you guys are totally misunderstanding what that percentage means, as the second poster tried to explain.

Let's say there are only 3 ways your phone can use power: Display, Radio, and CPU.

If you turn on your phone and do nothing, display will be responsible for MOST of your battery usage. THerefore the percentage is going to be really high, like 99%, for example. Does that mean the display is malfunctioning? No, it's using just as much power as it needs. The percentage is high only because nothing else is requiring power at the time.

Now, if you start playing a game on your phone, CPU usage will spike. Then you might see a spread of 49% display, 49% CPU, 1% radio, for example.

And if you're doing something that requires radio, CPU, and display, then you might see a fairly even spread of 34/33/33.

So the actual percentage number by itself cannot tell you if something is wrong or not. You have to correlate it with how the phone is being used.
 
smartguy75 said:
Just got the Epic 4G touch. Man awesome phone. I am coming from HTC Evo. I have been observing past three days since I got the phone, under the battery usage, I see Display taking 37% of the battery. My Evo display percentage was very less. Is that normal or do I have a defective piece?

Can anyone please advise and explain why the display is taking so much percentage?
Click to expand...


on the evo3d, the display normally took around 60%-80% of the battery. 37% is really great.

super amoled + uses more power to display white than traditional lcds.
 
Thanks. I restarted my phone later this evening. And I see words with friends now only 3%. I am thinking that was the cause. But there is no way to close words with friends. I cannot even force close that app. Also Shouldn't the app run in background so if the opposite player plays their tile, I should be notified?
Tommydaniel said:
I can guarantee Words With Friends wasn't completely closed and eating your battery
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Thanks. Had Words with Friends earlier stuck for 37 % and probably caused a lot of battery damage. There was no way to close that app despite restarting. Finally suddenly in the evening when I opened to play my move and looked at its battery usage, it is 5% now.



novox77 said:
Sounds like you guys are totally misunderstanding what that percentage means, as the second poster tried to explain.

Let's say there are only 3 ways your phone can use power: Display, Radio, and CPU.

If you turn on your phone and do nothing, display will be responsible for MOST of your battery usage. THerefore the percentage is going to be really high, like 99%, for example. Does that mean the display is malfunctioning? No, it's using just as much power as it needs. The percentage is high only because nothing else is requiring power at the time.

Now, if you start playing a game on your phone, CPU usage will spike. Then you might see a spread of 49% display, 49% CPU, 1% radio, for example.

And if you're doing something that requires radio, CPU, and display, then you might see a fairly even spread of 34/33/33.

So the actual percentage number by itself cannot tell you if something is wrong or not. You have to correlate it with how the phone is being used.
Click to expand...
 
In general, battery woes are either going to be a CPU problem, or a radio problem, or both. Stuff like display, haptic feedback, audio playback are all easy on the battery compared to CPU and radio.

And amongst radio, 4G requires the most power, followed by 3G, then GPS, then wifi. Signal strength also affects the amount of power used. The phone will boost power to try to pick up weaker signals.
 
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