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For those having a low battery issues....

i thought li-ion batts had no memory and that the old full charge/full drain wouldn't affect battery performance.

anyone have a link to some insight? i'm not saying this isn't working for you....but should it?
 
I thought it was absolute crap as well, and after 3-4 full drains, I'm rocking 50-60% remaining at the end of the day. I was being left with less than 20%. Haven't seen the yellow bar in 3 days.
 
Power cycling really does help. Yesterday my phone battery life sucked beyond sucking. And I kid you not when I say that I was about ready to return my Captivate. HOWEVER....

I decided to try cycling my battery, so I completely drained it last night and let it charge overnight without powering it on. Now at the end of today, I have noticed a HUGE difference!! I am totally shocked and completely amazed. I would do it again, but right now my battery is sitting at 80% after maybe an hour of charging throughout the day (while driving and listening to Pandora). I have made no changes to my apps, no changes to ANYTHING, but power cycled the battery. So I have gone from a skeptic to a believer overnight.

Thank you guys for saving me from returning my phone!!
 
I had seen a number of people recommending this, since I just got my captivate on saturday and the battery life had me feeling a bit crazy I figured I'd give this a shot. Yesterday I was able to drain it, today I had to work at draining it so it seems like it's getting better. Thanks for the suggestion!
 
Another way to save battery is download the Advanced Task Killer, go into the settings, set the level to aggressive and set it to run when the screen goes off. My phone sat idle from 6am to noon yesterday and still showed 100%. I used the phone during lunch which drained it just a tiny sliver. Then, at the end of the day after not using it much other than checking email, it was still with that little sliver that I had at lunch time. Make sure your GPS is not constantly running and wifi disabled when not using it.

I wasn't a believer in task killers because what I read about them not being any good, but a friend of mine with the EVO (an even bigger battery eater) did this and it gets him almost 2 days of battery vs. a half day of battery.

(Of course if you use it all day and have the screen on much of the day, your battery is gonna die fast.)
 
by draining the battery - do you mean drain it until the phone shuts off...or...until the 'charge your battery now' message appears?

I've had very, very bad battery life every day (moderate user) since I bought this device. But I haven't drained the battery until it shuts off, just until the stock battery icon turns yellow-or until the charge now message appears.
 
I saw someone else suggest using JuiceDefender with the advanced add-on. Ive used it for a couple days and it really seems to help quite a lot. You can pretty much control all the ways and when your phone uses 3G/Wifi. Worth a shot anyway.
 
Pema108 said:
by draining the battery - do you mean drain it until the phone shuts off...or...until the 'charge your battery now' message appears?

I've had very, very bad battery life every day (moderate user) since I bought this device. But I haven't drained the battery until it shuts off, just until the stock battery icon turns yellow-or until the charge now message appears.
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I believe they mean a total drain till it powerd off. What I did was, I drained totally which ended up being later evening, then plugged it in and left it powered off till I got up the next morning. It was fully charged. Rinse and repeat.

This actually made me remember when I had gotten one of my first cell phones (the kind that would have dented in someone's skull if you where inclined to smack someone with it), I was told to cycle it like the above mentioned.
 
Actually, this power cycling isn't to benefit the battery itself, but rather it resents and calibrates the algorithm that tells the phone how much battery is remaining. It has been argued elsewhere that this is really detrimental to the battery itself, but the effects of the full drain are so many power cycles into the future (like 5 years) before the effects are felt, that we'll all have new phones anyway...
 
s.m.knipe said:
It has been argued elsewhere that this is really detrimental to the battery itself, but the effects of the full drain are so many power cycles into the future (like 5 years) before the effects are felt, that we'll all have new phones anyway...
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Batteries can only survive so many charge-discharge cycles anyway before they wear out. Well before 5 years, even a top-notch battery will long be past the point of needing replacement.

These aren't iPhones: you can replace the tired battery without buying a new phone. ;)

I went through 3 batteries over the lifespan of my V635.
 
I really hope the battery issue clears up for me in the next day or so. I love this phone but my battery is absolutely unacceptable. I went from full charge to 33% in about 6 hours :(!!
 
me too - i'm getting horrible battery life, and i don't watch movies for very long or listen to music or browse the web much. i only turn on wifi when i need it and shut it off when i'm done AND i use advanced task killer and have it set to aggressive when the screen turns off.

after reading about everyone "cycling" their batteries, i ran mine down to 1% last night and charged it over night. i haven't used the phone much today but i plan on running it down and fully charging it a couple more times.

hopefully everyone isn't crazy and battery life improves.
 
I'm at 50% right now and haven't used my phone that much. I've stopped using ATK and just using ADW, battery indicator, and widget locker... i did the full drain last night and i feel like it got worse...
 
I did a full drain/charge last night, and I think mine has gotten worse also. I would say my usage level is moderate. Maybe the first Samsungs had less than desireable batteries. I use ATK, auto sync is off, gps off, wifi is never used really, and my screen is not being used most of the time. Going to exchange it for a newer one today.
 
Dieabolical said:
I did a full drain/charge last night, and I think mine has gotten worse also. I would say my usage level is moderate. Maybe the first Samsungs had less than desireable batteries. I use ATK, auto sync is off, gps off, wifi is never used really, and my screen is not being used most of the time. Going to exchange it for a newer one today.
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The phone or the battery?
 
The phone. I talked to AT&T today and they said to just come in and exchange the whole thing. I rooted it already and took off all the ATT apps, so looks like I will just have to flash it back to stock before exchanging.
 
i powercycled my phone last night. My battery yesterday would like around 10-15% every hour or so. I charged it back to full while i slept last night, my battery is currently at 90% with an uptime of 12hours after one full discharge. yea im a believer now.
 
Hi okay so the above post is right. A full discharge is bad for your battery. A lithium ion battery has only so many charge cycles before it goes out and a full discharge is worse than several half discharges. Lithium ion batteries have no memory. Period. However it does change the calibration of the phone which if why you think you get an improvement. It must calibrate because every battery has a different profile where the max voltage varies and the drop off voltage varies. Good luck.
 
just thought I'd post my positive results after trying this. I got my phone about 1.5weeks ago and the first couple days seemed pretty good. I got 1hr of playing on it for 10% battery drain, and then about 7.5hrs in and out of signal and taking pictures for 15-20% battery drain. Then, I noticed that my battery was draining really fast, about 8% per hour when completely idle. The only thing I had running on it of any significance was google data sync (very little going on there), weather, and a 2hr greader sync. I would pull it off the charger around 6:30am, and then by the time I got to work (9am) it was down to 85% with *very* little use. I was about to exchange, when I thought of the full drain/full charge cycle. I drained it full last night until it shut itself off, and then charged. I've used it very little so far, but it's 1pm and the battery is only down to 89%. That's 6hrs of light use today for a cost of 11% battery. *that* I can live with. I'm gonna do a couple more cycles just for good measure. I've had multiple devices with Lion batteries and have never had this issue, so I wonder if the battery has some defect it might be worth returning it for.
 
Well I took my phone back for an exchange yesterday due to very poor battery life. My second captivate doesnt look much better(so far). After a full charge last(took off charger at 630am) night....I have everything off, gps, wife, account sync, brightness 0, etc. maybe 4 or 5 texts, 2 voice calls this am.... at 4pm my battery is 17% left..wtf. I shut the phone off for now, my shift ends at 7:30 :(
 
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