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Help Galaxy S display really excessive battery drain

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bwong365

Lurker
Hey there, my display seems to consistently use too much power.

After six hours unplugged today:

The battery usage screen shows
Display - 98%
Cell Standby - 2%

That's kind of ridiculous since the battery history menu shows the screen having been on for only 1hr 43 minutes

As said in the title the remaining battery is currently 34% after 6 hours in from 100%

Any advice? I've had terrible luck with the SGS's so far (1 soft key sticking, 1 fried internal SD card). None of them were spectacular on battery life but this is by far the worst unit.

-Galaxy S GT-i9000M (Sasktel/Canada)
 
Do you put the phone to sleep/stand by when your not using it. By quickly pushing the power button not long enough for it to power down.
I wasnt doing that and was getting a ridiculous dispaly usage pecentage.
I found much better battery performance after flashing from 2.2 to 2.2.1.
 
If you install one of the "Android Widgits" ( Power Control ) that comes with the phone, you can control the screen's brightness. Dim, Medium, and Bright.

I keep mine on Dim most of the time, only use Bright if in direct sunlight. I keep the Screen Timeout on 15 seconds.

I configured the Screen to "Never sleep when charging". That gives me the best of all worlds. I used my phone today for about 6 hours off grid and still had 76% battery left when I got home.

That Widgit also gives you access to On/Off for WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS, Sync, Screen Display brightness....

If I want the screen to stay alive while I am surfing the web, I use an app called "Screebl". It is an on/off app for keeping your screen awake.


Hope this helps a bit.
 
Obviously, something is wrong. My display eats up 90%+ of my display within just a few hours of being on standby, and that's with the brightness set to the dimmest possible setting at all times! Any solutions?
 
Really?? I can barely get 6 hours out of a full charge, with the GPS and bluetooth turned off and only moderate use. I've seen battery test articles on the Internet where people are reporting 2 days of use!

This is very disappointing for such an expensive phone :-(
 
I use Screen Filter for reducing the battery usage. The one touch toggle is great to enable/disable the brightness. By default the screen is gonna be bright even if you keep the brightness to zero.
 
One thing you shouldn't forget is that the phone drains power quickly in other ways as well.

Yes the screen drains a $#1% load but I've also found that H/3G/wifi uses up tons of battery power as well. When using my phone in Hong Kong/Macau, the battery life was way better as I had the data connection turned off. Then I could get 2 days no problem. As soon as got back to Australia and put my original sim card back in, everything went back to high drain again. :(

There's a great program you can use called APNdroid. It's a simple widget that turns data on/off. I experimented with this a lot and it indeed will save you plenty of battery power when you don't need a constant data connection.
 
Check in the battery history partial wake section to see if there is an app that is keeping the phone active while it's supposed to be asleep. I had Social Hub keeping my phone awake and had to upgrade it to get rid of the problem. Before I did that I only got like 4-6 hours out of my battery with barely any use, now I get a day to a day and half easily.
 
The screen usually uses the most power...
The biggest problem with all smartphones is the batteryconsumption.

There is a way to extend the batarylife, getting a better battery.
The standard battery is 1500mah and there's an official samsung battery that is 3000mah

here it is
Extended high capacity 3000mAh battery for Samsung Galaxy S

Only problem is that the battery is thick to get it's cappacity. So it pretty mutch destroy's the look.

But if batteryduration is what you want this is what you'll need.
 
I think the problem is android is made for phones with lcd screens....if you look in setting for the display power saving mode is for lcd screens not amoled .........amoled uses more power when veiwing pages with white backgrounds
 
andy-roid said:
I think the problem is android is made for phones with lcd screens....if you look in setting for the display power saving mode is for lcd screens not amoled .........amoled uses more power when veiwing pages with white backgrounds
Click to expand...

Be smart and use a black background AMOLED uses nopower with black colors
 
My display after 31 minutes of being on has eat up 80% of the 30% of battery that has been used so far.
Phones been unplugged for 4h41m54s and I have 70% battery remaining(if you didn't work it out from my confusing sentence above >_<)
 
Have you tried turning data connection off? And what android version are you on? 2.2.1. has problem with the email and gallery app that drains a lot of power.
 
sanosuke said:
Check in the battery history partial wake section to see if there is an app that is keeping the phone active while it's supposed to be asleep. I had Social Hub keeping my phone awake and had to upgrade it to get rid of the problem. Before I did that I only got like 4-6 hours out of my battery with barely any use, now I get a day to a day and half easily.
Click to expand...

How did you upgrade Social Hub?
 
snapper.fishes said:
Have you tried turning data connection off? And what android version are you on? 2.2.1. has problem with the email and gallery app that drains a lot of power.
Click to expand...

How does Gallery eat up battery?

When I click on the icon it always reopens and doesn't start of where I left of but loads up again :S

I'm on 2.2.1 officially and no, I hate turning of data on my Galaxy S and i4.
 
The Samsung Fascinate has a Samsung supplied widget that gives you 3 levels of brightness.
* Very bright for bright sun
* medium, good enough for most daylight stuff
* Dim, more than enough for inside use.

I keep it on Dim and can get 4 to 5 hours of continuous use reading books and still have 35% or more battery left. Standard 1500 mA battery. I use the white text/on black background setting.

This widget has controls for WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS, Sync, ScreenBrightness. It is a full screen width size control bar.

I leave everything turned OFF except for BT, and the phone will still have 98% battery overnight when I awake and check it in the mornings.

I also have Background Sync turned off. I don't allow any background stuff to run at all. I think I am smart enough to sync an application IF I want up to date info.
 
I realise that it must be frustrating to have such a rapid battery drain, however, my own experience of you issues seems to be a mirror image.

I routinely changed the firmware on my phone using Odin, installed / removed dozens of apps, changed launchers...you get the idea.

After all of the above I finally found myself in the position where the battery would actually drain overnight by about 30% and that was in airplane mode! i.e. no background data at all. This resulted in about 4 hours of moderate use the following day without even having made a call.

So,

1)backed up my apps to the SDCARD
2)removed the lag fix
3)upgraded to latest Kies
4)upgraded to stock 2.2.1 via kies

Thats it. nothing else.

with moderate use, personal email, corporate email, SMS, facebook, internet lookups, c10 calls, i.e. nothing too heavy the battery has went from 4 hours to 2 days (including turning nothing off during the night)

If you have a look in the wild there are thousands of reason why you are suffering from battery drain, there's no point in repeating them here, however, my experience is get some stable firmware as a starting point and then take it from there.

One last point. The display will nearly always be the biggest hog for power on any device not just a SGS. You have arguably the brightest, clearest screen available in the handheld market, so take a step back and look for other ways to save power.
 
Ever since I went to 2.2.1 my battery life has dropped by 1/3rd :( I used to be able to last 2 days if I had to, now I wont get 1.5 days
 
Scared said:
Ever since I went to 2.2.1 my battery life has dropped by 1/3rd :( I used to be able to last 2 days if I had to, now I wont get 1.5 days
Click to expand...

Thats weird did you install any extra apps? Because evryone I know with 2.2.1 had improved greatley on battery duration
 
THE ANDROID said:
How does Gallery eat up battery?

When I click on the icon it always reopens and doesn't start of where I left of but loads up again :S

I'm on 2.2.1 officially and no, I hate turning of data on my Galaxy S and i4.
Click to expand...

For that you will ask the devs. I am just relaying their word. But the power leak bug is quite well known.
 
My personal experience with heavy battery drain is when I turn on Background Data and Sync. When those two features are on, the battery will drain about 40% overnight.

When I turn them off, the battery only looses 2%-3%
Last night, the popup message to remove the battery charger showed just as I was going to bed. This morning the battery was at 97% over a 7+ hour time period.
 
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