Battery life....not so bad IMO

[cp24eva]

I got the extended battery, but I wanted to do a drain on the battery to calibrate it and to that memory dohicky thingy. At about 1030 am I was at 67 percent (was using the extended battery previously) I was in wifi and in 4G and 3G areas all day. Just did normal things in and out the house. Moderate downloading of apps on and off wifi. Internet usage and MP3 downloads off wifi. Drove miles across the city and went from 4G to 3G areas. Watched youtube and break.com videos on and of the wifi and 4G. Texted and made a few phone calls outside of wifi. I did alot with the phone. My battery finally decided to totally die at around 830pm.

So, I don't have a million widgets running. Weather updates only when I prompt it to. E-mail get checked every 15 minutes. With all that I believe I got a god deal of battery usage. And it took me a short time to charge it fully. I wasn't counting, but I believe it was close to about 1.5 hours of charging.

With that said QUIT RUNNING A MILLION WIDGETS! While you phone is not being used, why do you need facebook widgets running. Press a button and update, same with weather. You only need to know it when you actually look at your phone. So press the button and update it. I only plan on using my extended battery on long road trips or when I know I'll be out for a looong time.

 

[mikeinctown]

I wish mine was like that. If I was at 67% at 10:30, it would shut off around 2 or 3 with any use. With No use, it would be at 40%

Sent from my Rezound using DroidForums.

 

[pedromartinez]

I have a Rezound and I get decent battery life.

 

[RezoundHound]

How To Get The Most Out of Your Battery

The key to getting battery longevity is proper application manager. Many applications run in the background and even access the Internet without you even being aware of it. Here are some tips to improve battery life.

1. Reboot your phone. Then, go to Settings>Applications>Running Services. Check to see which apps are running. You'd be surprised. There are probably apps you don't even use running without your knowledge or consent. To stop them, click on the apps you don't need constantly running. At the bottom of this same screen you'll notice how much free RAM you have.

2. Place the "Power Control" Wiget on one of your home screens and use it diligently. 3G/4G uses more battery power WHEN ACTUALLY DOWNLOADING/UPLOADING. When idle it uses far less power than WIFI because WIFI uses power just to maintain a constant connection. If you don't need to use the network, turn it off. The Wigit will allow you to quickly turn it back on without searching through a ton of settings. The same goes for Bluetooth. Unless you're out of the house and using a BT headset (or BT car connection), why do you need this constantly on?

3. Go to Settings>About Phone>Battery/Battery Use. As you can see, compared to everything else on the phone your display is by far the biggest battery hog. Go to Settings>Display>Brightness and make sure it's set to "Automatic Brightness". Use the Power Control Wiget to quickly dim the screen even more when in a dark environment. Just be aware that the brightness button on the Wiget does NOT go back to "Automatic". You'll have to do that manually.

4. Go to Settings>Power>Power Mode and change this to Economy. Some people are under the impression this slows down performance. It has noting to do with speed of operation or RAM use. Settings>Power>Economy Mode Setting shows you a list of features this automatically turns off at a preset battery percentage level (Settings>Power>Turn Power Saver On At).

5. Install Juice Defender. Actually, this should have been number one on the list. For those not familiar, there are three versions of this app. There's Basic (free), JD Plus ($2.99) and JD Ultimate ($4.99). I have the Ultimate and it's the first and only app I've actually paid for. Let me tell you....it was well worth the price. For those who are less than technologically proficient, just get the Basic version and set it on "Balanced" or "Aggressive". For those who are a little more daring, get the Plus or Ultimate version and use the "Aggressive" profile. Then, click on "Customize" or "Advanced". Whichever version you get, go into Configure apps. This allows you to enable or disable connectivity when a specific app runs. Select the apps you want to access the Internet. There are a lot of apps (especially games) that have no business accessing the Internet, yet they do. Here, you can disable their ability to do so. After running JD for 24 hrs., open the program and go to the "About" tab. It will show you how much JD has increased your battery life. Right now I'm averaging just under 2X. I go to bed with a fully charged battery and don't charge my phone overnight. I wake having only lost 5% battery charge. I know that sounds impossible, but it's true. There are tons of settings in JD. Customize them to suit your individual usage. I would suggest downloading the Basic version first. Use it, then review the below link to see if the other versions have features you're comfortable using.

Overview | How to use JuiceDefender

https://market.android.com/details?...yLDEsImNvbS5sYXRlZHJvaWQuanVpY2VkZWZlbmRlciJd


RH

 

[cp24eva]

I remember someone saying that juice defender actually hurt their battery life. Is this so in some cases?

 

[BayouFlyFisher]

If you are having short battery life here’s a list of things that can help. Just read through the list and select the items that fit with the way you want to use your phone. Not all items will work for everyone and this list was written for the Droid Bionic but should work for your phone too:


- Don't use an automatic task killer--not even the one that comes with the phone. Reboot your phone and look at what's running. If anything that you've installed is running and there's no reason for it, then uninstall it and find an alternative that behaves. Ignore any stock apps that run on boot as I've found them to be more or less benign.

- Weather widgets, live wallpapers, news/social feeds, any app or service that you use that runs--do without it if you can. If you can’t do without it, lengthen it’s refresh time.

- Don't use antivirus

- Set your WIFI sleep policy to never. The default is "turn off when screen turns off". This will cause the wifi to reconnect every time you open the phone. From any Home Screen select Menu/Settings/Wireless & Networks/ and then use the Menu button to see some new options - select Advanced. Then select Wifi Sleep Policy and set it to Never. Home key to return to Home Screen.

- If you have access to wifi, leave it toggled on as it is more efficient than 3G. Wifi consumes less battery power than 3G.

- I leave GPS toggled on too by the way. Apps use it as needed. When I'm done with Maps or an app that uses it, I'm sure to return to the home screen so GPS can stop. Under wireless settings turn on "Google location services" so that an app is able to use network resources to get your location instead of GPS. I have "VZW location services" turned off--don't know why that option is even there. By the way, I increase the speed of voice output > text to speech > speech rate because I like the directions to get spit out faster. That saves a bit of battery. Turning off the display and just listening for directions help. Also, often I just get the directions and then exit back to the home screen: GPS uses so much battery I try to get it over with ASAP.

- When you get a 1) new battery, 2) do a factory reset, or 3) an OS upgrade - run your battery all the way down until the phone shuts off and then charge the battery all the way up. This will calibrate the phone's understanding of the battery's capacity. Do this once every month or two also, but don't do it too often if you can help it.

- I have my battery set to "Performance Mode" and data is on all the time because I am on call 24x7. If you don't mind, try out a more conservative battery profile to save more gobs of energy.

- Set screen brightness to "Automatic"

- Under Accounts, click on any account listed and turn off sync for any items that you're not interested in syncing. For example, Google Books if you don't use it. Don't use Backup Assistant--I prefer syncing my contacts with Google. You don't need both. Also go into your contacts > menu > display options > backup assistant > UNCHECK. Also do contacts > menu > more > settings > contact storage > and select your Google account and "remember this choice"

- Turn on Bluetooth only when you are going to use it.

- Consider turning off voice privacy. This may not be a big deal but it will save some processing (and therefore battery). It may also improve call quality.

-Turn off haptic feedback, animations, and any un-needed sounds in Android settings and in your apps

- Set your screen timeout to as low a time as you can stand (I use 1 minute) and manually turn the screen off when you’ve finished using the phone.

- Turn off in-pocket detection. In-Pocket Detection has been the source of many issues already.

- Keyboard: turn off vibrate on key press and sounds for any keyboards you use

- Use a red or black screen background. On the original Droid screen--not sure about this Bionic screen--red was the most efficient color that could be displayed.

- Camera app: I like keeping location on and flash on auto. Consider turning location off or at least returning to the home screen ASAP when using camera if location for camera is on.

- In stock browser the default home page is Google and it uses your location. This is a bad idea as it can waste your battery for no reason. Make something else your home page and make sure to close any web page that uses your location when you're done viewing it.

- Charge your phone via the wall charger instead of computer USB as it is faster. Also, don't use long USB cords--use regular power extension cords instead. I stick with the charger that came with the phone. Put the phone on charger when you go to bed every night.

- Consider install the Home Replacement app Zeam. It is basic app that uses very few resources and will help with battery power.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This is a link to some very good videos about saving battery power on the Bionic (there are 4 parts and the other parts will show up as available videos when part 1 finishes):

Battery Saving Video

Part 1: [video=youtube;cvWg7SbUgsI]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=cvWg7SbUgsI[/video]



If battery life is still bad: Consider doing a factory reset: These have gotten pretty painless lately by following these simple steps: 1. Make sure Backup and Restore are checked in the Privacy setting. 2. When going through the setup after the reset, turn on wifi as soon as you can (assuming it is available). 3. After you have entered your Gmail account info, you will be presented with a screen that has two check boxes. Basically they are "Do you want Google to backup and restore this phone”. Make sure you check both of those. Your apps will then automatically reinstall (paid and free). Set the phone aside for a minute or two and let the apps download and install. 3. If rooted, use an app such as titanium backup to restore data only to select apps such as Tapatalk and you will not have to re-enter all your login information. I do this for 3-4 apps (Tapatalk, SPB Shell, etc.).

I've been flashing new roms/updates about once per day lately and I can be up and running with all my apps and settings back in place in less than 20 minutes. It's pretty painless now.

 

[RezoundHound]

I remember someone saying that juice defender actually hurt their battery life. Is this so in some cases?

Used properly, I don't see how that can happen. You do have to click on "Enable" within the program. If you don't do that, it's not turned on. If that were the case, no matter how many functions you tweak, JD is doing absolutely nothing. Also, if you use a Task Killer app, make sure JD is on the bypass list. As it's already been discussed on many forums before, task killers aren't necessary with newer versions of Android. The OS manages apps well on its own.

Once you get all of the settings to your liking, be sure to click on "Backup" on the "About" tab. That saves your settings ( I believe to your SD card) in case you decide to uninstall and then reinstall.

Try it out. It's free. What do you have to lose?


RH

 

[cp24eva]

Oh, I have nothing to lose except battery life lol. But I'm not afraid of that. I'll give it a shot and take some tips from that tutorial above. I didnt have the battery issue though, that was mikeinctown. Hope he gets some battery relief. I have the extended battery in the cases where I know I'll be gone for quit a while. A few hours away from a good signal shouldn't hurt much though. I actually think the battery life on this 4G phone is ok. 4G phones will drain. It's expected.

@Bayouflyfisher, does lookout count as Antivirus? and why does antivirus drain? and isn't it a bit dangerous not to use antivirus? Or are we going on the premise of android being less virus prone because of it's linux architecture?

 

[mikeinctown]

Well the tip above is all well and good except on the Rezound, anything other than high performance setting disables 4G and enables 3g. I'm sorry, but I bought this phone to use 4g. if I only wanted 3g, I would have just kept my OG and limped along.

 

[BayouFlyFisher]

Well the tip above is all well and good except on the Rezound, anything other than high performance setting disables 4G and enables 3g. I'm sorry, but I bought this phone to use 4g. if I only wanted 3g, I would have just kept my OG and limped along.

Guess I should have added something like, "Just read through the list and select the items that fit with the way you want to use your phone. Not all items will work for everyone and this list was written for the Droid Bionic but should work for your phone too."

 

[atomicwedgie]

I tried Juice Defender on both my Dinc and Charge and IMHO it didn't do anything.

Task killers hurt more than they help unless you have a rogue app.

I leave WiFi on all of the time because, as has been pointed out, it's easier on the battery than even 3G is.

Also as has been said, I set all my apps to sync no fast than every 15mins. Weather every two hours. Facebook and other apps are manual sync.

If I feel I will be away from my charger for a while, I turn off 4G.

I had a problem a few days ago (there's a thread about it) but now the battery performance is stellar as far as I am concerned.

Very happy with this phone overall which is more than I can say for the Damsung (dis)Charge (misspell intended)

 

[cp24eva]

More like the Damn-son!

Sent from my ADR6425LVW using Tapatalk

 

[mikeyman67]

I installed Juice Defender, set the brightness down with the widget, gmail and yahoo on 15 min refresh, exchange on push. Running Go-Launcher. A moderate day of fiddling, drag racing, email, Internet etc...and I went 16.5 hours (3g and wifi) before hitting the 10% mark. 4G not so long (LTE stands for Loves To Eat) . More testing to do, but really happy so far. A keeper for sure.

Sent from my HTC Rezound using Droid Forums