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OK here is the official SGS2 I777 Battery saving thread. I don't mean to be a culprit and post "another battery saving thread", but I am. So get over it. This thread is meant to maintain the battery savings threads, all in one place. INCLUDING: Battery savings tips, philosophies, and other methods of efficiently managing the charge that your battery witholds. Since I searched through basically all of the 17 pages in both the I777 and regular SG2 to collect all this. NOTE: THIS THREAD IS NOT MEANT TO ADDRESS BATTERY DRAIN PROBLEMS OR ANYTHING OF THE LIKE. DO NOT POST YOUR PROBLEMS HERE. This is simply a collection of what I found to be the most essential threads and information regarding efficient use of battery charge and battery savings. I'll update this every few months, or as I see fit. I don't see things changing much since the way a battery works, and our android os will be relatively similar over the years.
I realize that people looking for this information could just go through all the threads like any other xda troll would be the first to point out, but I also recognize the noob community for this phone (I was once there myself) and would like to be helpful in providing it all in one place to prevent others from wasting their time, whether deserving or not
BATTERY SAVING THREADS:
*Basically what I did here is I just weeded out all the crap and gave you the threads that are actually of use*
Here is your basic, comprehensive Battery Saving thread:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1234264
(It contains many simple changes that are obvious to some, including lower brightness, turning off animations, and then more complex changes such as under volting and fast dormancy)
More general tips plus freezing apps and undervolting:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1335864&highlight=battery
More general tips: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1443603&highlight=battery+life
THE TWO THINGS THAT KILL YOUR BATTERY THE MOST:
Super AMOLED Screen: Now it's all apparent to us at this point that android screens (S-amoled's) kill very large amounts of battery. You will save copious amounts of battery if you do not use your screen as much, hence why half of the people posting their battery stats have screen on like once an hour for half a second. They basically don't use their phones.
Data/Radio: Ever notice that when you put your phone on airplane mode before you go to bed, when you wake up it's only gone down by about 1%? That's because you're not getting any service, and have no data coming in. Believe it or not, the phones hardware is pretty efficient. CPU's don't use very much idle power at all, and I expect that to stay the same, even with quad-core processors coming out. It's mostly the over air things (and screen ) that kill our battery. Data itself uses a **** ton of battery. On a daily basis (And I've tried just about all the roms; CM7,CM9, MIUI (GB and ICS), SammyTW ones, etc.) I use a considerable amount of data. I try to have my data on most of the day since I get facebook notifiations and send/receive MMS's, but on the days where I have it off for a couple hours I start to notice, damn, my battery is still pretty high
EDIT: Using Edge/2G saves a lot of battery if you're someone who needs data on most of the day. I recently switched to instead of intermitedly turning data on and off, just having Edge on all day (for notifications) and then switching to 3G when I needed to browse or use maps, etc. Idle usage of Edge vs. 3G is probably around 40% less battery consumption (my opinion), it works really well for me.
PHILOSOPHIES:
If you want to compare your own battery life with others to get a better idea about things, check out this thread:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1498303&highlight=undervolt
Juice Defender + others: I am a fan of this application. I used to use it for the first couple months I had the phone and it made a significant difference (mostly because of data deactivation). It makes 20-35% difference in savings from having not micro-managed anything yourself to then using the app. There are other variations of JD, GreenPower, Battery Booster, etc.
If you want more information about Undervolting, or the process, please check out:
http://checkrom.com/threads/more-ba...ry-before-posting-about-bad-battery-life.542/
Fast Dormancy effects the trafficway in which your data makes it to your phone, both effecting the speed at which is arrives, and the battery it consumes while doing so. Check out this thread:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1111581&highlight=fast+dormancy
Underclocking and Overclocking: These are ways of tweaking your CPU usage. Underclocking is known for when you limit the maximum frequency, your CPU can clock to. So in laymans terms, what that transaltes to is your 1.2 GHz (1200 MHz) processor, can be changed to a 0.8 GHz (800 MHz) processor, if you were to underclock it to 800 Mhz. This is helpful to some almost completely dependant on your usage.
More elaborate, drawn out explanation: While your phone is idling, or sitting with the screen off, it is sitting at 200 MHz (lowest default - if you go lower than that your phone can become unstable [screen not turn on, etc.]), so underclocking won't help you improve battery usage much if you just keep your phone off most of the day. Undervolting would help more with that. if you however, find that you play lots of games, or mindless swipe across homescreens all day confused, or perhaps photo editing apps, or other things that use the maximum cpu frequency; then you will find that having your phone underclocked to 800 MHz, forces your cpu to work less during those heavy maintence situations, but in turn, prevents heavy battery drain. What this translates to in daily use: If you play angry birds, your phone's cpu might be jumping up to 1200 MHz (depends on your kernel settings - usually it's set to ondemand, in which case it will do so) during those swipes when the bird flys across the screen. However, that is not a very cpu intensive action, so if you were underclocked to 800 MHz, you probably wouldn't see any difference (lag, stutters) in your game play. However, if you were playing a 3D defense game, or esentially any other 3D game which requires you to scroll around the map, or has many many things on the screen at once (beyond fruit ninja and angry birds), then you would notice a difference in performance due to underclocking. I mention all of this because underclocking will be most effective during those situations, but it can also be the most hindering, in those same situations. All depends on how you're using your phone and what you're trying to achieve, while maintaining a certain level of quality.
Overclocking works the opposite, if you are trying to reach a certain level of performance (you just downloaded a new 3D MMO dungeon defense game and your phone is jittering and laggy during gameplay), beyond your default 200-1200 MHz clocked cpu, you may overclock up to 1600 MHz (some devs don't like you doing it - because it is essentially quite harmful for your cpu if used for a longer period of time), also depending on the kernel (again, devs created them) you may not be able to overclock, but on the majority you can.
To Underclock you will need an app called SetCpu (or equivalent) in order to change your over-underclock rate, as well as the scaling of your kernel (ondemand, performance [max frequency, all the time], conservative, etc.), also some roms have clocking options built in (such as AOKP).
For information regarding Underclocking check out: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1238580&highlight=underclock
If you're just straight up looking for a better battery saving rom, look here:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1439179&highlight=battery
If you want to know more about Android OS, and how it goes about consuming battery, check out this thread:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1290020
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Last but not least, if you do most or all of these methods but you're still not happy? You can always turn your phone off, I heard that saves a lot of battery
If you care, leave thanks at the bottom. If not that's cool. I'm not into the whole publicity thing, I just like helping.
First, juice defender does not help at all and btw s amoleds save battery vs lcds
Sent from my SGH-I777 using Tapatalk 2
Very useful compilation of battery related threads. Good job VanillaCracker <claps>
Super AMOLED Screen: Now it's all apparent to us at this point that android screens (S-amoled's) kill very large amounts of battery. You will save copious amounts of battery if you do not use your screen as much, hence why half of the people posting their battery stats have screen on like once an hour for half a second. They basically don't use their phones.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
AMOLEDs are supposed to be more energy efficient than LCDs I thought. That being said, I think one problem might be that many users of the former tend to keep their screens very bright because they are such a beauty to look at. I get what I think is good battery life by adjusting the brightness of my screen down when on battery only and by fine-tuning auto brightness settings.
One of the nice things about the S-AMOLED screen is that when it shows blacks, it's not using pixels. Pixels are actually turned off for the blacks. You can get further battery saving by using darker themes and inverted apps. Of course, that's not to everyone's liking. Me, I tend to like darker, tending towards minimalist screens as opposed to bright, busy ones, so it's a win for me.
Nick281051 said:
First, juice defender does not help at all and btw s amoleds save battery vs lcds
Sent from my SGH-I777 using Tapatalk 2
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Click to collapse
First, in reading my paragraph I was speaking of JD's helpfulness in relation to not micro-managing (turning off data, etc.) anything yourself. In this case JD helps a lot....
Second, I didn't bash any part of our AMOLED screens, but they use a lot of battery...idk anything about how they compare to other screens, and idc...that has nothing to do with my post. We all have I777's, and that's the way it is, so I'm not too concerned of other screens.
I will say, that in light of reading most of your comments (which are found everywhere) , evidently, that you do at least make a good point, most of the time.
Sent from my SGH-I777 using XDA
Yes data drains battery. If you are rooted (I hope you are since you are reading this on xda), you should get Droidwall. It's a firewall for your phone which limits certain apps to use network data, wifi data, or neither. Useful if you are also a little bit paranoid :silly:.
Another amazing app I also use is called llama. It is similar to tasker but it's free. This app allows me to set profiles and actions based on location (antenna mast instead of GPS to save battery) and other triggers. Not sure how ICS manages BT and Wifi scanning but those things use to drain my battery under GB so I got into a habit of toggling them on/off. Llama can do it automatically for me because I am lazy or sometimes I forget to.
I think any phone screen can be a big battery drainer if left on long and are set really bright. I have a habit of hitting the power button after I am done using it as opposed to just letting it shut off by itself.
xhepera said:
AMOLEDs are supposed to be more energy efficient than LCDs I thought. That being said, I think one problem might be that many users of the former tend to keep their screens very bright because they are such a beauty to look at. I get what I think is good battery life by adjusting the brightness of my screen down when on battery only and by fine-tuning auto brightness settings.
One of the nice things about the S-AMOLED screen is that when it shows blacks, it's not using pixels. Pixels are actually turned off for the blacks. You can get further battery saving by using darker themes and inverted apps. Of course, that's not to everyone's liking. Me, I tend to like darker, tending towards minimalist screens as opposed to bright, busy ones, so it's a win for me.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
They are more efficient than LCD's, and I made no notion to say they weren't. I simply said that they were one of the two main culprits of battery drain. I'm not saying our phones suck cus they have AMOLED screens, it's actually awesome. I'm just saying, like any other phone, having the screen on lot is going to kill your battery.
Yeah on stock (rooted after a month) I used to use auto-brightness most of the time, and sammy's auto seems a little brighter than necessary by default (so I'd keep it on 40% some days). But after switching around to different rooms (before I started tweaking auto-brightness) having brightness at what I'd actually consider an adequate level, versus a little bit brighter makes a huge difference. When the screen looks just a little too dull in all situations it really takes away from the experience hah
Also, I know black pixels are technically off on AMOLEDS, but I've noticed on many occasion when using in a room with no light on at night (pitch black, essentially) that when rebooting and hitting the yellow triangle screen (mostly black) you can see the black area of the screen. It's not completely black. It's definitely a very real looking black, but it still looks like there's a backlight behind the screen. Is that the case? Can anyone confirm?
Sent from my SGH-I777 using XDA
. . .idk anything about how they compare to other screens, and idc...that has nothing to do with my post.
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Click to collapse
While it may not have anything to do with your post, per se, I think it's a good idea for people to be educated about our screens since many *are* coming from the LCD world and some of the rules they're used to don't apply. And some of those rules very definitely have an effect on battery life, like the rendering of blacks that I mentioned above.
VanillaCracker said:
They are more efficient than LCD's, and I made no notion to say they weren't. I simply said that they were one of the two main culprits of battery drain. I'm not saying our phones suck cus they have AMOLED screens, it's actually awesome. I'm just saying, like any other phone, having the screen on lot is going to kill your battery.
Yeah on stock (rooted after a month) I used to use auto-brightness most of the time, and sammy's auto seems a little brighter than necessary by default (so I'd keep it on 40% some days). But after switching around to different rooms (before I started tweaking auto-brightness) having brightness at what I'd actually consider an adequate level, versus a little bit brighter makes a huge difference. When the screen looks just a little too dull in all situations it really takes away from the experience hah
Also, I know black pixels are technically off on AMOLEDS, but I've noticed on many occasion when using in a room with no light on at night (pitch black, essentially) that when rebooting and hitting the yellow triangle screen (mostly black) you can see the black area of the screen. It's not completely black. It's definitely a very real looking black, but it still looks like there's a backlight behind the screen. Is that the case? Can anyone confirm?
Sent from my SGH-I777 using XDA
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Click to collapse
That is the case with LED screens. In a mostly black scene, the individual pixels for the black area are not lit, however there is still a backlight lighting the screen itself which you may see bleed through. This is of course assuming the phone LED works at least somewhat similarly to a TV.
xhepera said:
While it may not have anything to do with your post, per se, I think it's a good idea for people to be educated about our screens since many *are* coming from the LCD world and some of the rules they're used to don't apply. And some of those rules very definitely have an effect on battery life, like the rendering of blacks that I mentioned above.
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Click to collapse
Yes I agree with you on that. It is more the manner of criticism which he spoke it that I am not favorable of, not necessarily the information which he shared. Which is why I wrote what I did at the end of my comment.
Sent from my SGH-I777 using XDA
Ahem....let me try to get his thread back on track.
I agree wih your comments vanillacracker. On a gb rom if I disable auto sync it helps me a lot wih battery life because he signal is really awful at my work. So I guess if the signal is bad it tries to sync amd keeps doing it for a long time whih really drains the battery. Disabling background data helps even more but I like to get my emails so I do not.
Sammy based roms are the best wih auto brightness quickness. Aosp roms are always slow to react. I hate when I step outside and the screen takes for ever to adjust. But the sammy based roms also have high default brightness as you mentioned.
Ps: do not feed the trolls. Just report them.
Sent from my SGH-I777 using xda app-developers app
Tophaholic said:
Ahem....let me try to get his thread back on track.
I agree wih your comments vanillacracker. On a gb rom if I disable auto sync it helps me a lot wih battery life because he signal is really awful at my work. So I guess if the signal is bad it tries to sync amd keeps doing it for a long time whih really drains the battery. Disabling background data helps even more but I like to get my emails so I do not.
Sammy based roms are the best wih auto brightness quickness. Aosp roms are always slow to react. I hate when I step outside and the screen takes for ever to adjust. But the sammy based roms also have high default brightness as you mentioned.
Ps: do not feed the trolls. Just report them.
Sent from my SGH-I777 using xda app-developers app
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Click to collapse
I will agree with you on most of your points and yes you are correct about the signal, the worse your signal is the more it affects the battery. Also, tasks aokp has the option now to change the reaction speed so if you like aosp but hate the reaction speed that is an option.
How exactly was I trolling? I know you're referring to me, I made a criticism of two points out of the entire thing and he tells me I'm a troll and that I need to take an anti depressant. What exactly did I do wrong?
Sent from my SGH-I777 using Tapatalk 2
Amobius said:
That is the case with LED screens. In a mostly black scene, the individual pixels for the black area are not lit, however there is still a backlight lighting the screen itself which you may see bleed through. This is of course assuming the phone LED works at least somewhat similarly to a TV.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ohh alright that makes a lot of sense then. Thanks a lot, that was really helpful for me! Yeah cus in the completely black screen sometimes I can see the little splotches that look like it's where the backlight is squished against the screen or something. I noticed the marks are in a different spot on my current I777 than they were on my old one (replaced cus power button stopped working). Yeah it would make sense that AMOLED's came around the same time LED's started getting more popular in TVs too (few years ago), pretty baller technology for a phone! I'm loving it haha
Nick281051 said:
Way to come back with a personal attack, it's been proven in many cases that JD does not help and if anything hurts battery life. I used to use it and now I don't with no hit on battery. I'm not depressed thank you very much. I reported you for that one. I wasn't saying anything bad or personal but you had to go ahead and do it.
Sent from my SGH-I777 using Tapatalk 2
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I disagree with you that Juice defender does not improve battery life. I am aware that obviously running an app in the background (Juice defender in this case) uses battery. But if the app is disabling your data (data uses battery..more than the juice defender app uses) then it's not possible for it to not increase battery.....just logic there. Anyway I'm sure there's been reports that say it does and does not increase battery, it's been obvious to me that it does, and it's logical to assume it does (if you know what I'm addressing) too. So I'll say to each their own. I do not wish to argue about things anymore, I will not edit my thread to your liking, you may simply dismiss that tip if you'd like.
I do not care about a report, I'm sure most people see the way I act and understand my reasoning. I probably overreacted a bit to your initial response , I've edited my accords. :cyclops:
BTW, VC, thanks for the compilation. Hopefully it will prove useful to folks!
VanillaCracker said:
I disagree with you that Juice defender does not improve battery life. I am aware that obviously running an app in the background (Juice defender in this case) uses battery. But if the app is disabling your data (data uses battery..more than the juice defender app uses) then it's not possible for it to not increase battery.....just logic there. Anyway I'm sure there's been reports that say it does and does not increase battery, it's been obvious to me that it does, and it's logical to assume it does (if you know what I'm addressing) too. So I'll say to each their own. I do not wish to argue about things anymore, I will not edit my thread to your liking, you may simply dismiss that tip if you'd like.
I do not care about a report, I'm sure most people see the way I act and understand my reasoning. I probably overreacted a bit to your initial response , I've edited my accords. :cyclops:
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Click to collapse
Thank you for being mature about it, that makes me infinitely less mad And i respect you for thay, ill edit mine as well
Sent from my SGH-I777 using Tapatalk 2
Nick281051 said:
I will agree with you on most of your points and yes you are correct about the signal, the worse your signal is the more it affects the battery. Also, tasks aokp has the option now to change the reaction speed so if you like aosp but hate the reaction speed that is an option.
How exactly was I trolling? I know you're referring to me, I made a criticism of two points out of the entire thing and he tells me I'm a troll and that I need to take an anti depressant. What exactly did I do wrong?
Sent from my SGH-I777 using Tapatalk 2
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Click to collapse
Dude.....no offense but your first post was pretty disrespectful....hence my comment. However your quoted post was very useful. I believe in one thing...you give respect you get respect.
Now...getting back to the topic....good point about tasks rom....I did try it out but frankly speaking it is still not at par with sammy base roms wih regards to auto brightness. It does rock otherwise.
I am currently on ktoonsezs MIUI port (love that guy. No homo)....and m pretty happy with the auto brightness
Sent from my SGH-I777 using xda app-developers app
Tophaholic said:
Dude.....no offense but your first post was pretty disrespectful....hence my comment. However your quoted post was very useful. I believe in one thing...you give respect you get respect.
Now...getting back to the topic....good point about tasks rom....I did try it out but frankly speaking it is still not at par with sammy base roms wih regards to auto brightness. It does rock otherwise.
I am currently on ktoonsezs MIUI port (love that guy. No homo)....and m pretty happy with the auto brightness
Sent from my SGH-I777 using xda app-developers app
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Click to collapse
Yes now that I think about it I did come off douchey, and I apologize to the op for that
Sent from my SGH-I777 using Tapatalk 2
Tophaholic said:
Dude.....no offense but your first post was pretty disrespectful....hence my comment. However your quoted post was very useful. I believe in one thing...you give respect you get respect.
Now...getting back to the topic....good point about tasks rom....I did try it out but frankly speaking it is still not at par with sammy base roms wih regards to auto brightness. It does rock otherwise.
I am currently on ktoonsezs MIUI port (love that guy. No homo)....and m pretty happy with the auto brightness
Sent from my SGH-I777 using xda app-developers app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If the only thing which is holding you from using aokp is the auto brightness, there is a flashable zip in the fluxxi thread which gives great settings.
Sent from my SGH-I777 using xda app-developers app
Amobius said:
That is the case with LED screens. In a mostly black scene, the individual pixels for the black area are not lit, however there is still a backlight lighting the screen itself which you may see bleed through. This is of course assuming the phone LED works at least somewhat similarly to a TV.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
OLED screens do not have a backlight. That is one of the things that make them much more power efficient than LCD. The pixels themselves in an OLED display generate light.
hey, so i have ran pretty much every "jelly bean" rom out there for this phone for about 2-2.5 months. maybe less. note sure..
anyway, the battery has been horrible! on every rom.. I have a 2700 mAMP battery, and a regular Samsung battery. I have to use both once a day for this phone.. now I have no idea what is making the phone loose percentage after percentage of battery as fast as it has for me, but everytime i post i get about 0 luck from people that either have the same issue, or just people saying they have heard it a million times. i probably should have put this in the "Q&A" thread, but maybe i forgot. can someone, preferably more than one, help me out here?? i don't get how other people say they have 8 or more hours of screen on time with half the battery left. it just doesn't make since. I am loving the android system. but this could be anything! the apps in the background. the kernel, maybe I didn't clean my cache or something. i can't raise my brightness up to far or it'll drain my battery, jamie in the paranoid thread said he had his batter on 100 percent and had excellent battery. so I'm far from confused here. do I need to get another phone, or what. very much apprentice the help from as many people as possible. I love my phone, but I hate that i have to focus on using two battery a day with this phone.
Same here battery draining pretty quick on all jb ROMs.
Sent from the TermiNOTEr!
Battery usage is highly subjective..
It's nearly impossible to determine a baseline Usage expectancy, simply due to the untold number of variables that drain the battery.
We know the obvious power users ....the display, wifi, data ..
But it gets far more difficult to track the Usage after that.
We know that JB is not optimized for our device, but it's getting better, and until we see a true JB kernel with the rom matched to it, the battery is going to suffer.
Then of course we have the many services that users run, along with countless apps ...
Long story short ....maybe a more stable choice would work better? ?
Like ICS, At least until JB calms down a bit ...
I'm actually running Saurom as I type this ...and my battery life is excellent.
JB just isn't quite there yet ...IMHO ....g
to get better battery turn brightness to lowest usable setting, turn off sync for any non essential apps, turn off soft key lights, flash a kernel that lets you under volt and under clock, try different govonors and io schedulers, turn off gps, put in airplane mode when not using. these should help. keep in mind cell signal strength will also impact battery and 4g will kill it faster then 3g. i am on cm9 stable under clocked to 1.18 undervolt all by 25mv( not much change but i like to be safe) ondemand and sio and get amazing battery life.
What's your screen-on time? 4 hours is the close to the limit on ANY rom for our Notes. You have to make sure it's not some sort of confirmation bias going on here.
gregsarg said:
Battery usage is highly subjective..
It's nearly impossible to determine a baseline Usage expectancy, simply due to the untold number of variables that drain the battery.
We know the obvious power users ....the display, wifi, data ..
But it gets far more difficult to track the Usage after that.
We know that JB is not optimized for our device, but it's getting better, and until we see a true JB kernel with the rom matched to it, the battery is going to suffer.
Then of course we have the many services that users run, along with countless apps ...
Long story short ....maybe a more stable choice would work better? ?
Like ICS, At least until JB calms down a bit ...
I'm actually running Saurom as I type this ...and my battery life is excellent.
JB just isn't quite there yet ...IMHO ....g
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
thank you so much man! i actually went to at&t and they mentioned that too. they said the kernel im using isn't fully optimized for the phone yet. other words. the phone wont support it. he said basic stock ics is the best thing to do now. he also said. these forums are for phones from Europe as well. not just for AT&T in the us. again, the ROMS these devs are making are not supported for the phone, and is kinda like a mimic of something its not. he said jelly bean was out, but i don't know where to get it. can someone tell me how to install ICS, because when I download it, and use KIES, it installs the system, but never fully completes the process.
trancemusic+1 said:
thank you so much man! i actually went to at&t and they mentioned that too. they said the kernel im using isn't fully optimized for the phone yet. other words. the phone wont support it. he said basic stock ics is the best thing to do now. he also said. these forums are for phones from Europe as well. not just for AT&T in the us. again, the ROMS these devs are making are not supported for the phone, and is kinda like a mimic of something its not. he said jelly bean was out, but i don't know where to get it. can someone tell me how to install ICS, because when I download it, and use KIES, it installs the system, but never fully completes the process.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sure...
At the top of the general note section, you will find the "note super everything thread"....
Scroll down to find the ICS info you need...
There are many great ICS roms, and you will find that your phone is "MUCH" better running on the software that was intended for it..
Do the homework in the superthread, and read, read, read......then if you have more questions....just PM me, and we'll get ya up and running....g
gregsarg said:
Sure...
At the top of the general note section, you will find the "note super everything thread"....
Scroll down to find the ICS info you need...
There are many great ICS roms, and you will find that your phone is "MUCH" better running on the software that was intended for it..
Do the homework in the superthread, and read, read, read......then if you have more questions....just PM me, and we'll get ya up and running....g
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
thank you so much! I will get right to this
I never got more then 2 hours screen on time on any ROM, just figured that was normal.
Ugh.
That is low scout ....
I pull 3 hours average ...
Must be the internut ..on XDA ....LOL ......g
gregsarg said:
Ugh.
That is low scout ....
I pull 3 hours average ...
Must be the internut ..on XDA ....LOL ......g
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm in the same boat as manel, never gotten anywhere above 2h on screen time. Maybe additional 10m or so. Figured it was normal lol
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I717 using xda premium
Battery life is purely subjective. No two people will have the same experience.
Have you used an app like CPU spy to make sure the phone is going into deep sleep? Rogue apps keeping the phone in a wake lock can seriously affect battery life, but its hard to say if anybody's apps are doing that, because we all use different apps and there's no list of apps that keep a wake lock, so you need to use something like CPU spy to see if you are going to deep sleep when your screen is off.
Related to apps as well, don't use any task killers or constantly kill apps when you exit them. A lot of people think killing apps is necessary when it completely is not. Android, since donut or eclair, manages its RAM very well, so that when a properly written app (ie. It's not keeping a wake lock) is in RAM, it's just in a frozen state not using any CPU cycles. Constantly killing well written apps hurts battery life, because restarting the app fresh is much more processor intensive than pulling a frozen app out of RAM. Plus you don't have to deal with annoying loading/splash screens.
Also, like others have said, using the lowest brightness possible, and turning off sync for any unnecessary apps will help battery life. GPS doesn't matter so long as you don't keep something running that uses it. If an app isn't using GPS, then GPS isn't using battery. I always leave my GPS on and do not notice a difference compared to turning it off. If you're paranoid about GPS leave it off, but it's annoying to have to turn it on every time you want to use an app that requires it. You can also disable location access in most apps like Facebook, twitter, etc where you don't need GPS really, and that will make leaving it on even better. If you don't use GPS much anyways, leave it off.
Like somebody said, your cell signal can greatly affect your performance, so use WiFi whenever possible, and even put a data toggle in your pulldown so you can disable cell data when you don't really need it. WiFi in general uses less battery than cellular data, so I use it whenever possible.
I've also noticed that how you use your screen on time also has a great effect on battery life. When I have extended lengths of constant screen on time where the phone starts heating up and whatnot, I see much less battery life than if I just use my phone here and there intermittently. Long stretches of screen on time stress the processor and battery heating them up and making them less efficient, where as short stretches allow the processor time to stay at a cooler, more efficient temperature. If you game at all on your phone, you've definitely experienced this, as you know that your phone heats up due to the extended lengths of screen on time and heavy processor usage. Gaming is a no-no if you're striving for better battery life.
With following those guidelines, my Note sees about 3.5 screen on time with JB on Gubment Cheeze. I would get around that on ICS as well, and I don't remember what it was on GB. Fellow testers and teammates for Gubment Cheeze have seen up to 4 hours and a little more even on JB, so it's definitely possible to have decent battery life on JB.
It really comes down to your own personal usage.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2
(quoted)(Related to apps as well, don't use any task killers or constantly kill apps when you exit them. A lot of people think killing apps is necessary when it completely is not. Android, since donut or eclair, manages its RAM very well, so that when a properly written app (ie. It's not keeping a wake lock) is in RAM, it's just in a frozen state not using any CPU cycles. Constantly killing well written apps hurts battery life, because restarting the app fresh is much more processor intensive than pulling a frozen app out of RAM. Plus you don't have to deal with annoying loading/splash screens. )quoted)
I was not aware of this info....many thanks for the heads up...I always supposed that since the ram was consumed with applications, that those apps were pulling CPU usage from the device...
that is clearly not the case......g
Yep, no problem. If you go back to a touchwiz based ROM and go into the stock task manager, it shows you what's taking up RAM, as well as the CPU usage of each thing in the list. If the apps are working properly, pretty much everything will show very little to 0% CPU usage, and ones that are using it heavily will even be highlighted in yellow or red depending on their CPU usage %age. Unfortunately aosp based ROMs don't have that task manager, one of the things I miss from touchwiz.
Every time a non-techy friend buys a new android, it seems the overly aggressive sales rep that sold the phone to them 'helped' them get to know the phone and installed a task killer, specifically advanced task killer. I always just uninstall it without telling them and see how long it takes them to notice lol.
It's still useful in certain instances, for example if you have an app that doesn't run well but you still like/need to use, but in general practice android does a much better job of managing itself. Besides, if you have an app that you know runs poorly and hogs your processor in the background, but you still need to use it, with most aosp based ROMs you can set your phone so that long pressing the back button kills the current app, essentially making task killers useless.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2
welchertc said:
Battery life is purely subjective. No two people will have the same experience.
Have you used an app like CPU spy to make sure the phone is going into deep sleep? Rogue apps keeping the phone in a wake lock can seriously affect battery life, but its hard to say if anybody's apps are doing that, because we all use different apps and there's no list of apps that keep a wake lock, so you need to use something like CPU spy to see if you are going to deep sleep when your screen is off.
Related to apps as well, don't use any task killers or constantly kill apps when you exit them. A lot of people think killing apps is necessary when it completely is not. Android, since donut or eclair, manages its RAM very well, so that when a properly written app (ie. It's not keeping a wake lock) is in RAM, it's just in a frozen state not using any CPU cycles. Constantly killing well written apps hurts battery life, because restarting the app fresh is much more processor intensive than pulling a frozen app out of RAM. Plus you don't have to deal with annoying loading/splash screens.
Also, like others have said, using the lowest brightness possible, and turning off sync for any unnecessary apps will help battery life. GPS doesn't matter so long as you don't keep something running that uses it. If an app isn't using GPS, then GPS isn't using battery. I always leave my GPS on and do not notice a difference compared to turning it off. If you're paranoid about GPS leave it off, but it's annoying to have to turn it on every time you want to use an app that requires it. You can also disable location access in most apps like Facebook, twitter, etc where you don't need GPS really, and that will make leaving it on even better. If you don't use GPS much anyways, leave it off.
Like somebody said, your cell signal can greatly affect your performance, so use WiFi whenever possible, and even put a data toggle in your pulldown so you can disable cell data when you don't really need it. WiFi in general uses less battery than cellular data, so I use it whenever possible.
I've also noticed that how you use your screen on time also has a great effect on battery life. When I have extended lengths of constant screen on time where the phone starts heating up and whatnot, I see much less battery life than if I just use my phone here and there intermittently. Long stretches of screen on time stress the processor and battery heating them up and making them less efficient, where as short stretches allow the processor time to stay at a cooler, more efficient temperature. If you game at all on your phone, you've definitely experienced this, as you know that your phone heats up due to the extended lengths of screen on time and heavy processor usage. Gaming is a no-no if you're striving for better battery life.
With following those guidelines, my Note sees about 3.5 screen on time with JB on Gubment Cheeze. I would get around that on ICS as well, and I don't remember what it was on GB. Fellow testers and teammates for Gubment Cheeze have seen up to 4 hours and a little more even on JB, so it's definitely possible to have decent battery life on JB.
It really comes down to your own personal usage.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2
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That's a very big heads up. Thanks. But thing is when I have wifi on. Don't I need to be connected to wifi network first before it actually can help me??
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I717 using xda premium
trancemusic+1 said:
That's a very big heads up. Thanks. But thing is when I have wifi on. Don't I need to be connected to wifi network first before it actually can help me??
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I717 using xda premium
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Click to collapse
This is true. What kind of signal strength do you get where you are at? Does your phone bounce back and forth to lte. I have noticed when i go from a strong signal to weaker signals or band switching a lot, my battery drains rapidly.
Use cpuspy, as mentioned, to verify you do see deep sleep. Also, i find if rooted, that seting the min speed to 192 helps quite a bit.
I own a nexus 10, I like it, but a big complaint by many is the battery life. Apparently a large portion of the battery drain is attributed to the screen, which makes sense due to its high resolution.
I was curious as to whether you can dumb down the screen but still have text legible and images viewable without too much loss of quality. Also if it would actually benefit battery life.
What I mean by that is turning the 2560x1600 into 1280 x 800 by turning off pixels in a checker format, every other pixel being turned off. If it looked terrible they'd be no point, if it didn't save any battery life they'd be no point.
Reason as to why you'd want to do this, is that if you were reading a simple text file you might not care about high detail, maybe some games don't work at high resolutions and maybe reasons I haven't thought of.
Is it possible? Would it save battery life? Would you still be able to read text?
FabMan_UK said:
I own a nexus 10, I like it, but a big complaint by many is the battery life. Apparently a large portion of the battery drain is attributed to the screen, which makes sense due to its high resolution.
I was curious as to whether you can dumb down the screen but still have text legible and images viewable without too much loss of quality. Also if it would actually benefit battery life.
What I mean by that is turning the 2560x1600 into 1280 x 800 by turning off pixels in a checker format, every other pixel being turned off. If it looked terrible they'd be no point, if it didn't save any battery life they'd be no point.
Reason as to why you'd want to do this, is that if you were reading a simple text file you might not care about high detail, maybe some games don't work at high resolutions and maybe reasons I haven't thought of.
Is it possible? Would it save battery life? Would you still be able to read text?
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Search around the forum a bit - I recall seeing a few mods that essentially turned the screen into a 1280x800 rendered screen. Until we see some stability improvements (hopefully) in 4.3, there are a few people still running it for the speed.
omac_ranger said:
Search around the forum a bit - I recall seeing a few mods that essentially turned the screen into a 1280x800 rendered screen. Until we see some stability improvements (hopefully) in 4.3, there are a few people still running it for the speed.
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Thanks for pointing this out, I assume it uses 4 pixels as one, which is great for certain games and general performance I imagine. However I doubt it would improve battery life, right?
FabMan_UK said:
Thanks for pointing this out, I assume it uses 4 pixels as one, which is great for certain games and general performance I imagine. However I doubt it would improve battery life, right?
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It could. Less demand on your CPU, GPU, and RAM should mean better battery life.
Sent from my Optimus G using xda app-developers app
FabMan_UK said:
Thanks for pointing this out, I assume it uses 4 pixels as one, which is great for certain games and general performance I imagine. However I doubt it would improve battery life, right?
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I don't think it would improve battery life very much, no.. I get awesome battery life when watching a movie or reading books, but when it comes to any kind of streaming (netflix in particular) my battery just drains, even more so then on my phone. I usually underclock when doing that, because it really doesn't require that much CPU. The tablet still kicks my laptop's butt in battery life, so even at 6+ hours I can't complain - and when I hit 8 or so I'm really quite pleased.
xboxfanj said:
It could. Less demand on your CPU, GPU, and RAM should mean better battery life.
Sent from my Optimus G using xda app-developers app
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While it probably would reduce some drain, I'd imagine it would be minimal based on percentage of battery drain mostly being the screen. Perhaps under clocking and under volting would reduce some battery drain, the main way to conserve battery is reducing screen draw. That is why reducing brightness has such a big effect, I was hoping that you could turn off pixels to reduce the drain. Though I'm not sure it's possible or it would look good.
Lolwut? Battery life a major complaint? WAT? It is a 10in tab with insane hardware pushing an insane resolution that averages 7-8hrs of SOT. How is that bad? Some people's expectations need to be brought back down to Earth.
Sent from my Nexus 4
The majority of the battery life is not from the pixels....but the screen itself (i.e., the lighting).
Yes, the pixels does use up more CPU/GPU cycles, but the majority will always, and I repeat always, be the screen. Why do you think the iPhone gets such awesome battery life? They have a tiny screen.
PoisonWolf said:
The majority of the battery life is not from the pixels....but the screen itself (i.e., the lighting).
Yes, the pixels does use up more CPU/GPU cycles, but the majority will always, and I repeat always, be the screen. Why do you think the iPhone gets such awesome battery life? They have a tiny screen.
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Still, the rendering of the bigger number of pixels uses more power. Not sure about percentages though. This is specially important when running 3D games or other graphics-intensive apps. But I still credit your point about the back-light being a great deal of it.
hessan said:
Still, the rendering of the bigger number of pixels uses more power. Not sure about percentages though. This is specially important when running 3D games or other graphics-intensive apps. But I still credit your point about the back-light being a great deal of it.
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If that's the case, the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S should have gotten worse battery life than their Android counterparts back in the day. Did that happen? No. The energy footprint on ARM devices are so minute that the backlighting still takes the trophy in terms of energy footprint.
PoisonWolf said:
If that's the case, the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S should have gotten worse battery life than their Android counterparts back in the day. Did that happen? No. The energy footprint on ARM devices are so minute that the backlighting still takes the trophy in terms of energy footprint.
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Apple only has a small set of fairly similar devices to support. All have the same series of GPU, similar hardware, and iOS is a less resource intensive OS. There are too many differing factors to fairly compare battery on two devices on the two OS's.
Overall I like the phone, but I have a few gripes. Maybe some of you agree, and maybe some of you know some solutions.
Much better than the Xperia z3v I had at first. The Xperia had a few odd things about it that bugged me, and the lack of root was getting to me. That is what made me switch.
But it did have much better battery life... I would have 50 to 60 percent battery when I returned home, the G3 will be below 20 percent most days.
The keyboard has a one handed mode, but its prediction and correction are not good. I somehow miss the space key and get run on words all the time, it's been a little frustrating. I know of no third party apps that have a one hand mode though.
The auto brightness is better than the Xperia but still not as good as it can be, it requires too much attention. It limits it's range and trays to be adjustable but it doesn't work well.
Its size has put it over my comfortable one handed use size. The one handed mode helps a bit though. Can't really do much about that. It seems to be the trend.
Its close to being a great phone but held back a bit. Maybe there are solutions to most of my woes.
Marine6680 said:
Overall I like the phone, but I have a few gripes. Maybe some of you agree, and maybe some of you know some solutions.
Much better than the Xperia z3v I had at first. The Xperia had a few odd things about it that bugged me, and the lack of root was getting to me. That is what made me switch.
But it did have much better battery life... I would have 50 to 60 percent battery when I returned home, the G3 will be below 20 percent most days.
The keyboard has a one handed mode, but its prediction and correction are not good. I somehow miss the space key and get run on words all the time, it's been a little frustrating. I know of no third party apps that have a one hand mode though.
The auto brightness is better than the Xperia but still not as good as it can be, it requires too much attention. It limits it's range and trays to be adjustable but it doesn't work well.
Its size has put it over my comfortable one handed use size. The one handed mode helps a bit though. Can't really do much about that. It seems to be the trend.
Its close to being a great phone but held back a bit. Maybe there are solutions to most of my woes.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Battery life for me is great. You might want to get Wakelock detector and see what is causing this. I can get 36 hours and still have 40% left. Also, it just depends on what you are doing with it. I send/receive text messages, make phone calls, surf the web, read news, etc. Usually, I have it charged before I go to bed and when I wake up 7 hours later, it's still at 100%. I leave it on all night as I use the phone as my alarm clock.
Now, I am rooted and I use Greenify to help hibernate a lot of apps. However, you don't have to be rooted to Greenify now. I don't hibernate any system apps and I don't sync a lot of unnecessary stuff either. I also have the Snapdragon Battery Guru app installed which works well. However, I will say, for a few days, I didn't root this phone, didn't use Greenify and used only the Snapdragon Battery Guru and I was still getting well over 24 hours of battery life.
I use Swiftkey and it has a one-handed/compact layout. It seems to be doing fine for me, but I don't use one-handed mode.
I feel you. Whenever I do any type of graphics intensive gaming (i.e. Real Racing 3) during the day, battery drain is crazy. When I don't use it as much, Ive had the phone go for two days. The phone seems to have great conservation when the screen is off, but that massive high-res screen has got to have something to do with battery drain. It's not the most convenient, but personally, I've found the best solution to be a quick mid-day charge. Phonearena did a charge comparison between phones, and the G3 is one of the fastest charging phones on the market right now. 2 hours for a full charge. Like I said, it's not the greatest thing to have to plug in your phone during the day, but I've found that even a solid half an hour charge makes a huge difference.
guitrsol93 said:
I feel you. Whenever I do any type of graphics intensive gaming (i.e. Real Racing 3) during the day, battery drain is crazy. When I don't use it as much, Ive had the phone go for two days. The phone seems to have great conservation when the screen is off, but that massive high-res screen has got to have something to do with battery drain. It's not the most convenient, but personally, I've found the best solution to be a quick mid-day charge. Phonearena did a charge comparison between phones, and the G3 is one of the fastest charging phones on the market right now. 2 hours for a full charge. Like I said, it's not the greatest thing to have to plug in your phone during the day, but I've found that even a solid half an hour charge makes a huge difference.
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Well, yeah. Games are going to drain it no matter what and it depends on how long you play. I've noticed even with Game of War, an hour of gaming will drain it maybe 8% or more. Just depends on what you do with it.
Any phone is going to drain like crazy, but yes, the Quad HD display definitely drains the battery more due to the higher number of pixels. But, for those with every day normal use (not gaming), this phone definitely lasts more than a day.
Whenever I play a game, if I'm at home, I plug it in if I know I'm playing for a long period of time. otherwise, if I'm away from home, I know I can still play over an hour of a game and still have plenty of juice to last me the rest of the day.
I would rather have better battery than the added resolution screen. 1080p is very good for a phone.
I watch youtube and mess around online a bit on breaks. Same behavior as the z3v and dramatic difference in battery life.
I never found one handed mode in SwiftKey.
Nvm... Found it
The screen is the biggest user of battery... 60% according to the battery use chart.
These past few devices I have had... Has lead me to a conclusion.
All this undervolting and CPU throttling is pretty much useless.
The processor in this device and my last few, has had very little load on it for the most part. Some games may push the system, but general use and some youtube barely has the device going more than a couple steps above minimum clock speed.
Background services and sync... Small effects overall on battery.
It's all about that screen and it's power efficiency. Resolution has something to do with it as well. As the GPU must run harder on higher resolutions.
Turn down the brightness... And then I can't see the video I am watching.
An android phone with a current SoC, a 3000mah battery, a 4.7-5 inch screen, and 1080p resolution... Should be able to get well over 10 hours of screen on time, running video...
The radios are power hungry as well, but mostly in prolonged use like video streaming.
This size and resolution war has prevented us from gaining what we want most... Great battery life.
Still the phone ain't too bad.
Marine6680 said:
These past few devices I have had... Has lead me to a conclusion.
All this undervolting and CPU throttling is pretty much useless.
The processor in this device and my last few, has had very little load on it for the most part. Some games may push the system, but general use and some youtube barely has the device going more than a couple steps above minimum clock speed.
Background services and sync... Small effects overall on battery.
It's all about that screen and it's power efficiency. Resolution has something to do with it as well. As the GPU must run harder on higher resolutions.
Turn down the brightness... And then I can't see the video I am watching.
An android phone with a current SoC, a 3000mah battery, a 4.7-5 inch screen, and 1080p resolution... Should be able to get well over 10 hours of screen on time, running video...
The radios are power hungry as well, but mostly in prolonged use like video streaming.
This size and resolution war has prevented us from gaining what we want most... Great battery life.
Still the phone ain't too bad.
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Click to collapse
True with that. This isn't an 1080p resolution screen. It's more since it's a QuadHD, so that is definitely what kills it. But, I don't watch videos for 10 hours! LOL. But, I know what you're driving at.
So I just picked up a Galaxy tab S7 plus 128GB with 5g.
Before purchasing I watched and read benchmark reviews but I'm getting considerably less performance than pretty much all benchmarks I have seen.
Single core/gpu/memory benchmarks are exactly where they should be but multicore is around 20% less than expected.
This is a new device, I even did a factory reset and tried again, not much installed and settings are default.
Anyone have any ideas?
I don't think you should believe in benchmarks anymore, it's better to refer to real-world tests and reviews from users.
Actually many Android devices have implemented hidden switches which temporarily disables thermal/performance constraints when it detects a benchmarking app being run (similar to a defeat device) so it scores much higher than it normally should, with a risk that the device might be damaged due to overheat and such.
From my experience, Samsung isn't doing well with the optimizations, making some games lag horribly, and this is getting even worse with the most recent Android 11 update.
I was just a little disappointed that's all, multicore is only slightly higher than my snapdragon 855 phone, nubia red magic 3. Much better single core, gaming and emulation though on the tablet.
It is running great though and I'm enjoying it.
Love the device ..... But it seems to handle Kodi worse than my Nvidia Shield. That's my pretty anecdotal comparison for Android devices
So after a bit of playing around I think I found the main culprit, it was nova launcher prime.
After using the tablet for a day I looked at the battery stats and noticed that it was constantly running and used over 20% of the battery over time.
Uninstalled and benchmarks are much better but not completely there, in geek bench 5 I get 980 single and 2950 multi, was 2600 multi.
I expect 3000-3200 from this device so only a little under now, it is possible that the benchmarks I saw were using android 10 before the update to 11.
Looking at the battery stats One UI is under 2% battery consumption by comparison.
Johnnio said:
So after a bit of playing around I think I found the main culprit, it was nova launcher prime.
After using the tablet for a day I looked at the battery stats and noticed that it was constantly running and used over 20% of the battery over time.
Uninstalled and benchmarks are much better but not completely there, in geek bench 5 I get 980 single and 2950 multi, was 2600 multi.
I expect 3000-3200 from this device so only a little under now, it is possible that the benchmarks I saw were using android 10 before the update to 11.
Looking at the battery stats One UI is under 2% battery consumption by comparison.
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Wow .... Would have never guessed. I do in fact always use Nova. Maybe I should delete. Wish I could save (backup) desktops like with Nova
jcrompton said:
Wow .... Would have never guessed. I do in fact always use Nova. Maybe I should delete. Wish I could save (backup) desktops like with Nova
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I was surprised too as I have been using it for years now.
Not saying 100% that it will solve your your issue but it is at least worth considering.
It could be a problem my end or even perhaps how android 11 records battery usage but Samsung UI has 1.8% battery usage vs 20% for nova launcher, I need to use the tablet longer to see if that translates to longer screen on time.
Johnnio said:
I was surprised too as I have been using it for years now.
Not saying 100% that it will solve your your issue but it is at least worth considering.
It could be a problem my end or even perhaps how android 11 records battery usage but Samsung UI has 1.8% battery usage vs 20% for nova launcher, I need to use the tablet longer to see if that translates to longer screen on time.
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Keep me/us updated on what you find. Thanks.
jcrompton said:
Keep me/us updated on what you find. Thanks.
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I'll report back in a day or so with a screen on report.
jcrompton said:
Keep me/us updated on what you find. Thanks.
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Click to collapse
So, a couple of days later I would say that I do seem to be getting more out of the battery, around one hour more with the same mixed usage, YouTube, gaming, reddit is fun app, Firefox, screen brightness 65%, volume full, 120Hz with WiFi and mobile data enabled.
Screen on time from 100% to 10% is roughly 7 hours, not as good as I was hoping for but I am hammering it and I expect that the battery test videos I have seen are using auto brightness.