I hve been using my phone on power saving mode from 2 days to save battery and to hve more life out of it. I wana ask tht it is ok to use it continuously on power saving mode forever??
Any ideas??
No problem in using power mode all the time. It's a feature Samsung enables to save battery
Yep. Can't see a problem except the expected performance downgrade etc.
Sent from my GT-I9300T using xda premium
Personally I hated the power saving modes in every smartphone i had cause it affects performance. I will buy a spsre battery and a charger. If you are ok with the performance in power saving mode you should use it!
Enjoy your phone to its maximal potential. Don't let the battery saving issue to disturb your user experience.
Sent from my GT-I9300 using XDA
My phone doesn't decrease in performance with saving mode enabled. It is always fast.
Sent from my GT-I9300
CreekDirt said:
My phone doesn't decrease in performance with saving mode enabled. It is always fast.
Sent from my GT-I9300
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Not the case with mine, I notice a decrease in performance. It most likely under clocks the CPU...
In regards to the original question, no there is nothing wrong with leaving the phone in power saver mode. In fact you could probably argue that its better as the phone creates less heat.
Ideally I'd like to overclock mine
Well there is no such thing as saving power without sacreficing preformance. (unless you undervolt it or use more power effectient drivers)
But you should be ok running in power save mode all the time, although I do question why you bought a top of the line smartphone then. I think you would have saved more power (and money) buying a lower end phone.
It does govern the cpu. You can uncheck it. I leave mine checked.
Sent from my GT-I9300
Truely speaking i cant see diiference of even 1% in comparison to power saving and normal mode. Any one knows y battrey depleting though good but at same rate in both modes??
juice defender app does a good job for me. i use the basic settings but you can tweak it to save more battery.
Power saving appears to cap the clock speed at 1.0 GHz rather than 1.4 GHz and it may also disable cores, too. Most of the time it feels just as responsive to use. It is less snappy for some apps and benchmarks quite a bit slower, but I feel I'm splitting hairs as it still feels quicker than my last handset.
I see two days of moderate use with Power Saving on. I don't quite see two days with it off, but the difference is probably not statistically significant and the device is still new.
Power Saving
im using a power saving application on Xperia S ... is it okay to keep it working all the time??
thank you ....
ButterMaker: first of all, wrong forum, also battery saving apps are known to interfere with androids way to handle memory so I would say no
CuttyCZ said:
ButterMaker: first of all, wrong forum, also battery saving apps are known to interfere with androids way to handle memory so I would say no
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, should not use battery/ram optimization apps. They interfere with androids core system.
I uninstalled all these apps after trying and researching. They eat more battery then they save. I only use battery stats apps to keep a log of battery drain.
Now I easily get 40+ hours on my S3 with moderate uses.
I've just done some undervolting and governor changes on my phone... (faux 012 kernel), build.prop added ro.ril.disable.power.collapse=0, pm.sleep_mode=1
On Powersave (where the CPU frequency is locked at the lowest 192mhz, I was able to hit 9mAh(reported by Battery Monitor Widget with HTC Sensation current detection option enabled) on idle with data on, sync on
Reported by the phone's built in stats:
30 min screen-on time, 1 hour phone on time, >12 hours deep sleep, my battery was just above 50%
of course, with frequency at 192mhz, there was major noticeable lag... one time, there was too much stuff running on the phone when it rang, and it couldn't work fast enough for me to answer the phone in time before bouncing to voicemail
lowest noted current usage before change - after change
deep sleep: 20mA | 9mA
screen on idle: 100mA | 60mA
9 hours usage before hitting 50% | >12 hours usage before hitting 50%
I've looked/used at the other available governors....
the interactive is next "power saving" efficient... clocks up from 192mhz somewhat slowly after some use, and goes back to 192mhz
the conservative is next... clocks up very fast from 192mhz use, slowly goes back to 192mhz
the ondemand clocks up faster and goes down slower
all of them clock up from 192mhz when the usage barely passes 50%
anyways... is there a way to customize my own needs? I want the phone on 192mhz until the CPU goes over 90% for 1s, then clocks up slowly... when a phone call comes in, i want it to use as much as it needs... etc
Maybe it's just me, but this phone is pretty fast/stable without missing with out volting
Sent from my HTC_Amaze_4G using xda app-developers app
Spastic909 said:
Maybe it's just me, but this phone is pretty fast/stable without missing with out volting
Sent from my HTC_Amaze_4G using xda app-developers app
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Click to collapse
I just want to be able to maximize battery life when I need(eg when I'm going out and I know I won't be near a phone charger for more than 20 hours, and still need the use of GPS/camera etc)
paperWastage said:
I've just done some undervolting and governor changes on my phone... (faux 012 kernel), build.prop added ro.ril.disable.power.collapse=0, pm.sleep_mode=1
On Powersave (where the CPU frequency is locked at the lowest 192mhz, I was able to hit 9mAh(reported by Battery Monitor Widget with HTC Sensation current detection option enabled) on idle with data on, sync on
Reported by the phone's built in stats:
30 min screen-on time, 1 hour phone on time, >12 hours deep sleep, my battery was just above 50%
of course, with frequency at 192mhz, there was major noticeable lag... one time, there was too much stuff running on the phone when it rang, and it couldn't work fast enough for me to answer the phone in time before bouncing to voicemail
lowest noted current usage before change - after change
deep sleep: 20mA | 9mA
screen on idle: 100mA | 60mA
9 hours usage before hitting 50% | >12 hours usage before hitting 50%
I've looked/used at the other available governors....
the interactive is next "power saving" efficient... clocks up from 192mhz somewhat slowly after some use, and goes back to 192mhz
the conservative is next... clocks up very fast from 192mhz use, slowly goes back to 192mhz
the ondemand clocks up faster and goes down slower
all of them clock up from 192mhz when the usage barely passes 50%
anyways... is there a way to customize my own needs? I want the phone on 192mhz until the CPU goes over 90% for 1s, then clocks up slowly... when a phone call comes in, i want it to use as much as it needs... etc
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There are several other things you can do which may be more effective than what you are trying to do- or even more effective WITH what you are trying to do.
First, don't lower the minimum clock speed, 384 is the minimum that HTC chose, probably for multiple reasons. As long as your phone is going into deep sleep, it doesn't use ANY processor, and on any governor EXCEPT battery saver, it is VERY rarely idling at the minimum speed.
Next, look at the init.post_boot.sh and init.qcom.post_boot.sh files(you may have one, or you may have both, faux added the second one in later builds) in the system/etc folder, that sets many of the kernel settings. Do some research into how changing the line for "down_differential"(which is 5 stock, 1 increases battery A LOT, but increases lag a bit too), , "up_threshold"(stock is 90, setting to 95 increases battery, but takes longer to get to full clock speed), "sampling_down_factor"(stock is 4, you can lower to 1 for increased battery life, and slightly more lag), "sampling_rate"(latest faux changes to 30000, setting to 50000 means it checks whether to increase/decrease cpu speed less often, and gives better battery life).. changing those values will have much bigger impact on battery life, while adding a little bit of lag at most if you change them quite a bit. Also, look to see if you have a line that says "echo 1 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu1/online", if you do, change it to a 0, 1 forces the second core on ALL the time instead of letting ICS decide when to turn it on.
Next, look at thermald.conf in the same folder, some of the biggest differences in battery life between roms is because of that file- faux replaces it with his later kernels, but I'm not sure if it is to increase battery life, or increase performance. His is definitely different than any rom I have seen, and people report much improved battery, and that file is likely why.
Doing all of these things with system files rather than with a 3rd party CPU app means the phone will deep sleep more, and be more responsive, because there is no app constantly running in the background trying to make changes on the fly. Also, you can find "battery saver" scripts that can be put into the above files that have their own tweaks you can make if you are determined to use that governor- but battery saver tries to constantly stay at the minimum speed possible(if you read it in some places, it simply stays at minimum speed PERIOD), and will have the most extreme lag, with a questionable amount of increased battery life compared to a tweaked on_demand governor.
And last, before undervolting, try decreasing the max speed of the core.. you can lower it by 1-2 steps and notice NO difference in speeds, yet get far better gains than undervolting, without creating instability. The volts that HTC chose are probably the very minimum that works well for all of our phones, as undervolting by 12.5 may work fine on my phone, but may introduce random reboots or worse on yours- once you undervolt you simply can't troubleshoot any issue on your phone, because the UV could be the cause instead of anything else..
There is more than that you can do also, like making sure that your screen-on and your actual usage numbers are almost EXACTLY the same- get an app like betterbatterystats(available free on XDA) to see what partial-wakelocks are keeping your phone from deep-sleep.. the higher the % of deep sleep, the less you have to worry about ANYTHING to do with the CPU, since the CPU isn't being used at all..
paperWastage said:
I just want to be able to maximize battery life when I need(eg when I'm going out and I know I won't be near a phone charger for more than 20 hours, and still need the use of GPS/camera etc)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you do everything I said above to maximize battery on the on_demand governor, you can use a CPU app to change to battery saver governor when you know you won't be near a charger, and you just want basic functionality(no games, browser, etc), and DONT set on boot.. that way on reboot it defaults to normal governor.
I tweaked all the things I said above and get at LEAST 16+ hours with 3+ hours of screen on, and will get over 24 hours if I underclock to around 1.2ghz.. battery saver isn't even needed if you set everything else right.
Or you can buy 2 1900mah ankers and an external charger for 29.99 and free shipping on amazon, and simply carry the spare charged battery, and never care again.. much simpler fix if you ask me.
thanks for the tips Silentbtdeadly. I'll look at them this weekend
I am already using the Anker 1900mAh battery, with the latest faux kernel and energy stock ICS rom...
I get maybe 15 hours from 100% to 10% with ~1-2 hours of usage
From looking at BetterBatteryStats, it looks like the phone is falling into deep sleep properly with no obvious problems with wakelocks/alarms...
If I left my phone unplugged overnight with data on and autosync, it levels out.... lost 9% over 6 hours
I think I just have 2 main problems:
Drain from 100%->80% is fast after unplug... I think it takes 30 minutes to get to 90% and another 60 minutes to get to 80%. BBS shows phone in deep sleep, Battery Monitor Widget shows mA usage ~50mAh with -2%/hour, but the %-left slopes down a lot, since i did lose 20% in 90 minutes
when I turn on the phone and use it for <1 minute and put it back to sleep... Battery Monitor Widget shows a sharp drop in %-left even though BBS shows falling into deep sleep
I guess my problem might be the battery-monitoring hardware/firmware... I just received the Digital Timer, will try Bump Charging to see if I can get 16-20 hours with 3 hours of usage
paperWastage said:
thanks for the tips Silentbtdeadly. I'll look at them this weekend
I am already using the Anker 1900mAh battery, with the latest faux kernel and energy stock ICS rom...
I get maybe 15 hours from 100% to 10% with ~1-2 hours of usage
From looking at BetterBatteryStats, it looks like the phone is falling into deep sleep properly with no obvious problems with wakelocks/alarms...
If I left my phone unplugged overnight with data on and autosync, it levels out.... lost 9% over 6 hours
I think I just have 2 main problems:
Drain from 100%->80% is fast after unplug... I think it takes 30 minutes to get to 90% and another 60 minutes to get to 80%. BBS shows phone in deep sleep, Battery Monitor Widget shows mA usage ~50mAh with -2%/hour, but the %-left slopes down a lot, since i did lose 20% in 90 minutes
when I turn on the phone and use it for <1 minute and put it back to sleep... Battery Monitor Widget shows a sharp drop in %-left even though BBS shows falling into deep sleep
I guess my problem might be the battery-monitoring hardware/firmware... I just received the Digital Timer, will try Bump Charging to see if I can get 16-20 hours with 3 hours of usage
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Careful with battery monitor widget, the way it polls the battery creates its own drain.. there is another widget called currentwidget that can actually log how much energy is being used by an app, it too can drain a lot, but it could show you if a certain app is using an absurd amount of power.. I have more info for it in the battery saver section of the bible in my signature.
I think about 16 hours with 2-4 hours of screen on is the most that can be gotten without seriously degrading the performance. If you set the governor options like I said in the last post and under clock a little, you will get a little lag on minor things, but the phone is still quite usable, and 24 hours is totally doable at those settings with 3-4 hours screen on.
Do realize the anker batteries aren't perfect, I bought two at once.. one gives me much more battery life than the other does even tho they were bought together, so that could be a factor too. I try to maximize battery life, but I'll carry a spare charged battery so I don't worry too much, it is the best solution thus far.
Sent from my HTC_Amaze_4G using xda app-developers app
Links pointing to androidbatterylife.com are DOWN FOR GOOD!
Android Battery Life, a pretty successful website has been made in order to help android users achieve better battery life while still using many functions and apps. All of these guides are available, with screenshots, at www.androidbatterylife.com
It's my 2000th post here on xda, and I wanna make it special
PORTAL! http://www.xda-developers.com/android/battery-saving-mega-guide-celebrating-users-2000th-post/
A lot of users are thinking that everything mentioned should be applied. You don't have to apply all of them, just apply what you think works for you. This is more of an index of guides, if you will.
Yes, this is in the Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting because of the word "Troubleshooting"... I'm shooting your "Low battery life" trouble in the face.
So let's begin:
The guide is split into 3 parts: Easy, Medium, and Advanced.
First up is... you guessed it..
Easy
Screen / Display LINK
If you go to Settings>Battery, you’ll clearly see that “Screen” has the biggest bar of about 40-60%. The bigger the bar (and the number), the bigger the battery drain. We’ll try to lower that bar as much as we can.
Brightness
First of all, to reduce the battery drain caused by the display, click on the Screen button, then click display (it’s the same as going to Settings>Display), then click on brightness, untick Auto-Brightness if it’s ticked and lower the brightness to minimum.
Explanation: A brighter screen means the screen is emitting more light, which consumes more battery. So lowering the brightness makes the screen use less battery juice.
Wallpaper
Second thing to do to reduce the “Screen” battery consumption is having a Static Wallpaper, and not a Live Wallpaper. So go to Settings>Display and click Wallpaper, and pick any wallpaper you want except the wallpapers from the Live Wallpapers list.
Explanation: Live Wallpapers use the CPU (and possibly the GPU) to make the image move. So the phone is using the CPU to process these images, which means more battery sucking, and we don’t want that.
Sleep
Again, go to Settings>Display, and click Sleep (aka screen timeout) and set that to something less than 1 minute. I personally use 30 seconds and it’s good enough for day-to-day use.
Explanation: The more time the screen is on, the higher is the battery usage, because the screen won’t be using the battery when it’s off…
Framework Animation
Fourth thing to do is disable the Framework Animations. Framework Animations are the animations you see when you switch from an app to another app, or when you press home, or back, or recent apps buttons. To turn those off go to Settings>Developer options (if you don’t see that, then go to About Phone and press the Build Number button 8 times, then go back), scroll down to drawing section, and set Window animation scale, Transition animation scale, and Animator duration scale to “Animation off”.
Explanation: Framework Animations use the GPU (and possibly the CPU) to draw the frames of the animations, so by turning them off, you’re pulling some load off of the GPU and CPU to make the battery life better.
Widgets
Believe it or not, widgets can greatly affect battery life, it's because they update themselves regularly. This can wake up the phone a lot of times. So the best way to prevent this is to remove all the widgets on the homescreen.... and maybe keep the ones that don't update themselves much.
Remember, everything that’s shown on-screen that isn't app related is registered as “Screen” in the battery window. So to lower that, you have to compromise every little thing that’s shown on the screen.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Google Services LINK
One major issue you may face with Google Services is the location battery drain. This was born in Android 4.2.2 and can be easily fixed by just unticking a button.
Problem
The real problem is, in one word, Location.
Google Services such as Gmail, Now, Maps, and Google+ constantly polls your location using your wifi (if you're connected) or your cell network. And every time Google Services poll your location, your battery gets affected. So what's the solution to that?
Solution
Further research by Galaxo60 proved that going to Settings - Location Settings (or Location on android 4.4), and unticking WiFi & mobile network location (or setting the Mode to Device Only) prevents Google Services from polling your location, thus preventing the battery drain
So disable the WiFi & mobile network location option, and actually tick and turn on GPS satellites. (It's just like setting the Mode to Device only on KitKat)
But why do that? Why should I turn on GPS?
Picture taken using Android 4.4 KitKat
Explanation
Google Services don't use your GPS to poll your location, so your GPS actually stays offline most of the time; and the reason you should enable GPS is to "Let apps that have asked your permission use your location information".
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Go Dark LINK
Some devices have AMOLED or SAMOLED (Super-AMOLED) screens, like the Samsung Galaxy SII and the Motorola Moto X. The following method is helpful for these kind of devices.
You may check what's your screen type to see if it's AMOLED or not. If it's not, this method won't help you achieve better battery life, but may help your eyes
What's AMOLED?
AMOLED is a screen type designed to get the highest contrast a screen can get to. Black pixels turn themselves off, unlike the IPS screens that always require a backlight. So AMOLED has less battery consumption than most screen types.
What to do?
Try turning everything as dark as you can. So make the wallpaper have as much black areas as possible, and use dark apps. The best way to convert most apps to dark apps is downloading Team Black Out Updater. From that app, download the apps you want to make them darker and install them. Some apps require having root because you have to flash them via recovery.
This consumes less power
This consumes more power
Explanation
By turning most things dark/black, more pixels in the AMOLED screen will turn off, thus lowering the power consumption caused by the screen.
Remember, this is only for AMOLED screens, IPS/LCD screens will still consume the same power from the battery.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Turn Off Auto-Sync LINK
Auto-Sync constantly checks the data on the phone and the data on the cloud, and adds the missing files. In other words, Auto-Sync = wasted battery.
Turn off Auto-Sync
Go to settings, scroll down to you google account, tap it and tap on your gmail. Then uncheck all the items on the list.
This is wrong. Now untick them!
Explanation
Auto-Sync consumes a lot of data and battery. By unchecking the items, Auto-Sync will turn off, and thus saving battery AND data!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Turn Off NFC LINK
NFC is wireless, and wireless consumes battery. So turning off NFC will make the battery life slightly better.
NFC off when not needed
If you don't use NFC, go to settings > more > and turn it off. Android beam will grey out because it needs NFC, we don't need that either.
Explanation
NFC consumes a lot of battery if you keep your screen on most of the time. So by turning it off, we're improving battery life while the screen is on.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
NO Task managers/Hibernators LINK
Yes... I know... Weird right? Don't be misguided, and understand what's happening inside android before doing anything.
Uninstall / Disable Task Managers / Killers / Hibernators
If you have any Task killer, or Task manager apps installed, either disable them if you can, or uninstall them.
Explanation
Android learns the way you use it. It knows which apps you like best and pre-opens them and puts them in RAM so that they get opened faster. Android keeps a log of how much time you've been spending on an app.
By using a Task killer, you're breaking this log, thus preventing Android from learning how you use it. The results?
Android will be loading every app you open from scratch.
Android will get slower.
Android will be wasting battery.
So uninstall those "battery killers" and let Android do the work instead.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Use ART LINK
Yes... ART... Not art, but ART... It's an Android 4.4 KitKat specific thing...
What is ART?
ART is a runtime replacement of the Dalvik runtime. It's the way the phone handles apps. Dalvik used to install apps fast, and conserve some space after the installation, but it compiles the app as soon as you open it, and runs it on a Virtual Machine (if it's not a native app).
ART pre-compiles the app on installation, which takes up a little bit (teeny tiny) more space, but makes apps faster to open, and over all performance better.
Switch to ART
Go to settings, developer options, and tap on select runtime, then use ART and reboot. It'll take some time to finish booting the first time it's running ART, but when it's done optimizing apps it'll be worth the wait.
Explanation
ART demands less CPU power to process things over time. It pre-compiles apps just once so that when you open an app, the CPU won't work as much to compile the app just-in-time (JIT). So, less CPU work, less battery consumption, more battery juice, and more performance!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Pick the correct charger LINK
I can't put direct links to chargers, so go HERE to the relevant page and see the chargers from there.
Is a fast charger better? or is it the slow one?
Use the Right Charger
A slow charger relaxes the battery, making it last longer when it fully charges. So, for a better battery life, use a slow charger at night when you're sleeping, or when you don't need to charge it quickly.
I recommend using this charger*: it's small, looks good, and it's slow with a 1A power output... Perfect for what we want.
If you're in a hurry, and your phone's battery has little juice left, you may want to charge it pretty quickly. In this situation, you won't care about the relaxation of the battery, so you should use a fast charger.
Something like this charger* should help a lot in achieving what you need. It also has a second slot it you have to charge another device. Use the A slot to charge faster with its 2.4A power.
You can also use a car charger if your phone's battery suddenly dies while you're not home.
This car charger* is perfect because it's fast enough to revive your phone and gives you enough juice to save the day.
So be wise and use the right charger for the right situation, so that you can achieve the best battery life possible.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Have a Spare Battery / Power Bank LINK
Sometimes, your battery will die, whatever you do...
Have a Spare Battery
In that case, if you have a phone with removable battery like any current Samsung device, equipping another spare battery could be very useful. If your battery is almost dead, just turn off the phone, open it up, and put your spare battery in. Voila, insta-charge
Have a Battery Bank
One great gadget to own with your phone is a backup power bank. This portable power bank (see link of the page HERE) is awesome because it's universal, and has a 13000 mAh capacity which can charge your phone about 5 times!
So if you don't want to scratch your head to do tweaks, you can use spare batteries or power banks to save the day
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Know How to Use Android LINK
It's all about how you use it...
We see a lot of users that use Android the wrong way. We see people setting their screen timeout to 30 minutes because "whenever I want to chat, the screen keeps turning off". We also see a lot of users, even devs and power users, constantly pressing the back button to go home.
Know How to Use Android
If you have the screen problem where whenever you want to interact with the screen, it turns off, don't turn the screen timeout up. Turn it down, so that the screen turns off sooner, and saves battery.
And to go home, there's a button for that for a reason! Use it! Pressing back over and over again closes the app, and clears it from your device's RAM. When you re-open the app, it will open from scratch, so your phone will be slower, and will consume more battery since it's using more CPU power.
So use the home button, try to keep as much apps in RAM as possible, stop "clearing all" apps from RAM, and save battery!
Explanation
RAM, either full or empty, consumes the same amount of electricity, unlike RAM in computers.
The CPU copies data from storage to RAM and then runs the app. If the app is already in RAM, the CPU won't reopen it, it'll directly use it.
So making the RAM full of opened apps helps the CPU. The phone becomes faster, and the need of electricity running through the CPU to open the app is now nonexistent.
Also, Android keeps a log of how you use your phone and pre-opens the apps you need. If you constantly kill and clear out apps, you're breaking that log. So when clearing apps, you're not letting Android learn the way you use it. This results in a slower experience, and more battery drain.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Deactivate Auto-Rotate LINK
Auto Rotation isn't always needed... right?
Disable Auto Rotation
Go to Settings, Display, Rotation, and turn off Auto-rotate.
Explanation
Auto-rotate uses the phone's G-Sensor to see how you're holding the phone. By turning off Auto Rotation, you're using less hardware, thus using less battery
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Turn on Airplane Mode LINK
When in low signal places, it's a hassle trying to find that precious signal...
Turn on Airplane Mode
Whenever you feel that the mobile signal is getting too low, turn on airplane mode if you don't need to call someone. Go to settings, More, and check Airplane mode to turn it on.
Explanation
The phone wants you to stay connected to a cell tower whenever possible. On low signal places, the phone will try harder to find a tower to connect to, and that drain a lot of battery. So turning on Airplane Mode makes your phone rest and not search for any tower, thus saving battery.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Use a Light Theme for LCD Screens LINK
AMOLED will consume less battery on the dark theme, LCD isn't affected by that...
Use a Light Theme for LCD
Using a lighter theme with more white in it helps your eyes, because you can lower the brightness even more and still see the screen just fine.
Explanation
The lower the brightness, the better the battery life. So a lighter theme is what we want, so we can reduce the brightness and still see everything.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Charge You Battery Correctly LINK
It's called a battery cycle, not a quarter of it
Charge it correctly
Don't let your battery go down to 0%, charge it while it's about 50%.
Explanation
No matter what charger you're using (either a slow or a fast one), the battery is greatly affected by the frequency of the charges. Our phones have different batteries than past devices had, so battery life cycles are a bit different as we used to think.
More info here: http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/charging_lithium_ion_batteries
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Use Widgets with Manual Refresh LINK
Widgets update themselves a lot... but there's a solution for that.
Use Manual Refreshed Widgets
Check every widget you have, and see whether you can set it to refresh whenever you click on it, or do something to refresh it.
Explanation
Auto-refreshing widgets make the phone wake up a lot and do some processing which can use the battery. By making them manual, you are controlling the frequency of the refreshes, and you are forbidding the widgets to refresh while the phone is asleep.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Do Not Rely On Battery Discharge Rate LINK
Look! Left it overnight and only lost 2%! This is about 0.25%/hr!
WRONG!
The battery acts like a capacitor (not exactly like it, but very similar to it), so whenever its charge is changed, the discharge / charge rate will change with it.
So, if you leave your phone overnight at 100%, you'll get a rate of x%/hr. If you leave it at 50%, you'll get a rate of y%/hr where x and y are very different.
It's only a matter of experimenting where is the sweet spot of battery percentage that you should have when keeping it overnight.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Do Not Wipe Battery Stats LINK
Some people do that a lot... but why?
What's Battery Stats?
Battery stats is basically a file in Android that stores the battery history. The longer the battery stats is, the more accurate the battery percentage reading is.
Why not wipe it?
Wiping battery stats is like tinkering with the fuel gauge in your car: you won't get more gas if you glue the gauge's needle at Full.
The problem is that wiping battery stats will give you wrong readings. Users thought that wiping it will make the battery "hold the charge better". This is wrong because doing so will break Android's battery reading, and that's why it will show you a higher percentage for a longer time.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Do Not Buy Cheap Batteries LINK
Wow! A 2500 mAh battery for my Galaxy Ace! And the same size of the original!
The problem here is that some users order a battery with a higher mAh value for a very low price. They get their 2500 mAh battery and put it in the phone. The device would last a lot longer now before its battery dies.
Now let's not forget why they ordered such a battery. It's most probably because their old battery is just exhausted and isn't lasting much. So no matter what battery they get, they'll notice a big difference in battery life.
Usually these cheap batteries are advertised as 2500 mAh, while they're actually a lot less.
So if you want to replace your old battery, try getting an original one.
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Thanks to all of you who gave me more ideas on how to achieve better battery life
Medium
Undervolt LINK
The CPU is the biggest battery consumer, and it needs voltage from the battery. If we decrease that, we'll gain some battery life.
Undervolt your CPU
Assuming you have TricksterMOD, launch it and go to the specific window. Scroll down to CPU Voltages, then click Profile, and save the Profile as Default.
Now hit the minus/plus button right above where it now says "Default". When the window pops up, hit the minus button JUST ONCE. Every time you hit the minus button you undervolt by 12500 mV, and we'll call that a "step"; so undervolt by one step.
Hit the check mark button to apply.
Explanation
Every time you undervolt by a step, the CPU will demand less and less from the battery to run. This improves the battery by just a bit. It's mainly to avoid temperature throttling, but it also improves battery.
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Increasing SD card Read-Ahead Value LINK
Whether or not you have an SD card, this helps...
Increase readahead Value
Go to TricksterMOD, swipe to general, and click Read Ahead Buffer Size under the I/O Control section. Set it to 3072 (Value is in KB, so it's 3MB)
Explanation
The bigger the read-ahead buffer is, the better the SDcard can predict what command would come next. It prepares itself to do a command before it's even issued. This gives you better performance, and a potential increase of battery life because generating 3MB is nothing compared to the performance benefit.
Check out this Spreadsheet from broodplank.net for more info on the benefits of read-ahead.
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Advanced
Underclocking LINK
One major battery drainer is the CPU, so if you don't really use the phone much, and you don't care about games, you should probably consider underclocking it to get that precious juice back.
Requirements
You must be rooted and have a kernel that supports overclocking. You may find out how to root by doing a little online research because every device has its own rooting method (for example, I wrote a fully detailed guide on how to root your Nexus 4).
CPU Underclocking
Warning: Underclocking the CPU too much could result in an SOD (Sleep Of Death) which makes the phone sleep and not turn on without pulling the battery.
First of all, we need a controller, or a daemon to control the CPU's clock speeds. So go ahead and download TricksterMOD from the Play store, we'll be using that to underclock the CPU.
Now enter it and grant su permissions, swipe from left to right and select the general menu, scroll down to CPU frequency control and tick frequency lock, then click on the number next to the min button, and choose the smallest number in the list.
Then, click on the number next to the max button and choose something a little less than you CPU's stock frequency... on a Nexus 4, the stock frequency is 1.5 GHz (or 1512000) so I picked 1.2 GHz (or 1242000).
Now swipe down to CPU Governor Control and click the button next to the Governor Button, and select conservative. If you don't have conservative in the list, pick ondemand. Now hit the check mark button at the top of the app to apply the settings.
Explanation
We are lowering the CPU's clock speed which makes it a little slower, but consumes much less battery. We are also changing the way the frequencies are handled: with the conservative governor, the CPU will prefer staying at lower frequencies.
MP Decision
We're not done yet, swipe again from left to right and click specific, then look for MP Decision. If it's there, turn it off, if not then it's probably already off. Hit the check mark to apply the settings.
Explanation
MP Decision sees how you use the phone, and clocks the CPU relatively (if you're just chatting, it'll underclock. If you're playing games, it'll clock it to normal). We don't want that since we want to force underclock the CPU, so we turn this off to prevent it from playing with our settings.
GPU Underclocking
On that same screen, scroll down to GPU max frequency, and lower that just one step below the default clockspeed (400 MHz being the stock frequency on the Nexus 4, so let's set that to 320 MHz). Don't forget to hit the check mark button to apply the changes you've made.
Explanation
The GPU draws almost everything you see on the screen, so it's always active. Lowering its frequency has a big positive impact on battery life, which is what we want.
So that's basically it for the underclocking part, have fun playing with different governors and frequencies to get that precious Performance/Battery life point.
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Detecting Wakelocks VS Installing Battery Saving Apps LINK
The most cliche thing to do when your battery doesn't last a day is install a battery saver app. However, I don't do it myself. I prefer detecting wakelocks in order to reduce battery consumption.
What is a Wakelock?
A wakelock is the moment where you turn the screen off, but the CPU stays awake doing something. It is the phenomenon when the CPU isn't asleep when the screen is off and it shouldn't be doing anything. Wakelocks usually drain battery because the CPU is kept awake and working while it should be resting.
Detecting a Wakelock
To detect a wakelock, install Wakelock Detector. Charge your phone, then unplug it and leave it with the screen turned off for about an hour or two. Then open the app and check the list of wakelocks.
The bigger the red bar on the top, the longer the wakelocks are. The top app is the number 1 culprit, and should be removed. If the top app is Google Services, it's probably the Location issue. If it's another app, check if there are syncing issues, and try making the sync interval a little longer, or turn off its notifications.
Explanation
We're trying to minimize the wakelocks caused by some apps to prevent the phone from being awakened. By doing that, we let the phone go to deep sleep faster, and longer. So, more battery life for us!
Another way to detect wakelocks (a little more pro)
Download and install betterbatterystats. It's basically a more pro version of Wakelock Detector. It also needs root for some functionality to work, but it gives you a more in-depth info about the wakelocks, CPU states, and network usage.
msm_hsic_host is the 3G... not to worry about that
So that's it for the wakelocks! Keep testing with different app configurations to achieve the best deep sleep mode for your phone, and get the most out of your battery.
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Undervolt Even More! LINK
Undervolting once is fine. Undervolting twice is better. But undervolting a million times isn't good... So let's undervolt as much as we can.
Download Stability Test, run it, and hit the Scaling Stability Test button (root will be needed). Wait about 8 to 10 minutes while it's doing the process. If it doesn't crash, stop it by pressing the back button. Your phone is stable, you can undervolt even more.
So go to TricksterMOD and undervolt another step (remember to save a profile indicating how many steps you've undervolted). Then test again using stability test....
Keep doing that until something bad happens like the app crashing, or Android itself rebooting. When it does crash, "overvolt" back one step. At this point your CPU is running good while on the lowest voltage.
Explanation
Every time we undervolt by a step, we test the stability of the CPU so it doesn't crash. When it crashes, we overvolt back to the last voltage set that was stable, so that we get the lowest voltages our CPU can handle without going crazy, and thus, getting that slight push of the battery life.
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Tweak Kernel Governors / Schedulers / KSM LINK
These tweaks only apply to certain kernels, since not all kernels allow you to modify these settings.
Governor, Schedulers, and KSM Tweaks
If you have a kernel tweaking app like tricksterMOD or faux clock, you are 90% free of all trouble of tweaking kernel governors.
First, find a kernel that has a specific and optimized governor. Turn off MPDecision if the kernel has an alternative (anything like "Intelli-Plug" will do). Now let's tweak!
We cannot cover the options for every kernel and every governor in the universe since each one has its own options and settings.
I am currently using faux kernel on my device. This kernel has intellidemand as the optimized governor. The aim of the kernel dev was to replace MPDecision with something better.
The links below provide some info about that kernel. These settings include tweaking the governor, schedulers and the KSM:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/nex...ernel-ver-031-mako-kk-4-4-uv-otg-cpu-t2008222 (the second post shows the recommended settings for faux kernel)
https://plus.google.com/+PaulReioux/posts/WFcjPqMEZgJ
Have fun tweaking!
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Great guide, and great usage of your 2000th post! I've featured this on the XDA Portal
Great post!
I like using Screebl to prevent screen turning off and on unnecessarily. And use One Power Guard by onexuan. It really lessens the drain over night. I use Condi to automatically disable mobile data when connected to wifi at home as well.
very great guide! Just note something for people with HTC Sense. If you use the weather clock with current sensor, setting the location to GPS only will disable the location service (even if it's seems on, the widget will say it's off since it doesn't want to use the GPS). Because of that, you loose that feature if you do that.
Um, there's a problem with this guide. Instead of underclocking, overclock the processor. The faster the processor, the faster it gets jobs done, the faster it can go to sleep. These reduces long wakelocks and in general improves battery life.
I used to think the same way, but thinking that way is false.
What about Greenify?
idk about you, but greenify is useful.
EDIT: And for the fast charge/slow charge, do you have any proof?
Beatsleigher said:
Um, there's a problem with this guide. Instead of underclocking, overclock the processor. The faster the processor, the faster it gets jobs done, the faster it can go to sleep. These reduces long wakelocks and in general battery life.
I used to think the same way, but thinking that way is false.
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So you're saying that it's better not to underclock and just use default values?
Hmm kind of skeptical about the home button thing. I usually back out of an app to prevent it from running in the background and consuming battery. Can anyone comment on this?
fredrick1213 said:
Hmm kind of skeptical about the home button thing. I usually back out of an app to prevent it from running in the background and consuming battery. Can anyone comment on this?
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the fact that the app opens from scratch again makes the CPU work more and thus using more battery
if it's kept in the RAM, it'll stay paused, it won't use the CPU and makes your phone faster sincr it resumes the app, thus making your battery usage less.
Sent from my Nexus 4
Riro Zizo said:
the fact that the app opens from scratch again makes the CPU work more and thus using more battery
if it's kept in the RAM, it'll stay paused, it won't use the CPU and makes your phone faster sincr it resumes the app, thus making your battery usage less.
Sent from my Nexus 4
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So if using Greenify, which automatically hibernates apps and greatly increases my battery life btw, will it make pressing the home button useless?
Beatsleigher said:
Um, there's a problem with this guide. Instead of underclocking, overclock the processor. The faster the processor, the faster it gets jobs done, the faster it can go to sleep. These reduces long wakelocks and in general improves battery life.
I used to think the same way, but thinking that way is false.
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you have a point if the user is a heavy user. But for normal users, the CPU won't be doing much; so underclocking it won't affect time, but it greatly improves battery life.
steakhutzeee said:
What about Greenify?
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pham818 said:
idk about you, but greenify is useful.
EDIT: And for the fast charge/slow charge, do you have any proof?
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greenify freezes the app if you're not using it, so the phone will start it from scratch... it's a good app if you use it on apps that you barely use, but don't greenify the apps that you use frequently, it will badly affect your battery life.
as for the fast/slow charge, I have no proof since this is what i usually have as a personal experience, but i find out that my battery lasts longer when i charge it slower...
Sent from my Nexus 4
fredrick1213 said:
So if using Greenify, which automatically hibernates apps and greatly increases my battery life btw, will it make pressing the home button useless?
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if for example you greenify whatsapp, and you press home while you were inside whatsapp... yes... it's useless...
but try building the habit of pressing it, the back button kills the apps, we don't want that
Sent from my Nexus 4
i always clear all my apps before i put the phone to sleep.
i'll try to not clear apps anymore, and see how that works.
thanks
pham818 said:
i always clear all my apps before i put the phone to sleep.
i'll try to not clear apps anymore, and see how that works.
thanks
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ah, you see, here's where it does make the good difference, keep doing that because you won't use the apps for about 8 hours, so it's better if they're closed.
i just posted this because i see people constantly closong the apps that they always use, but if you're not using the apps much (like when sleeping) it's better to kill them
Sent from my Nexus 4
Great post, love all of the tips. Keep up the good work. I hope to see 2000 more posts to come.
aguilar8788 said:
Great post, love all of the tips. Keep up the good work. I hope to see 2000 more posts to come.
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oh you will, trust me
every 1k posts I'll make something very special.
my 1000th post was releasing 2 very annoying apps that the portal newswriters denied them for being too annoying
Sent from my Nexus 4
First of all thanks! battery life is a never ending issue in any smartphone using the no animations, less widgets and device only location... hope it'll prove useful
I got a question... I use go power master which has a "screen off optimization" and i noticed that my battery barely drains itself while the phone is idle... it's not what you count as a task killer right?