Hows battery life? - Galaxy S II Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

I don't have this phone but i have the Sprint Galaxy S 2 Epic 4g touch
I've seen some roms showing 80% battery life with 1 day and still going battery life and it got me curious.
SO how is your phones battery life? I know my phone lasts me a whole day and end of story...

You have a different phone as you already know, therefore a separate forum in which you can discuss about things like these.
Anyways, battery life is completely subjective to each individual. It depends on each phone even if they're the same model. Number of apps, how you use your phone, and so many things else need to be considered, not to mention the rom and kernel tweaks.
To get the most out your battery (apart from completely switching off the phone) you have to monitor all the above mentioned things and how they affect battery life. A good way to start is to install betterbatterystats available on the author's thread here (or play store version which you should consider if you find the free one helpful). It will tell you the wake locks holding your device from deep sleep and apps draining your battery and going rogue.
Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk 2

Related

[Q] Average battery life on these developed roms?

I was just wondering on how long your battery life was, I guess when comparing to idle time. I ask because this was the main issue of mine as to why I havent flashed anything. When idle I was getting up to about 3 - 4 days of battery.
If battery life is important to you I would avoid all ROMs other than stock.
Flashing 3rd party ROMs is likely to damage you battery calibrator which causes you battery life to drain rapidly since calibration gets all screwed up.
Nobody knows specifically what is causing this serious issue but what we do know is that it happens when you flash a 3rd party ROM/Kernel.
ArtificialSweetener said:
If battery life is important to you I would avoid all ROMs other than stock.
Flashing 3rd party ROMs is likely to damage you battery calibrator which causes you battery life to drain rapidly since calibration gets all screwed up.
Nobody knows specifically what is causing this serious issue but what we do know is that it happens when you flash a 3rd party ROM/Kernel.
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hey! can you please keep all your posts in one thread? it's getting hard for me to track your progress.
thx man.
jonnyg1097 said:
I was just wondering on how long your battery life was, I guess when comparing to idle time. I ask because this was the main issue of mine as to why I havent flashed anything. When idle I was getting up to about 3 - 4 days of battery.
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custom roms usually use the stock kernel. what you get on your stock rom, you should get on a custom.
battery life is also subjective and variable, depending on your useage patterns, etc.
ArtificialSweetener said:
If battery life is important to you I would avoid all ROMs other than stock.
Flashing 3rd party ROMs is likely to damage you battery calibrator which causes you battery life to drain rapidly since calibration gets all screwed up.
Nobody knows specifically what is causing this serious issue but what we do know is that it happens when you flash a 3rd party ROM/Kernel.
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Click to collapse
Once again... lick my butthole 5thelement. Man you really bring out the class in me tonight bro.
I've been using task650s ROM with great battery life. I did have the battery drain issue which I don't think is really ROM related but once I went through the suggested calibration on this forum everything has been great. Think I've had my Tab on for 5-6 days with it at idle through the night and earlier parts of the day and using it for internet browsing and music around the house each evening. Turned it off last night with 30-40% battery left (just a guess).
ArtificialSweetener said:
If battery life is important to you I would avoid all ROMs other than stock.
Flashing 3rd party ROMs is likely to damage you battery calibrator which causes you battery life to drain rapidly since calibration gets all screwed up.
Nobody knows specifically what is causing this serious issue but what we do know is that it happens when you flash a 3rd party ROM/Kernel.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yea I am familiar with screwed up battery life calibration on my Captivate. I was getting anywhere from 8 hours to a day and a half which was why I was asking.
sternweezy said:
I've been using task650s ROM with great battery life. I did have the battery drain issue which I don't think is really ROM related but once I went through the suggested calibration on this forum everything has been great. Think I've had my Tab on for 5-6 days with it at idle through the night and earlier parts of the day and using it for internet browsing and music around the house each evening. Turned it off last night with 30-40% battery left (just a guess).
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Click to collapse
Really? Hmm thats good to know, I will look into that one then if I consider flashing.
Heavy usage (a lot of browsing, notes, some games) nets me a little over a day. My usage can be heavy and nonstop.
My average is around 2 days before I have to charge. That's mostly moderate heavy. My usage is abnormal but I can say I'm happy with its battery life.
Using tasks rom and pershoots kernel.
My usage is heavy everyday so I get about 7 - 8 hours of screen time by the time I go to bed and usually I am around 30% - 35% left. I use it all day for when I am on the train or in class. Running Starburst KME at the moment but I got the same average battery life on all ROMs using stock kernel. Pershoots kernel is reliable and I could go an extra day if I wanted.
My galaxy tab got big problem on battery.Fully charged on 6am morning,airplane mode without any use,by 7pm night i left 50% battery.Baseband version P7500KWXG1 firmware upgrade from samsung kies.
yh9205 said:
My galaxy tab got big problem on battery.Fully charged on 6am morning,airplane mode without any use,by 7pm night i left 50% battery.Baseband version P7500KWXG1 firmware upgrade from samsung kies.
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yeah, battery life for the galaxy tabs seems to be pretty poor! i just can use my 10.1v (stock) for only about 3 or 4 days. just for a little bit of wifi surfing and ebook reading (wifi switches off during standby).
i really love my galaxy tab, and i hated my ipad, but regarding battery life i used to charge my ipad only once a month!!! really. and i used it exactly for the same things as my galaxy tab.
samsung promised it to have similar battery life as the ipad...one more lie from them...

Poor Battery Life on new AT&T Galaxy S II

I have the AT&T Samsung Galaxy S II phone, and it is absolutely brilliant. Speeds are excellent - no lag. Screen is absolutely AMAZING. Camera is the best I've ever touched.
BUT, the thing that bugs me is the battery life. One of the selling points of the Galaxy S II to me was the "Amazing Battery Life" which has been praised. I have only owned this phone for two days (charged only one and a half times), but I have not seen this "excellent" battery life AT ALL.
Any tips or suggestions? I have read that the battery in this device "improves" after some time (a few charge cycles). Is this true?
Thank you
hey congratulations on your new samsung. I got mine when it first came out and had the same problems with batteries. My best suggestion is to familiarize yourself with custom roms and learn everything you need to know about flashing and rooting, and when you're ready look into installing a custom rom. Cognition v1.5.1 is a really good choice because of the fact that it removes a lot of the bloatware that automatically runs when you turn the phone on (which drains the battery quite a bit). Also some other ways of dealing with the battery life is to reduce the brightness as much as you can handle (the highest setting of brightness on any phone is never a good idea for battery life).
if you search around these forums you will probably find better help from people who know more about this stuff than me. However, as someone who went from never touching android in my life to learning it all with this phone I can say your best bet is to learn how to flash and mess around with the firmware. That coupled with basic battery tips will help a lot.
also one final thought. If you download battery calibrator from the market, charge your phone to 100% then take the plug out and run it, let it drain down to 0% then start the charge over that is the quickest way to fix the battery issues. (this would only need to be done once, or every time you flash a new firmware if you choose to pursue that).
hope I helped!

New android user here!

I just purchased my first android phone the galaxy s2 from att. I came from a JB 3gs and all I can say is that it is night and day! I love the UI of the the phone!
I have a few questions and I noticed my display eats up 50% of my battery usage, what would be my best way to improve battery life? The catch is can I still use the samsung interface or what ever you call it? I do like it. If I need to use like the CM7, does it have the voice talk feature, helpful when I'm driving. Will rooting/flashing roms my phone void the warranty?
thanks all
Turn the display brightness down or put on auto brightness to save bat. Also when npt using wifi or gps turn them off. Cm7 is great ita what im running . No touchwiz just pure android. And you can always flash back to a atock unrooted rom with odin if u need to reaturn your phone. And the more syncing you have going on the more bat it eats so if u dont use email or calenders turn off the syncing for them
The touchwiz is giving me the voice commands? How do I kill the active services? they seem to turn on automatically after they stop. I turned off the email and cal sync. I wonder if the HTC sense weather clock is killing my battery?
Many Widgets cause battery drain. There is a thread created by entropy512 with known battery drainers, here:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1308030
I tried CM7, MIUI, S8, UnNamed and now Cognition 777 (just for the last 12 hours). I haven't seen dramatic differences in battery life between any of them. Its about how you use the phone.
Sent from my Galaxy S II (i777)
Battery
Welcome, I'm also new to android from iphone 4. nice thing about the galaxy S2 is that you can change the battery very easily. I just bought a replacement Samsung battery for $15 or $20 with an external charger and just keep it in my wallet so I have the peace of mind. To tell you the truth I've only used it a couple of times. Once you get used to turning off some of the things you don't need the battery lasts much longer than my iPhone. Enjoy
quarlow said:
Many Widgets cause battery drain. There is a thread created by entropy512 with known battery drainers, here:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1308030
I tried CM7, MIUI, S8, UnNamed and now Cognition 777 (just for the last 12 hours). I haven't seen dramatic differences in battery life between any of them. Its about how you use the phone.
Sent from my Galaxy S II (i777)
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Click to collapse
+1
I find that battery life depends more on how you set up your apps/accounts/etc than on which ROM you use. As long as there isn't a glaring bug in a ROM and I don't download any buggy apps from the market that hold wake locks, I can set my phone up to get great battery life on any of them. I could also be less intelligent about how I set up my phone and get poor battery life on any ROM out there.
I'm gonna need to catch up on all the android lingo. I got about 12 hours on my use today and had 10% bat life. Is that a good start?
Is it better to charge it on a usb/computer or wall charge? I notice it get hot with the wall charge.
It shouldn't get hot while charging unless you are putting it through some heavy use at the same time. Wall charger should charge it faster.
Sent from my Galaxy S II (i777)
kipliq said:
I'm gonna need to catch up on all the android lingo. I got about 12 hours on my use today and had 10% bat life. Is that a good start?
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Click to collapse
Not a good start unless you had 5 or 6 hours of screen on time.
I was fooling around with the thing all day and watched 30 min of netflix and played from games during my break and lunch. Will keeping the screen brightness at 70% drain the battery quickly?
I came from the Atrix 2 and noticed that this device burns through the battery a ton quicker. I do not play any games on it so I was considering dropping the speed down a tad. However by around 5 in the afternoon I was around 56% battery left. That was random turn ons, texting, facebooking, etc. Nothing too awful heavy.

Terrible stock battery life and won't accept non OEM batteries

Hey guys,
I've been lurking in the forums for the past year and lately I've noticed that my battery has been crapping out. I'm running CM 10.1-20130807-NIGHTLY-i777 (I update it once a month), i777UCLE5, with CWM 6.0.3.5.
With the stock battery I get just about 1.5 - 2 hours of active usage. If I listen to music on it for 45 minutes, the battery drains over 30%. This is with JuiceDefender on.
I invested in two Anker batteries which worked for about 2-5 months then started locking up my phone. When I rebooted, battery went from 98% to 13%. Happened to one of my two batteries in month 2, and the second battery crapped out in month 5. Then I got a so called "stock battery" from eBay -- had the same model # and everything but didn't have NFC on it. Crashes my phone and drains the battery instantly too.
I'm wondering -- is there any way I can make these after market batteries work with my phone? I'm guessing it has something to do with not having NFC. They probably have much better life than my stock battery but I just can't make use of them.
Any tips appreciated.
power86 said:
Hey guys,
I've been lurking in the forums for the past year and lately I've noticed that my battery has been crapping out. I'm running CM 10.1-20130807-NIGHTLY-i777 (I update it once a month), i777UCLE5, with CWM 6.0.3.5.
With the stock battery I get just about 1.5 - 2 hours of active usage. If I listen to music on it for 45 minutes, the battery drains over 30%. This is with JuiceDefender on.
I invested in two Anker batteries which worked for about 2-5 months then started locking up my phone. When I rebooted, battery went from 98% to 13%. Happened to one of my two batteries in month 2, and the second battery crapped out in month 5. Then I got a so called "stock battery" from eBay -- had the same model # and everything but didn't have NFC on it. Crashes my phone and drains the battery instantly too.
I'm wondering -- is there any way I can make these after market batteries work with my phone? I'm guessing it has something to do with not having NFC. They probably have much better life than my stock battery but I just can't make use of them.
Any tips appreciated.
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Click to collapse
You need to search for the free xda version of Better Battery Stats so that you can take a more detailed look at what is causing your battery to drain.
You can find some great information by reading this thread.
You likely have something (or perhaps more than 1 thing) holding a wakelock that is not allowing the phone to get into a deep sleep and conserve battery power.
AJ Newkirk said:
You need to search for the free xda version of Better Battery Stats so that you can take a more detailed look at what is causing your battery to drain.
You can find some great information by reading this thread.
You likely have something (or perhaps more than 1 thing) holding a wakelock that is not allowing the phone to get into a deep sleep and conserve battery power.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the tip. I will try that out over the weekend.
Any advice to make non OEM batteries work with the i777?
power86 said:
Thanks for the tip. I will try that out over the weekend.
Any advice to make non OEM batteries work with the i777?
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Click to collapse
You can use replacement batteries, but they will render NFC useless. Only OEM i777 batteries have the necessary equipment to make NFC work.
You may want to do a search in the Accessories forum here and see what people recommend.

[Q] KitKat/4.4.x and battery issues (regardless of the ROM)

I have been trying out various 4.4.x ROMs (CM, Resurrection Remix, SlimROM) and had varying levels of success but the one issue that I have had consistently with all of them on my SGS2 is battery. 4.4.x seems to devour my battery no matter which ROM I am using (and the different ROMS are using different kernels usual). CM11 has far and away been the most stable so I have stayed with that but it too as failed to resolve my battery issue. I have never had much luck with battery life before but half a day is ridiculous. I thought about trying a different kernel but not sure that would help as #1 I would think the CM team would know better than I what would be the optimal kernel and #2 I have been trying different kernels anyway when I have been trying different ROMS as I believe the different ROMS have all had different kernels. Has anyone else had this issue? More importantly has anyone had any luck resolving this?
I suggest you to replace your battery. Beaware from cheap ones!!! I have I9100 too, i also try many methods to increase my battery life but i reach maximum 10 hours. Then i buy new batteries. It is not original galaxy s2 batteries but i think better than the original one.(1800mAh buy from ebay) Now i use RR kit kat rom with stock kernel my mobile data is always on and I go to bed at %35 percent of batteries.
1. If your battery is quite old, replace it.
2. Check whether you are having any wakelocks. Does it go to deep sleep?
3. When you say battery life as half a day, what is your actual usage? Screen on time, Wi-Fi, 3g, calls etc?
4. Betterbatterystats and greenify are your friends.
ottoasd said:
I suggest you to replace your battery. Beaware from cheap ones!!! I have I9100 too, i also try many methods to increase my battery life but i reach maximum 10 hours. Then i buy new batteries. It is not original galaxy s2 batteries but i think better than the original one.(1800mAh buy from ebay) Now i use RR kit kat rom with stock kernel my mobile data is always on and I go to bed at %35 percent of batteries.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks. My battery is about 2.5 years old, its an Anker battery, 1900mAh that I bought on amazon (I honestly don't know what constitutes "old" for batteries, is 2 1/2 years old?). As for ROMS I was actually running an older version of RR but had serious stability issues (related to sdcard, never was able to resolve it) and battery wasn't great (better than now though) when I upgraded to the newest RR I had some lingering stability issues and battery issues too so just settled on CM11 this time.
banjara said:
1. If your battery is quite old, replace it.
Sorry, but what in your all's opinion makes for an "old" battery? 2, 3 years? or are we talking 4+ is there a way I could test my battery to see if it going bad perhaps?
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2. Check whether you are having any wakelocks. Does it go to deep sleep?
I am not totally clear on wakelocks and deep sleep, I have "Battery Stats" installed (guess its not the same as the betterbatteryapp but seems to give some similar info) but its not clear to me how to read it all. In this case it sayd the stat period is 3 hours 8 minutes and out of that it has been in deep sleep 1h 51m and running time 1h 17m and wifi time 1h 25m and my batter is down to 74%, I am assuming that is not normal? In terms of applications the hogs are defintely the two audio apps poweramp and dogcatcher (they are just at the top of the list, the numbers it gives don't really make sense to me)
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3. When you say battery life as half a day, what is your actual usage? Screen on time, Wi-Fi, 3g, calls etc?
Well I have a 3 hour idea of my usage above, I don't use 3 g, I have wifi on about a third of the day perhaps, and actualy screen time probably just an hour or two, I do use it quite a bit for podcasts and music though. But I had tried it with my audio apps uninstalled for a few days and it still drained fairly quickly.
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4. Betterbatterystats and greenify are your friends.
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Will take a look, I kind of liked the battery stats option to compare to stats that others have uploaded, but I haven't checked out greenify.
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Click to collapse
Thanks!
If your battery is 2.5 yrs old, that's almost certainly the cause of your issues. Good advice to stick to original Samsung batteries; though there's nothing wrong with the 2000mAh genuine Samsung battery Vs the 1650mAh one - I used one of these for almost two years.
MistahBungle said:
If your battery is 2.5 yrs old, that's almost certainly the cause of your issues. Good advice to stick to original Samsung batteries; though there's nothing wrong with the 2000mAh genuine Samsung battery Vs the 1650mAh one - I used one of these for almost two years.
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Click to collapse
Doh, was hoping I wouldn't have to replace the battery. Actually... that said. Should a 2.5 year old mostly unused 1650mah samsung battery still be good? I think I still have the factory battery around somewhere now that I think about it. When I purchased the Anker battery I seemed to remember it was mainly for price and reputation reasons, not that the Samsung battery had such a bad reputation but the Anker had such a good reputation and a pretty good price.
I will give another battery a try if you say 2.5 years is old, but I do have to admit that the battery drain was not nearly as much of an issue with the older ROM I was using (RR 4.2.x) before, it wasn't stellar but not like this so it seems to me its more than just the batter thats giving me problems here.
Anyway, my phone is still golden other than the battery issues so if i can squeeze another year and a half out of it I'd be a happy camper. Any other thoughts would be welcome (and appreciated!)
Batteries discharge over time if they're stored/not used, ideally you should charge it up to/keep it at around 60-65% every few mths if you're going to store it for that long. If you've not touched it at all in that time, it might not be able to take/hold a charge anymore because that wasn't done.
Only way you're going to find out is if you charge it & use it.
Yeah, if you ended up getting 4 yrs out of a smartphone you'd be rather happy indeed.
If you really want to satisfy yourself as to whether it is indeed the age of the battery you're currently using causing your problems, do a clean install of stock & test that for a week. If it does the same thing with stock, you'll know for definite it is the battery. I'd be very surprised if it isn't though; they're not designed to last much longer than what you've had yours if you're charging/discharging constantly.
MistahBungle said:
Batteries discharge over time if they're stored/not used, ideally you should charge it up to/keep it at around 60-65% every few mths if you're going to store it for that long. If you've not touched it at all in that time, it might not be able to take/hold a charge anymore because that wasn't done.
Only way you're going to find out is if you charge it & use it.
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Click to collapse
doh, yeah haven't touched it; and the life lessons continue (didn't know that about batteries). will try it out, if its gone its gone, lesson learned.
Yeah, if you ended up getting 4 yrs out of a smartphone you'd be rather happy indeed.
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Yeah, I suppose I am pretty easy to please, I don't do games and don't really do video and don't feel that my phone is particularly slow (yet) so so far happy enough
If you really want to satisfy yourself as to whether it is indeed the age of the battery you're currently using causing your problems, do a clean install of stock & test that for a week. If it does the same thing with stock, you'll know for definite it is the battery. I'd be very surprised if it isn't though; they're not designed to last much longer than what you've had yours if you're charging/discharging constantly.
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Click to collapse
Thats a good idea, given what you've said i don't doubt that a large part of my problem is the battery (like I said before, with the older rom it was better but not stellar) do you know where I can find a stock rom nowadays? (sorry on the ROMS page they all seem to be custom roms, or perhaps i missed something?)
Thanks!
Stock roms @ Samfirmware, get one for your carrier/country (not 4.0.4 though, anything else is fine), if there's only 4.0.4 for your carrier/country, any other stock rom will do really -I just tell people to stick to carrier/country in the first instance as these have modems bundled with them that should have been tested by the carrier to give most people on their network good connectivity most of the time.
Or, Wanam has a thread in one of the development sections (I forget which; do a search or have a rummage around) that has CWM flashable stock roms if you'd prefer to do it that way; haven't had a look at the thread for a while so not sure if links are still live, but Wanam is a very active dev & I'd be surprised if he doesn't still have them hosted somewhere.
Does it drain more at a locationw where you use a certain Wifi?
I'm asking cause wlan-rx drains are know Android phones in big open Wifis as the phones get bombarded with signals from other computers/phones and are not filtered and keeps the phone awake.
Easiest way to find out is using Betterbatterystats.

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