I9000 Battery Muncher

[Guest cyber0905]

Apologies first of for the noobiness of this question but you folks seem to be the only place I might be able to get a straight answer.

I have a vanilla I9000, charged 3 times so far - im currently only getting 1hr 30mins usage - 1 phone call, 10 mins browsing facebook - the best ive got is 3hrs.

Ive never had a smart phone before but surely this isnt right?!

What can I do to improve this battery life issue

Thanks

[Guest unfnknblvbl]

Give it a few days - all new batteries need to 'bed in' so to speak.

[Guest Ash_786]

Apologies first of for the noobiness of this question but you folks seem to be the only place I might be able to get a straight answer.

I have a vanilla I9000, charged 3 times so far - im currently only getting 1hr 30mins usage - 1 phone call, 10 mins browsing facebook - the best ive got is 3hrs.

Ive never had a smart phone before but surely this isnt right?!

What can I do to improve this battery life issue

Thanks

That usage is unbelievable after 3 charges. Reset your phone and if the problem continues then give the phone back to where you got it from.

[Guest d_droid]

These new batteries work as they are supposed to from the very start, so that's not your problem. I agree with the above, reset to factory and if it is still like that, then take it back and get a new battery.

[Guest DistortedLoop]

There's something amiss with your device or settings if you're only getting that little bit of time out of the phone, unless of course you're plugging the heck out of it with usage, but it doesn't sound like it from your post. I agree that you should probably take it back to where you got it and ask for a new battery, if not a new device, but if you're interested in more discussion on it, read on:

My SGS can make it through the day, barely, with my normal use, but that's part of the frustration with battery life discussions. My normal use might be light use for you, or very heavy use. Don't get wrapped up in comments from others that are along the lines of "I get 20 hours with heavy use" unless they describe what heavy use is for reference.

Be aware that battery life is the number one complaint of any of these new superphones. Every phone out there, except perhaps the newest iPhone, that follow has hundreds of people complaining of battery life and asking how to improve it.

So let's keep some things in mind:

1) The battery life on ANY smart phone is pretty poor compared to what you're used to from something like a flip phone. That's just a fact and nothing, except a heft external battery pack is going to change that any time soon.

2) Most are lucky to get a full day out of their big screened smart phones, though with tweaking and intelligent management of background data apps, a lot of people can go 24 hours or so.

Some things you should check:

1) There's a battery use information screen in the Settings application under the About section. Check it out and see what's sucking up the bulk of your life. It should usually be the display, or perhaps the calls you make. If you click on any of the indicators in there, you'll get more detailed information on that, for example, click on display and it will tell you how long the display has actually been turned on since the last charge of the phone. Sometimes you can find a problem application going through those. I discovered a rogue application that kept turning on the display to keep WiFi awake for some reason, and it was hurting battery life.

2) Many widgets, applications and syncing stuff turns on the radios and sucks up juice. If you have facebook, twitter, and other things updating in the background, the more often they're on, the faster battery will drain. Beautiful Widgets is a wonderful looking app, but I've found that it really sucks up the juice on my phone if I have it check the weather every 30 mins or so. Twitter app, same thing. Most of these kinds of apps are probably best left in manual update modes unless you're willing to give up some battery life or just have to have frequent notifications pop up that so-and-so sent you a tweet/facebook comment.

3) Emails the same as #2. The more frequently you set it to sync automatically, the worse battery life will be. Consider how often you need to get auto downloads and what the trade off in battery time is.

4) Check your screen brightness. Have it on automatic, or manually force it to low. Even with the Super AMOLED lower power consumption screens, the display is usually the biggest drain on the battery.

5) Be aware that on every smartphone I've owned, except for iPhones, the music player seems to suck juice big time too. I figure about 5-10% of battery life per hour is typical for me when playing music/podcasts.

6) Get a car charger and a couple of extra microUSB cables or actual microUSB chargers and keep them in locations where you frequent if you can. I have a 1-Amp microUSB charger in my car, and a desktop charger at my desk at work, and on my nightstand at home. Whenever I am near one of these, the phone gets plugged in if I am not using it. You can even use the USB port on your computer or laptop, of course.

7) There's a lot of debate on these new batteries. Some say they need to be conditioned, some say they don't. What I found interesting is that with the HTC EVO 4G, even HTC is saying that you will greatly improve battery life if you follow some bizarre procedure of charging the phone to 100% while turned on, then turning it off, unplugging it from the charger, then charging it again until the charger light turns green on the off phone, then unplugging it, and then doing the charge until green while turned off 10 times. Something about topping off each cell. I'm just repeating it, not saying it actually works. I did it on my EVO, but I never had battery complaints with it, but I had a 3rd party extra-capacity battery with increased mah.

8) Speaking of extra-capacity batteries, it's just a matter of time before Seidio releases one for the Galaxy phones, especially now that the four US carriers are getting SGS variants. I really recommend these things. I prefer the smaller ones that don't require a new case/battery back for the phone, for aesthetic reasons, and they still give an extra 10-25% life on the device, which is the difference between making it through the day or not sometimes.

Good luck, and let us know what happens for you.

[Guest fredphoesh]

What can I do to improve this battery life issue

Thanks

1 are you sure your wifi and bluetooth are switched off?

2 get autokiller and set it to aggressive

you should easily get a 14 hour day using the phone quite a lot.

[Guest Hendrickson]

Sounds like a fake post to me from a iphone 4 fanboy. 1 hours 30 mins is impossible. The fastest I drained the battery took like 2 hours with wif,gps,mutli tasking music and playing a movie.

[Guest ZAnwar]

Sounds like a fake post to me from a iphone 4 fanboy. 1 hours 30 mins is impossible. The fastest I drained the battery took like 2 hours with wif,gps,mutli tasking music and playing a movie.

Maybe, but it maybe a legit problem too. If it is legit, it's a faulty battery, no other way about it.

[Guest iLiquid]

7) There's a lot of debate on these new batteries. Some say they need to be conditioned, some say they don't. What I found interesting is that with the HTC EVO 4G, even HTC is saying that you will greatly improve battery life if you follow some bizarre procedure of charging the phone to 100% while turned on, then turning it off, unplugging it from the charger, then charging it again until the charger light turns green on the off phone, then unplugging it, and then doing the charge until green while turned off 10 times. Something about topping off each cell. I'm just repeating it, not saying it actually works. I did it on my EVO, but I never had battery complaints with it, but I had a 3rd party extra-capacity battery with increased mah.

Hi DistortedLoop,

This was the freakiest thing I ever read about Li-ion batteries.

HTC really said that?

[Guest DistortedLoop]

Hi DistortedLoop,

This was the freakiest thing I ever read about Li-ion batteries.

HTC really said that?

I'd have to try to find the actual thread out of the 100's that are publishing this fix to find the quote. I think it was someone else quoting HTC, not HTC directly posting, so you know how that can be. I probably shouldn't have mentioned it without being able to link to it.

Apparently this suggestion is quite popular with the HTC Incredible crowd as well. Lot's of "it works for me" type posts from those guys too.

[Guest CaptainC]

I did this after having problems whit my battery, after a flash i did only get 17h out of my battery and that whit nearly no use of the phone, bu after this i have got 1day and 22+ (most connect to charger now) whit mutch more use than ever, mutch more calls sms surf and playin hq youtube videos for my dougther in car . so this defently works!

One question most i do this everytime i chare my phone or is that first time enought?

Cheers

[Guest bambibio]

These new batteries work as they are supposed to from the very start, so that's not your problem. I agree with the above, reset to factory and if it is still like that, then take it back and get a new battery.

No they do not. When I first got my Galaxy a month ago, I barely got it last 12hours with the first few full charges (after the first few days of using it like a maniac) and now I easily run it two days, and with little use 3-4.

[Guest d_droid]

No they do not. When I first got my Galaxy a month ago, I barely got it last 12hours with the first few full charges (after the first few days of using it like a maniac) and now I easily run it two days, and with little use 3-4.

http://www.batteryuniversity.com/partone-12.htm