MyBB guide to better Android Battery life

Polymathic

Polymathic

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Thought that this might be a useful thread to have.
Here's some stuff I noticed:

If I charge my phone overnight my phone will not even make to 5pm the next day. I find the battery runs hot and this drastically decreases battery life. So what I do now is charge my phone for a couple hours in the evening then take off charge before I go to bed and then charge it for another 1.5 - 2 hours when I wake up and this gives me much better results.

For some reason when I have no airtime my battery life is drastically worse.
 
If you have no airtime, it will keep on trying to send data if background data is enabled - this will kill your battery and the phone will also not sleep. So either make sure you have airtime, or turn off data.

Greenify is also a great app to help save battery.
 
What phone are you using?
I leave my phone to charge overnight and have not noticed what you are describing. I'm sitting on 18hrs @ 74% battery. But that is flawed a bit since I have very little screen time. Most drainage atm for me is from Google Services.
 
I will say though that my phone the Samsung S3 is awesome and everything but the battery life on it sucks ass to say the least, hardly lasts 2 days.

My old phone the Samsung Wave 2 would last like a week with continuous use.
 
I looked, but couldn't find the guide?

All I'm reading is bulldust....
 
MyWorld said:
What phone are you using?
I leave my phone to charge overnight and have not noticed what you are describing. I'm sitting on 18hrs @ 74% battery. But that is flawed a bit since I have very little screen time. Most drainage atm for me is from Google Services.
Click to expand...
Xperia Go. It takes about 4 hours to charge to 100% but I find that overcharging causes the battery to overheat
 
http://www.juicedefender.com/ Will help with the night schedules. It basically "suspends" phone over night and during the day only turn the 3G radio on every 5 minutes(time set by you) to poll for updates.

If you really wanna know what apps kill your battery maybe run https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=edu.umich.PowerTutor&hl=en for a day or 2. Will sort out the nasties, so you know what is killing it.

Things that help save power:
  • Dark themes: more ligth = more power use.
  • Schedule WiFi/3G do not let both run 100% of the time (apps like juice above and tasker can help with this also Google just patented the ability for phones to do this so expect it in new releases)
  • Turn Vibrate or sound off, do not use both. Also vibrate on keypress can chew battery power.
  • Never run phone at 100% brightness, set as low as you can with a toggle widget for when you in light places.
  • Run as few Widgets as posible.
  • This one is obvious... I hope: turn off live or scycled wallpapers

For charging: with Li Polymer you should use trickle charges instead of deep cycle(Charge more often). Heat kills battery life and 3%-100% charge generates more heat vs 80%-100%
 
Good idea with this thread. I'll weigh in with a few tips of my own (in no specific order):

  • Lower your screen brightness to the lowest that you can without it affecting the readability of the screen. The screen is by far the biggest battery hog.
  • Disable Google location services unless you are explicitly reliant on them. They do use a bit of battery life.
  • Your signal strength plays a huge role in battery life, moreso when the device is constantly polling 3G towers. Enabling 2G network mode is a good way to work around this if using an unreliable network (such as Cell C). Of course, this does come at the price of slower connectivity.
  • Using a scheduler such as Tasker or Llama to set your device to sync every hour or so, as opposed to constantly polling, is another idea.
  • Sometimes, an app goes crazy in the background, preventing your device from going into the power-saving deep sleep mode. Use an app like as BetterBatteryStats, to identify the cause of wakelocks and isolate them.
  • Apps such as Greenify help in hibernating applications that you have closed, preventing them from using any additional clock cycles and battery life. Could give you a slight improvement.
  • An option for the custom ROM guys- install a kernel that allows you to change the governor and voltage settings of the chipset. This is the most effective way to improve battery life, but also the most risky, and could easily brick your device. Approach with caution.

However, the best way to really improve your battery life is simply to tailor your usage to a degree of common sense. You don't need your GPS, Bluetooth and WiFI all on, and your screen at maximum brightness, when you are sitting in an office at your desk. Likewise, if you don't heavily browse the internet or download a plethora of apps, using 2G mode makes sense.

Some things do detract from the smartphone experience, but I believe that a smartphone should have some balance between performance and efficiency.
 
NomNom said:
That's nothing, it's takes most of the day to charge my phone.
Click to expand...
Xperia Go has a capacity of 1305 mAh the S3 has 2100 mAh battery that's a huge difference but least you can charge your phone overnight it makes life so much easier
 
BTW most anti virus apps are major battery hogs. If you're vigilant enough then you shouldn't need one. I tested Avast and it reduced the battery life on my RAZR Maxx to about 1.5 days.

Other battery hogs which should be disabled when not in use:
- Bluetooth (big one this)
- GPS

It's a good idea to add widgets to allow you to enable and disable things like GPS and bluetooth, especially if you use them relatively frequently...
 
AlphaJohn said:
For charging: with Li Polymer you should use trickle charges instead of deep cycle(Charge more often). Heat kills battery life and 3%-100% charge generates more heat vs 80%-100%
Click to expand...

Show me an android phone with a li-polymer battery. You are not likely to find one, since li-pol has about half the energy density of li-ion. This means your advice very bad indeed, and will reduce the life expectancy of a li-ion battery. (li-ion likes 0-80% charges)
 
P924 said:
Show me an android phone with a li-polymer battery. You are not likely to find one, since li-pol has about half the energy density of li-ion. This means your advice very bad indeed, and will reduce the life expectancy of a li-ion battery. (li-ion likes 0-80% charges)
Click to expand...

Falls under same rule http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-ion_battery#Battery_life (Same for all Lithium based batteries.

Rechargeable batteries degrade with use, the capacity decreasing until it is unusably small. Li+ batteries last longer[111] if not deeply discharged (depleted) before recharging. The smaller the depth of discharge, the longer the battery will last.[112]
Batteries may last longer if not stored fully discharged. As the battery self-discharges over time, its voltage gradually reduces. When depleted below the low-voltage threshold of the protection circuit (2.4 to 2.9 V/cell, depending on chemistry) it will be disabled and cannot be further discharged further until recharged.[111][clarification needed] It is recommended to store batteries at 40% charge level.[111]
The rate of degradation of lithium-ion batteries is strongly temperature-dependent; they degrade much faster if stored or used at higher temperatures. The carbon anode of the cell also generates heat. High charge levels and elevated temperatures (whether from charging or ambient air) hasten capacity loss.[50] A test on a commonly-used LiCoO
2 cell showed that over one year a fully charged cell kept at 25 °C (77 °F) permanently lost 20% of total capacity; the loss was lower when stored at lower charge levels and lower temperatures. Poor ventilation may increase temperatures, further shortening battery life. Loss rates vary by temperature: 6% loss at 0 °C (32 °F), 20% at 25 °C (77 °F), and 35% at 40 °C (104 °F). When stored at 40%–60% charge level, the capacity loss is reduced to 2%, 4%, and 15%, respectively. In contrast, the calendar life of LiFePO
4 cells is not affected by high charge states.[113] They may be stored in a refrigerator.[114][115]
Charging forms deposits inside the electrolyte that inhibit ion transport. The increase in internal resistance reduces the cell's ability to deliver current. This problem is more pronounced in high-current applications. The decrease means that older batteries do not charge as much as new ones (charging time required decreases proportionally).
Click to expand...

AND you should never ever in your entire life let a battery get to 0% that is an instagib. (Ask Nokia 920 owners when Windows Phone did not prevent that from happening. Nokia forums where full of complaints)
 
Last edited:
Turn off mobile data and wifi. Infinite battery life...
 
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